Customer Reviews
A much-needed voice from the past - By: Peter Ward, 19 Sep 2008 
People often come to read Orthodoxy having heard of the influence it had on CS Lewis. Chesterton was something of an intellectual father to Lewis when it came to Christianity, & you can find echoes of Chesterton's ideasin Lewis' writings if you know what to look for. But anyone approaching Chesterton from this angle would immediately be struck by the differencein style & approach between the two men, with Lewis initially looking much more like the teacher & Chesterton like the excitable & slightly wayward pupil. Orthodoxy, however, rightly remains a classic of Christian apologetics, & the reader who attempts it will be rewarded with one of the most enjoyable & muscular defences of faith ever written by a layman.
The book is Chesterton's attempt to explain what he believed in. Having previously written a book criticising just about every other philosophy on offer, he wrote Orthodoxy as an answer to critics who felt he should finally state his own position, which he proceeds to doin his typical, impromptu manner. Chesterton's style is immediately engaging, but does perhaps take a little getting used to for a 21st Century reader. A typical mistake is to take his light-hearted & jovial approach to almost everything as evidence of a lack of seriousness, but a generous reader will soon see the benefits of the lighter touch. His disingenuous, almost rambling style seems so inconsistent with the seriousness of his subjects, that his insights have the added power of surprise & his arguments only hit harder for appearing to come from nowhere. His prose may come tightly-packed with rhetoric, but he never indulges rhetoric for its own sake, & he always denied the charges of flippancy or shallowness which came from critics who couldn't see past the poetry & the humour. Contrary to instinct, it shouldn't prejudice our opinion of a thinker if they choose to treat serious matters with a smile rather than a frown.
The reason his thinking is still relevant today is that he didn't challenge atheistic science or reason on their own grounds. He didn't start out with a philosophical programme to prove the existence of God or the immortality of the soul, & so wasn't vulnerable to specific advancesin science or logic. Instead he goes straight for the philosophies which people have built upon them & attacks the unquestioning acceptance of the atheistic worldview, replacing scepticism about God with scepticism about every attempt to remove him. He did understand the science of his day, & could be perfectly rational himself, but he wasn't ashamed to admit that faith really does require a leap. Despite the fact that this usually draws cavalier dismissals from atheists, he kept the argument firmly where it belongs: not among this or that set of scientific debating points, butin between the collision of the opposing worldviews of Materialism & Theism. Only if you keep the debate here can you ask the awkward questions about whether Materialism is consistent with free will, whether morality can really mean anything without God, whether scientific method could ever discern the supernatural, & whether one can really live a philosophy that may well be self-destructive. These are questions that you can't dismiss with a lecture on evolution or psychology, & they are questions on which today's most vocal atheists are suspiciously quiet. Materialism, Chesterton says, has its own articles of faith & its own contradictions, & a leap away from atheism is not a leap away from reason, evidence & sanity, but away from a position too problematic to be sustainable.
But far from being a purely negative book dealing only with criticisms of Materialism, the main part of the book is concerned with showing that Orthodox Christianity, regardless of whether or not it is true, is by far the best philosophy on offer for anyone who truly cares about morality, politics, psychology & intellectual good health. I won't attempt a summary here, but these chapters are required reading if you need to broaden your view of the place of religionin the world. They will explode any notion that religion is best left for church & the private lives of individuals. Of course, Chesterton did think Orthodox Christianity true, &in the closing chapters offers his reasons for believing it. Having all the appearance of lightness & even naivety, these pages raise questions that should keep an honest atheist awake at night.
The current intellectual climate likes to make all debate about religion into an uneven fight, with science on one side & delusion on the other, & no doubt at all over who the winner will be. Chesterton can at least teach us how to draw the battle lines correctly, & show us Christianityin its true fighting colours (as well as showing up the chinksin the armour of science & its associated philosophies). Total certainty doesn't seem to be a luxury either side can afford, but Chesterton was someone who made his decision & never looked back. Happy to concede that much of religion was a mystery, he embraced it because of its power to explain so muchin life which the scientific worldview, taken to its logical conclusions, can only destroy. His closing pages deal with the almost suicidal assaults launched by rationalists who barely understand that their attacks are only destroying the things they value most. "The secularists have not wrecked divine things", he wrote, "But the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them".
Pointedly prolix - By: A. foley, 23 Jul 2008 Chesterton is hard to take at times; his irritating metaphors & play on words can grind one down. But, what is extraordinary is that this book is so relevant to the "now". He has grasped the nettle of modern relativism & said: "no, accipio crucem Christi; I believein the Trintiy of princely might": "it is utterely rational for me to so believe". A definite "must" for anyone who wishes to deal with the issues of modernity & faith.
Not the classic I expected.... - By: David Robertson, 19 Jan 2008 
I bought this book with a great sense of anticipation - it is often cited & comes highly recommended. The edition I read had a foreword by Philip Yancey. The book itself is, as expected full of wit, humour & some excellent observations & arguements. And yetin many places for me it misses the mark. His observations on Calvinism for example are shallow. I also found the book to be quite dated. Having said that there are some real gemsin it. Maybe I will like it more if I read it again. I did get some great quotes from it & I leave you with one of them - ""But all conservation is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution." GK Chesterton - Orthodoxy - Hodder & Stoughton 1999 - p.168
Essential Reading - By: J. Coleman, 05 Apr 2007 This is a fascinating book, which, like all good things, requires initial effort to adjust oneself to the very particular style of the author & an awareness of it's placein time, i.e. the beginning of the nineteenth century. What is so refreshing about this book is the novel approach of the author to important aspects of the faith. It is insightful, humorous & moving. I would absolutely recommend this timeless work to any denomination of Christian.
Life Affirming - By: leothegrate, 17 Dec 2006 Viewed as Chesterton's master work; this book affirms that Catholic orthodoxy is the real orthodoxy, & all attempts to substitute various (sometimes worthy) alternatives are dooomed to dangerous failure. The world needs to look again to Chestertonin these dark times.
