Sublime

The message of the Bible for the politics of the contemporary West is that it is not enough to have a state. You also need a society – meaning, that common belonging that comes from a sense that we are neighbours as well as strangers; that we have duties to one another, to the heritage of the past and to the hopes of generations not yet born; that

A society must ensure equal dignity – the Hebrew phrase is kavod habriyot, ‘human honour’ – to each of its members.

There is the common ground of the common good, and there are the semi-private domains of our diverse religious traditions. We are responsible to society for the former, to our own community for the latter.

Greatness, even for God, certainly for us, is not to be above people but to be with them,

Only if my desires have been educated beyond selfishness to the common good do I experience law as freedom itself—as the Psalm put it: “I will walk in freedom for I have sought out Your law.”

It took faith to stay Jewish in the Hellenistic age,

The God of freedom summons humanity to freedom: responsible, law-governed, self-restrained, the liberty that honours the liberty of others, but never less than freedom.