“Orthodoxy requires all our faculties, our reason, our imagination, our bodily habits, our affections. Straight thinking is inconsistent with crooked lives. Faith without works is dead; stories without dragons are boring; worship is a matter of sound doctrine and well-cooked meat on the grill; and a god chained to earth, however noble the portrayal, is …
Fruit In Its Season
“A Christian civilization is certainly not a perfect civilization, but it is a civilization that accepts the Christian way of life as normal and frames its institutions as the organs of a Christian order. Such a civilization actually existed for a thousand years more or less. It was a living and growing organism—a great tree …
Becoming Hindu In Beverly Hills
I recently heard a very nice gentleman give his testimony about his pilgrimage from various forms of evangelical Protestantism to Eastern Orthodoxy. He was obviously sincere, intelligent, well-read, and spiritually hungry for God, but I was really concerned about the central hinge in his argument. Before getting to that, I am listing this post under …
For the Small Stuff
I am on the road this Lord’s Day, and will be preaching at Christ Church in Cary. At home in Christ Church, the pulpit will be filled by Francis Foucachon. Thus, as it turns out, I am not responsible for the exhortation in the call to worship this morning, or for the homily that accompanies …
Reverence and Godly Awe
As we worship God we must remember the glory of covenant which enables us to worship Him. Too many Christians regard the New Covenant as God “dumbing down” His requirements. The Old Testament represents graduate school worship, and the New Testament somehows sends us all back for some training in the remedial basics. This thinking …
The Scarecrow’s Hat
One of the regular charges leveled against Auburn Avenue types is that we are paving the way for our folks to go over to Rome, or, mayhap to the other church, farther to the east, that has apostolic credentials going all the way back. Unless you count the Copts. And the Armenian Orthodox. Bunch of …
Traveling Shoes
I woke up in Idaho and will be going to sleep (shortly) in North Carolina. Airplanes are really amazing when you think about it. I am here for a conference sponsored by Christ Church in Cary, NC, and am really looking forward to it. The info on the conference can be found on their web …
Scholarship Bores Down
The Loss of True Confession
“While we deplore the fracturing of life, its robberies and rapes, its abuses and cruelties, its assaults and catastrophes, we can no longer measure its darkness in the presence of God. All we can do is weep. We cannot make confession. There is no one to whom to confess. We cannot bring our sin before …
Prisoner or Professor?
“Conscience, then, is more like the moaning of a prisoner in his cell than the discourse of a professor at his lectern. It is an alarm signal whose noise can be turned down but not off. It is our interior reality, which is inexplicable in the absence of God and inconsolable apart from his grace.” …