”The heart of another is a dark forest,” writes Ivan Turgenev in A Month in the Country. This is true, indeed, not only of the heart of another, but equally of my own heart: that too is “a dark forest.” In the words of the Psalmist, “The heart is deep” (Ps. 64:6). There are profundities within each one of us which we have yet to plumb. Personhood cannot be exactly defined; we can provide an ostensive definition, pointing to what is meant and indicated by “being a person,” but we cannot offer a systematic and exhaustive description.

Being human: how could that be an issue? Perhaps it wasn’t in the past, when what it is to be human was agreed by all and taken for granted. But if we look back to the past, we must try to ensure we look back to the real past, and not simply project back an idealized form of the present.

One of the burning issues of the day, perhaps even the defining question of our era, is what it is to be human and how our existence as sexed and sexual beings relates to our common humanity.

The term “theology of the body” derives from a series of 129 lectures by the same name given by Pope John Paul II between 1979 and 1984. These lectures, widely considered the first major teachings of the late pope’s pontificate, sought to establish a comprehensive anthropology in which the human body was understood as a revelation of God and divine purpose.

What qualities make a Christian teacher? As I read about Saint Macrina, I find myself thinking that I would like to be a teacher more like her. Macrina responds to God’s great compassion in several ways: in action, by her philanthropic work and evangelical poverty; in teaching, by influencing and leading others to a life dedicated to God; and in witness, through her spirit of bravery in the face of death and thanksgiving for all God has done.

I find the subject of homosexuality painful. I find this subject difficult. I do not normally comment on how anything affects me personally in an academic context. But this is an exception. At least part of what brought me to Orthodoxy more than twenty-five years ago from my native evangelical Anglicanism was a combination of exhaustion at the endless debate about homosexuality and a sense that the changes my native church was then undergoing were a slippery slope out of classical Christianity.

Father Pavel Florensky’s “Friendship,” structurally and thematically the culminating letter of the twelve which comprise his 1914 book The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, has proven a challenge to his readers from the time that he first wrote it as part of his master’s thesis to the present. A cursory reading in translation allows little room to imagine that it envisages “friends” in any conventional sense— the sort of friend of which a man might have two or three or several—or that he could have such a friend in addition to a wife.

Church” and “sexuality” are two words that relate to the human being as a relationship that takes place, not as an individual, not as an undifferentiated unit of the species. They refer to human existence as an active event and an effective presence, before both event and presence are “immobilized” by abstract thought into a conceptual entity.

As the Western world moves deeper into the postmodern context, it seems that the latter is imposing its agenda on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity. This development runs the risk of provoking a defensive attitude on the part of the Church (as is the case now), in which theologians and churchmen seek to condemn what they find wrong in the secular milieu and go on repeating truths in traditional terms.

For the Orthodox tradition, theosis is not a far-off expectation, but a possibility realized in the everydayness of life. When thinking about theosis, the Fathers were attentive to the various parts of the soul, its rational and affective parts. For the rational, theosis has to do with seeing God’s truth and wisdom embedded in creation and realized through contemplation.

G. K. Chesterton once said that one should never tear down a fence unless he knows why it was put there in the first place. In this article, I will attempt to explain some of the foundational reasons why the Church has put a fence around its beliefs regarding the nature and purpose of human sexuality.

The broad shift towards acceptance of same-sex relationships and sex in Western culture has been met consistently over past decades by opposition from the Orthodox Church. More recently, in response to the extension of civil marriage legislation to include same-sex couples, many Orthodox hierarchs and theologians have sought to rearticulate and disseminate what they consider to be the Church’s unchanging doctrine of marriage.

On June 26, 2015, the nine justices of the Supreme Court of the United States issued a slim-majority decision that is profoundly reshaping American law and society. In a vote of 5 to 4, the court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex marriage is a legally protected right throughout the United States. This brief essay will deal with a few of the issues stemming from the Supreme Court decision with the aim of contributing to discussion within the Orthodox Church.

Christian anthropology cannot arise out of a theoretical intellectual vacuum. It is rooted in the one, true anthrōpos, Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, the Son of God; in him and in his relation to the world and to God. True to him, his ecclesial body, the Church, is commissioned to manifest that anthropology to the world.