Stefan George Books

I first read this book back in the summer of '83, as a skinny kid, while in college. I was curious about bodybuilding before buying it, but after reading it this book actually inspired true change in me. I immediately began training using the dusty, dilapidated weight-set that sat down in the dank, beer-stenched fraternity house basement that I lived in during the summer. I then graduated to the university gym, and then to a real Gold's Gym- I was working out with real bodybuilders! It was such a rush to get into the true environment of pro bodybuilding. It took seemingly forever to put on muscle but one day it seemed to magically start to happen. It was like a dream come true. I used to sit at a bus-stop waiting to come home after a monsterous workout. I never remember ever feeling so exhausted in my life while waiting for the bus.

Anyway, I managed to get into beautiful shape and excelled in my studies and eventually reached the pinnacle of my profession...and bodybuilding was one element that helped, without a doubt. This book by Arnold and friends was so inspirational to me and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to transform their body/lives or anyone who wants to peer into the world of the greatest bodybuilder of all time. You won't regret buying this book. If you happen to be reading these reviews, Arnold, thank you for the memories. I will always consider you as being one of the top greats of sports and success stories..

Full of information on mental & physical training. Things even I would never have thought about. Recommend it to anyone, well worth the money.

What can we say?

Fantastic book. Great for motivation. After reading this book you will realize that dream really can come true if you put enough effort and passion in them.

This is a must have for anybody wanting to know more about the basics of bodybuilding. This book has loads of pictures, detailed descriptions and is thorough and straight forward. And if you happen to be an Arnold Schwarzenegger fan, even better. Buy it!

**Since two books are being reviewed, I'm posting reviews on each book.

I happened to decide to read some self-help type books because like everyone else, I hit a stagnating point in my career and wanted to read about how some of these purportedly self-made successful authors achieved success in life. By some strange coincidence, I read Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder" then TimothyFerriss's "The 4-Hour Workweek" in succession, and though these two authors may seem an anachronism, the similarities of their central message, namely, how they were able to achieve their dream lifestyle are exactly the same. Only the techniques and philosophical underpinnings differ.

Timothy Ferriss and 4WW as already reviewed on this page, advocates much of the platitudes written by other self-help authors such as life is short, do not spend every day in a job you hate to buy things you do not need, follow the Pareto 80/20 principle, etc. Of course the most interesting aspect is the notion of outsourcing the repetitive, low level work in your own business pursuits much like the big corporations are doing now to maximize your free time to pursue the things you enjoy, like the "mini-retirements" Ferriss takes regularly to all the exotic places that we all enviously wish we could do. I think this is really the core of the book and is why the book achieved such popularity in such a short time. The world has truly become flat, and the threats and discordance of an increasingly globalized world and outsourced workforce underlies all of us who occupy the once exalted white-collar job. Ferriss masterfully targets this underlying fear and concern, by turning it around and telling the Reader that you can fight back by doing the same think the big companies are doing to you, by utilizing the same technologies and outsourcing techniques, such that eventually you'll be able to kick back in a hammock with a drink in you hand, and in the other a laptop or cell phone with wireless Internet access to run your outsourced business in some exotic location like Tahiti or something, that the book cover depicts so well.

On Arnold, what can I say that has not already been written and talked about the man? To me and many others, he is the very embodiment and walking, living example of what all the self-help books advocate especially on topics like setting goals and visualizations. In the auto-biographical book, Arnold talks about how when he was 15 years old, he came upon bodybuilding and realized that "my life, the answer I'd been seeking. It clicked. It was something I suddenly just seemed to reach out and find, as if I'd been crossing a suspended bridge and finally stepped off onto solid ground." The first half of the book describes the single-minded determination, persistence and hard work he subjected himself to, to achieve his goal of becoming the greatest bodybuilder of all time, then parlaying that success as the foundation to achieve his other goals of becoming a successful businessman, actor and leader. It chronicles his life and achievements from the age of 15 to about 22 when he won the greatest bodybuilding competition, the Mr. Olympia for the first time. Reading this section really allows you to get a first hand account of the mindset Arnold had to achieve the great levels of success he was able to achieve and is eye-opening and invaluable. The second half describes exercises and diets you can do to achieve your own physical goals. While this section may be dated by recent advances in knowledge about strength training, and be biased to people like Arnold with great genetic, physical, nutritional and drug enhanced abilities, you can still benefit from his advices about regularity, dedication and sustained efforts required to obtain that six-pack ab, muscular biceps and of course good health.

