In English

In the first few centuries of the Christian era, medi­cine devel­oped more rapidly in the East than in the Latin West. The author of this paper presents the suggestion that, in great part, the differ­ence lies in the respective concepts of what actually constitutes the human person. While the Orthodox Christian Church was con­vinced of the unity of body and soul, which mutually comple­ment each other, the Latin West became influenced by the Gnostic  and Platonistic  concept of "dualism "— the idea of a radical dichotomy between body and soul in the human person. This Gnostic  idea tends to see an enmity between body and soul, indeed, between all matter and that which is said to be spiritual. It conveys the ...

Transplants have become part of everyday life in modern society. The positive and negative positions which have been expressed on them in ecclesiastical and theological circles have usually been of a fragmentary nature. The Orthodox Church has not yet taken a final decision on them. And any such position cannot be adopted by isolated individuals or committees attempting to base their views on its tradition, but will have to be at the behest of its universal conscience. The beginnings of transplants go back to ancient times. The ancient Egyptians already know how to make skin grafts. The first transplants of vital organs and human body tissue, however, took place in our own day. The first successful kidney transplant was completed in ...

Returning to the subject of the Elder’s sermons. It was indeed a great spiritual pleasure to see him preach in church. His face would be transformed in a wondrous way, since the whole of his soul was invested in the sermon. He would actually often make some kind of witticism or would mention some very simple, everyday examples, at which people would laugh. His ultimate objective, besides people’s spiritual benefit, was not to be admired at all. Such was his humility. I remember him regularly mentioning the following simple example, as a way for the uneducated peasant farmers to understand the reason behind Christ’s incarnation: he used to say that there was someone who noticed some ants down a stream-bed ...

Set your hope on God, Who stoops and sees from above. We do our part, which is the effort.

Rapid advances in modern medicine have opened up vast new vistas in an effort to prolong human life and erad­icate disease. Most dramatic of these breakthroughs is the transplantation of vital organs from one person to another. Organ transplants are such a new phenomenom that they raise unique and never before encountered theological and ethical questions for our Orthodox faithful: Can we violate the bodily integrity of one person, in order to help another? Can we allow the deliberate "dismemberment" of a lifeless body or the "mutilation" of one living person for the sake of another? Or shall we permit an otherwise healthy person to die when an organ transplant can restore him to a fairly normal and reasonably extended ...

Abortions, ratification of adultery, destruction of the language, automatic divorce and other anti-Christian legislation. How to bring in more tourists and so on. No political party has opposed any of this. As long as we bring in the money, it doesn’t matter how we do it.

December 2012, Christianity Today magazine graciously provided a forum for me to answer a question I posed in the title of my article: “Will the twenty-first be the Orthodox century?” I answered, “Yes. The twenty-first will likely be a century that witnesses a theological rebirth of the Orthodox vision within Protestantism, regardless of whether or not the Orthodox Church itself grows numerically.” I explained the ways in which mainline and evangelical Christians are retrieving the Great Tradition of our Church as a resource for reconstruction and renewal. I documented evidence for the rise of a new kind of ecumenism that is basing itself on a revival of the ancient approach to worship and theological decision-making. However, there was one very important ...

And further down the line, the return of doubting Thomas. No sooner had the reading finished than, suddenly, the bells started pealing mightily and at the same moment joyful shots were fired out in the courtyard. The monastery guards, in their kilts, were firing to the glory of God. Everything then quietened down for a minute or two: no bells, no shots, no shouts, no chanting… Everything became still all at once… Then within this sudden cessation of all the noise, there came, from within the church itself, from somewhere in its depths, a strange sound I’d never heard before, a very pleasant tinkling… metallic, but at the same time resembling large drops of water falling like notes of music… It ...

Don’t neglect to root out from the hearts of your children the seeds of sin, wickedness, blasphemous thoughts, sinful habits and tendencies and every other passion. The seeds of all evil are present in children and, as they grow up, these flourish and take root, and then have the predictable harvest.

