This essay was written for a Diaconate course in the OCA. You can read the original with footnotes and appendices here (or download/print), or read a shorter version formatted for the web below.
Continue reading “The Marxist Failure to Eradicate the Church”Category: religion
In the beginning
This is a paper I wrote as a requirement for a Diaconate training course within the OCA (Orthodox Church in America) under Fr. Silviu Buntu. The topic of the course was traditional Orthodox interpretation of Scripture.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The goal of this paper will be to illustrate traditional interpretation of Scripture as practiced by the Jews and early Christians and continued primarily in the Eastern Church.
In the West there is a recent movement to treat the scriptures as a piece of literature. Dead words on a dead page to be dissected and picked apart, its organs harvested and distilled, at best down to medicine or tools, and at worst mere entertainment.
Contrast this with historical understanding and practices, where Scripture is alive and timeless.
The fundamental lens through which its authors and early audiences looked at scripture is the bifocal lens of:
- God is speaking to and about you.
- When God speaks, it is for your edification (it is useful to you).
Notes to a Friend, or “The Godwork Machine”
Note: My recreational fiction writing was slammed into an extended pause following my coming down with the worst cold I’ve ever had (lasted basically the month of March 2020. Antibody tests indicate it was not COVID, but that is almost beyond belief for me). In the meantime, I have written a lot, but have not yet come back to my fiction. The following is one of the things I wrote during this time.
My dear friend Chris Corwin wrote a journal entry he created in response to a daily journaling prompt and kindly shared it with me today.
The prompt was “do you believe in God”.
I’m going to comment on some specific portions here, after summarizing it.
Continue reading “Notes to a Friend, or “The Godwork Machine””