Now, what I found so uncanny was the similarities of both authors, in that Ferriss is 29, and found great success in running a business in an innovated way, and used that success to write a best selling book on his first try. Likewise, Arnold was around 29 when he wrote and published his book, and used his great physical presence and huge success in a relatively unknown and marginalized sport of professional bodybuilding to publish a best selling book on his first try. Also, both men are savvy marketers and self-promoters and used those abilities shamelessly to catapult their first time published books to best seller status on their first try. Ferris from what I've read on his blog, used exactly that, his blog and Internet presence to build an audience long before the book was published and also by ensuring he got connected to other best selling authors and learning from them and using their connections to make sure his book would get published and read by a large audience. In another biography I read on Arnold, when the publishers of his book told him he would need to go a 10 city book tour, his response was "why only 10 cities, why not 50 cites", because he understood that to get his book sold and read by a large audience he had to get the word out.

But where the similarities end, the differences are quite pronounced. Though I do admire Ferriss and his marketing savvy, and his ability to articulate his agenda in an intelligent, if somewhat shallow way, I can't help but a feeling that his methods do not have long term viability. In addition, somewhat like Arnold, he's big on his athletic achievements but many seem exaggerated, and many if from what I've read online are unsubstantiated. Arnold, on the other hand, does not need to exaggerate anything, as he won the greatest bodybuilding championship 7 times, was at one time the highest paid actor, has made millions not only from acting, but owning real estate, a publishing company, restaurants and even leases a 747 airplane to southeast Asian countries, and is now governor of California, America's largest economy. His success and track record are for real, and when you read in his book about the psychological attitude he utilized such as goal setting and visualization and the use of good old fashion hard work, determination and perseverance, he never advocates a get quick success scheme.

In all fairness to Ferriss, he understands well the need for a catchy title and book cover and the frustrations of all the corporate cogs stuck in their Dilbertesque cubicles and to bank on their frustrations of now only working a dull and frustration job for long hours, but having that very job be outsourced to another country! And despite the ease with which he makes it all sound, there was much planning, strategic surveying, and persistent hard work to get his book and the image surrounding it to sell as well as it has. I think if anything, you can learn a great deal from how he got to where he is, and is in fact the very kind of traits Arnold talks about in his book that lead him to his success.

Not to berate the general attitude of this great country, but I think America has too much of a mentality of quick fixes and gains. Don't like your physical appearance, just to do plastic surgery or suck the fat out with liposuction. Likewise, all the get rich schemes too many to mention that permeate our national psyche. Reading how an immigrant like Arnold Schwarzenegger achieve his success with a positive attitude, gold old fashion hard work, determination, persistence, setting objective and attainable goals resonates with me much more deeply, especially since my parents are in his same age range and immigrated to this country with nothing and achieved success using his principles.

In conclusion, while I find Ferriss's book a bit gimmicky and shallow in details of how he achieved his lifestyle, it is still a worthwhile read and though many could claim much of his advice is common sense, if we all lived life utilizing true common sense intelligence, wouldn't we be all successful? Arnold's suggestions are to set clear and objective goals, visual yourself achieving success, and working hard everyday to achieve your vision. What could be more common sense?

Both books are worthwhile reads, but if you had to choose one, I'd pick Arnold's any day. His successful record speaks for itself.

-Don Kim

I wish to stress with some urgency that in my view this recently issued monograph on Germany's greatest poet, Stefan George, who was likewise one of modern Europe's most enigmatic and disturbing political presences, constitutes an achievement of incomparable significance in the historiography of cultural modernism. Experto crede: I have been occupied in studying these individuals for thirty years or more, and I can assure students that Robert Edward Norton has shed more light than admirers of Stefan George would have thought possible upon a dazzlingly talented, albeit indubitably eccentric,literary cenacle at whose center stood the masterful and charismatic visionary who was its spiritus rector.

