On Reading the Works of St. Dionysius the Areopagite (St. Peter of Damascus)

By St. Peter of Damascus

(A Treasury of Divine Knowledge, Bk. 1)

For should anyone preach anything contrary to God’s intention or contrary to the nature of things, then even if he is an angel St Paul’s words, ‘Let him be accursed’ (Gal. 1:8), will apply to him. This is what St Dionysius the Areopagite, St Anthony and St Maximus the Confessor affirm. For this reason St John Chrysostom says: ‘It was not the Greeks but the Holy Scriptures that transmitted these things to us. There is no contradiction when Scripture says about a certain person both that he did not see Babylon as a captive and, elsewhere, that they took him to Babylon with the rest. For one who reads attentively will find it said about this same man in another part of Scripture that they blinded him and in dm condition took him off as a captive (cf. 2 Kgs. 25:7; Jer. 52:11): Thus he went to Babylon, as the one writer says, but did not see it, as the other says.

Honoring the Old Testament Athletes of our Faith

By Archimandrite Dionysios Anthopoulos

Today, my beloved, is the Sunday before the Nativity of Christ, and our holy Orthodox Church prepares us for the great feast by setting before us sacred figures "who throughout the ages have pleased God, from Adam until Joseph, the betrothed of the Most Holy Theotokos."

Let us proceed by listening to the content of the Apostolic reading of today which the Apostle Paul addressed to the Hebrew Christians: