Category: Culture
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About Fairy Tales
If you want to teach a child not to do something, then clear directions and consistent discipline will generally do the trick. However, if you want to teach a child not to do a certain kind of thing, something completely different is called for. Most likely, you will have to resort to stories. Stories tell…
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Atheism and the Imagination
Einstein was famous for his “thought experiments.” He worked his way into radical new insights, not through careful research in a laboratory, but through careful work in the imagination. The same is true for almost all work in cosmology. You cannot simply observe the data generated from particle experiments and announce a conclusion. What is…
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We Are Not Here to Help
My writings are sometimes treated as though I’m offering some new insight. That only tells me that the reader has only just begun to read. I pray God never to be original in my thoughts, for I long for nothing other than the Tradition. At best, I simply bring the Tradition back into the conversation…
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Excuse Me, You Are Not Rational
Words have a way of getting hijacked. Language refuses to stay unchanged and the result can be confusion, particularly when language is compared across the centuries. A common sentiment, written in one century, can be taken to mean something completely different in another. Such is the case with the word “rational.” The word was hijacked…
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Human Tradition in a Modern World
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. – Monty Python and the Holy Grail The comic genius of Monty Python often shows it face when interjecting the present into the past. The charming…
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A Gifted Existence
You cannot give thanks for what has not been given to you. This simple maxim goes to the heart of the Christian life. If I steal your money and burn down your house, I cannot offer thanks for what I have done. It was not given to me from God. Anything that is not a…
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Understanding Evil and Doing Good
The Fathers commonly spoke of three things together: Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. The three are related. And it is necessary to understand these three in order to understand the nature of evil – both why it is evil and how it behaves. The root of Truth, Beauty and Goodness in the Fathers is Being and…
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Unecumenism – The Saving Union
My recent articles on the Church drew attention to the topic of union and its importance within the life of the Church – indeed, it is the life of the Church. Orthodox theology, when rightly considered, has a “seamless” quality: everything fits and one thing enlightens another. Perhaps the single most important thread in this seamless…
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Unecumenism and the Sins of All
The concept of the One Church shifted during the Reformation. I offer a case in point as well as a reflection on how it changes our current understanding. The old Anglican Book of Common Prayer offers one of the early examples of a subtle shift in Christian thinking and speech. In the Thanksgiving after Communion we…
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Consequences of the One Church – Unecumenism
In thinking through a theological question, I often engage in thought experiments. The Fathers might call it a form of theoria, but I won’t presume that word for myself. But what I do is to make a concerted effort to let go of unexamined assumptions. I look at a different set of assumptions and ask, “What if…
P.Stephen, reading your response to Janine, my heart rejoiced, because that is exactly it ! Living near a monastery, I…