The Whole Counsel Blog
Chosen to Bear Fruit
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Though it may at first seem counterintuitive, the most important Biblical text for understanding the Christian Gospel as St. Paul proclaims it is the book of Deuteronomy. The book of Deuteronomy sums up the Torah, the Pentateuch, in presenting the Prophet Moses’ great final sermon to the people of Israel before his death and their entrance into the land promised to their forefathers. It is, in condensed and pointed form, the covenant document granted by God to his people Israel. In the ancient world, the type of covenant document, ‘berith’ in Hebrew, which is represented in the Old Testament is a particular type of ancient suzerainty treaty. When a king conquered a new city or territory and took possession of…
The Whole Counsel Blog
The Election of Israel
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In last week’s post, the story of Jacob and Esau and the histories of Israel and Edom, the nations which took their names from the twins, were seen to lies in the background of St. Paul’s discussion of election in Romans 9-11. The Jewish people, which had been the primary recipient of God’s promises as a birthright, now found itself estranged, in large part, from those promises in favor of the recently redeemed Gentiles who already were coming to represent the great body of the Church. St. Paul elaborates on the fact that this pattern has happened before in the scriptures, the disastrous effects of allowing this transition to evolve into enmity, and most importantly the blessings that are promised…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Jacob I Have Loved, Esau I Have Hated
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The story of twin brothers Jacob and Esau, or Israel and Edom, represents a major portion of the patriarchal narratives in Genesis. St. Paul returns to this story in his Epistle to the Romans, chapters 9 through 11 in answering a particular situation in the life of the Roman church. This major passage, separated from its original context in the Epistle to the Romans, the New Testament, and the scriptures as a whole, as well as from its historical context, has become one of the primary bases for an entire stream of Western thought regarding election and its relationship to the salvation of the human person. In order to properly understand what St. Paul is teaching in the Epistle to…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
What We Own Is Sacred Because We Are Sacred
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Sunday of the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, October 14, 2018 Titus 3:8-15; Luke 8:5-15 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. One of the accusations that certain non-Orthodox Christians level against the Orthodox is that we worship idols. They say that when we bow before an icon or kiss it or…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Here There Be Giants
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In recent times, the rediscovery of the original ancient context of Genesis 6:1-4 has led to a fascination with the subject of the ‘Nephilim’, who are here said to be produced through sexual immorality involving angelic beings and human women. In some quarters, this has been developed into full-fledged conspiracy theories regarding these ‘Nephilim’ still existing in our world today. Those fascinated by crypto-archaeology produce doctored photos of what they hold to be gigantic human skeletons, the remains of these people. This near obsession has exploded as a counter to a re-reading of the Genesis and later texts, begun by St. Augustine, which reads these texts in a de-mythologized way, seeing all involved parties as human. The interpretation of these…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Genesis and "the Fall"
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The first eleven chapters of Genesis have long been seen as a literary unit which serves as a sort of prologue to the rest of the book of Genesis, the Torah or Pentateuch, and the whole of the scriptures. Within these chapters, we read of the creation of the world and of humanity, the expulsion from paradise, the descent of man, the flood of Noah, the descent of the nations, and the tower of Babel. Theologically, particularly in the Late Antique West, Genesis 3 and the expulsion from paradise became the site of major focus, defined as “the Fall” of man. Debate began as to what precisely this fall entailed and what it represented. It was taken primarily as a…
The Whole Counsel Blog
4 Ezra: A Biblical Book You've Probably Never Read
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In one of the earliest postings on this blog, the difficulty of defining the exact limits of the Old Testament within the many language traditions of the Orthodox Church was described. Though there is clear agreement on a certain set of books and their authority across all of Orthodox tradition, the exact list of books found in a published Orthodox Bible will largely be a function of the language tradition from which that Bible comes. Many of the books of the Old Testament which all of the local churches agree are authoritative are not read from publicly in our present liturgical life, which further complicates the issue of the canonicity of certain of those books. One such text is 4…
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
Sexuality and Gender: Response to "Orthodoxy in Dialogue" Open Letter
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On September 24, 2018, the “Orthodoxy in Dialogue” website published an open letter to the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America, calling upon them to make a radical revision of the sexual ethical teachings of the Orthodox Church. The following is a point-for-point response, arranged roughly according to topic, with relevant quotes from the OiD piece. Abortion…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Queen and Mother
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Recent posts have discussed the divine council of angelic beings which surround the throne of God, the way in which certain individuals in the Old Testament were exalted to join that council, and the way the saints in Christ become members of the divine council, sharing by grace in Christ’s rule over his whole creation. Within these themes, and the mediatory role of the saints and their patronage, the Theotokos, Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ, has a special role, as has been recognized within the Christian faith from the very beginning. The veneration of the Theotokos in the West developed in ways which ultimately produced Marian dogmas which the Orthodox Church does not recognize. In response to these developments,…
