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...
The method by which the Orthodox Church receives converts is a very controversial topic, and one which has provoked much online discussion. Should a convert be received by baptism, by chrismation alone, or perhaps simply after a...
The feast of the Ascension is a feast of comfort and consolation for the people of God. But it can for some people represent a stumbling block. Looking at the ascension of Christ as it is narrated in Scriptures, does the Church then...
Many people will (hopefully) identify the above quote as coming from the speech of Polonius in Act 1, Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It was part of the fatherly talk he gave to his son Laertes before the boy moved away to university. ...
In a recent edition of the “Public Orthodoxy” website (of course; where else?) Dr. Carrie Frost offered some exuberant and triumphant reflections of the recent ordination of the “deaconess” Angelic in Africa. The recently...
I recently spoke with a dear friend who dolefully reported that a distant family member had left his very traditional Protestant church (with its stress on doctrine and Reformed worship) for a group called “The Bridge”. The name...
Borrowing the words of an old Gordon Lightfoot song, there hangs a ribbon of darkness over Canada, my home and native land. The Lightfoot song described the singer’s sadness and grief at the departure of someone loved and needed in his...
Thousands of years ago when I was an Evangelical Protestant in the Anglican Church, I never prayed to the saints or asked for their intercession. It was made quite clear to me by those around me that obedient Christians never did that...
It is a wonderful thing to know the Scriptures well, but there is a drawback: since we know how all the stories end, we can miss the drama inherent in the narrative. For example, In Luke 7:11f we can read about the grief of the widow...