Although George began his literary career as something of a minor Teutonic satellite on the far fringes of the French Symbolist movement (we learn, for instance, that the poet became quite close, both personally and artistically, to several of the Symbolist School's leading lights, viz., Paul Verlaine and Stephane Mallarme to mention just two of the more prominent figures) the predominant emphasis in Robert E. Norton's monograph rests upon the author's entertaining presentation of a wide range of hitherto obscure details involving the poet's later career, when his personal pretensions began to outweigh his literary career--over which George assiduously endeavored to cast a shroud of mystery and ambiguity--as well as unlocking for us a treasure trove of hitherto obscure biographical facts and anecdotes about the disciples and associates who drifted into the orbit of George-Kreis at one time or another. These anecdotes cover the waterfront, from uproarious and barely believable brawls that erupt out of the blue between alpha-intellects who are not what one would describe as pugilists, to grotesque tales of oddballs and geniuses who prefer to gussy themselves up in amazing couture in order to be wearing chic and appropriate threads when sallying out to attend the legendary and elaborate masqued balls that were almost a matter of routine in Schwabing-Muenchen. That custom, we learn, dictates that these people are more often than not attired in Roman-styled togas or, when feeling somewhat more daring, decked out in some gaudy purple-dyed gown that has been designed to garb a middle-aged intellectual who is impersonating the Magna Mater!

We learn also that these bright young things also hold somewhat outre "language orgies" in the course of which one of the oddest of the odd, viz., Alfred Schuler, launches himself into a catatonic state and then proceeds to time-travel back to ancient Rome (to visit his idol, of course, the Roman Emperor Nero!).

On the darker side of these affairs, the narrative presents more ominous anticipations and adumbrations of ominous types of cultic behaviors and ritual observances many of which would one day come to exert a profound and troubling influence on a less purely literary gathering of activists, viz., Hitler's National Socialists, whose adherents were to inherit so many elements of George's uniquely--even oppresively--authoritarian leadership style, along with the [Schuler-inspired]adoption during the fin de siecle period of the swastika as a sort of occult sigil of mystical might, one that came to adorn the title page of the Circle's official literary journal, the Blaetter fuer die Kunst.

We're also given numerous details about the poet's itinerary as he wandered from one associate's flat to another's (he was definitely what one might call a "professional house-guest"), along with fresh discoveries about the incredible group of renowned thinkers and creative writers (among whom the most talented were surely philosopher Ludwig Klages, archaeologist Alfred Schuler, poet Hugo von Hoffmansthal, and Shakespearean scholar Friedrich Gundolf), all of whom became adherents to the famous "Circles" that were so idiosyncratic a feature of cultural life in Schwabing-Munich at the dawn of the 20th century.

In closing, I repeat that I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in German culture, in the nascent proto-National Socialist scene in early 20th century Bavaria, or simply in the spectacle of some of the weirdest intellectuals ever to have come down the pike.

Over there they pronounce his name, "Gay-or-ga," and over there they treated him almost as a god. From American shores we find it difficult to see why Stefan George attained the eminence we once did, but Norton does his very best to penetrate two mysteries--one is the mystery of George's decline in reputation--and the other is, what made him the extraordinary character he was, and what is it about Germans that makes them need heroes and leaders so badly?

George was a talented poet, and apparently a homosexual, and early on he fell in love with the brilliant young poet Hugo von Hoffmanstahl, who drew back when confronted with the full force of George's love, and later became Richard Strauss' favorite librettist and the author of, for example, Der Rosenkavalier, a work that has lasted longer than any of George's own poetry. But, in the US, George has always been shrouded by a mist of romance and also by suspicions that he was somehow a proto-Nazi. His sympathizers say that he was resolutely anti-Fascist and anti-Nazi, but his case was not helped by his insistence on showing the swastika under the impression that its use could distinguished as separate from that of the National Socialists. Stefan George drew a cult around himself, and around the image of his boyfriend, known as "Maximin," who died early and young and thus became, for the George-kreis (or circle), an image of national and personal purity and unrealized potentiality. It is a sad story and Norton gives us a Stefan George who seems almost human, if a bit over-rated. It is hard to believe that eighty or ninety years ago people thought of him as they did Lenin. It has been a long time since a mere poet attained that kind of status in world affairs.

Robert Norton's landmark biography on Stefan George and his circle truly is an exceptional book in every respect. Expansive in its inclusion of meticulous detail, this work stands as the definitive biography on George in any language to date.

Dr. Norton has done the English-speaking world a great service in producing this fine work of scholarship on a very esoteric subject.

