Category: Knowledge of God
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Knowledge that Saves
It is perhaps unfortunate that our English language (as well as the Greek and many other Indo-European variations) do not make a clear distinction between knowing something as a fact, and a different kind of knowing which requires participation in the actual life and reality of that which we know. Thus it is possible for…
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Do We Want to Know God?
It was remarked briefly in a recent comment that “we cannot know God completely,” and that we should be satisfied with the mysteries of the faith and trust the teaching of the Church (I apologize for using the writer’s honest statement as the point of departure for this post). However, this short quote from St. Silouan:…
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The Importance of Being Ignorant
I remember a talk given by Fr. Thomas Hopko last year in Dallas. In the course of some side remarks, he said that his son, Fr. John Hopko, had been asked what his dad was doing now that he was retired and no longer Dean of St. Vladimir’s. As reported by Fr. Tom, young Fr.…
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When Things Are Not As They Seem
It is said that when some of the natives of the South Seas first saw Captain Cook’s ships approaching, they saw them as clouds. There was no category in their world for “ships,” thus the Captain and his crew came in “clouds.” I’ve have always wondered about the connection between how we name things in…
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‘Til Christ Be Formed in You
Writing to the Galatians, St. Paul utters the cry of a spiritual father: My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you…(Galatians 4:19) Though, interestingly, the imagery he uses is that of a mother and her children… But it is a groaning parents have for their own children…
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The Church of Many Rooms
In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? (John 14:2). I have shared before about a dream I once had of a Church in which there were many rooms. It was an old, wooden Orthodox Church, packed…
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Being Saved This Day in the Church
I thought I would bring the discussion down from the heady heights of theology and into the place where I spend my time and the bulk of my life. Being saved in the Church is a very day-to-day and moment-to-moment thing. Getting started: Do I cross myself before I get out of bed. It sure…
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The Mystery of God
Unless we start out with a feeling of awe and astonishment – with what is often called a sense of the numinous – we shall make little progress on the Way. When Samuel Palmer first visited William Blake, the old man asked him how he approached the work of painting. “With fear and trembling,” Palmer…
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The Mystery of Ourselves
For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. 1 Corinthians 2:11 I think it can be quickly agreed by all that God is a mystery – we do not know…
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What’s At Stake in the Atonement
One of the more common topics both on this blog and on a number of other Orthodox sites are questions about the Atonement. In general the Atonement refers to how it is we understand that Christ reconciled us to God. When we say, “Christ died for our sins,” what does it mean? The questions of…
Joy is essential to life. We cannot know life without joy