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The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition – A Passionate and Tolerant Vision of Authentic Substantive Faith
"I have tried to describe a Christianity which is fully compatible with everything we now know, and to indicate why Christians feel privileged to give their lives to it."
—Huston Smith In his most personal and passionate book on the spiritual life, renowned author, scholar, and teacher of world religions Huston Smith turns to his own life-long religion, Christianity. With stories and personal anecdotes, Smith not only presents the basic beliefs and essential teachings of Christianity, but argues why religious belief matters in today's secular world. Though there is a wide variety of contemporary interpretations of Christianity—some of them conflicting—Smith cuts through these to describe Christianity's "Great Tradition," the common faith of the first millennium of believers, which is the trunk of the tree from which Christianity's many branches, twigs, and leaves have grown. This is not the exclusivist Christianity of strict fundamentalists, nor the liberal, watered-down Christianity practiced by many contemporary churchgoers. In exposing biblical literalism as unworkable as well as enumerating the mistakes of modern secularists, Smith presents the very soul of a real and substantive faith, one still relevant and worth believing in. Smith rails against the hijacked Christianity of politicians who exploit it for their own needs. He decries the exercise of business that widens the gap between rich and poor, and fears education has lost its sense of direction. For Smith, the media has become a business that sensationalizes news rather than broadening our understanding, and art and music have become commercial and shocking rather than enlightening. Smith reserves his harshest condemnation, however, for secular modernity, which has stemmed from the misreading of science—the mistake of assuming that "absence of evidence" of a scientific nature is "evidence of absence." These mistakes have all but banished faith in transcendence and the Divine from mainstream culture and pushed it to the margins. Though the situation is grave, these modern misapprehensions can be corrected, says Smith, by reexamining the great tradition of Christianity's first millennium and reaping the lessons it holds for us today. This fresh examination of the Christian worldview, its history, and its major branches provides the deepest, most authentic vision of Christianity—one that is both tolerant and substantial, traditional and relevant.
—Huston Smith In his most personal and passionate book on the spiritual life, renowned author, scholar, and teacher of world religions Huston Smith turns to his own life-long religion, Christianity. With stories and personal anecdotes, Smith not only presents the basic beliefs and essential teachings of Christianity, but argues why religious belief matters in today's secular world. Though there is a wide variety of contemporary interpretations of Christianity—some of them conflicting—Smith cuts through these to describe Christianity's "Great Tradition," the common faith of the first millennium of believers, which is the trunk of the tree from which Christianity's many branches, twigs, and leaves have grown. This is not the exclusivist Christianity of strict fundamentalists, nor the liberal, watered-down Christianity practiced by many contemporary churchgoers. In exposing biblical literalism as unworkable as well as enumerating the mistakes of modern secularists, Smith presents the very soul of a real and substantive faith, one still relevant and worth believing in. Smith rails against the hijacked Christianity of politicians who exploit it for their own needs. He decries the exercise of business that widens the gap between rich and poor, and fears education has lost its sense of direction. For Smith, the media has become a business that sensationalizes news rather than broadening our understanding, and art and music have become commercial and shocking rather than enlightening. Smith reserves his harshest condemnation, however, for secular modernity, which has stemmed from the misreading of science—the mistake of assuming that "absence of evidence" of a scientific nature is "evidence of absence." These mistakes have all but banished faith in transcendence and the Divine from mainstream culture and pushed it to the margins. Though the situation is grave, these modern misapprehensions can be corrected, says Smith, by reexamining the great tradition of Christianity's first millennium and reaping the lessons it holds for us today. This fresh examination of the Christian worldview, its history, and its major branches provides the deepest, most authentic vision of Christianity—one that is both tolerant and substantial, traditional and relevant.
191 pages, Paperback
First published September 6, 2005
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368 people want to read
About the author
Huston Smith
126 books319 followersSmith was born in Suzhou, China to Methodist missionaries and spent his first 17 years there. He taught at the Universities of Colorado and Denver from 1944–1947, moving to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri for the next ten years, and then Professor of Philosophy at MIT from 1958–1973. While at MIT he participated in some of the experiments with entheogens that professor Timothy Leary conducted at Harvard University. He then moved to Syracuse University where he was Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy until his retirement in 1983 and current emeritus status. He now lives in the Berkeley, CA area where he is Visiting Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
During his career, Smith not only studied, but practiced Vedanta Hinduism, Zen Buddhism (studying under Goto Zuigan), and Sufism for over ten years each. He is a notable autodidact.
