5/25/2012
Fr. Lawrence Farley
Today we find almost every boundary being deliberately transgressed, repudiated, set aside, broken down, and discarded, with a consequent break down of order in the world.
The Nicene Creed enshrines for all time the reason why we should give our souls to another human being, the Man Christ Jesus.
There is not a shred of evidence in the epistles or the earliest history of the Church to sustain the notion that Jesus was beginning a Zealot movement or that His apostles expected Him to come back soon and overthrow Rome.
Our culture has a great interest indeed in saying that a woman can do any job that a man can do and so liberal Orthodox bowing down to secular culture reject the exclusion of women from the priesthood.
We are not worth the suffering caused to the sinless Son of God. And yet of course that was why He suffered for us, the sinless for the sinful, the innocent for the guilty, the immortal God for mortal and dying men.
Christ had compassion on the sinful woman, as He has compassion on all. We must at least try to see others as they are so that we might share with them Christ’s compassion.
Our Orthodox devotion to Mary (whom we call “the Theotokos”) often heads the list of Protestant objections, since it features so prominently in Roman Catholicism.
On what basis should decisions be made regarding how to receive former schismatics into the Church?
The Ascension also means that Christ is still with us—and in fact is nearer to us than ever.
Here then is the main problem with churches which make “inclusiveness” the sole and governing virtue: that community has abandoned its God-given mandate to exhort its members to repentance.
The Prophet Haggai reminds us that there is a day to be small and that a wise heart will leave questions of numbers, growth, and influence in the hands of God.
Let us connect the narrative dots: what we experience now as “sea water” once existed before creation began.
True lived Orthodoxy is rooted in the family of the Church—a family built upon apostolic foundations.
And the pagans are still around (at least here in Canada) and they are still noisily raging. They are not dead or even asleep. They are wide awake (and ‘woke’). They don’t worship Zeus or Apollo anymore. The idols currently ascendent here in the West have different names.
"From the core of the very stone on which Jesus lay an indefinable light pours forth. It usually has a blue tint, but the colour may change and take many different hues. It cannot be described in human terms."
A look at the long and complicated history of the papacy reveals that this view of the papacy was never the “perpetual practice of the Church” nor was it contained in the declarations of the Ecumenical Councils.
Once again, Matthew reads all the prophecies predicting Messianic salvation through the lens of Christ’s coming.
If a parent does not share the Church’s faith or if he or she rejects the Church’s morality, then that parent is not in a position to bring the child to baptism.
It is a heretical reduction to coopt Christ, His Mother, and His saints in the service of nationalism or of any earthly ideology.
That is why apocalyptic literature is thrilling and full of violent imagery. It leaves many details vague and compensates for this by a wealth of symbolism.
We also live in a time of deadly winter, when multiplied wickedness causes men’s hearts to grow cold. The rulers of this age promise earthly reward to those who will abandon the truth, and a warm bathhouse stands ready to receive the apostates.
Prideful presumption is what is involved in all such acts, whether the act involves trusting that God will nullify the power of germs in church, or that He will grant immunity to snake venom, or that He will overcome the force of gravity.
Like many, I was more than a little surprised to see an American Orthodox archbishop of prominence suggest that inter-communion is a good idea—i.e. that an Orthodox priest should give Holy Communion to a non-Orthodox person.
We Orthodox Whos, the tall and the small, will sing to the Lord this Pascha. Pascha is within our grasp, so long as we have hands to clasp.
As anyone who like me does not live under a rock can see, the Christian foundation is being radically eroded, if not violently overthrown.
The history of Orthodoxy in Alaska reminds us that the Church will always be missionary in its essence.
Rating: 8.8|Votes: 26
Dr. Ed will be missed by all who had been privileged to know him. He was one a pivotal generation who was prepared to work and sacrifice to join the Orthodox Church in a day when the cost for doing so was very high.
Rating: 9.4|Votes: 34
There were two main Rabbinical schools of thought: the school of Hillel insisted that the phrase meant that the husband could divorce his wife for anything at all that displeased him; the stricter school of Shammai insisted that the phrase limited the reason for divorce to sexual misconduct of some sort.
Rating: 9.6|Votes: 48
It is our willingness to oppose the views of our secular culture if they contradict the consistent witness of the Church.
Rating: 7.4|Votes: 34
As soon as one emerges from the cultural cocoon of modern thought one sees that the concept of God’s wrath against sin was not regarded by the ancients as an embarrassment to be overcome and denied, but as something to be emphasized and celebrated.
Rating: 8.9|Votes: 10
The temptation is to regard the Holy Ascension as if it were the Holy Absence, as if Christ has gone away and we now have less of His presence than was available when He walked the earth. It is not so.
Rating: 9|Votes: 42
Why is such a terrible psalm found in the Psalter? What does it mean? I suggest two things.
