Shane Williamson > Recent Status Updates

The Sermon on the Mount takes the reader/listener back to Sinai to understand what God requires of the people of Israel in the first century CE. (91)

The analysis of religion in antiquity has first and foremost to do with practice. (86)

The first gospel constitutes an argument about how the followers of Jesus at the conclusion of the first century understood the requirements of the law and the rationale for their understanding of its requirements. (68)

It is apparent that [Matthew] is linked to Jewish sectarianism in the traditions known by [the] church fathers. Matthew as a sectarian Jewish composition must find its place in the conflicted and complicated developments of the emerging Jewish and Christian worlds of the second century CE and immediately thereafter. (65)

Technological innovations, including artificial intelligence, are not neutral, for they can either foster participation and justice or exacerbate inequality, control and exclusion. For this reason, they must be evaluated by asking a crucial question: Do they truly help individuals and peoples to become more humane and fraternal, while respecting our common home and future generations? (75)

"...justice is born from, and fulfilled in, fraternity, because the way we approach and relate to the least among us becomes, in concrete terms, the measure of our relationship with God and with our brothers and sisters."