As a young man, Smith, of his own volition, after suddenly turning to mysticism, set out to meet with then-famous author Gerald Heard. Heard responded to Smith's letter, invited him to his Trabuco College (later donated as the Ramakrishna Monastery) in Southern California, and then sent him off to meet the legendary Aldous Huxley. So began Smith's experimentation with meditation, and association with the Vedanta Society in Saint Louis under the auspices of Swami Satprakashananda of the Ramakrishna order.
Via the connection with Heard and Huxley, Smith eventually experimented with Timothy Leary and others at the Center for Personality Research, of which Leary was Research Professor. The experience and history of the era are captured somewhat in Smith's book Cleansing the Doors of Perception. In this period, Smith joined in on the Harvard Project as well, an attempt to raise spiritual awareness through entheogenic plants.
He has been a friend of the XIVth Dalai Lama for more than forty years, and met and talked to some of the great figures of the century, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Thomas Merton.
He developed an interest in the Traditionalist School formulated by Rene Guenon and Ananda Coomaraswamy. This interest has become a continuing thread in all his writings.
In 1996, Bill Moyers devoted a 5-part PBS special to Smith's life and work, "The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith." Smith has produced three series for public television: "The Religions of Man," "The Search for America," and (with Arthur Compton) "Science and Human Responsibility." His films on Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Sufism have all won awards at international film festivals.
His latest DVD release is The Roots of Fundamentalism - A Conversation with Huston Smith and Phil Cousineau.
During his career, Smith not only studied, but practiced Vedanta Hinduism, Zen Buddhism (studying under Goto Zuigan), and Sufism for over ten years each. He is a notable autodidact.
As a young man, Smith, of his own volition, after suddenly turning to mysticism, set out to meet with then-famous author Gerald Heard. Heard responded to Smith's letter, invited him to his Trabuco College (later donated as the Ramakrishna Monastery) in Southern California, and then sent him off to meet the legendary Aldous Huxley. So began Smith's experimentation with meditation, and association with the Vedanta Society in Saint Louis under the auspices of Swami Satprakashananda of the Ramakrishna order.
Via the connection with Heard and Huxley, Smith eventually experimented with Timothy Leary and others at the Center for Personality Research, of which Leary was Research Professor. The experience and history of the era are captured somewhat in Smith's book Cleansing the Doors of Perception. In this period, Smith joined in on the Harvard Project as well, an attempt to raise spiritual awareness through entheogenic plants.
He has been a friend of the XIVth Dalai Lama for more than forty years, and met and talked to some of the great figures of the century, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Thomas Merton.
He developed an interest in the Traditionalist School formulated by Rene Guenon and Ananda Coomaraswamy. This interest has become a continuing thread in all his writings.
In 1996, Bill Moyers devoted a 5-part PBS special to Smith's life and work, "The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith." Smith has produced three series for public television: "The Religions of Man," "The Search for America," and (with Arthur Compton) "Science and Human Responsibility." His films on Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Sufism have all won awards at international film festivals.
His latest DVD release is The Roots of Fundamentalism - A Conversation with Huston Smith and Phil Cousineau.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
June 2, 2012
In an interview with HarperSanFrancisco, Huston Smith says he wrote The Soul of Christianity in response to his friend and former pupil’s book: Marcus Borg’s The Heart of Christianity. Smith accused Borg of having given up too much to Modernism. We could imagine he means Borg’s tendency to discount many of the miraculous stories in both the Old and New Testaments. A self-proclaimed universalist, Smith actually accuses Borg of being too liberal. Yet, Smith became a universalist because he spent his career deeply engaged with each of the enduring faith traditions. The sum effect being this: Smith takes no issue with the miraculous, nor does he mind sharing a claim on truth; he is, however, troubled by how the Christian church has abandoned “The Great Tradition”—the faith as it existed for 1054 years, virtually unchanged.
Smith doesn’t require anyone to believe in, for instance, a literal virgin birth, but he is stern in saying the metaphor rescues us from an empty literalism. When Saul Bellow gave a dramatic description of a man on a huge horizontal sky-hook, launching crisp $100 bills like paper airplanes, Smith was moved enough to ask “Did this really happen?” The fiction writer replied, “Something like that.”
Here, Smith’s in concert with Borg. He says there are different ways of knowing a thing to be true. The ancient Greeks, he tells us, had a word, theoria, for the type of knowledge a person gained from watching the Greek dramas. Our words for theory and theatre come from it.
While a good chunk of this book is taken from Smith’s work The World’s Religions, he offers several fresh and lucid insights regarding a Christian worldview. Where did modernism go wrong? He says “It equated two things, absence-of-evidence and evidence-of-absence […:] The fact that science cannot get its hand on anything except nature is no proof that nature is all that exists” (xvi).
