Issuu

BLINDED BY RAGE

How Anger Keeps Us from Seeing God

Fr. Theodore Pulcini and Oswin Craton

ancient faith publishing chesterton, indiana

Blinded by Rage: How Anger Keeps Us from Seeing God

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by: Ancient Faith Publishing A Division of Ancient Faith Ministries 1050 Broadway, Suite 6 Chesterton, IN 46304

All Old Testament quotations, unless otherwise identified, are from the Orthodox Study Bible, © 2008 by St. Athanasius Academy of Orthodox Theology (published by Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee) and are used by permission. New Testament quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible, © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc., and are used by permission.

Cover art and design by Micah Peek

ISBN: 978-1-968863-05-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2026933942

Printed in the United States of America Copyright

Foreword

In fall 2018 I received a phone call from Metropolitan Joseph (Zahlawi) of the Antiochian Archdiocese inviting me to be the keynote speaker for the twenty-first annual Clergy Seminar of the Dioceses of Los Angeles and the West and Northwest, which was scheduled to be held February 11–14, 2019, in Alhambra, CA. I was honored— and not a little intimidated—to be asked to address this august gathering of nearly a hundred clergy!

I accepted the invitation, asking what my assigned topic would be. The Metropolitan told me that I was to formulate the topic. “You have been a priest for thirty-five years! Based on your own experience, what do you think clergy need to hear more about these days? Propose a topic, and get back to me for my approval.” After a few days of

Sample pages only. Purchase the full book at https://store.ancientfaith.com/blinded-by-rage-how-anger-keeps-us-from-seeing-god/

reflection, I suggested this topic: “For Our Deliverance from All Wrath: Anger as a Personal and Pastoral Issue.” The Metropolitan gave his enthusiastic endorsement.

As soon as I received this approval, I began work on my session talks. And the more I worked on them, the more convinced I became of the relevance of my topic. It seemed that anger was increasing everywhere in the culture, and religious groups—especially clergy—were being forced to consider its impact on contemporary Christian witness.

That was way back in 2018 and 2019. Who can deny that since then the focus on anger has continued to grow exponentially and that it has a corrosive effect in both secular and religious contexts? Almost without fail it is mentioned as a central issue in public discourse. As civility has diminished, the malignant influence of anger has been increasingly evident. How are we to address it? How can we check its growth? How are we to understand anger from a responsible theological perspective? I became more and more convinced that the Orthodox spiritual Tradition, in its unparalleled

depth and breadth, had much to say about this issue—and in my talks at the Clergy Seminar, I communicated some of the content I had excavated in my research. The content of those talks was positively received and gave rise to a number of discussions both during the Seminar and afterward. Recordings of the Seminar sessions were made available on the website of the Antiochian Diocese of Los Angeles and the West, where they were often accessed.

These Seminar talks led to similar presentations at gatherings of other clergy (both Antiochian and those in other jurisdictions) and in retreats offered to broader audiences in parishes in several states.

There could be no denying that anger was a focus of both personal and communal concern.1 Consequently, I was not totally surprised when I

1 This concern was underscored by Oxford University Press, which in 2025 designated “rage bait” as its Word of the Year, a term meaning “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive.” https://corp.oup .com/news/the-oxford-word-of-the-year-2025-is-rage -bait/.

Sample pages only. Purchase the full book at https://store.ancientfaith.com/blinded-by-rage-how-anger-keeps-us-from-seeing-god/

received a message (both by phone and in email) from Oswin Craton, who had painstakingly listened (and in some cases, relistened) to the Alhambra Seminar lectures, taking copious notes. He noted that “the information you provided in these lectures has been of immeasurable personal benefit, and it is material that I wish all could easily access.” Observing that not everyone had the luxury of spending so much time listening to the lectures, he suggested that it might be beneficial to make their content available in the form of a book that “condenses much of the material significantly.” I was delighted to receive the manuscript of the book on which he had worked. It preserved my key points and strengthened my materials with additional supporting quotations, mainly from patristic sources.

And here is that book, a work on which Oswin and I collaborated and which, we hope, will enhance the ongoing discussion of anger in our time. This book is based on our conviction that even though anger is a topic of crucial cultural, sociological, psychological, and political concern, it is primarily a spiritual issue that is best Copyright ©2026 by Theodore Pulcini and Oswin Craton.

studied in the context of solid Orthodox theological Tradition.

To this end, we present the following pages for your consideration.

