Alastair Roberts
54 articles
Presenting Limbs and Organs: Baptism and Sacrificial Ethics
Although we tend to define ourselves by our subjectivity —our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, decisions, actions—we are frequently forgetful of the objectivity of the self as body, the reality of the self that underlies and precedes all of our subjectivity. The body is the site of our ‘givenness’, where we are…
Sealed for Resurrection: Baptism and the Objectivity of the Body
Christians, even those who say much about ‘incarnational’ faith, can say surprisingly little about the way that God claims our bodies . Perhaps this is most striking in treatments of baptism, where the intensely bodily character of the rite would especially seem to invite comment. Even if the term ‘baptism’…
Before Obergefell: Some Thoughts on How We Got Here
The establishment of same-sex marriage is not a bolt from the blue, but the logical outworking of a series of related developments in America’s practice and understanding of marriage. Same-sex marriage was unthinkable just a few decades ago. What made it thinkable wasn’t a concerted campaign on the part of…
Christians, Liturgy, and the Past, 2
Connecting with the past within the present is a complicated endeavor. One of the most immediate challenges facing us is that of ensuring that, as Christians, our use of the past is undertaken in service of present faithfulness. The past is not a realm to which we retreat, but a…
Christians, Liturgy, and the Past, (Part 1)
Over the last few years, I have had frequent cause to return to the question of the ways in which the past and its forms of liturgy should be handled within the Church today. Keeping faith with the past is seldom as straightforward an endeavour as it might initially appear,…
Sexual Difference, Liberal and Christian
Ethika Politika has published a fascinating interview within which the French Catholic philosopher Fabrice Hadjadj discusses his recent work on the subject of sexuality. While there are many points where our lines of reasoning as Protestants will sharply diverge from Hadjadj’s, there is also much that is deeply perceptive in…
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