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...
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...
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...
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...
I sometimes end up reading books at the request of my parishioners, asking for my opinion of them (such as The Shack by William Young and Love Wins by Rob Bell). That is why I read Bradley Jersak’s A More Christlike God; A More...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
In my last blog post I examined Paul’s words in Romans 9 and their bearing upon the classic Reformed teaching about predestination—i.e. the notion that before the creation of the world God had already chosen some to be saved and some to...
In his book Reflections on the Psalms, C. S. Lewis wrote a chapter on praising which began with him saying that “It is possible (and it is to be hoped) that this chapter will be unnecessary for most people”. In the same spirit, I hope...
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...
Protestant critics of Orthodoxy fault us for many things, but one of the foremost of their objections is our devotion to Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Hostility to Roman Catholicism is built into Protestant DNA, so anything in Orthodoxy...
I have recently come across the teaching that Orthodox Christians should not pray for non-Orthodox. I cannot cite the details of who-where-when, so perhaps I am misunderstanding what is being said. But the concern to differentiate...
