More Pictures
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Fr. Steve blesses Katherine and I before dinner.
Australian Translation of the Bible?
Among other changes, the Three Wise Men are "eggheads from out East", while the Virgin Mary is a "pretty special Sheila."This is NOT a joke. Although it ought to be. Read on if you dare.Meanwhile the parable of the Good Samaritan is "the story of the good bloke."
Wedding Photos
For those of you who were unable to attend the wedding (Dec 28th 2002) here are some photos. I'm hoping to get some more up soon.
Jeremy and Katherine on a bridge
A timeline: (I like timelines)
A quick recap and then a glance into the future…
1998
*God’s grace rayed down on me: Kate and I met one another.
*I completed junior college (finally)
*Worked as a bartender for Claim Jumper Restaurant.
*Kate’s reading: Earnest Becker, William James, Dostoyevsky, and Ayn Rand.
*My reading: Greg Bahnsen, John Calvin, Cornelius Van Til, Gary North, Rousas Rushdooney, Louis Berkhof, and C.S. Lewis.
1999
*Began my studies at UCLA-- began my community service work that would eventually lead to my employment as a middle school teacher.
*Kate takes the high school equivalency exam and begins junior college.
*I begin my journey to Orthodoxy-- certain questions about certain Protestant presuppositions begin to form.
*Kate stopped attending her family’s Mormon church.
*Kate’s reading: Elie Wiesel, Martin Luther, Douglas Coupland, C.S. Lewis, Greg Bahnsen, Bruce Shelley, and Walter Martin.
*My reading: Arthur Pink, Loraine Boettner, Michael Horton, Thomas Aquinas, Herman Melville, Douglas Coupland, J.R.R. Tolkien.
2000
*Began Law Fellows Program through UCLA law school.
*I purchased the 38 volume Church Fathers collection for Kate on Valentine’s Day.
*Took the Law School Admission Test
*Kate begins employment with IN-N-OUT Burger.
*Spent summer working 40 hours a week as a pre-literacy coach in an East Los Angeles preschool.
*Kate worked as an English tutor at Santa Ana College.
*I continued my struggle with Protestantism.
*Kate’s reading: Scott Latourette, Mary Shelley, and various church histories.
*My reading: Mark Shea, Scott Hahn, F.F. Bruce, Ronald Dworkin, Phillipa Foot, Rene Descartes, and Plato.
*Kate and I both read Brothers Karamazov. Our literary lives have not been the same since.
2001
*Kate and I are baptized at Grace Presbyterian Church in Yorba Linda by Pastor Ron Gleason.
*I Graduated from UCLA with a degree in Philosophy and a minor in Education
*My sister, Heidi, graduated from Huntington Beach High School.
*Spent five weeks in Houston, Texas at Teach for America’s “boot camp.”-- worked as a summer-school teacher at Attucks Middle School.
*Began graduate work in Secondary Education at Loyola Marymount University.
*Began Teaching 6th grade English and Social Studies at Hosler Middle School in Lynwood, California.
*Kate and I both began to consider Orthodoxy with ever greater urgency.
*Kate’s reading: Spurgeon, Shakespeare, Eusebius, Ante-Nicene Fathers, and books on Mormonism.
*My reading: Dostoyevsky, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Phillip Schaff, Jaroslav Pelikan, John Meyendorff, Turgenev, and J.R.R. Tolkien.
2002
*On Kate’s 18th birthday I proposed to her, she accepted.
*Began attending Orthodox services permanently after “visiting” during Holy. Week.
*Kate begins studying History at California State University, Long Beach.
*Began teaching 7th and 8th grade Reading and English at the same school.
*Kate is promoted to work at IN-N-OUT Burger’s corporate office.
*On December 22, Kate and I were Chrismated into the Orthodox Church at the hand of Bishop Anthony (now Metropolitan).
*On December 28, Kate and I were wed at St. Paul’s Greek Orthodox Church in Irvine California (happiest day of my life to date).
*Kate’s reading: Daniel Clendenin, Kallistos Ware, Peter Gillquist, All of John Grisham, Wally Lamb, various Russian history books.
*My reading: Kallistos Ware, Alexander Schmemann, Daniel Clendenin, Vladimir Lossky, Frank Schaeffer, Victor Hugo, Dostoyevsky.
2003
*Witnessed our dear friend Wayne Nikolai-Toshikazu Olson Chrismated into the Orthodox Church.
*Graduated with a Masters degree in Secondary Education from Loyola Marymount.
*Celebrated our first Pascha as married Orthodox Christians.
*Our family grows with the addition of "kitty witty", our new kitten.
*Kate’s reading: Jim Forrest, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Fr. John Mack, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, and John Breck.
*My reading: Jaroslav Pelikan, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Fr. John Mack, and Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn.
Up coming…(Lord willing)
*Kate is taking a break from her studies at the University.
*I’m spending my summer, beginning June 23rd, taking a ten-week intensive Greek course at UCLA.
*August 13th I begin my law training at Chapman University Law School in Orange, California.
2006
*(Lord willing) I’ll be graduating from law school.
*(Lord willing) I’ll pass the Bar.
*(Lord willing) Kate and I will begin the purchase of a home.
*(Lord willing) Kate and I will begin having children.
"...We were right, and the Fathers were wrong. That settled the matter..."
