19 Μαρτίου 2017

The word “helper” itself presupposes an action for which Adam needs help. The only work that the text refers to is to protect and cultivate Paradise. The first interpreters of the sacred text understood that labor in Paradise was not handy work, but spiritual effort, meaning a labor toward perfection. According to several Christian writers, the human person was created physically perfect, but spiritually imperfect. St. Irenaeus of Lyons believed that the first man and woman were not made morally perfect from the beginning because in that case all their actions would have no moral significance. “Though they were made having the image and likeness as their potentiality, they were required to become the image and likeness through spiritual labor ...

In my 24 years as an Orthodox Christian, I’ve heard countless homilies about the evils of the culture in which we live. Most of those homilies have gone on to exhort the hearers to live sanctified lives in the midst of the culture, but very few have found anything to say about how we might go about redeeming the culture itself. By this point, I’m ready to paraphrase Mark Twain’s famous comment about the weather: “Everybody complains about the culture, but nobody does anything about it!” A recent book examines this phenomenon from a general Christian perspective. The book is called The Culturally Savvy Christian, by Dick Staub, and it’s one of the most refreshing books I’ve read in a long time. Staub’s ...