Douglas Knight

Brothers, Sisters and beloved Children in the Lord,
The human mind finds it difficult to comprehend the immense change the Birth of Christ brought about in the world. He who was born in the manger of Bethlehem was not an ordinary child like the ones that are born every day. He is the Creator of the [...]

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Metropolitan John Zizioulas’ earlier work, Being as Communion, has a fair claim to be one of the most influential theological books of the later twentieth century; it had a lasting effect on ecumenical discussions and on the vocabulary and assumptions of many churches as they sought to clarify their self-understanding and indeed their understanding of [...]

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One of the most chilling things on this journey to the Holy Land was the almost total absence in both major communities of any belief that there was a political solution to hand. So step back from that for a moment and ask, ‘What do both the communities in the Holy Land ask from us [...]

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Thesis One:
The Bishop serves the koinonia of the gospel into which the baptised are incorporated by God the Holy Spirit
Through the gospel God calls all people into relationship and establishes a covenant of love, mercy and justice. By baptism the people of God become participants in the visible body of Jesus Christ. The bishop [...]

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Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God [...]

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Because it is often all too obvious that historical knowledge cannot be elevated straight into the status of a new liturgical norm, this archaeological enthusiasm was very easily combined with pastoral pragmatism: people first of all decided to eliminate everything that was not recognised as original and was thus not part of the “substance”, and [...]

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Anglicans value being part of a world Communion, but successive controversies have made it increasingly unclear what it is that they have in common. The contention of this document is that Anglican ‘communion’ will be maintained and nurtured, not just by preserving existing ecclesiastical structures but through a renewal of the theological tradition which brought [...]

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Sorry. What with the grind of term and the excitement of events this autumn I never got around to doing any actual blogging. I haven’t posted anything of my own since August. It takes me much longer to post something I have written that to post a couple of paragraphs, already polished and published, by [...]

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Who would have thought that, in the early years of the twenty-first century, the most vibrant and serious field of Christian study would be the Church Fathers? But it is true. They are returning.
We certainly need their help. I teach at a Catholic university that employs hundreds of professors, and the evidence is plain to [...]

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We cannot know other people in a full sense without love. We have want to be in relationship with them, and be recognised by them. We must look for their response, and respond to it gladly when we receive it. The highest form of recognition is mutual recognition in friendship, fellowship and love. Any [...]

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Everything about being Christian – worship, prayer, mission, fellowship, holiness, works of mercy and justice – is rooted in the basic belief that the one God who made the world has acted in sovereign love to call out a people for himself, a people through whom he is already at work to anticipate his final [...]

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Bartholomew I has become known as “the Green Patriarch” for his environmental leadership. More than a decade ago, Bartholomew first announced on an island in the Aegean Sea that pollution and other attacks on the environment should be considered sins.
In a widely-quoted Venice address in 2002, Bartholomew I urged Christians “to act as priests of [...]

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As pope, Benedict XVI doesn’t give an inch to the preconceptions that were formed about him as a cardinal. He doesn’t thunder condemnations, he doesn’t hurl anathemas. He reasons staunchly, but serenely. His criticisms against modernity or against the “pathologies” that he sees even within the Church are fully elaborated. That is part of the [...]

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A very good spiel from the Archbishop. I think the matter needs to be pressed a little harder though.
We have a secular liberal ideology; forms of evangelical Christianity; forms of traditional Christianity (which themselves subdivide into smaller, usually acquiescent groups); and we have forms of Islam. These different groups have co-existed in our de facto [...]

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The question of how, with whom, and to what end the Church makes decisions is not a secondary one; it gets to the core of the Gospel (not the only thing that does this, of course; but still it is an essential). Bp. Wright’s vehemence is understandable, whether well or poorly expressed: he feels as [...]

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Bishop Tom Wright responds to ‘A Covenant for the Church of England’, issued by Paul Perkin and Chris Sugden and others
So to ‘action’. This is divided into five areas: mission, appointments, fellowship, money and oversight. I am delighted that this document begins with mission; one of the great gains of the last decade has been [...]

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So far I have said that, in the church, we already participate in that future complete assembly, which is the whole body of Christ. In this future body we will be relationship with all, and they will all participate in us. We will belong, not any smaller or lesser group, but to the whole, the [...]

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has defended the rights of university Christian Unions, saying that Student Union bodies should not discriminate against them simply because they don’t approve of their views.
“The danger in issuing sanctions against a body whose views you disapprove of is that it looks like a fear of open argument. [...]

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In the Church, the institution is not merely an external structure while the Gospel is purely spiritual. In fact, the Gospel and the Institution are inseparable because the Gospel has a body, the Lord has a body in this time of ours. Consequently, issues that seem at first sight merely institutional are actually theological and [...]

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Second Aquinas Colloquium – Blackfriars Oxford
We are pleased to reveal that the principal speaker at the 2nd annual colloquium on St Thomas will be Professor John O’Callaghan, Director of Maritain Centre at the University of Notre Dame. Prof. O’Callaghan, author of Thomist realism and the linguistic turn (2003) will be reflecting on the concept of [...]

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