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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is Chesterton's third criterion for progress?
(a) It must be heavenly.
(b) It must be a utopia.
(c) It must be like Eden.
(d) It must be earthly.

2. How does Bernard Shaw speak of miracles?
(a) With admiration.
(b) With disbelief.
(c) With contempt.
(d) With awe.

3. What is Chesterton's stated purpose in Chapter VI, the Paradoxes of Christianity
(a) To show that Christianity has an answer for every problem.
(b) To show that Christianity cannot account for irregularities.
(c) To show that Christianity is fully logical.
(d) To show that Christianity's irregularities are matched in its truths.

4. Chesterton names four standards by which people try to establish the ideals of equality and inequality. What is the first?
(a) The passage of time.
(b) God-given authority.
(c) Persuasive thinking, similar to Nietzsche's.
(d) The progression of creatures through evolution.

5. Why does Chesterton say that a man is bewildered when asked to summarize his belief in something?
(a) If he has no evidence for his belief other than his desire to believe.
(b) If everything he knows supports that belief.
(c) If he has only scattered evidence for that belief.
(d) If he must defend it to people who oppose him.

Short Answer Questions

1. At the end of Chapter VI, The Paradoxes of Christianity, what conclusion does Chesterton reach about orthodoxy?

2. According to Chesterton, what is the problem with moving slowly toward justice?

3. Why, in the abstract, does Chesterton disapprove of long, complicated words?

4. What does Chesterton call "the spike of dogma" that changed his religious opinion? (Chesterton 2000, pg. 234)

5. Why, according to Christianity, can passions be free?

Short Essay Questions

1. What argument does Chesterton make for keeping joy and anger separate? What is the danger in letting them meld together to produce some form of contentment?

2. How does Chesterton explain the modern view of miracles? Is this view contradictory?

3. How does Chesterton explain pantheism's relation to wonder? What is the primary difference between pantheism and action?

4. If Nature does improve man through impersonal means, as Chesterton claims, what must happen? What is happening in reality?

5. Why does Chesterton detest the religion of the Inner Light, of looking within oneself for God? What relation does this abhorrence have to Christianity?

6. What does Chesterton say is the most sensible ideal for nature? Is this a valid ideal? Why or why not?

7. The Church holds to some strict doctrines regarding man and his actions. Why is she so strict? Is it possible for her to swerve in her beliefs?

8. Why is it better to be a progressive, according to Chesterton's understanding of the term? Why should man rebel against the new rather than against the old?

9. Christianity holds that any man who depends on a luxurious life is fallen and corrupt. What effect does this belief have on the believer, according to Chesterton?

10. What is the common view of Christianity and Buddhism, according to Chesterton? How are they similar and dissimilar? What is Chesterton's opinion of their differences?

(see the answer keys)

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