“So therefore let us too run up to the upward path, so that we may come with Isaiah to the pinnacle of hope, and see from a vantage-point those good things which the Word shews to those who accompany him to the height.”–Gregory of Nyssa[1] When Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) described the first two verses of Matt 5 as a “brief…
“[W]e inevitably interpret the Sermon on the Mount for our own time and place. We are neither ancient Jews nor ancient Christians. We do not live within the first-century world of Jesus or Matthew or share in their culture or participate in their forms of government. We live rather in the age of capitalism, democracy, secularization, and technology—modern realities that…
“The Sermon must once again become a basic text and primary source of moral theology, ahead of the Decalogue, natural law, or an assemblage of norms or rights established by pure reason. In the face of the rationalism of our times, this demands of us an audacious faith in the solidarity of the Gospel, both at the intellectual and at…
[Today I begin a series of blog posts reflecting on the Sermon on the Mount. I am spending the summer reading this fascinating and challenging text for three reasons: 1) to prepare for my Christian Ethics course this fall, 2) to prepare for a Sunday night sermon series at Cloverdale, and 3)…to be fully transparent…to resist the forces of culture…