THEOSIS by Archimandrite George Capsanis, Abbot of the monastery of Osiou Gregoriou, on Mount Athos This is a special book, and reading it will be a challenge for many of you. This is not a book about the tradition, but a book of the Tradition. It reads as a typical Orthodox Christian book: it actually teaches as close as you can find to the traditions of the early Church, before the division of the one Church into many. Although it is a modern translation of a modern book, it is, to all intents, a book from a different civilisation from ours; what I mean by this is that there are things in it you find meaningless, and if things in it you will find unacceptable for the attitudes they express. These things fly against all you have been taught about what is acceptable; that is why there is a real division between the two sub-civilisations, the Western, and the Orthodox. There are also things in it that could not be put so well by any Western writer. Learning how to read such a book is necessary if you wish to cross the divide; if you wish to recover at first hand the knowledge that belongs to that ancient tradition. Otherwise you will find yourself permanently stuck in what Bunyan, in his Pilgrims Progress, named 'The house of the interpreter'. You deserve better than that. | 
