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The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition

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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."

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. [...]

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.

Huston Smith, son of Methodist missionaries in China, friend of Thomas Merton and Joseph Campbell, teacher and friend of Marcus Borg, wrote this book in 2004, and says it was 'the most exciting year of my writing'.

His parents' first child, whom he never knew, died in his father's arms one Christmas Eve. Other insights into his spiritual formation are interesting: 'One night, [my father] was visiting a village thirty miles away and he went by boat, but the lake froze over in the three days he was there... [so] he walked thirty miles home over ice. So it was that intensity, sincerity, devotion that I assimilated from my parents that was most important.' 'In our missionary home in traditional China, breakfast was followed by morning prayers, which included our servants' family. As we sat in a circle, our mother would lead us in singing a stanza of a hymn, in Chinese, of course. Then adults would take turns reading verses from the Bible... Then we would stand, about face, get down on our knees, and bury our faces in our hands on the seats of our chairs as my father led us in a prayer that closed with all of us saying the Lord's Prayer...'

Huston Smith has generally succeeded in his aim of writing a book about Christianity 'that carries the assent of all Christians', a book which is not combative, respecting various interpretations of Christianity without arguing with them. My view would be that only a liberal thinker like Huston Smith could do this. How liberal is he? Study this: 'I'm a universalist. I refuse to prioritize any one of the eight great religious traditions over the others.'

He ranges over the whole spectrum of Christianity (though hardly mentions Pentecostalism, if at all), citing liberal authors (eg. Marcus Borg) and conservative ones (like N T Wright and John Polkinghorne). He is critical of conservative Christians for their literalism and dogmatism and tendency to slip into 'disastrous political agendas' which are 'untrue to Jesus'. But Liberal churches 'are digging their own graves, for without a robust, emphatically theistic world-view to work within, they have nothing to offer their members except rallying cries to be good. We have it from Peter Berger that "if anything characterizes modernity it is the loss of the sense of transcendence".'

Huston Smith has more of a gift of wisdom/knowledge of comparative religions than accuracy. It wasn't Timothy who said 'Without doubt the mystery of our religion is great' (p. 32) but the writer of 1 Timothy (maybe Paul). It wasn't Jesus who talked about 'rejoicing with those who rejoice, and weeping with those who weep' (p. 63), it was Paul in Romans 12:15 - unless Smith has some evidence that Paul quotes Jesus at this point, evidence no one else has! For mispellings of Annie Dillard ('Anne Dillard' p. 125 etc.) we can forgive an old man - but not his editor/s. And his use of the Authorized Version of the Bible here and there (some quotes with sexist language) is unusual for a Christian scholar.

A couple of statements are in the category 'But that I can't believe', like

* 'If Jesus had not been followed by Paul, the Sermon on the Mount would have evaporated in a generation or two' (p. 89).

* 'The Christian worldview compressed into a sentence: the world is perfect, and the human opportunity is to see that and conform to that fact' (p. 33).

However, all that said, I marked the following for more reflection:

* God is *defined* by Jesus, but he is not *confined* to Jesus

* The Infinite is that out of which you cannot fall

* If it is not paradoxical, it isn't true (Shunryu Suzuki)

* A NT scholar went to heaven and asked Paul if he wrote the Letter to the Ephesians. Paul thought for a moment, stroked his beard, and said 'Yes, I think I did' which is as much as to say 'Who cares?'

