Brilliant is not too extravagant a word to describe this examination by a

Brilliant is not too extravagant a word to describe this examination by a Presbyterian pastor of American religion in terms of the recurrent struggle of Christian orthodoxy against Gnosticism, a struggle in which, on the American scene and especially in the Protestant camp, Gnosticism seems to have the upper hand. Beginning from the New Testament and early Christian periods, Lee sets out to describe Gnosticism and the orthodox response to it (St. Irenaeus is the major orthodox writer given voice at this juncture, and is relied upon by Lee throughout the book to articulate Christian orthodoxy). The essential features of Gnosticism receive a skillful illumination here: the hatred for the material world, the emphasis on private, individual illumination as opposed to the reception of a concrete Faith in the midst of a community, a spiritual elitism which held the average believer in contempt and rejected the centrality of the sacraments. Proceeding to the Reformers, and especially in a detailed analysis of Calvin, Lee finds a predominant retention of orthodox belief, but sees an almost Gnostic despair manifesting itself in Calvin's low opinion of humanity, even before the Fall. The ways that this despair, and the backlash to this despair, work themselves out in the arena of American religiosity, occupy the remaining portion of Lee's analysis. His occasional forays into American politics and economics are simplistic and wrongheaded (if we may be so bold), but they are at least consistent with his insistence that Christian faith not be neatly, indeed Gnostically, compartmentalized, safely separated from other arenas of human activity and struggle.