Archive for category New Nuggets
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM: “Jesus the Prophet”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, New Nuggets, Theology on October 15, 2025
In a homily Father Richard Rohr, OFM, describes the tension between priestly and prophetic tasks—both necessary for healthy religion:
There are two great strains of spiritual teachers in Judaism, and I think, if the truth is told, in all religions. There’s the priestly strain that holds the system together by repeating the tradition. The one we’re less familiar with is the prophetic strain, because that one hasn’t been quite as accepted. Prophets are critical of the very system that the priests maintain.
If we have both, we have a certain kind of wholeness or integrity. If we just have priests, we keep repeating the party line and everything is about loyalty, conformity, and following the rules—and that looks like religion. But if we have the priest and the prophet, we have a system constantly refining itself and correcting itself from within. Those two strains very seldom come together. We see it in Moses, who both gathers Israel, and yet is the most critical of his own people. We see it again in Jesus, who loves his people and his Jewish religion, but is lethally critical of hypocrisy and illusion and deceit (see Matthew 23; Luke 11:37–12:3).
Choctaw elder and Episcopal bishop Steven Charleston considers how Jesus invited others to share in his prophetic vision:
Jesus … saw a vision that became an invitation for people to claim a new identity, to enter into a new sense of community.… Jesus offered the promise of justice, healing, and redemption.… Jesus became the prophetic teacher of a spiritual renewal for the poor and the oppressed…. Jesus was more than just the recipient of a vision or the messenger of a vision. What sets Jesus apart is that he brought the elements of his vision quest together in a way that no one else had ever done….
“This is my body,” he told them. “This is my blood.” For him, the culmination of his vision was not just the messiahship of believing in him as a prophet. Through the Eucharist, Jesus was not just offering people a chance to see his vision, but to become a part of it by becoming a part of him.
Richard honors the role of prophets in religious systems:
The only way evil can succeed is to disguise itself as good. And one of the best disguises for evil is religion. Someone can be racist, be against the poor, hate immigrants, and be totally concerned about making money and being a materialist but still go to church each Sunday and be “justified” in the eyes of religion.
Those are the things that prophets point out, so prophets aren’t nearly as popular as priests. Priests keep repeating the party line, but prophets do both: they put together the best of the conservative with the best of the liberal, to use contemporary language. They honor the tradition, and they also say what’s phony about the tradition. That’s what fully spiritually mature people can do.
Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation – Monday, October 13, 2025
When Glory Explodes the Forms: Doxology, Faith, and the Exorcism of Epistemology
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, New Nuggets, Theology on July 14, 2025
 From Fr Aidan Kimel’s Eclectic Orthodoxy on 14 July 2025  by John Stamps* Δόξα Πατρὶ καὶ Υἱῷ καὶ Ἁγίῳ Πνεύματι . . . I was paying attention in church last Sunday—really, I was. But when Fr. Nebojša intoned: “Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, both now and always and unto the ages of ages,” a strange Platonic thought hijacked my brain. Socrates wouldn’t understand a word of this. For him, doxa meant “opinion.” The Father has an opinion? The Son too? And the Holy Spirit? Three divine “opinions”? Socrates would be horrified. In Book VI of The Republic, he blurts out: “Have you not observed that opinions (doxai) divorced from knowledge (episteme) are ugly things? The best of them are blind.” (506c) Already, he’d be reaching for the hemlock. But it gets worse. At St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, when we recite the Nicene Creed—first in Greek, then in English—we fervently confess: Πιστεύω εἰς ἕνα Θεὸν Πατέρα παντοκράτορα . . . “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty.” Or, more provocatively—and more Christianly—“I put my trust in one God, the Father Almighty.” Once again, Socrates would be scandalized. Pistis? Mere belief? Conviction at best? And you’re going to stake that on ultimate reality? Pistis may rise above illusion (eikasia), but it’s still fog—not the clear light of truth. Surely the divine deserves better. Surely epistēmē—solid, demonstrable knowledge—is the true coin of the metaphysical realm. To entrust pistis with the highest things would be like trying to buy eternity with Monopoly money. For Plato, pistis belongs low on the Divided Line—just above eikasia (imagination and shadows), and well below epistēmē. It’s trust in what we can see and touch, but without glimpsing the hidden reality behind it—the invisible Forms that give things their true