* The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is its faithful servant

* 'I pray God [the God above all distinctions] that he may quit me of [the personal] God' (Meister Eckhart)

* [The people who first heard Jesus' teaching] were astonished, and with reason. If we are not, it is because we have heard Jesus's teachings so often that their edges have been worn smooth, dulling their glaring subversiveness

* 'O God whose boundless love and joy / are present everywhere, / He cannot come to visit you / unless you are not there' (17th century German mystical poet Angelus Silesius)

* Hell is popularly depicted as a fiery furnace whose flames do not consume bodies but torture them forever. But this is only a metaphor; it cannot be literally true, for resurrected bodies are incorporeal and do not have flesh that could be burned. (Remember that resurrection is not resuscitation). The theological definition of hell is total aloneness... Will anyone burn in hell forever? The answer is no, for nothing can deprive us of the imago Dei that is the foundation of our humanity

* 'There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess/ I knew no one worth my envying him' (Czeslaw Milosz)

* Though divine in origin, the Church is made up of humans, of sinners, and so in an act unique for any institution, at the end of the second millennium the Pope publicly apologized and did penance in the name of the Church for the sins of individual Christians throughout the ages

* 'The Protestant Principle', stated philosophically, warns against absolutizing the relative. Stated theologically, it warns against idolatry. (But the chief Protestant idolatry has been bibliolatry)

* Protestant diversity is not as great as its hundreds of denominations (most of them more adequately termed sects) suggest... Actually, 85% of all Protestants belong to 12 denominations.

It's a challenging book.

Rowland Croucher

This book is not "just" about Christianity -- and I, a Buddhist, am saying this respectfully. The book is about us, about the deepest longings common to all of us. (Why not "5 stars"? There are some typos.)

I read this book while at a crossroads about Christianity. Smith's views on the possibilities of this religion were hopeful and refreshing. The first chapter, which listed the beliefs of Christians was a little dry. Chapter 2, which focused on the Christian Story, was my favorite. Chapter 3 was a thoughtful history of the religion. Smith was passionate and knowledgeable without being "preachy". The bottom line, "The Soul of Christianity" reminded why I am a Christian. A good read, especially if you need a reminder.

The Soul of Christianity, Restoring the Great Tradition is renowned author, scholar, and teacher of world religions Huston Smith's distillation of the Christian message as the source of Truth from which all meaning in life is derived.

He begins the argument by describing the relationship between science and faith and presents a fact that should be obvious but is not: the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

Smith says this is the essential truth that has triggered the second great revolution in the human spirit because it is bringing God back into the picture.

The first revolution--in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--replaced God with a scientistic view, which is to say our human ability to reason. In the first revolution, humanity was high on the Scientific Method and came to believe all truths could be discovered and mapped through experimentation.

Built on the real world of the five senses, Science kicked Mystery to the curb.

With scientific advances came a new set of values. The values of the early church--the Great Tradition--got lost under Sunday sales flyers. In came secular materialism and the lust for money. The Gold Standard replaced the Golden Rule.

Secular materialism now shapes all our institutions--science, technology, business, education, religion, media, art, government. And the rich got richer....

Despite the great portfolios, the impeccable report cards, the trophy houses, and the like that put a big distance between the winners and the losers, a problem remains that unites all of us: the "longing for release from mundane existence with its confining walls of finitude and mortality."

Smith says "the Good News of authentic religion--in this book, Christianity--is that the longing can be fulfilled."
As the argument of The Soul unfolds, Smith describes a conversation between science and the Christian world view in which science comes to realize its own false premises and limitations. Understanding science in the context of the Great Tradition of Christianity--the beliefs established in the first millennium, when the church was united--brings us back to Mystery.

As scientists come to realize that they can't explain everything, that one inquiry into the nature of the universe leads to more questions and more answers, they realize the questions are infinite and that the fundamental feature of the universe is not matter but information. Basically, scientists don't know why things happened. The why is what gets them.

It gets them because it takes them out of the physical world. Somehow--why?--the whole is invariably greater than the sum of its parts. The scientistic view of the world as we know it as growing more complex from the bottom up--simple little things evolve into complex big things--whereas the Christian world view asserts that the Infinite becomes the many. The parts of the whole are virtues, Smith says, "for they retain in lesser degree the signature of the One's perfection.

