church bell from below

No Other Foundation

Reflections from Fr. Lawrence Farley

Fr. Lawrence Farley

About Fr. Lawrence Farley

Fr. Lawrence serves as pastor of St. Herman's Orthodox Church in Langley, BC. He is also author of the Orthodox Bible Companion Series along with a number of other publications.

Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Franklin Graham (son of the famous evangelist Billy Graham) opined on NBC Nightly News that Muslims pray to a “different God” than do the Christians. Around the same time the Reverend Jerry Vines,...
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Christianity Makes No Sense

Christianity makes no sense. Just ask self-proclaimed intellectual giants like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. They will tell you that Christian claims are crazy, outrageous, and intellectually scandalous. The very idea that a...
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America the Great?

Presented for your consideration (as Rod Serling would say): a great and powerful society, yet one whose laws and culture were a standing offence to God and in open defiance of His Law. At the heart of this society stood a principle that...
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Demonizing Dichotomies or a Rainbow Flag?

The hardest thing that a Christian can do in the world is to keep his balance. One thinks here of that wonderful image of G.K. Chesterton, where he spoke of the Church as having “the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses,...
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All Kinds of Everything

The last few weeks of my life have been spent writing a commentary on the Book of Daniel, which of course includes pouring over the so-called “Benedicite” (to give its western name), the long hymn found in chapter three and put on the...
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Is Perversion Possible?

We don’t often hear the word “perversion” used much any more, and anyone using the term in print to describe any form of sexual practice better have a good lawyer handy. Some people are proving themselves very aggressive these days, and...
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Reading the Old Testament

Though Marcion has been dead for a long time, his legacy is still among us. Marcion was a heretic in the second century who said that the Old Testament was un-Christian, and that the God of the Old Testament was not the Father of our...
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The Death of Dialogue

“Dialogue” is a happy word, along with other happy words like “inclusive”, “tolerance”, and “acceptance”. It is assumed by our culture that all reasonable people are open to dialogue—that is, open to hearing the other person’s point of...
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Congratulations: It’s a Baby Girl…Maybe

An article about a presentation made in my neighbouring province of Alberta some time ago made me wonder if I didn’t live in the Twilight Zone rather than Canada.   Twelve years ago, a baby girl was born in Alberta by the name of Wren...
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The Passing of Father Tom

Today I joined the sad multitude of those mourning the passing of the Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko, theologian, writer, Dean Emeritus of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary, known to the many who loved him simply as “Father Tom”.   Tributes...
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I and Thou and the Veil

Those reading the title of this article will perhaps remember a book of similar name written by Martin Buber, I and Thou, first published in German in 1923. Buber’s main thesis in the book is that human beings have a choice in their...
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Reclaiming St. David (Feast Day March 1)

Devotion to St. David of Wales (and to all the western saints) serves a very important role in the Orthodox Church—it rescues us from the accusation that we are merely “the Eastern Church” (as some textbooks describe us), the eastern...
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A Christian Response to ISIS

It is difficult to tune in to a newscast or to social media these days without learning about the latest atrocities committed by ISIS (sometimes referred to as ISIL, “the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant”). This jihadist group...
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Constantinian Authenticity: Eleona

As we have seen from previous posts, in her book Christians and the Holy Places: the Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins, Taylor argued that none of the churches which Constantine built in the Holy Land were erected on authentic sites—not...
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Constantinian Authenticity: Golgotha

This week we continue to examine the assertions of a scholar, Joan E. Taylor who in her book Christians and the Holy Places: the Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins, published in 1993 by Oxford University Press, makes the case that none of...
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