Killing

Studying King Saul’s combat experiences can help us understand his personality change and violence toward David.

What will be lost to many—including too many Christians—is the fact that this pledge of “never again” is, if it is to mean anything at all, a promise to fight if, in the last resort and with the aim of peace, nothing else will protect the innocent, requite an injustice, or punish evil.

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

Against pacifist sentiment and calls for isolationism, Reinhold Niebuhr insisted on a realistic Christian response to political crises, one willing to dirty its hands to avoid catastrophic evil. However, his dialectic between love and justice produces a catastrophic paradox.