With Regard to my Last Post

Don't get me wrong! He will still live. Only, finally, finally, finally, it will be in and through us.

God's funeral

God is an old man who wants to die. He has been trying to for two-thousand years. The "pious" and faithful, myself included, keep him from doing so by our constant reliance on him for what he hopes us to our inherit as our own prerogative and responsibility. 
We are like children saying, "Don't go, Daddy! Don't go!" Only the more mature recognize it is time to let him go. The biggest favor we can do is to say, "It will be sad and hard to see you go. But you have provided and given for us what you can. We give you permission to depart."

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Since the Holocaust...

Since the Holocaust, the theologian has the added task of covering the nakedness of God. The problem is, to do it, one must acknowledge it. Not surprisingly, there are few who will.

Wesley's code-word

Wesley's code-word, Christian perfection = theosis!

Publican and Pharisee; here's the rub

We have made a religion out of avoiding the religion of the pharisee.

The Achilles heel of Orthodoxy is that it can't really acknowledge the legitimacy of a work of God outside of its own borders, however obvious it may be.

The Orthodox Church is austere. No question about it. But it is an austerity we have taken upon ourselves, and not something God asks of us. And, it can backfire, as we find ourselves in the position of the "older brother," resenting those who have not made the same decision as ourselves--sometimes even daring to call them non-Christians, not children of God.

What is the Reformation?

The Reformation breathed life into a situation that had become death for so many people. It does little good, I think, to say, "The Reformation has no relevance for Orthodoxy, because Orthodoxy didn't share in the series of abuses that led up to it." In fact, there are many ways that Orthodoxy shows the same spirit--legalism, lifeless formality, hyper-materialism in its understanding of sacraments, seeing church life as a fulfillment of objective obligations, etc.--that was present in the West, shortly preceding the Reformation.
"Converts" from Protestantism, and even from Catholicism, to Orthodoxy, inevitably have imbibed of some of the critical thought and valuation of freedom that comprises the Reformation, and bring this with them into Orthodoxy. This is a good thing. The correctives of the Reformation, to the extent they address the real human condition, are treasures that should forever inform our idea of what Church is, in whatever context we find ourselves. We may like to hermetically seal East from West, but reality--and, I suspect, God--is not so easily fooled. 
I question the idea that the Reformation is primarily the rediscovery of biblical principles concerning the process of salvation. Instead, I think it  may be helpful to think of it simply as this: the Reformation is an instance in which love was allowed to inform theology.