Showing posts with label Scot McKnight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scot McKnight. Show all posts

Friday, March 29, 2024

the way of the cross

The Way of the Cross is not the Way of the Sword.—Scot McKnight, The Audacity of Peace, 97

<idle musing>
An appropriate ending to this little book. Monday we start another book from way back in 2016 that I'm finally getting around to reading: Margaret Sim, A Relevant Way to Read. I hope you enjoy it. Here's the publisher blurb:

In A Relevant Way to Read, Margaret G. Sim draws on her in-depth knowledge of New Testament Greek to forge a new exegesis of the Gospels and Paul's letters. Locating her studies in the linguistic concept of relevance theory, which contends that all our utterances are laden with crucial yet invisible context, Sim embarks on a journey through some of the New Testament's most troubling verses. Here she recovers lost information with a meticulous analysis that should enlighten both the experienced scholar and the novice. Whether discussing Paul's masterful use of irony to shame the Corinthians, or introducing the ground-breaking ideas behind relevance theory into a whole new field of study, the author demonstrates her vast learning and experience while putting her complex subject into plain words for the developing student.
</idle musing>

Thursday, March 28, 2024

The way of the lamb

They [the early Christians] do this first in their small house church gatherings: they embody the Way of the Lamb and they resist as dissident disciples the way of the Dragon. Their habits emerge over time into a living reality, the agency of goodness in the Way of the Lamb. So emergent is this living reality of goodness that goodness itself becomes an agent constraining the believers to act in all spheres of life as those who have learned an alternative reality. That is, when they enter the agora they behave not as Romans but as Christotorm humans. They worship God, they are not driven by power and opulence and status and arrogance, they resist military victories, and they choose the ways of economic generosity and equity.

That is the peace ethic of Revelation. It is the Way of the Lamb and the challenge is to follow the Lamb while living in Babylon.—Scot McKnight, The Audacity of Peace,—Scot McKnight, The Audacity of Peace, 96–97

<idle musing>
And that's still the challenge today, isn't it? But when was the last time you heard a sermon or read a book or sang a song that pointed that out?

Just an
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Wednesday, March 27, 2024

A new understanding of violence

But the establishment of the Kingdom of God in the person of Jesus reveals to us a new understanding of violence; the tables are turned. Whereas the old kingdom was established by the use of violence, the new Kingdom was established in the receipt of violence. God the Warrior becomes the Crucified God, the one who receives in himself the full force of human violence.—Peter Craigie, The Problem of War in the Old Testament, 99 (emphasis original), cited in Scot McKnight, The Audacity of Peace, 83

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Absorbing the violence

I have come to the conclusion that the war texts express human evil at times. My conclusion comes from the Bible’s witness to the Way of the Cross. in Christ God has come to humans in all their evil, has entered into that history and reality, has gone all the way to the bottom of that reality in the brutality and hideousness and injustice of Jesus’ crucifixion, has unmasked the evil at work in such systems of injustice, has absorbed the injustice in order to redeem its agents (all humans), has redemptively liberated humans from such injustice and evils, has been raised to the world's true Lord, and has sent the Spirit to transform humans into the Way of the Cross, or Christoformity. In Christ God ends the violence of humans by absorbing the violence in his Son for all of us.—Scot McKnight, The Audacity of Peace, 82–83

Monday, March 25, 2024

Christoformity

Christoformity is a hermeneutic for real life decisions by real followers in real situations. Nor is it as simple as ‘What would Jesus do.’ Rather we ask, how do I embody the incarnation of God's redemptive love in this moment for this person or persons or situation as one who is in communion with Christ through the Spirit?—Scot McKnight, The Audacity of Peace, 69–70

Friday, March 22, 2024

A consistent pacifistic christoform hermeneutic

Bonhoeffer operated with one of the most consistently pacifistic christoform hermeneutics in the history of the church. But it was a hermeneutic, not a rule. As a hermeneutic it had to be worked out in specific contexts and I turn now to explore a christoform hermeneutic in the face of dying for others, perhaps the most exacting explication in the history of the church on what elf-denial as participation in Christ means. Here we find utter Christoformity.

