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The Way: What Every Protestant Should Know About the Orthodox Church
Outlines the fundamental differences between Orthodoxy and Protestantism. Written with a broad vision of the historic church; includes instruction to help believers to embrace the fullness of the Christian faith.
222 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
September 20, 2014
This book did a good job of highlighting the problem of Protestantism's ingrained ideal of autonomy. I felt that the writing was a bit too judgmental and condescending in many places, which I found off-putting. On the whole, however, it was a good work of apologetics. I would definitely not give this book to someone inquiring about Orthodoxy, though, since the whole "You're wrong," vibe that crops up sometimes is not what I would consider the leading edge for anyone's conversion. Better to focus on the profound goodness and love of God and show how Orthodoxy gives one freedom to accept that love fully. I read this when I had already been caught up into the faith, so it didn't push me away. But again, I would never give this to a beginning inquirer.
October 29, 2007
Excellent book about why many Protestants are embracing Orthodoxy. It is less about the author's own personal conversion and more apologetics for doing so. Good footnotes and historical backup to his statements and an excellent bibliography. The author did his homework.
October 9, 2015
Thank God for Clark Carlton
This is an author who pulls no punches and I am thankful for it. Carlton wades into the murky depths of theology and helps draw a clear line between the Protestant faith and Orthodoxy in such a way that no one will wonder which side they are on.
This is an author who pulls no punches and I am thankful for it. Carlton wades into the murky depths of theology and helps draw a clear line between the Protestant faith and Orthodoxy in such a way that no one will wonder which side they are on.
January 30, 2016
If Protestantism is a willful child of the Catholic church, what is it to the Orthodox? What is the Orthodox faith for that matter, Catholicism with more beards and fewer popes? The Way begins with the unexpected conversion story of its author from a Southern Baptist seminary to a faith thought to be the sole province of Greek and Russian immigrants before articulating the core aspects of the ancient faith – the Trinity, the Church, and the Eucharist which brings them together – as they stand in relation to the doctrines of most American Christians. Although Protestants defined themselves against the authority of Rome, their doctrinal stands nonetheless render them separate from Orthodoxy – so separate, in fact, that Clarkson believes Protestantism constitutes a separate religion. In The Way, readers of all stripes will find an introduction the Orthodox theology, and Protestants will find a particular challenge to their views on sola scripture and the role of tradition.
After easing readers into the book with his conversion story, which unfolded amid a fundamentalist takeover of a southern baptist college in the 1980s, Carlson shifts to theology. The Trinity is a crucial concept to Orthodox theology, as it establishes God's nature as rooted in relationship. "God is love" does not simply mean that person called God happens to be loving; His very nature is bound up in the act of the Incarnation, just as the Church's nature is contained within the Eucharist. The Church, Clarkton writes, is not a body of people who believe the same thing, but a community which shares in the living body of Christ. In less heady chapters, Carlton argues against sola scripture from various grounds, namely that no one interprets scripture without a tradition; Calvinists read the bible through Calvinism, Lutherans through Lutheranism, Arians Arianism, etc. The Catholic-Orthodox tradition at least has the merit of being the source of the scriptural compilation, as it took several hundred years for a definitive collection to be established by the Church. The Eastern Orthodox church has no qualms regarding protestant rebellion of papal authority, for they too reject it; but in Carlton's view the protestants have erred seriously in rejecting all authority. Scripture alone is insufficient; every heresy has come armed with its chosen scriptural arguments, and the massive variety of commentaries on the scriptures demonstrate how subjective readings can be. The leadership of the Church resolves heresies not simply by finding scripture, but interpreting them in the light of the Church's nature. Arianism was a heresy not because it chose the "wrong verses", but because it effectively denies the Incarnation, and with it the church's very life. If the Bible were so important to Protestantism, why then did they modify it -- dropping books as desired? Christ left a Church, not a book, writes Carlton, and sola scriptura reduces the Bible to a rule book and Christianity an ideology, while the Orthodox faith is a life lived in Jesus, through the Eucharist.
Carlton has a talent for making theology comprehensible, though he is an author who frequently bares his teeth, with a contempt borne of familiarity for aspects of modern Protestantism. Sola scriptura no doubt dies hard, just as strict Constitutionalism dies hard: how easy it is to endue an object with objectivity, in the hopes of satisfying our need for something that is wholly True. But the Bible is not God; it is merely inspired by him, writes Carlton, and to worship it is to commit idolatry. In a finishing touch, Carlton scrutinizes the creeds of Protestant sects to point out what they truly worship, comparing the opening lines of the Nicene Creed ("I believe in One God") with articles of faith like the Westminister Confession, which open placing scripture at the forefront and then address God. If nothing else, The Way does much to demonstrate that the Eucharist was far more important to the early church than a once-a-year knocking back of grape juice does credit.
