The Library of Christian Classics comprises the classic works that every Christian should read at least once in their life. They are wells of Biblical wisdom that speak to us across the centuries.
In his 62 years of frenetic and happy life, Chesterton wrote some four thousand essays, about two hundred short stories, five novels, countless newspaper articles, some plays and travel chronicles, hundreds of poems, a book on Victorian literature, and another on the history of England. He also enjoyed writing biographies of notable figures and undertook the colossal task of transforming the lives of Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Robert Browning, William Blake, Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles Dickens, and Robert Louis Stevenson into literature. Chesterton's tireless pen poured out around a hundred books filled with a vitality that continues to challenge believers and non-believers, loyal readers and unsuspecting visitors alike.
1908 was a restless year for Chesterton, who was already thirty-four years old. In that year of overflowing creativity, he published Orthodoxy, probably his most important theological writing. Although he still had twenty-eight years of life and countless books to write, his philosophy already resonates with full clarity in Orthodoxy, a classic text of Christian apologetics and spirituality, the story of his unusual journey from skepticism to faith. The playwright Francisco Nieva said that this is the most optimistic book of the 20th century. The journalist and theologian Philip Yancey confessed that if, in addition to the Bible, he could take one book to a deserted island, he would undoubtedly take this one.
Orthodoxy is innocence recovered; it is discovering what had already been discovered; it is choosing to be home after circling the globe and returning to the starting point. Chesterton's philosophy is a powerful response to the skepticism that marked his youth and continues to darken our world. When he began to doubt doubt, he found himself already on the way to orthodoxy. The prodigal had to wallow in the mud to learn the value of his home; Chesterton had to encounter the irrationality of rationalists and the humanists' contempt for humanity to return to the arms of his Father.
The goal of the Library of Christian Classics, published by Abba, is to recover and make available to the Hispanic people the wisdom that God gave to our ancestors in the faith. Many of them are published for the first time in Spanish, and others are recovered and completely revised for better understanding in the 21st century.