The Whole Counsel Blog
The Saints in Glory
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The word which we commonly read in English translation as ‘saint’ or ‘saints’, derived from the Latin ‘sanctus’, translates the Greek word ‘agios’ (plural ‘agiois’) which is seen constantly in the inscriptions of iconography. In the New Testament, this word is used to describe both the worshipping community of the church in its sojourn on earth and the ‘dead in Christ’ (cf. Acts 9:13, 32, 41, Rom 1:7, 12:13, 1 Cor 14:33, 2 Cor 9:12, Eph 2:19). This Greek term is actually the substantive form of the adjective ‘holy’, and could simply be translated ‘holy one’ or ‘holy ones’. The reason it has traditionally been translated as ‘saints’ is to indicate that by the time of the New Testament, the…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Humans in the Divine Council
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In last week’s post, God’s divine council, the angelic beings surrounding his throne with whom He shares graciously his governance of the heavens and the earth, was introduced. There are several ways in which human persons in the Old Testament encounter and interact with the divine council. These encounters and modes of interaction lay the groundwork for a transformed relationship in the New Covenant, which will be the subject of next week’s post. Simply put, every encounter with God the Father in the Old Testament is mediated either through God the Son, as was discussed in a previous series on this blog, or by angelic beings, as will be discussed here. Though these encounters are far from common, the most…
The Whole Counsel Blog
God's Divine Council
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In the scriptures, when the hosts of angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, virtues, principalities, powers, cherubim and seraphim are described, they are described using predominately one of two metaphors. The first of these has already been used here in the previous sentence, that of the ‘heavenly hosts’. This reference to the multitude of angelic beings forms one of the names given to the God of Israel in the Old Testament, Yahweh Sabaoth. Because of the similarity in English transliteration, this title is often confused with a reference to the Sabbath. It is not, however, the Hebrew words ‘shabat’. Rather, it is the plural substantive form of the verb ‘tsavah’. This is the verb that is used in Genesis 1, for example,…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
What if a heartbroken Catholic knocks on my church door?
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I have watched now over the past few weeks as each awful page is turned in the growing sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. It’s been bad for years now, but what’s come out just recently is looking even worse. I have been very hesitant to say much publicly on this, because it is so fraught with possible missteps. So forgive me…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Who Wrote the Bible and Why Does it Matter?
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The first question in this post’s title may seem an obvious area of discussion. There have been articles, books, and documentaries with the title ‘Who Wrote the Bible?’ In any modern commentary on a book of the Bible, a significant amount of space is devoted to discussing the authorship of that book. Introductions to the Old and New Testaments, the latter in particular, will devote a large portion of their text to various theories of authorship for different texts. Beyond just the identity of an author for the text, texts of the Old Testament are frequently split into various source documents with various authors then proposed for various portions or layers of the text. In the debates between liberal and…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Is the Book of Revelation Canonical in the Orthodox Church?
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To ask in the present day whether or not any book of the New Testament is truly canonical in the Orthodox Church may seem odd. While the history of the canonization process of the Old and New Testaments took place over several centuries and is neither neat nor tidy, it is an issue, particularly in the case of the New Testament, which has been settled for more than a millennium at this point. It is taken for granted that the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Protestants all share the same list of 27 canonical New Testament books. Delving into the history of the book of Revelation in particular, however, and the arguments for and against its canonicity, reveals…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Churching of Infants: Reflections on Liturgics in a Pan-Orthodox World
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Among my less-public duties is that I serve in the Department of Liturgics for the archdiocese in which I serve. I am not a liturgical scholar nor a translator. My job is mainly to help make sure that the English we use is the finest and most appropriate. I am, however, a liturgist in the sense of being a liturgical celebrant at the holy…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Christ in the Apocalypse
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The book of Revelation takes its name from the first verse, identifying the text as ‘the Revelation (Apokalypsis) of Jesus Christ’. This is important to understanding the text. It is not the revelation of ‘end time’ events in the distant future. It is not the revelation of esoteric spiritual secrets about the cosmos. It is a revelation of who Jesus Christ truly is. The Revelation received by St. John is a communication from Christ to seven churches in Asia Minor, who are facing persecution, schism, compromise, and heresy. In answer to all of these difficulties faced by his people, Revelation proclaims the divine identity of Christ, who he is, what he has done, and what he shortly will do when…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Christ in the General Epistles
