Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Morality is the Original Dogma
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Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Exorcism is Central to the Gospel
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The Whole Counsel Blog
The Rich Man, Lazarus, the Afterlife, and Asceticism
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The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) is often treated quite differently than Christ’s other parables. None of the others have the history of being taken quite so literally. This parable is often mined for details and cited authoritatively in regard to concepts of the afterlife or at least of the intermediate state of souls between the time of a person’s death and the general resurrection at the time of Christ’s glorious appearing. In some cases, this goes so far as an argument that this story may not even be a parable as it is not identified as one in the text. Arguing against this last assertion is the fact that the Parable of the Good Samaritan…
The Whole Counsel Blog
The Antiquity of Hell
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Popular conceptions of heaven and hell in the modern world have been deeply shaped by Dante’s Divine Comedy. Specifically, the conception of hell has been deeply shaped by the Inferno. which has enjoyed a far wider readership and fascination than the corresponding sections on purgatory and paradise. In fact, Dante’s particular vision of hell has had so profound an impact that debates over universalism in the present time tend to take for granted that anyone who accepts historic Christian teaching on eternal condemnation believes in some variation of Dante’s hell. Perhaps no other work of literature has so transformed Western Christianity’s popular understanding than Dante’s, with the possible exception of Milton’s. Both of these authors, however, were composing works of…
The Whole Counsel Blog
The Bodies of the Saints
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One element of the practice of the Orthodox Church that is particularly troubling to many of those who are outside, particularly in contemporary Western society, is the veneration of relics. This is true even for Christians of Protestant background. In part, the relics of the saints produce either a fascination or an aversion due to the denial of death ubiquitous in our modern cultures. Long gone are the days in which the bodies of departed family members would lie in the home for visitors to pay their respects, then to be solemnly buried with prayers on the property of the family or the church where their graves would be seen and visited continuously by the family and community. Rather, our…
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
Tom Holland's Dominion: A Review
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The Whole Counsel Blog
On Circumcision and Baptism
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Contrary to modern misperception, every element of the Torah, the law of God, is still in force and relevant to the life of the Christian faithful today. There can be no clearer or more authoritative testimony to this fact than the word of Christ himself (eg. Matt 5:17-19). Despite its contemporary caricature, the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 represents a strict reading and application of the Torah to the situation of Gentiles entering into the assembly, the Church, of Christ. St. Paul fiercely defended himself against the charge of seeking to abolish the Torah or promote its violation throughout his missionary journeys as described in the Acts of the Apostles and in his own epistles (eg. Acts 21:20-21; Rom 3:31). …
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Reintegration of the Christian
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Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
What Would Happen If God Just Showed Up?
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The Whole Counsel Blog
The Bread of Heaven and the Blood of the Covenant
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The Eucharist has always stood at the center of the life and worship of the Christian Church. The sacrifice of the Eucharist is the preeminent act of Christian worship, the central focus of Christian life, and the constituent element of the church as community. Sacrifices are meals, meals shared together by the community with the community’s God. Several past posts have focused on the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist and its nature as a meal. There is also much to be said about the elements themselves, the food which constitutes this meal. Beginning by at least the seventh century and especially in the West, there has been considerable discussion and debate as to how the body, blood, and indeed the…
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
No Pregnancy in Heaven: Infertility and Theological Anthropology
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Over the course of writing my recently released book, Under the Laurel Tree: Grieving Infertility with Saints Joachim and Anna, I’ve had the honor of talking to individuals and couples from a variety of Christian backgrounds who have one thing in common: they struggle to integrate the reality of infertility with faith in a God who is supposedly life-giving. There are many…
The Whole Counsel Blog
The Book of Jubilees
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The Book of Jubilees is an ancient Jewish text from the Second Temple period. As a text, it played a significant role in the religion of the first century AD. Josephus made heavy use of it in his Antiquities. In addition to being a textual composition, Jubilees is a repository for a vast swathe of Jewish religious and historical traditions providing a window into the understanding and practices of Jewish people during this period. Many of the ideas found in Jubilees appear in the New Testament, casually mixed as traditions with the text of the Hebrew scriptures themselves. In a handful of places, the New Testament authors seem to cite Jubilees directly. Many of the earliest Fathers reference this text…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Christ & Tolkien Conference: Oct. 1-3, 2020
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Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
1844: A Disappointing Anniversary
