No: 2130722265
Class: ISS 412
The Soul of Christianity: Restoring of Great Tradition. By Huston Smith. New York: Harper Collins, 2005, 176 pp.
The basic accounts of the book “The Soul of Christianity: Restoring of Great Tradition” is based on the Christian’s tradition and principle. Besides, this book has tried to cover all information of Christianity throughout the history and also adds some information about the reformation, changes in Christian society, but this book is not a complete account of all topic. So, the author divided his book into three sections. The first (pp. 1-35) describes the Christian worldview. The second part (p. 37-128) treats the Christian story. And the last one, author presents the three main …show more content…
There was the relevant position of the Jews in Jesus’s time; these groups are a Sadducee, Essence, Pharisee, and Zealot. In addition, he describes the history of “Holy Week” in Jesus history; these are Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, the Night on the Mount of Olives, and important one is the Crucifixion. And in the past part of this chapter, the author presents an account of the foundational points in Christian theology: the incarnation, the trinity, the atonement, the resurrection of the body, the virgin birth, hell, and life everlasting. So, these concepts are occurred in the mind of the …show more content…
First of all, Smith presents places where these three branches are dominated, “Roman Catholicism focuses on Vatican in Rome and spreads out from there, being dominant in Poland central and southeast Europe, Ireland and South America. Eastern Orthodoxy has its major influence in Greece, the Slavic countries, and Russia. Protestantism dominated northern Europe, England, Scotland, and North America.” (p. 129). In the year 380, Christianity became the official religion in the Roman Empire, but before this century, the Christianity struggled so much in Roman Empire. However, in 1054 the Christian church occurred the great division, it divided in to two group; the Eastern Orthodox dominated in the East and the Roman catholic is in the West. Smith stated that the reason of division sophisticated geography, politics, language and culture. And in sixteenth century, there was a big division happened in the Roman Catholic Church, then one group called Protestant occurred. “Protestantism followed four main courses; Baptist, Lutheran, Calvinists, and Anglican.” (p. 130) Smith gives information about these three branches in summarily way. He does not explain the topics deeply by according to another book. For example, he describes the authority of Roman Catholicism, the sacraments; the corporate view of the church in Eastern Orthodox,