We continue our series examining St. Matthew’s citations of the Old Testament. Today we look at his citation of Micah 5:2. “In the Masoretic Hebrew it reads, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are little to be among the clans of Judah,...
Today, as we begin to enter the Christmas and Theophany season, we begin a series on the use of the Old Testament in the early chapters of the Gospel of St. Matthew. We will examine his citations in his narrative of Christ’s birth,...
G. K. Chesterton wrote that he once left fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery and hadn’t found any books so sensible since (from his Orthodoxy, “The Ethics of Elfland”). I suggest that Christianity is one such fairy tale, and...
In my previous blog piece, “Why I Am a Christian (Part 1)” I examined the question of why one should believe in the physical Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. I looked at the essential historical reliability of the Gospels portraits...
Many years ago, when I was tucking my eldest daughter into bed, she asked me a question: “Dad, why do we believe in the Resurrection?” I have always taught both my daughters to be strong and to think for themselves, and so I was happy...
About two weeks ago I issued an extraordinary personal appeal through this blog asking for the support necessary to meet an unprecedented financial need, as our parish of St. Herman’s Church in Langley, B.C. struggled to meet a huge and...
The story of Cain and Abel is the story of the human race. It is tragically timeless, for it is tirelessly enacted over and over again in every generation. As Larry Norman once queried (as aged historians may remember from his song...
The title of this blog piece is the title of a book written by Bishop Maxim Vasiljevic, bishop of Los Angeles and Western America of the Serbian Orthodox Church. (I trust he will forgive not being capitalized.). The book is an...
In my Protestant days, I had no problem with anyone talking about Mary—so long as it was Christmas. On Boxing Day, that was it. Over. No more talking about Mary. What are we anyway, Catholics? It was understood that when we packed...
This is an extraordinary personal appeal, one which I do not make lightly.St. Herman of Alaska Church in Langley, B.C., Canada (of which I have been pastor since 1987) is in the process of building a new church temple on our property,...
In 1956 an American game show debuted called “To Tell the Truth”. Each round of the game introduced three people all claiming to be the same person, and a team of panelists would ask them questions. Those pretending to be the real...
I would like to share with you an easy technique for avoiding moral accountability. Whenever you are caught and called to account for doing something wrong (that is, when you are “busted”), you simply invoke the figure of the Pharisee. ...
Some heresies never seem to die, but have a disconcerting tendency to pop up in every generation, rather like the emerging heads of the whack-a-mole in the children’s game one sees in Chuck E. Cheese: whack them down as hard and often...
Like many Orthodox clergy, I have lost track of the number of times my Protestant brethren have objected to the priestly title (in my case, “Father Lawrence”), citing the Bible which commands that they “call no man ‘Father’”. They are,...
Recently I listened to a podcast in which Larry Chapp (a universalist Roman Catholic) interviewed Dr. David Bentley Hart. In the course of the interview Dr. Hart asserted that, unlike Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy does not have an...
