The Reformed Ninja

Gregory Palamas teaches of the blessed virgin Mary: “She alone forms the boundary between created and uncreated nature, and no one can come to God except through her and the mediator born of her, and none of God’s gifts can be bestowed on angels or men except through her. As in the case with lamps on earth constructed of glass or some other transparent material, it is impossible to look at the light or enjoy its rays except through the lamp, so it is beyond the reach of all to look upwards to God or be helped by Him to make progress in any direction, except through the Ever-Virgin, this God-bearing lamp who is truly radiant with divine brightness.” ( The Homilies , "On the Entrance into the Temple," 53.37, pg 431; cf. Homily 37.15, 17, 18, pgs 296-297) The relevant portion of Homily 37, "On the Dormition," 37.15 reads: “She alone stands at the border between the created and uncreated nature, and no one can come to God unless he is truly illumined by her, the true la...

As a normative principle, it is proper that we should ever begin: “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:20 KJV). This is what I find most distressing, that people are not consulting the Scriptures for clarity about how to respond to plague and to the idea of forced vaccines. For we hear people say things like, "Love, Love," but I do not believe they are truly consulting Biblical love, which is always obedience to God's revealed will: “This is love, that we walk according to His commandments” (2 John 1:6 NKJV). If I may be permitted an interpretive paraphrase: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘ LOVE , LOVE ,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘ LOVE , LOVE , have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name [and healed many diseases]?’ And then I will dec...

Orthodox ecclesiology, which is to say the Eastern Church’s understanding of the nature of the Church, is necessarily and permanently exclusivistic. This means that, according to the Orthodox position, the Eastern Orthodox Church is the Church, which is to say an identity with the Body of Christ. Whatever calls itself church that is also not in immediate external communion with the Eastern Churches is therefore not in inward communion with the Church, and so not in communion with the Body of Christ, and, a fortiori , not in communion with Christ. Patriarch Dositheus’ synodal and canonical Confession states: That the dignity of the bishop is so necessary in the Church, that without him, neither Church nor Christian could either be or be spoken of. For he, as a successor of the Apostles, having received in continued succession by the imposition of hands… is a fountain of all the Mysteries [Sacraments] of the catholic Church, through which we obtain salvation. And he is, we affirm, as n...