Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition (review)

James Payton’s book is designed to introduce Orthodox thought and culture to an audience of evangelical Christians who, for a variety of reasons, may be unfamiliar with that large and rich Christian tradition or may have inherited sets of prejudices about it that the author wishes to address. He broaches the subject head on: how many evangelicals simply know Orthodoxy as a “suspect” tradition that has at its heart devotion to the Virgin Mary, sacraments, monasticism, icons, relics, and incense? How far removed it all seems from the standard thought patterns and religious practices of American evangelicalism. Payton has years of experience of ecumenical dialogue with Orthodoxy, and an obvious and vibrant empathy with his subject. He presents the tale of Orthodoxy simply as that of the origins of Christianity: its traditions not so much ethnically peculiar, but more as the foundational line of Christian faith. Overall, one reads this book and learns much about the basics of dogmatic theology. The author, on numerous occasions, presents the Eastern traditions as something that may, in fact, assist the evangelical today to gain a helpful set of new perspectives on fundamental matters such as the interpretation of St. Paul, the concept of redemption, or the nature of the Church. He begins with a brief and rapid account of church history from an Eastern perspective. How unusual it is to hear the account of the rise of Christianity to the Renaissance period, with not even a mention of the Reformation. Church history has been so often simply “Western Church History,” as presented, that this account (however rapid and partial) comes with striking freshness. There follows in the second and third chapters a general discussion of how Orthodoxy differs in style and approach from the more familiar Western traditions of theological thought. The author places emphasis on the preference for apophatic (what may be briefly described as “turning away from speech” and the favoring of quiet reflection on mystery, or theology witnessed in prayer and doxology) rather than kataphatic (discursive and apologetic) theology that has been so often the Western preference. The Western Church has grown up in an environment that has been so often harried by deep religious social and theological controversies that most of its thought patterns and practices are deeply scored by apologetics. The Eastern Church has known its fair share of controversies, but many of them were settled in the very early centuries (later ages were under the stifling hand of many oppressors, some only removed in recent memory), and it has never developed such an apologetic trend in its thought.

From chapter 5 through chapter 9 the reader will find a very lively and graceful account of fundamental issues in the common core tradition of Christianity. Issues covered include creation theology, anthropology and the Fall, ways of envisaging salvation, and the nature of grace. Chapters 10, 11, and 13 focus more specifically on issues that might strike the visitor to a real-world Orthodox church as being “different”: the style of the churches, the prevalence of icons, and the forms of prayer in Eastern Christianity. Chapter 12 is an important discussion of tradition and Scripture in Orthodox thought—a matter that is of fundamental import, certainly to most evangelicals, and might have benefited from a higher positioning in the book’s table of contents.

All in all, in this lively, informative, and often inspiring book, the author shows a deep love for the Orthodox tradition, and a desire to offer its riches to an evangelical world, to which he belongs, which he evidently loves, and which he clearly knows so well. The study is a fine example of the positive power of ecumenical thought: an example of how the story can be told to the benefit of all parties, without the need for glossing over fundamental matters of difference. An Orthodox might not find it a total...