The Whole Counsel Blog
The Sacrifice to End All Sacrifices
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As mentioned previously, the fact that the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament are no longer observed within Christian communities, beginning with the apostolic community, has been used to marginalize the commandments of the Law regarding worship in toto. While the idea that Christ’s offering of himself as a pleasing sacrifice to the Father means that all of the old sacrificial commandments are irrelevant is attractive in its simplicity, it grossly distorts the scriptural understanding of sacrifice. Further, this idea has led the vast majority of Protestantism to question whether there is such a thing as a new covenant priesthood. This blanket Protestant denial of ongoing sacrifice in the Christian community, particularly associated with the Eucharist, is itself a response…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Worship in Spirit and Truth
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Worship, as an offering made to God, ought to be the offering which God wishes to receive from human persons. This is seen immediately in Genesis, in the sacrifices of Cain and Abel, one of which is accepted by God, the other of which is rejected. Consistent with this, extremely detailed instructions were given for the design of the place of worship, and the structure and patterns of worship itself, in the Law. In terms of order, these commandments even take precedence over many of the moral commandments given in the Law. In fact, the commandment to celebrate the Passover precedes the actual Passover in Exodus 12. These commandments regarding worship are taken incredibly seriously by the text, with Aaron’s…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Cut Off from Among the People
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One element of the Law which the vast majority of Christians see as being obsolete or annulled following the death and resurrection of Christ is the system of death penalties prescribed for a variety of offenses therein. While there are still many Christians who see the death penalty as appropriate in cases of murder, or other very specific crimes, relatively few would argue for its application in cases of, for example, disrespect to parents, or the fraud of a woman being found not to be a virgin on her wedding night. The fact that Christians do not embrace a literal application of these commandments from the Law is then often used in argument in an attempt to relativize the seriousness…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Self-Denial Is an Invitation
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Sunday of the Adoration of the Holy Cross, March 11, 2018 Hebrews 4:14-5:6; Mark 8:34-9:1 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. These are the words of the Lord Jesus. If you are like…
Nearly Orthodox
Sentinel
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The task of wisdom is to prompt the intelligence to strict watchfulness, constancy, and spiritual contemplation. -St. Hesychios My back hurts thinking of standing at the door and watching. The pain resides in my lower back and climbs up my spine to the upper back. My shoulders round forward, protective. I want to roll forward, stretch that spine, fall to the floor, take a nap. When we stand, though, and train ourselves…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Why Don't Christians Keep Kosher?
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The most common answers to this question, that ‘that part’ of the Law doesn’t apply anymore, or that Acts 15 said that only four commandments apply to Christians, have been seen in previous posts in this series to not be valid from the perspective of how the New Testament understands the Law as applying to Christians. Why is it, then, that Christians do not follow the kosher laws regarding food in the Old Testament? In fact, many of the foods that Orthodox Christians in particular are allowed to eat during fast periods are food which were considered unclean under the commandments of the Law. It must first be said that there is no good evidence that the Apostles, including St.…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Acts 15 and the Law in the Church
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Acts 15, which presents the proceedings of what has become known as the Council of Jerusalem, that apostolic gathering which became the paradigm for future church councils, is considered to be the central passage in the New Testament to an understanding of how the apostles viewed the continued relevance, or irrelevance, of the Law to the life of the church. A group of pharisees who had become embraced Jesus as the Messiah were putting forth the argument that the Gentiles who were by that time entering into the nascent Christian church should be subject to not just the Old Testament Law, but to their pharisaic interpretation thereof. The gathered apostles, prominently Ss. Paul, Peter, and James, found against this party,…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Is the Law Abolished or Fulfilled?
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The topic of the post would seem to be an easy question. In Matthew 5:17, Christ states that he has not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfil them. Once this text has been quoted and the box has been checked, however, when the way in which the Law is interpreted, treated, and applied particularly in Protestant communions, the practical reality of this verse becomes more cloudy. If what is meant by ‘fulfilled’ is ‘taken care of’ or ‘done away with’ on a practical level, if it effectively means ‘can be safely ignored’, then saying ‘fulfilled not abolished’ is a distinction without a difference. Matthew 5:18-19 do a great deal to clarify what precisely Christ means…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Who Decided Which Books Would Be in the New Testament?
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A previous post discussed the (loose) nature of the Old Testament canon in the Orthodox Church, but what about the New Testament? Unlike the Old Testament, the New Testament as a canon of 27 books is agreed upon by essentially all groups which identify as Christian. The way in which the New Testament canon came into existence, however, is the subject of an immense amount of disinformation and uninformed opinion. When asked when these 27 books were ‘canonized’ as the New Testament, many will answer that that happened at the Council of Nicea. Some will present this event as the bishops involved looking at a vast array of texts, including but not limited to the 27 which would be accepted,…
The Whole Counsel Blog
On Allegorical Interpretation
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One of the temptations into which we frequently fall when seeking to understand others in our own time and in the past is that we begin with the assumption that they think and interact with a given set of ideas in the same way that we do. So, for example, in interfaith discussions, Christians will from time to time refer to groups of Jewish and Muslim leaders holding councils. Or Muslims will speak of the Torah or the New Testament as if it was viewed in the same way in which they view the Quran. This immediately generates misunderstandings that then have to be overcome in order to truly interact. Christians involved in these discussions need to understand how authority…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Prodigal's Prayer and Repentance: A Single Movement
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Sunday of the Prodigal Son, February 4, 2018 2 Corinthians 6:12-20; Luke 15:11-32 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. When I was on the Holy Mountain of Athos over the past couple of weeks, I asked the question and heard others ask the question of what we are to bring back with…
The Whole Counsel Blog
The New Testament Tradition
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In many ways, the content of the New Testament, and even its text, are a much more settled issue than that of the Old Testament, as previously discussed. That said, there is still a great deal of debate about which text of the New Testament, in its details, holds canonical authority. This is due to an embarrassment of riches with regard to the New Testament text, for which we have nearly 6,000 manuscripts. A manuscript, properly speaking, is a hand-written copy of a text. Our extant manuscripts of the New Testament stretch from the early part of the second century to the beginning of the 20th century, at which point many churches in Greece were still reading the epistles and…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Why Repent? What Kingdom?
