The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition [Hardcover]

Huston Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 6, 2005

Huston Smith, dean of world religions, presents the essential teachings of Christianity, and, for the first time, his own profound Christian faith and convictions.

In this elegant and concise treatise, Huston Smith examines and puts forth what being a Christian has meant for him personally, how it has shaped his life and beliefs. In contrast to the misguided course of culturally rigid and intolerant evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity on the one hand, and the non-transcendent liberal Christianity of Marcus Borg, John Shelby Spong, et al. on the other, Smith presents a passionate and convincing argument for a vital alternative that is a deeper, authentic Christian faith that is both tolerant, respectful of people's and religious differences, yet substantial.

In part one, he relates his own story as a child of Christian missionaries in China, and how the beliefs they instilled in him resonated throughout his life. Using those beliefs, he argues that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, must find its way back into modern life for modern life to continue, and that the Christian world can co-exist, and in fact must co-exist with modernity.

Part two is an expanded and deeper version of the chapter on Christianity from The World's Religions.

And finally, in part three, Huston analyses and discusses the three main divisions in Christianity today.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An intriguing combination of apologia, early church history and cultural critique, this deeply personal book attempts to convey the foundations of Christian thought in a way that appeals to modern readers seeking authentic faith in a secular culture. The devotional tone is a distinct departure for Smith, a philosopher and prominent scholar of world religions. This may account for the erudite and occasionally rambling quality of the book's first section, where Smith delineates the "fixed points" of a Christian worldview; he uses science, psychology, the arts, Platonic philosophy and medieval theology to meditate on the nature of reality and the order of the universe. As Smith takes on the "shaky foundation" of modern culture, one of his central tenets is that modern culture has not been able to "distinguish absence-of-evidence from evidence-of-absence." The book's longest section is Smith's summary of the life and significance of Jesus, the history of the early church and various theological matters such as the Trinity and the nature of heaven and hell. While parts are relatively straightforward, Smith's use of anecdotes and willingness to make his own idiosyncratic interpretations of major doctrines of the Christian faith mean that this section cannot be read as a simple digest of previous scholarship. (Sept.)
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From Booklist

Renowned religious scholar Smith believes we are living through the second of two great revolutions. The first, that of the scientific method that emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, he proclaims was disastrous for the human spirit. The current revolution he deems constructive because it allows us to see where secularism went wrong, making the twentieth century an era of violence, not progress, and rendering the institutions of contemporary culture unstable at best. He examines basic Christianity by writing about what Christianity means to him and how it has shaped his life and beliefs in three chapters that eruditely discuss, respectively, the Christian worldview, the Christian story (encompassing the historical Jesus, the Christ of faith, the Resurrection, the Mystical Body of Christ, and the Incarnation, among other topics), and the three branches of Christianity today (Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism). In revealing his own religious beliefs, Smith offers a Christian primer filtered through the mind of a brilliant interpreter. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne; 1st Printing edition (September 6, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006079478X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060794781
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #732,104 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Huston Cummings Smith (born May 31, 1919) is among the preeminent religious studies scholars in the United States. His work, The Religions of Man (later revised and retitled The World's Religions), is a classic in the field, with over two million copies sold, and it remains a common introduction to comparative religion.

Smith was born in Soochow, China, to Methodist missionaries and spent his first 17 years there. He taught at the Universities of Colorado and Denver from 1944 to 1947, moved to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, for the next 10 years, and then served as professor of Philosophy at MIT from 1958 to 1973. While at MIT, he participated in some of the experiments with entheogens that professor Timothy Leary conducted at Harvard University. Smith 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, California, area where he is Visiting Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

During his career, Smith not only studied but also practiced Vedanta Hinduism, Zen Buddhism (under Goto Zuigan), and Sufism for over 10 years each. He is a notable autodidact.

As a young man, of his own volition after suddenly turning to mysticism, Smith set out to meet with then-famous author Gerald Heard. Heard responded to Smith's letter, invited him to 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 his 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 that 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, in an attempt to raise spiritual awareness through entheogenic plants.

He has been a friend of the XIVth Dalai Lama for more than 40 years, and has met and talked to some of the great figures of the century, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Thomas Merton.

Smith 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 five-part PBS special to Smith's life and work: The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith. Smith has also 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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mr. Smith's Opus, September 14, 2005

By 

Robert W. Kellemen "Doc. K." (Crown Point, IN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition (Hardcover)

Huston Smith is not one to take on small tasks, as evidenced by his universe-sized purpose statement, "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." If anyone has earned the right to try, Smith would be that person given his life-long scholarly, passionate pursuit of the history of world religion.

"The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition" arrives just in the nick of time to perhaps halt something of the great Christian capitulation to post-modern thinking. When so many other Christian authors are hyping the latest trend and hoping on the latest bandwagon, Smith calls a halt to the march.

He does so not as a naïve, head-in-the-sand cultural rejecter, but as a world-aware, Word-wise scholar who is well aware of the multiplicity of competing narratives. Smith expertly presents Christianity as THE meta-narrative that explain all the other mini-narratives. Further, he concisely and precisely sifts through the myriad of competing Christian narratives to restore the great tradition-the grand essentials of core Christian belief.

