We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Shane Claiborne on How Bad Theology Can Be Deadly
David D Flowers shared this video over at The Centrality and Supremacy of Jesus Christ and we thought it was worth sharing here too. Theology matters.
Category: General
Tags: Non-Violence
Related Reading

Podcast: Shouldn’t We Also Take the Command to Cut Off Our Hand Literally?
If we take the command to turn the other cheek literally, what about the command to gouge out our eyes? Or cut off our hand? http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0452.mp3

Does Following Jesus Rule Out Serving in the Military if a War is Just?
Jesus and Military People Some soldiers responded to the preaching of John the Baptist by asking him what they should do. John gave them some ethical instruction, but, interestingly enough, he didn’t tell them to leave the army (Lk 3:12-13). So too, Jesus praised the faith of a Centurion and healed his servant while not…

The Myth of Redemptive Violence
Check out Shane Claiborne’s excellent piece on the problem of violence posted yesterday on Huffington Post. Money quote: “Christian theologians have said Jesus teaches a ‘third way’ to interact with evil. We see a Jesus who abhors both passivity and violence and teaches us a new way forward that is neither submission nor assault, neither…

Was the Early Church Pacifistic? A Response to Paul Copan (#11)
In Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG) I argue that Jesus and Paul instruct Christians to love and bless their enemies and to unconditionally refrain from violence (e.g. Matt 5:39-45; Rom 12:14-21). Moreover, I argue that this was the prevailing attitude of Christians prior to the fourth century when the Church aligned itself with the…

Does the Old Testament Justify “Just War”?
Since the time of Augustine, Christians have consistently appealed to the violent strand of the Old Testament to justify waging wars when they believed their cause was “just.” (This is Augustine’s famous “just war” theory.) Two things may be said about this. First, the appeal to the OT to justify Christians fighting in “just” wars…

God’s Dream for the World
One of the grandest expressions of non-violent nature of God is found in Isaiah 11. Here God is dreaming of a time when his creation would be entirely free of violence. “The wolf will live with the lamb,” Isaiah says, and “the leopard will lie down with the goat.” So it will be with “the…