Many years ago, when I was tucking my eldest daughter into bed, she asked me a question:   “Dad, why do we believe in the Resurrection?”  I have always taught both my daughters to be strong and to think for themselves, and so I was happy to hear the question, and I answered it as best as I could, giving the historical evidence.  At the end of it all, she said, “Oh, good.  I was afraid you were going to say that we should believe in it because it was in the Bible.”  No chance of that; Dad is not a fideist, nor a fan of circular reasoning.  The case for Christianity is a strong one, and can withstand historical scrutiny. Here I would like to set out the case for Christianity in somewhat fuller terms than I did that night so long ago.

Why I Am a Christian (Part 1)

I know a man in Christ who prays for Marilyn Monroe every day as a part of his prayers for all the departed.  He doesn’t pray for her under her stage-name of “Marilyn” though.  He prays for her under her real name of “Norma Jeane”, the name given her by her mother and under which she was once baptized by (of all people) the evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson while under the foster care of a very fundamentalist family.

Who Prays for Marilyn?

The story of Cain and Abel is the story of the human race.  It is tragically timeless, for it is tirelessly enacted over and over again in every generation.  As Larry Norman once queried (as aged historians may remember from his song “Nothing Really Changes”), “Will Cain kill Abel—with a bayonet?”  Regardless of the choice of weapon, somewhere and some place that murder is happening even now as you are reading this.

Cain and Abel and a Bayonet

Some heresies never seem to die, but have a disconcerting tendency to pop up in every generation, rather like the emerging heads of the whack-a-mole in the children’s game one sees in Chuck E. Cheese:  whack them down as hard and often as you like, but they will pop up again someplace else.

Up It Comes Again—the Whack-a-Mole Heresy

Like many Orthodox clergy, I have lost track of the number of times my Protestant brethren have objected to the priestly title (in my case, “Father Lawrence”), citing the Bible which commands that they “call no man ‘Father’”.  They are, of course, thinking of our Lord’s words in Matthew 23:9.  If I am feeling puckish and mischievous, I sometimes respond with a simple denial, insisting, “No, the Bible doesn’t say that” just to wind them up and make the final riposte more satisfying.  It is not particularly sanctified, but it is fun.  What is the difference between “call no man ‘father’” and “call no man your father”?  The difference is the difference between a title or form of address and a relationship.

Call No Man “Father”

In my Protestant days, I had no problem with anyone talking about Mary—so long as it was Christmas.  On Boxing Day, that was it.  Over.  No more talking about Mary.  What are we anyway, Catholics?  It was understood that when we packed away the Nativity set, all talk of Mary got packed up along with it.  And my proof that Bible-believing Christians should not talk about Mary?  The New Testament never did.  Well, hardly ever did—just long enough to narrate the Christmas story.  Was she in the Acts of the Apostles?  Not really.  Was she in the Epistles?  No.  So there you go:  no talking about Mary or calling her blessed.

The Self-emptying of the Mother of God

I would like to share with you an easy technique for avoiding moral accountability.  Whenever you are caught and called to account for doing something wrong (that is, when you are “busted”), you simply invoke the figure of the Pharisee.  Tell your accuser that he is being judgmental and Pharisaical, and that he has no right to judge you.  After all, the Lord says, “Judge not”.  It works almost every time, functioning as a moral Get Out of Jail Free card.

Judge Not

Recently I listened to a podcast in which Larry Chapp (a universalist Roman Catholic) interviewed Dr. David Bentley Hart.  In the course of the interview Dr. Hart asserted that, unlike Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy does not have an official and authoritative Magisterium.  By this he meant that Orthodoxy possesses no institutional organ (such as the papacy and the episcopate dependent upon it) that can routinely and authoritatively declare what is or is not the official teaching of the Church when consulted.

An Orthodox Magisterium?

Everyone presumably acknowledges that there is nothing wrong with children dressing up as fairies, Disney characters, Marvel superheroes, and (my own favourite when I was a child) black cats in order to go door to door with their friends after dark to collect candy.  The argument against Halloween is that it also glorifies violence, gore, and death, so that it is unsuitable for Christians to participate in Halloween.  Collecting candy is fine; it is the frightening stuff that comes afterward that is the problem.  Halloween trades in things like graveyards and corpses and ugly witches on broomsticks and bats and cobwebs and Frankenstein monsters.  So, the question arises:  why do people delight in such scary stuff?

Reflections on an October Event

In 1956 an American game show debuted called “To Tell the Truth”.  Each round of the game introduced three people all claiming to be the same person, and a team of panelists would ask them questions.  Those pretending to be the real (usually famous) person would make up answers, while the real person would answer truthfully.  The inquiring panelists would then guess which was the real person.  The host of the show would conclude by saying, “Will the real (name) please stand up?” and he or she would then stand up thereby revealing their identity and the accuracy of the panelists’ guesses.

“Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?”

Reflections on Orthodox Theology and Biblical Studies - Fr. Lawrence Farley offers brief commentary and analysis on topics related to Orthodoxy, theology, morality, the Scriptures, and contemporary culture.

Those familiar with old-time Pentecostalist liturgy will identify the title of this piece as a part of that liturgy.  Not, of course, that tongue-speaking Pentecostalists of the old school would admit to having liturgy.  Liturgy, for them, is what the Catholics have (along with their step-children, the Anglicans) because they do not have God or the Holy Spirit.  Liturgy is usually described by them as “dead liturgy” because the people using the liturgical book are spiritually dead and need such substitutes for true Spirit-led worship.

