Revised & Expanded O&H on Pre-Order + New Podcast in the Works

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Hello, blog readers and email list subscribers! I just wanted to give you a couple quick updates in case you hadn’t yet heard: — The revised, expanded edition of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Finding the Way to Christ in a Complicated Religious Landscape is now available for pre-order. Wondering what’s new? Read all about that here. Click here to place your order and…

Review of ‘How Our Departed Ones Live’ by Monk Mitrophan

· Guest Author
HOW OUR DEPARTED ONES LIVE: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH. By Monk Mitrophan. Translated, Archpriest John R. Shaw. Jordanville: Holy Trinity Publications, 2015. 452 pps. ISBN-10: 088465401X The Wall Street Journal  ran a headlining piece on March 31, 2011 entitled, “The Last Laugh,” that anecdotally reported on a sea change in the conduct of funerals in the United States in which “families…

Why I Cannot Be a Post-Evangelical, Post-Denominational, etc., Christian

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
One of the things I’ve noticed in recent years is the growth of all kinds of “Post-_______” Christianity. By this I mean varieties of Christianity that are all generally within the Evangelical Protestant genre yet explicitly do not embrace any particular tradition. Typically, what this looks like is something recognizably Evangelical yet with a potpourri of different doctrinal, worship and pastoral emphases…

Two Schools: What the Council of Crete Means for the Future of Orthodox Theology

· Seraphim Danckaert
Various media reports and editorials have described the controversies before, during, and after the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, recently held during Pentecost on the island of Crete. Some have concluded that the Council’s difficulties were the result of geopolitics, and can therefore be explained away as little more than an ecclesial version of the larger political and cultural…

Recovering a Full Theological Vision of the Ascension

· Hieromonk Herman (Majkrzak)
And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. —John 12:32 Ascension Day is possibly the most forgotten of the great feasts of the Lord. Why? In part because, unlike all the other feasts of the same rank, it can never fall on a Saturday or Sunday. Forty days after Pascha is always a Thursday,…

Are Mormons Developing Toward Greater Orthodoxy?

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Today I ran across this fascinating piece over at First Things by Richard J. Mouw: “Mormons Approaching Orthodoxy” (“Orthodoxy” here is what we might call “small-O orthodoxy”). In this, Mouw, the former president of Fuller Theological Seminary, makes observations about his relationship with Mormons that resulted from his participation in years of Evangelical-Mormon dialogue, which he uses to interpret statements made by…

Vladimir Lossky on Ecumenical Dialogue

· Dylan Pahman
I recently came across Paul Ladouceur’s translation of an article by Vladimir Lossky on “The Doctrine of Grace in the Orthodox Church,” published in the St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 58, no. 1 (2014). The whole article contains matters of interest to readers here, but I’d just like to highlight its inclusion of a rare statement by Lossky on his understanding of ecumenical…

Follow-up from Nicholas Marinides on Non-Chalcedonian Christology

· Guest Author
Editorial introduction: Here is a follow-up response from Dr. Nicholas Marinides commenting on the reply he received from Coptic author Mina Soliman on his piece from earlier this week, “Chalcedonian Orthodoxy and Non-Chalcedonian Heterodoxy.” For the full context, you’ll want to take a look at the previous posts: Read Dr. Marinides’s initial post. Read Mina Solimon’s response. Thanks Mina, for taking the…

Response to Nicholas Marinides on Non-Chalcedonian Christology

· Guest Author
We’ve received a note regarding a more thorough response from a Coptic writer, Mina Soliman, regarding Nicholas Marinides’s recent post, “Chalcedonian Orthodoxy and Non-Chalcedonian Heterodoxy.” Mina is a lector (reader) of the Coptic Orthodox Archdiocese of North America. Here are some excerpts from his piece: You begin with the ecclesiological issues. One is left in a quandary over two traditions, split for…

Early Pentecostal Speaking in Tongues was About Foreign Languages

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The following two excerpts are from the revised text of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Finding the Way to Christ in a Complicated Religious Landscape, which is due for publication by Ancient Faith Publishing in December 2016 (see the full Table of Contents here). The chapter on Pentecostalism from which these sections are drawn is completely new for this edition. The “Parham” mentioned in…