Orthodoxy

Rating:
Summary: From a Failed Pagan
Review: Love this book. Chesterton is sort of the Mark Twain of apologetics. Reading it I found that I was laughing one minute and seriously blown away the next. I am not a Christian, but this book gave me hope that maybe there is a place for a logic and faith based Christianity which is both orthodox and stronger than a fearful fundamentalism. I like the fact that Chesterton opposes his critics while for the most part honestly respecting them as intelligent people. It's the sign of a man secure in his ideas.

I would recommend this book to any other failed pagans out there. Would also be a good read for any agnostic interesting in the role of imagination in simple, thoughtful living.

Rating:
Summary: A profound book
Review: My initial reaction about halfway through the first chapter was, "This man thinks way too much."

The depth to which Chesterton attacks the most mundane of topics is staggering. Who ever considered the "rightness" of fairy tales, and the "wrongness" of everyday life to such a degree? (in the Ethics of Elfland)

This is the perfect precursor to Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind", because Chesterton here exposes for us the philosophical background of the problems of Post-Modern thought which Bloom describes. Another complimentary book would be Ravi Zacharias's "Deliver Us from Evil".

Rating:
Summary: One of the most honest books written re/ the Christian Faith
Review: One of the best books I have ever read in re/ to the Christian Faith. It challenges one to think through his or her convictions and take a serious look at the superstitions that have, unfortunately, been associated w/ the Christian faith.

Rating:
Summary: Curious, Brilliant Apologetics
Review: Orthodoxy is not the book I thought it would be. I really expected a rigorous, systematic defence of orthodox doctrine. Instead, I read a rousing autobiography, which left me in continued awe of the author, but rather bemused about Chesterton's mental habits.

First off, Chesterton in relation to various heresies (in particular secularism), is a bit like a drunken man with a sledgehammer in a china shop. Not an angry drunk, but a happy, wild-eyed, well-practiced drunk. Chesterton's intellect so thoroughly overpowers the counterarguments that he sometimes seems at a loss as to which direction to swing the hammer. So he muddles cheerfully along, smashing a bit of Nietzchism here, crushing a Socialist argument there. And through it all he seems painfully aware of the oncoming post-modern society, in which the ultimate secular virtue of tolerance would leave us oblivious to rational argument.

Orthodoxy is replete with classic Chesterton. He makes his points with precise metaphors that waste no words. A particular favorite of mine is his argument against the relativist effort to remove value from physical or abstract objects. Chesterton cites the title of a work called "the Love of Triangles" and points out that if Triangles are loved for anything, they are loved for being triangular.

As with The Everlasting Man, Chesterton provides his readers with a neat intellectual trick that can be used for self-analysis. In Orthodoxy, the trick is the reduction of conversation to monosyllabic sentences. Chesterton has found another key characteristic of the modern world here - the tendency of people to adopt a complex language for the express intent of not saying anything at all. Anyone familiar with the sciences will understand the necessity of precision in language, combined with the maddening inability of the words themselves to convey the desired meaning. As an example, I refer to isotactic, syndiotactic, and atactic polymers. These terms refer to the pattern of orientation in polymer chains. Is it possible to infer that from the terminology? Our language is full of adopted "scientific" nomenclature that contains meaning of which we are unaware. One of these days, I'm going to state a hyperthesis and wait for someone to point out my spelling error.

But I digress. Chesterton's recognition is that the more complex our language, and the more specialized its application, the less meaning the language itself conveys. Witness the confusion over the terms "liberal" and "progressive," cited by Chesterton as examples. Anyone familiar with the modern (American" connotations of these words will recognize that "liberal" is someone who wants to limit free speech, have government control over the economy, mandate the membership of the Boy Scouts, and dictate how many gallons of water can be contained in your toilet tank. Progressive is simply someone who wants to progress back to the 60's. The meanings of the words are a far cry from the definition of the words.

Chesterton supplies the antidote - one syllable words only. While this is obviously of limited utility, it's a nice exercise (like trying to cook breakfast using only your left hand, if you're right handed). His point is well taken - the one-syllable words are pretty hard to confuse or confute, and they're remarkably handy. They're also anathema to wordy people like me.

I cannot, of course, help compare Chesterton's autobiographical Orthodoxy with Augustine's Confessions. I shudder to think that it is the different audiences that define the difference in these books, but in any case here is a contrast between a brilliant ancient writer and a brilliant modern writer, both explaining how they came to accept Christ and His Church. Where Augustine is expansive, structured, precise and deeply interested in addressing each of the many ways we might consider the phenomenon of "memory," Chesterton is rambling, concise, and chaotic in his visualization of madness and genius.