Bonhoeffer was against rule-making. Discernment — rather than law-making or undeviating principle-formation — was his method of knowing what to do in a concrete situation.—Scot McKnight, The Audacity of Peace, 66–67

Thursday, March 21, 2024

But how?

Christoformity, however, occurs not through valiant efforts or white-knuckling discipline but through the quiet surrender of participation in Christ.—Scot McKnight, The Audacity of Peace, 62

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Love your enemies? You gotta be kidding! Nope, he wasn't…

Sixth, a peace ethic converts enemies into neighbors. For some Israel’s scriptures led to a social love for one’s own and a social hatred for one’s enemies. To put it simpler, to love one’s own nation and to despise the nations of others as deplorables and shit-hole countries. Some in the Qumran community saw Rome as the enemy (1QM 1:9—11). The apostle Paul discovered a social hierarchy among Christians (Galatians; Romans 14:1-15:13). Jesus’ peace ethic subverts othering gentiles and women and the marginalized and Romans especially and in its place he calls kingdom people to love one’s enemies and to pray for one’s persecutors. His radical teaching from beyond our time zone does not derive from pragmatics, as if he's saying, ‘Hey guys, if we act this way things will go easier for us.’ No, he grounds it in the love of God for all humans, and God's love is as wide as the sunshine and as democratic as rain. Which is what he means by ‘perfect.’—Scot McKnight, The Audacity of Peace, 53–54

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

True overcoming

A peace ethic committed to loving all, including one’s enemies, does not respond to militaristic demands as others do. Instead of appealing to rights or demanding justice, Jesus calls kingdom people to decode the system and deconstruct its ways of power by surrendering to the power in a way that removes their teeth and grinding. It is the way of Jesus, after all: he surrendered over and over to the powers, exposed and absorbed their vicious ways on the cross, overcame them into a new life for his followers on Easter Sunday, and empowered them for kingdom living on Pentecost.—Scot McKnight, The Audacity of Peace, 53

Monday, March 18, 2024

But is it Ṭov?

A peace ethic asks what is tov in this situation, which at times transcends what many would perceive to be ‘just’ or ‘right’ or even (dare I say it) ‘biblical.’ It does not ask about status or about who will win, but about what is tov.—Scot McKnight, The Audacity of Peace, 44

<idle musing>
How many times have you asked yourself that? I'll be honest, it was a new idea to me—but a powerful one!
</idle musing>

Friday, March 15, 2024

On the margins

Those who are ignored, suppressed, silenced, and excluded are not just seen by Jesus: he exalts them to center stage. Those who because of exigencies in life do not have the advantages and privileges of others are seen and given a place at the table. Here we find the beginnings of a peace ethic about imprisonment in our society. Here we find the beginnings of a word of grace and hope that can turn prisons, which are populated by folks from the margins, into centers of transformation, reconciliation, and rehabilitation.—Scot McKnight, The Audacity of Peace, 42–43

Thursday, March 14, 2024

The way of suffering? Or the way of violence?

What I learned from Sider is that Jesus here consciously and intentionally rejected the way of violence and power over others and chose the way of suffering and service as the path to ‘victory’, now redefined. One doesn't get to the Easter victory of Jesus apart from the defeat on Friday.— Scot McKnight, The Audacity of Peace, 21–22

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

What is a peace ethic?

A peace ethic embodies the self-denial ethic of Jesus. A peace ethic volitionally and communally participates in the cruciform pattern of the life of Jesus.Through the power of God's grace and the indwelling Spirit of God the participant in the way of Jesus is transformed into a Christoform life.— Scot McKnight, The Audacity of Peace, 10

Thursday, October 19, 2023

A peace ethic

"A peace ethic embodies the self-denial ethic of Jesus. A peace ethic volitionally and communally participates in the cruciform pattern of the life of Jesus. Through the power of God's grace and the indwelling Spirit of God the participant in the way of Jesus is transformed into the Christoform life."—Scot McKnight, Audacity of Peace, 10

Saturday, October 14, 2023

When will we ever learn?

From a Google books preview of Scot McKnight's Audacity of Peace (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2022), 8:
International saviors save little and sin lots.
<idle musing>
Indeed! When will we ever learn?

I've got to get this book! The table of contents looks great, as do the few pages I can see in the Google preview
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