Here is a useful, sympathetic, evangelical primer on a vast portion of the Church, about which the West is largely ignorant. Clendenin, a systematic theologian, has his PhD from Drew and has taught on both sides of the former Iron Curtain, most recently for several years in Moscow State University. After explaining why we should be interested in Orthodoxy, not least due to evangelicals converting to it because of its liturgical beauty and adherence to patristic doctrine, Clendenin gives a brief history of the movement. He then focuses on four major areas for chapter-length treatments: the apophatic vision of God, which transcends rational thought and focuses on an understanding of God in terms of what he is not; the image of Christ, with special reference to the controversy over icons (‘aesthetic in the service of the sacred’); the witness of the Spirit as one’s fundamental authority, despite echoes of Protestantism’s sola Scriptura and Catholicism’s emphasis on tradition; and the apotheosis (roughly, though misleadingly, ‘deification’) of believers, and the concomitant mysticism it has engendered. While not unappreciative of the dangers in each area, Clendenin focuses more on an appeal to learning from Orthodoxy’s strengths via a hermeneutic of love.

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