General
This last Sunday was the Feast of St. Luke. It was more than coincidence I think that I happened across a couple of verses from his Gospel that I look at very differently now than when I was a Protestant.
The verses in question are Luke 11:27-28, “As he said this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you nursed!’ But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!’”
In my Baptist days, I was taught that this cut across Roman Catholic… Continue reading
Finished up Tobit the night before last. It is always a favorite book to reread because it is such a good story, it has a strong Christological spiritual sense, and it is one of the few places in the Scriptures where dogs are given a positive presence.
In most other places in the Bible, dogs get a bad rap. To be called a dog, a dog’s head, or a dead dog was an insult. Dogs were unclean and ate unclean things- sometimes even human carrion. Apparently, packs of feral dogs roamed in urban areas back then (Ps. 58:7, 15 and Ps. 21:17, 21 [that’s Psalms… Continue reading
A RC in one of my forums asked why Orthodox find Purgatory objectionable when we also pray for our departed:
One chief difference between the RC and Orthodox views on the Intermediate State is that we don’t go for the whole purgatorial fires thing.
In RC purgatory, forgiven sins are still being punished in some way, while in the Orthodox view forgiven sins are forgiven and the damage it caused is being healed in a place of refreshment. RC descriptions of purgatory, especially before Vatican 2 often presented it as horrible as hell but just with a time limit. We do not accept such a… Continue reading
Gospel: Today the Church’s Lectionary lands us near the end of the Sermon on the Mount,
“15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. 16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? 17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.… Continue reading
“For the man in Christ, the antinomies of the mind are not irreconcilable opposites; they are simply ruptures caused by the upheaval of original sin in man.
Uniting himself to Christ, man feels in himself a coming-together of fragmented parts, a healing of the intellect, a wholeness and integration that make him capable of integrated understanding.”
-from The Theory of Knowledge According to St. Isaac the Syrian
St. Isaac’s gnoseology held that there were three degrees of knowledge in ascending order of importance.
The First Degree ranges from our animal appetites up to our rational skills in the arts and sciences and is concerned solely… Continue reading
In reading Darwin’s Autobiography and his other writings, public and personal, I think a good summary of the evolution of Charles Darwin’s metaphysical/ religious views would be as follows:
Up to 1830- His seminary days he was a Biblical literalist and a big fan of Paley’s arguments. He says in his Autobiography that at this time, “I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible.” During his seminary years he developed a love for science and became an Old Earth Creationist.
1831-1836: His Christian faith was “quite orthodox” in his own words when he boarded… Continue reading
Had a fundamentalist attack me this morning because I did not follow biblical principles when reading the Bible. When I asked him what those principles were he said he did not have a list he just “knew it when he saw it.”
So it got me to thinking, “What ARE my general principles when reading the Bible?” So this morning over coffee I put together a list of ten principles I have learned from the ancient Christians as to how to read the Bible properly.
When reading ancient texts it is best to read them as ancient people wrote and understood them and not in… Continue reading
One very common objection to the Orthodox Catholic Faith is that we refer to our priests as “Father”. And at first glance it seems that those who criticize us for this practice have a case from the Bible. When this charge is brought up our interlocutors have in mind the words of Christ in Matthew 23:8-10, “But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brethren. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called masters, for you have one master, the Christ.”
Seems clear cut… Continue reading
Here are a few reasons I believe naturalism undermines rationality and ends up being self-defeating under the claim that the natural world/matter is all there is:
To begin with, naturalism/materialism is one of the most primitive philosophies there is and was popular with the pre-Socratic philosophers until refuted by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. It has only gained resurgence to the extent modern people have forgotten these great philosophers and their clear thinking on this issue.
The idea of the materialist is that matter is all there is and the universe is causally closed. Everything is to be explained solely in terms of physics, matter and… Continue reading
A verse from today’s Gospel, Luke 17:6, “So the Lord said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
A mustard seed is symbolic of the type of faith we need because although it begins very small it is also very tenacious and can grow in very difficult circumstances. Blessed Augustine writes, “A mustard seed looks small. Nothing is less noteworthy to the sight, but nothing is stronger to the taste. What does that signify but the very great fervor and… Continue reading
Read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay on self-reliance and this quote from Zoroaster jumped out at me. A variation of the “God helps those who help themselves” theme: “To the persevering mortal, the blessed Immortals are swift.”
Which in turn reminded me of a Hindu story Joseph Campbell told in Myths to Live By,
“There is a fable told in India of the god Vishnu, supporter of the universe, who one day abruptly summoned Garuda, his air-vehicle, the golden-feathered sunbird; and when his wife, the goddess Lakshmi, asked why, he replied that he had just noticed that one of his worshipers was in trouble. However, hardly… Continue reading
Last night I began reading the prophet Habakkuk. A short book containing only three chapters it is unique in many way among the prophets in that it is primarily a theodicy. That is, it is a prophecy about the impending fall of Judah and Jerusalem and also the ultimate fall of the Babylonians at the hands of the Persians but the main thrust of the book is about how confusing God’s ways can be, how distant He can seem in our trials, how unexpected and even alarming some of His solutions to our problems or answers to our prayers can be.
The prophecy focuses on… Continue reading
“Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.” (1 Timothy 3:16, RSV)
“Without a doubt, great is the mystery of godliness: God was revealed in the flesh, vindicated in [the] spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, and received up in glory.” (1 Timothy 3:16, Eastern Orthodox Bible)
This verse comes up quite often in discussions with King James Only advocates as a… Continue reading
Started 2 Peter for my morning NT reading time. 2 Peter is one of the last books of the NT to be accepted universally by Christians and one of the most hotly debated in terms of authorship among Christians since ancient times.
It did not receive universal acceptance until the late fourth century at the councils of Carthage and Laodicea.
One of my favorite sections speaks of the ancient Christian and orthodox doctrine of theosis or divinization and follows this up with a list of virtues called in ancient rhetoric a sorites or gradation which is itself embedded in the exordium of the whole passage.… Continue reading
For those Christians posting articles and videos about “what the Bible really says” about homosexuality and saying traditional Christians are misled by “poor translations”:
How is it that for three thousand years these interpretations were never taught by the Jews or the Greek Church fathers for whom the Biblical languages were their native tongues and for whom the Biblical cultures were their native cultures only to be discovered by progressive professors in the modern post-Enlightenment, post-Christian West during the sexual revolution of the 1960s?
Do you honestly believe that for three thousand years, no rabbi, no Jewish theological school, no saint, no Fathers, no Doctors… Continue reading