—Fr. Theodore Pulcini

Sample pages only. Purchase the full book at https://store.ancientfaith.com/blinded-by-rage-how-anger-keeps-us-from-seeing-god/

Introduction

Anger is a passion with which we are all quite familiar. Almost from our earliest moments (at least from age two), we become well-acquainted with anger. It is a passion that accompanies us daily, offering us opportunities to experience its effects on numerous occasions. And beyond being a passion with which we as individuals must contend, it also has become an all-too-recognizable staple of modern society. We truly live in an age of rage. Entire social movements and political parties thrive on and encourage anger; it motivates them and sustains their agendas. One need only turn on the news to see crowds of angry people shouting, screaming, and often doing much worse, all out of anger at some injustice (whether real or perceived). When

Sample pages only. Purchase the full book at https://store.ancientfaith.com/blinded-by-rage-how-anger-keeps-us-from-seeing-god/

we open practically any periodical or browse the shelves of any bookstore, we encounter dozens of examples that betray the prevalence of anger in our society: articles such as “Mad As Hell: The Power of Women’s Rage”;2 “Anger: 7 Benefits Of Being Really Mad”;3 “11 Good Reasons to Get Angry”;4 or “Unlocking the power of anger: Empowering yourself with sacred rage”;5 books like Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Anger; 6 Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger; 7 or even Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger8 . . . and one could cite even more. Anger has become a convenient tool of many modern social movements—often even of religion, including Christianity itself.

The goal of this book is to look at what Scripture and the Church teach us about anger, answering questions such as: Is anger ever appropriate?

2 Zacharek, “Mad As Hell.”

3 Dean, “Anger: 7 Benefits.”

4 Ratson, “11 Good Reasons.”

5 Corson, “Unlocking the power of anger.”

6 Chemley, Rage Becomes Her.

7 Traister, Good and Mad.

Does God become angry? Should we as Orthodox Christians participate in societal anger?

This book follows the basic outline of Fr. Theodore Pulcini’s Clergy Seminar lecture series (referred to in the Foreword), to which the authors have added more of their own research. Readers who were privileged to have attended those lectures or who have heard recordings of them will recognize the overall tenor of the points that follow. This book has been put together in order to present the essence of Fr. Theodore’s lectures in an easily accessible format, especially by including many of the readings cited. To these have been added further quotations, especially from the Church Fathers, in order to present as full an analysis of Orthodox teaching on anger as possible.

—Oswin Craton

Sample pages only. Purchase the full book at https://store.ancientfaith.com/blinded-by-rage-how-anger-keeps-us-from-seeing-god/

Scripture on Anger

It is not possible to turn to any one verse in the Bible and assume we have settled the Scriptural view of anger. What we find in Scripture instead is an evolution of attitudes toward this passion. Just as we find an evolution in the development of the human perception of God Himself as He has revealed Himself more and more to humankind throughout history, and just as we see an evolution of attitudes toward things such as marriage and divorce, we also find an evolution of attitudes toward anger.

In saying this, we are not implying that God Himself has changed or that His Word has been altered. Rather, we are observing that humankind’s finite understanding of God and of His

Sample pages only. Purchase the full book at https://store.ancientfaith.com/blinded-by-rage-how-anger-keeps-us-from-seeing-god/

divine nature and will matures as God reveals more and more of Himself to them over time.

As an example, we might look at attitudes about marriage among God’s people. In early Hebrew history, polygamy was an accepted practice. We know, for instance, that Abraham himself had three wives, Jacob four, King David at least eight, and King Solomon famously had seven hundred. God warned of the dangers of multiplying wives (Deut. 17:17), but He did not forbid it. As humankind grew in understanding of God’s will, comprehending more of God’s warning against a multiplicity of wives, we find that by the time of the Babylonian captivity (sixth century bc) monogamy had become the norm. Later, Christ revealed that monogamy was in fact God’s design from the beginning (Matt. 19:5–6) and that marriage is more than a mere contractual arrangement—it is something spiritual and sacramental. Beginning from the time of the patriarchs, through Moses and the prophets, and at last to Christ Himself (the Word made flesh), we see a growing and deepening understanding of marriage as God revealed to humankind more of Himself and of His will.

Scripture on Anger

In similar fashion, the biblical view of anger evolves and matures as God’s will and intent become clearer throughout history—especially as the human understanding of God’s nature becomes more developed and refined. Recall that in the early period, God was seen as very “humanlike.” Anthropomorphic depictions of God abound in the Old Testament, though today we certainly recognize that they are not literal. While we read of “the hand of God” (Job 27:11), “the eyes of the Lord” (Prov. 15:3), “the arm of the Lord” (Is. 53:1), and “the face of the Lord” (Gen. 19:13),9 we acknowledge that these are anthropomorphic depictions of a being that cannot be described in human terms, and so we use the nearest thing that we are able to comprehend.

The perceptions of God in early Hebrew history indicate that the ancients were influenced in their thinking by the pagan societies all around them. Thus the early Hebrews tended to see God as a being with great power, but really reflecting very much the nature of human beings like themselves. 9 NKJV.

Sample pages only. Purchase the full book at https://store.ancientfaith.com/blinded-by-rage-how-anger-keeps-us-from-seeing-god/