"The foundational virtue os exisetence, for to be more than figments of the imagination, virtue must exist....The west's ternary is the good, the true, and the beautiful, and these beginnings open out into creativity, compassion, and love until we arrive at Islam's Ninety-nine Beautiful Names of God, which include the Holy, the Forgiver, the Gentle, the Inocmparable, the Glorious, and their likes. Above these lies the hundredth name, which--symbolically absent from the Islamic rosary--is unutterable."

Once the prodigal son called Science is coming home to find his place in the Father's world, the family can sit down to dinner and say grace.

Here's where the Christian world enters Smith's discussion. If Judaism is the Jews' story of their attempt to come to terms with the unseen order of the world, then Jesus can be seen as coming to mediate the world of the Spirit with the sensual world. The essence of God is love, Jesus reminded us.

"Jesus tried to convey God's absolute love for every single human being and for everything God has created," Smith says, pointing out: "If the infinity of God's love pierces to the core of a being, only one response is possible--unobstructed gratitude for the wonders of God's grace."

If love is the essence of God, then "at no point could God have been truly god without being involved in relationship. That requirement was met 'before the foundation of the world' was laid, Paul told the Ephesians," Smith says.

In a nutshell, then, science is making a perfect circle that brings itself--and us--back to God as Infinite, God as Creator, God as Love. If we accept this, then we can find meaning in life by living in the Spirit rather than in the Shopping Mall.

But how? By "participating in God's infinite love for the world. If we visualize that love as a ray of light descending from heaven, faith is moving into that light and letting it transform us to become a part of it."

Human allegiance belongs to God. Smith explains this further:

"We can draw here on the analogy of the child in his or her home. After the child's physical needs have been met, or rather while they are being met, the child needs above all to feel the enveloping love and acceptance of its parents. Paul, Luther, and Protestants in general say something comparable for human beings throughout their lifespans. Since from first to last human beings are vulnerable before the powers that confront them, their lifelong need is to know that their basic environment, the ground of being from which they have derived and to which they will return, is for them rather than against them. If they can come to know this to the extent of really feeling it, they are released from the basic anxiety that causes them to try to elbow their way to security. This is why, just as the loved child is the cooperative child, the man or woman in whom God's love has awakened the answering response of faith is the one who can truly love other people. The key is inward. Given faith in God's goodness, everything of importance follows. In its absence, nothing can take its place."

Jesus told us to come to him as little children. Leave your nets and follow me. Let the dead bury their dead. Love God, "who transcends all the limitations and distortions of finite existence," with all your heart and mind and soul. Then you'll know why you get up in the morning.

Born to Methodist missionary parents in rural China in 1919, Huston Smith has enjoyed a distinguished career as a scholar of world religions at Washington University, MIT, Syracuse, and Berkeley. His book The World's Religions, first published in 1958, has sold over 2 million copies as an introductory university textbook on the subject. Now in his late eighties, Smith describes himself as a "voice in the wilderness" decrying the corrosive forces of "secular modernity" which would marginalize religion. Thus his earlier book Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief (2002). His newest book begins with that prophetic warning but moves forward with a positive exposition of what he calls "The Great Tradition" of Christianity that enjoyed near unanimity among believers for the first millennium of the faith.

In Part One Smith presents an innovative interpretation of what he considers the fifteen "fixed points" of a distinctly Christian worldview. In fact, I found this part of the book to be mis-titled. What Smith outlines here is not distinctly or particularly "Christian," but rather a general "theism." Toward the last part of this section he admits as much, saying that the first part of the book "outlines the universal grammar of religion to which (in their various idioms) all religions conform" (my emphasis). Still, his staunch defense of a robust theism is welcome. Part Two is called "The Christian Story" and expands material from his book The World's Religions. Contrary to those who would be skeptical about ancient Christianity, here Smith insists that he intends to be entirely non-innovative and instead to rehearse, restore and revive what most all Christians of the first millennium believed. This is by far the longest section of the book, and concludes with his analysis of the seven "foundational points" in Christian theology--the incarnation, the atonement, the trinity, life everlasting, the resurrection of the body, hell, and the virgin birth. In the final Part Three he compares and contrasts the three main branches of Christianity--Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism.

