The Great Heresies (Paperback)

The review about this product

Published in 1938, this book has great merit and deserves five stars, but has its shortcomings. This edition is a re-typeset version of the original and is littered with anoying errors which snuck threw the spellchecker softwear. But the merits outweigh the demerits, and return us to great truths by way of the great heresies.

CONTENTS

1. Heresy (to oversimplify any existing system, eg scientific, nationalist, theological heresy)

2. Scheme of the book

3. The Arian Heresy (AD300: denied the Incarnation, was supported by the Roman army - good psychological analysis of the Roman Empire and military)

4. The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed (AD630: Islam as over-simple theology. Predicts Islam Resurgam.)

5. The Albigensian Attack (1163: matter and the body is evil: the Manichean-Dualist-Jansenist-Calvinist-Puritan response to the problem of evil. Caused upsurge in devil worship, magic, destruction of marriage, vegetarianism, teetotalism)

6. What was the Reformation? (1517: a protest and attempt to reform RC worldliness, allied with secular powers to divest church of its land and political power)

7. The Modern Phase (now called `postmodernism', itself a dying term, not surprisingly. The secular inadvertent attack on Reason itself and deliberate attack on the Church universal, disregard of fatal intellectual mistake of self-contradiction; relativism and subjectivism, AntiChrist)

STYLE

Hilarie Belloc is closely linked with G.K. Chesterton, and his name with that of C. S. Lewis. There is merit in this linkage as Belloc and Chesterton were friends and both Catholic. But where Chesterton has subtlety and humour, smooth style and flow, Belloc has a two fists of iron style and pounds his opponents. He is normally fair, according to Queensbury rules. He is irritating to a Protestant, but (so I say) worth every effort required to adapt to as he has his compensations. He says what most are now too scared to say in the twenty-first century, for political correctness is but a hypocrite and coward mood and will pass in time.

WEAKNESSES

Belloc was as staunch a Roman Catholic as is possible to be, and every chapter of this book shouts this fact, over and above the argument and analysis he presents from the viewpoint of what C.S. Lewis called `Mere Christianity'. The irony here is that he pointedly denies that there is such a thing as a doctrinal `Mere Christianity' to be detected in all the branches of Christendom's historic churches. But he effectively contradicts himself in fact by repeatedly commenting on Greek Orthodoxy; pointedly ignores the early church; ignores the Anglican communion; and plainly allows that Protestant societies had superior `vitality' to the old RC societies but are (in 1938) dying out because they are generically `auto-toxic'. But then by this mere analogy, all societies are `auto-toxic' in this sense: he notes that the RC communion of 1500 with its bought bishops and indulgences needed radical reform but resisted it; and Islam split Shia-Sunni very early on, etc. Belloc covers a vast acreage of history but does it with seven-league boots, missing out swathes of connecting facts and ideas hasteing to a conclusion. It seems to me that he is aware of the mind of the reader, but not the person. He appeals to the male way of thinking, not the female. He too often gives generalizations unsupported by even one example. His theoretical Trinitarianism lacks consideration of the Holy Spirit.

He is very cold-blooded. Glib recitals of European civil wars, Islamic invasions, the Reconquista, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and other deadly episodes unnerve me. He skates over some critical events such as the victory of Charles Martel against Islam at the battle of Tours-Poitiers AD732. In such a short book this is probably inevitable, and he is a take-no-prisoners, no regrets type such as is not seen today. He is a dinosaur of the Rex genus and I am glad we on the same side but not side-by-side.

His knowledge of practical live Islam is weak. He notes the pure doctrines, but lacks the feel of its chimeric nature and inability to see the world as anything other than Umma-Kuffaar. The mindset of instinctive systemic counter-verisimilitude towards the jahiliya he knows not. He does not do much with his accurate perception of its inherent societal inefficiency and the consequent constant need to co-opt and tax, as opposed to create and generate. The Janissaries and Mamelukes elude him. Dhimmitude he seems not to know of, nor of the honour-shame nature of the culture, constantly operating at the level of conformity as opposed to internalization (or holiness as our jargon has it - revivals are holiness movements). This is probably due to the RC weakness towards this tendency itself.

His notion of all charging of interest as `usury' is woefully naïve economics. Interest is the cost of a loan, a charge on use of money which could be put to alternate uses, and the insurance cost of bearing the risk of loan default. But then even Aquinas did not understand this, and Belloc just failed to get up to date.

STRENGTHS

He summarises well, and says what badly needs saying in our day, without jargon-munching touchy-feely death-by-qualification. It is quite possible to get a working idea of any of the heresies he tackles, purely by reading that chapter alone. It is excellent for beginners in this respect. The sheer speed of progress over the facts and the ideas is very exhilarating.

The sign of a powerful intellect, he draws accurate connections between apparently entirely different things. Eg, the indissoluble `Trinity' of Plato and Aristotle (Truth, Beauty, and Goodness) and its complete consonance with Theism, revealing why atheist Communism has contempt for both these abstract things and the physical dignity of the person (ch.7). Also, the whole chapter on Albigensianism and its forms. In life Mr. Belloc must have been as formidable a foe as a friend, I will read more of him.