ABSTRACT
Christos Yannaras is a highly original thinker who does not fit easily into any ‘school’. A philosophical theologian influenced by Heidegger, Wittgenstein and the French existentialists, he is best known as the exponent of an ontology of the person rooted in the Greek patristic tradition. He is also known for a strongly apophatic approach to the knowledge of God hostile to the rationalist theology long dominant in the West, which he regards as a fundamental distortion of the Gospel kerygma. He is nothing if not controversial. Conservative Orthodox are upset by his bold restatement of traditional teaching in a contemporary language that makes use of such expressions as ‘mode of existence’, ‘relation’, ‘reciprocity’, ‘ecstasy’ and ‘eros’. Many Western Christians are offended at the way their tradition is represented in his writings. His books have nevertheless had huge sales. They began to be translated into Western European languages in the early 1970s, and since the collapse of the communist system have also been translated into Romanian, Russian and other Eastern European languages.
