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Restoring the Great TraditionBestselling author, Huston Smith, a man whose knowledge of world religions probably surpasses most people’s knowledge of their own religion, has written a book on Christianity that is “relevant and profound” according to the back cover. The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition (2005, Harper San Francisco) seeks to tell the story of Christianity by elaborating its worldview, history and three main divisions. Does Smith succeed?

I covet Smith’s insights into world religions. If I had the time, I too would study the other religions of the world, of course always comparing and contrasting them to Christianity – my own. But Smith makes too many comparisons to the world’s religions in this book, and too few contrasts. By the time I finished the book, I was left wondering if Smith understands Christianity as well as he thinks he does.

Smith argues for Christianity’s superiority (though weakly), but not Christianity’s exclusivity. (It seems to me that arguing for Christianity’s superiority is actually more arrogant than the exclusivity argument, because at least the exclusivity argument is based on the belief that Christianity is true.) He says that most Christians today believe that God is defined by Jesus, not “confined to Jesus.” I challenge the statistics that led him to that conclusion, but even more so, I challenge the idea that if a majority of Christians were to reject the exclusivity of Christ for salvation, they must be right.

Another problem is Smith’s disregard for interpreting the “literal meaning” of Scripture. He cites the church fathers as examples of those who found allegorical meanings in Scripture and rejected the “literalism” of today’s fundamentalists. I too believe that not all Scripture should be taken literally, meaning that poetry should be interpreted as poetry, apocalyptic language as apocalyptic, etc. But where narrative is straightforward and written with the intention of describing actual events, one does injustice to the text to reject its “literal meaning.”

This rejection of literalism leads Smith to reinterpret the meaning of crucial New Testament moments. With regard to the resurrection, he says that “something like that” happened. And then, “It seems flippant to say that ‘something like the virgin birth and the empty tomb happened,’ but we must remember that the alternative to that wording is to stay trapped in literalism.” Actually, the alternative to that wording is capitulation to modernist arrogance that assumes such events could not actually occur.

When Smith begins to speak about the Christian Story, specifically Jesus, things don’t get better. When writing of the Lord’s Prayer, he makes the laughable statement, “The prayer is addressed to the abba (father) of us all, and the full salutation, ‘Our Father who art in heaven’ makes it clear that it carries no gender connotations…” I’m still trying to figure out how “Father” carries no gender connotations whatsoever.

Smith quickly dismisses the Protestant understanding of the atonement and chooses to side completely with Abelard – the “Jesus as an example of God’s love” theory – which if taken together with the other theories is fine, but when separated from the others is woefully inadequate.

The end of the book describes Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism. Smith speaks negatively only of Protestants (not surprisingly).

I was thoroughly disappointed by this book. The back cover and the description made it sound like this would be a book about the most important aspects of Christianity. Instead, I suffered through 160 pages of “soulless” Christianity. Smith has several good points to make, but other books make those points better than this one, a work that turns out to be the latest rehash of early 20th century liberalism.

written by Trevin Wax. © 2007 Kingdom People Blog 

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