This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.
On its journey from Byzantium to Constantinople to Istanbul, this special place helps us understand the broader arc of Christian history, which goes on until Christ's return.
We needn’t fear statistics and studies as palm readings into a certain future. God is God, and his Spirit is alive through his Word.

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There is no true “self” apart from God. Anything so surmised is caught up in the meaninglessness that is death.
Good, we tend to think, is the absence of evil. But this reversal of the formula can only have disastrous consequences.
Walking in the light doesn't entail a spotless moral record but rather an honest appraisal of who we are.
God is consistently rooting us in reality—both what is seen and unseen—because that is where he is.
There is power in the name of Jesus, and we love to manipulate power for our own ends.
Faith is like a horse with blinders because it only beholds God’s promise. It is obsessed with what God has already said.
Gregory is a bridge between the patristic age and the medieval.
Cyril’s fervor for pure explication of the gospel was present throughout his career.
We cannot overstate that no person outside the Bible has been as influential to Christian theology as Augustine.
Origen is wrong about stuff, but he had the foresight to say that if he was wrong, he was open to correction.
You will not be disappointed in this Champion of the Incarnation.
Finding the balance between indifferentism and obsessiveness has never been easy, and it’s especially difficult in our environment.