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ORTHODOXY

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Before his series of Father Brown mysteries, G.K. Chesterton wrote "Orthodoxy," an autobiographical 'detective' story of how he came to believe the Christian faith. Drawing from "the truth of some stray legend or from the falsehood of some dominant philosophy...an anarchist club or a Babylonian temple what I might have found in the nearest parish church," Mr. Chesterton playfully and inductively reasons his way toward the one worldview that best explains and preserves the phenomena in the world he found around himself.

The world around Mr. Chesterton was rife with Modernism in the early twentieth century. Based on philosophies of the late nineteenth century, religious and political traditions were being questioned. Anarchism, communism, and socialism were the parlor topics of the day; the merely symbolic importance of religion was being settled upon. These are the roots of our post-modern society today in which the meaning of nearly everything (even words, according to literary deconstructionists) is now in doubt. At one point in the chapter entitled "The Suicide of Thought," Mr. Chesterton quips, "We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table." An exaggeration even today, undoubtedly. Still, we have traveled quite a distance philosophically since the era before the World Wars, and "Orthodoxy" is an excellent snapshot of where we've come from.

But be warned: This snapshot captures a lot of active thought. It took me a couple of reads over as many years to get a handle on the structure of the book, and now the rest of it has been becoming clearer to me. Part of the problem is Mr. Chesterton's writing style. There is much playfulness in his language, and a reader could mistakenly conclude that the author's reasoning relies heavily upon wordplay, the turn of a phrase to turn the tables on his opponents. It can become frustrating if one isn't careful. Mr. Chesterton himself acknowledges this impression, "Mere light sophistry is the thing that I happen to despise the most of all things, and it is perhaps a wholesome fact that this is the thing of which I am generally accused." But don't miss the meat for the gravy (or the salad for the dressing, as your case may be). The potency of his arguments doesn't rely on his clever semantics but on his connections between observed facts and the ancient, corresponding orthodoxy of Christianity. Mr. Chesterton has fun with words because he can, not because he needs to.

This mixture of cleverness and careful thinking ultimately leads Mr. Chesterton to this conclusion: Christian faith is well-reasoned trust in Christ. And the desire for well-reasoned trust is a "practical romance," as Mr. Chesterton calls it--a need in the ordinary person for "the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure...an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome." A way to accept the knowable while looking beyond it toward what is yet to be known.

Mr. Chesterton wrote "Orthodoxy" for people looking for that kind of romance. "If anyone is entertained by learning how the flowers of the field or the phrases in an omnibus, the accidents of politics or the pains of youth came together in a certain order to produce a certain conviction of Christian orthodoxy, he may possibly read this book." However, this book isn't for everyone. "If a man says that extinction is better than existence or blank existence better than variety and adventure, then he is not one of the ordinary people to whom I am talking. If a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing." The inconvincible cannot be convinced. Yet the skeptical (such as Mr. Chesterton once was) can be because they are the doubters who're still looking around. I myself come from a skeptic's background and regard "Orthodoxy" as a plausible, if sometimes difficult to comprehend, and wonderful way someone can come to trust the claims of Christianity.

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).

Like most others who have read Chesterton, I find him enjoyable, hilarious, and utterly commonsensical. Orthodoxy is the perfect introduction to the man and his writings.

(...)The orthodoxy Chesterton speaks of is not the Eastern Christianity but traditional Christian doctrine from even before there was a division in the Church. It is akin to Lewis's Mere Christianity in that it is not in any particular denomination but mainly to be found in the early creeds of the Church which the vast majority of Christians acknowledge as authoritative (e.g., Apostles', Nicene).

In response to those who dismiss Chesterton's views as "unscientific" or "outdated," I answer, as Chesterton might, that a strictly empirical method of acknowledging reality is not defensible on strictly empirical grounds, and to assert such is thoroughly narrow-minded and dogmatic, or something to that effect. Chesterton's treatement of foreign peoples may often be characterized by ill-informed or distorted views, but I cannot recall any malice towards them. In our society so eager to be offended, many often overlook the truths within satire, or satirical writing. As for his views just being an excuse to be contrary, if anything he was seeking to be the same, similar to two thousand years of Christianity. As he famously writes "Tradition is the democracy of the dead."

Finally, I believe that any unprejudiced person, while perhaps not agreeing completely, would find it difficult to deny out-of-hand Chesteron's characterizations of man, man's sinful nature, and his wonder at the universe. And at the very least, his style is engaging and Orthodoxy is certainly great reading.

After reading the first paragraph, I thought, "I wish I had written this book."

Chesterton has the gift of thought and the gift of expression, a rare commodity in the age of chatter and blather. I found myself puffing to keep up with his logic!

I think the power of the book is found in the subtitle: romance and faith. Americans see God through the squint of Puritanism, so we see Him as merely a syllogism or a cosmic party pooper. We forget that our God was once accused of being a glutton and wine-bibber. I could see many alleged Christians doing likewise if He were here today. Chesterton breaths the life back into Adam's clay, and for this I thank him!

In the tradition of the heavywights like C.S Lewis. G.K.Chesterton makes the final case for the Truth.

You cannot read this book in one session and say that you understand it. You need to rethink it all several times, enjoying it as you enjoy a quality picture: after numerous blinks.
GK was able to put inside a brief book a colossal work in all dimensions: deepest logic, total truth content and excellent wording, all backed up by everyday-life examples.
As with any masterpiece, you recognize it in the fatc that if you borrow or add one word in the entire book and you end up destroying it. Chesterton explains why the world is insane in his ABSOLUTE view (take it or reply it, if you can) by recalling old truths and new concepts; he re-news what makes sense and why that makes sense.
One attracting issue about this writer is that he avoids wrestling against anyone who doesn't share his view. He kills the wrong view, elegantly saving the opponent, with humorous prosaic poetry.

