Book Review Preview: The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware

Finished book review here.

Today I got a copy of The Orthodox Church, by Timothy Ware. It's the 1964 Pelican edition.

Having grown up in America, I had more casual occasion to encounter Catholic and various Protestant influences than Eastern Orthodox ones, when I was learning about the different interpretations people make of the Bible. So one reason to read this book is to fill a general gap in my knowledge.

More specifically, from what I've heard of Orthodox soteriology, it may be closest to New Wine soteriology of that of any existing church, and it would be very interesting to see what similarities or differences exist between the two. Motivational structure tends to follow from soteriology, and so if Orthodoxy has a somewhat New Wine-like soteriology, one would think that it ought to have a proportionately similar motivational structure. Eastern Orthodoxy is what it is, so if New Wine motivational structure is similar enough to the Orthodox one, then we would expect it, in practice, to be not much more or less effective than Orthdox motivation, all else being equal.

More generally again, it looks like The Orthodox Church is a history of doctrine, and thus might be a good way for me to consider the points of view of different eras of the church. There was only one, catholic / orthodox church for the first half of the church's history, so this accounts for a lot of theological thinking. Orthodox theological development post-Schism is interesting in itself and ought to have some similarities with the other branches of Christianity. I am curious to see what I think about traditional theology.