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Made Perfect in Faith: A Second Volume
More Sermons on the Lives and Works of the Holy Church Fathers

by Father James Thornton

ISBN 978–0–911165–95–1
355 pp.
$17.95
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In this homiliary, Father James Thornton introduces fifty-two of the greatest Fathers of the Orthodox Church. And rightly are these men venerated
as Church Fathers, for, as Father James demonstrates, they are the very
embodiment of Orthodox Christianity as the One, Holy, Catholic, and
Apostolic Church: they are one, in that together they preserved the unique
truth of Christianity with a consensus indicative of “the mind of Christ”
(I Corinthians 2:16); they are holy, in that they led exemplary lives of virtue,
synergistically participating in the deifying Energies of God; they are
catholic, in that each in his own time and place manifested the totality
of Orthodoxy in its therapeutic wholeness; and they are Apostolic, in
that they were the historical successors to and the spiritual continuators
of the life of discipleship into which the Lord initiated His first followers.
Eschewing the dry language of history and the recondite language of theology
alike, Father James opts to present his subjects in the pious language
of hagiography. He thus renders the Church Fathers immediately accessible
to all, challenging us to ask ourselves about them, in our own spiritual
lives: “Seest thou how faith wrought with...[their]...works, and by works
was faith made perfect?” (St. James 2:22).
About the Author
The Reverend Dr. James Thornton holds the Diploma and Licentiate
in Orthodox Theological Studies from
the C.T.O.S., where he is a Research Associate, and a
Doctorate in Advanced Pastoral Studies from
the San Francisco Theological Seminary. He serves the Holy Trinity Eastern Orthodox Church in Oxnard, California, a parish of the American Exarchate of the Orthodox Church of Greece, Holy Synod in Resistance.
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