I first learnt of Stefan George in relation to Arnold Schoenberg, who set many of George's poems to music: cf. especially Schoenberg's exquisite and groundbreaking song cycle The Book of the Hanging Gardens, Op. 15 from 1909--his Expressionistic and pantonal year.

As to George's poetry, I think it superior to Rilke's--and Rilke is recognized as one of the great poets of the 20th Century, in any tongue. In the original German, George explored new orthographical techinques such as the elimination of the capitalization of all nouns, excess umlauts, etc.

I read this book with joy and insight. It is very well written and demonstrates in which way poetry and philosophy (around 1900) is struggling to establish an immediate, unalienated contact between the human being and a surrounding world that lost "looks" and "words."

This book provides great first-person insight into the following:
-how were Allied prisoners treated by the Japanese in route to Japan and in the Japanese prison camps?
-what were the effects of the Nagasaki bomb on humans and on Nagasaki?
-what did survivors that were near the explosion see and experience?
-how did the Japanese people view the use of the atomic bomb immediately after it's use?
-what was/was not censored about WW II?

I often lose interest in a book and don't finish it (A.D.D. I suppose) but I read this book front to back. It's certain to alter your understanding of this topic.

Maybe it was good that this material was lost for so long and only now published. I think it enlightens those of us doing some soul-searching about the use of the atomic bombs on Japan by the United States; more so than if it were published 60 years ago. Read it and form your own opinions.

Mr Weller's journey was remarkable in that so little is known about the witnesses and survivors of the atom bombs. His courage and determination to thwart MacArthur's press restrictions should be praised and followed as a journalistic template in the 21st century, in Iraq or anywhere secrecy is used to gag to blind the public to the consequences of our actions.

The striking conditions of the POW camps where prisoners were human shields and disposable slave labor is appaling. In Nagasaki the idea that "thick soled shoes" will block gamma rays and his skepticism of Japanese doctors and authorities, even the victims of the mysterious "sickness", is therefore obvious. Heinous war bred
numbing crimes on both sides.

My father arrived in Nagaskai harbor in September '45. He still refuses to discuss what he witnessed(as did Cindy Franks father in "My Father's Secret War")except for his recollections of resistance to the occupation by
the Black Dragon Society and the huge toll lost in disarming the minefields of the Sea of Japan. This book has
contributed to my understanding of and appreciation/discomfort in the use of the atom bombs. I probably wouldn't exist as Dad was part of the Navy's first wave of the proposed invasion.

Finding out about post-war Japan is like scything through a glacier, thank you Weller family for the clear light.

In the foreword, Walter Cronkite says: "This is an important book -- important and gripping." Somehow, categorizing a book as "important" has always struck me as a rather weak recommendation ... until now.

A gentleman I have known for years has told me often of his brother, a prisoner of the Japanese, beaten repeatedly in the coal mines of Japan. In fact, almost 50 years later, he lost a kidney as a direct result of those assaults. This book illustrates that I did not have even the foggiest idea until now of the intensity of base brutality in the coal mines of Baron Mitsui.

Although a better title may have been "The Censored Dispatches" or something similar, that takes absolutely nothing away from the power of this book. As a published historian, I have learned that there is no substitute for the firtshand account of someone who was actually there, and the immediacy of these dispatches, feverishly written over a few weeks, have the unmistakeable ring of on-the-spot authenticity as told by a skilled observer.

This is strong stuff, disturbing and hard to read. I found that setting the book aside from time to time helped me to be better able to stop and ponder the ramifications of these distant events in our days ...

* Is cansorship right or wrong? And who decides?
* When is harsh brutality right (whether in person or by a remote weapon)?
* When (if ever) is it right to make a "deal with the devil" for "the greater good" (such as leaving some wrongdoers go unpunished so that they might share their research or help the Allied cause -- i.e., Baron Mitsui died wealthy and at a comfortable old age)
* What other important things are we ignorant of because they were censored?
* How can we learn from the horrors of the past in our history-poor present?

This book is highly recommended as a window into an almost forgotten chapter of the past, one that we cannot afford to forget or ignore.

I was 13 at the time the Nagasaki bomb was detonated and have always wondered about it all. Even when I was in USAF Pilot Training classes 10 years later,the Classified training which covered these weapons was mostly "How it Works" but nothing memorable about what it does to humans or structures. Now 40 some years later I have a first hand account from someone who was there shortly after and talked to survivors.

