Many converted to Orthodoxy from Western confessions. Some may wonder what of their past faith needs to be rethought and what they should retain. The good news is Orthodox engagement with nearly all contemporary Western teachings and trends can be found in this period.
Christianity emerges as a system of interacting with understanding the world, described in teachings and lived by the actual human persons of every era. This way of thinking and seeing has been bred into the bones of every person born in the West for centuries, though today it may go unnoticed like the air which we breathe.
For the Christian, the union of our nature with Christ in His one Person, even that deified human nature that we receive in the Eucharist, unites us at this present moment with that pinnacle of history which is the Incarnation, and by it we are tied to our fathers and mothers of the old covenant.
The scriptures call us, rather than attempting to reframe the scriptures and tradition of the church within the context of the things which we as modern people "now know," to reframe our own understanding of our lives, our personal histories, and the world as we encounter it in terms of the fullness of God's creation and the reality of Jesus Christ himself.
It is commonplace for many modern Christians, even Orthodox Christians, to consider St. Constantine a problematic figure. Even the fact that he is considered a saint within the Orthodox Church is seen as difficult. Obviously, the end of Christian persecution by the Roman Empire was a great benefit to the Church and to the Christians of the day. But it is not…
Dylan Pahman [Note: A version of this review was published in The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 88, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 184-187. Published here with permission.] ORTHODOX READINGS OF AQUINAS. By Marcus Plested. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. 276. $99.00 Hard Cover, ISBN: 978-0-19-965065-1. The encounter between the works of Thomas Aquinas and the Orthodox Church is often told in a…
Relevant to several recent postings here on same-sex marriage is this May 2012 piece from the Roads From Emmaus weblog. It is mainly a clearinghouse of links to other resources on the position of same-sex marriage in the history of Christianity. It has been slightly edited for this publication. There have been several postings online in the past few days of various…
It seems that nearly half of Christians in America think that Jesus is coming back by the time we could be swearing in an occupant for the 67th term for a President of the United States: (Pew Forum) According to a 2010 Pew Research Center survey, roughly half (48%) of Christians in the U.S. say they believe that Christ will definitely (27%)…
The following guest piece by Joel J. Miller originally ran under the title “Why apostolic tradition matters, part 2.” It is republished here with permission. It seems that every time a supposedly “lost gospel” is unearthed the media hypes it as if it were the Second Coming. Invariably, these texts contradict the received understanding of the church. The most recent example is…
St. John Cassian, in his 75 year life lived at the turn of the fifth century, interacted with every major Christian figure of the Patristic Age, founded monasticism in the West, laid the theological foundation for the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’, wrote the papal brief for the position of the Roman See at the Third Ecumenical Council, and wrote the most read work…
