Orthodoxy (Image Classics) - Softcover

G.K. Chesterton

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385015364 ISBN 13: 9780385015363

Publisher: Image, 2001

Synopsis

Chesterton's timeless exploration of the essentials of Christian faith and of his pilgrimage to belief (more than 750,000 copies sold in the Image edition) is now reissued.

For G.K. Chesterton, orthodoxy carries us into the land of romance, right action, and revolution. In Orthodoxy, a classic in religious autobiography, he tells of his pilgrimage there by way of the doctrines of Christianity set out in the Apostles' Creed.

Where science seeks to explain all things in terms of calculation and necessary law, Chesterton argues on behalf of the Christian doctrines of mystery and free will. Sanity, he says, belongs to the poet who accepts the romance and drama of these beliefs rather than to the logician who does not. This sanity is not static. It does not mean merely learning the right doctrines and then lapsing into a refined meditation on them. Chesterton dismisses such an inactive belief as "the greatest disaster of the nineteenth century." For him, right thinking is a waste without right action.

For Chesterton the populist, political ction often spells revolution. He discovers in the doctrines of original sin and the divinity of Christ ever-present seedbeds of revolt in the face of the tyrannies of money and power.

About this title

Review:

If G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith is, as he called it, a "slovenly autobiography," then we need more slobs in the world. This quirky, slender book describes how Chesterton came to view orthodox Catholic Christianity as the way to satisfy his personal emotional needs, in a way that would also allow him to live happily in society. Chesterton argues that people in western society need a life of "practical romance, the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome." Drawing on such figures as Fra Angelico, George Bernard Shaw, and St. Paul to make his points, Chesterton argues that submission to ecclesiastical authority is the way to achieve a good and balanced life. The whole book is written in a style that is as majestic and down-to-earth as C.S. Lewis at his best. The final chapter, called "Authority and the Adventurer," is especially persuasive. It's hard to imagine a reader who will not close the book believing, at least for the moment, that the Church will make you free. --Michael Joseph Gross

From the Publisher:

Chesterton's classic explanation of the essentials of the Christian faith and of his pilgrimage to belief. Written in 1908, it displays all the intellectual clarity and literary skill of one of this century's greatest and most thoughtful authors.

About this edition

• Publisher: Image
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0385015364
• ISBN 13: 9780385015363
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 170