This post continues with section 6 of the fourth chapter of For the Life of the World, the last section of the chapter. Here is the link again to Deacon Michael Hyatt’s second podcast on chapter four.
For the Life of the World: Part Ten
This section shifts to look at the sacrament of penance or [...]
This will likely be the last post in this series. In it I want to explore something that is not actually a question or concern of mine, but which is a concern I’ve heard repeatedly expressed by a wide variety of people in various settings throughout my last decade and a half associated with Christianity. [...]
First, I think there is one sentence from the article, Beyond Justification, that highlights the proper place within our understanding for this discussion.
Theosis is not just the “goal” of salvation; it is salvation in its essence and fulfillment.
In other words, if we are not united with God, if we do not come to live and [...]
I was struggling to frame my thoughts for the next post in this series when I realized I needed to pause for a moment and explore the Christian concept of the Trinity, that is of a triune God. I will say up front that anything and everything we can express about the essence and nature [...]
We are not only being saved from something, we are being saved toward something. What is the goal of our salvation?
When you immerse yourself in the ecumenical councils and the writings surrounding them, you quickly find that you cannot discuss salvation without discussing Christ. You cannot even begin to understand what it means to be [...]
The article that spurred this series, Beyond Justification: An Orthodox Perspective, immediately caught my attention in its opening paragraph with the sentence:
Orthodox in general have never quite understood what all the fuss was about to begin with.
That precisely captures my state of confusion ever since my conversion to Christianity. [...]
Earlier this week I was discussing with a friend the difficulty of actual communicating anything meaningful about sex or sexuality in our cultural context without first exploring the question of what it means to be a human being created in the image of God. I think a lot of American cultural Christians, especially those often [...]