Journey Into Divine Intimacy

Recently, someone ask me whether I thought Orthodoxy was a grace-filled religion. What prompted this was that she thought the fact that we pray for the dead implied that God's grace was somehow insufficient for the dead and thus they needed our prayers. I realized that her and my understanding of God's grace might have some differences, so I wants to say a few words about this. Ephesians 1:3-4 says: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. So God has all these spiritual blessings in the heavenly places that He wants to give us, and He wants to give them to us "in Christ". This "in Christ" is VERY significant. Paul over and over in his letters says that the Church is the "body of Christ": For the husband is the head of the wife eve...

Before I was received into the Orthodox Catholic Church, I did not spend much time thinking about Mary, the Mother of God. A lot has changed since then. I will share a little how my thinking about her has changed. I divide these contemplations into two categories: dogma (non-negotiable beliefs) and theologoumena (theological opinions). The Dogmas As a pious Orthodox, I have two dogmatic beliefs about Mary: 1) that it is appropriate to venerate her with the title Theotokos, or "Mother of God" and 2) that she retained her virginity for her whole life. These two dogma come from the proceedings of two different ecumenical councils. If anyone will not confess that the Emmanuel is very God, and that therefore the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God (Θεοτόκος), inasmuch as in the flesh she bore the Word of God made flesh [as it is written, “The Word was made flesh”] let him be anathema. ( Third Ecumenical Council ) If anyone shall not confess that the Word of God has two nativ...

During Holy Week, we have a lot of public reading of Scripture. For example, over the course of the morning, afternoon, and evening services yesterday on Great and Holy Friday, all of these were read out loud: http://oca.org/readings/daily/2014/04/18 Right after Jesus died, "the tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many." (Matt 27:52-53, ESV). What struck me as I was listening to this passage was the order of events. This remarkable occurrence happened not at the point of Jesus' resurrection, but at the point of His death. In other words, as soon as Jesus died, He descended into Hades and began liberating the captives. And as a sign of this reality, some saints were even anticipatorily raised from the dead! The Church unpacks this mysterious undertaking in many places in her Holy Tradition. First, in a few passages from he...

I was reminded today of my two favorite prayers, one a morning prayer and the other a prayer before going to bed. The reason they are close to my heart is that they were helpful in my transition from Confessional Calvinism to Orthodoxy. I always have been acutely aware of my brokenness and my dire need for God's mercy. Many years ago, this is what attracted me to Confessional Calvinism. It provided a model (TULIP) for explaining the data in my experience (namely, total depravity) and for providing foundation of hope (namely, perseverance of the saints). When I was on the threshold of Orthodoxy, renouncing TULIP was actually much harder for me than accepting the Orthodox veneration of the Theotokos. I had lingering suspicions about this emphasis on free will in Orthodoxy because it threatened what I perceived was the only hope of my salvation: the sovereign grace of God. However, when I ran across these two prayers--both prescribed to be prayed every day--my heart was finally set ...