Catholic and Protestant approaches to ethics

The question of how Christians ought to live has occupied believers since the earliest days of the church. The New Testament repeatedly links faith in Jesus Christ with transformed patterns of life, calling followers of the way of Jesus to love God, love their neighbours, pursue holiness, embody the character of Christ, and seek to …

A critical defence of Christian anarchism

Christian anarchism is a theological and political doctrine holding that ultimate authority belongs to God rather than the state, and that the teachings and example of Jesus radically undermine coercive power, violence, domination, and nationalism. Christian anarchists typically emphasise the practice of nonviolence, voluntary community, mutual aid, economic justice, and radical discipleship shaped by the …

There’s some good in this world

Walter Brueggemann, one of the great Protestant theologians of the Hebrew Bible, died on Thursday, aged 92. Brueggemann is widely described as a modern prophet in the tradition of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. He possessed the ability to explain the meaning of the ancient text with clarity and precision, and interpret its prophetic …

Nothing in my hand I bring

Last week, I suggested that, in his inaugural sermon at the Nazareth synagogue (Lk 4:16-21), and in the Beatitudes which must have been taught very soon after, Jesus echoed the words of Isaiah 61:1-7. I said that Jesus came to change the world, to turn the world upside down, to right wrongs, to pour out compassion, …

A guide to the Beatitudes

In what would be his last sermon, Pope Francis emphasised a contrast between the way of the world and the Way of Jesus. He said: Todayโ€™s builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for losers, and that those who fall along the way are losers. Theirs is the construction site of Hell. …