Douglas Knight

Where’s Al, they have all been asking.
So what a relief to find Al Kimel’s Pontifications again. Pontifications was the place where all theological blogs met, and we all learned a wider churchmanship. I owe him a colossal debt. But clearly it is tough-going – ‘in some way the sorrows have intensified’. Now he’s in dark [...]

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Petition to BMA on Abortion
6.7 million abortions have been performed by doctors in Britain since the implementation of the 1967 Abortion Act and 2006 figures just published show a further rise in the annual number of abortion
There is growing public unrest about the growing number of abortions and specifically about:
1. The 24 week upper age limit [...]

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There are two very astute pieces from Pietro De Marco over at Chiesa on the Church and the public square in Italy, though it could be the UK that he is describing. The first is called A Catholicism deliberately absent from the public sphere
A first thesis: in the Tuscan communities, Catholic existence – outside of [...]

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First of all, a remark about the idea of dialogue itself. It is, I suggest, an idea that finds its roots and origins in the Jewish and the Christian traditions. It is an idea that has undergone, philosophical development in the western world. In his great encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam, [...]

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The Communion has grown and developed through the missionary vision and labours of, among others, Evangelical Anglicans in the Church of England. Evangelicals have never understood the Church of England as simply the national church of the English people but part of the worldwide church of Christ sharing in his mission. We should have a [...]

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Amongst the papers prepared for the Church of England General Synod in July (220&) is the very considerable GS 1651 Transforming Worship: Report of the Liturgical Commission (large Word doc), made available online by Thinking Anglicans.
The Liturgical Commission reviews the vast range of initiatives and says something cautiously encouraging about almost everything. But is [...]

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Pope Benedict has, in his Wednesday General Audiences, been giving brief addresses on the leadership of early Christianity. He began last year with the Apostles. Such things naturally lend themselves to be collected in book form, and a couple of months ago, OSV obtained rights to publish an edition of Apostles in the US (a [...]

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Christianity is politics done slowly. It is politics with memory and imagination, that understands the past as resource from which a future may perhaps come into being constructed. It is the politics of the promise of God.
It is a deep-seated assumption of the tradition as we have inherited it that the past is gone and [...]

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This loss of Christian memory is accompanied by a kind of fear of the future. Tomorrow is often presented as something bleak and uncertain. The future is viewed more with dread than with desire. Among the troubling indications of this are the inner emptiness that grips many people and the loss of meaning in life. [...]

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Scott Prather at Swords to Plowshares introduces the Aberdeen theology faculty. They look like a good team, young fresh and energetic, all publishing, with the emphasis on dogmatics, which I think makes this department unique in the UK.
My first question:
What sort of ecclesiology does all this evangelical dogmatics result in? It [...]

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I think the idea of a globalisation of solidarity is wonderful, and I am glad to say that CAFOD, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, has set in train a project called Live Simply, designed to help people live in solidarity with the poor. It has often struck me that Islam asks of its followers [...]

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Among Catholic bishops, and among religious leaders in all communities, nobody has been more outspoken in this debate than Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles. Last year he received widespread media attention when he declared that he would engage in civil disobedience rather than comply with a law requiring him to report illegal immigrants, and [...]

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Andy Goodliff has posted on The promise of a Christian university –
Christian University? You have got to wonder where he gets these ideas from. Andy posts a handy list of titles then, as these bloggers do, asks for more ideas.
Obviously his list includes Bristol’s finest, Gavin D’Costa Theology in the Public Square: [...]

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In the De Decretis Athanasius argues against the opinion he had heard Eusebius express that the Son alone participates in the Father while we participate in the Son. If that were so, we would then be the Son’s sons. Rather, we are sons of the same Father as the Son is, our sonship being granted [...]

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At the very least, then, the Lambeth Conference is like a council in that its purpose from the beginning has been to confront divisive issues with both truth and charity, engaged through the work of the Holy Spirit, and so nourishing and preserving unity in the midst of division. Thus, to insist that agreement be [...]

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Here are a couple of titles that caught my eye while putting together a bibliography for next term’s Old Testament course
Aidan Nichols Lovely like Jerusalem: The Fulfillment of the Old Testament in Christ and the Church

The highly regarded spiritual writer and theologian Fr. Aidan Nichols, O.P. presents an overview of the Old Testament by [...]

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For O’Donovan, the extraordinary events of that Pentecost day changed the world forever. God’s people became open to mutual address.
• It eventually led to the ‘conciliar movement’ in Christendom—a call upon the Pope to take seriously the Christian wisdom of others.
• In turn, there blossomed parliamentary movement in civil society—a call upon the King [...]

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Asia News Iraqi Christians ‘facing extinction’

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(Last week the Islamic scholar and reformer Tariq Ramadan argued in the Guardian for an end to calls on British Muslims to integrate. Here, Prospect editor David Goodhart replies)
The idea that British foreign policy has been run on an anti-Muslim agenda does not stand examination. In Bosnia and Kosovo (and Sierra Leone), Britain took military [...]

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Westminster Theological Centre – Conversations in Deep Church
4 evenings beginning June 19th 2007

The late C.S. Lewis coined the expression Deep Church in a call for a concerted exploration of the resources in the Christian tradition that unite orthodox Christians across the denominational and theological spectrums. One of Lewis’ concerns was the erosion of a [...]

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