Recently I was asked by one of my catechumens what the Orthodox thought about St. Joseph, the spouse of the Virgin Mary, called “St. Joseph the Betrothed” in our Orthodox Synaxarion because although he was betrothed to Mary, the marriage...
In many Orthodox churches, baptisms are done privately and almost secretly: after the morning Divine Liturgy at which the entire church community was present had concluded and all the people had left, a few people remained behind—or...
A number of Evangelical inquirers have asked exactly what we Orthodox mean in our prayer describing the Theotokos as “the salvation of the Christian people”. They also wonder what we can mean when we pray that we “may obtain paradise...
Hidden well away in the Greek of the genealogy with which St. Matthew opens his Gospel is a little theological secret—a secret which utterly vanishes in most English translations. Matthew begins his genealogy of Jesus by saying that...
Books of comparative religion such as I used to read way back in university (such as Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions) gave the reader the impression that all religions, if not the same, were at least similar and that Christianity...
An ancient law in the Old Testament is assuming new significance in today’s increasingly secular culture. It is this: “You shall not move your neighbour’s boundary marker which the ancestors have set” (Deuteronomy 19:14). The law was...
I had thought of entitling this piece “About UFOs”, but then quickly reconsidered, not wanting to blow all my credibility before anyone had begun reading it. This piece is an unabashed and unapologetic rip-off of a chapter in Rod...
Much to my surprise, some time ago the Nicene Creed was trending online among the Southern Baptists, America’s largest Baptist organization. They were, apparently, debating whether or not that Creed should be added to their official...
Once when I was a new convert to Anglicanism (a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away) I asked my dear Anglican pastor why our Anglican Church no longer canonized any saints. I knew that the Roman Catholic Church continued to canonize...
Up here in Canada, doctors can legally kill people under certain circumstances. The law allowing the murder used to be referred to as “Medically Administered Death” (“MAD” for short) until possibly someone with eyes noticed the acronym...
I have just finished reading a very 2002 interesting book The Case for Christ, written in Evangelical style by Lee Strobel. One of the chapters was about how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah, for which Mr....
The whimsical title of this blog post is based on the 1969 book by David Reuben entitled Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask). I chose the title because although the Church has its own teaching about...
I suppose I am hardly the first person to notice that the ancient posture for prayer is largely identical to the universal posture of surrender. That is, the ancient posture for prayer consisted of raising both arms and hands to heaven...
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...
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...
