PODCAST · religion
No Other Foundation
by Fr. Lawrence R. Farley, and Ancient Faith Ministries
Fr. Lawrence Farley offers brief commentary and analysis on topics related to Orthodoxy, theology, morality, the Scriptures, and contemporary culture.
Episodes
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Ontology and Exegesis
During the tumultuous fourth century when it seemed everyone in the Church was fighting everyone else and Arians and Orthodox (to use modern terms) were going at it hammer and tong, one of the weapons used in those debates was the Bible. All the arguing parties called themselves “orthodox” and...
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The Kenosis Key
Odds are that if you began to talk about “kenosis” in a room full of strangers they would assume you were talking about a change in your metabolism. Nope: that’s “ketosis”, not “kenosis”. The term “kenosis” is a theological term used to describe the divine self-emptying that occurred at the...
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Confession and Communion: Guidelines or Laws?
One question that is often asked of pastors by new converts is “How often should I go to confession?” Closely allied to this query is the one which asks, “Do I need to go to confession each time before receiving Holy Communion?” These are good questions, and because they deal with the human…
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The Falling Man and the Mercy of God
Twenty-five years ago today, on September 11, 2001, many innocent people died in New York City— almost 3000 by one count. Those were the ones trapped in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center when two airplanes, commandeered by Islamic terrorists, flew into those buildings in order to make a...
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Adam and Eve in Fair Verona
I have just finished re-reading the late J. N. D. Kelly’s wonderfully readable biography of Jerome and it made me a bit sad. St. Jerome was, of course, the greatest Christian scholar of his day and he deserves immense credit for soldiering ahead with his translation of the Old Testament from the...
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An Undefiled Sacrifice
In chapter 14 of the Didache, a work dating to about 100 A.D., we read the following: “On the Lord’s own day gather together and break bread and give thanks, having first confessed your sins so that your sacrifice [i.e. the Eucharist] may be pure. But let no one who has a quarrel with a companion...
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The Homoean Temptation and the Ecumenism of Agreed Statements
Readers of this blog may not be familiar with the Homoeans which would be quite understandable for they all died out centuries ago. Now they can only be discovered within the pages of church history books, but they were all the rage in the fourth century. Let’s review.
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The Parish Priest as Spiritual Father
There have been a number of times throughout my ministry that I have been asked by inquirers or parishioners if I would be their spiritual father. My answer is always the same: “No, but I am happy to be your pastor and your friend”. Sometimes I explain more fully: “People in parishes don’t need a...
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“The Superstition of Divorce”: a New Review of an Old Book
In 1918 G. K. Chesterton wrote a series of five articles for the New Witness condemning the (then current) move in England to enact more liberal divorce laws. The articles were collected and published in 1920 under the title The Superstition of Divorce (image inset), a first-edition of which was...
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The Union of our Spirits: Ekklesia as Epiclesis
One might imagine that the very first words of the Orthodox Liturgy consisted of a blessing pronounced by the priest saying, “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!” It is not so. The very first words of the Liturgy consist not of a blessing by the priest but…
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Remembering Who You Are
In 2010 country singer Miranda Lambert recorded and released a song written by Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin entitled “The House that Built Me”. It was a clever song as well as a moving one, playing on the notion that we build houses; houses do not build us. The point of the song, however, was...
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At the Center of your Body
I have just finished reading the excellent and admirably honest autobiography of Anthony Hopkins entitled We Did OK, Kid. Hopkins seems to have been (he is still alive) one of those people who grew wiser, better, and kinder with age. Throughout the book, however, I thought I could discern a life...
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The Camel Caper
When I was a young man and a new teenage convert to the Christian Faith through the Jesus People movement I believed whatever I read in a book as long as it was written by someone with letters after their name. Yep: I was that dumb. And so when I first read an article written by S.G.F. Brandon...
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“He’s Alive”
Eva Mozes Kor was a Jewish girl, born in Romania to Alexander and Jaffa Mozes, the only Jewish residents in the area. She had three siblings, one of whom was her twin sister Miriam. Her parents and two older sisters were gassed in Auschwitz; she survived because, along with her twin sister, she…
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Music Really Doth Hath Charms
Not too long ago I wrote a blog piece entitled “Music Hath Charms” in which I argued for the softening and transformational nature of music (adding a plug for choir directors with the suggestion they were mostly all underpaid). One person who read the piece called my attention to some (shall we...
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Christ Said What?
