In the last post we looked at love, peace, and joy as the defining components of a Christian life. It is these realities that constitute fundamental discipleship to Christ, not obedience to rules or fear of contamination, however...
With its multiplicity of rules, canons, and liturgical stipulations, one might be forgiven for thinking that Orthodoxy is primarily about rules and regulations, coupled with a corresponding fear of breaking the rules and regulations....
In the translation provided in our official OCA Divine Liturgy book of the festal material for the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross there exists a puzzle. All of the material there is quite appropriate to the feast—the psalm for the...
In the bad ol’ days when I was still highly resistant to what I now call “Holy Tradition” I was keen to sniff out the slightest whiff of idolatrous veneration of the Mother of God—including the use of the term “the Mother of God” used by...
Not many people know that the charismatic renewal movement which swept through the mainline Protestant and the Roman Catholic churches from the 1970s had an Orthodox component as well. Calling this component a “movement” in the Orthodox...
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...
