Chuck

“We are not masters of our fate, but neither are we victims of it. We are, indeed, co-creators and cooperators with God and His grace.”
― Stanley S. Harakas, Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality

“Don’t let your pain destroy you. Let it propel you!”
― Matt Sorger, Power for Life: Keys to a Life Marked by the Presence of God

“Since our reasoning brain is a gift from God, there is undoubtedly a legitimate place for scholarly research into Biblical origins. But, while we are not to reject this research wholesale, we cannot as Orthodox accept it in its entirety. Always we need to keep in view that the Bible is not just a collection of historical documents, but it is the book of the Church, containing God's word. And so we do not read the Bible as isolated individuals, interpreting it solely by the light of our private understanding, or in terms of current theories about source, form or redaction criticism. We read it as members of the Church, in communion with all the other members throughout the ages. The final criterion for our interpretation of Scripture is the mind of the Church. And this means keeping constantly in view how the meaning of Scripture is explained and applied in Holy Tradition: that is to say, how the Bible is understood by the Fathers and the saints, and how it is used in liturgical worship.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“We see that it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way