"Let books be your dining table, / And you shall be full of delights. / Let them be your
mattress,/
And you shall sleep restful nights" (St. Ephraim the Syrian).


Monday, April 4, 2016

Re-Introducing Eastern Christianity?

I have already contacted the editor, Amir Azarvan, requesting an interview about his newly published collection, Re-Introducing Christianity: an Eastern Apologia for a Western Audience (Wipf and Stock, 2016), 210pp. With any luck, we'll be able to hear from him in answer to my questions in a few weeks.

About this book, released this month, the publisher tells us:
"Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. . . . And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction" (Bill Maher). Many seem unaware that contemporary critiques of Christianity are relevant mostly to its modern offshoots (whose followers have to some extent earned Bill Maher's unflattering caricatures). To its detriment, Christianity is increasingly identified in people's minds with these more recent expressions. As a result, a growing number of people are turning away from Christianity and, indeed, religious faith altogether. Drawing from an eclectic group of theologians, clergy members, monastics, and lay scholars, this edited volume re-introduces Christianity to a modern audience. It presents a more authentic, experiential side of Christianity to the religious skeptic; a side that eschews blind faith, legalism, and judgment; a side that is rarely given a hearing in the ongoing debate with today's skeptics. Re-Introducing Christianity is also directed at modern Christians, and refutes their most frequently expressed criticisms of what the contributors boldly, but humbly, call the Apostolic Faith.
The book is divided into seven sections, often with several essays in each, covering such topics as theosis, the communion of saints, the process of salvation, icons, sacraments, the reality of the resurrection, women in the Orthodox Church, and much else besides.

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