Sitting Lightly on Labels
I have just finished reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. It is a thoroughly enjoyable read, comprehensive, and engagingly written. It is also a great doorstopper...
View Article“Can I Get an Amen?”
Those familiar with old-time Pentecostalist liturgy will identify the title of this piece as a part of that liturgy. Not, of course, that tongue-speaking Pentecostalists of the old school would admit...
View Article“Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?”
In 1956 an American game show debuted called “To Tell the Truth”. Each round of the game introduced three people all claiming to be the same person, and a team of panelists would ask them questions....
View ArticleReflections on an October Event
Everyone presumably acknowledges that there is nothing wrong with children dressing up as fairies, Disney characters, Marvel superheroes, and (my own favourite when I was a child) black cats in order...
View ArticleAn Orthodox Magisterium?
Recently I listened to a podcast in which Larry Chapp (a universalist Roman Catholic) interviewed Dr. David Bentley Hart. In the course of the interview Dr. Hart asserted that, unlike Roman...
View ArticleJudge Not
I would like to share with you an easy technique for avoiding moral accountability. Whenever you are caught and called to account for doing something wrong (that is, when you are “busted”), you simply...
View ArticleThe Self-emptying of the Mother of God
In my Protestant days, I had no problem with anyone talking about Mary—so long as it was Christmas. On Boxing Day, that was it. Over. No more talking about Mary. What are we anyway, Catholics? It was...
View ArticleCall No Man “Father”
Like many Orthodox clergy, I have lost track of the number of times my Protestant brethren have objected to the priestly title (in my case, “Father Lawrence”), citing the Bible which commands that they...
View ArticleUp It Comes Again—the Whack-a-Mole Heresy
Some heresies never seem to die, but have a disconcerting tendency to pop up in every generation, rather like the emerging heads of the whack-a-mole in the children’s game one sees in Chuck E. Cheese:...
View ArticleCain and Abel and a Bayonet
The story of Cain and Abel is the story of the human race. It is tragically timeless, for it is tirelessly enacted over and over again in every generation. As Larry Norman once queried (as aged...
View ArticleWho Prays for Marilyn?
I know a man in Christ who prays for Marilyn Monroe every day as a part of his prayers for all the departed. He doesn’t pray for her under her stage-name of “Marilyn” though. He prays for her under her...
View ArticleWhy I Am a Christian (Part 1)
Many years ago, when I was tucking my eldest daughter into bed, she asked me a question: “Dad, why do we believe in the Resurrection?” I have always taught both my daughters to be strong and to think...
View ArticleWhy I Am a Christian (Part 2)
In my previous piece, “Why I Am a Christian (Part 1)” I examined the question of why one should believe in the physical Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. I looked at the essential historical...
View ArticleThe Genesis of Liberal Theology
I have been reading liberal theology since my college days—i.e. theologies which deny many, most, or all of the major tenets of the traditional Christian Faith. The theologies are as many and as varied...
View ArticleThe Strange and Perverse Disinclination to Believe in a Miracle
G. K. Chesterton wrote that he once left fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery and hadn’t found any books so sensible since (from his Orthodoxy, “The Ethics of Elfland”). I suggest that...
View ArticleSt. Matthew’s Old Testament: Isaiah 7:14
Today we begin a series on the use of the Old Testament in the early chapters of the Gospel of St. Matthew. We will examine his citations in his narrative of Christ’s birth, childhood and adulthood up...
View ArticleSt. Matthew’s Old Testament: Micah 5:2 and Hosea 11:1
We continue our series examining St. Matthew’s citations of the Old Testament. Today we look at his citation of Micah 5:2. “In the Masoretic Hebrew it reads, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are...
View ArticleSt. Matthew’s Old Testament: Jeremiah 31:15 and Isaiah 11:1
We continue our series examining St. Matthew’s citations of the Old Testament. Today we look at his citation of Jeremiah 31:15. It reads, “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping....
View ArticleSt. Matthew’s Old Testament: Isaiah 40:3 and Isaiah 9:1-2
We conclude our series examining St. Matthew’s citations of the Old Testament. Today we look at his citation of Isaiah 40:3, which reads, “A voice cries, ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of Yahweh!...
View ArticleEcclesiastical Gnosticism
There is today in the Orthodox Church a cult of personality—or, more precisely, of personalities, in the plural. That is, there are a number of men, mostly monastics and wearing the badge of “elder”...
View Article