In 1816, Harvard University published a circular letter in response to enquiries about admissions standards for ministry students. Candidates for admission, it said, “must be thoroughly acquainted with the grammar of the Latin and Greek languages” and “be able properly to construe and parse any portion” of the Greek New Testament.1 Fast forward to the year 2000, when it was only “recommended” that candidates for admission to Harvard Divinity School have an “elementary” knowledge of one ancient or modern language. To graduate with a master of divinity, the main graduate degree typically sought by pastors, a student needed only […]

  In 1219, in the midst of the Fifth Crusade, Saint Francis of Assisi crossed unarmed into the enemy camp in order to preach the gospel to Sultan al-Kamil, the Muslim ruler of Egypt and Saladin’s nephew. In his hagiographic account of this incident, Bonaventure relates the following:

Pastor John Scripture Reference: Mark 1:21-28

  22 You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. 23 If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, 24 and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless. Exodus 22:22-24 (ESV)

  Albert Einstein became famous when he formulated his theory of special relativity at the age of 26, while he was working as a clerk at the Swiss Patent Office in Berne. When the very secular institutions in which he trusted demonstrated no will to resist the evils of Hitler’s advance, Einstein was struck by the moral clarity of the Church.1

  One of the ethical violations that led to charges against South Korean cloning researcher Hwang Woo-Suk was that he used female lab assistants as egg donors.1 Embryonic stem-cell research requires cloned human embryos. Embryos are fertilized eggs. So, Professor Hwang threw moral considerations to the wind and used his own assistants as research tools. In fact, increasing numbers of women around the world are being solicited for their eggs for the purposes of medical experimentation. The problems with egg donation for reproductive purposes are sufficiently strong to avoid the practice, but what about egg donation for research? Are there […]

  8 And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ 9 And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. 10 Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. 11 And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, 12 saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne […]

Pastor Chris Scripture reference: Luke 5:1-11

  When John Chrysostom looked toward baptism in the local church, his mother was delighted. But when he said he wanted to become a monk, she made him promise not to leave her as long as she lived. John obliged, but after his mother’s death, he moved to the country to become a monk. There, John apprenticed for four years to an elderly, Syrian ascetic. He sought holiness and spent two years in a cave, pushing his body and mind to the very limit, “continually standing, scarcely sleeping, and learning the Old and New Testaments by heart,” as was the […]

  During the autumn of 1942, during the dark days of the Second World War, the Christian writer and academic C. S. Lewis broadcast a series of eight talks on the BBC on Christian morality. When they were published the following year under the title Christian Behaviour,1 Lewis added four more short essays on other subjects, one of which was on Christian marriage. Here he explained that he was reluctant to discuss marriage, partly because the Christian doctrine on the subject was so unpopular. As he said:2