Sinners - Page 3 of 4

Repentance

Repentance The opening message of John the Baptist, who served as a herald for Jesus, was, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This call to repentance was an urgent appeal to sinners. No one who refuses to repent can ever enter the kingdom of God. Repentance is a prerequisite, a necessary condition …

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Atonement

Theology / By Youssef Matta

Atonement The apostle Paul declared that he was determined to know nothing save Christ and Him crucified. This was the apostle’s way of emphasizing the extreme importance of the Cross to Christianity. The doctrine of the Atonement is central to all Christian theology. Both the Old and New Testaments make it clear that all human …

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Original Sin

Theology / By Youssef Matta

Original Sin It is commonplace to hear the statement, “people are basically good.” Though it is admitted that no one is perfect, human wickedness is minimized. Yet if people are basically good, why is sin so universal? It is often suggested that everybody sins because society has such a negative influence upon us. The problem …

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Sin

Theology / By Youssef Matta

Sin Sin can be pictured as an archer releasing an arrow from his bow and missing the target. It is not, of course, that failure to hit the bull’s-eye in target shooting is a grave moral matter. Rather, the simplest biblical definition of sin is “to miss the mark.” In biblical terms, the mark that …

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”Do Not Believe Every Word like the Fool . . . !” Rhetorical Strategies in Shenoute, Canon 6

Heritage / By Armia FAYEZ

”Do Not Believe Every Word like the Fool . . . !” Rhetorical Strategies in Shenoute, Canon 6 ST. SHENOUTE (flORUIT ~A.D. 385–465) is the major Coptic writer of the late fourth and fifth centuries. The idea of producing texts in Coptic was not his invention, but he brought the language to a peak of …

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Care for the Sick in Shenoute’s Monasteries

Heritage / By Armia FAYEZ

Care for the Sick in Shenoute’s Monasteries SHENOUTE’S WRITINGS PROVIDE a rich store of evidence for the various ways in which the sick were cared for in his monasteries. Care for the sick was a shared value at the heart of the early monastic movement, and certainly this was the case in Shenoute’s monasteries. The …

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Shenoute’s Place in the History of Monasticism

History / By Armia FAYEZ

Shenoute’s Place in the History of Monasticism A LITTLE MORE than 1,500 years ago, inside the massive church whose ruined hulk has come to be known as the White Monastery (Arabic Dayr al-Abyad), on an occasion near the middle of the fifth century when the monastery’s longtime leader Shenoute was about one hundred years old, …

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John of Shmoun and Coptic Identity

Eminent, Heritage / By Armia FAYEZ

John of Shmoun and Coptic Identity After the Council of Chalcedon in ad 451 and in particular after the Arab conquest of Egypt in ad 641, the need to demonstrate Coptic self identification became more important than before.[1] Usually, there is the need to stress one’s identity and define or form its features when one …

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Notes on the Arabic Life of Ibrahim al-Fani: A Coptic Saint of the Fourteenth Century

History / By Armia FAYEZ

Notes on the Arabic Life of Ibrahim al-Fani: A Coptic Saint of the Fourteenth Century The Lives of Coptic saints in the later Islamic era fall into the category of sacred biographies that have not attracted much study until recently.[1] This observation does not imply that these Lives have little or no historical or literary …

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Liturgy of the Monastery of al-Muharraq

Liturgy / By Armia FAYEZ

Liturgy of the Monastery of al-Muharraq The Monastery of al-Muharraq has special peculiarities in its liturgical practice.[1] For example, the term used there for ‘hymn’ is different from all other manuscripts: luhunat, rather than alhan. There are even differences in the musical instruments, as the monks of the Monastery of al-Muharraq use, in addition to …

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