Rating: 9.2|Votes: 22
And it doesn’t matter whether or not one chooses to fight, for if you make Jesus the center of your life in the Church, the Enemy will bring the fight to you. Not fighting is not an option. The only two options are: fight the Enemy and win, or let the Enemy take you out.
Rating: 8.7|Votes: 34
Just as the iron axe-head floated into defiance of the laws of nature and arose from the depths of the Jordan River, so we also, in defiance of the laws of nature, shall arise from the depths of the grave at resurrection of the dead.
Rating: 9.6|Votes: 38
What does Pentecostal (or true) Orthodoxy look like? I suggest that it contains at least five ingredients.
Rating: 9.9|Votes: 30
The question arises as to what a pastor might tell a young parishioner confiding in him such perplexity, suspicion, or even a decision that they were gay, bisexual, or transgender.
Rating: 9.6|Votes: 36
The disease the medicine is intended to cure is the one now afflicting large segments of our modern secular population—that of careless and serene self-righteousness.
Rating: 7.2|Votes: 20
Rather than talking about the ecclesiastical situation in the Ukraine, of greater interest and possible profit is a discussion about authority in the Church.
Rating: 9.3|Votes: 30
Of course everyone goes to heaven when they die. Where else would they go? Belief in a hell has completely fallen out of our culture, probably at more or less the same time as did our sense of sin.
Rating: 9.8|Votes: 69
The revolution regarding gender is radical and vociferous, and like all devout revolutionaries, its advocates are taking no prisoners, which accounts for much of the rhetoric and verbal violence in America’s culture wars.
Rating: 7.4|Votes: 21
Every Sunday we confess in the Creed that we believe in “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church”. But what do we mean when we confess the Church as catholic?
Rating: 7.8|Votes: 16
The prophet Isaiah speaks to us today as well, for we no less than ancient Israel have trouble knowing the Master’s manger.
Rating: 8.9|Votes: 23
We can admire the porcelain figures of the Western images and the hagiographies, but not really love them. To love the saints, we first need to see them as they truly were.
Rating: 8.7|Votes: 37
Thinking about the catastrophe that befell Israel in 70 A.D. when the Temple was destroyed and the people of Judea scattered through all the world, I would like to make two points.
Rating: 9.2|Votes: 16
We continue with our apologetic project of commending the Christian Faith to our Jewish neighbours, and today look at the life of Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophetic elements in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.
Rating: 9.3|Votes: 22
Here I would like to suggest that the religion of Israel was clearly preparatory, and was never meant to be God’s final word to Israel or to mankind.
Rating: 7.9|Votes: 28
I am not unaware of how unpopular such a project can be today. The unpopularity of the attempt to convince Jews of the truth of Christianity goes back a long way.
Rating: 9.5|Votes: 31
This quick survey of church history reveals that for whatever varied reasons it was allowed, the Church did indeed allow babies to be baptized even before Constantine gave us a break.
Rating: 9.4|Votes: 28
The puzzle is solved when we back away from the English translation of the Hebrew which our current book provides and use the Greek translation of the Septuagint instead, which was almost certainly the version used by whoever chose this psalm for the koinonikon for the day.
Rating: 9.6|Votes: 27
So, what’s going on here? Does Jesus really call the Gentile woman a dog?
Rating: 9.3|Votes: 24
The importance of John the Baptizer may be gauged by the amount of paint and ink the Church spends on him.
Rating: 8.2|Votes: 75
All of the women I know personally who veil themselves in church do not intend thereby to make a statement about women like Kelaidis’ grandmother, one way or the other. They are grateful, I suspect, to have the choice about whether or not to veil themselves, and they make their choice.
Rating: 9.3|Votes: 12
We sometimes have the idea that God stands outside His creation, peaking down into it and occasionally interfering with the world He made by temporarily suspending its natural and physical laws to create a miracle.
Rating: 9.7|Votes: 46
It is important to remember this basic Biblical truth, and not to become so invested in the political storms around us that we forget that the land in which we cast our votes and eat our bread is not really our native country.
Rating: 8.9|Votes: 36
The question is: should the Church of God leap into the ideological fray and join the protest? Should we join the march and carry the signs? And if so, on which side?
Rating: 8.5|Votes: 19
How should one interpret the Bible? What rules should govern our exegesis?
Rating: 10|Votes: 5
So the question for us as we begin to read a letter that was written from the slammer, as it were, is, “Are we prepared to forfeit our respectability for Jesus Christ?” That’s the challenge.
Rating: 9.7|Votes: 89
If a respected author writes for a publication whose known purpose is the promotion of a particular agenda, then by that very act he lends credence and credibility to that agenda.
Rating: 9.4|Votes: 72
There is a lot wrong with the Biblical interpretations of the Christian Zionists. Since this is a blog and not a book, I will mention only three of them.
