orthodoxy
I’ve frequently admired the writings of The Ochlophobist, even if they make me painfully aware of the gaps in my classical knowledge.
His writing during this year’s Dormition fast is no exception, linked without trite commentary:
Much ink, physical and virtual (including on this site), has been spilt discussing, making light of, or just plain despairing over the modern American obsession with the “end times”. An obsession American evangelical Christianity seems intent on infecting the rest of the world with.
Even if one discards the recent theology or paradigm of dispensationalism, it’s still easy to get hung up on, well the end of all things.
Whether or not the issue is even applicable to Christians can boil down into another one of those interesting divides of what we believe versus what we say we believe. One of the most profound experiences for me of the past year is coming to grips with the implications of things I had supposedly professed all my life. Continue reading...
I didn’t intend on making a couple posts and disappearing into the aether for months. To say this summer has been long and strenuous would be an understatement. I do have some reflections to write up, but those will have to wait until I can attempt to do them a bare minimum of justice.
In the meantime, some brief thoughts concerning current reading materials. Most of us who “grew up goddy” cut our teeth on the Picture Bible, among other things. We were saturated in the Bible, read it, heard sermons of it, did studies in it. That said, I’ve come to realize much modern Christian understanding of the Bible is a mile wide and an inch deep. We’ll hand it to unbelievers and tell them to read it when we don’t even know how to deal with much of it ourselves. The Old Testament comes to mind. Continue reading...
A friend pointed me to a fascinating article in The New Republic profiling a handful of recent converts to the Orthodox Church. Not little-o orthodox, but Big-O Orthodox. You know, the ones that trace their doctrinal decisions and their lines of leadership back to the original apostles?
It’s interesting in part because the principal subjects of the article live in Wheaton, IL — the Rome of the Evangelical world, home do innumerable Christian colleges and publishers and organizations and churches. (Oh, man, the churches. Through the 80s, Wheaton was effectively a dry town — I believe one, perhaps two businesses in the entire city were allowed liquor licenses, and grocery stores were SOL. Instead of bars, there were large swaths of Wheaton that had two, even three churches on a single street. But I digress.) Continue reading...