Another of Smith’s strengths is the ease with which he weaves anecdotes from science, experience, narrative, and poetry throughout. I’m convinced that this isn’t an effort he makes so much as an instinct—and it remains his best argument for the power of subjectivity: Each time, Smith makes his strongest case by way of metaphor.
In a nod toward universalism, he brings in Flannery O’Connor’s title image “Everything that Rises Must Converge.” If we imagine virtues on a great chain of being, we see how they expand as they ascend: “As virtues expand they begin to overlap; their distinctions fade and they begin to merge” (8). This requires that we replace the image of a ladder with that of a pyramid. Another images he offers is the longitudinal lines on our planet: “as they converge at the north and south poles.” He suggests examples that “betoken a new mood in Christendom, a more conscious, general recognition that though for Christians God is defined by Jesus, he is not confined to Jesus" (16).
Smith reminds us that Noam Chomsky’s great achievement was the discovery of a universal grammar that all the world’s languages adhere to, as if hardwired. Smith sees a parallel grammar of religion “to which all religions conform” (34).
In a period when objective truth is slippery, Smith wells over with faith. He quotes Pascal “the heart has its reasons the mind knows not of.” And maybe we’ve heard that before—maybe we’ve heard conservatives say something to that effect on their way to evading a difficult issue. Smith’s edge is his deliberate grounding in postmodern realities—namely, the new physics. Why can we insist on a mystical world beyond our mind and senses? Because science has concluded that there is more energy in one cubic centimetre of empty space than in all the matter of the universe combined (40). Smith begins with startling realities, then applies imagination.
As we’d expect, the heart of Smith’s vision is a portrait of Christ. The apostle Peter described Jesus as a man who “went about doing good”. Smith brings back St. Paul’s famous description of Christian love in I Corinthians 13 and says it “ought not to be read as if he were describing a quality that was already known. His words list the attributes of a specific person, Jesus Christ” (83). Furthermore, Jesus was different from us because he never showed irritation at being interrupted: “It was impossible to interrupt Jesus because he simply dealt with what was at hand” (48). Jesus offered healing, orientation, and acceptance. “The phrase ‘bids them welcome’ said of the Buddha, also comes to mind” (49).
And when he taught, Jesus worked more with people’s imagination than their will: “Instead of telling people what to do or what to believe, he invited them to see things differently, confident that if they did so their behaviour would change” (51). What did he want them to see differently? Jesus was an “authentic child of Judaism” who experienced God as “infinite love bent on people’s salvation.” For Jesus, it was the post-exilic holiness code which got in the way of God’s compassion.
Smith reminds Christians why we should strive to love all people: “So that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good.” We aim to be like God, which is simple enough, but Smith sharpens the idea. “Union with God” is a particular aim of the Orthodox church, where each person seeks “actual deification, becoming through grace ‘partakers of the divine nature’” (147). We love like God loves, says Smith, when we treat people according to their needs, not their dues (55). And if God is love, and love entails relationship, then it follows that hell is “total aloneness—not being connected to anything” (119).
This is the path toward blessedness, toward “beatitude”. Yet, when we read the beatitudes, we behold a paradoxical happiness:
Undoubtably, Smith is esoteric. But one result is a compelling picture of prayer, more compelling than Borg's. The argument starts with a question for the ages: “how did God get into Jesus?” Smith’s answer? Prayer. “For Jesus’s human nature wasn’t simply an empty jug into which his incarnation automatically flowed. Prayer brought things into his human nature that were not there before” (57).
Physics may also suggest that something is truly accomplished in prayer. As Smith explains, “the most important scientific discovery of all time” found that the universe is non-local:
Again, Smith begins with startling realities, then applies imagination. If the natural world is “not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose,” as physicist J.B.S. Haldane says, then it follows that the supernatural world is too. By pondering mysteries of the physical world, we solidify hope for the afterlife as well. “Just as matter cannot be destroyed… so too with consciousness” (117).
And so, this world of religion can be accessed, but it requires that we speak its language. Smith sets up this analogy: if mathematics the language of science, then symbolism is the language of religion. Take, for instance, the cross: “The overt symbolism of the cross is so obvious—its vertical arm uniting heaven and earth, and its horizontal arm symbolizing throwing one’s arms out to others” (110).
