I remember Elmer. Elmer was an elephant, whose image adorned the backs of our notebooks when I was in public school, and whose face flew on a flag on our school flagpole. Elmer was “the Safety Elephant” whose rules we were encouraged to...
Especially in advance of the much-anticipated Great and Holy Council scheduled for later this year, there has been much talk about the importance of our ecumenical connections, including the possibility of recognizing the baptisms of all...
Recently, on the first Sunday of Great Lent, we read the Synodikon in church. Well, actually just a tiny snippet of it, the bit about the legitimacy of icons and that this faith had established the world, and offering a heartfelt “Memory...
In the ongoing debate about universalism or the assertion that eventually everyone will be saved, proponents of universalism have often referred with an almost kind of hushed reverence to a volume written by Dr. Ilaria Ramelli, The...
In the course of my researches into the eternity of hell as presented in the Scriptures and the Fathers, I have come across a wonderful book on the subject by Mr. Edward William Fudge, entitled The Fire That Consumes: The Biblical Case...
How can you be sure what the Bible teaches? I get this question a lot from inquirers and catechumens. Most of them come from Protestantism, where their experience has taught them that the Bible is not self-interpreting and that appeals...
Recently there has been some talk in church circles of changing the present calendar so that Pascha (or “Easter” as it is known in the West) falls on the same day every year. The present Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, made...
In the Gospel for the Sunday of the Canaanite Woman (Matthew 15:21-28) we find a phrase that some have found troubling. The troubling nature of the phrase was brought home to me in a university lecture I once heard, for the lecturer...
If the Biblical teaching about hell suffers in the popular imagination, being thought of as a kind of subterranean torture chamber erected and run by all-powerful divine sociopath, the Biblical teaching about heaven and the Kingdom...
In the debate about the theological validity of Christian universalism one sometimes finds discussion about the meaning of the word “eternal” in Matthew 25:46. Christ there says plainly that the unrighteous “will go away into eternal...
In my last two blog articles, I examined the biblical, patristic, and conciliar evidence for the traditional view of the Church that the punishments of Gehenna were eternal, and also examined the question of how belief in the eternity of...
In a previous article I attempted to examine the Scriptural, patristic, and canonical evidence for a belief in Universalism, the belief that eventually all will be saved (including, according to many universalists, Satan and the demons)....
When they are in fashion, fads are never recognized as fads. Those under their influence and promoting them feel that they have come across An Important New Truth, or (if Orthodox) An Important But Neglected Part of Our Tradition....
The Sunday before the feast of Theophany is dedicated to the work of John the Baptist (or St. John the Forerunner, to give him his liturgical title). To appreciate him fully, we need to place him in his historical context, and realize...
Every Sunday our little parish serves an abbreviated Matins service before the Divine Liturgy, and part of that service contains a hymn called an “Exaposteilarion” or “Song of Light”. In the Sunday Matins, it consists of a brief...
