Orthodoxy

Orthodoxy is a book of Christian apologetics written by G. K. Chesterton in 1908.

Chesterton wrote it as the companion to Heretics (1905). Critics had complained that he spent that book demolishing everyone else's philosophy without ever stating his own, so here he sets out to explain how he arrived at Christian orthodoxy — arriving, in his own image, like a yachtsman who sails off to discover a new island and lands instead, to his great satisfaction, back in England.

The argument runs through the limits of pure rationalism, the sanity of paradox, and the case for wonder, and it is made in jokes and reversals rather than in formal theology, which is why it is still read by people who disagree with every word of it.

"The only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge. Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel. When some time ago I published a series of hasty but sincere papers, under the name of "Heretics," several critics for whose intellect I have a warm respect (I may mention specially Mr. G.S.Street) said that it was all very well for me to tell everybody to affirm his cosmic theory, but that I had carefully avoided supporting my precepts with example. ".