Volume > Issue > Sherlock Holmes & Jesus Christ

Sherlock Holmes & Jesus Christ

IS CHRISTIANITY JUST A GAME?

By Paul C. Fox | May 2000
Paul C. Fox, M.D., is a family physician in Blairsville, Pennsylvania, and a member of St. Mary's Byzantine Catholic Church.

“Excellent!” I cried. “Elementary,” said Holmes.Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Crooked Man

For a few luminous months during my sophomore year in high school I came to believe in the Full Personhood of Sherlock Holmes. That is, I became persuaded that the “world’s first consulting detective” had been, after all, not a mere fictional device, but a living, breathing man.

The instrument of my conversion to this faith was W.S. Baring-Gould’s marvelous Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, which purported to be the authentic biography of the great detective. From his birth to Siger and Violet Holmes in the North Riding of Yorkshire to his death among his beehives in Sussex, Sherlock Holmes and his life and times were presented with such a wealth of believable circumstantial detail (complete with footnotes) that I felt compelled to believe in his existence.

The world seemed a larger and more wonderful place with the knowledge that Sherlock Holmes had had a life outside the reports of his cases written by his associate Dr. Watson and published through Watson’s “literary agent,” Conan Doyle.

Enjoyed reading this?

READ MORE! REGISTER TODAY

SUBSCRIBE

You May Also Enjoy

Another Side of John Henry Newman

His brother-in-law, Tom Mozley, would say, "He would have been a second Paganini if he had become a professional musician."

Kant Was Wrong

According to Kant, we do not look upon the world as it is, but upon an appearance of the world projected by the structures of the human mind.

The Looming Civil War Over Abortion

Either Christianity will rebaptize the heart of the nation or secularism will drive out Christianity, but one or the other will be victorious.