“Can I Get an Amen?”

I have just finished reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Christianity:  The First Three Thousand Years.  It is a thoroughly enjoyable read, comprehensive, and engagingly written.  It is also a great doorstopper of a book, so large a hardbound tome that unless one has hands like those of the Incredible Hulk one finds it hard to hold the book in one hand while drinking coffee with the other.  The title (“the first three thousand years”) refers to the fact that the author begins his tale in 1000 B.C. to take account of Greek culture and Hebrew history.  Such a comprehensive sweep takes many pages:  1016 to be exact, not counting notes, bibliography, and index.

Sitting Lightly on Labels

In the baptismal prayer in which the priest blesses the baptismal water, there is a line that baptism will bestow upon the candidate the loosing of bonds, the remission of sins, the illumination of the soul and “the gift of adoption to sonship”.  The phrase “adoption of sonship” is a reference to the words of St. Paul, who used the word to describe our salvation in Christ in Ephesians 1:5.  There he sums up our salvation by saying that God “predestined us to adoption to sonship [Greek υίοθεσία/ uiothesia] through Jesus Christ to Himself”.  Given that this adoption to sonship serves to encapsulate and summarize our entire salvation, we must pay it closer attention and to what it all means.

Adoption to Sonship

On September 8, the Church sings that the Nativity of the Theotokos has “proclaimed joy to the whole universe”.  It is easy enough to sing, but somewhat harder now for us to understand.  Why, we may ask, did the birth of a baby girl in around 18 B.C. or so proclaim joy to the whole inhabited world?

The Lights of an Approaching Rescue

In the late Metropolitan’s Kallistos Ware’s classic The Orthodox Church, he describes the Church as “a continued Pentecost”.  This is true, but it is important not to misunderstand his meaning.

A Continued Pentecost

It seems to be commonly held among scholars that the so-called monarchical episcopate (i.e. the system of having one bishop governing a city church with presbyters working with him) was not apostolic and did not come to Rome until the late second century or even later. That is the opinion of scholars such as Alistair Stewart (in his commentary Hippolytus: On the Apostolic Tradition), Brent Allen (in his Hippolytus and the Roman Church in the Third Century), and others such as the late great J.N.D. Kelly. By this figuring the Christians in Rome had no one leader who spoke for all of them, but were divided into a number of self-governing communities with different leaders described by various titles. A single leader who could speak for all the communities in Rome only arose in the late second century (with Bishop Victor) or the early third century (with Bishop Pontianus).Writers such as Irenaeus who asserted there were such singular leaders and bishops in Rome from the days of the apostles were, according to this theory, anachronistically projecting back a later system into an earlier time. It also follows therefore that the document known as the Apostolic Tradition, ascribed to Hippolytus and dating from the early third century, cannot be taken as evidence of a monepiscopate in Rome at that time, but must be regarded as the result of extensive redaction. What are we to make of this? Need we dump that section of Irenaeus’ work?

It seems to be commonly held among scholars that the so-called monarchical episcopate (i.e. the system of having one bishop governing a city church with presbyters working with him) was not apostolic and did not come to Rome until the late second century or even later. That is the opinion of scholars such as Alistair Stewart (in his commentary Hippolytus: On the Apostolic Tradition), Brent Allen (in his Hippolytus and the Roman Church in the Third Century), and others such as the late great J.N.D. Kelly. By this figuring the Christians in Rome had no one leader who spoke for all of them, but were divided into a number of self-governing communities with different leaders described by various titles. A single leader who could speak for all the communities in Rome only arose in the late second century (with Bishop Victor) or the early third century (with Bishop Pontianus).<br><br>Writers such as Irenaeus who asserted there were such singular leaders and bishops in Rome from the days of the apostles were, according to this theory, anachronistically projecting back a later system into an earlier time. It also follows therefore that the document known as the Apostolic Tradition, ascribed to Hippolytus and dating from the early third century, cannot be taken as evidence of a monepiscopate in Rome at that time, but must be regarded as the result of extensive redaction. What are we to make of this? Need we dump that section of Irenaeus’ work?

Who Was Linus?

Evangelizing the West

On baptizing infants

Symbol and reality

Sir, we would see Jesus

No Other Foundation

Dealing with Anger

Sola Scriptura

The Historical Case for Infant Baptism

Praying for the Dead

Strangers in a Strange Land

Scriptural Teaching On Predestination

The so-called “Holy Fire” is the name given to the fire that appears on ends of the candles of the Patriarch of Jerusalem and others every Holy Saturday.

Holy Fire

North American popular culture, as brought into your home and heart by the North American media, is a very powerful force, and it seems that we too easily underestimate its transforming power.

Waters of Marah

I sometimes cannot help asking myself three liturgical questions whenever I visit churches which serve the Liturgy in the “classic” pattern I learned in seminary—all of those questions quite rhetorical.

Three Liturgical Questions

Lord’s Prayer-Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done

Fr. Lawrence Farley comments on a discussion that takes place each year during Holy Week.

Holy Week Anti-Semitism?

Wrath of God and Christian apologetics

In the original usage, the Trisagion was sung as a refrain to Psalm 80. The cantor would chant verses of the psalm as all walked in procession and the people sung the Trisagion hymn as its refrain after every verse.

The Trisagion Hymn

In Praise of CS Lewis

Do Fish Know They’re Wet?

Real Roots of Universalism

The Genesis Creation Stories

Are you comfortable

What does the Orthodox Church think about gay sex? The official answer is not hard to find.

Of Gay Sex and Leaven

The Church as Apostolic

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