Orthodoxy

In honor of the fact that last week was been Holy Week and the fact that I needed to read something that would require me to think, I chose to read G.K. Chesterton's defense of the Christian philosophy, Orthodoxy. This is a book that I have heard many people recommend, including the sales clerk at B&N when I bought the book. I figured that since I enjoy Chesterton's fiction, I should try this piece.

In this book, Chesterton is defending Christianity based on the philosophy created by the Christian faith, saying that Christianity often brings together two conflicting ideas in such a way that the positive factors from each are held and that no other philosophy can do this. According to Chesterton, Christianity has the ability to proclaim ideas that don't seem to be true but are actually right. It is very hard to explain his ideas in simple speech because so much goes into proving each of them but it was very interesting. I have never seen the Christian faith defended on the basis of the philosophy created but he manages wonderfully. The first three chapters were very slow, where he was showing the flaws in the prevailing philosophies of the time, which are still strong in today's society, but after the fifth chapter, it was very interesting to see how the Christian faith managed to answer some of the questions Chesterton poses.

This is a rather difficult piece (even though it is only 153 pages, it took me all week to read) because of the difficulty of the material, the older style prose, and the cultural references that are not as well-known as they would have been to the readers of the early twentieth century. Chesterton is discussing the deeper ideas between several different philosophies so some study in this area would probably help to read this.

While it was a challenge and I am not sure how much I can explain after reading this, I do think I will be reading this again sometime so that I can try to absorb some of Chesterton's ideas and his joy in life.

A really nice quotation from the book: "Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die."

Rating: 3.5