Granted, not everyone, including this reviewer, will name and claim the identical doctrines nor define them identically. However, it is difficult to refute the grand movement in the symphony that Smith composes.

Personally, one of the most helpful apologetical (reasoned, logical defense of Christianity in light of apparent contradictions) premises is Smith's pithily worded insight that modern (and post-modern) culture has not been able to "distinguish absence-of-evidence from evidence-of-absence." That is, we may not always be able to scientifically prove the active presence of God, however, nor can we prove the absence of God scientifically, and we certain can discern His affectionate, sovereign presence spiritually.

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of "Soul Physicians" and "Spiritual Friends."

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An scholarly but accessible defense of the Christian faith, September 30, 2005

By 

FaithfulReader.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition (Hardcover)

In 1996 Bill Moyers devoted a five-part PBS special to the work of now-Syracuse professor Huston Smith, the child of missionaries, author of THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS, and a PBS television producer and filmmaker. In THE SOUL OF CHRISTIANITY: Restoring the Great Tradition, Smith turns his pen to a defense of the essentials of the Christian faith.

Weaving together thoughtful deductions, history, personal anecdotes, insights from others, poetry and pertinent hymn lyrics, Smith looks at the Christian worldview, the foundational points of Christian theology, and the three branches of the church today. In writing, he says he rarely had to reach for his Bible to check its quotations, for they were "in my head and in my life."

This is accessible --- but by no means light --- reading. In Part One, Smith enumerates the fixed points of the Christian world, including its infiniteness (which includes the finite) and its order. There are two distinct ways of knowing, according to the Christian worldview: the rational and the intuitive. "After we have done our best to understand the world, it remains mysterious but through the shrouds of mystery, we can dimly discern that it is perfect."

In Part Two, Smith engagingly recaps the foundational points of Christian theology: the incarnation, the atonement, the trinity, eternal life, bodily resurrection, hell and the virgin birth. On the incarnation, "Christ was the bridge that joined humanity to God." He offers a beautiful interpretation of the atonement ("the most powerful demonstration of the sender's love is to let its receiver know that the sender suffers the pain the recipient suffers") and a moving look at the symbolism of the cross.

His thoughts about the trinity are compelling. On Christians believing in the trinity and yet being monotheistic, he reminds us, "H20 can be ice, water, or steam without losing its chemical identity." He later adds, "If then, love is not just one of God's attributes, but his very essence --- and it may be Christianity's distinctive mission in history to claim just that --- at no point could God have been truly God without being involved in relationship."

In Part Three, Smith examines three divisions of Christianity today: Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism (over 900 denominations in the United States). He briefly illumines each. In Catholicism, he touches on the roles of Mary and the Pope, the Church's defense of human life, and the importance of the sacraments. Smith shows how the Eastern Orthodox Church differs from the Catholic Church in both the extent of its authority and the means by which it reaches its dogma. Smith looks at two aspects of the Protestant Church: justification by faith (faith as a response of the entire self) and the Protestant Principle (warning against idolatry, or "absolutizing the relative").

Smith admits, "Christianity is such a complex phenomenon that it is difficult to say anything significant about it that will carry the assent of all Christians." Some Christian readers will disagree with Smith's points, especially on the exclusivity of Christianity and inerrancy of scripture. "There's a new mood in Christendom," he writes, "a more conscious, general recognition that though for Christians God is defined by Jesus, he is not confined by Jesus." Smith also asserts, "Only a minority of Christians...now claim that all non-Christians will go to hell." His take on biblical inerrancy ("The chief Protestant idolatry has been bibliolatry") will also be open to debate among more conservative believers.

Writer and philosopher Dallas Willard calls THE SOUL OF CHRISTIANITY "a unique achievement for our times" with good reason. Christians and non-Christians looking for an accessible yet scholarly overview and defense of the Christian faith will find this a thought-provoking and discussable book.

--- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby. [...]

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A summary of Christianity, January 2, 2006

By 

Michael Bond (Shawnee, OK United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition (Hardcover)

In The Soul of Christianity, Dr. Huston Smith gives us a distillation of Christianity, it's history, current state and it's place among other faiths. He makes does not debate the points here with others who will invariably disagree, but rather to clearly presents his ownunderstanding of the Faith.

The book is presented in 3 sections. The first part, "The Christian Worldview", contains 15 points regarding humanity's ability to comprehend God and the infinite. The section is so rich with historical, religious and literary references that I had to slow down to savor it, looking up the unfamiliar references. (Something I recommend to everyone.) This is the deepest material of the text and will take the most time to digest. Some readers will not agree with his belief that Christianity is but one of many paths to God.

The second part is easier to read and it is very straightforward with a narrative of the history of the Faith's foundations. A brief summary of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ and Paul are covered. It addresses the popularity, distinctives and acceptance of Jesus and His message. This expanded chapter from Smith's book The World's Religions the covers all the basics. Believers who take a more literal view of the scriptures may feel that several doctrines of Christianity have been left out or re-interpreted.

The third part is a brief but interesting comparison and contract of the three main branches of Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism. The chapter isn't critical of either branch and point out interesting facets about each.

It would be folly to expect universal agreement with Dr. Smith's thoughts and he knows it. He presents these as his own and the reader is encouraged to take it as that. Learn from this book and if you disagree with parts of it, use it as motivation to study and learn more about your own faith.