For someone trying to restore The Great Tradition, Smith has much to offer that’s new. This would be a problem if he claimed to have truth over a barrel, but he doesn’t. Clearly, each “cell” of the body, throughout history and geography, has been necessary to produce the understanding that now exists. Smith lets Emily Dickinson make the point:
Like lightening to the children eased
Through revelation kind
The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.
u
Smith doesn’t require anyone to believe in, for instance, a literal virgin birth, but he is stern in saying the metaphor rescues us from an empty literalism. When Saul Bellow gave a dramatic description of a man on a huge horizontal sky-hook, launching crisp $100 bills like paper airplanes, Smith was moved enough to ask “Did this really happen?” The fiction writer replied, “Something like that.”
Here, Smith’s in concert with Borg. He says there are different ways of knowing a thing to be true. The ancient Greeks, he tells us, had a word, theoria, for the type of knowledge a person gained from watching the Greek dramas. Our words for theory and theatre come from it.
While a good chunk of this book is taken from Smith’s work The World’s Religions, he offers several fresh and lucid insights regarding a Christian worldview. Where did modernism go wrong? He says “It equated two things, absence-of-evidence and evidence-of-absence […:] The fact that science cannot get its hand on anything except nature is no proof that nature is all that exists” (xvi).
Another of Smith’s strengths is the ease with which he weaves anecdotes from science, experience, narrative, and poetry throughout. I’m convinced that this isn’t an effort he makes so much as an instinct—and it remains his best argument for the power of subjectivity: Each time, Smith makes his strongest case by way of metaphor.
In a nod toward universalism, he brings in Flannery O’Connor’s title image “Everything that Rises Must Converge.” If we imagine virtues on a great chain of being, we see how they expand as they ascend: “As virtues expand they begin to overlap; their distinctions fade and they begin to merge” (8). This requires that we replace the image of a ladder with that of a pyramid. Another images he offers is the longitudinal lines on our planet: “as they converge at the north and south poles.” He suggests examples that “betoken a new mood in Christendom, a more conscious, general recognition that though for Christians God is defined by Jesus, he is not confined to Jesus" (16).
Smith reminds us that Noam Chomsky’s great achievement was the discovery of a universal grammar that all the world’s languages adhere to, as if hardwired. Smith sees a parallel grammar of religion “to which all religions conform” (34).
In a period when objective truth is slippery, Smith wells over with faith. He quotes Pascal “the heart has its reasons the mind knows not of.” And maybe we’ve heard that before—maybe we’ve heard conservatives say something to that effect on their way to evading a difficult issue. Smith’s edge is his deliberate grounding in postmodern realities—namely, the new physics. Why can we insist on a mystical world beyond our mind and senses? Because science has concluded that there is more energy in one cubic centimetre of empty space than in all the matter of the universe combined (40). Smith begins with startling realities, then applies imagination.
As we’d expect, the heart of Smith’s vision is a portrait of Christ. The apostle Peter described Jesus as a man who “went about doing good”. Smith brings back St. Paul’s famous description of Christian love in I Corinthians 13 and says it “ought not to be read as if he were describing a quality that was already known. His words list the attributes of a specific person, Jesus Christ” (83). Furthermore, Jesus was different from us because he never showed irritation at being interrupted: “It was impossible to interrupt Jesus because he simply dealt with what was at hand” (48). Jesus offered healing, orientation, and acceptance. “The phrase ‘bids them welcome’ said of the Buddha, also comes to mind” (49).
And when he taught, Jesus worked more with people’s imagination than their will: “Instead of telling people what to do or what to believe, he invited them to see things differently, confident that if they did so their behaviour would change” (51). What did he want them to see differently? Jesus was an “authentic child of Judaism” who experienced God as “infinite love bent on people’s salvation.” For Jesus, it was the post-exilic holiness code which got in the way of God’s compassion.
Smith reminds Christians why we should strive to love all people: “So that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good.” We aim to be like God, which is simple enough, but Smith sharpens the idea. “Union with God” is a particular aim of the Orthodox church, where each person seeks “actual deification, becoming through grace ‘partakers of the divine nature’” (147). We love like God loves, says Smith, when we treat people according to their needs, not their dues (55). And if God is love, and love entails relationship, then it follows that hell is “total aloneness—not being connected to anything” (119).
This is the path toward blessedness, toward “beatitude”. Yet, when we read the beatitudes, we behold a paradoxical happiness:
…wherein the sorrow is not eliminated but is enfolded and transmuted by God’s all-permeating love. In blessedness the spear of suffering is enveloped in a shaft of light. The light shines in darkness, which does not consume it. (56)
Undoubtably, Smith is esoteric. But one result is a compelling picture of prayer, more compelling than Borg's. The argument starts with a question for the ages: “how did God get into Jesus?” Smith’s answer? Prayer. “For Jesus’s human nature wasn’t simply an empty jug into which his incarnation automatically flowed. Prayer brought things into his human nature that were not there before” (57).