meaning. Pistis is for the unphilosophical. The half-blind. The cave-dwellers huddled in the cave who mistake sensible things for what is really real. But Christian theology flips the entire Platonic ladder upside down. From Doxa to Glory For Socrates, doxa means “opinion”—an unreliable, subjective mental state. But in Christian liturgy, doxa is glory: not mental conjecture but the radiant, overwhelming presence of the living God. Doxa is Moses taking off his shoes before the burning bush. Doxa is Moses descending Sinai with a face that glows because he got too close to raw holiness. Doxa is the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth, dwelling among us. Doxa is not conjecture. It’s encounter. Somewhere between the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint, doxa got an upgrade. And this raises a linguistic and theological mystery: How did the Hebrew word כָּבוֹד (kavod—weight, substance, heaviness, splendor) become doxa (opinion) in Greek? The Septuagint translators had choices. And their choice changed Christian theology forever. From Pistis to Trust In the New Testament, pistis is not an epistemic crutch. It is relational trust, covenant loyalty, and a faithful response to a God who reveals Himself not in abstractions but in history, flesh, and self-giving love. Far from being a lower form of knowledge, pistis becomes the primary way humans recognize and respond to divine glory—a deeper, riskier kind of knowing, grounded in love, testimony, and encounter. For Socrates, by contrast, pistis was barely a step above guesswork—an uncritical belief in the physical world, just above imagination (eikasia) and far below true knowledge (epistēmē). It belonged to the realm of opinion (doxa) and was reserved for the half-blind dwellers in the cave. But in the New Testament, pistis becomes something far more daring. It echoes the Hebrew word emunah (אֱמוּנָה): steadfast trust, covenant faithfulness, unwavering reliability. Christian faith isn’t vague optimism. It’s not mere intellectual assent or rearranging our mental furniture. Pistis is not a foggy feeling or private conviction. It is existential trust. It is covenantal loyalty. It is Semper Fi!— our fidelity to the God who speaks, acts, and keeps His promises and our willingness to stake everything on His trustworthiness. Faith is stepping out onto the water like Peter because Jesus said, “Come.” Faith is betting everything on the God who delivered Israel from Pharaoh’s tyranny and raised Jesus from the dead. Or, as Robert Jenson once put it: “God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having before raised Israel from Egypt.” This is how Christians reliably identify and name God: by His acts of faithfulness. And pistis is our answering act of trust and faithfulness in return. From Eikasia to Icon Images are tricky. Plato had his reasons to be suspicious. He especially distrusted imitative images—whether in poetry, painting, or shadowplay—because they were seductive lies, copies of copies, that lured the soul away from truth and down into the flickering cave of illusion. Teenagers glued to their 300-DPI iPhone screens aren’t so different from the cave-dwellers in The Republic, staring at shadows on the wall, mistaking illusion for reality. That’s why Plato wanted the image-makers banished from the ideal city. For him, images were not innocent—they were propaganda, simulacra, distortions. In his metaphysics, images were the lowest of the low. But Christian theology tells a different story. Scripture gives us strong reasons to trust—not all images, but certain ones—as truth-bearing windows into reality. First, just look at yourself in the mirror—warts and all. You are the imago Dei. Look at your spouse, your children, your friends. Knock on your neighbor’s door with cookies or a bottle of wine. Hand $20 to a homeless person. Pray for—and forgive—your bitterest enemy. Why this exercise? Because every one of them is the imago Dei. They are the spitting image of God. This is where Christian theology begins: with the startling claim that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. We bear the weight of glory. This image (εἰκών) is not falsehood. It is truth-bearing. It carries the imprint of the Creator. The image is not a pale copy—it participates in the reality it reflects. This image is a site where divine glory dwells. Second, when the Word became flesh, God’s image wasn’t entering alien territory. The Incarnation is not some bizarre intrusion into a world God otherwise keeps at arm’s length. It is the culmination of God’s long purpose for creation: that divine glory would dwell bodily within it. The Incarnation is no invasion. The kosmos belongs to the Lord, and the fullness thereof. Third, Jesus of Nazareth is the Image-Bearer par excellence. He looks just like us. That God was one of us is the scandal at the heart of the Christian confession. And yet . . . the One in whom all the fullness of God dwells (Colossians 2:9) looks so much like us that we don’t recognize Him. Familiarity breeds contempt and generates its own kind of blindness. Glory walks right past us wearing