The Scriptural teaching on predestination is found mostly in Romans chapters 8-11 and in Ephesians chapter 1. Doing a full exegesis of these texts is a task which exceeds what can be done a blog, so readers are referred to a full reading...
Slamming St. Augustine often seems to be a kind of leisure sport among some Orthodox, despite its lack of historical pedigree. We hear much about Augustine’s negative views on sexuality, his horrible views on sin and damnation, his...
The year is 1868; the place, Damascus. A self-taught mystic calling himself Abd el Matar left his wife, family, and home to found a group of disciples in Damascus, the Shazlis, basing it on a Sufi brotherhood established in the middle...
Lately Giacomo Sanfilippo posted on his Orthodoxy in Dialogue blog a response to “a professor at an Orthodox seminary” whom he styled “Ross Douthat’s Orthodox admirer”. I am not sure why the reluctance to engage in persons directly and...
St. Paul was once intent upon visiting his new convert church in Corinth, and wrote them that he intended to visit them after passing through Macedonia in the north. But he said that the visit would not take place soon, for “I will stay...
In our Lord’s last extended discourse to His disciples on the night on which He was betrayed, He spoke about His final departure from their earthly lives. It was, not surprisingly, something of a theme that night: “Little children, yet a...
A very thoughtful person recently commented on my blog about how he would like to see me engage in greater depth the question of how one should translate the phrase κολασιν αιωνιον/ kolasin aionion in Matthew 25:46, which Dr. Hart...
David Bentley Hart’s The New Testament: a Translation has come to a bookstore near you. I have already written about Hart’s article (published in Commonweal in September 2016) in which he spoke at length of the genesis and need for such...
Dr. Hart has recently completed his translation of the New Testament, and it is now for sale at a book store near you. One naturally asks, “Why do we need another translation of the New Testament since so many translations already...
North American popular culture, as brought into your home and heart by the North American media, is a very powerful force, and it seems that we too easily underestimate its transforming power. How else to explain the results of a poll...
After a break of many months, I am happy to announce that the Coffee Cup Commentaries podcast is starting again. There will be some changes, to which the new visual logo attests. It will still be found at Ancient Faith (of course) and...
The Feast of the Elevation of the Cross does not primarily commemorate the crucifixion of Christ. That saving event is commemorated every year on Great and Holy Friday. Our feast of September 14 commemorates the finding of the Cross in...
It is safe to say that the allegorical method has fallen upon hard times in the scholarly world. What was once considered a discovery of the deeper meaning of the Old Testament text is now almost universally derided in the academic halls...
Every age faces the temptation to remake the true God in its own image—or in other words, the temptation to idolatry. The brutal ages of barbarian northern Europe tended to refashion God into a kind of Christian Viking, a warrior God,...
When Mary of Nazareth first emerged from her mother as a newborn infant and uttered her first newborn cries, few then present could have had any inkling what that child would mean to human history. After an extended period of infertility...
