Is Jesus's moral philosophy broad in scope, such that it includes a political morality, or narrower, consisting only of private virtues? This is the question we began debating in the previous installment. There, we considered two reasons why people may advocate the "narrow" view: clinging to an image of Jesus as presented in right-wing ideology, and the false dichotomy that Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 12: Personal or Political?
Jesus’s call to common living (the sharing of all money and possessions) is read by many as a political conviction about how society should be. And while this has not been the traditional interpretation of the Christian establishment, it is a popular means of arguing that Jesus intended his moral philosophy to be applied at a socioeconomic, as well as personal, level. In the Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 10: More Mammon
In the last installment we revisited the parable of the Dishonest Manager (Luke 16:1–13), which we looked at in part 3 in relation to Jesus’s shocking example of a man who steals his boss’s money as an image to depict "the kingdom of God." But more shocking is the character of the king in the parable of the Ten Pounds (Luke 19:11–27), who at the end of the story, apparently has Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 9: Mammon
As it’s been nine months since the last installment of this project, let's recap: Parts one to four were primarily concerned with the foundational, regulative virtue of prudence, and the last four parts continued to identify ways in which individuals can improve themselves. These were virtues of humility, nonjudgmentalism, and nonpossessiveness. We explored these three virtues Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 7: Possessiveness
What is the most repeated phrase in the Bible? “Do not worry.” In this part, we continue from where we left off with Jesus's statements on justice, analyzing his approach to anxiety. In the previous part we saw how one section of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:19–34) can be applied to one common form of anxiety—negative self-image—and here we will turn to worries about Continue Reading …
“Augustine: A Guide for the Perplexed” Prologue: A Life Confessed
From James Wetzel's book, Augustine: A Guide for the Perplexed, published in 2010 by Bloomsbury Academic. Prologue: A Life Confessed Look, my life is a stretch. —Augustine, Conf. 11.29.39 Augustine was born on the 13th of November 354 in the town of Thagaste in Roman North Africa. His historical placement puts him, on the one hand, in a fallow period in the history of Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 4: Imprudence?
The Unjust Judge In a certain city there was a judge... [and] In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, "Grant me justice against my opponent." For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, "Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 3: Shocking Images
In the previous part dedicated to prudence, one of the parables I analyzed was "the Assassin" from the noncanonical Gospel of Thomas. The question of why this parable is not in the biblical canon is an intriguing one. It may simply have been invented by the authors of Thomas, but it does not sound unlike Jesus to me. Now, as well as it being the only noncanonical parable of the Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 2: Prudence
Part 1 of this series ended with my arguments that because Jesus was not a systematic philosopher, it would be helpful to elaborate his moral teachings in the framework of an ethical system, and that virtue ethics is the system best suited to this purpose, as many Christians have traditionally thought. Taking up this approach, in Parts 2 to 4 I discuss several of Jesus's Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 1: Introduction
Jesus was a philosopher. If you doubt this, I'd like to persuade you by way of his parables, which imply a certain kind of ethical system with several key values. These include, principally, prudence, nonpossessiveness, nonjudgmentalism, humility, inclusion, and forgiveness. This is post is the first of several parts. In future parts, I'll address parables themselves. In Continue Reading …