dusty sandals. But if we have eyes to behold the mystery, Jesus—crucified, risen, and ascended—is the true Image (εἰκών) of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). Not a photocopy. Not a metaphor. Not a shadow. He is one of us—bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. And yet He reveals God to us fully and truly. We Orthodox insist on this incarnational truth: images matter because the Image matters. To celebrate this, we wallpaper our churches with icons—not as decoration, but as theological proclamation. Icons are not aesthetic accessories. They are visual participation in divine reality. Icons reveal. They manifest. They make present. They proclaim what words alone cannot say. Why do we venerate icons? Because images, rightly ordered, are truth-bearing. Because the Image became flesh and dwelt among us. And because, through Christ, we too are being transfigured—from glory to glory—into the image of God. For us, seeing is not believing lies. Seeing is encountering glory. Epistemology Needs an Exorcism My old philosophy professor, Nicholas Wolterstorff, used to warn us: “Ever since Plato, the Western world has been haunted by the lure of certitude.” And he’s right. That ghost still lingers. We need an exorcism. We need to turn epistemology into doxology. Or more precisely: episteme-logos into doxo-logos. Once you’re bewitched by epistemology and the certainty it promises, it’s hard to break the spell. You start—and you end—by measuring all truth, including theological truth, by mental clarity, logical deduction, and timeless abstraction. But Trinitarian doxology and the Nicene Creed don’t just challenge Greek epistemology—they scandalize it. We can’t start with clear and distinct ideas. We must begin with faithful witness. We begin where we actually encounter the glory of God. The Father who speaks. The Son who acts. The Spirit who breathes. Three Persons. One God. Doxology—not detached speculation—is the engine that drives Christian theology. To the Greek philosophical mind—fixated on unchanging forms, impersonal absolutes, and epistemic certainty—this kind of God-talk sounds like theological madness. A God who speaks? Acts? Loves? Suffers? Raises the dead? So yes—we fumble and stumble for the right words. Apophatic theology rightly reminds us that God always exceeds our categories and language. But that doesn’t mean we stay silent. Christian speech begins in worship—yes, in doxology—and in the risky act of saying something true about the God who cannot be contained. Let the Platonists chase certainty . . . we behold glory. For the life of me, I still don’t fully understand how kavod—a word of weight and substance—became doxa, a word that once meant “opinion.” But the Septuagint translators had choices. And their choice opened the door for Christian theology to do something the ancient philosophers never saw coming. Faithful God-talk begins not with control, but with wonder. Not with clarity, but with trust. Not with epistemic mastery, but with doxology. We speak because God has spoken. We bear witness because doxa showed up in history, and refused to stay abstract. We dare to name the Unnameable because the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth . . . and we beheld His glory. Let the Platonists chase their Forms, the Cartesians polish their clear and distinct ideas, and the positivists flatten everything into data. And yes, let the American Fundamentalists obsess over the inerrancy of the original autographs—those long-lost parchments that somehow guarantee perfect doctrine, if only we squint hard enough. Scripture, for them, isn’t the living voice that calls us into communion, but a cosmic answer key dropped from heaven. The lure of certitude is still a mirage. We will not lose our nerve. We will render doxa to the God who acts— Who speaks, Who raises the dead, Who walks through our kosmos with dusty feet and scandalous grace. . . . καὶ νῦν καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. Ἀμήν.  * * *John Stamps is Senior Technical Writer at Guidewire Software in San Mateo, California. He holds a BA in Greek from Abilene Christian University, an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary, and pursued further study in the philosophy of religion at Yale Divinity School—just long enough to accrue debt and existential questions. He attends St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in San Jose, is married to the long-suffering Shelly Houston Stamps, plays mediocre tennis with misplaced confidence, and speaks Spanish that routinely scandalizes native speakers and small children. |
The Seven Sacraments, or Mysteries of the Christian Church
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, New Nuggets, Theology on April 2, 2025
The inward life of the Christian Church is mystical (or sacramental). The word “mysteries” (Greek mysteria) is the term used in the Orthodox East; “sacraments” (Latin sacramenta), the term used in the Latin West. So, how and when did Western Latin and Eastern Orthodox come to identify and accept the seven sacraments, or mysteries of the Christian Church?
