The Orthodox Church has always taught that the background against which the scriptures and scriptural events are rightly understood is preserved within Holy Tradition.  Holy Tradition is the life of the Holy Spirit within the church, but how precisely this functions is often misunderstood.  Sometimes it is thought to be some sort of secret additional knowledge, beyond the scriptures or the public proclamation of the church passed down orally.  This sort of idea, however, is roundly condemned by the Fathers in their contest against Gnosticism.  What separates Christianity from Gnosticism, they argue, is that Christianity has always publicly proclaimed the same faith delivered once and for all to the saints.  A prime example of how tradition ‘works’ can be seen…

St. Stephen is remembered in the church as one of the first deacons chosen by the apostles (Acts 6:5) and the first Christian martyr following the resurrection and ascension of Christ (7:58-60).  The church has also, however, maintained and handed down a great deal more information about this important saint.  Like St. Paul, St. Stephen had been a student of the rabbi Gamaliel, a figure who appears briefly in the New Testament (5:34; 22:3), but becomes a massively important figure of authority in later Talmudic Judaism.  The Mishnah, in particular, is composed primarily of the statements and opinions of famed rabbis on particular topics of the Torah, and Gamaliel’s opinions are featured prominently.  While St. Paul’s level of rabbinical, as…

In the post which began the current series, the figure of the Devil and his fall from membership in God’s divine council was discussed.  Having served as a cherub or seraph, a guardian of God’s throne, he sought to supplant God in the lives of newly created human beings out of envy, resulting in his being cast down to Sheol to reign over the dead in a kingdom of dust and ashes in Genesis 3.  This figure, though clearly seen in the understanding of death and Christ’s victory over it in the New Testament and the liturgical tradition of the Orthodox Church, lacks many of the common features and characteristics of Satan.  He was not, per se, an archangel, certainly…

In the previous posts of the present series, the Devil and a group of fallen angels were discussed.  The former was cast down into Sheol, or Hades, to devour and rule over the dead.  The latter were confined in chains in the Abyss for their crimes until the end of the world.  In another previous post, the angelic beings to whom the nations were assigned at the tower of Babel, who later became corrupt and sought the worship of the nations they were to govern were described.  These beings did not fall as the others and remain in the heavenly places according to St. Paul (Eph 6:12), though they are judged at the resurrection of Christ (Ps 82) and their…

In a previous post, the giants of the Old Testament, who came into being through demonic sexual immorality, were discussed.  Only brief comments were made at that time about their angelic “parents”.  These angelic beings, however, play an important role in the unfolding of the Old Testament and in New Testament theology.  In another post, the three events of Genesis 1-11 which might be termed a ‘fall’ of humanity were discussed.  It was commonplace in the Fathers and other early Christian writers to speak about the sinful state of humanity remedied by Christ in terms of one of these three events, with the other two subordinated, but which event varied.  St. Irenaeus sees all three in terms of the sinful…

The figure of the Devil or Satan as a personal spiritual being appears at a few distinct points in the scriptures in which his origin and identity are described.  The Biblical picture of this entity, however, is very often distorted by later popular Christian literature and modern popular culture.  There is far more of Milton than of scripture in the average Christian of today’s understanding of who the Devil is, what his goals and purposes are, and how he came to be who he is today.  The various demons and devils of scripture, the subject of the next several posts, are often merged together or arranged into some kind of hierarchy, or more recently bureaucracy, in a way that is…

First Corinthians 15 is the chapter, out of St. Paul’s entire corpus, which most fully expresses the Apostle’s understanding of the resurrection of the dead.  The first half of the chapter discusses the importance of Christ’s resurrection and how it is inviolably linked to the resurrection not only of human persons, but of all things.  In the second half of the chapter, St. Paul describes, in so far as he can, what the resurrection of humanity and ultimately of the entire creation means.  The chapter closes with St. Paul reveling in a hymn of victory over death.  In the midst of this discussion, St. Paul gives a series of rhetorical examples as evidence of the centrality of the resurrection of…

In a previous post, the role of the angelic realm in liturgical worship was briefly discussed.  The primary place in which the lives of Orthodox Christians intersect dynamically the angelic realm of God’s heavenly council is within worship broadly and the Divine Liturgy in particular.  The reality of angelic presence and participation in the worship of the Holy Trinity is referenced continually in liturgical hymns and prayers as a means to awareness of this reality.  God’s divine council, including the angels and the saints in glory, participates in Christ’s reign over creation in both governance and in the public work (Gr. leitourgeia) of worship.  This takes places continuously in the unseen, heavenly realm and is joined by human persons in…

This blog has often, and will continue to, make reference to extra-Biblical literature.  The two most important categories of this literature are Second Temple Jewish literature and early Christian writings such as the Apostolic Fathers.  Second Temple Jewish literature reveals to us the religious world and mindset of the first century AD from which Christianity emerged.  It shows us the theological lens through which the apostles understood the revelation which came in the person of Jesus Christ.  The Apostolic Fathers, and the Fathers of the second and third centuries as well, in particular, show us the continuity with, and transformation of, Second Temple Judaism that came to constitute the Christian religion.  Not only is the New Testament rife with allusions…

As is the case with 4 Ezra, 4 Maccabees is a Biblical text that lies at the very edges of the Old Testament canon in the Orthodox Church.   In later Greek manuscripts, 4 Maccabees is included in an appendix.  In older Greek manuscripts no such distinction is made, though 4 Maccabees is often found at the end of these manuscripts rather than following 3 Maccabees, along with Psalm 151 and the Prayer of Manasseh, two liturgical fragments.  It is present in Old Georgian Old Testaments and was for a time, though no longer, in the Romanian Old Testament.  Due to their relegation to the ‘apocrypha’ in most English Bibles, 1-3 Maccabees are not well known to most English readers. …