Physics may also suggest that something is truly accomplished in prayer. As Smith explains, “the most important scientific discovery of all time” found that the universe is non-local:
The story is this: Particles have spins. In paired particles, when one particles spins downward the other spins upward. Now, separate the two—distance is irrelevant; it can be an inch or to the edge of the universe—and when one particle goes into a downspin, simultaneously the other spins upward. For prayer, nonlocality suggests that the person praying and the person being prayed for are closer than side by side. Distance doesn’t apply—they are in the same spaceless mathematical point. (59)
Again, Smith begins with startling realities, then applies imagination. If the natural world is “not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose,” as physicist J.B.S. Haldane says, then it follows that the supernatural world is too. By pondering mysteries of the physical world, we solidify hope for the afterlife as well. “Just as matter cannot be destroyed… so too with consciousness” (117).
And so, this world of religion can be accessed, but it requires that we speak its language. Smith sets up this analogy: if mathematics the language of science, then symbolism is the language of religion. Take, for instance, the cross: “The overt symbolism of the cross is so obvious—its vertical arm uniting heaven and earth, and its horizontal arm symbolizing throwing one’s arms out to others” (110).
For someone trying to restore The Great Tradition, Smith has much to offer that’s new. This would be a problem if he claimed to have truth over a barrel, but he doesn’t. Clearly, each “cell” of the body, throughout history and geography, has been necessary to produce the understanding that now exists. Smith lets Emily Dickinson make the point:
Like lightening to the children eased
Through revelation kind
The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.
u
November 5, 2011
For quite some time, I've been looking for a good introduction to Christianity which I can recommend and to which I can refer. This is that book. The author, Huston Smith, wrote the wonderful textbook on world religions many of us have studied, so he is in some ways an old and familiar friend.
There are several things I love about this book:
Its critique of modernity and the scientific worldview is needed, and I think, solid. He argues that when this worldview leaves no place for God and faith, it leaves us and our institutions void of motivation, beauty, hope, meaning and purpose. His dictum, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," is worth remembering.
As one might expect, this teacher of world religion compares Christianity with other religions, but never denigrating another religions in doing so. This is not a "my religion is better than yours" book, but "this is what I love about this religion" book.
As much as it can be within its limitations, it is comprehensive in its approach, discussing the commonalities and differences between Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism, without attempt to give a bias or preference to any.
I think many young people will find his discussion of the historical Jesus interesting. Worthy of note the discussion concerning Jesus' attack on "social divisions that compromised God's impartial, all encompassing love for everyone" (p. 46). Is Smith thinking about the sexuality debates that have wracked our culture in recent times? I don't really know, but there are definite implications given here.
The book is written with passion by a person who loves faith and religion in general, and Christianity in particular. I would recommend this book to anyone curious about the Christian faith, or to anyone who is questioning their own faith.
There are several things I love about this book:
Its critique of modernity and the scientific worldview is needed, and I think, solid. He argues that when this worldview leaves no place for God and faith, it leaves us and our institutions void of motivation, beauty, hope, meaning and purpose. His dictum, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," is worth remembering.
As one might expect, this teacher of world religion compares Christianity with other religions, but never denigrating another religions in doing so. This is not a "my religion is better than yours" book, but "this is what I love about this religion" book.
As much as it can be within its limitations, it is comprehensive in its approach, discussing the commonalities and differences between Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism, without attempt to give a bias or preference to any.
I think many young people will find his discussion of the historical Jesus interesting. Worthy of note the discussion concerning Jesus' attack on "social divisions that compromised God's impartial, all encompassing love for everyone" (p. 46). Is Smith thinking about the sexuality debates that have wracked our culture in recent times? I don't really know, but there are definite implications given here.
The book is written with passion by a person who loves faith and religion in general, and Christianity in particular. I would recommend this book to anyone curious about the Christian faith, or to anyone who is questioning their own faith.
December 13, 2023
Absolutely splendid book. A worthy, honest read--especially for Christians. Encourages humility, openness and mysticism. The inability to prove something does not mean the something does not exist.
A second reading. Smith is a Christian with a Vedantic Understanding and a universalist. A worthy, honest read indeed.
A second reading. Smith is a Christian with a Vedantic Understanding and a universalist. A worthy, honest read indeed.
January 6, 2021
A wild mixture of wisdom and woo woo.
