No Other Foundation

Recently I listened to a podcast in which Larry Chapp (a universalist Roman Catholic) interviewed Dr. David Bentley Hart. In the course of the interview Dr. Hart asserted that, unlike Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy does not have an official and authoritative Magisterium. By this he meant that Orthodoxy possesses no institutional organ (such as the papacy and the episcopate dependent upon it) that can routinely and authoritatively declare what is or is not the official teaching of the Church when consulted.

Everyone presumably acknowledges that there is nothing wrong with children dressing up as fairies, Disney characters, Marvel superheroes, and (my own favourite when I was a child) black cats in order to go door to door with their friends after dark to collect candy. The argument against Halloween is that it also glorifies violence, gore, and death, so that it is unsuitable for Christians to participate in Halloween. Collecting candy is fine; it is the frightening stuff that comes afterward that is the problem. Halloween trades in things like graveyards and corpses and ugly witches on broomsticks and bats and cobwebs and Frankenstein monsters. So, the question arises: why do people delight in such scary stuff?

Everyone presumably acknowledges that there is nothing wrong with children dressing up as fairies, Disney characters, Marvel superheroes, and (my own favourite when I was a child) black cats in order to go door to door with their friends after dark to collect candy. The argument against Halloween is that it also glorifies violence, gore, and death, so that it is unsuitable for Christians to participate in Halloween. Collecting candy is fine; it is the frightening stuff that comes afterward that is the problem. Halloween trades in things like graveyards and corpses and ugly witches on broomsticks and bats and cobwebs and Frankenstein monsters. So, the question arises: why do people delight in such scary stuff?

In 1956 an American game show debuted called “To Tell the Truth”. Each round of the game introduced three people all claiming to be the same person, and a team of panelists would ask them questions. Those pretending to be the real (usually famous) person would make up answers, while the real person would answer truthfully. The inquiring panelists would then guess which was the real person. The host of the show would conclude by saying, “Will the real (name) please stand up?” and he or she would then stand up thereby revealing their identity and the accuracy of the panelists’ guesses.

In 1956 an American game show debuted called “To Tell the Truth”. Each round of the game introduced three people all claiming to be the same person, and a team of panelists would ask them questions. Those pretending to be the real (usually famous) person would make up answers, while the real person would answer truthfully. The inquiring panelists would then guess which was the real person. The host of the show would conclude by saying, “Will the real (name) please stand up?” and he or she would then stand up thereby revealing their identity and the accuracy of the panelists’ guesses.

Those familiar with old-time Pentecostalist liturgy will identify the title of this piece as a part of that liturgy. Not, of course, that tongue-speaking Pentecostalists of the old school would admit to having liturgy. Liturgy, for them, is what the Catholics have (along with their step-children, the Anglicans) because they do not have God or the Holy Spirit. Liturgy is usually described by them as “dead liturgy” because the people using the liturgical book are spiritually dead and need such substitutes for true Spirit-led worship.

Those familiar with old-time Pentecostalist liturgy will identify the title of this piece as a part of that liturgy. Not, of course, that tongue-speaking Pentecostalists of the old school would admit to having liturgy. Liturgy, for them, is what the Catholics have (along with their step-children, the Anglicans) because they do not have God or the Holy Spirit. Liturgy is usually described by them as “dead liturgy” because the people using the liturgical book are spiritually dead and need such substitutes for true Spirit-led worship.

I have just finished reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. It is a thoroughly enjoyable read, comprehensive, and engagingly written. It is also a great doorstopper of a book, so large a hardbound tome that unless one has hands like those of the Incredible Hulk one finds it hard to hold the book in one hand while drinking coffee with the other. The title (“the first three thousand years”) refers to the fact that the author begins his tale in 1000 B.C. to take account of Greek culture and Hebrew history. Such a comprehensive sweep takes many pages: 1016 to be exact, not counting notes, bibliography, and index.

Sitting Lightly on Labels

In the baptismal prayer in which the priest blesses the baptismal water, there is a line that baptism will bestow upon the candidate the loosing of bonds, the remission of sins, the illumination of the soul and “the gift of adoption to sonship”. The phrase “adoption of sonship” is a reference to the words of St. Paul, who used the word to describe our salvation in Christ in Ephesians 1:5. There he sums up our salvation by saying that God “predestined us to adoption to sonship [Greek υίοθεσία/ uiothesia] through Jesus Christ to Himself”. Given that this adoption to sonship serves to encapsulate and summarize our entire salvation, we must pay it closer attention and to what it all means.

In the baptismal prayer in which the priest blesses the baptismal water, there is a line that baptism will bestow upon the candidate the loosing of bonds, the remission of sins, the illumination of the soul and “the gift of adoption to sonship”. The phrase “adoption of sonship” is a reference to the words of St. Paul, who used the word to describe our salvation in Christ in Ephesians 1:5. There he sums up our salvation by saying that God “predestined us to adoption to sonship [Greek υίοθεσία/ uiothesia] through Jesus Christ to Himself”. Given that this adoption to sonship serves to encapsulate and summarize our entire salvation, we must pay it closer attention and to what it all means.

On September 8, the Church sings that the Nativity of the Theotokos has “proclaimed joy to the whole universe”. It is easy enough to sing, but somewhat harder now for us to understand. Why, we may ask, did the birth of a baby girl in around 18 B.C. or so proclaim joy to the whole inhabited world?

On September 8, the Church sings that the Nativity of the Theotokos has “proclaimed joy to the whole universe”. It is easy enough to sing, but somewhat harder now for us to understand. Why, we may ask, did the birth of a baby girl in around 18 B.C. or so proclaim joy to the whole inhabited world?

In the late Metropolitan’s Kallistos Ware’s classic The Orthodox Church, he describes the Church as “a continued Pentecost”. This is true, but it is important not to misunderstand his meaning.

In the late Metropolitan’s Kallistos Ware’s classic The Orthodox Church, he describes the Church as “a continued Pentecost”. This is true, but it is important not to misunderstand his meaning.