A personal intellectual hero...

Richard Hays is an awesome, awesome guy. A quotation I love from his thought:

"One reason that the world finds the NT’s message of peacemaking and love of enemies incredible is that the church is so massively faithless. On the question of violence, the church is deeply compromised and committed to nationalism, violence, and idolatry. This indictment applies alike to liberation theologies that justify violence against oppressors and to establishment Christianity that continues to play chaplain to the military-industrial complex, citing just war theory and advocating the defense of a particular nation as though that were somehow a Christian value. Only when the church renounces the way of violence will people see what the Gospel means, because then they will see the way of Jesus reenacted in the church."[1]

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[1] Hays The Moral Vision of the New Testament, 343.