The matter of the creation of the world is, in itself, a field where the religious and scientific views of the world meet. Any investigation of this ‘world-shattering event’ would certainly involve pausing to remark on the dynamic which is evolving in the ranks of the scientific community. Ideas come and go, arriving and departing, and all the time constantly being tested against observable data. This dimension is of importance when the scientific view is contrasted with the religious concept of creation. The religious concept appears to be static and well-established in sacred texts, which were written when an entirely different world-view prevailed, and in social environments with a completely different educational composition from our own. Photo by Dimitris Iliopoulos Very ...

How easily we Orthodox indiscriminately adopt the language of Western theology! It is always a great temptation for those who have converted to Orthodoxy from Western Christian denominations to bring the baggage of their former allegiances with them rather than embrace Orthodoxy as something which is entirely different from the Christianity they left behind. While they may see the Western Christendom of today as alien to the Church of the Fathers, they are sometimes reluctant to accept that not everything from the pre-schism West is part and parcel of Orthodoxy. And yet, the influence of Western theology is to be found not only amongst Orthodox converts in the West, but also among those who have been brought up in the ...

Don’t be cast down in the midst of sorrows and temptations, but with Christ’s love assuage the anger and the cantankerousness. The less patience you have, the greater your temptations seem.. And the more your grow in patience, the smaller they become and you get through them without effort, solid as a rock.

We’ve said before that God is not wrathful, bent on punishment and revenge. If He were, He would be bad. But there’s no trace of badness in the divinity. Every trial is an education from God and is a form of the spiritual struggle we have deliberately banished from our lives. In a variety of ways, the good Lord tries to bring us closer to Him. In God’s eyes we’re all fighting the good fight. Today’s economic crisis is a great trial, test and education. God is a wonderful educator. He’s trying us for our own good and for our victory. Greece has been exposed, is insecure, frightened, in turmoil. Spiritually defenceless, seduced by the good life, surfeit, hyper-consumerism, enrichment and profligate ...

Prove to God, in practice, that you’ve given yourself up to Him completely, that you’re not concerned about anything, that you accept, calmly and without complaint, whatever He sends, pleasant or otherwise, in the conviction that this has been allowed by Divine Providence. Your sole concern should be the careful observation of God’s commandments, whatever the circumstances.

C. Luther’s sermon 1. The rhetorical environment On the eve of the Reformation, at the end of the 15th century, preaching in Germany presents the following picture : a) Itinerant preachers attracted crowds of people in open-air settings to inspire them, in return for general absolution of sins, to fight against the Turks, who had conquered the Christian East and were the enemies of the Lord and His Church,. The famous orders of preachers (Dominicans, Franciscans and Augustinians) had undertaken the systematic education of these preachers. b) The sermo modernus satisfied the needs of scholasticism, but to the detriment of the Biblical text, whereas the Biblical homilia antiqua had come to be regarded as simplistic. At the time of Luther, the subject of sermons ...

Does an individual ever have the "right to die?" Must life be prolonged when there is little or no chance of its res­toration to "meaningful existence?" Is there any moral jus­tification for curtailing the life of a terminally-ill patient in order to free him from unbearable suffering? These ques­tions, punctuated by the much-publicized and controver­sial Karen Ann Quinlan case, are becoming increasingly important as we strive to enhance not only the quantity but the quality of human life. They concern a very real problem faced by our own Orthodox Christian clergy and laity alike in dealing with acutely and terminally-ill pa­tients. We therefore ask, "What is the stance of the Ortho­dox Church concerning mercy-killing or euthanasia?" And "to what extent ...

Do whatever you have to in order to experience Him and bring Him into your heart. So He can soften your heart with the touch of grace, every time you recall how much God loves you and how He’s protected you from spiritual death, keeping you safe from the filth that the demons bring into people’s minds.

Saint John Cassian was born c. 360, probably in Scythia Minor, now Dobruja in modern-day Romania and Bulgaria. He died in 435 in Marseilles. His feast day as a saint of the Eastern Orthodox Churches is celebrated on February 29, a date assigned also in the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church. The Roman Catholic Church also celebrates him as a saint on July 23.  “I shall speak first about control of the stomach, the opposite to gluttony, and about how to fast and what and how much to eat. I shall say nothing on my own account, but only what I have received from the Holy Fathers. They have not given us only a single rule for fasting or a ...