One might reasonably assume that the seven Sacraments (Mysteries) were determined early in the period of the united Church (AD 33 – 1054). That assumption would be false.
One of the renowned teachers of the united Church, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (6th Century) listed six sacraments in his work The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (ca. AD 500): baptism, Eucharist, confirmation, priesthood, the consecration of monks, and rites for the dead.
Two centuries later, another early teacher revered East and West, John of Damascus (675-749), mentions only two sacraments: Baptism together with the corresponding chrismation and the Eucharist (Communion), the only two mysteries identified in the New Testament and instituted by Jesus.
Clearly, there was no unanimity on the identity or number of sacraments/mysteries in the first 1,000 years of the unified Christian Church, nor at the time of the Great East-West Schism of 1054.
In the post-Schism Latin West, Peter Lombard (1100-1164), in his fourth Book of Sentences (d.ii, n.1), enumerated the seven sacraments. This list of sacraments was accepted by the Western Latin Roman Church at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.
49 years later, during the Second Ecumenical Council of Lyons in 1274, Eastern Greek theologians, under Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos (in his Profession of Faith), accepted the seven Latin Sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation (Chrismation), Eucharist, Penance, Priesthood, Marriage, and Anointing of the Sick.
So, clearly, neither the Seven Holy Sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church nor the Seven Holy Mysteries of the Eastern Orthodox Church are First Thoughts of God, but mostly, save two, distant Afterthoughts of Man, codified a thousand years after Jesus and the Apostolic age.
New Testament “Love”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in New Nuggets, Theology on March 31, 2025
Koine (common) Greek, the Greek of the New Testament, is often much more specific than English. This is important for those wanting to understand exactly what the New Testament means. An example of this specificity is the Koine Greek words used to describe the word “love.”
In English, the word “love” can be applied to a variety of types of love. “Love” can apply to feelings toward a spouse, parents, siblings, strangers, or even a cup of coffee. Koine Greek, however, uses a specific word for each type of love. Here are the Greek words that were used during Christ’s time to convey the different meanings of the word “Love”:
- Eros (ἔρως): Refers to romantic love felt towards one’s spouse or lover. This Greek term is where the word “erotic” is derived from. The word “Eros” is not actually used in either the Old or New Testaments.
- Phileo (φιλέω): Refers to feelings one has towards close friends; “brotherly love”. This word was used in the New Testament to describe Jesus’ love for his disciples (John 20:2) and for Lazarus (John 11:3).
- Agape (ἀγάπη): Sometimes called “God’s kind of love”. This is the kind of love that we should have for all men, and also for our enemies. It is a selfless kind of love that Christians must have in regard to acting in the best interest for all human beings. “But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;” (Matthew 5:44).
- Storge (στοργή): This Greek word refers to love we have for our parents, siblings, our children and other members of our family. Paul used this word in the negative in Romans 1:31 when he described the pagans that he was in contact with as being without “natural affection.”
Human Institutions
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, New Nuggets on March 31, 2025
Nothing on earth has a stronger amoral drive for survival than a human institution.
