Tag: atonement
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Therapeutic Substitutionary Atonement
For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures… (1 Cor. 15:3-4) No statement is more central to the Christian faith than St. Paul’s…
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The Heart of Darkness – the Dawn of Mercy
The Christian faith is not about ideas – it is about things that are. As such, we do not need to cultivate theological systems – we need to know how to live. This also tells us something about darkness. The dangers we face are not found in mistaken ideas – they are found in the…
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Living the Life of the Publican
For many people in our culture, the idea of private confession is neither attractive nor comforting. We prefer “to put our best foot forward,” and make the best impression on others. Everyone is aware that everyone has faults. Those who have grown up Protestant may have been frequently reminded, “For all have sinned and fall…
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Face to Face
There are few joys of a blogosphere writer greater than to meet face-to-face with his readers. Such has been my experience at my time at the 16th All-American Council of the Orthodox Church in America. To embrace someone who can say that my articles on the death of my parents helped them to endure the…
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Salvation, Ontology, Existential, and Other Large Words
In recent posts I have contrasted morality with ontological, as well as existential, etc. I’ve had comments here and elsewhere in which people stumbled over the terms. The distinction offered is not a private matter. Orthodox theologians for better than a century have struggled to make these points as being utterly necessary to the life…
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From the Foundations
Among the more interesting statements in Holy Scripture is found in Rev. 13:8: All who dwell on earth will worship it [the beast], everyone whose name has not been written in the book of life, of the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world… That Christ is here described as the Lamb is…
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The Grace of Just Showing Up
There has been a tendency in much teaching about the notion of salvation by grace to ground the image in a legal or forensic metaphor. Thus, we are saved by grace in the sense that someone else’s goodwill and kindness (God’s) has now freed us from the consequences of our actions. Thus we speak of…
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Suffering in a One-Storey Universe
A comment on a previous post which mentioned the Biblical and patristic teaching that we should “give thanks to God for all things” has been an occasion for personal reflection – the substance of which forms this present post. For those who wrestle with the inherent difficulties of giving thanks for all things – I…
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Existence and Truth
Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, as a young man who returned to the faith following a flirtation with Marxism, came to an understanding that the Christian faith is not to be understood as a moral structure, but as a matter of true existence. This distinction is deeply important in Orthodox understanding, and has been a hallmark of…
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Why Small Things Matter
A reader’s comment on an old posting of mine (from 2007) took me back to read the same. It seemed worth re-posting. Some things bear repeating – again and again, as they say. Perhaps one of the greatest disservices done to Christians by the spate of “Left Behind” novels and the like, and the romanticism…
This week is my first time to experience the bridegroom services. What amazing beauty! Having experienced this I begin to…