The author
Graduating summa cum laude from Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf in Montréal, Canada, Jacques Beaulieu did a Honours degree in Physics at Université de Montréal before going to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Attached to the Oxford Engineering Department and junior member of Corpus Christi College, he did research in Electrical Plasma Physics at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority's Culham Laboratory.
He found the hard way that something published in the scientific litterature by professors from well-respected institutions is not necessary true. This forced him to take the time to check other people's works rather than take them for granted. He applied this to his teaching of physics, going back to the sources and checking how the experiments were conducted. This same careful scrutiny is also applied here in his research on the Gospels.
While in Oxford, he met Linda Nadin, a Catholic Convert who had completed a B.A. in English Litterature at Oxford's St Anne's College and was working at the Bodleian Library. They married at the Oxford Chaplaincy. Together they moved to Montréal where he taught at Brébeuf College. They have three sons. They now have lived for more than twenty years in the Montréal Borough of Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and are members of the Roman Catholic Parish of Saint Aloysius, Archdiocese of Montréal.
After nearly thirty years of teaching, he took early retirement and focused on theology, a subject that had fascinated him all his life. Life, Love and Law is his first book. He brings to this subject a scientific mind and a down-to-earth view.
He prefers common sense to scholarly authority, logic to tradition. When the need arises, he goes back to the original Greek Gospel text but without the usual preconceived translations that have stiffled any fresh reading of these familiar texts. He sees the Gospels as straighforward rather than mystical, as forming a very coherent whole rather than a set of somewhat unrelated ideas.
James Alison's work not only convinced him of the need of a fresh reading of the Gospels but sowed the seed of some of the ideas found in his book Life, Love and Law.
He is also much interested in Genealogy and Québec History. His work on these subjects as two of his Physics textbooks are available at
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, June 6th, 2004
© 2004 Jacques Beaulieu - property of Jacques Beaulieu for individual private use only. All rights reserved