“Life in Christ”

In our civilization, so rich in knowledge and in power, we can no longer offer any reply to the enigma of death. We want only to forget death. Yet it meets us again and again in the form of hatred, oppression, separation,...

Of the fifteen Old Testament passages read in Orthodox practice at the vesperal Divine Liturgy of Holy Saturday, the fourth consists of the entire, brief book of Jonah. Although the book is numbered among the “Minor...

A professor at Sarah Lawrence College long made it a practice to bring some of her students to St Vladimir’s Seminary, to introduce them to Orthodox worship. It was always a welcome sight to see her and the group of young...

Why indeed do Orthodox Christians still fast? For most people, life is challenging enough without adding self-imposed limits on what we eat, drink and do on certain days of the week and during long periods of the Church...

Attitudes of submission, respect, awe, wonder. These are basic qualities of the emotion we know as “reverence.” Humble deference and veneration also have a part in reverence, as do tenderness and love. Reverence is such a...

Those who hold that the only sure ground of knowledge is scientific inquiry and rational analysis actually represent not so much science as the heresy of “scientism,” a purely materialistic view of reality. Yet science...

The names Dennett, Dawkins and Harris have recently become well-known in both atheistic and fundamentalist circles. ^[1]Their writings and interview musings have elicited a heated response, especially from people who are...

As much as any other Christian feast, the significance of Christ’s Nativity comes to expression by means of “antinomies.” These are paradoxical affirmations that speak of the ineffable mystery of the Incarnation by...

The “holy war” we associate today with militant Islam was practiced no less relentlessly by ancient Israelites. In the days of Samuel and Saul, it often meant destroying an enemy or even an entire people, and to offer the...

For over a century biblical scholars have debated whether the Old and New Testaments contain “mythical” elements. The answer depends on how we define “myth,” and here there is very little agreement. The Brothers Grimm held...