Month: June 2025

Toward an Incarnational Understanding of Culture: Fr. Pavel Florensky on Why, and How, Christianity Must Critically Engage Modern Culture from Within

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By Seraphim (Bruce) Foltz, Ph.D. Eckerd College A. The Transcendent Relation to Culture Although largely focused on Church History and Patristics, the Collected Works of Fr George Florovsky also devotes an entire volume to the topic of Christianity and Culture.  These essays soundly reject the “pietist” or “revivalist” accusation that culture is “a sinful entanglement”[1]  Read More …

“Learning to Unlearn”: Foundations of Orthodox Christian Education

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By the Very Rev. Maximos Constas 1.              On the Nature of Christian Teaching Authentic teaching is a vocation. It is a calling. To teach seriously is to lay hands on what is most vital in another human being; it is to seek and engage the student’s innermost life. There is no craft apart from Read More …

Against the Self:The Modern Crisis of Identity in Classical Context

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By Jesse Cone The “Inimical” Claim In 1986 the Catholic philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe described the idea of “the self” as “inimical to Christianity.”[1] This idea, that we human beings “aren’t (mere) members of a biological species, but selves,” is not only common today, but assumed. In our everyday discourse we talk of discovering our selves, Read More …

Geologic Time, Animal Death and the Testimony of “God’s Two Witnesses”

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By Joshua Moritz, Ph.D., St. John Chrysostom Academy Note: This article is part of a two-article Paideia Forum, designed to present differing perspectives on issues of note in Orthodox Christianity around the world. These pairings are not meant to equate the differing views or to question any aspects of Orthodox Tradition and Dogmatics. For the Read More …

Man’s Nature Before the Fall and the Origin of Death

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By Jesse Dominick, M.Div., editor at OrthoChristian.com Note: This article is part of a two-article Paideia Forum, designed to present differing perspectives on issues of note in Orthodox Christianity around the world. These pairings are not meant to equate the differing views or to question any aspects of Orthodox Tradition and Dogmatics. For the other Read More …

Gender and Ordination: The Image of God in Male and Female

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Protodeacon Brian Patrick Mitchell, Ph.D. The recent push for making deaconesses has moved several scholars and priests to offer counter-arguments against deaconesses. Unfortunately, many of these counter-arguments have been seriously lacking, even to the point of contributing to the problem. There are two ways to argue against deaconesses. One way is to argue on the Read More …

Twelve Reasons Why Women Cannot be Ordained as Deacons in the Orthodox Church

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By Drs. Mary and David Ford, St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Seminary             This is a brief summary of why having female deacons is contrary to the teachings and practices of the Orthodox Church. 1.  It has always been the teaching of the Orthodox Church that both sexes share equally in our common human nature.  Women, Read More …

The Spirit of Antichrist and the Forerunners of Antichrist

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By Archbishop Averky (Taushev) From the second chapter of St. Paul’s Second Epistle to the Thessalonians it is clear that the teaching about the Antichrist enters into the content of the earliest apostolic evangelization. After giving a description of the Antichrist in the third and fourth verses of that chapter, the holy Apostle writes further Read More …