A disturbing but beneficial bonus is the accounts of the Allied POW's tribulations while in Japanese hands. Those were awful times, at best.

And last but not least, the accounts of censorship during that time are eye-opening.

Highly recommended, especially to the historically deficit younger generations.

Based on the title, I expected this to be an account of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. There is certainly some of that. But it's really a book about the author/war correspondent. The book reiterates countless times how the author was the first American into Nagasaki after the bomb. That's impressive (although later in the book we read about someone who got to Hiroshima earlier)-- but the book doesn't contain much substance about Nagasaki. The rest of the book is a mish-mash of other aspects of the war, and it gets repetitive about how merciless the Japanese were to our prisoners. Toward the end the book tries to become political and focus on censorship, which wasn't very interesting.

The most comprehensive book I've ever read about JSP! Must have for JSP developer

I think the authors of this book are really "Professional" in working on their projects, but not really "Professional" on how to work together to make a good book that is easy to read and understand. I'd recommend "Web developement with Java Server Pages" (from the IBM "Einstein" & the MIT "Rocketman") Save your penny my friends.

Too wordy, like other WROX books.

The title of my review sums it up. For a beginner I expected this book to get me up and running, It never did. I read the first 5 chapters and their was way too much focus on the Java code that was created by the JSP engine from a JSP page, and not enough emphasis on how to implement and use JSP. BOOOOH. And there are numerous spelling mistakes, including one on the first page of the introduction. C'mon WROX, wheres your QA/Copywriters? I will return this in exchange for ISBN 1884777996

I didn't like this book. The examples are hard to follow. Also, it assumes you want to use other technologies like Servlets in conjunction of your JSP pages, which I'm not. API is not organized very well and hard to find things fast. I hope my O'Reilly (on order) is better...

THREE VIEWS ON EASTERN ORTHODOXY AND EVANGELICALISM is one of Zondervan's "Counterpoint" books, where theological issues are debated by all sides of the issue. Here the "Yes" position is taken by Bradley Nassif (Orthodox), the "No" position is taken by Michael Horton (evangelical) and Vladimir Berzonsky (Orthodox), and finally a "Maybe" position is argued by George Hancock-Stefan (evangelical) and Edward Rommen (Orthodox). Each of the participants makes an argument, is rebutted by the others, and then offers final words. As one might guess, the Orthodox argue that their churches have been "evangelical" in a sense all along and one merely needs to stress those facets of their own tradition. The Evangelical commentators argue against Orthodox from several viewpoints. For Mr Horton, Orthodox's view of justification, which he sees as nebulous, is a major problem. Mr Hancock-Stefan, though he argues "Maybe", says that the traditions aren't really compatible at all from what he sees as a tradition of church and state oppression of evangelicals, and suggests that the Orthodox should just cross to the other side.

As an Orthodox Christian, I was unhappy with the book. For one, it is simply unwise for the Orthodox to approach the evangelicals at all in debate. The inroads that evangelicals have made into Orthodox countries such as Romania have resulted in serious damage to local spiritual and cultural life, and Orthodox synods (such as those of Iasi and Jerusalem) have repeatedly condemned them in no uncertain terms. But beyond that, the biggest problem with this debate is that the editors did not set one specific definition of evangelicalism to work with. The EO commentators write in response to that non-confessional evangelicalism that has become mainstream over the last century, which doesn't even look back to the early Protestant reformers, let alone the Church Fathers. However, Michael Horton, writing from a Reformed perspective, answers every critique of this evangelicalism by proclaiming how the Reformed churches are different, how they look back to Calvin, and how Calvin looked back to the early Fathers. Mr Horton seems to have entered the discussion with the assumption that his partners in debate would be speaking to him of his own tradition. A second problem is that the evangelical commentators don't really seem to get Orthodoxy at all. That's only to be expected, since they happily remain evangelicals, but it makes their entire treatment of Orthodoxy very frustrating to read. The insistence by evangelicals that the Orthodox Church does not stress a personal relationship with Christ is pure slander, for the importance of the so-called "Jesus prayer" is known even by the least theologically educated Orthodox layman. Mr Horton seems to think that agreements in doctrine between the Reformed tradition and Orthodoxy actually amount to something, but as the Reformed tradition simply lacks the continuity back to the day of Pentecost that the Orthodox Church can claim, it's all quite meaningless to pile up similarities.

