church bell from below

No Other Foundation

Reflections from Fr. Lawrence Farley

Fr. Lawrence Farley

About Fr. Lawrence Farley

Fr. Lawrence serves as pastor of St. Herman's Orthodox Church in Langley, BC. He is also author of the Orthodox Bible Companion Series along with a number of other publications.

More Bishops, Please

Recently I was re-reading a good but somewhat dated book about the episcopate, entitled The Apostolic Ministry, a collection of essays edited by Bishop Kenneth Kirk and published 1946.  In one piece, written by Beatrice Hamilton Thompson...
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Icons: Objects for Veneration or Mere Decoration?

Recently I have come across an anti-Orthodox polemic which rejects our veneration of icons on the grounds that venerating an image painted on a board of Christ, His Mother, or His saints is contrary to the practice of the apostles and of...
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Was Jesus a Zealot?

Thousands of years ago when I was a teenager and a brand-new Christian, I happened to read an article by S.G.F. Brandon about Jesus being a Zealot, in which he questioned much if not most of the Gospel portrait of Jesus and suggested...
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Long Haired Men

Recently a minor fracas in the narthex of our church was caused by (I kid you not) my long hair (see inset for a rear view of said hair).  Since my hair steadfastly refuses to grow on the top of my head, you would think I could be cut a...
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Alarm Bells in the Vatican

Here’s my (whimsical) guess:  somewhere in the Vatican there is a little alarm bell, installed shortly after Jorge Bergoglio became Pope, that sounds every time the Pope puts his theological foot in his mouth.  The sounding of the bell...
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Becoming a Christian: Cerebral or Sacramental?

It has been suggested to me that in many (most?) Evangelical circles one becomes a Christian “by accepting the finished work of Christ”—i.e. by believing and accepting as true that on the cross Jesus paid the full price due our sin and...
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My New Commentary on Ephesians

Those very familiar with my work may know that I have written commentaries on every book of the New Testament, published by Ancient Faith Publishing as The Bible Study Companion Series.  One volume of that series was “The Prison...
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The Slippery Slope and the Eclipse of the Gospel

In the ongoing debate over the legitimacy of the new so-called “deaconesses” established by some Orthodox in Africa we often hear of “the slippery slope argument”.  Some people use the term with approval, insisting that there does indeed...
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An Assurance of Salvation

I am sometimes asked if an Orthodox Christian can have an assurance that he or she will be saved.  The question usually comes from my converts from Evangelicalism.  They were previously taught that when one is saved, one is given the...
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Anaxios: Unworthy and Evil

A story is told of the final temptation of Christ.  Satan had been trying to tempt Jesus to sin, to compromise, to abandon His divine mission (see Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13), and according to this story, Satan tried one last time to...
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Predestination: Trampling the Tulip

In this final blog post, I would like to conclude my extended look at a Reformed view of predestination.  There are certain aspects of it that fly in the face of much Biblical teaching.       In classic five-point Calvinism on this...
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Do You See This Woman?

All of the words of the Saviour are important, even the words spoken that were strictly rhetorical.  One such utterance is found in the story of the sinful woman, told in Luke 7:36f.        The story is told of a day that Christ entered...
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