Justice

A version of this book review of Timothy Keller’s Prodigal Prophet first appeared in the Winter 2019 issue of Providence‘s…

It is sad to grow up and realize you’ve become a monster. The awareness does not change the fact that you are now a monster.

The flawed human race, trapped in a cycle of cascading pain and wrong, is what and who God is bound and determined to love. The question is, how can He do it?

For Christians, God isn’t the Santa Claus who brought the presents to the tree. He’s the Source and the Power of the love the family members feel for one another on Christmas morning. He’s found in the trust the child feels in the parent, the commitment and love the parent feels toward the child.

Most Christians, including most evangelicals, have been falling over themselves to denounce Jeff Sessions. But the way this immigration debate is carried out too often mirrors the political debate.

Christians should remember this: any political theology that treats its own people as a divinely chosen political community treads on heretical soil.

Both the Jacksonian and Progressive persuasions that Michael Doran describes exhibit symptoms of secularized politics. Neither articulates a truly Christian view of politics or foreign policy.

Just war theorizing has typically left the issue of national honor untouched, although warriors and statesmen routinely emphasize the importance of vindicating the sacrifice of the fallen. Does prolonging a war in order to assuage or vindicate national honor comport with the just war tradition?

Foretelling a time of cultivation, Isaiah prophesies, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.” One cannot plow a field with a sword, nor prune a tree with a spear. In this article, originally published in Christianity and Crisis on March 8, 1943, John Knox contrasts the promotion of good with the destruction of evil, particularly in conflict. Promoting good is insufficient; the conduct of war and the creation of peace are distinct phenomena to be pursued with discrete tools.