Books comparing rival theological systems should primarily be about translating across schemes. This is what people want in reading these kinds of books. They are in one view and they want to understand the other view. To effectively meet this end, one has to be familiar with both sides, that is, one has to know how to speak the language of the other guy.

Unfortunately this isn't accomplished. While the two Orthodox writers give a basic overview of Orthodox teaching, they fail in two basic ways. First, they fail to grasp the language and system of their Protestant interlocutors and therefore do not adequately address their objections. They show a very superficial understanding of Reformation theology. Second, they fail to get to the heart of the differences which lie in Trintarian theology, Christology and theological method. A much more effective exposition and hence argument could have been made.

The Protestant participants suffer from the same kinds of problems plus others. The baptist contributor forcuses on abuses mainly in the Russian jurisdiction. This is hardly a fair tactic, for the abuses, theological, moral or administrative are anecdotal, that is, they are limited to his experience. Second, considering that the Russian Church was practically exterminated by the Soviets, it is understandable if its laity/clergy who were prohibited from learning the Bible or going to seminary are ignorant of basic Christian teaching and moral praxis. In fact the baptist contributor ultimately confesses ignorance as to what the real issues are between Reformation and Orthodox soteriology, indicating that he shouldn't even be a participant.

Horton's contribution is better but suffers from the same general failure to grasp the theological system and langauge of the people on the other side, and thereby mount and effective critique. Granted that the Orthodox representatives failed to give an adequate articulation of the Orthodox view of justifiction, it certainly wouldn't have been hard to find one. There are a number of such articles readily available in Orthodox scholarly journals. (See for example, Church and Justification. An Orthodox Approach to the Issue of Justification and Collective Faith, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 28 (1983)). And Horton follows his usual modus operandi of tarring people with positions that they do not affirm. For example because he isn't familiar with understand the Orthodox teaching on faith, he simply denotes it as the same teaching as Roman Catholicism, specifically the idea of "implicit faith." Horton makes this kind of move on a number of occasions, reducing Orthodox teaching to Catholic teaching to make it easier to criticize. In point of fact though, the Orthodox while having some superficial similarities to Catholicism, understand things differently because they have a different Trinitarian theology, Christology, soteriology and anthropology. Horton shows nothing more than a superficial understanding of Orthodox theology because he simply hasn't done any substantial reading in it, as is evidenced in his use of only a few fairly popular sources and his constant inability to draw the appropriate conclusions.

If you are coming from an Evangelical/Reformation background and you want to understand Orthodox teaching from the inside out, below are some works that will save you time and money in the long run.

An abosolute must is Joseph Farrell's Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor, which is an analysis of Maximus' theology and ends with a comparison with Augustinianism. Hard to find, but well worth it. Maximus is a central theological figure for Orthodox theology. Just as it is not possible to understand western theology apart from Augustine, so it is not possible to understand Eastern theology apart from Maximus.

Farrell's translations of the Disputation with Pyrrus and Photius' Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit are short, inexpensive and packed with information. Farrell knows how to translate ideas and spell out the conceptual connections.

John Romanides, Ancestral Sin, is a helpful exposition of the Orthodox teaching on anthropology, and the Fall and a critique of western conceptions.

John Meyendorff's Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, is also a must to understand the centrality of Christology to Orthodox theology and how the Orthodox understand Christology.

Meyendoff's, Salvation in Christ: Lutheran-Orthodox dialog, is also helpful, though somewhat overly optomistic.

Michel Barnes, The Power of God, and David Bradshaw's, Aristotle East and West are both vergy good works and should be read together-Barnes first, then Bradshaw.

Richard Haugh's Photios and the Carolingians: The Trinitarian Contoversy, is short but very helpful.

Henri Crouzel's Origen. Origen is one of the most important figures in Christian theology, for he is the source of most of the debates in Christology and Trinitarian theology in the first millenium of the church.

While not Orthodox, other helpful works are, Arvin Vos, Aquinas, Calvin and Contemporary Protestant Thought, and, Harry McSorely's Luther: Right or Wrong, Rupert Davies, The Problem of Authority in the Continental Reformers.