Finally (yes! Finally!) I have to admit that I remain unconvinced of Chesterton's hyperthesis of sanity. Where Chesterton sees sanity as the result of a tension between two extremes (in fact, two poles), I suspect that it is such tension that generally "cracks" people's heads (in most cases the tension between perceived reality and reality-by-policy).

Chesterton, however, will get the better of me with such arguments as: "To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything is a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."

Magnificent!

Rating:
Summary: Fit only for unscientific children, I guess. (Like me)
Review: Orthodoxy is written for the poet and the child in each of us (The latter being that part of us Jesus said can inherit the Kingdom). Orthodoxy is, at the same time, one of the wisest, and funniest, books I have ever read; almost up to the level of Everlasting Man. It seems to me he does give a logically challenging, if rather whimsical, argument for the Christian faith here. And having read many of the most famous skeptics of our time, his argument remains no less timely, powerful, and suggestive.

How do I explain the reaction of the reader below, then, who appears intelligent, but finds "Little that is intellectually bearable" in this book, and could not even read it through once without throwing it down in disgust? For one thing, Chesterton's approach is not scientific, but psychological. For those to whom science is the only god, a little prior reading might be worthwhile -- John Polkinghome or Hugh Ross on evidences for the Creator in modern cosmology, for example. Let Scott Peck's People of The Lie search your heart. Or even try my book, Jesus and the Religions of Man, which offers empirical evidence of a more historical nature for the truth of the Christian claims. Let the facts presented in these books take the edge of your arrogance.

Then, maybe, go for a walk through Mt. Rainier National Park when the huckleberries are reddening in the fall, or skin dive in Hawaii. Or walk through a dark forest on a clear night when the stars are out. Observe and wonder. Become a child again. Laugh at your certainties and prejudices a little. Then try reading this book again.

"(Skepticism) discredits supernatural stories that have some foundation, simply by telling natural stories that have no foundation." "The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer Light, fair as the sun. . .""To be allowed to make love to the moon and then to complain that Jupiter kept his own moons in a harem seemed to me a vulgar anti-climax." You still don't see the relevence or wisdom of such teachings? Oh, well. Chesterton did warn, "If a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. . . It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything -- even pride." This book, I guess, is no exception.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, humorous, intelligent, and full of surprises
Review: Portly, fun loving, witty G.K. Chesterton decided to write this book as a companion volume to his book HERETICS. Since HERETICS had criticised contemporary philosophies, ORTHODOXY was written to present an alternative viewpoint, and is therefore both affirmative in tone and autobiographical in many places. A sampling of his chapter titles gives some idea of Chesterton's sense of fun as well as his unusual approach to the matter of Christianity. Chapter one is "In Defense of Everything Else" (one pictures Chesterton with a whimsical, impish smile on his face as he wrote this). There are also chapters on "The Suicide of Thought", "The Ethics of Elfland" (a really superb chapter), "The Maniac", and "The Paradoxes of Christianity". In this easily readable book (only 160 pages in the small paperback edition), Chesterton shows that theological reflections and philosophical ruminations need be neither boring nor incomprehensible. This was jolly good fun to read, being both funny and intellectually stimulating. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: A classic every believer should read...
Review: Some books are timeless classics. In the world of Christian classics Orthodoxy is one of them. It is G. K. Chesterton's account of his search for authentic Christianity in the midst of the conflicting voices of the modern world. So it is both deeply theological and also personal, even quirky, in its critical review of the various other, opposing approaches to life.

Chesterton was a contemporary of Leo Tolstoy, H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. Much of what he writes is "in answer" to them and their divergent views of the meaning of life.

Chesterton came to a deeply held Christian faith that took its outward expression in his 1922 conversion to Roman Catholicism. Today, Chesterton is best remembered as the creator of the "Father Brown" detective stories, but he was a prolific writer, penning studies of Robert Browning (1903) and Charles Dickens (1906), novels including The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) and The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), poems, collected in 1927 and essays, collected in Tremendous Trifles (1909) and Come to Think of It (1930).

