4/14/26 from the Wittenberg Door News Desk
Alert: Discreet Spoilers ahead.
Pastors read. At least, I hope they do. While I often post on the Wittenberg Door about relatively scholarly reading, that's not all the reading I do. I thought it might be interesting to put up an occasional post about a book I have read or listened to recently. In this post, The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton. Many Christians know Chesterton primarily for his incisive works in defense of biblical Christianity. Yet he was a prolific writer otherwise. What's particularly interesting is the way his writing demonstrates his citizenship in a particularly Christian worldview. His writing never considers Christ as an afterthought or as incidental to the world. The world of Chesterton works in a particular way because of who created it and who sustains it. Though we are always confronted by the fruits of the fall into sin, those who decide to operate in opposition to the way God has graciously created the world are ultimately engaged in a fruitless, disappointing, and frustrating enterprise, which will ultimately lead to failure in all the measures that matter.
This is the case in The Man Who Was Thursday. In this brief novel, the main character has been recruited into the police force to infiltrate and combat an anarchist movement. In his efforts at infiltration, he engages with multiple other people about the metaphysical purpose of poetry and anarchy, and the question of how they interact in the real world, if one can even find the real world.
The anarchist organization is led by a group of seven people, known by the days of the week. There is also a leader of the organization, but he is someone who has never been identified clearly, though he operates in plain sight.
When there is a suspicion that one of the group of seven people is a government spy, the various members of the leadership carry on covert investigations to determine who the traitor is and how to interfere with the unfaithfulness to the organization.
In the end, there is an international chase involving different members of the leadership. Eventually, the anarchist movement . . . well, I better not say what happens.
Chesterton is an intriguing writer. This novel is not at all what I would call "brain candy." It's entertaining, insightful, and vivid throughout. The situations are as relevant to this day as they were when the book was penned in 1908.
Alert: Discreet Spoilers ahead.
Pastors read. At least, I hope they do. While I often post on the Wittenberg Door about relatively scholarly reading, that's not all the reading I do. I thought it might be interesting to put up an occasional post about a book I have read or listened to recently. In this post, The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton. Many Christians know Chesterton primarily for his incisive works in defense of biblical Christianity. Yet he was a prolific writer otherwise. What's particularly interesting is the way his writing demonstrates his citizenship in a particularly Christian worldview. His writing never considers Christ as an afterthought or as incidental to the world. The world of Chesterton works in a particular way because of who created it and who sustains it. Though we are always confronted by the fruits of the fall into sin, those who decide to operate in opposition to the way God has graciously created the world are ultimately engaged in a fruitless, disappointing, and frustrating enterprise, which will ultimately lead to failure in all the measures that matter.
This is the case in The Man Who Was Thursday. In this brief novel, the main character has been recruited into the police force to infiltrate and combat an anarchist movement. In his efforts at infiltration, he engages with multiple other people about the metaphysical purpose of poetry and anarchy, and the question of how they interact in the real world, if one can even find the real world.
The anarchist organization is led by a group of seven people, known by the days of the week. There is also a leader of the organization, but he is someone who has never been identified clearly, though he operates in plain sight.
When there is a suspicion that one of the group of seven people is a government spy, the various members of the leadership carry on covert investigations to determine who the traitor is and how to interfere with the unfaithfulness to the organization.
In the end, there is an international chase involving different members of the leadership. Eventually, the anarchist movement . . . well, I better not say what happens.
Chesterton is an intriguing writer. This novel is not at all what I would call "brain candy." It's entertaining, insightful, and vivid throughout. The situations are as relevant to this day as they were when the book was penned in 1908.
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