Thinking Theologically: 'the Mystic' and 'the Lawyer

Thinking Theologically explores the difference between Mystical/Eastern and Juridical/Western Christianity. The authors summarize it this way: The authentic patristic theologizing of the Orthodox Church is not an intellectual enterprise, but the struggle for the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, as the Holy New Testament Prophet, St Seraphim of Sarov, reminds us. This acquisition of the Holy Spirit leads to union with God in Christ (theosis); thus, Orthodox theologians have been neither academicians nor lawyers but "mystics," though in an Orthodox Christian understanding of the word. In the West, theology has been primarily a dialectical exercise, while in the East, it has been perceived primarily as an ontological process, an existential experience, that is, the theology must be shaped by a living encounter, an actual experiencing in contemplative prayer (theoria) of the object of the theologizing.