Chesterton always brings a new twist to the reader's perspective on life. By bringing such diverse topics as insanity, elfs, and the relevance of religion to the forefront, Chesterton interweaves the ancient truths of Christianity with a realistic view of the world. He does much to show that Christianity, by its alleged irrationalities, is the only rational explanation for all the quirks of life. This is Chesterton at his best, and must be read by anyone who is at all interested in the defense of classical Christianity.

Like C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton is one of the greatest apologists of all time. "Orthodoxy" is a masterpiece of Christian literature, my favourite part being the chapter on paradoxes.

Only the most ingrained skeptics won't find intelligent and useful insights in this book, but that's because they refuse to find anything insightful in any Christian's work.

G.K. Chesterton has a great sense of humour, a wonderful style of prose, and is clearly a most amazing thinker and a uniquely brilliant Christian. I highly recommend it to all honest seekers & thinkers.

"Orthodoxy" is described by Chesterton as "a slovenly autobiography", a description that's really not too far off the mark. Instead of depending upon rigorous logic, the contents of this work are rather "mental pictures" of a sort, which is what the author states at the outset. This sort of approach is easy to attack by any contrarian skeptic, but I can't criticize Chesterton, as he and I are really cut from the same cloth. Loath to state the obvious, we both prefer to *illustrate* the truth via induction. This is a perfectly valid method of presenting ideas, it's just that it's easy to misunderstand and misrepresent. It's for this reason that this book probably wouldn't change someone's mind-kind of a litmus test for the open-minded, which, it turns out, self-proclaimed 'skeptics' or 'freethinkers' are anything but.

Chesterton makes two really good points throughout the book: 1) sanity lies in maintaining seemingly opposed extremes in a kind of dramatic tension. It's not balance, it's both at once. It's not a contradiction, it's a paradox. Christianity fits this like nothing else: singularity/plurality, freedom/servanthood, individuality/assimilation, etc., all are fused together in seeming contradiction of common sense. But don't we always find truth to be stranger than fiction? In contrast, monomania is a kind of insanity, like total belief in oneself, or the belief that one unfalsifiable human construct, like evolution, completely illuminates everything. 2) The importance of maintaining a kind of humble childlike wonder about the world, the universe, about existence itself. What if you saw a four-inch-long fully-functional helicopter hovering about? Wouldn't that be delightfully incredible? Not too long ago, after reading this book, it dawned on me, upon observing a dragonfly, that that was precisely what I was looking at. I'm not even talking about creationism, irreducible complexity, any of that. It is in fact, neither here nor there. Just the fact that such a marvelous thing should exist, by any means, is truly stupendous. It should inspire deeper thought about fundamental issues. The modern-day 'scientific' priesthood is perpetually at pains to systematically dismantle the ability to see things this way even as they proclaim it superficially.

The funny thing about Chesterton's writing is that he gets so wrapped up in his ideas that rather strange-sounding, apparent non-sequiturs come up every so often. A sample Chestertonism: "As a fact, anthropophagy [cannibalism] is certainly a decadent thing, not a primitive one. It is much more likely that modern men will eat human flesh out of affectation, than that primitive man ate it out of ignorance." Well, duh!? As in his Father Brown mysteries, Chesterton loves to toss off sweeping statements, and is a bit too shy of explicating his ideas with the utmost clarity sometimes; chalk it up to slovenliness, I guess.But for the most part his ideas are sound and his writing thought-provoking.

I think this book is one of the greatest apologies for the Christian faith ever penned; possibly even better than C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity". Rather than attempting to build an airtight logical argument from the ground up in which the reader is forced to accept the premises of Christianity or be logically inconsistent, Chesterton builds his apologetic on the idea of wonder and imagination. He attempts to show that anyone who enjoys an imaginative, romantic, adventure filled life owes it to themself to look into the Christian faith, because this is exactly what it offers. He offers a frank disclaimer at the beginning of the book in which he says that anyone who does not want this kind of life need not read this book because it has nothing to offer them. He constantly attempts to make the reader see the mystery and the glory of normal, everyday things and then argues that Christianity offers the best possible scenario for holding together the mysterious with the mundane. The fact that the book is focused on mystery, romance, and imagination, however, is not to say that Chesterton rejects logic or good critical thinking altogether. To the contrary, he delightfully skewers, slices, and dices the inconsistency and ridiculousness of a great deal of worldly wisdom and the popular thinking of his age, which, as it turns out, does not look all that different from a great deal of the accepted wisdom of our own. Chesterton, however, recognizes that logic has it's limits, and that it cannot fully appeal to or account for all that makes us human. The book is filled with many wonderful passages, and there are parts of the book where it seems like every line you read is a quotable quote. So, with Chesterton's disclaimer in mind, if you are looking for an eminently readable, and unique defense of the Christian faith you owe it to yourself to get this book.
On a final note, I feel the need to respond to the reader who accuses Chesterton of being racist and elitist in this book. I'm wondering if the reader read the same book I did, as I found nothing that I can recall that was racist or elitist at all, and anyone who knows anything about Chesterton at all will know that he was neither of these things. Chesterton was one of the greatest spokesmen of all time for the importance of ordinary people and common values and morality, and, especially in his later life, was an outspoken opponent of racist practices and groups like eugenics and the Nazi party.