Prayer Ropes and Rosaries
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, Hesychasm - Jesus Prayer, Monasticism, New Nuggets, Patristic Pearls on December 21, 2024
Both the prayer rope and the rosary are revered traditional aids to Christian prayer, yet each has its own unique origin, symbolism, and devotional use.
The Prayer Rope, now largely associated with the Eastern Orthodox Church, is a loop of knots (each knot containing seven crosses), usually made of wool, that is used to focus and intensify prayer, particularly the Jesus Prayer. It acts as a physical guide for a repeated, meditative style of prayer, allowing practitioners to keep count while reflecting and meditating. The prayer rope has its beginnings in early fourth century Christian monasticism in the Egyptian Desert, where it was devised as a tool to aid in the ascetic practice of continuous prayer (1 Thes. 5:17).
Origins: The prayer rope is known as a ‘komboskini’ in Greek and ‘chotki’ in Russian. The prayer rope owes its origins to St. Pachomius the Great, a fourth century “Desert Father” in upper Egypt and founder of cenobitic monasticism (a monastic tradition that stresses community life, over the older, eremitic, or solitary tradition). St. Pachomius established the prayer rope as a practical solution for the monks under his supervision to count prayers and prostrations consistently. The prayer rope evolved as a useful instrument for monks to keep track of their prayers, particularly the Jesus Prayer, without distraction. It gradually took on a deeper spiritual value, with each knot symbolizing a request for mercy and humility.
Symbolic Significance: Wool knots, each knot containing seven crosses, are commonly used on traditional prayer ropes to represent Christ’s flock and the shepherd’s care. The number of knots in a prayer rope varies; typically 33 (Christ’s age at crucifixion), 50, or 100.
Traditional Use: In Orthodox Christian practice, the prayer rope is typically used for private prayer in reciting the Jesus Prayer, acting as a physical and spiritual guide to help the mind (nous) and heart concentrate on prayer.
The Rosary, strongly associated with the Roman Catholic Church, is a string of beads that ends with a crucifix and is used to guide Catholics through a sequence of prayers that reflect on the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Each bead signifies a specific prayer, such as the Hail Mary, and each set of beads makes a ‘decade’ that corresponds to a mystery in Christ’s life. The rosary has a long history, dating back to the Middle Ages when it first arose as a popular form of laity devotion, eventually becoming a prominent practice in Catholic piety.
Origins: The rosary is typically identified with Saint Dominic in the early 13th century. The rosary began as a simple way for lay people to join in the monastic practice of reciting the Psalms, but has since evolved into a systematic form of prayer. The rosary prayers are split into decades, each with ten Hail Marys, an Our Father, and a Glory Be, and are frequently accompanied by meditations on the Mysteries of the Rosary.
Symbolic Significance: Each rosary bead represents a prayer as well as a step in the meditation journey through Jesus Christ’s and the Virgin Mary’s lives. The rosary culminates with a crucifix, which represents Christ’s sacrifice.
Traditional Use: Roman Catholics utilize the rosary for both personal meditation and social worship. It is frequently prayed privately for personal spiritual development or in groups for social objectives and celebrations.
Rohr: Power, Prestige, and Possessions; Major Obstacles to the Reign of God
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, New Nuggets on November 28, 2024
Fr. Richard Rohr – is a Franciscan priest, Christian mystic, and teacher of Ancient Christian Contemplative Prayer. He is the founding Director of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, NM.
In Jesus’s consistent teaching and in Mary’s great Magnificat, both say that there are three major obstacles to the coming of the reign of God. I call them the three P’s: power, prestige and possessions. Mary refers to them as “the proud,” “the mighty on thrones” and “the rich.” These, she says, God is “routing,” “pulling down” and “sending away empty.” (This great prayer of Mary was considered so subversive by the Argentine government that they banned it from public recitation at protest marches!) We can easily take nine-tenths of Jesus’s teachings and very clearly align it under one of those three categories: Our attachments to power, prestige and possessions are obstacles to God’s coming. Why could we not see that?
