Articles

(Photo: Library at St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai) Note: A few articles randomly are available for public view without subscription, and if you need a waiver of the subscription fee, please be in touch at priestpauls@pm.me. All proceeds support site maintenance and the Paideia Conference; all work on the journal is volunteer. May the Lord bless our right efforts however unworthy, any errors herein be harmless, and the reader be blessed! The Inner Work of the Spiritual Life by Metropolitan Jonah (Paffhausen) The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God: An Orthodox Christian Perspective by Paul Kingsnorth “Learning to Unlearn”: Read More …

By Metropolitan Jonah (Paffhausen)  This is eternal life: that they may know Thee, the true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. (John 17:3) μεταμορφοῦσθαι εν τῇ ἀνακαινώσει τοῦ νοὸς ὑμῶν,[1]  (Romans 12:2) “Be transformed in the renewal of your nous.”   Metanoia          The inner work of the spiritual life is the real substance of being an Orthodox Christian.  Salvation, eternal life, is about coming to know God. We can live a purely external religious life, go to church, read the prayers, fast a little, partake of the sacraments and be nice to people; this is good and may bring us to heaven. But there is far more.  If we Read More …

By Rico Vitz, Ph.D., Azusa Pacific University             The depth of beauty is often concealed by the elegance with which it presents itself. This is true both of natural beauty and of moral beauty. It is also true of the spiritual beauty of Christ’s second love command: that is, the call to love one’s neighbor as oneself. That Orthodox Christians are called to love their neighbors in this way is eminently clear. How we are called to do so is less readily apparent. The general types of actions that the commandment requires seem clear enough—e.g., feeding the hungry, clothing Read More …

By Priest Paul Siewers, Ph.D.Bucknell University A recent book on former U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles displays an epic cover photo of him striding across an airport tarmac toward a plane, confidently bound for some diplomatic or covert mission against Communism, clad in a homburg hat and long coat, his uniform as a liberal American churchman and statesman. The book, God’s Cold Warrior by John D. Wilsey, examines the religious motivations for Dulles’ leadership of America’s side in the Cold War in the 1950s. While the global jetsetter Dulles is perhaps best known today for the D.C. airport Read More …

By Vladimir ShokhinInstitute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences It was not until the mid-20th century with the provocative challenge from Charles Hartshorne (1948, 1984)[1] that the timelessness of God became a general topic of discussion in Western theology. St. Augustine had insisted that time was created with the world[2] and therefore cannot not be an attribute of the Creator. Due to its perfect fit with the Christian worldview, this view was endorsed by authorities such as Boethius, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Francisco Suarez so as to permit only a very narrow space in Christian theology for the expression of Read More …