This book gets four stars because of both the great idea of comparing the two Christian traditions and Bradley Nassif. The other authors were very unprepared for the book. Michael Horton does the best job of the evangelicals but still gets some aspects of Orthodox theology wrong. Vladimir Berzonsky was the worst writer by far because he equated all evangelicals with Anabaptists in their theological views (particularly with the Sacraments). This is not his fault though, because the book itself does a horrible job explaining what evangelicalism is.

The two evangelicals are (I think) Baptist and Presbyterian (or Reformed), but there are huge differences in these traditions, and I am truly shocked that none of the writers were Confessional Lutherans even thought the historical meeting between the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Lutheran scholars of Tubingen is brought up in nearly every chapter. This means no writer defends the view of Lutherans that the bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper have the real presence in them after they are blessed (with the exception of Dr. Nassif who also understands that the term usually applied for this which is Consubstantiation is a very poor term nearly no competant Lutheran and/or Episcopal scholar uses)!

Nassif also used the best methodology in his analysis of doctrine (that of Christological Maximalism) thus showing many views, particularly of the Sacraments (if I may dare call them that) in the evangelical churches were argued over in the past by councils who found such views contrary to the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation which all branches of non-heretical Christianity accept.

My review should not be seen as a praise of just the Orthodox. Nassif happens to be an Orthodox writer who was at one time an evangelical and it shows in the quality of his presentation (even though I would say he should have made his position a maybe). The worst writer, Berzonsky both commits the aforementioned oversimplification but he also made it seem as if all the differences between the two were the lack of tradition (which in some ways I agree with), but also the denial of the council in which the iconodules won over the iconoclasts, which not all evangelicals would disagree with (i.e., not all evangelicals are iconoclasts.....i.e. me).

Overall I think that the book should have been much longer and should have been much more thought out by the last four writers. Nassif gets the gold medal....everyone else needs to repeat Seminary, or really read and try to understand either "The Orthodox Church" by Bishop Kalistos Ware (and the Philokalia for the mystically minded) or Calvin's "Institutes of the Christian Religion" (and Luther's Large Catechism and the Book of Concord).

This book is worth it for the first chapter. The responses are just kissing up to each other....usually :-).

Increasing interest in the Eastern Orthodox is helped immensely with this book's publication. The three views pertains to five authorities giving their opinion as to comptability between Eastern Orthodoxy and evangelicalism. One says yes, two say no, and one maybe. You'll have to read to figure out who lines up with which compatibility assessment.

What is good about the exchange is the format of major essay by one, than the others react. This is excellent format and provides salient interaction to occur. Nuances are discovered and brought out, allowing the interested reader to explore.

What salient differences provided here include: different authority of tradition and resultant view of Scriptures; totally different view of original sin; resultant divergent views of Apostle Paul's theology; resulting in different anthropology, esp. image and likeness issues which result in different soteriology.

The two as Horton points out are not really that close, other than outstanding agreement on Trinitarian issues, outside of filoque.

What is lacking in this otherwise well done volume is limited confessional reaction from Reformed evangelical side, but realization that having Lutheran/Roman Catholic/Arminian etc., would be a huge and tiresome volume. For Lutherans, Issues Etc. just had an excellent interview in month of August, 2005 which can be listened to on their archives with Eastern Orthodox spokesman.

This provides a good base to go from. Good sources cited for followup to the interested.

The book is composed of essays that examine the differences and similarities between Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism. As one who works in both the Evangelcal and Orthodox worlds I found this format to be benefical.

In addition to this topic being a difficult topic in and of itself the generalities are often broad. Eastern Orthodoxy has a variety of expressions that range from Ethiopian to Russian. Evangelicalism is all over the map from Pentecostal to Reformed, and everything in between. For the most part (I speak in broad terms) the Orthodox view in this book is Eastern European, while the Evangelical views are mostly American Reformed.

The book is written in a format that allows free expression of ideas in the form of essays and an opportunity for agreement and rebutal by the other essay writers. It is an easy read and very informative.

There is common ground on the Gospel and I believe both Orthodox and Evangelical readers will find the book to be encouraging to our common faith. The most striking difference between Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism is the view of the atonement and the doctrine of salvation. Orthodoxy can learn from Evangelcialism in their zeal for the Gospel and salvation by faith apart from works. Evangelicals can learn from Orthodoxy concerning the doctrines of Christ and His incarnation. Far from being enemies the reader will find that we are brothers in Christ.