By Fr. Stephen Freeman, February 9, 2015 If Christian morality is not a legal or forensic matter, how are we to think about moral behavior? Does the word have no use for Orthodox Christians? What do we think about when we confess our sins? If morality is ontological – a matter of being – what does that look like? To say that morality is ontological, a matter of our being, is to confess that the commandments of God are
Turning Back (Part II) ‘The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Master, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such. What do you say about her?”… But Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him,
By Aristotle Papanikolaou, PhD What happened on the day of our Lord’s Transfiguration? On this day, Jesus took with him three disciples, Peter, John and James, three of the better-known disciples. He took them to a ‘high’ mountain, the Bible tells us (Mt 17:1-9; Mk 9:2-8; Lk 9:28-36). They are at the ‘high’ mountain, which is often a place of revelation in the Bible, and at this mountain Jesus is transfigured. St. Matthew tells us,
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, January 17, 2015 How is an allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures possible? In the fourth chapter of Galatians, St. Paul invokes the story of Abraham and his two sons, one born of a bondwoman (Hagar) and the other of a freewoman (Sarah). As he prepares to draw a lesson from the story he says of it: “These things are an allegory.” He then proceeds to draw a very authoritative (for him)
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, November 12, 2014 There are things that children understand instinctively. And the things that children know and understand are worth consideration. They have much to teach us. Among the most natural things children do is play. Depending on how you define play, it is among the first activities in which we engage. It comes to dominate the lives of children and is the hallmark of their existence. Play is what children do. It
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 30, 2016 The Swedish Lutheran theologian, Gustav Aulen, publish a seminal work on types of atonement theory in 1930 (Christus Victor). Though time and critique have suggested many subtler treatments of the question, no one has really improved on his insight. Especially valuable was description of the “Classic View” of the atonement. This imagery, very dominant in the writings of the early Fathers and in the liturgical life of the
You Cannot Live with Feet Only Those who are pursuing the same objective, if they live together, will find many advantages in this sharing of their life. In the first place, none of us is self-sufficient when it is a question of material needs. We all need one another to procure the necessities of life. The foot, for example, is capable of doing certain things on its own. If the absurd could happen and it
By Fr. George Morelli [1] “And the Spirit, in the form of a dove, confirmed the truthfulness of His word. O Christ our God, who hast revealed Thyself and hast enlightened the world, glory to Thee!” “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. (Mt 9:12) The Feast of the Theophany of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ brings greater understanding of God’s encounter with His Chosen
By Father Lawrence Farley Saint Stephen is usually hailed as the first Christian martyr, but he is more than that. His death was also a boundary, and the blood which flowed from his body as the stones hit him became a river, one which separated the faith of the Christians from the religion of Judaism. For unlike the martyrs who followed him, Stephen was not killed by the pagan Romans, executed under a law which
By Father Stephen Freeman As a child of the South, accustomed to the tones and the tales of my region, I was well aware of the “fires of hell”. Roadside signs proclaimed the eternal destiny of those who were not saved. I have discovered in later years, that many adult Christians remain committed to the most literal possible version of the fires of hell and will argue as though heaven itself depended on the burning
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