What canons are there in the Church? What do they govern? Do canons restrict people’s freedom or do they help people to exercise their freedom? Why do those hair-splitting formalities even exist in the Church? Is it impossible to get saved without them? FOMA Magazine asked Archpriest Demetrius Pashkov, who is a professor in the Department of World and Russian […]
Why Did Jesus Have To Die?
September 3, 2018 By
by C. S. Lewis We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories we build up as to how Christ’s death did all […]
Caveat Emptor: Ware’s ‘The Orthodox Church’
June 5, 2018 By
This is a short post on changes in the book “The Orthodox Church” by Kallistos Timothy Ware regarding the Orthodox teaching about contraception. Natural family planning is acceptable, because it simply involves abstinence from sex during times when fertility is likely. Such is the teaching of the Church of Greece as expressed in her encyclical […]
Priestesses in the Church?
January 31, 2018 By
by C.S. Lewis “I should like Balls infinitely better,” said Caroline Bingley, “if they were carried on in a different manner … It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing made the order of the day.” “Much more rational, I dare say,” replied her brother, “but it would not be near […]
Eating Food that has Blood in it According to Canon Law
January 16, 2018 By
Q: I wonder if it is ok to eat food that has blood in it? What about Acts 15 where the Apostles forbid it and what about blood transfusions? A: Actually – and this is not well-known – the Orthodox position is that the Apostolic Council is still binding, and this includes the prohibition on […]
St. Photius the Great, The Photian Council, and Relations with the Roman Church
November 12, 2017 By
by Dr. David Ford Introduction There is considerable discussion today within the worldwide Orthodox Church about the status of the so-called “Photian Council,” held in Constantinople in 879-880. This is an exceedingly important council in the history of the Orthodox Church, and therefore deserves to be much more widely known among the Orthodox faithful. […]
How do you know that the Orthodox, not the Iconoclasts, preserved the more ancient Christian view of Icons?
November 6, 2017 By
For one thing, Iconoclasm would have thrived in Islamic dominated territory… but it didn’t. The first out break of Iconoclasm began in Moslem territory, though this was not Christians destroying images, but Moslems destroying Christian images (Pelikan, p. 105). There is also reason to think that Moslem influence inspired the Iconoclastic Emperors (for one, all […]
Why Should Reading in the Orthodox Church be Unemotional?
August 24, 2017 By
By Fr. Andrew Chizhenko I remember the words of Alexander Griboyedov from his play “Woe from Wit”: “Read it not like an altar server, but with passion”. For centuries, that aphorism was the reason of sarcastic mockeries about church readings in intellectual circles. In fact, they do not correlate with the truth and ancient thousand […]
