Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
The Church and Homosexuality: A Meditation
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I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. —Romans 8:18 And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” At that saying…
The Whole Counsel Blog
The Spirit of God in the Old Testament
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This week serves as a sort of epilogue to the recent series on Christ in the Old Testament. These previous posts discussed the reality that Second Temple Judaism, through a close reading of the Hebrew scriptures, had developed the idea that there is a second hypostasis of Yahweh, the God of Israel. The terminology for this within the Jewish world was to speak of the ‘Two Powers in Heaven’. The identity and origin of this second hypostasis was the subject of much debate and conjecture in Jewish literature. The New Testament authors clearly identify the second person of the Godhead as Jesus Christ, incarnate in their day. In response to this core argument of the Christian proclamation, the Jewish community…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Why Christianity Must Have Saints
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Sunday of All Saints, June 3, 2018 Hebrews 11:33-12:2; Matthew 10:32-33, 37-8; 19:27-30 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. This first Sunday after Pentecost is dedicated to the commemoration of all the saints, and so it is commonly called “All Saints Sunday.” So I thought we could spend a little time today…
The Whole Counsel Blog
God's Body
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One feature of the Orthodox Jewish synagogue service is the hymn sung near its dismissal which repeatedly affirms that ‘God does not have a body’. This particular hymn was added in the fourth or fifth century as a direct response to, and rejection of, Christianity. On the surface, far removed as we are from the issues in the early debate between the nascent Christian and Rabbinical Jewish communities, we might assume that this is aimed at a rejection of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation. In reality, however, the primary field of debate in that era was over the correct interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures which would become the Christian Old Testament. The repeated reaffirmation that the Jewish believer ought…
Nearly Orthodox
Always Standing
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I am getting familiar with the words so I am sitting down. In fact, I am sitting on my bed in the middle of a sunny Sunday afternoon, avoiding doing anything I had on my long list of things to do after Liturgy. I tell myself it’s a “day of rest” and all that. It feels legit. I pick up a prayer book given to me by a friend and begin to…
The Whole Counsel Blog
The Son of Man
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The title ‘Son of Man’ is best known by most readers of the scriptures as the title which Christ most often applies to himself in all four of the Gospels, a rare thread running through all four with utter consistency. In fact, other than references to the Old Testament and a single instance in the Acts of the Apostles, this title occurs in the New Testament only as a form of self-reference by Christ. When Christ uses this term, however, he is drawing on an Old Testament tradition which was already by that time well-defined. Further, from this Old Testament tradition, the idea of a particular divine figure had formed within Second Temple Judaism, and many of Christ’s references are…
The Whole Counsel Blog
God the Word
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Famously, the prologue of the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel speaks of the Logos, who has existed eternally with God from the beginning, and is God. It became extremely common to read these statements in the prologue philosophically. To read them as an attempt by St. John to philosophically represent the deity of Jesus Christ in relationship to the God of Israel as a Jewish monotheist. Philo of Alexandria’s mention, as a Jewish Middle Platonist, of the divine Logos as an emanation of the one true God is seen as either a parallel or a precursor by this view. Others looked to the idea of the logos in Stoic philosophy. This line of thought has so permeated patristic studies…
The Whole Counsel Blog
The Angel of the Lord
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There is within the Christian world, even among Orthodox Christian writers and scholars, a certain presupposed narrative regarding the ‘development’ of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity within Christianity. It is presupposed that the people of the Old Testament were Unitarian monotheists, that they believed that only one God existed, and that that God was a single person. It is then presupposed that through his teaching and deeds, culminating in his resurrection and ascension into heaven, early Christians came to believe that Jesus is also divine in some sense. The development of Christian belief over the next several centuries is then seen in evolutionary terms, in which early ‘low’ Christology in which Christ is seen to be divine, but not…
With Lamps in Hand
Two Spiritual Lessons We Can All Learn from a Mother's Love
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A few weeks ago, I was sitting on the playground at my daughter’s school while my girls played for a little. I was sitting on a bench on the edge of the basketball court holding my son. There was a group of middle school boys playing basketball and pestering some middle school girls. As I watched them make sixth-grade boy jokes and mess with the girls, I had a thought I’ve had…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Women Disciples of the Lord
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The phrase “women disciples of the Lord” is enough of a commonplace in Orthodox hymnography that it moves past the modern ear with little notice. It seems simply obvious at even a surface reading of the gospels that Christ had a number of followers, and that some of them were women. Contained within this brief phrase, and in the use of the word disciple, however, is a massive transformation in the way in which women were viewed in the ancient world, and their perceived role within the Christian community. As in a previous post, in the person of Jesus Christ, priesthood is reunited with masculinity as a calling, so too in the revelation of Jesus Christ attested by the New…