Recently I was scrolling through the website of a famously-liberal denomination which quickly became excruciatingly boring because it was so predictable. In the early 1980s my (then) Anglican bishop the Right Reverend H. V. R. Short described the group as “humanism with God-talk” and I was…
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Pharisaical Eyes
In the narrative in John 5 we find a story which our Lord heals a paralytic who had been lying by the pool of Bethesda, and there is a detail there that I had missed in all the decades I had been reading that story. It is this: our Lord healed the man with a word, telling him to take up the…
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The Fate of Fairholme
Way, way back in time in the years 1979-1981 I lived in the village of Turtleford, Saskatchewan, having moved there from suburban Toronto. Turtleford was a rural village of about 500 souls and my ministry as an Anglican priest took me to other villages, such as Spruce Lake and Livelong (and no, I...
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An Ascension Reflection: Where Does the Eucharist Take Place?
Those familiar with liturgical worship will be familiar with the pre-anaphoral dialogue— the dialogue between celebrant and people that takes place just before the celebrant prays the anaphora, the long prayer over the bread and wine which consecrates them to be the Body and Blood of the Lord…
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Music Hath Charms
In his 1697 play The Mourning Bride, playwright William Congreve wrote that “Musick hath charms to sooth a savage breast [i.e. a savage heart], to soften rocks or bend a knotted oak”.
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An Embroidered Text?
Recently I watched the very interesting 2016 documentary entitled “Rome: Empire Without Limit with Mary Beard”. Ms. Beard, a very readable British scholar, functioned as host and narrator. Regarding Christ, Ms. Beard said, “one Jewish Rabbi had developed new ideas. His name was Jesus. The Sayings...
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The Authority of the Priest
In the Protestant Evangelical world the priest (sorry: “the pastor”) is not a figure of authority within the local church community but is primarily a preacher, an administrator. He can be available for counselling, if necessary. In large mega-churches he functions as a CEO. But he is not a…
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In Praise of Geegaws
In a wonderful old book by Leslie Farmer published in 1944 entitled We Saw the Holy City (mentioned briefly in last week’s blog), Farmer tells a story about how he led a group of soldiers on leave during the Second World War to the church in Bethlehem at Christmas time. The Reverend Farmer was...
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The Road to Kiriath-jearim
Time to climb aboard our time machine and leave the year 2026 for a time over a thousand years before Christ, the time when Eli was high priest in Israel during the period of the Judges (read all about in 1 Samuel). The land is in turmoil yet again: the Philistines immediately west of us are...
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A Church on its Deathbed
Recently I read a copy of the alumni magazine from a mainline Protestant seminary. It was very well done and showcased a number of people, both faculty and students, all fervent in their faith and zealous to serve the Lord. It presented the seminary, as it intended to do, as a place of thriving...
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Of Wormholes and Memorials
In a post-Liturgy Q & A held by a wonderful and learned priest, Fr. Justin Hewlett, someone present (a Baptist, if memory serves) asked a question about the Eucharist. He had been reading some anti-Catholic literature which had denounced the supposedly Catholic teaching that Christ was...
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How to Preach
With the expected influx of ordinations to the priesthood hoping to keep up with the recent surge of new converts coming into Orthodox parishes, many new priests will be stepping into pulpits (metaphorical or otherwise) to preach. Given the importance of preaching in the life of a parish (St.…
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The Donation of Constantine
The term “the donation of Constantine” refers to a medieval forgery, long used to support the claims and authority of the medieval papacy. According to the document, the emperor Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, transferred as a gift the city of Rome and the western part of the...
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“He Doesn’t Know, Does He?”
Lately, through the kindness of a friend, I watched recently an old 1961 British film starring a very young Hayley Mills entitled Whistle Down the Wind, dating from before her Disney days. I saw it as a young child when it was first released in movie theatres and re-watching it as an old man I...
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“A Personal and Private Search for God”
One doesn’t think of stars immersed in Hollywood or British theatre and who attend All The Best Parties sitting in an arena and listening to an address by Billy Graham, but so it was.
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The Veneration of Relics
In my experience it’s a safe bet that most Protestants are not enthused about the veneration of relics— i.e. bits of a saint’s bone or bits of things they once used, such as pieces of their clothing (these are called “secondary relics”). That would apply even to Protestant “saints”: if I came to…
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Papa John Scratch and Company
It was during the 1988 All-American Council of the OCA that I overheard Fr. Daniel Donlick (then Dean of St. Tikhon’s Seminary) comment to a group of worker priests (i.e. clergy who supported themselves and their families by working at secular jobs while serving parishes) “We must bow low before...
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Christ in our Midst: Present and Future
During the exchange of the Peace in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy it had been my custom to greet those around me by saying, “Christ is in our midst!”, expecting the reply (and giving as the reply when the greeting was given to me) “He is and ever shall be!” I was therefore quite surprised when the...
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“Command!”: a Reflection on the Contemporary Ordination Practice
At the ordination of a priest or deacon the following ritual is observed: some of the serving clergy take the candidate to be ordained into the nave (in the case of a diaconal candidate, two subdeacons; in the case of the priestly candidate, two deacons), assist him in making a prostration toward...
