No Other Foundation

No Other Foundation episodes:

• 06.19.2024

  Finding Comfort in the Ascension

  The feast of the Ascension is a feast of comfort and consolation for the people of God. But it can for some people represent a stumbling block. Looking at the ascension of Christ as it is narrated in...

  
• 06.12.2024

  “To Thine Own Self Be True”

  Many people will (hopefully) identify the above quote as coming from the speech of Polonius in Act 1, Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It was part of the fatherly talk he gave to his son Laertes before the boy...

  
• 05.22.2024

  A Bridge to…Where?

  I recently spoke with a dear friend who dolefully reported that a distant family member had left his very traditional Protestant church (with its stress on doctrine and Reformed worship) for a group called “The Bridge”. The name of...

  
• 05.15.2024

  Prayers to the Saints in the Eighth Day

  Thousands of years ago when I was an Evangelical Protestant in the Anglican Church, I never prayed to the saints or asked for their intercession. It was made quite clear to me by those around me that obedient Christians...

  
• 05.01.2024

  Sojourning in Bethany

  It is a wonderful thing to know the Scriptures well, but there is a drawback: since we know how all the stories end, we can miss the drama inherent in the narrative. For example, In Luke 7:11f we...

  
• 04.24.2024

  A Unified Date for Easter?

  As reported in the Byzantine Texas blogsite, the Ecumenical Patriarch is calling for a unified observance of Easter by next year, 2025, to coincide with the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea. In a sermon he said, “We beseech...

  
• 04.17.2024

  Is Jesus Divine?

  Imagine my surprise to find that the view that Jesus was not divine was not confined to J.W.’s and Christadelphians. When perusing Facebook (just one of my bad habits) I found a debate televised on Faith Unaltered between Dr....

  
• 04.03.2024

  Story and History

  When we are reading the literature of the ancient Hebrews (i.e. the Old Testament) it is important to be aware of the kind of glasses we are wearing—that is, we should be aware of the unspoken conceptual presuppositions that we...

  
• 03.20.2024

  Great Lent: “The King in His Beauty”

  Now that Great Lent is upon us, the question sometimes arises about where we should put our spiritual focus. There are two places we should certainly not put our focus—and only one place where we should.

  
• 03.13.2024

  Doing the Deeds That Will Allow Us to Inherit the Kingdom

  In reflecting on the Sunday of the Last Judgment, the Very Rev. Dr Bogdan Bucur calls our attention to the difference between the Lord’s invitation to those at his right hand in Matthew 25.34: “Come, you blessed of My Father,...

  
• 03.13.2024

  A “Call of Duty” Spirituality

  Presented for your consideration (as Rod Serling used to say): an old man dressed up as an Orthodox priest-monk who is actually neither priest nor monk, performing outrageous antics both in public and online in a furious attempt to...

  
• 03.06.2024

  Haggai, Being Small in a World of Big

  The work of the prophet Haggai is short and easy to miss; it is a mere two chapters in our Bibles sandwiched in between the books of Zephaniah and Zechariah. If you are flipping quickly through the final pages...

  
• 02.28.2024

  Menstruation and Holy Communion

  I remember once when a friend was sharing with me his distress at the liberalism afflicting his Protestant denomination, and the fact that many of their clergy were denying such things as the virgin birth and the divinity of Christ....

  
• 02.21.2024

  Crisis of Confidence: A Book Review

  I have just finished reading Crisis of Confidence: Reclaiming the Historic Faith in a Culture Consumed with Individualism and Identity, by my friend Carl R. Trueman. Dr. Trueman is professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City...

  
• 02.14.2024

  An Orthodox Priest converts to Islam

  Every so often one encounters something that breaks the head as well as the heart. By that I refer to things that not only wring the heart with grief, but also confound the head because they are so perversely...

  
• 02.07.2024

  Was Phoebe a Deaconess?

  I am told that during a very interesting and well-run radio show about deaconesses, it was agreed (or at least widely thought) that Phoebe, mentioned famously in Romans 16:1, was a deaconess. But was she?

