Book Review: Adventures in Orthodoxy by Dwight Longenecker

Adventures in Orthodoxy: The Marvels of the Christian Creed and the Audacity of Belief by Dwight Longenecker

The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed is an ancient text that summarizes the basic beliefs held by almost all Christians. Like any list of basics handed down from posterity, it can seem a bit rote and remote. In this book, Father Longenecker goes through the creed phrase by phrase, showing how the ideas are revolutionary and exciting. One of Longenecker's favorite things is to look at things from different perspectives, as if standing on one's head in order to notice different details. His comments are both insightful and witty, making the book a delightful and quick read.

Here's a rather long quote, but it so well exemplifies the writing style and intelligence of the book:

Try a little experiment. Just for fun, if you aren't already Catholic, tell people you've decided to convert. Your friends with taste will tease you for liking plastic snowstorm paperweights with miniature basilicas inside, paintings of Mary on black velvet, and pictures of Jesus with googly eyes. At the same time your friends who pride themselves on being "plain folk" will blame you for a sudden interest in Baroque architecture, lacy vestments, and Monteverdi Masses. Educated colleagues will denounce you for joining an ignorant and unthinking religion that demands blind obedience, while your less-educated friends will think you've been seduced by philosophical mumbo-jumbo. Your populist critic will blame you for being elitist, while the snob will smile sadly and say that you've chosen to mix with peasants, simpletons, and working-class drones. "Spiritual" friends will be incredulous at your acceptance of a rigid, dogmatic, and hierarchical system, while your theologically minded friends will say you've gone in for mysticism and mushy spirituality. Your liberal friends will shake their heads in dismay at the thought that you would submit to an authoritarian and misogynistic regime, while your conservative friends won't understand how you can possibly agree with a Church that promotes social-welfare programs, opposes the death penalty, and is in favor of ecology, ecumenism, and interfaith dialogue.
  If everyone attacked the Catholic Church for the same huge and terrible crimes--as they do Hitler, Pol Pot, or Bin Laden--we'd have to conclude that the Catholic Church was indeed a most terrible organization, and every good man and true should rise up against her. But since the attacks are on totally contradictory fronts, don't we have to suspect that there might be a problem, not with the attacked, but with the attackers? [p. 124-125]

The book is very orthodox and very entertaining and very thought-provoking. Catholic or not, it is well worth reading.

Highly recommended.