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Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Those Who Harm the Church
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Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Visitation of God
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The Whole Counsel Blog
Faithfulness
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In discussions of the Christian religion, perhaps no word is bandied about more frequently than the word ‘faith’. Despite its frequency of use, defining precisely what it means based on usage often proves elusive. This is likely due to the variety of historical and religious contexts in which the term has come to be used. The central principle of the Protestant Reformation was salvation by faith alone. This established an ongoing debate about the relationship between faith and works in salvation. The Christian faith refers sometimes to the whole of the Christian religion, sometimes to Christian beliefs or dogmas, sometimes to a restricted list of core beliefs or dogmas which are seen as unquestionable. When dealing with the struggles and…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
A Star of Hope
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The Whole Counsel Blog
The Tree of the Cross
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Friedrich Nietzsche famously said regarding Christian readings of the Hebrew scriptures, “there followed a fury of interpretation and construction that cannot possibly be associated with a good conscience: however much Jewish scholars protested, the Old Testament was supposed to speak of Christ and only of Christ, and especially of his Cross; wherever a piece of wood, a rod, a ladder, a twig, a tree, a willow, a staff is mentioned, it is supposed to be a prophetic allusion to the wood of the Cross; even the erection of the one-horned beast and the brazen serpent, even Moses spreading his arms in prayer, even the spits on which the Passover lamb was roasted all allusions to the Cross and as it…
The Whole Counsel Blog
The Name of the Lord
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The pivotal moment in the life of Moses as related in Exodus is his prophetic call at the bush which burned but was not consumed. Within this call narrative, an important and well known moment is the revelation to Moses of the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Despite how well known this moment is, there are a number of misnomers regarding the revelation of the name Yahweh, as well as precisely what this name means and indicates. This is true not only in terms of popular understanding but even major scholarly theories based on references to this name have recently lost most of their popularity if not been completely overturned. Archaeological finds have given further relevant…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Apocalypse Now
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In the common vernacular, the term ‘apocalypse’ is used to refer to the end of the world or some imagined future in which the present world societal structures have been destroyed or ceased to exist. In fiction, this was typically some sort of nuclear or environmental catastrophe, though in recent years it has tended more toward disease outbreak in general and one which turns humans into zombies in particular. This popular usage has come through a particular interpretation of the final book of the New Testament, the Apocalypse of St. John, or the book of Revelation. Centuries of interpretation which holds that this text, or at least the greater part of it, describes events which will take place at the…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Feed Your God or Be Fed by God
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The Whole Counsel Blog
Tabor and Hermon
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In the celebration of the Feast of the Transfiguration in the Orthodox Church, much attention is paid to the revelation of Christ’s glory as uncreated light. This is fitting, as this element of the event and of the feast became critically important to later doctrinal disputes within the East and ultimately between East and West. There are, however, other important elements of the event and feast relating to the revelation of Jesus as not only Christ but as God which may be all too quickly passed over as a result of this emphasis. Certain liturgical elements of the feast and of scriptures telling of the event give clues to these other elements if they are followed through attentively. One of…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Why Orthodox Christians Can Love Tolkien and Other Imaginative Fiction
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The Whole Counsel Blog
Atonement for the Whole World
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First John 2:2 states that Christ has offered himself as an atoning sacrifice “not only for our sins but also for the whole world.” For most of Christian history, this verse has been used as a football in various theological disputes. First, it was used as a proof text against the Donatists who saw their churches in North Africa as the totality of the church of Christ. Second, it was debated in regard to the condemnation of apokatastasis or universalism. Beginning in the period of the Protestant Reformation, it became a key text in the debate surrounding the Calvinist doctrine of limited or particular atonement. While what St. John has to say to the Johannine community in 1 John may…
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
The Incarnation: Principle and Goal of History
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The Whole Counsel Blog
The Handwriting of Our Sins
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One verse cited often with regard to the crucifixion of Christ in the Orthodox liturgical tradition is Colossians 2:14. “When he canceled the handwriting in the decrees against us, which were opposed to us. And he has taken it from our midst, by nailing it to the cross.” This verse describes how, as the previous verse says, we who were dead in our transgressions were made alive by having those transgressions taken away. The language used here offers us yet another window through the scriptures to understand the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our sakes upon the cross. Though it may not be apparent in English translation, this language of the handwriting of a decree is part and parcel…
