Fr. Matthew Baker was one of the most brilliant up and coming minds in the Orthodox Church before his tragic death in a car accident, leaving behind a wife and six children. He was called by some the next Florovsky. I believe he is interceding for us now. These are his words from a comment on Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, in response to a query about Orthodox reading material.

As for modern theologians, you cannot go wrong with Florovsky. You are right: up till now, he has been respected across the board, on all sides of the spectrum. Some on Mt Athos have called him a Church Father, and Elder Sophrony Sakharov once sent to him his own “theological confession,” asking for his judgment and saying “I need you to keep me on the royal road of the Fathers”. This attitude, however, is beginning to change among some of our liberal North American Orthodox academics: it is now becoming fashionable to attack Florovsky as “polemical,” “anti-Western,” encouraging a sterile repetition of patristic sayings, etc. In reality nothing could be further than the truth, and these people have not read Florovsky very extensively or carefully.

Fr Dumitru Staniloae is also especially good – a giant. Study him and Florovsky and you can have years of education. And there are many others. Elder Emilianos of Simonopetra (Mt Athos) is probably your best contemporary monastic theologian, followed by Elder Sophrony Sakharov, Archimandrite Placide Deseille and Elder Vasileos of Simonopetra. I especially recommend Archimandrite Placide’s beautiful essay, “Stages of a Pilgrimage,” in The Living Witness of the Holy Mountain: Contemporary Voices from Mt Athos, trans. and ed. Hieromonk Alexander [Golitzin] [South Canaan, PA: St Tikhon’s Seminary, 1999]. It is the most well-informed, balanced, fair and insightful treatment by a recent Orthodox writer on Roman Catholicism that I know of. In this area, there are some things one cannot know from just playing with a prayer rope and pretending to be a hesychast – one must actually study the historical sources. Placide actually knows Roman Catholic theology, liturgy and spirituality at its best – he had the best French Cistercian monastic formation, and he converted to Orthodoxy after a long struggle. Fr Patrick Henry Reardon is, IMO, one of our best popular writers here in America, with a deep knowledge of the Bible, the Liturgy and the Fathers of both East and West. Again, there are many others.

But be very careful about what you read by Orthodox on the internet. Especially from websites which speak of “the pan-heresy of ecumenism,” or those which quote canons or patristic proof-texts with no regard to literary or historical context, or which trade in easy, schematic, but grossly oversimplified contrasts between Christian East and West. Stick with reading your Bible, and read the Church Fathers themselves – systematically, voluminously, widely – as well as sound modern theologians such as those I mentioned above. Stay away from those who separate themselves from the broader Church at large in the name of supposed correctness, strictness, or piety. Listen to your parish priest, and cultivate a relationship with him. Ask him what to read.