—from the book Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent
by Richard Rohr
The Beatitudes- Fresh Eyes on Ancient Language
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, New Nuggets, Theology on May 2, 2024
A new translation by David Bentley Hart
The Eight Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew (Chap. 5, verses 3-10)1
3 Μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι, ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν.
How blissful2 the destitute, abject3 in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of the heavens.
4 μακάριοι οἱ πενθοῦντες, ὅτι αὐτοὶ παρακληθήσονται.
How blissful those who mourn, for they shall be aided.
5 μακάριοι οἱ πραεῖς, ὅτι αὐτοὶ κληρονομήσουσι τὴν γῆν.
How blissful the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
6 μακάριοι οἱ πεινῶντες καὶ διψῶντες τὴν δικαιοσύνην, ὅτι αὐτοὶ χορτασθήσονται.
How blissful those who hunger and thirst for what is right, for they shall feast.
7 μακάριοι οἱ ἐλεήμονες, ὅτι αὐτοὶ ἐλεηθήσονται.
How blissful the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
8 μακάριοι οἱ καθαροὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ, ὅτι αὐτοὶ τὸν θεὸν ὄψονται.
How blissful the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
9 μακάριοι οἱ εἰρηνοποιοί, ὅτι αὐτοὶ υἱοὶ θεοῦ κληθήσονται.
How blissful the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
10 μακάριοι οἱ δεδιωγμένοι ἕνεκεν δικαιοσύνης, ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν.
How blissful those who have been persecuted for the sake of what is right, for theirs is the Kingdom of the heavens.
1 Translation by David Bentley Hart. The New Testament, 2nd Edition, Yale University Press, 2023.
2 μακάριος (makarios): “blessed”, “happy”, “fortunate”, “prosperous”, but originally with a connotation of divine or heavenly bliss.
3 A πτῶχος (ptōchos) is a poor man or beggar, but with the connotation of one who is abject: cowering or cringing.
Christ is not Jesus’ Last Name
Posted by Dallas Wolf in New Nuggets, The Holy Trinity, The Logos Doctrine (series) on January 6, 2024
“Jesus is the union of human and divine in one person, and the Christ is the eternal union of matter and Spirit from the beginning of time.”
“Whenever the material and the spiritual coincide, there is the Christ.”
~ Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
My Mystic Christian Family Tree
Posted by Dallas Wolf in New Nuggets on November 10, 2023
My personal list of spiritual favorites. Listed in a loose chronological order. Many are institutional saints; others should be. I Figured it might be interesting to let everyone know what sources lie behind much of my thinking and writing.
Jesus, the Christ ——————————– AD 30
Paul of Tarsus ———————————– AD 60
Gospel Writer of John ———————– AD 90
Justin Martyr ———————————– AD 150
Clement of Alexandria ——————— AD 190
Origen of Alexandria ———————— AD 230
Athanasius of Alexandria —————– AD 330
Macarius of Egypt —————————- AD 350
Basil of Caesaria —————————— AD 350
Makrina the Younger ———————- AD 355
Gregory of Nazianzus ——————— AD 360
Gregory of Nyssa —————————- AD 380
Evagrius Ponticus ————————— AD 380
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite —– AD 500
John Climacus ——————————– AD 620
Maximus the Confessor —————— AD 630
Isaac of Nineveh —————————– AD 680
Symeon the New Theologian ———– AD 1000
Gregory Palamas ————————— AD 1340
Teresa of Ávila ——————————- AD 1560
John of the Cross —————————- AD 1580
Additional influences: Antony the Great, Pachomius the Great, John Cassian, John of Damascus, Seraphim of Sarov, John B. Heard, Vladimir Lossky, Sergii Bulgakov, John Zizioulas, John Romanides, Christos Yannaras, Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, John Meyendorff, Alexander Schmemann, Kallistos (Ware), Dumitru Stăniloae, Olivier Clément, Sophrony (Sakharov), Seraphim (Aldea), Bart Ehrman, Marcus Borg, Richard Rohr, Eusebius Stephanou, N.T. Wright, Jürgen Moltmann , and David Bentley Hart.
First Thoughts 