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The Accomplishments of the Reformation
On October 31 parts of the western world celebrated Reformation Day, giving thanks for the Protestant Reformation. (I am tempted to observe that on the old Julian calendar, Reformation Day was on Thursday November 13.) Here I would like to look back and make a few observations about the...
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The King of Israel
Tucked well away in the Divine Liturgy in a prayer that the priest says silently for himself we find a significant title of Christ. The priest offers the prayer as the people sing the cherubic hymn but because it is not a prayer of the Church but a private prayer of the priest there is no reason...
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A Christian Response to War
As a baby boomer child of the 1950s, I was taught to hate war. For my generation, war was an unmitigated evil (though, happily, this notion did not spill over into hating or disrespecting our soldiers—later described as “peace-keepers”). Our generation’s hatred of war was well expressed in the…
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The Dying of the Light
When I was young, I read a famous poem that I now regard as one of the strangest poems ever written. It is the one entitled “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas with its repeated refrain “do not go gentle into that good night…rage, rage against the dying of the light”.
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Surveying the Old Testament
When I was a child in grade five, I was given a New Testament by the Gideon Society, like everyone else in my grade. Note: the New Testament, not the entire Bible. I suspect that the decision to confine the gift to the New Testament Scriptures was dictated more by economics than by theology—after...
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Tithing Mint
I am often asked by catechumens questions of basic liturgical etiquette, such as how to enter the church, how to venerate an icon, and when to make the sign of the cross. I am always happy to explain and (if in church) to demonstrate, since these are things that Orthodox people should know and do...
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All Kinds of Everything
There are, I suggest, two ways to experience the world. The first is that of the materialist: the world is all that exists. The physical world that we see and experience has no real or intrinsic meaning; it just is. We can, if we like, endow it with meaning from our own heads, but such meaning...
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I Don’t Believe in Christianity
I recently read in Jaroslav Pelikan’s excellent Jesus Through the Centuries a line from American scholar Arthur O. Lovejoy, who asserted, “The term ‘Christianity’ is not the name for any single unit of the type for which the historian of specific ideas looks.” Rather, the term describes “a series...
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The Focus of the Pharisee
If you Google the term “Pharisees” you find the following: “The Pharisees were a Jewish social movement and school of thought in the Levant during the time of Second Temple Judaism”. That definition is historically true, but spirituality inadequate, for Pharisees were and are not confined to the...
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Losing Your Name, Losing Your Soul
It occurred to me recently that it is significant that the invisible enemy of our souls is called “the Evil One” in both the Lord’s Prayer and in such passages as 1 John 5:19. That is, our adversary is never named, but only referred to obliquely. He is also referred to as “the Adversary” from the...
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Rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem
From the days of Moses when God made a covenant through him with Israel to come and dwell in their midst, Israel has offered sacrifice to Yahweh their God. The detailed instructions for offering sacrifices and for the shrine centre built to receive them are found in the Pentateuch. Originally…
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Baptismal Liturgies
In many Orthodox churches, baptisms are done privately and almost secretly: after the morning Divine Liturgy at which the entire church community was present had concluded and all the people had left, a few people remained behind—or perhaps, if they had not been at the Liturgy, came to church...
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The Healing of a Broken Heart
Fr. Nicolaie shares the story of Tara, and the hope that comes when a broken heart is changed by God's healing touch.
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“The Salvation of the Christian People”
A number of Evangelical inquirers have asked exactly what we Orthodox mean in our prayer describing the Theotokos as “the salvation of the Christian people”. They also wonder what we can mean when we pray that we “may obtain paradise through you, O Virgin Theotokos”. These queries are perhaps...
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The God of the Unexpected
Hidden well away in the Greek of the genealogy with which St. Matthew opens his Gospel is a little theological secret—a secret which utterly vanishes in most English translations. Matthew begins his genealogy of Jesus by saying that “Abraham begot Isaac, and Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot…
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Our So-Called Galactic Brothers
had thought of entitling this piece “About UFOs”, but then quickly reconsidered, not wanting to blow all my credibility before anyone had begun reading it. This piece is an unabashed and unapologetic rip-off of a chapter in Rod Dreher’s new book Living in Wonder in which chapter he deals with UFO...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Fr. Lawrence Farley offers brief commentary and analysis on topics related to Orthodoxy, theology, morality, the Scriptures, and contemporary culture.
HOSTED BY
Fr. Lawrence R. Farley, and Ancient Faith Ministries
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No Other Foundation currently has 324 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
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Fr. Lawrence Farley offers brief commentary and analysis on topics related to Orthodoxy, theology, morality, the Scriptures, and contemporary culture.
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No Other Foundation publishes regularly with 324 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
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No Other Foundation is created and hosted by Fr. Lawrence R. Farley, and Ancient Faith Ministries.
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