Category: Mystical Theology
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Do We Want to Know God?
It was remarked briefly in a recent comment that “we cannot know God completely,” and that we should be satisfied with the mysteries of the faith and trust the teaching of the Church (I apologize for using the writer’s honest statement as the point of departure for this post). However, this short quote from St. Silouan:…
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The Importance of Being Ignorant
I remember a talk given by Fr. Thomas Hopko last year in Dallas. In the course of some side remarks, he said that his son, Fr. John Hopko, had been asked what his dad was doing now that he was retired and no longer Dean of St. Vladimir’s. As reported by Fr. Tom, young Fr.…
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Solidarity and Salvation
Who is God? And what is man? What is wrong with man such that he needs to be “saved?” Is there more than one way of explaining this? The issue of salvation, of how man is brought back into a proper relationship with God, has been the primary concern of Christianity since its very inception.…
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When Things Are Not As They Seem
It is said that when some of the natives of the South Seas first saw Captain Cook’s ships approaching, they saw them as clouds. There was no category in their world for “ships,” thus the Captain and his crew came in “clouds.” I’ve have always wondered about the connection between how we name things in…
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‘Til Christ Be Formed in You
Writing to the Galatians, St. Paul utters the cry of a spiritual father: My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you…(Galatians 4:19) Though, interestingly, the imagery he uses is that of a mother and her children… But it is a groaning parents have for their own children…
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Zizioulas and the Church that is Communion
One of the more profound writers and thinkers in the Orthodox Church today has to be Metropolitan John Zizioulas – who has taught for years in Scotland and England – and is known to be one of the closest theologians to His Holiness, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. Zizioulas [as he is commonly referred to without…
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The Church of Many Rooms
In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? (John 14:2). I have shared before about a dream I once had of a Church in which there were many rooms. It was an old, wooden Orthodox Church, packed…
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Being Saved This Day in the Church
I thought I would bring the discussion down from the heady heights of theology and into the place where I spend my time and the bulk of my life. Being saved in the Church is a very day-to-day and moment-to-moment thing. Getting started: Do I cross myself before I get out of bed. It sure…
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The Church of the Second Storey (And Why There Isn’t Really One)
For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and…
“The Self”. A phrase that has many avenues to its realization. Each of them of which I am aware has…