In my previous blog pieces I examined the question of how converts to Orthodoxy should be received, focusing mostly upon converts coming from Protestant denominations. I also suggested that non-Chalcedonians might be received by...
In my previous blog piece I examined the question of how converts to Orthodoxy should be received. One set of criteria which suggested that non-Chalcedonians should be received by confession alone, that those “who previously have been...
The question of how the Orthodox Church should receive converts from other Christian confessions is a large and complicated one, and is sometimes capable of drawing very warm responses—including from some of our Protestant and Roman...
Do fish know what wetness is or that they are wet? Obviously not, because they have never experienced what it is to be dry—or at least not for long. A “dried fish” is not something we find in the ocean but on the menu. Fish do not know...
Like many other neat-freaks, I appreciate the motto “a place for everything and everything in its place”. Things that have no place or are out of their place look cluttered to my neat-freak soul, and I feel the universe will run much...
You will perhaps not be surprised to hear that I have never stood before a naked corpse and cut into its flesh with a sharp knife. That is, I have never participated in the dissection of a cadaver as is done as part of one’s medical...
Just recently I listened again to a bit of theology offered in a lovely old song by (the often under-rated) Jennifer Warnes, “It Goes Like It Goes”, written by David Shire and Norman Gimbel which featured in the 1979 film Norma Rae. The...
David Bentley Hart has lately written a piece in the Church Life Journal with the somewhat unwieldy title of “The Spiritual Was More Substantial Than the Material for the Ancients”. Like everything Dr. Hart writes it is worth reading....
In a thoughtful piece entitled, “Headscarves, Modesty, and Modern Orthodoxy” published in Public Orthodoxy, Katherine Kelaidis has some valuable things to say about women wearing headscarves in the modern West. In this piece she offers a...
There is, alas, an immense amount of nonsense written about St. Mary Magdalene, some of it of quite venerable vintage. For example, one strand of western Christian tradition identifies her with the sinful woman whose story is told in...
St. Peter once offered his new Gentile converts some advice about the task of being in the world while not being of the world: “Beloved, I beseech you as aliens and strangers to avoid fleshly desires which wage war against the soul” (1...
“We’re all dying, aren’t we?” These words could have come from the lips of any thoughtful philosopher from the days of Marcus Aurelius on. In fact they came from the lips of Marilyn Monroe in the last complete film she ever made, “The...
Should the Keystone Pipe-line be built? Is globalization a good thing? Which political party should we vote for? These are questions which have provoked a tremendous amount of debate, not excluding loud shouting and mass protest,...
How should one interpret the Bible? What rules should govern our exegesis? One approach is to toe the party line, a kind of exegetical “be true to your school” approach. This approach looks not primarily to the Biblical text itself, but...
The importance of John the Baptizer may be gauged by the amount of paint and ink the Church spends on him. His portrait is painted and is found on every single icon-screen in all the churches, regardless of whether or not he is that...
