It’s a scene every moviegoer remembers: Vizzini, convinced of his own brilliance, keeps shouting “Inconceivable!” every time events defy his expectations. Finally, Inigo Montoya turns to him and delivers the perfect rebuke: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” The same could be said of much modern Orthodox talk about economia and akribeia. These are ancient theological terms with precise meanings shaped by the canons and the Fathers, yet today they’re flung about as if akribeia meant harshness and economia meant leniency. But that’s not what they mean, and confusing them has led to deep distortions… Continue reading →

Many well-meaning Orthodox Christians today, eager to preserve the purity of the Church, have revived a rigorist approach to baptism and the reception of converts, advocating for universal rebaptism and denying the validity of any baptism performed outside visible Orthodox boundaries. While this impulse comes from genuine zeal for the faith, it constitutes the resurrection of an error repeatedly confronted and rejected by the Orthodox Catholic consensus. Drawing on selective patristic quotations and novel interpretations of ancient concepts, modern rigorists often misunderstand both the history and the tradition of the Church on this issue.

The Historical and Patristic Foundations

The roots of the current controversy… Continue reading →