For many “cradle” Orthodox Christians in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, experiencing one’s first confession at around the age of seven marked the transition from infancy to childhood. Regarding seven as the age of reason, or of “discretion”, was something they shared with their Roman Catholic neighbors, as was the way in which their families prepared them for their first experience of confession...

A survey of confession and reconciliation practices in the contemporary Orthodox East presupposes a hearty trek through the ancient Church’s experience. From the apostolic age, one encounters two distinct perspectives on the theme of reconciliation in St. Paul’s epistles...

Over the past five or so decades, theology in the West has experienced a shift. In this shift, experience has become one of the main criteria for assessing what counts as true knowledge of God. It is not, however, just any kind of experience but the experience of the marginalized, which has taken on many forms...

As a priest for over forty years, I have had the privilege of hearing probably several thousand confessions. Having been raised in the Orthodox Church, confession has also been part of my own life from the time I was a child...

As we are all aware, the Divine Liturgy is our present participation in the life of the age to come, a real encounter with the kingdom of God. St Maximus the Confessor teaches that the liturgy is the site where the grace of the Holy Spirit “transforms, remoulds, and truly remodels [each participant] into a more divine image.” ...

St. John of Damascus, in his Defense of the Holy Icons, mentioned resemblance in the sense of resemblance to the prototype. His main goal was t show that veneration of icons is not a form of idolatry, and to do so, he emphasized the importance of the likeness between the represented person (the prototype) and the icon, distinguishing it from the identity of nature...

A professor of religion at the University of Southern Mississippi, Slagle’s 2011 study, The Eastern Church in the Spiritual Marketplace: American Conversion to Orthodox Christianity, was one of the first studies to focus specifically on American conversions to Eastern Orthodoxy, an area of research that would soon be followed by Oliver Herbel (2014), Turning to Tradition, and Sarah Riccardi-Schwarz (2022), Between Heaven and Russia.

For the Orthodox, the liturgy is where the faithful encounter God as a community and seek to draw all into communion with him. For those who privilege liturgy as the source and summit of this encounter, it is the primary way that the faith is experienced, understood, expressed, and transmitted...

The objective of this text is to engage in a comparative analysis of the role apophaticism plays in two very different contexts—Orthodox theology and quantum mechanics. Why quantum mechanics? Isn’t it one of the most successful theories in physics? How could we be ‘apophatic’ about one of the most successful theories of physics, one hundred years after its invention?

The relationship of human experience to theology and the tradition it inhabits is more complex and dynamic than we think. While popularly many conceive tradition as a fixed reality into which we must somehow fit our experience, I believe that experience is the driving force that animates our theology and the tradition that has been handed down even today...

The former archbishop of Wales and of Canterbury and professor and master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, Rowan Williams is a scholar of the first order. He’s written a great deal about what history teaches us about ourselves, God, and the Church...

Several years ago, I wrote a review of David Bentley Hart’s book That All Shall Be Saved /... / Professor Hart’s examination of the ancient Christian doctrine of apokatastasis was written from the perspective of the philosopher/ theologian. Terminology was technical and precise; logical and rational argumentation prevailed. Fr. Aidan Kimel1 addresses the same topic from the perspective of an Orthodox pastor...

As I was preparing this reflection on the story of Mary of Egypt, I was marveling at the many facets that this story offers when viewed through the lens of our experiences: what has been, what may have been, how the stories are told, and where the light shines through them, the light everlasting, the light of hope that is offered to us all if we are able to see and follow it...

When I shared the sad news of Bishop Seraphim’s death with my wife, Olga, she replied, “Our Seraphim flew away from us.” I was struck by how aptly the expression described his movements during his life with us and now his departure. It dawned on me: surely, he was a seraph, cast on earth among us for a mysterious mission...