Rating: 8.8|Votes: 60
Now however, among most Evangelical Protestants, the phrase “sola Scriptura” has come to mean something rather different—and something that their Reformed ancestors would not have been happy with.
Rating: 9.7|Votes: 18
The Council of Nicea ended a long time ago (in 325) and Arius is very, very dead. Why do we still make such a big deal about the Council and commemorate it at such an important time—i.e. right after Pascha and before Pentecost?
Rating: 9.5|Votes: 52
The term “dialogue” seems to have taken its place alongside the proverbial terms “motherhood”, “apple pie”, and “the flag” as sacred and untouchable.
Rating: 8.9|Votes: 28
So then, when we do find ourselves angry and some real or imagined offence, what are we to do? I suggest three things.
Rating: 10|Votes: 9
A number of questions rush to the fore: who are these “they” who saw and worshiped Him? And why did “some doubt”? And moreover, what does all this mean?
But these hymns do more than simply summarize the content of the Gospel readings and offer a kind of musical precis. They also reveal that Christianity is a mystery religion, in which the risen Christ reveals Himself to the initiated.
Rating: 9|Votes: 10
Devotion to St. David of Wales (and to all the western saints) serves a very important role in the Orthodox Church—it rescues us from the accusation that we are merely “the Eastern Church” (as some textbooks describe us), the eastern half of a sundered and broken body.
Rating: 9.9|Votes: 28
There is much talk among Christian feminists of the necessity of utilizing “women’s gifts” in the Church and of the subsequent necessary ordination of women in order to allow for this utilization.
The questions usually arise regarding the first petition, and what is meant by “sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk”. Avoiding these sins is difficult enough, but first we have to understand what sins we are striving against.
Rating: 9.7|Votes: 24
If there is one thing that is lamentably common in almost all feminist writing it is the apparent inability to reconcile the complementary concepts of ontological equality and hierarchical subordination.
Rating: 8.8|Votes: 11
What does this mean? It means that faithful service is important, and that God honours age. It means that our own goal should be to grow similarly old in the service of God, so that God can confide in us as He did to Simeon and Anna.
Some people in particular are distressed when they see in Christian writers anything polemical or negative. Why, they ask, do these Christian writers have to denounce certain trends and ideas?
Rating: 9|Votes: 54
The real question therefore is not “Is the biblical God a God of wrath?”, but rather “Why is the wrath of God celebrated so widely and so emphatically in the Bible?”
Rating: 7.6|Votes: 22
One may have four friends or more, but (in Christian thought) only one spouse. Conjugal union is, by definition, a union of two and only two, because it is sexual. Friends stand symbolically side by side; spouses, face to face. The face to face posture of spouses expresses, both symbolically and physically, the sexuality of their union, and its essential difference from Friendship.
Rating: 5.3|Votes: 3
Goodness, as we see from the words and works of God in the Scriptures, is binary and discriminating. That is, it discriminates virtue from vice, and righteousness from evil.
Rating: 9.6|Votes: 5
Two groups of people recognize this binary ordering of the world instinctively: children and classical love poets.
Rating: 10|Votes: 10
That is, for him some bits in the Scriptures are devoid of inspiration or authority, and ought to be jettisoned since they are merely the voices of sinful humans, men incapable of rising to a divine standard.
Rating: 8.2|Votes: 5
We all have seen the statue of Justice holding her scales and wearing a blindfold so that she cannot be subject to partiality or bribery. That blindfold should obscure her tears as well, for one may well shed tears even when administering just punishment. All punishment for crime, whether execution or incarceration, represents a defeat for society, and should be administered with sorrow—and for Christians, with prayer for all, perpetrator as well as victim.
Rating: 6.1|Votes: 21
I understand some of this denunciation of the Most High on online forums and the like—some people are simply angry at Christianity and happily use any stick with which to beat Christians. They take some Old Testament verses out of their literary context and entirely out of their cultural context and start shouting. What is more perplexing to me is finding some Christians arguing that the Old Testament deity is insufficiently Christ-like. I expect the unbelievers to throw large chunks of the Bible angrily across the room. But I expected believers to be more respectful of what is for them, after all, Holy Writ.
Rating: 9.9|Votes: 18
Pagans could cremate and burn their dead and be consistent with their religious beliefs. Christians cannot, for Christians believe that the body has too much value to be consigned to the flames.
Rating: 8|Votes: 10
Whatever discussions occur regarding the possible revival or creation of an order of female deacon, let us all at least be open and truthful. Let us admit that this is not that: the proffered model of deaconess bears little resemblance to the ancient order. Let us therefore debate possibility of the new model on its own modern merits.
