Nov 10, 2009

One of the common complaints against traditional evangelicalism is that it has been held captive by a distinctly Western approach to rationality. The central target of this complaint is the “Enlightenment,” with its emphasis on reason to the detriment of revelation.

Oct 27, 2009

Every year, on Hallowe’en, I sit on the front porch of my house with a bowl of candy, a box of beeswax candles, and a large icon for the Feast of All Saints. Every child who comes to the house gets a piece of candy, and may also light a candle and place it before the icon.

Sep 25, 2009

The great power and theological depth of the Scripture is found within these points of tension, and again within the tension between our lives today and the various parts of this ancient collection of books. The Bible is like a stringed instrument in this respect. It only works because of great tension. Stop trying to take the tension out of the Bible. If you take away the tension, smoothing over and dumbing down and making everything instructions and promises, all you get is a poorly tuned instrument and really bad music.

Aug 20, 2009

I take it for granted that when we talk about God we are not talking about a god, a large and powerful member of the genus ‘gods’ who just happens to be the only one. We are talking, in the wake of the great Hebrew breakthrough into monotheism in the post-exilic period, of God who is not one of the gods.

Jul 28, 2009

There is a common Western tendency to criticize common Western tendencies. I’ve seen Christians eager to criticize Western tendencies. I’ve also seen liberals who were not Christian criticize Western tendencies. Criticizing “Western tendencies” is a Western thing to do.

Apr 15, 2009

Orthodox theology seemed to me so obviously more adequate, natural, and just… true. There were other things that I didn’t understand, didn’t like, or was repelled by, but one thing that I understood was that these people knew about prayer. They knew about the connection between the mind and the body. Those were enough to interest me. I still had an attract/repel relationship with the Church. I had to turn inside out in order to enter the Church…

Mar 25, 2009

One of the most frightening phrases in the English language is: “It’s nothing personal.” It almost always precedes something bad. For someone to tell me that what they are about to do is not personal is already a confession of sin. In the life of the Eastern Church few words could be more important. Oddly there is not a single definition for the term, and yet there is agreement as to its importance. The Elder Sophrony stressed what he called the “cardinal importance of the personal dimension in being.” More…

Jan 26, 2009

The point that apocalyptic makes is not only that people who wear crowns and who claim to foster justice by the swords are not as strong as they think… It is that people who bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe. One does not come to that belief by reducing social process to mechanical and statistical models, nor by winning some of...

Oct 7, 2008

"Mankind is more than the janitor of planet Earth," writes Brendan O’Neill. "I am avowedly atheist. But listening to the bishops' drab, eco-pious Christmas sermons, I couldn’t help thinking: ‘Bring back God!’"

Aug 7, 2008

Pietism made its appearance as a distinct historical movement within Protestantism, at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, around 1690-1730. 1 Its aim was to stress "practical piety," as distinct from the polemical dogmatic theology to which the Reformation had initially given a certain priority. Under different forms and in various "movements," it has not ceased to influence Protestantism, and indeed also the spiritual life of other churches, to this day...