I continue to be very pessimistic about the public square, expecting an increasing opposition to and persecution of Christians throughout the world.   This is based on reading stories daily about how Christians are opposed, sued, discriminated against, deplatformed, and ridiculed.   This does not mean for me a disengagement with the world but a recalculation of what that engagement involves.   The prophets found themselves in the important role in ancient Israel of telling the governmental and social powers of their day that they did not know God.   As the West today becomes increasingly anti-Christian, not simply post-Christian, in its values and practices, and as it redefines virtues in anti-Christian ways, the Church’s engagement with the public square ought to be less and less a matter of finding common cause with others in the pursuit of justice but needs rather to be a matter of showing the world that it is not the Kingdom of God.   An anti-Christian vision of the world defines

  Setting of the Letter: Upon receiving St. John’s apocalyptic missive to the seven churches of Asia in the mid-90s AD, those churches decided to formulate a collective response.   Delegates, two from each church, were sent to Ephesus to discuss the letter and compose a reply to John, their beloved elder imprisoned by the Roman authorities on the Isle of Patmos.  The council listened to testimonies from Nicolaitans, who gave tearful descriptions of their exclusion from certain Christian communities.  Activists were brought in to explain their involvement in social justice.   While disagreeing among themselves, they nevertheless were able to formulate a rejection of John’s theology. [This is a fictional and satirical letter, of course, intended to highlight current differences among those in the Christian tradition—whether actually Christians or not—on the issue of Church and State, culture, and society   relations.   Certain groups in John’s day, claiming to represent Christianity, h

  The 1 st /2 nd c. AD philosopher, Plutarch, wrote several essays on friendship and then one essay entitled How to Profit by One’s Enemies .   The writings balance one another in that they worked towards the common goal of exploring how relationships might make one better—or worse.   Therein lies a relevant lesson for Evangelicals in the 21 st century.  What it needs, if it is still possible to rescue it, is good friends and a worthy enemy.  'Evangelical' means different things in different parts of the world, so the point made here applies primarily to the North American context. On the ‘friendship’ side of the equation, one of the developments over the past fifty years has been the breakup of friendships between Evangelicals.   The ‘instruments of unity’ have either disappeared or become too weak.   It is difficult to find unity around a central figure—an evangelist like Billy Graham, a pastor like John Stott, or a scholar like Howard Marshall.   A few prominent names mi

After two thousand years of a clear understanding that Romans 1.26-27 and 1 Corinthians 6.9 understand homosexuality to be sinful, some revisionist interpreters in the late 20th century began to venture alternative—albeit contradictory—readings of Biblical texts in a vain attempt to dismiss Scripture’s testimony declaring homosexuality to be a sin.  Some revisionist interpretations have even been proposed by Biblical and Classics scholars, who should know better but who, for one reason or another (sometimes even intentionally), have misled their readers. [1] Some of the revisionist readings, however, can be dismissed by considering just a few passages in Plutarch (1st/2nd c. AD).  This is helpful, since laity can become confused amidst all the primary texts from antiquity that might be considered.  The following, brief study examines some of the conceptual and linguistic parallels between Paul and Plutarch in just a few passages.  Plutarch undermines a number of the fanciful, revisioni

 At times, Greek and Roman philosophers turned to the subject of friendship as a moral category.  Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch gave considerable thought to the nature of true friendship and to the relationship between it and the virtues.  In this brief reflection, I would like to point out a few points made by the 1st/2nd century philosopher and writer,  Plutarch, in his essay , ‘On Abundance of Friends.’  Some of his comments offer a way to compare and contrast his statements with our understanding of the church. The question to consider is, 'How does thinking about the church as a place for forming and practicing friendship expand our understanding of the church?'  Plutarch's comments will challenge a shallow view of 'friendship,' such as we have with Facebook 'friends.'  The Covid pandemic has shut down fellowshipping together, challenging our understanding of the church as primarily a worship service with programmes and some light fellowship a

During the summer of 2021, the Wilberforce Academy held its annual meeting at Worcester College, Oxford.  On the agenda was discussion of abortion and homosexuality from an orthodox, Christian understanding.  Subsequently, the Provost of the college, David Isaac, apologised to students from the college (on summer break) for allowing the college’s facilities to be used to host the event—and this despite his previous record of defending free speech at institutes of higher learning. [1]   An excellent response to this decision has been published as an open letter from the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Toby Young. [2]   What Provost Isaac appears rather clearly to have done is set his college on a path to fall afoul of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill aimed at those opposed to freedom of speech by de-platforming speakers, cancelling classes, and so forth at British universities in order to advance their own viewpoints and not allow others to present their views.

Alasdair MacIntyre's subject is philosophical ethics, and he is best known for his critique of ethics understood as the application of general, universal principles.  He has reintroduced the importance of virtue ethics, along with the role of narrative and community in defining the virtues.  His focus on these things—narrative, community, virtue—combine to form an approach to enquiry which he calls ‘tradition enquiry.’ [1] MacIntyre characterises ethical thinking in the West in our day as ethics that has lost an understanding of the virtues, even if virtues like ‘justice’ are often under discussion.  Greek philosophical ethics, and ethics through to the Enlightenment, focussed ethics on virtue and began with questions of character: 'Who should we be?', rather than questions of action, 'What shall we do?'  Contemporary ethics has focused on the latter question alone, with the magisterial traditions of deontological ('What rules govern our actions?') and tel