May 15, 2017
This beautifully written book presents not just the basic beliefs and essential teachings of Christianity, but also includes personal stories and anecdotes. The author points out the limitations of secular culture which emphasizes individuality and demonstrates how this distorts our ability to sense the deep connections of all creation. He is quite firm in his criticism of the mistaken assumption that "absence of evidence" is equivalent to "evidence of absence".
December 19, 2014
Profound - absolutely Profound - a must read for any interested in theology and desirous of an historical perspective of Christianity
I plan to read more of his books
I plan to read more of his books
June 23, 2019
Just a reminder to anyone thinking of reading this book: when Huston Smith writes about world religions (and in this book Christianity in particular), he writes of the "high form" of the religion, that is, what the religion says about God and human existence in the wisest, purest form the religion takes. He very specifically does NOT dwell in the low forms of the religion - e.g., fundamentalism, dogmatism, etc. He is clear about that at the outset. He doesn't deny them; they simply aren't the purpose of his books. If you are not able to read about religion (and again, Christianity in particular) without needing to read how it has been used and corrupted over the centuries, don't read this book. Likewise, if you are a conservative Christian, a fundamentalist, or a dogmatic evangelical, you may not like this book either. This book is for those seeking to understand Christianity at its highest intellectual/philosophical form. It is not meant to "reinforce" your particular, narrow set of dogma, nor is it meant as an historic criticism of the church as an actor in history.
If you made it past all that and are still interested, it is quite a good book. : )
If you made it past all that and are still interested, it is quite a good book. : )
June 1, 2020
Huston Smith, who passed away in December 2016, was a tireless seeker after spiritual wisdom. His pathways were many and varied and he wrote about his discoveries for a wide audience but especially the educated layperson. This book is about the essence of Christianity and an extended reaffirmation and argument for the view that secular materialism has simply got it wrong. Typical of his style, the book is well written and vitally important for our times. If you are a seeker as well I also recommend 'Wisdomkeeper' by Dana Sawyer (magnificent bio of Smith) and Aldous Huxley's 'The Perennial Philosophy'.
July 20, 2019
his is the first of Houston Smith's books I have read all the way through, and almost didn't make it through this one. Part One, The Christian Worldview, almost lost me because it is dense and philosophical. I am glad I persisted as I truly enjoyed Part Two, The Christian Story. I lost interest again in Part Three on the Branches of Christianity, as I found it too brief to do justice to the differences. All in all, I appreciate the personal nature of this book as Smith takes a step back from writing about the religions of the world and writes from the inside on his own faith.
October 4, 2022
Short book explaining the history and theology of Christianity and the relevance of Jesus Of Nazareth's teaching to human life. Huston Smith is a juggernaut in theological discourse and a self-defined Universalist, which I respect and understand given his life spent in a deep dive of the eight great world religions or revelations as he describes them. You can't study and live them as closely as he has without seeing their obvious correspondence.
Currently reading
October 18, 2025"That voice is the voice of first-millennium Christianity, the Great Tradition, which all Christians can accept because it is the solid trunk of the tree from which its branches have sprung. It is the voice of peace, justice and beauty that emanates from the Christian soul and which (in the company of other authentic religions) the world desperately needs."
This is refreshingly intelligent and well written so far.
This is refreshingly intelligent and well written so far.
June 17, 2022
For Everyone On the Path
This is almost required reading. If I could, I would prescribe this book for your soul's health. I've read it before, quite a long time ago. I came to it this week with an open heart, and I was rewarded. It is stunning. It is one I will re-read. It is a treasure.
This is almost required reading. If I could, I would prescribe this book for your soul's health. I've read it before, quite a long time ago. I came to it this week with an open heart, and I was rewarded. It is stunning. It is one I will re-read. It is a treasure.
October 8, 2022
Best Overview of Christianity
I’ve searched a long time for this book. Simply grateful to have found it. The overview, and deep intellectual defense, is what I’ve been looking for since 2009.
I’ve searched a long time for this book. Simply grateful to have found it. The overview, and deep intellectual defense, is what I’ve been looking for since 2009.
November 22, 2023
Huston Smith is well-known as an expert on world religions. In this work, as in his famous book on World Religions, he attempts to portray the religion at it's best. He has some interesting perspective on various aspects of Christian belief.
July 23, 2018
A pleasant and challenging read from Huston Smith. A gentleman and a scholar, his prose are both accessible and challenging. A good read for Christians and non-Christians alike. Peace.
April 2, 2023
Excellent. A classic overview of the foundational beliefs in Christianity.
