The Soul of Christianity PDF
Preview The Soul of Christianity
T H E S O U L — o f — C H R I S T I A N I T Y Restoring the Great Tradition ��� HUSTON SMITH CONTENTS ��� PREFACE v PROLOGUE ix INTRODUCTION xiii Part One THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW 1 Part Two THE CHRISTIAN STORY 37 Part Three THE THREE MAIN BRANCHES OF CHRISTIANITY TODAY 129 CODA 163 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 167 INDEX 169 ABOUT THE AUTHOR ALSO BY HUSTO N SMITH CREDITS COVER COPYRIGHT ABOUT THE PUBLISHER PREFACE ��� This is a passionate book, written with a great sense of ur- gency. Endowed by blood and birth with an instinctive feeling for the holy, a sense of awe for the wonder and beauty of sa- cred things, I feel like a voice crying in the wilderness, the wilderness of secular modernity which religion is unable to pull us out of because it presents our culture with a babble of conflicting voices. And yet a voice that can pull us out of the wilderness is on our very doorstep. 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. I am not the only one at work on this project, and among my fellow laborers are a number who are better scholars and theologians than I am. Still, my sense of urgency remains. For Preface precisely because of their towering talents it will take time for their thoughts to make their way into our culture. I have tried to write a book which, without oversimplifying, is readily comprehensible to every intelligent reader who is interested. Several subsidiary points can help to place the book in per- spective: First, it is not a complete account of its subject. It is re- stricted to Christian faith and gives only passing attention to institutional developments, and it bypasses the dark side of Christian history entirely. Second, it is not a scholarly treatise. It omits references and contains very few footnotes. Here and there I make minor changes in the wordings of the writers I quote so that they will fit smoothly into my text. When quoting scripture I choose whatever translation best suits my needs. Third, the book is not combative. It respects other inter- pretations of Christianity and does not argue with them. Their authors have done what they needed to do, and I have done the same. Last in this list of waivers: while I assume full responsibility for everything through Part One, when I move to the Chris- tian story in Part Two I try not to be innovative. I think of it as the subtitle of the book indicates, as a work of restoration. Countering the current tendency to be skeptical about the past, I try to show how first-millennium Christianity can sur- prise the present with new life. Stated positively, 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. I found writing this book exhilarating, for it enabled me to vi Preface see more clearly than before the intellectual and spiritual gold of Christianity, its intellectual expanse, the vastness of its at- mosphere, and its genius for cutting through to the quick of life. Part One is totally new. Part Two expands and deepens the chapter on Christianity in my book The World’s Religions. Part Three presents the three main divisions of Christianity today. vii
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