What Smith offers here is similar to the book The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith (2003) by the New Testament scholar Marcus Borg. Smith seems more eager to defend the objective content of the faith, compared to Borg who emphasizes subjective faith, and at times he is as critical of liberals as he is of conservatives. Both books attempt a fresh and winsome overview of the "essence" of Christianity from the perspective of a liberal Christian fighting the forces of reductionistic secularity in major university settings (Smith describes our universities as the "churches" of materialist secularism). I would take personal exception to some of his liberal conclusions, but overall found myself very grateful for his forceful and public defense of the faith. Written at a simple level for the ordinary lay person, this would be a fine book to recommend to non-believers who would never listen to more conservative voices but might listen to an "insider" of their guild. Smith writes with equal parts passion and conviction as an unapologetic witness to the Good News of Jesus.

When I first saw this book, I was intrigued by the description on the jacket, so I decided to buy it. After reading the book, I find that this description is tilted to the introduction more than the rest of the book, but I did like the book overall.

I really liked the beginning of the book, but got bogged down a little in the middle - it was just not as interesting there to me. The latter part was worth the slog I had to get to it though.

As many people know, Huston Smith wrote a famous book on the world's religions. Probably fewer people know that he was born in China to missionary parents and later hung out with Huxley and even Timothy Leary. Mr. Smith is now over 90 years old - he wrote this book only a few years ago.

In the Introduction, Smith laments secularism, and points out that secularists mistake absence of evidence for evidence of absence when considering the existence of God. I have to agree that these two things are NOT equivalent, but one hears many (even well educated) people say this or something that means this frequently. That being said, Mr. Smith does not let Christian fundamentalists off the hook. He prefers a middle road I guess.

In Part 1, Smith presents his take on the Christian Worldview - some of this got a tad tedious for me. In Part 2, he presented what he called the Christian Story - I thought this much better for the most part, but he does seem to have a fairly conservative viewpoint on many points here, which kind of surprised me given that he taught at Berkeley.

Part 3 looked at the three main branches of Christianity today. I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school, but I still learned a few things I had not before on Catholicism. I found it interesting to learn about the Eastern Orthodox view of the truly corporate nature of the church and its heavy emphasis on mysticism; this was not what I expected given the name Orthodox, and I learned that I have much in common with this group. His discussion on Protestantism was very enlightening - I had never really gotten the justification by faith thing before as I do now.

All in all, I liked the book. It is middle of the road I guess, but as many people have strong opinions on the subjects considered, it may not please all readers.

Huston Smith, one of the greatest comparative theologians of the Twentieth Century, brings a mystic feel to his lifelong quest to understand the nature of God. He combines a massive erudition with a wonderful ease of language that makes him a joy to read. For many he virtually defines the field of comparative religious studies and anything he writes is automatically worth reading. That is why this book is curiously disappointing, like when you went to see Albert Pujols and he only hit a double. This book can be thought of as two books and the first one is quite good. Here Dr. Smith presents some of his musings on what effect the rise of empirical science has had on our understanding of Christianity. He is at his best when he takes on the scientific method's "absence-of-evidence" arguments. It is a belief of Dr. Smith's that the world is not as science says it is. It is as science, philosophy, the arts, myth and legend say it is. He addresses this idea here showing the limits of science in understanding the nature of all religion. He also includes some personal reminiscence that throws light on his personal life and beliefs.

It is in the second part that the book begins to lag. For here he talks about Christianity, its beliefs, its history and its structure. It is brilliant, insightful and beautifully written. I loved it now as well as I did the first time I read it, twenty years ago. For this whole section is nothing else than his Christianity section from The World's Religions reproduced practically word for word. One expected more. Another point that might give a pause to some is his scholars belief that Christianity is one, but not the only, path to God. Still it is not a bad book and it is certainly worth a look if you don't expect too much. However, if you are looking for insights into the true nature of Christianity you would do better to reread your copy of The World's Religions.