Category: Fathers
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The End of the Modern World
“Welcome to the 21st Century!” Pick your issue, and if its outcome conforms to a popular, desired norm you are likely to hear such a greeting. The greeting also implies that a less than desirable outcome is wrong because it doesn’t belong to our time. It might be characterized as “medieval,” “outmoded,” “out-of-date,” “primitive,” “Neanderthal,”…
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Has Your Bible Become A Quran?
Those who engage in debates on a regular basis know that the argument itself can easily shape the points involved. This is another way of saying that some debates should be avoided entirely since merely getting involved in them can be the road to ruin. There are a number of Christian scholars (particularly among the Orthodox)…
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Memory Eternal
“The greatest danger in the modern world is the attack on man as the image of God. That God became man in order to unite man to God is the only sure Divine underwriting of human worth. We have value because of the image we bear.” – Archbishop Dmitri of Dallas – 1924-2011 I was…
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Saintless Christianity
What would Christianity mean if there were no saints? To rephrase the question: What would be the meaning of the Christian gospel if there were no wonderworkers, no people who had been transfigured with the Divine Light, no clairvoyant prophets, no healers, no people who had raised the dead, no ascetics living alone in the…
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N.T. Wright on Hell
Worth a listen. Well said. I’ll write on the topic a little later…
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Being Saved in Sodom and Gomorrah – The Prayers of the Saints
This is an exercise in Orthodox reading of the Scriptures. The habits of modern Christians run towards history: it is a lens through which we see the world. We see a world of cause and effect, and, because the past is older than the present, we look to the past to find the source of…
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Preaching the Love of God – St. Isaac of Syria
I would not have a blog except for the friendship of Fr. Aidan Kimel. He has returned to writing himself. His latest is an exquisite word on the need for preaching the love of God – with a wonderful look at this love in the writings of St. Isaac. I append a short excerpt. Do…
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We Have Seen
St. John, in the prologue of his gospel, says the following: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father (John 1:14). In his first Epistle he says the following: That which was from the beginning,…
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Isaac of Syria on Humility
From Met. Hilarion Alfeyev”s The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian: To speak of humility (mukkaka or makkikuta) meant to Isaac to speak of God, for God in his vision is primarily the One who is ‘meek and lowly in heart’. God’s humility was revealed to the world in the Incarnation of the Word. In…
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Riding on a Donkey
As far back as Genesis, in the prophecy of Jacob over his sons, we hear the association of the Messiah with a donkey: Judah, you are he whom your brothers shall praise; Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; Your father’s children shall bow down before you. Judah is a…
Nathan, the Blessed Theotokos be with you in all things.