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Sunday after Theophany, January 14, 2018 Ephesians 4:7-13; Matthew 4:12-17 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” (Matt. 4:17) With the baptism of Jesus, His public preaching ministry begins, and it is said that with this…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Three Ways Christians Approach the World
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There are generally three approaches that Christians have taken when it comes to their surrounding cultures: 1) Rejection, resistance, and hostility: This approach sharply distinguishes the Church from the world, emphasizing that the Church is so much “not of this world” that the world must be fled and an alternate community established. It is a posture that is fully closed to the world —…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Four-Point Spiritual Life
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Sunday before the Theophany of Christ, December 31, 2017 2 Timothy 4:5-8; Mark 1:1-8 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Be watchful in all things, suffer hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. (II Tim. 4:5). These are the words of St. Paul’s admonitions to his disciple St. Timothy…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
There is No Christmas and No Church Without History
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Sunday before the Nativity / Eve of the Nativity, December 24, 2017 Hebrews 11:9-10, 32-40; Matthew 1:1-15 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. One of the things that strikes people who encounter the Orthodox Church for the first time is that we have a very strong emphasis on history. It’s everywhere in…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Why Do We Do Ministry Without God?
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Twenty-Seventh Sunday after Pentecost / Tenth Sunday of Luke, December 10, 2017 Ephesians 6:10-17; Luke 13:10-17 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of the darkness of this age, against the spiritual hosts of…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Walk as Wise
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Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost / Fourteenth Sunday of Luke, December 3, 2017 Ephesians 5:8-19; Luke 18:35-43 Very Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” This verse is Ephesians…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Is the Septuagint the Orthodox Old Testament?
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For most Orthodox readers, the answer to the titular question of this piece will be an obvious and immediate ‘Yes’. It is a commonplace of Orthodox Christian catechesis that unlike the West, and here West primarily speaks to Protestant and more recent Roman Catholic Bible translations, which uses the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible as its Old Testament, the Orthodox Church places authority in the Septuagint. Even a casual internet search will reveal lengthy arguments to this effect, citing the evidence of New Testament quotations, of particular readings in the New Testament where a theological point seems to hinge upon a particular Greek rendering, and quotations from the Church Fathers about the value and reliability of the ‘work of…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Is Our Giving Worthy of Our Calling?
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Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost / Thirteenth Sunday of Luke, November 26, 2017 Ephesians 4:1-7; Luke 18:18-27 Very Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. “I, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called.” St. Paul, who is writing…
Nearly Orthodox
Gathering In
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In a few weeks, we’ll say goodbye to our house in Tennessee. We bought it back in 2005 after selling our bungalow in Chicago for more money than we could imagine. It was the height of the real estate market, just before the bubble burst. We decided to slow down our lives a little. The kids were small and we felt like the city was closing in on us. The place in…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Christ's Two Witnesses
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As we approach the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and living in the United States, which has been powerfully shaped in its cultural and religious life by Protestant Christianity, the most common way of thinking about the role of the scriptures in the Church is the principle of Sola Scriptura in its various forms. It is therefore very common to read Orthodox perspectives, written in dialogue or in controversy with Protestantism, speaking against this foundational Protestant principle. Unfortunately, most often these Orthodox commenters pick up and utilize traditional Roman Catholic arguments against Sola Scriptura, rather than attempting to formulate Orthodox answers. This is unfortunate because these arguments are well and good as an attempt to get a person to…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Chosen Vessel
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Feast of the Apostle Paul / Seventh Sunday of Luke, October 29, 2017 II Corinthians 11:21b-33; 12:1-9; Luke 8:41-56 Very Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. On this day we celebrate our patronal feast, the feast of the Apostle Paul, the “chosen vessel” of the Lord, sent…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Is the Church a Refuge?
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Sunday of the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, October 15, 2017 Titus 3:8-15; Luke 8:5-15 Very Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Today in the eighth chapter of Luke’s Gospel we read again the familiar parable of the Sower and his seed. As we consider this…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
God Has Visited His People
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Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost / Third Sunday of Luke, October 8, 2017 II Corinthians 9:6-11; Luke 7:11-16 Very Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. “God has visited His people!” I must admit to many “favorites” in the Scripture, and that line is certainly one of them. Can’t…
Nearly Orthodox
Context and Spiritual Insecurity
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“Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.” ―Thomas Merton This quote comes up in my Twitter feed almost weekly. It always seems to catch me when I’m in a grumpy mood. That said, these days I’m always cranky when I read Twitter. I need to change my feed– or I need to change my habit of checking Twitter. This quote is out of context, and as such, it conveys a terrible message…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Love is Not a Two-Way Street
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Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost / Second Sunday of Luke, October 1, 2017 II Corinthians 6:16b-18, 7:1; Luke 6:31-36 Very Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Most ethical philosophy is ultimately about fairness and can roughly be resolved into the so-called “Golden Rule,” to treat others as you…