In the opening chapter of Orthodoxy, Chesterton "eliminates the competition" by skewering competing world-view theories, showing their warts and all. He then describes flawed approaches to life that will lead to despair, in the second chapter, "The Suicide of Thought." Having put erroneous views to rest, for the remainder of the book he describes the central truths of Christianity as the only correct way of understanding creation and human life.

Chesterton portrays himself as one who has traveled all around the world, only to have arrived at home again as if it were some new and strange land. "Home" being the traditions of Christian faith. Such a journey may seem unnecessary, but you will agree that same paradox appears in everything from Dorothy's journey in the "Wizard of Oz" to T. S. Eliot in "Little Gidding." It is the way of human kind, according to Chesterton, to seek and to find-even if what is found was "there all along." (A fact echoed in Chesterton's dedication of the book "To My Mother").

Those who read Orthodoxy will travel with Chesterton as guide-which may be the best way to go, because he is an amusing intellectual companion who has trod that way before.

Philip Yancey wrote the foreword to this edition and claims this book transformed his Christian understanding. If that is not enough to tempt you to read it, perhaps this quotation will: "The orthodox church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox church was never respectable... It is easy to be a madman; it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own." (page 149).

Chesterton has been called been called "the prince of paradox" because his theology is often robed in a light, energetic, rapid-paced and whimsical style. This was brought about to no small degree by his custom of dictating all of his writings. (A custom, we might note, shared by none other than the Apostle Paul).

Rating:
Summary: A classic every believer should read...
Review: Some books are timeless classics. In the world of Christian classics Orthodoxy is one of them. It is G. K. Chesterton's account of his search for authentic Christianity in the midst of the conflicting voices of the modern world. So it is both deeply theological and also personal, even quirky, in its critical review of the various other, opposing approaches to life.

Chesterton was a contemporary of Leo Tolstoy, H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. Much of what he writes is "in answer" to them and their divergent views of the meaning of life.

Chesterton came to a deeply held Christian faith that took its outward expression in his 1922 conversion to Roman Catholicism. Today, Chesterton is best remembered as the creator of the "Father Brown" detective stories, but he was a prolific writer, penning studies of Robert Browning (1903) and Charles Dickens (1906), novels including The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) and The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), poems, collected in 1927 and essays, collected in Tremendous Trifles (1909) and Come to Think of It (1930).

In the opening chapter of Orthodoxy, Chesterton "eliminates the competition" by skewering competing world-view theories, showing their warts and all. He then describes flawed approaches to life that will lead to despair, in the second chapter, "The Suicide of Thought." Having put erroneous views to rest, for the remainder of the book he describes the central truths of Christianity as the only correct way of understanding creation and human life.

Chesterton portrays himself as one who has traveled all around the world, only to have arrived at home again as if it were some new and strange land. "Home" being the traditions of Christian faith. Such a journey may seem unnecessary, but you will agree that same paradox appears in everything from Dorothy's journey in the "Wizard of Oz" to T. S. Eliot in "Little Gidding." It is the way of human kind, according to Chesterton, to seek and to find-even if what is found was "there all along." (A fact echoed in Chesterton's dedication of the book "To My Mother").

Those who read Orthodoxy will travel with Chesterton as guide-which may be the best way to go, because he is an amusing intellectual companion who has trod that way before.

Philip Yancey wrote the foreword to this edition and claims this book transformed his Christian understanding. If that is not enough to tempt you to read it, perhaps this quotation will: "The orthodox church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox church was never respectable... It is easy to be a madman; it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own." (page 149).

Chesterton has been called been called "the prince of paradox" because his theology is often robed in a light, energetic, rapid-paced and whimsical style. This was brought about to no small degree by his custom of dictating all of his writings. (A custom, we might note, shared by none other than the Apostle Paul).

Rating:
Summary: Hee Hee
Review: The following quote from "sincre reader" is the most amusing thing I have read in a long time:

"His only excuse is that he existed in a time when science was not as advanced as it is today."

What a hoot! You should have your own comedy show, Sincere Reader!

Rating:
Summary: This book can be peeled like an onion
Review: The Romance Of Faith. Like any real romance, this book about faith can be peeled back in each reading to reveal a deeper and richer truth. With witty voice (I know it's not an audio book -- but you can almost hear him) Chesterton shows us that God doesn't fit into anyone's box -- and that true faith is the most exciting & perilous thing of all. To truly believe leads us to truly live. For years this has been my favorite book -- and one which shows the richness and jolly goodness of faith.

One caveat -- must smoke a pipe while reading in order to fully appreciate book.