Orthodoxy
Orthodoxy is G. K. Chesterton’s response to his critics’ assertion that his earlier collection of essays, Heretics, had “merely criticised current philosophies without offering any alternative philosophy.” In his intellectual journey from pagan to agnostic to positivist philosopher, he had attempted to build a philosophy “some ten minutes in advance of the truth.” But when he compared his modern philosophy with Christian theology, he realized that he was “the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before.” Thus, Orthodoxy is a work of Christian apologetics, where Chesterton tries to show that Christianity is a universal answer to the everyday needs of humanity, and not just an arbitrary philosophy handed down from on high.
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- Orthodoxy by Chesterton is an amazing analysis of why Christianity is so important for any society. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16769
- I don't really enjoy the fiction of C. S. Lewis at all, really, and even G. K. Chesterton's fiction is not that good, it feels very contrived and it feels like preaching to the choir. As part of the choir there is a lot I agree with, but I don't quite get the point of his fiction.
But Chesterton's non-fiction books, The Everlasting Man, Orthodoxy, What's Wrong With the World and Heretics are some of the best and most insightful books I have ever read, and they really took me by surprise because I did not expect them to be what they are. They are full of speculation, and misunderstandings, but they are also full of very deep insights into humanity.
I do, however, think the fiction of Tolkien is historic and unsurpassed, nothing written since really comes close IMO.
- I have taken boatloads of psychedelics in my life. If I could do my life over again I would have traded every single trip for having read Orthodoxy and the Everlasting Man by Chesterton before I was 25. Tripping gives you zero insights into the divine, it is not revelation, you don't get closer to God. There are real answers, but we as civilization have been deliberately moving away from under false premises, and the world has gotten worse and worse. Drugs can't fix this. If you want a better world, you should not dull your perception of it.
Something that would be much more beneficial for all humanity is if more of the clergy actually preached the bible, instead of trying to explain it away, which is almost exclusively what the clergy I have engaged with tries to do.
- After being indoctrinated to hate everything about the west and Christianity for most of my life — through school, university, news media, entertainment, and the administrative state — and after coming to hate the west and Christianity as a consequence of this indoctrination, I really found the following books to be the ultimate mindfucks:
- Heretics by GK Chesterton
- Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton
- Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America by Mary Grabar
- A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell
- Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World by Tom Holland
- Christianity is based on the conversation between God and His chosen people from the creation of the world until now, with that conversation moving towards and flowing from the Incarnation, Passion, Death, and Resurrection of the Second Person of the Trinity. Part of which is in the Bible (everything is not in the Bible alone - e. g. the list of the books of the Bible isn't in the Bible)
Mere Christianity by Lewis is a pretty good introduction to the idea, as is Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.
- Related, I highly recommend Orthodoxy by Chesterton, especially to protestants and atheists.
You miss out on the best parts of the philosophy when you occupy either of those two camps, though, they're really the same camp. Protestantism and atheism are effectively the same thing. I know a lot of people won't appreciate that line. Just Read Orthodoxy. It gives you a different perspective on Christianity that just may save you some years.
One of the theses of his book is that, despite much of the philosophy perhaps being already integrated into you, when you forego it in the name of protestantism or atheism, you'll find yourself coming full circle to the philosophy in the most inefficient way possible. He gives the example-metaphor of a yachstman who sets out on a sea voyage from England. This man eventually reaches the shore of a land which he believes to be some new island in the South Seas.
That land turns out to be England.
He'd just rediscovered the land he's always occupied, the one that's always been mapped out before him. Don't be the fool who rediscovers England. The map has been laid out before you, through much blood and toil, and centuries. Maybe just read it.
