With its divine focus, the book is, in a way, an extended meditation on the Trinity. And in being so, the message is, to this reader anyway, that that is the Orthodox way -- set your heart, mind and soul on the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Ware is clear. For example, in the first chapter he gives three broad "pointers" to God common to all humanity -- order in creation, the depth of each person's inner life, and love among people. That's not a bad summary of how man comes to perceive God.
Elsewhere, he describes the relationship among creation, creator and science with these five sentences.
As creator, then, God is always at the heart of each thing, maintaining it in being. On the level of scientific inquiry, we discern certain processes or sequences of cause and effect. On the level of spiritual vision, which does not contradict science but looks beyond it, we discern everywhere the creative energies of God upholding all that is, forming the innermost essence of all things. But, while present everywhere in the world, God is not to be identified with the world. As Christians we affirm not pantheism but "panentheism". God is in all things yet also beyond and above all things.
Near the end of the book, Ware sets out three types of union in the economy of divine love: union according to essence characteristic of the relationship among the three persons of the trinity; union according to hypostasis (personhood) as seen in God the Son being one person, fully man and fully God; and union according to energies as seen in mystical communion between God and a person.
His treatment of mysticism is clear, but not simplistic. He describes the Orthodox tradition of using the Jesus Prayer in contemplation (a contemplative being called a "hesychast" in Greek).
So the Jesus Prayer begins as an oral prayer like any other. But the rhythmic repetition of the same short phrase enables the hesychast, by virtue of the very simplicity of the words which he uses, to advance beyond all language and images into the mystery of God. In this way the Jesus Prayer develops, with God's help, into what Western writers call "prayer of loving attention" or prayer of simple gaze", where the soul rests in God without a constantly varying succession of images, ideas and feelings. Beyond this there is a further stage, when the hesychast's prayer ceases to be the result of his own efforts, and becomes --at any rate from time to time--what Orthodox writers call "self-acting" and Western writers call "infused". It ceases, in other words, to be "my" prayer, and becomes to a greater or lesser extent the prayer of Christ in me.
It is in this mystical territory -- communion between God and man, the life of the Trinity, the overflow of energy from creator to creation -- that I find Ware most helpful. I sometimes hear the Orthodox tradition cited in these matters but in defense of suspicious-sounding theology. However, with Ware, I sense I have a good guide.
