[D-fendr]

I recently re-read The River of Fire that you excerpted from a long while back. Thanks for that, it's quite an exciting read for a Papist. :)

I ran the jist of it past a cradle-Catholic and had an interesting conversation as well.

[kosta50]

The River of Fire was written (late 1970's) when our Churches were much more at odds, with Vatican II reforms gone wild, making things even worse. But it certainly captures the Protestant, rather than Catholic, theology in its core.

It portrays the Orthodox approach very well, and the idea that we experience God's goodness depending on our spiritual state as either blessings or pain. the idea is that God is Good and He is always and forever Good, unchaning.

[Kolokotronis]

Kalomiros certainly has his detractors among the Orthodox. Personally, I thoroughly enjoy his writings and find them excellent expositions of Orthodox theology. That said, I think the good professor lumped the Latins in with the Protestants, a failing one sees to this day in Greece. For some reason many Greeks, even educated ones and especially religious ones, see the West as being thoroughly Latin. Its as if Protestantism is just some off shoot of Catholicism. When Greeks who don't know us find out we are Americans, the almost immediate assumption is that we are Catholics. They do it with other Western nationalities as well. Anyway, his polemic against the Latins really seems today to be one against a strawman, though I doubt that was his intention when he wrote the piece. I think it was more the result of the times, as Kosta said, and an inborn Greek prejudice against all Latin matters theological.