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The ‘general’ or ‘catholic’ epistles are a group of texts within the New Testament consisting of the epistles of James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, and 3 John, and Jude. These are a group of texts which are too often neglected for several reasons. They are relatively short texts, which means though they are part of the Orthodox lectionary, they tend to be moved through very quickly, and mostly on weekdays in the regular lectionary cycle. While the Pauline epistles share a common background and theological purpose, the general epistles are extremely eclectic. James, for example, has little in common with the others. Based on biographical information in the Acts of the Apostles and his own biographical comments in…
The Whole Counsel Blog
St. Paul the Mystic
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As a bridge between the discussion of Christ in St. Paul’s epistles and Christ in the General Epistles, it is important to discuss a second factor in St. Paul’s understanding of Christ as God. This concerns the oft-neglected area of St. Paul’s own personal practices of prayer and piety, and how this relates to both his vision of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, in his call to be an apostle, and to his own direct knowledge of Christ as God. While the previous post discussed St. Paul’s identification of the second hypostasis of Israel’s God as the person of Jesus Christ based on Second Temple Jewish tradition, this one will focus on the epistemological issue of how…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Christ in St. Paul's Epistles
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The Christology presented in the letters of St. Paul is particularly important to an understanding of the viewpoint of the New Testament as a whole, in that St. Paul’s epistles are the earliest documents, the first written, that discuss who Christ is. Though obviously these letters were written after the events described in the gospels and, in most cases, the events described in the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul’s written exhortations to the nascent Christian communities which he had established precede the setting down of the gospel accounts in writing. If there was indeed some sort of ‘development’ of the understanding or the idea of Christ, from a ‘lower’ to a ‘higher’ Christology, one would expect to find in…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Christ in the Gospels
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Several weeks ago, a series of articles discussed how Christ can be seen, and was understood within Second Temple Judaism in the Old Testament. A companion series discussing how Christ is seen in the New Testament may seem counter-intuitive due to its apparently obvious nature. This is particularly true of Christ in the gospels, which are quite obviously entirely about our Lord Jesus Christ. However, the core of that previous series was developing the way in which Second Temple Judaism had come, through careful attention to the text of the Hebrew Bible, to see God as a godhead of two or more persons even before the incarnation of Christ. This then provided those to whom Christ came with the means…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
"Blessing": Does It Actually Mean Anything?
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Sixth Sunday after Pentecost / Sixth Sunday of Matthew, July 8, 2018 Romans 12:6-14; Matthew 9:1-8 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Today I would like to speak about blessing and cursing. Our epistle reading from Romans 12 ends with this verse: “Bless those who persecute you; bless, and do not curse”…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Shepherds of Israel
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There is a common misunderstanding of the origins of clerical orders within the Church. It is argued that the Christians of the apostolic era, including the apostles themselves, believed that Christ would certainly return within their own lifetime. It is only when that clearly did not occur, when the apostles, or at least most of them, had died, that the concept of the church came into being, as well as varied understandings, which evolved over time, as to how the newly constituted church ought be governed. It is thought that these structures were deeply influenced by the prevailing culture at the time, most especially Roman culture, as the church, by this time, was primarily Gentile. This narrative has been put…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
No Love? No Church. No Christianity.
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Ss. Cosmas & Damian of Rome / Fifth Sunday of Matthew, July 1, 2018 1 Corinthians 12:27-13:8; Matthew 8:28-9:1 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. What is love? If you grew up when I did, you probably now have that 1993 Haddaway song in your head. But if you don’t know what…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Being and Doing: On Rebellion
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The relationship between the truths of the Christian faith, and the Christian way of life, has fallen into great disrepair in modern times. At its core, the Protestant Reformation was focused on this relationship. In the contemporary world, our idea of faith itself has become anemic. One is a Christian if they believe that certain propositions are true. This reduces the last judgment to a true/false test, in which correct answers gain one eternal life. This misunderstanding then generates a whole series of debates regarding exactly which propositions, and how many, are absolutely required for salvation, or to be a Christian, and which ones and how many can be held in disagreement. In those areas where it has been decided…
Nearly Orthodox
Waking Anxious, Underwater
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Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Phil 4:6-7 I woke up feeling anxious. It happens like this sometimes. I go to bed feeling fine. I sleep well. I might even stumble around after waking for a few minutes,…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Man as the Image of God in Reverse
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That human persons are created in the image of God is explicit from the first pages of the scriptures (Gen 1:27). As a concept, removed from its particular purpose in the Genesis narrative, this fact has become the subject of a seemingly endless series of speculations as to exactly what this means. In contemporary theology, this most often takes the form of seeking to identify ‘the image of God’ in man with some characteristic or characteristics of human person. So it is proposed that rationality, or language, or freedom, for example, are the substantial meaning of God’s image. All of these speculations, and this approach as a whole, have severe difficulties. On one hand, as we advance in our knowledge…