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October 19, 2014Huston Smith is an old man who has loved Christianity his whole life, since he was taught by his parents who were missionaries to China. He has also loved all the world's religions, through which people have contact with the transcendent realm, and learn peace and generosity. Today Smith is distressed to observe that this thing he loves is being disregarded by secular people as backward superstition, in conflict with science, and is being hijacked by religious people who are doing it wrong, and perverting "the great tradition." This short but dense book is his apolgia for Christianity. The first section, "The Christian Worldview," is very theoretical and theological. A good deal of it went over my head, and I think I'm pretty well educated. It made me wonder who Smith thinks his audience is. Other professors? And I wondered about the chapter title "The Christian Worldview." This could never have been the world view of the mass of Christians, but only perhaps of the great doctors. I was able to get some things from it that I liked very much-- that the language of religion is symbolism, and that the scriptures are full of symbolism, and to read the Bible strictly literally is not only to fall into error if, for example, you read it as a science text, which it is not, but to miss much of that symbolic meaning about the nature of God. Also Smith finds possible the salvation of non-Christians. By saying that God is "defined by Jesus, but not confined to Jesus," he says that God is to be found in other lands, other cultures, other religions. The second part of the book describes the effect that Jesus had on the original disciples, and the effect the young Christian movement had on its early followers. Much of this is lifted from the Christianity chapter of "The World's Religions." He says that the first Christians definitely experienced something, because their lives were transformed, freed from fear and guilt, and full of joy and energy, and their love for each other was documented. He describes the major Christian doctrines. And in the last section he describes the differences between the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches. There are parts of this that I found moving. And, as always, I found Smith an admirable human being. But again, I wondered at the audience. Smith wants to defend his religion against secularists and "bad religionists" (my term, not his), but I doubt that any secularist or bad religionist will be swayed by this text. But Smith has said his piece.
November 7, 2013
I've only had this book checked out for about 7 weeks. There's just an awful lot in it and I have to take long breaks between passages. It has been enlightening and engaging, a strong reminder that Christians come from a long tradition, shared by ALL who believe in Christ as the Savior of humanity. I may buy this book so I can refer to it.
One of the striking things I found, towards the end, was a description of purgatory which I found fascinating: "...a temporary abode where souls are punished for sins that have not yet been forgiven." Sort of a slanted version of people being remembered after their death: as long as we have memories of someone they don't actually die. But by dwelling on the negative memories, we keep them from making the jump into heaven. Kind of empowering and frightening: who wants to be responsible for that?
Then again, people like Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Ivan the Terrible...they'll never make it to heaven, will they?
One of the striking things I found, towards the end, was a description of purgatory which I found fascinating: "...a temporary abode where souls are punished for sins that have not yet been forgiven." Sort of a slanted version of people being remembered after their death: as long as we have memories of someone they don't actually die. But by dwelling on the negative memories, we keep them from making the jump into heaven. Kind of empowering and frightening: who wants to be responsible for that?
Then again, people like Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Ivan the Terrible...they'll never make it to heaven, will they?
November 14, 2008
Wellspring of philosophy: “the longing to be at home in the world is what keeps most of us from being at peace.”
“To be human is to long for release from mundane existence with its confining walls of finitude and mortality.”
“If anything characterize modernity it is the loss of the sense of transcendence – of a reality that exceeds and encompasses our every day affairs” – Peter Berger
“God is the conventional English name for the Infinite, but Good, True, Real, Almighty, One, etc. are equally accurate.”
“God is defined by Jesus, he is not confined by Jesus.”
“The Infinite is that out of which you cannot fall.”
“Absolute perfection reigns." – Snowflakes falling/Each flake falls/in its own proper place – Zen haiku
“Science’s technical language is math. Religion’s technical language is symbolism, the science of the relations between the multiple levels of reality.”
“To be human is to long for release from mundane existence with its confining walls of finitude and mortality.”
“If anything characterize modernity it is the loss of the sense of transcendence – of a reality that exceeds and encompasses our every day affairs” – Peter Berger
“God is the conventional English name for the Infinite, but Good, True, Real, Almighty, One, etc. are equally accurate.”
“God is defined by Jesus, he is not confined by Jesus.”
“The Infinite is that out of which you cannot fall.”
“Absolute perfection reigns." – Snowflakes falling/Each flake falls/in its own proper place – Zen haiku
“Science’s technical language is math. Religion’s technical language is symbolism, the science of the relations between the multiple levels of reality.”
March 16, 2014
I have read several books by Huston Smith and each one has increased my appreciation of his intellect, humor, and ability to discuss religious and spiritual issues with compassion and insight. I happened upon this one in the library and was not disappointed. I need to find a copy to buy for reference. I did need a dictionary by my side for parts of it, because he uses exact theological terms when discussing some of the ideas, but in general he has the gift of simplicity which makes his concepts crystal clear. This one will appeal to new believers who want to understand the fundamental beliefs of all Christians, as well as how they may differ with one another, as well as to long-time Christians who need to remember what is essential and life-changing about their faith.
