Through Western Eyes, Eastern Orthodoxy: A Reformed Perspective - Robert Letham

This is a wonderful book for someone looking for insight into the Eastern Orthodox history, theology and church practice. Letham's strength is the historical summation which gives not only an understanding of where and how doctrine developed but deeper appreciation for the depth of thought and often controversy involved in what we now often take for granted in our systematic theology.

The Eastern Church has many problems (lack of exegesis, iconography, incomplete view of justification, etc.) but they also have things that the Reformed Church can learn from especially the focus on Trinitarianism and the Unions (Trinity, Incarnation and Theosis). Letham presents the East in a way that makes them less threatening and allows a Reformed thinker to avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water. In fact, I now believe that the Reformed have more in common with E.O. than with much of the broader Western Evangelicalism.

This is an important book.