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
David Bentley Hart's The New Testament: A Review
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That David Bentley Hart was asked to produce a translation of the New Testament may at first seem counter-intuitive. His field is philosophy and philosophical theology, not New Testament or Greek language (though he reads Greek). Further, with the wide range of New Testament translations available to a general audience in English, not to mention the variety of Greek critical editions available…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Jacob and His Well: Baptism for the Nations
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Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, May 6, 2018 Acts 11:19-30; John 4:5-42 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Christ is risen! Today let us begin by contemplating the meaning of water. The Gospel we read today is focused quite literally on water, in which Jesus meets with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Paralysis of Life on the Go
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Sunday of the Paralytic, April 29, 2018 Acts 9:32-42; John 5:1-15 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Christ is risen! Something happened in my life this past week that for years I wasn’t sure would ever happen. And it’s something that hadn’t happened in my life for almost 20 years. On Friday,…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Priesthood and Masculinity
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The theme of priesthood in the scriptures begins at the very beginning. The first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis draw heavily on the literature and traditions of the surrounding nations, though always with alteration, and in some cases even inversion, of the pagan themes found therein. The most obvious example of this is the story of the flood, which existed in many forms in the Ancient Near East before Genesis was written, and so Genesis both corrects these accounts, and serves as an apologetic for the true God of scripture against the various Near Eastern deities. This is also true of the story of the creation of Adam itself. In the Ancient Near East, the various pagan cultures…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
That Very Body
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Sunday of the Myrrh-bearers, April 22, 2018 Acts 6:1-7; Mark 15:43-16:8 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Christ is risen! On this third Sunday of Pascha, we are returned mystically to a series of events in Scripture which have to do with the body of the Lord Jesus. This is the Sunday…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Marriage and Sexuality According to Christ
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While it has become a commonplace in modern rhetoric to minimize, or even deny, that Jesus himself had anything to say about sexual morality, this is simply not true. In answering a question regarding divorce in Matthew 19:3-12, Christ directs us back to the first two chapters of the book of Genesis in order to illustrate God’s plan for gender, sexuality, and marriage in his creation. By pointing to and reaffirming these passages, Christ in fact makes a strong statement which has consequences for the Christian understanding of issues as diverse as divorce, polygamy, and homosexuality. Understanding this teaching of Christ presents an additional hurdle, however, as the Genesis narratives to which he points have themselves been the subject of…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
20 Years of Being Orthodox: 6 Things I've Learned
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Today marks the 20th anniversary of my reception into the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church — the Orthodox Church. I was just 22 years old at the time and still in college (I had something of a “career” in college, accumulating one BA, most of another, and three minors, all while working to support myself). In 1998, April 19 was Pascha, and at…
Nearly Orthodox
Running
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Remember when I said I don’t like to run? I mean, there’s a whole chapter in Garden in the East on exercise in which I make it super clear that I don’t like to run and that I am NOT going to run. I do other things. I enjoy Pilates and weight training. I’ll even sign up for Flamenco classes if the mood strikes, but I don’t like to run. Oh. Um.…
The Whole Counsel Blog
St. Paul and the Law
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As a conclusion to this series on the ongoing importance of the commandments of the Law in the New Testament and in the Orthodox Church, it is important to address directly St. Paul’s understanding of the Law. It has become a commonplace since Martin Luther to read St. Paul as setting out a dichotomy between the Law on one hand, and the gospel which he proclaimed on the other. This distinction has been read forward into the other New Testament writers, and also backward into the Old Testament. That which is identified as Law, then, in the scriptures, or at least, portions of it, is allowed a continuing role in the life of the church and of Christians but that…
With Lamps in Hand
When You've Fallen Off Your Spiritual Wagon
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Christ is risen! The Paschal season is upon us, filling us with new hope, new joy, a lightness of heart, and a fresh start. And in the light of the Resurrection, I’m overjoyed to be restarting this project after barely getting it off the ground last year. Have you ever started something and then found yourself not following through the way you thought you would? And have you ever noticed that the…
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…
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
Do Orthodox Converts Have to Reject Their Religious Past?
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I recently received an email from a Protestant who read Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy and was puzzled by some passages that were seen as being inherently contradictory. From the appendix “How and Why I Became an Orthodox Christian” (pp. 373-384): I am convinced that my life as a Christian before I discovered Orthodoxy was both real and fruitful. […] I had been in…
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.…
