Orthodoxy
by G. K. Chesterton
This book is intended to be the companion of the "heretics" and to put a positive side in addition to the negatives. Many critics complained about a book called Heretics because it criticized modern philosophies without offering an alternative philosophy. This book is an attempt to answer that challenge. It is inevitably affirmative and therefore inevitably autobiographical. The author threw back as much as the one who surprised Newman when he wrote his Apologia; he was forced to be selfish just to be sincere. While everything else is different, in both cases the cause is the same. The author's goal is not to try to explain whether the Christian faith can be believed, but how he personally believed in it. Therefore, the book is built on the positive principle and answer of the riddle. He speaks first of the author's own lonely and sincere speculation, and then of the expressive style in which he is suddenly pleased with Christian theology. The author sees this as a persuasive belief. But if that's not it, it's at least a recurring and surprising coincidence.