After easing readers into the book with his conversion story, which unfolded amid a fundamentalist takeover of a southern baptist college in the 1980s, Carlson shifts to theology. The Trinity is a crucial concept to Orthodox theology, as it establishes God's nature as rooted in relationship. "God is love" does not simply mean that person called God happens to be loving; His very nature is bound up in the act of the Incarnation, just as the Church's nature is contained within the Eucharist. The Church, Clarkton writes, is not a body of people who believe the same thing, but a community which shares in the living body of Christ. In less heady chapters, Carlton argues against sola scripture from various grounds, namely that no one interprets scripture without a tradition; Calvinists read the bible through Calvinism, Lutherans through Lutheranism, Arians Arianism, etc. The Catholic-Orthodox tradition at least has the merit of being the source of the scriptural compilation, as it took several hundred years for a definitive collection to be established by the Church. The Eastern Orthodox church has no qualms regarding protestant rebellion of papal authority, for they too reject it; but in Carlton's view the protestants have erred seriously in rejecting all authority. Scripture alone is insufficient; every heresy has come armed with its chosen scriptural arguments, and the massive variety of commentaries on the scriptures demonstrate how subjective readings can be. The leadership of the Church resolves heresies not simply by finding scripture, but interpreting them in the light of the Church's nature. Arianism was a heresy not because it chose the "wrong verses", but because it effectively denies the Incarnation, and with it the church's very life. If the Bible were so important to Protestantism, why then did they modify it -- dropping books as desired? Christ left a Church, not a book, writes Carlton, and sola scriptura reduces the Bible to a rule book and Christianity an ideology, while the Orthodox faith is a life lived in Jesus, through the Eucharist.
Carlton has a talent for making theology comprehensible, though he is an author who frequently bares his teeth, with a contempt borne of familiarity for aspects of modern Protestantism. Sola scriptura no doubt dies hard, just as strict Constitutionalism dies hard: how easy it is to endue an object with objectivity, in the hopes of satisfying our need for something that is wholly True. But the Bible is not God; it is merely inspired by him, writes Carlton, and to worship it is to commit idolatry. In a finishing touch, Carlton scrutinizes the creeds of Protestant sects to point out what they truly worship, comparing the opening lines of the Nicene Creed ("I believe in One God") with articles of faith like the Westminister Confession, which open placing scripture at the forefront and then address God. If nothing else, The Way does much to demonstrate that the Eucharist was far more important to the early church than a once-a-year knocking back of grape juice does credit.
January 22, 2008
This was the most helpful book I read on my journey into the Orthodox Church. The author is a Southern Baptist convert who attended Southeastern seminary. It was easy for me to identify with him and really hear all that he was saying in the book.
May 30, 2009
The subtitle pretty much sums up the content. Has a good analysis of the Protestant doctrine of "Sola Scriptura" and a good contrasting presentation of the Orthodox understanding of scripture and tradition.
March 11, 2013
A Baptist who converted into Orthodox. A must read book for every Protestant. Finally, somebody clears up all the confusion and some smokescreen about the Orthodox faith.
Read
May 6, 2022This was a good read. It may not have been very deep, but it goes as deep as you can as a work for a popular audience and delivers a lot of good points. The scriptural backing was plentiful. The point about belief in the real presence and the related practice and structure of the early church having this at its center and on the other hand belief in the theanthropic incarnation, as both mutally justifying, shows that Dr Carlton knows the coherence aspect of justification in epistemology. Highly based. I knew of this epistemology but not of its exemplification here and it's still blowing my mind. They believed the incarnation because they practiced the eucharist and believed the real presence. And if you deny the real presence, what then is your basis for believing the incarnation? This was St Irenaeus' point against the gnostics.
Similarly those who deny the visible church are like docetists, who deny that Christ was really physical. They have to interpret Ephesians where St Paul says the Church is Christ's body metaphorically. Or Carlton shows that they are Nestorian about the church, believing there is an invisible and visible that are two different entities, one corruptible and the other not. St Augustine spoke first of an invisible church to argue against donatists who thought the church could only be composed of the perfectly saintly. St Augustine said no the church is invisible and divine, as well as human and suffers these impure parts. Luther took that and repurposed it, saying the visible church can't be fully so, only the invisible church is truly. This again is pseudo-Platonic, like the gnostics. It highlights the common error of heresies like Arianism (also discussed herein), Nestorians, Docetists, and Gnostics: to see God as too good for us as to truly become one with our earthly nature. Their denigration of the earthly led them into extreme ascetical denunciation of marriage itself [vaporize material here yourself], or the other more common extreme now, covertly being ruled by the earthly impulses, totally throwing out fasting and vigils because it's all corrupt and doesn't matter anyway [it will all be vaporized later].
I think Dr Carlton completely succeeds in showing that Protestantism is itself an opposing tradition, lapsing into identical positions as the heretics, and where they don't, arbitrarily keeping articles of belief whose source is orthodoxy.
