Orthodoxy (1908)

Chesterton is one of my favourite authors, but this pamphlet is pure rubbish. Simply listing all the fallacies, illogicalities, sophistries, straw-man attacks, even disingenuities and so on therein contained would take several pages. Of course, being GKC he sometimes makes sense even here, but those moments are few and far between. But the main problem is perhaps that he doesn't actually defend Christianity as something true, but as something convenient. ( )

Chesterton has an excellent writing style who is a pleasure to read but the arguments made are pretty shoddy. If you're keen on Jesus then you'll love it, if your just sceptically interested then you'll find it annoying. ( )

Logos Library

This book is meant to be a companion to "Heretics," and to put the positive side in addition to the negative. Many critics complained of the book called "Heretics" because it merely criticised current philosophies without offering any alternative philosophy. This book is an attempt to answer the challenge. It is unavoidably affirmative and therefore unavoidably autobiographical. The writer has been driven back upon somewhat the same difficulty as that which beset Newman in writing his Apologia; he has been forced to be egotistical only in order to be sincere. While everything else may be different the motive in both cases is the same. It is the purpose of the writer to attempt an explanation, not of whether the Christian Faith can be believed, but of how he personally has come to believe it. The book is therefore arranged upon the positive principle of a riddle and its answer. It deals first with all the writer's own solitary and sincere speculations and then with all the startling style in which they were all suddenly satisfied by the Christian Theology. The writer regards it as amounting to a convincing creed. But if it is not that it is at least a repeated and surprising coincidence.

I like this book. This is an easy and quick book to get a 'dose' of Chesterton's writing style - and his firm logic. Granted that he writes with a thickness and he is dealing with issues of his day in the words of his day, but his points are very much still relevant. To read Chesterton you must read slowly and with a pen in hand to mark his points. ( )