Rating: 6|Votes: 2
Given that our worship takes place in heaven it is not surprising to see so many icons on the walls around us, nor that we ask for the prayers of the Mother of God and the saints and angels. Since we have ascended to heaven, we find ourselves invisibly surrounded by the saints who also stand with us in heaven’s court. With what else should be adorn our church walls and icon corners but their images?
Why this insistence on exclusion? The Fathers of Nicea wanted to exclude heresy from the Church for the same reason that a doctor wants to exclude cancer from the body of his patient—because if he includes the cancer in the patient’s body, the result will be the death of the patient. Cancer kills, and so does heresy. Heresy is not simply incorrect opinion, akin to getting a numerical sum wrong. Heresy is stubbornly refusing to accept the truth, in exactly the same way as someone who has been poisoned might stubbornly refuse to accept swallowing the antidote. A person who has been poisoned will die. And the good intentions of the heretic notwithstanding (for who knowingly accepts error?), the person who refuses God’s provided remedy of Christ will also die.
Rating: 10|Votes: 1
The point here is that the Councils were not content merely to produce documents for people to read for their edification. They insisted that these truths be followed, and backed them up with anathemas, excommunicating those who dissented from them.
Rating: 10|Votes: 2
One joins a church or a monastic community precisely because it is in some way unlike the modern world, and presents one with a clear alternative to secularism. The different clothing witnesses to the presence of this clear alternative—one rooted in the past centuries and preserving its liturgical practice, history, tradition, and dogma.
For me the perplexing thing about the gap is not that it exists—secularists will be secular, after all, and most people are too busy living life to spend much time questioning the underlying presuppositions of their culture. For me the perplexing thing is how Christians could come to deny the existence of the demonic
Rating: 9.9|Votes: 7
Why a trumpet? Why not (for example) a signal fire, or the waving of a standard? Why a trumpet blast, and what did the blast of a trumpet mean to Israel?
Rating: 10|Votes: 3
Today’s young children are now in danger from a source other than traffic. I refer to the pandemic of pornography sweeping our land.
The point of the Synodikonis to draw very thick lines in the doctrinal sand and say that if anybody in the Church crosses those lines and strays into heresy, they must either recant or get out, and it is precisely this approach to truth that is necessary and saving.
Recently there has been some talk in church circles of changing the present calendar so that Pascha (or “Easter” as it is known in the West) falls on the same day every year.
Rating: 1.3|Votes: 3
Some suggest that the word simply means “age-long”, indicating that the punishment of the unrighteous will endure for an age and then come to an end, and they point out that the root of the word is aeon [αιων], meaning “age”. What are we to make of this?
In this final blog article I will examine some of the Father’s teaching to see how they viewed the pain of hell being consistent with God’s love.
Hell and heaven therefore are in no sense parallel to each other, as the objection presupposes. They are not two different compartments of reality, with heaven on the top-floor penthouse and hell in the basement.
Rating: 7.4|Votes: 16
I suggest that the latest interest in Universalism, the belief that everyone will eventually be saved, is the latest fad (or, if preferred, that it is currently fashionable).
The popularity of Destination Weddings is a symptom of a more profound cultural dysfunction. The problem is not just that this is a rich person’s game, and one that effectively excludes as guests those not able to bear the cost of jetting away to the Destination and staying at a fancy hotel.
We know how it will really unfold—with the last trumpet, and the voice of the archangel, and the resurrection of the dead, and the final triumph of Jesus, and the new Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God like a bride adorned for her husband. We know what others don’t. We know the word “maranatha”.
Rating: 5.8|Votes: 4
Our Lord’s parable of Lazarus and the rich man is unique among the parables, for in this parable alone one of the characters has a name.
Rating: 9.8|Votes: 4
The question for Christians is this: is the apostolic Tradition which the Church has received authoritative, or not? Have we the authority to move the ancient boundary landmark which our fathers have set?
America has not yet become Babylon the Great, despite the recent legal ruling. But even if it does, so what? We can peek at the end of the Book, and see how the story will end. And it turns out that it will end with glory, with the kingdom of this world becoming the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.
Rating: 7.5|Votes: 2
The times have become even more dangerous for children as we descend further and further into spiritual barbarism and as every last trace of Christian faith and morals is banned and banished from our western culture.
I have watched it faithfully every year since I can remember, and have the whole wonderful thing more or less memorized by heart.
Rating: 4|Votes: 2
The pastoral irony of all this, of course, is that any Christian who asks a priest with trembling whether or not he has committed the unforgivable sin cannot possibly have committed it, for the question proves that the one asking it loves Jesus and fears being separate from Him.
It is especially important to remember this at the Feast of the Ascension, for the Ascension is not only the triumph of God, but even more the triumph of Man. We do not glorify God by belittling man and denying humanity its proper glory. Humanism, with its emphasis on the splendour of the human person, at least gets that right.