April 23, 2009
I bought this book after reading Huston Smith's Why Religion Matters.
I was less impressed by this book than than Why Religion Matters, but that may have just been because I read it first and it was just so spectacularly amazing.
This was a more dense read. I had to read slowly, especially in part 1; parts 2 and 3 lightened up considerably.
I have learned quite a bit about Christianity from this book. It is a good, level-headed report that doesn't shrink from controversy, but rather reports it even-handedly where it matters and ignores it where it doesn't.
I heartily endorse it.
It is Mere Christianity for the 21st century, I'd say.
I was less impressed by this book than than Why Religion Matters, but that may have just been because I read it first and it was just so spectacularly amazing.
This was a more dense read. I had to read slowly, especially in part 1; parts 2 and 3 lightened up considerably.
I have learned quite a bit about Christianity from this book. It is a good, level-headed report that doesn't shrink from controversy, but rather reports it even-handedly where it matters and ignores it where it doesn't.
I heartily endorse it.
It is Mere Christianity for the 21st century, I'd say.
September 24, 2015
I learned a great deal from this book.
Smith accurately points out that human beings are hard-wired for transcendence.
That is what we yearn for instinctively.
Smith also writes that liberal churches often don't offer transcendence. Instead they offer rallying cries to be good, which ultimately doesn't satisfy. And as a result of this approach many liberal churches are digging their own graves.
We need a radically theistic world-view, which is the legacy of the Christian Mystics.
An emphasis on justice is essential, yet without a theistic world view at the center, we miss the mark.
-Amos Smith (author of Healing The Divide)
Smith accurately points out that human beings are hard-wired for transcendence.
That is what we yearn for instinctively.
Smith also writes that liberal churches often don't offer transcendence. Instead they offer rallying cries to be good, which ultimately doesn't satisfy. And as a result of this approach many liberal churches are digging their own graves.
We need a radically theistic world-view, which is the legacy of the Christian Mystics.
An emphasis on justice is essential, yet without a theistic world view at the center, we miss the mark.
-Amos Smith (author of Healing The Divide)
October 27, 2008
Smith presents an interesting breakdown of Christian theology and theological history in "The Soul of Christianity."
I'm not quite sure, however, what I'm walking away from it with. It's a lovely book, but anything he covered was so brief and generic (almost by necessity, really) that I don't feel I gained too much from the book aside from a pleasant reading experience and a bit of new information.
It follows the party line a bit too much for my tastes, but that was Smith's desire, I believe.
I'm not quite sure, however, what I'm walking away from it with. It's a lovely book, but anything he covered was so brief and generic (almost by necessity, really) that I don't feel I gained too much from the book aside from a pleasant reading experience and a bit of new information.
It follows the party line a bit too much for my tastes, but that was Smith's desire, I believe.
January 6, 2008
This is a great book by a scholar who's very familiar with all religions and all the arguments against religion and still holds a powerful and vital Christian faith. It helped me understand the appeal (and the possibility of rehabilitation) of a religion that has exasperated me for a large part of my life.
July 1, 2010
Smith doesn't really end up making a point, but it can be guessed at. I think he does very well at thinking ecumenically and explains the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and "Protestant" world views as well as anyone has. However, his inferred "Great Tradition" is rather flabby material that can be cut and pasted on almost anything with a spiritual aspect. Lots of empty calories here, folks.
January 19, 2018
A great book for developing an expansive view of the Christian faith in contrast to other faith traditions. Smith is never prejorative towards other faith traditions and is appreciative of their strengths. Mostly he seeks to reveal the wonderful depth of Christianity. So helpful to read in a reactive time.
April 24, 2008
another good one to have on the shelf next to THE REASON FOR GOD and MERE CHRISTIANITY. he also authors WHY RELIGION MATTERS and THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS.
great books that help to explain what each faith practices.
great books that help to explain what each faith practices.
May 11, 2009
An idiosyncratic look at the spirit of Christianity, by one of the grand old men of comparative religions. Not as deep or insightful as a specialist might hope, and a little challenging in its choices of illustrations for the ordinary lay reader.
March 7, 2007
Great book, very fun to read. Way to liberal for the fundamentalists, but they should read it anyway. I was surprised that Smith referenced very little if anything in the book
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February 27, 2008Very interesting look at the christian metaphysical thoughts.
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