Old Testament law repeatedly states its opposition to the charging of interest within a relational context. This position is reinforced in the Wisdom and Prophetic literature, radicalised in Jesus’ teaching and was applied widely within early and Medieval Church doctrine. This paper makes the case for taking the critique of interest seriously again. It does so by examining the ethical reasons for opposing the charging of interest within a relational framework in light of biblical teaching. It then highlights what has gone wrong since the relaxation of the Church's opposition to interest-based debt, especially since the development of unanchored credit money. The contours of an interest-free financial system are then outlined, with its contrasting advantages. Nevertheless, continuing subsidies and bailouts, institutional inertia and localised efficiencies provide reasons for the continuing survival of a debt-based system. However, the return of non-debt-based money may soon further disrupt the status quo and make the case for an interest-free economy once again.
This paper reinterprets the story of Balaam and his talking donkey in Numbers 22:22-33 in the Old Testament through Lori Gruen's concept of entangled empathy to offer a new insight into the ethical dimensions of biblical human-animal relationships. Previous scholarship on Num 22:22-23 often focuses on its theological symbolism or literary analysis, largely neglecting the ethical implications of the narrative. Gruen's theory emphasizes attending to animals’ well-being from their perspectives and recognizing the interconnected relationships between humans and animals, along with the moral responsibilities these relationships entail. This article examines Balaam's interactions with his donkey and the angel to illustrate the process of entangled empathy in Num 22:22-23. It argues that the narrative exposes the donkey's suffering to invite readers to empathize with her and prompts a reflection on Balaam's moral error based on his relationship with the donkey.
The life and work of Hans G. Ulrich is recounted in this essay. His life-story, theological interests and influences as well as his major theological works are surveyed.
Contemporary AI systems are increasingly designed to reduce uncertainty, ambiguity, and cognitive burden. This article argues that such systems do not merely expand human capacities but progressively externalize forms of judgment and existential burden that Christian traditions have historically understood as necessary conditions for the cultivation of moral agency. Drawing on the theological anthropologies of Augustine, Søren Kierkegaard, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the article develops a theological-anthropological critique of what it terms optimization culture: the normative logic through which the reduction of friction and existential difficulty becomes a dominant telos of technological design. Contemporary articulations of this logic are examined through the work of Jacques Ellul, Byung-Chul Han, Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan, and William Davies. The article argues that AI systems shaped by this logic risk progressively externalizing the practices of disciplined attention, existential responsibility, and costly judgment through which mature moral agency has historically been cultivated. In response, it proposes a formative anthropology of technology as a framework for evaluating AI not only according to functional criteria such as safety or efficiency, but according to the kinds of human beings such systems actively help to form.
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of Oliver O’Donovan's landmark Resurrection and Moral Order . The book rests on the conviction that Christian ethics must arise from the gospel. Yet this conviction did not arrive fully formed. It was the result of fifteen years of preaching and academic writing that has received relatively little scholarly attention. This article traces the development of O’Donovan's engagement with the question of biblical ethics from his earliest published writings in the 1970s to the publication of RMO in 1986. It argues that the book is best understood as a sustained effort to repair what he called “a hiatus in our moral thinking,” of which the divorce between biblical scholarship and Christian ethics was only a symptom for him. The article identifies five formative encounters that drove a decisive shift in O’Donovan's understanding of how to practice biblical ethics. Taken together, these encounters moved O’Donovan from an apologetic defense of the possibility of biblical ethics to a proclamatory articulation of evangelical ethics in RMO . I conclude by offering an interpretation of what evangelical ethics means in RMO as a challenge to Christian ethics today.
This paper offers a reply to Eric Gregory’s essay and its engagement with my own essay in this issue entitled, ‘Public Authority of the Church in English Reformation Theology’.
This essay argues that Catholic international development in Africa must move from asymmetrical charity toward a Trinitarian framework of partnership grounded in participation, reciprocity, and mutual gift exchange. Drawing on postcolonial theory, liberation theology, Catholic social teaching, mission history, and theological accounts of power in Augustine, it contends that the ethical renewal of Catholic aid requires a reconfiguration of relational power rather than merely improved accountability or managerial efficiency. The essay first traces the historical architecture of dependency within missionary modernity, highlighting the continuity between nineteenth century mission finance and the contemporary reliance of many African ecclesial institutions on external funding. It then situates Catholic charitable practice within the broader global development regime shaped by modernization paradigms and managerial governance, which often reproduce vertical relationships in which agenda setting and evaluative authority remain concentrated in the Global North. Through a critical analysis of four predominant models of faith-based aid in Africa, the Savior Model, the Hierarchical Model, the Benevolent Interventionist Model, and the Participatory Partnership Model, the essay exposes persistent asymmetries of power. As a constructive alternative, it proposes a Trinitarian ethic of partnership rooted in perichoretic communion, co-responsibility, assets-based over needs-based approaches and synodal discernment as a path toward decolonizing faith-based aid and fostering integral human and cosmic flourishing.
This article develops a theological ethics of peace 'in between', which takes the process of peacemaking as indicative of the nature of peace. It explores the implications for theological ethics of Christian practices of peacemaking that are directed at conciliation, or ending enmity, beginning from some specific examples from twentieth- and twenty-first century peace church traditions, focusing on the precarity, the ambivalence, and the creative character of these peacemaking activities. Theologically, peacemaking is located not only 'in between' opposing parties, but also in the tension between the peace given in Christ and the present experience of conflict - a tension that I see reflected in representations of peace in Christian art. I present peacemaking 'in between' as itself integral to peace, rather than simply a set of means towards peace as an end - avoiding a straightforward opposition between God's peace and Christian peacemaking in history. I argue that this is particularly important in order to avoid equating the defeat of specific historical enemies or opponents with the defeat of enmity itself - while remaining actively engaged in peacemaking. I suggest, finally, that attention to precarity, ambivalence and creativity in the experience of peacemaking opens up wider questions about how to engage theologically with the ethics and practice of compromise.
