CHRIST IN EASTERN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

Byzantine christology during the period from the Council of Chalcedon to the fall of Constantinople (451-1453) is not, in John Meyendorff's view, an especially recondite bit of theological esoterica, but rather an intellectual development which, since it largely circumvents the controversial distinction between the natural and the supernatural orders and insists that man is man only to the extent that he participates in God's life, may offer the key to the contemporary search for a ""new theology."" In pursuit of that thesis, he traces the thousand year development through its major stages: the Monophysite and Origenist schools, the work of the Pseudo-Dionysius; of Maximus the Confessor and of St. John of Damascus, the Iconoclastic crisis, etc. The book, however, is. not primarily a-work of theology, but of the history of theology, so organized as to give the reader an overall view of the mainstream of christological thought in Byzantium. As such, it will serve as an excellent complement to Grillmeier's recent Christ in Christian Tradition, which cover's the subject up to 451 A.D, Like the latter work, Meyendorff's book is intended for the serious student of theology; and, like it, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought will-prove indispensable to that kind of reader as well as to theological collections of any size.