  
• 01.31.2024

  Putting Aside All Idolatry For Christ Who Is Our Life

  Commenting on the epistle reading of Paul to the Colossians, the Very Rev. Dr Bogdan Bucur concentrates on the idea that the passions we struggle with also lead us into idolatry. For “when Christ who is our life appears,” we...

  
• 01.31.2024

  Pope Francis’ "Fiducia Supplicans" and Same-Sex Union

  I have just read two fascinating pieces about Pope Francis’ recent and controversial document Fiducia Supplicans, which officially allows Roman Catholic priests to bless persons in same-sex relationships, one by an Orthodox and the other by a Roman Catholic.

  
• 01.24.2024

  Leavening the Lump

  I note with no surprise whatsoever the news out of England, which is that the Church of England has decided to bless homosexual partnerships. This came after a compromise was struck last February following five years of debate about...

  
• 01.18.2024

  Adorning the Epiphaneia of the King

  The feast whose season we now in is called “Theophany” or (in many places) “Epiphany”. This latter is not so much an English word as it is a transliteration of a Greek word, epiphaneia. It is often rendered...

  
• 01.11.2024

  “God will never give you more than you can handle”

  I forget, in the course of my long life as a Christian, how many times I have heard people assure me that “God will never give you more than you can handle”. By this they seemed to mean that...

  
• 10.16.2023

  An Offensive Invitation?

  I am told on good authority that it is offensive to invite people of other religions to convert to Christianity. Thus it is offensive to say to a Jew, “Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God and...

  
• 10.13.2023

  I Just Had to Pray

  A quiet confession between us: Nostalgic freak that I am, I still like listening to old songs from the Christian folk group Children of the Day. The group is one of the earliest Jesus People music groups and consisted...

  
• 10.11.2023

  Saints in context-Abraham

  Today we begin a series on Old Testament saints in their context: surveying major figures of the Old Testament to better understand their lives, their words, and the lessons they can teach us - for, though dead, they still speak....

  
• 10.09.2023

  Arguing with Culty Fundamentalists

  There are stupider things to do than arguing with a culty fundamentalist. As the late great Jim Croce reminded us, you don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, and you don’t pull the mask off...

  
• 10.06.2023

  Evangelizing the West

  The Church has the same task in whatever land it takes root and finds itself, namely that of making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Trinity, and of teaching them to observe all that Christ...

  
• 10.03.2023

  Scepticism and the Holy Fire

  A wise man once said "what we believe always remains intellectually possible, and never becomes intellectually compulsive. I have an idea," he said, "that when this ceases to be so, the world will be ending."

  
• 09.28.2023

  Jesus Revolution

  I sometimes tell inquirers at St. Herman’s when they ask that I began my Christian life in earnest as a Jesus People—which usually results in blank stares, since most of them are too young to have heard of the cultural...

  
• 09.26.2023

  Great God Almighty’s Gonna Cut You Down

  Recently I heard a very dark and serious song about the judgment of God and His wrath against sinners. It was the folk song “Great God Almighty’s Gonna Cut You Down” (accessed here). I was not aware of...

  
• 09.20.2023

  The Cult of Bareness

  I cannot be the only one who has had the experience of visiting a non-Orthodox church service and finding it stunningly empty and plain. After long familiarity with Orthodox worship with its icons, incense, candles, vestments, Gospel books, and...

  
• 09.19.2023

  The Papal Claims

  Over two millenia there have, of course, been many papal claims, many of which Orthodoxy has always accepted. The claim to be the Patriarch of the West has proved unobjectionable to the East. The claim to be the...

  
• 09.16.2023

  “Corrective Baptism”?

  One would not have guessed that the question of whether to receive a person into the Orthodox Church by baptism and chrismation or by chrismation alone would be a hot issue given the history of reception into the Church. ...

