Chesterton's books often defy reviewing and 'Orthodoxy' is probably the prime instance of the class. The dilemma is how to praise it in a five-star mode, without burying it for its faults—I not being a skilled panegyrist or spin doctor. So, the bad news first, and I hope you bear with me.While it is fair to say that this is a very rewarding read in the long run, I admit that even as an avid and omnivorous reader it took me about five passes to feel I grasped all of it, and I would still approach an exam question on it with trepidation. It is also dated in places, but this is trivial. Chesterton is not so much a windbag, or really repetitious, but plain garrulous. He himself admits that this is 'a sort of slovenly autobiography', and that it details the intellectual and emotional path that brought him to the orthodoxy of the church and the Apostles' Creed in a 'set of pictures rather than a series of deductions'. Even worse, our genial genius says that he sets out to write all this personal history of theology and soul-forming for 'any average reader'. It is true. He uses very few difficult terms and technicalities. But you cannot study this like a textbook or read it like a novel, unless it be taken as on odd species of the stream of consciousness type. He does not so much write as think out loud on the paper. It requires that you absorb his meaning by a sort of spiritual osmosis. And of course to do that you have to open your heart as well as your mind, which implies considerable trust in the author. An element of humility helps, as well as some patience. Is that brainwashing? In no way: the whole time you have the option to disagree or stop reading. After all, (as he would say), it is only a book which enables you to meet the author by your own free will.
...
That said, it is a happy and good-hearted story as much as an intellectual odyssey. Everyone who successfully writes a book of this type succeeds in a very personal style. (Augustine's 'Confessions' and C.S. Lewis's 'Pilgrim's Regress' spring to mind.) Chesterton is a deeply modern Victorian, which is why he is constantly being republished. He accurately perceived the worldview and mood of his day and foresaw where it would lead in the future—our today. He is a whole and wholesome person. His faith is integrated. He knows how to enjoy himself. His disposition to the body, the mind, and the heart is holistic, even Gestaltic. They all function as they should in a fully whole person, a sum which is far more than its parts. It is good psychology and sociology, much more so than a shelf-full of academic textbooks on these subjects, I know, I have a few shelves-full.
A chapter synopsis runs the risk of being absurd, but here it is:
Chapter 1: Introduction in Defence of Everything Else
His motivation statement, to produce a positive account of his personal belief.
Ch. 2: The Maniac
'Sin' not being a popular concept he proposes the tendency to madness or sanity as the test of a good philosophy. What stops us being merely happy on earth? Egotism/self-centredness a universal problem.
Ch. 3: The Suicide of Thought
Reason itself is a matter of faith. No faith leads to no thinking. The errors of (philosophical) materialism; Evolutionism (not the theory of evolution itself); nominalism (philosophical not churchmanship); moral relativism; pragmatism/utilitarianism.
Ch. 4: The Ethics of Elfland
Nature of tradition and democracy and their relationship. Myths/fairy tales and magical stories are not mere tall tales but forms of great truths. Myths capture meaning and follow an inner core of rationality despite being 'unscientific' in magical spells and items. Logic in Elfland is always logic, but in the real world scientific 'laws' are not laws, just 'weird repetitions', containing mechanism but not meaning. [Hence the need for science fiction, to put the myth back into science.] The greatest myths contain the 'Doctrine of Conditional Joy'. Eg, the apple in the garden of Eden in Genesis; Cinderella's instruction to leave the ball before midnight; and Pandora's Box. There is a pervasive meaning in all things, or meaninglessness in all things.
Ch. 5: The Flag of the World
Contra relativistic sociology/anthropology, common morality (fairness, respect for life, restraint of violence) is common to all civilised peoples of history. Being and existence is fundamentally good, not neutral, therefore we must have 'universal patriotism...a primal loyalty to life'. Humanism is a weak-willed reality-denying error. Suicide condemned as rebellion and rejection of life.
Ch. 6: The Paradoxes of Christianity
Christianity accused of wildly and almost impossibly opposite errors. Eg, Christianity is morbidly fixated on sin and damnation, but is also somehow a rose-tinted spectacles pie-in-the-sky type of religion. Or, Christianity is soppy—for gullible children and old-maidish, but also too aggressive, producing Crusaders like Richard Coeur de Leon. Is it possible to coherently compound the elements of truth in these accusations?
Ch. 7: The Eternal Revolution
Is human progress possible, and what do we mean by progress? Evolution. Marxism simplistic, bound to fail [and yea, verily, it came to pass]. Doctrine of original sin.
Ch. 8: The Romance of Orthodoxy
Miracles. Creeds. Science. Buddhism. '...to a Christian existence is a story'.
Ch. 9: Authority and the Adventurer
Trinitarianism. Free will and rationality. Jesus and the Church. Why the Roman Empire fell, why the life of Christ is the life everlasting.
