“Life in Christ”

Someone asked the other day how we should read Genesis 2-3, the story of Adam and Eve. Behind his question lay troubled concern over the apparent conflict between science and Scripture. “If we take the biblical account seriously,” he concluded, “then we have to reject evolutionary theory altogether and align ourselves with those ‘creationists’ who…

A special example of Advance Directives (AD) for end-of-life care is a document concerning the withholding or withdrawing of life support systems. A typical declaration begins with the person’s name, followed by a request such as the following: “If my medical condition is deemed ‘terminal’ [optional addition: or I am determined to be permanently…

It’s particularly difficult in American culture to talk about death and the dying process. Yet sooner or later, most of us will have to make decisions concerning the end-of-life care we want for ourselves or for those close to us. It may be that we will die suddenly, in a car accident or of a heart attack. Today, however, increasing numbers of us…

A Roman Catholic friend (and a good theologian) recently asked me whether the Greek Fathers of the Church understand the term “righteousness” in a forensic sense. He was referring to a Protestant doctrine that holds that God does not “make” us righteous; He “declares” or “counts” us righteous. That is, God imputes righteousness to us, while we…

In the previous column, we stressed the point that God does not “punish” us for our sinfulness. If He allows us to know pain and suffering, it should not be construed as punishment meted out in vengeful anger. Because God in His very essence is Love, any suffering we may know or any penance we may be called to exercise is to be understood as a…

Sometimes priests come away from hearing confessions with a sense of profound sadness. That sadness is often due to the realization that we have allowed our faithful to acquire and live with images of God that are woefully distorted, images that seem to have little to do with the One who reveals Himself in Scripture and the Church’s worship. This is…

Yesterday’s local paper relegated the brutal war in Afghanistan and Iraq to page eight and didn’t even mention that California is in imminent danger of breaking off at the San Andreas Fault and floating out into the Pacific. The lead article on page one read “Episcopalians ‘regret’ gay rift.” This was conjoined with another piece, titled “Trinity by…

by John Whitehead

There are some things so evil that, even in a world filled with pain and suffering, it is almost incomprehensible that they exist in a so-called civilized society. What’s more, such evils should be opposed by any and every person who claims to be a champion of human rights. Partial-birth abortion is one such evil. Now the question…

Tuesday after Western Easter, six p.m. in the Paris underground. People packed in so tight I can lift both feet off the floor and not fall. Commuters back to their usual grind of “métro-boulot-dodo”: the smelly subway, the boring job, then home for a little sleep before it starts all over again too early the next morning. We arrive at Châtelet, a…

Times of trial and testing can make us doubt a great many things. When they occur within the Church, they can very easily obscure reality, skew our perspective, and in the worst cases, push us to the point where we abandon faith.

A conflict arises among members of the parish that the priest can’t begin to deal with adequately, and the situation…

It is around eleven p.m. on the Saturday night of Holy Pascha: “Easter” in Orthodox tradition. The faithful gather quietly in the darkened church, while a reader chants passages from the Book of Acts. Shortly before midnight the priest pronounces the blessing to begin the brief office of Nocturnes. At the prescribed moment, he exits the altar for…

A certain mentality current in the middle of the last century lingers on in many quarters today. It is the notion that Christianity, as we know and celebrate it in the Church, is attributable not to Jesus, but to the Apostle Paul.

In the mid-twentieth century, German Lutheran theology popularized a radical distinction between “the Jesus of history”…

The anaphora, or Eucharistic prayer, of the Liturgy of Saint Basil contains a petition that has always struck me. As the choir sings the Hymn to the Theotokos, “All of creation rejoices in you,” the priest offers a long series of intercessions for the saints, the living and departed, and those who bring gifts and offerings for the service of…

The Roman Catholic Church recently announced that it is closing the doors on “limbo.” For important theological reasons, this is a good thing. Yet it gives us cause to reflect a little on our own understanding of the state of existence after death and on the development of theology within the Church.

Developed by medieval Latin theologians, limbo…

Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, a pillar of the Orthodox Church in Western Europe, recently passed away at the tender age of 98. I last saw her in October, following the Divine Liturgy we celebrated in “The Crypt,” the parish of the Holy Trinity, located in the Russian Orthodox cathedral on the rue Daru, in Paris. Elisabeth came up to venerate the cross I…

If “hell is other people,” as Sartre concluded, then maybe heaven is too.

Every once in a while we meet someone who leaves an indelible and transforming mark on us. They can be longtime friends, casual acquaintances, or people who cross our path one time only. They can leave us with good or bad memories, yet the effect they have on us is profound,…

With the so-called “natural disasters” we have faced this past year, from the tsunami in Southeast Asia to recent tornados in the American Midwest—in addition to Katrina, Rita and the devastating earthquake in Pakistan—it is only reasonable to ask whether we are alone in our suffering and anguish, or if God Himself participates in it.

During…

Thanksgiving is upon us in a few days and already we’re in the midst of the “Christmas Season.” Every year the festivities of rampant commercialism and cheap parodies of Nativity begin a little earlier. Soon we’ll be hanging out stockings as we await the Parousia of the Easter Bunny.

This brings me back to the only real wellspring of sanity in this…

At rare and privileged moments we find ourselves overcome by a burning desire for God. Something from beyond presses us to venture into a mystery that both reveals and conceals God’s very being. That Something or Someone leads us on a sacred quest that attains its end not by reason, but by way of the heart. Consequently, the language we use to…

Anyone who reads the New Testament carefully notices the striking differences between the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) and the Gospel of John. If the first three are termed “synoptic,” it is because there are close similarities between them that suggest that they represent a stream of tradition very different from the one that lies…