  
• 09.12.2023

  Ecclesiastical Gnosticism

  There is today in the Orthodox Church a cult of personality—or, more precisely, of personalities, in the plural. That is, there are a number of men, mostly monastics and wearing the badge of “elder” who have set themselves up...

  
• 09.09.2023

  St. Matthew’s Old Testament: Isaiah 40:3 and Isaiah 9:1-2

  We conclude our series examining St. Matthew’s citations of the Old Testament. Today we look at his citation of Isaiah 40:3, which reads, “A voice cries, ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of Yahweh! Make straight in the...

  
• 09.05.2023

  St. Matthew’s Old Testament: Jeremiah 31:15 and Isaiah 11:1

  We continue our series examining St. Matthew’s citations of the Old Testament. Today we look at his citation of Jeremiah 31:15. It reads, “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for...

  
• 08.29.2023

  St. Matthew’s Old Testament: Micah 5:2 and Hosea 11:1

  We continue our series examining St. Matthew’s citations of the Old Testament. Today we look at his citation of Micah 5:2. “In the Masoretic Hebrew it reads, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are little to be among the...

  
• 08.23.2023

  St. Matthew’s Old Testament: Isaiah 7:14

  Today we begin a series on the use of the Old Testament in the early chapters of the Gospel of St. Matthew. We will examine his citations in his narrative of Christ’s birth, childhood and adulthood up to the...

  
• 08.16.2023

  The Strange and Perverse Disinclination to Believe in a Miracle

  G. K. Chesterton wrote that he once left fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery and hadn’t found any books so sensible since (from his Orthodoxy, “The Ethics of Elfland”). I suggest that Christianity is one such fairy...

  
• 08.09.2023

  The Genesis of Liberal Theology

  I have been reading liberal theology since my college days—i.e. theologies which deny many, most, or all of the major tenets of the traditional Christian Faith. The theologies are as many and as varied as their authors, but they...

  
• 08.02.2023

  Why I Am a Christian (Part 2)

  In my previous piece, “Why I Am a Christian (Part 1)” I examined the question of why one should believe in the physical Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. I looked at the essential historical reliability of the Gospels...

  
• 07.19.2023

  Why I Am a Christian (Part 1)

  Many years ago, when I was tucking my eldest daughter into bed, she asked me a question: “Dad, why do we believe in the Resurrection?” I have always taught both my daughters to be strong and to...

  
• 07.12.2023

  Who Prays for Marilyn?

  I know a man in Christ who prays for Marilyn Monroe every day as a part of his prayers for all the departed. He doesn’t pray for her under her stage-name of “Marilyn” though. He prays for her...

  
• 07.10.2023

  Cain and Abel and a Bayonet

  The story of Cain and Abel is the story of the human race. It is tragically timeless, for it is tirelessly enacted over and over again in every generation. As Larry Norman once queried (as aged historians may...

  
• 06.28.2023

  Up It Comes Again—the Whack-a-Mole Heresy

  Some heresies never seem to die, but have a disconcerting tendency to pop up in every generation, rather like the emerging heads of the whack-a-mole in the children’s game one sees in Chuck E. Cheese: whack them down as...

  
• 06.17.2023

  Call No Man “Father”

  Like many Orthodox clergy, I have lost track of the number of times my Protestant brethren have objected to the priestly title (in my case, “Father Lawrence”), citing the Bible which commands that they “call no man ‘Father’”. They...

  
• 06.15.2023

  The Self-emptying of the Mother of God

  In my Protestant days, I had no problem with anyone talking about Mary—so long as it was Christmas. On Boxing Day, that was it. Over. No more talking about Mary. What are we anyway, Catholics? ...

  
• 06.13.2023

  Judge Not

  I would like to share with you an easy technique for avoiding moral accountability. Whenever you are caught and called to account for doing something wrong (that is, when you are “busted”), you simply invoke the figure of the...

  
• 06.11.2023

  An Orthodox Magisterium?

  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...

  
• 06.09.2023

  Reflections on an October Event

  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...

  
• 06.07.2023

  “Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?”

  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...