Citizen Columns
Question
What single book or magazine should people read to find out more about your faith?
Answer
The Orthodox Way (1995) by Orthodox monk, bishop and Oxford scholar Kallistos Ware. This short book (164 pages) brings together deep awareness both of the Orthodox Christian faith and the sorts of questions western readers bring, since Ware was raised and trained in England and joined the Orthodox church when he was a doctoral student in the 1950's. He has been thoroughly shaped by the two worlds of Oxford academic rigor as a professor for forty years and by his Orthodox life as a monk, parish priest and bishop. He unpacks the ancient Christian faith and way of life in a systematic manner that never loses sight of its essential mystery and wonder. Insistence on the centrality of personal experience, however convoluted and messy, is at the heart of The Orthodox Way, and Ware begins the book with this quotation from his theological mentor, Georges Florovsky: "The Church gives us not a system, but a key; not a plan of God's City, but the means of entering it. Perhaps someone will lose his way because he has no plan. But all that he will see, he will see without a mediator, he will see it
directly, it will be real for him; while he who has studied only the plan risks remaining outside and not really finding anything."
Other candidates include The Way of a Pilgrim, by an anonymous 19th century Russian writer, and Alexander Schmemann's For the Life of the World (1973). But there is no single catechism. And rightly so. Books can convey much, but the life of faith is above all an encounter with Christ that takes places in hearts, homes and churches, and something of that must be experienced if you want to find out more. This is especially true of Orthodox Christianity, which emphasizes apprehension by all the senses, and not just our rational faculties. So, as Philip
told Nathanael, "Come and see" (John 1:46).
Father John Jillions
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