Who these are for
For people looking at the Orthodox or Catholic Church from the outside — Protestants who have started asking questions their tradition answers thinly, and people who came from no church at all and find themselves reading about the second century at two in the morning.
That reader arrives with a particular set of instincts, and most of them are good ones. Where is that in Scripture? Who says? Show me. These studies are built for someone who asks those questions rather than for someone who has stopped.
The whole text, before a word of commentary
Every session opens with the passages to read, and asks you to read them — in a Bible, in order — before any commentary. Disputed passages are then printed in full before anything is said about them, including the verses that cut against the argument being made.
This is the rule that does the most work, and the one most often broken. A passage quoted in part and discussed in whole is being managed rather than taught. If a study leans on a text, every verse of that text gets addressed by name, and the awkward ones do not quietly disappear between the quotation and the argument.
The sources are shown, not cited
When the New Testament quotes the Old, the Old Testament text is printed alongside it. An argument that turns on Genesis is not checkable if Genesis is only cited — you have to be able to see both texts at once and judge whether the one really says what the other claims.
Every Scripture reference on every page is a live link. Click it and the passage opens at BibleGateway in a new tab. Nothing has to be taken on anyone's word, including the author's.
The Fathers, and what they're for
The early Church Fathers are quoted at length, woven into the teaching rather than boxed at the end, and not softened to spare modern ears. Every quotation carries the work and the chapter, and each study ends with direct links to the translations used, so any line can be opened and read in its own context.
You do not have to grant them authority to find them worth reading. If you came up being told that Tradition is what men added to Scripture, the honest thing is not to argue you out of that on a web page — it's to put the second, third and fourth centuries in front of you and let you see what Christians were actually saying, in their own words, and how early they were saying it.
Their role here is specific: they are witnesses to how the Church read Scripture, not a second source of revelation. The weight is cumulative. What matters is that across six centuries, in Greek and Latin, from both halves of the empire, they read a given passage a particular way — not that any one sentence of theirs settles a question. No single quotation is asked to carry more than that.
They also write in the prophetic register, as the prophets did before them — addressing peoples, nations, generations and covenant orders rather than individuals. Read in that register they are severe, and the severity is not a defect to be edited out.
One standard for every party
"You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty. In righteousness you shall judge your neighbor." — Leviticus 19:15
These studies argue for a position and say so plainly. What they will not do is hold one side to a standard the other is spared. Whatever evidence is demanded of one party is demanded of the other; whatever is granted to one is granted to the other. Protective language applied unevenly is not caution — it is a thumb on the scale, and it is the thing this standard exists to catch.
That applies to the tradition you came from as much as to anything else. Objections are stated in their strongest form, in the words someone would actually use, and whatever is true in them is granted before they are answered. You will not find your old church caricatured here so that the argument has an easier time.
Where this is written from
From within Orthodoxy. That is worth saying plainly rather than leaving you to work it out — Scripture is quoted from the New King James Version as it appears in the Orthodox Study Bible, and where a question divides East and West the study will say so rather than quietly assuming one side.
A great deal of what is here is held in common with Rome, and where that is the case it is treated as common ground rather than claimed for one side.
Sources
Greek and Hebrew terms are given in transliteration so they can be looked up without specialist fonts.
One caveat worth knowing: BibleGateway's NKJV Old Testament follows the Masoretic text, while the Orthodox Study Bible's follows the Septuagint. For the New Testament the two are the same text. Where an Old Testament reading differs in a way that matters to an argument, the study says so.
Patristic texts are quoted from the public-domain Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers translations, available in full at Orthodox Church Fathers, New Advent and CCEL. Historical and contested claims are linked to primary or authoritative sources.
Who writes these
I started ICXC LOGOS as an apparel and jewelry company built around historical Orthodox art and the history behind it. What I didn't expect was how many good people I'd meet who were starting to question what they'd been taught — the same way I had. So I started building these.
I'm working through the biggest theological shifts first, and the ones I'd held closest. More will follow. I'm not a theologian and I don't represent anyone other than myself — I'm using the Church's own writings to answer questions I still have.
It's a journey and there's a lot to unpack. I hope this is useful on yours.
Corrections
If something here is wrong — a citation that does not say what it is claimed to say, a source that will not bear the weight put on it, a passage handled unevenly — that is worth knowing and worth fixing. A study built on checkable claims has no standing to resent being checked.