Conscientious Objections Toward a Reconstruction of the Social and Political Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth

The author argues that Jesus' views were based on belief in a non-retributive, omnibenevolent God, challenging not only the Mosaic Law but assumptions about eternal punishment and the divine sanction of the state and its retributive institutions of war and punishment. It also interprets Paul as being the first Christian revisionist. As a result, orthodox Christianity, through the influence of Paul (and thus Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin), has mistakenly promoted the 'just war' and 'divinely-ordained state' doctrines in the name of a thinker whose conclusions were in the opposite direction.