Review of Peter Leithart’s “Against Christianity” - Part 1
Done at the request of Jason
Most of the reviews or comments I’ve found for this book have been nothing more than a copy of the comments on the back of the book. Helpful, but hardly critical. In this review I want to state both what I like and what I didn’t like about this controversial book.
And I’ll start with that, the fact that this book was made to be controversial. On the first page Leithart writes
“Christianity is the heresy of heresies, the underlying cause of the weakness, lethargy, sickness, and failure of the modern church”.
Of course, it’s catchy, it makes the curious person want to read on but it is, in my opinion, very much an overstatement done to get the reader to be shocked and draw him in. It’s a form of trickery, and I don’t like it. But when he gets around to making the point about what Christianity actually means, I actually agree with him. Leithart writes,
“Christianity sometimes refers to a set of doctrines or a system of ideas…By this definition, Christianity is what Christian people believe about God, man, sin, Christ, the world, the future, and so on. The Bible, however, never speaks of such beliefs except as all-embracing, self-committing confessions of God’s people. The Bible gives no hint that a Christian ‘belief system’ might be isolated from the life of the Church, subjected to scientific or logical analysis, and have its truth compared with competing ‘belief systems’.”
Of course, he is not opposed to a logical analysis of the Faith (like a systematic theology book) but he is trying to make the point (as I understand him) that if one is to analyze the Faith is a system it must be a complete analysis including the Church, her rites and rituals, and a full orbed covenant view that puts it all together – with Christ as its focus. This is right and good. The Christian faith is not simply a cool idea. By using the word “faith” in describing our “religion” we are saying that it is a belief that Must and Always bring about “works”, not simply a mental accent.
“’faith’ stretches out to include one’s entire ‘stance’ in life, a stance that encompasses beliefs about the world but also unarticulated or inarticulable attitudes, hopes, and habits of thought, action, or feeling…the Church is united not only by one faith but also by one baptism, manifests her unity in common participation in one loaf, and lives together in mutual defense, submission, and love”.
This is the same the thing that N.T. Wright makes clear in the first 300 pages of his “The New Testament and the People of God”. I would encourage anyone to read it to get a good understanding of what a Worldview really is and how it works (praxis, symbol, story, questions).
I have to go back to work now. This post is my introductory analysis of the first chapter, Against Christianity. I’ll go through the other chapters (Against Theology, Against Sacraments, Against Ethics, For Constantine) later.
Most of the reviews or comments I’ve found for this book have been nothing more than a copy of the comments on the back of the book. Helpful, but hardly critical. In this review I want to state both what I like and what I didn’t like about this controversial book.
And I’ll start with that, the fact that this book was made to be controversial. On the first page Leithart writes
“Christianity is the heresy of heresies, the underlying cause of the weakness, lethargy, sickness, and failure of the modern church”.
Of course, it’s catchy, it makes the curious person want to read on but it is, in my opinion, very much an overstatement done to get the reader to be shocked and draw him in. It’s a form of trickery, and I don’t like it. But when he gets around to making the point about what Christianity actually means, I actually agree with him. Leithart writes,
“Christianity sometimes refers to a set of doctrines or a system of ideas…By this definition, Christianity is what Christian people believe about God, man, sin, Christ, the world, the future, and so on. The Bible, however, never speaks of such beliefs except as all-embracing, self-committing confessions of God’s people. The Bible gives no hint that a Christian ‘belief system’ might be isolated from the life of the Church, subjected to scientific or logical analysis, and have its truth compared with competing ‘belief systems’.”
Of course, he is not opposed to a logical analysis of the Faith (like a systematic theology book) but he is trying to make the point (as I understand him) that if one is to analyze the Faith is a system it must be a complete analysis including the Church, her rites and rituals, and a full orbed covenant view that puts it all together – with Christ as its focus. This is right and good. The Christian faith is not simply a cool idea. By using the word “faith” in describing our “religion” we are saying that it is a belief that Must and Always bring about “works”, not simply a mental accent.
“’faith’ stretches out to include one’s entire ‘stance’ in life, a stance that encompasses beliefs about the world but also unarticulated or inarticulable attitudes, hopes, and habits of thought, action, or feeling…the Church is united not only by one faith but also by one baptism, manifests her unity in common participation in one loaf, and lives together in mutual defense, submission, and love”.
This is the same the thing that N.T. Wright makes clear in the first 300 pages of his “The New Testament and the People of God”. I would encourage anyone to read it to get a good understanding of what a Worldview really is and how it works (praxis, symbol, story, questions).
I have to go back to work now. This post is my introductory analysis of the first chapter, Against Christianity. I’ll go through the other chapters (Against Theology, Against Sacraments, Against Ethics, For Constantine) later.
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