View
The Man Who Was Doodling
Dan DeWitt on G. K. Chesterton & the Art of Casual Sketching
I stopped being embarrassed about my joy of sketching shortly after meeting Gilbert Keith Chesterton. The introduction was made by none other than Clive Staples Lewis, who, I later learned, was an amateur artist himself. Their company was joined shortly thereafter by Lewis's fellow Inkling, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, a gifted illustrator in his own right (to name but one of his monumental gifts), and by Dorothy Sayers, who provided an apologetic for art in her book The Mind of the Maker. Lewis was my literary gatekeeper to another world.
The Inklings opened my eyes to the power (and pleasure) of art appreciation as a Christian, but no one has more normalized artistic expression for me than G. K. Chesterton. This is not to say that he has offered me a theological framework for drawing, though I'm sure reading hundreds of pages of his printed work has contributed something to my appreciation for aesthetics. I simply mean that he gave me license to care about theological and philosophical reflection without giving up what some might consider the whimsical hobby of doodling.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Dan DeWitt is the dean of Boyce College, the undergraduate school of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also teaches courses on worldview, philosophy, and apologetics. He is the author of Jesus or Nothing (Crossway, 2014) and posts regularly on his blog Theolatte.com. Dan and his wife April have four children and reside in Louisville, Kentucky.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on imagination from the online archives
19.10—December 2006
Training Up a Child Requires a Well-Formed Imagination by David Mills
18.4—May 2005
The Idylls, Idols & Devils That Corrupt the Moral Imagination by Vigen Guroian
more from the online archives
24.2—March/April 2011
Certain Death & the Last Lectures of Socrates & Jesus by Randall B. Smith
28.5—Sept/Oct 2015
on Our Sacred Duty to Teach the Devil to Death by Marcus Johnson
33.2—March/April 2020
Christian Pro-Family Governments?
Old & New Lessons from Europe by Allan C. Carlson
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