First, the antiquity of the Church confronts me. As an Evangelical, I discovered while I was in college that it was possible to dismiss the entire Church as having gone off the rails by about A.D. 95. That is, we, with our open Bibles, knew better than old Ignatius or Polycarp or Clement, who had been taught by the apostles themselves-we knew better than they, just what the Church is, and what it should look like. Never mind that our worship services would have been unrecognizable to them, or that our church government would have been equally unrecognizable, or the vocabulary in which we spoke of the Christian life would have been equally unrecognizable. We were right, and the Fathers were wrong. That settled the matter.This was written by Thomas Howard, the author of Evangelical Is Not Enough. The rest of this article can be found Here.The trouble here was that what these wrong-headed men wrote-about God, about our Lord Jesus Christ, about his Church, about the Christian's walk and warfare-was so titanic, and so rich, and so luminous, that their error seemed infinitely truer and more glorious than my truth. I gradually felt that it was I, not they, who was under surveillance. The "glorious company of the apostles, the noble army of martyrs, and the holy Church throughout all the world" (to quote the ancient hymn, the Te Deum) judge me, not I them. Ignatius, Polycarp, Clement, Justin, Irenaeus, Cyprian, Cyril, Basil, the Gregorys, Augustine, Ambrose, Hilary, Benedict-it is under the gaze of this senate that I find myself standing. Alas. How tawdry, how otiose, how flimsy, how embarrassing, seem the arguments that I had been prepared, so gaily, to put forward against the crushing radiance of these men's confession. The Church is here, in all of its antiquity, judging me.
*thanks for the article, sweetie.
Protestant Readers Read On
My beautiful wife has brought my attention to some "convert stories" that, though they vary somewhat in particulars, they are almost identical to our own stories in substance. Both of these men were Reformed Calvinists. Both of these men's stories will more than likely upset Calvinist readers, but read them anyway. For it's that very "upset" feeling that is confronted and answered.
Introduction to the Orthodox Church for Truly Reformed Calvinists by Hugh BensusanHere's an analogy that I'm sure most Orthodox will agree with and most Protestants ought to pay head.My pilgrimage to the Orthodox Church. by Eric Simpson.
A British friend gave me an analogy. Any bookstore will sell you a Shakespeare play. Now it goes without saying that there is a world of difference between reading a play and seeing it performed. (Christianity is more than just a book!) But even aside from this, my friend noted that the stage directions in a Shakespeare play are quite sketchy. They might tell you "Romeo exits," but you won't know where the characters are standing, and so forth. A director who decides to put on a Shakespeare play may end up staging it quite differently from another director. However, there is the Shakespearean tradition. Shakespeare knew how he wanted his plays staged. He had no need of writing these directions into the script, since the script is for the actors, not for the director. Those who studied under Shakespeare learned how these works were to be performed, and they in turn passed these unwritten directions down to our day. So if you want to stage "Hamlet" as the playwright intended, you have to learn from a Shakespearean director. Of course, you can pick up the scripts and direct the actors any way you choose, but it is debatable whether you can still call this a Shakespeare play. It would end up similar to Shakespeare, but what would Shakespeare think of it?More? OrthodoxInfo.comThe Apostle Paul instructed Saint Timothy: the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also (II Tim. 2:2). This shows that the deposit of the faith was entrusted by the Apostles to the next generation of bishops. Saint Timothy was then to pass this tradition down to his successors, and so forth. Four generations of Apostolic Tradition in one verse! And not a word about passing on a specific collection of twenty-seven separate writings. What would come to be known as the New Testament did not receive its final formulation until the end of the fourth century. It is said that the Protestants believe in Christ because the Bible says so, while the Orthodox believe in the Bible because it is Christian.
Wisdom from the first century: Ignatius (A.D. 30-107)
Having the written testimony of contemporaries of Christ and the Apostles is an invaluable blessing to posterity for it gives us a glimpse into the faith and practices of the Apostles themselves. Ignatius was a young child around the time of Christ's three-year ministry. During his adult years Ignatius was a disciple under John the Apostle. It is reasonable to believe that he and fellow disciple Polycarp were intimate friends with John the Apostle for well over twenty years.
In the quotes below consider how closely Ignatius ties Christianity to being within the Church, as opposed to merely believing in correct doctrine. Notice also how pointedly Ignatius remarks concerning the role and importance of the Bishop. (The following quotations are taken from some of the seven letters that Ignatius wrote to various churches. These are available in the first volume of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.)
Holy God, save Your people and bless Your inheritance.
“Wherefore, as children of light and truth, flee from division and wicked doctrines; but where the shepherd is, there do ye as sheep follow. For there are many wolves that appear worthy of credit, who, by means of a pernicious pleasure, carry captive those that are running towards God; but in your unity they shall have no place. Keep yourselves from those evil plants which Jesus Christ does not tend, because they are not the planting of the Father…For as many as are of God and of Jesus Christ are also with the Bishop. And as many as shall, in the exercise of repentance, return into the unity of the Church, these, too, shall belong to God, that they may live according to Jesus Christ.”“Do not err, my brethren. If any man follows him that makes a schism in the Church, he shall not inherit the kingdom of God. If any one walks according to a heretical opinion, he agrees not with the passion of Christ. Take ye heed, then, to have but one Eucharist. For there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup to show forth the unity of His blood; one altar; as there is one bishop, along with the presbytery and deacons, my fellow-servants: that so, whatsoever ye do, ye may do it according to the will of God.”
“Now the more any one sees the bishop keeping silence, the more ought he to receive him. For we ought to receive every one whom the Master of the house sends to be over His household, as we would do Him that sent him. If is manifest, therefore, that we should look upon the bishop even as we would upon the Lord Himself.”
“In like manner, let all reverence the deacons as an appointment of Jesus Christ, and the bishop as Jesus Christ, who is the Son of the Father, and the presbyters as the Sanhedrim of God, and assembly of the apostles. Apart from these, there is no Church.”