Similarly those who deny the visible church are like docetists, who deny that Christ was really physical. They have to interpret Ephesians where St Paul says the Church is Christ's body metaphorically. Or Carlton shows that they are Nestorian about the church, believing there is an invisible and visible that are two different entities, one corruptible and the other not. St Augustine spoke first of an invisible church to argue against donatists who thought the church could only be composed of the perfectly saintly. St Augustine said no the church is invisible and divine, as well as human and suffers these impure parts. Luther took that and repurposed it, saying the visible church can't be fully so, only the invisible church is truly. This again is pseudo-Platonic, like the gnostics. It highlights the common error of heresies like Arianism (also discussed herein), Nestorians, Docetists, and Gnostics: to see God as too good for us as to truly become one with our earthly nature. Their denigration of the earthly led them into extreme ascetical denunciation of marriage itself [vaporize material here yourself], or the other more common extreme now, covertly being ruled by the earthly impulses, totally throwing out fasting and vigils because it's all corrupt and doesn't matter anyway [it will all be vaporized later].
I think Dr Carlton completely succeeds in showing that Protestantism is itself an opposing tradition, lapsing into identical positions as the heretics, and where they don't, arbitrarily keeping articles of belief whose source is orthodoxy.
May 26, 2019
This book offers helpful comparisons of Protestantism vs. Orthodoxy, but is often judgemental, giving the best side of Orthodoxy and comparing it to the worst of Protestantism. Admittedly Protestantism is hard to pin down as there are so many expressions and beliefs that vary, but it still didn't feel like a fair representation. Still, I walked away with things to think about.
July 24, 2024
The Way, unlike "The Faith" which is also by Carlton, is more of an autobiography of Carlton's journey out of evangelicalism. It does not properly address other protestant traditions in general and if a protestant were to read this they would find it filled with more of Carlton's grievances with Protestantism than cases for Orthodoxy.
August 26, 2025
The best book on the Orthodox Faith I've read, well explained and supported with a wealth of references and clarity provided in footnotes. I cannot recommend this book enough to anyone interested in understanding Orthodoxy.
July 12, 2020
A highly critical view of Protestantism from an Eastern Orthodox view. May be a bit more polemical than other works, but an excellent and informative read otherwise.
October 21, 2022
Very good read for people seeking Orthodoxy from a protestant up-bringing
January 20, 2015
The first half of this book is the author's personal conversion story from being a lifelong Southern Baptist to a Greek Orthodox Christian that was very good and that I found to be personally very helpful. The second half is a more general breakdown of the differences between Protestant and Orthodox theology. If you're still committed to any of those distinctives (Sola Scriptura, particularly) you'll probably find this section of the book to be very illuminating, but if (like me) you've long since given up on those ideas, you may find it to be a little tedious. Still a very good read on the whole.
November 15, 2009
The first half gives an auto-biographical account of Clark Carlton's journey from a Southern Baptist to an Orthodox Christian, and gives a good deal of insight to the inner-workings of Protestant politics. The second half offers a great point-counterpoint on the fundamental aspects all Protestant/Evangelical Denominations share against Ancient Christianity. Dr. Carlton very quickly and effectively explains some very complicated matters on the two faiths. His writing is great and I treasure the knowledge I took from this work.
July 1, 2011
This is a good book for protestants to read about the Orthodox Church. The book is divided into two parts. Part one outlines the authors journey from a strong Southern Baptist Seminarian to an Orthodox Christian. The second have details the main differences in belief between the two. All protestants will benefit form part two. I feel however only as select few will benefit from part one especially those with experience with the southern Baptists. Growing up a southern Baptist and now being Orthodox this is obviously a book I could relate to.
July 16, 2019
Carlton was a convert from the Baptist Church. I didn't really like this book because it is unnecessarily polemical. He comes across very judgmental towards his former Baptist Church. This is not unusual coming from some converts from Protestantism. I haven't found a really good and gracious intro to Orthodoxy and its difference from the Protestant tradition yet except maybe The Orthodox Church by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware.
May 29, 2011
This is a good introductory book on Orthodoxy for Protestants. Some of the writing is a bit biased (but he doesn't try to hide that) but in general I found it to be clear, logical, and thought-provoking. Since it's an introductory book, it only provides a basic overview of Orthodoxy and how it differs from Protestantism, but I believe he hits all the major points.
May 26, 2012
Makes one ponder
July 31, 2012
Dr. Carlton's "Faith" series is a masterpiece. "The Way" is a brilliantly written, semi-autobiographical account of how Protestants ought to take a look at the Orthodox Church.
October 22, 2013
Solid starting point for Orthodox inquirers coming from a Prtoestant background.
January 13, 2014
An easy read. A little harsh towards protestantism. Dealt with the primary differences between ORthodoxy and Evangelical Protestantism in an understandable and convincing manner.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews