Quotes from Scot McKnight

We don't ask what the Bible says, we ask what God says to us in that Bible. The difference is a difference between paper and person.

God's idea of redemption is community-shaped.

... the Eucharist profoundly enables the grace of God to be received with all its glories and blessings.

The ultimate end of redemption is that we worship God with our whole being and in the whole company of the redeemed.

Angels will frequently - even when they're comforting us with good news - touch the awe of God's eternal presence and drive us to our knees before our God of glory.

Prayer is the way to die to our own wishes and surrender everything to God.

Those who aren't following Jesus aren't his followers. It's that simple. Followers follow, and those who don't follow aren't followers. To follow Jesus means to follow Jesus into a society where justice rules, where love shapes everything. To follow Jesus means to take up his dream and work for it.

God did not give the Bible so we could master him or it; God gave the Bible so we could live it, so we could be mastered by it. The moment we think we've mastered it, we have failed to be readers of the Bible.

We need to shed our unearthly and nonsocial and idealistic and romantic and uber-spiritual visions of kingdom and get back to what Jesus meant. By kingdom, Jesus means: God's Dream Society on earth, spreading out from the land of Israel to encompass the whole world.

The assumption that the gospel can be reduced to a note card is already off on the wrong track.

Too many people think repenting means feeling terrible about something someone has done. Feeling bad is fine, and it often accompanies repentance, but repentance is not so much about what we feel but the twofold prong of owning up to our own injustices and failures to love, and starting all over by living justly and lovingly.

What must be emphasized in all of this is the difference between trusting Christ, the real person Jesus, with all that that naturally involves, versus trusting some arrangement for sin-remission set up through him — trusting only his role as guilt remover.

We must not forget that it is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is the moment that lends significance to things. —ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL

the movement that has long called itself "evangelical" is in fact better labeled "soterian." That is, we have thought we were talking about "the gospel" when in fact we were concentrating on "salvation.

We live in a world of evaluations, assessments, and measurements, but Jesus turns his gaze deeper because he knows that what is measurable can be faked.

The Jesus Creed teaches us that a disciple's responsibility is to love God by following Jesus. You only follow someone else when your own lights or sense of direction are not good enough.

Community is like peace in that it is a result instead of an action. Peace results from acts of justice and behaviors of love. Community also emerges out of loving behaviors—like compassion and an embrace and forgiveness — and out of acts of justice.

First we are to seek peace in our local fellowship, to end strife and to seek reconciliation with God and with one another, and out of this peace-shaped, kingdom-shaped church we spill over peace into the world.

the way to inscribe the will of God on the hearts of people in this world is not by way of law or vote but by way of redemption through Jesus. Jesus' kingdom vision is for his redeemed people and for them alone.

God was on the move; God is on the move; and God will always be on the move. Those who walk with God and listen to God are also on the move. Reading the Bible so we can live it out today means being on the move—always. Anyone who stops and wants to turn a particular moment into a monument, as the disciples did when Jesus was transfigured before them, will soon be wondering where God has gone.

The longer you look at the idea that we read the Bible to find new meanings, the sillier it becomes. We read and return to the Bible not (just) to find something new but to hear something old, not to discover something fresh but to be reminded of something ancient.

PART OF THE GENIUS of genuine Christianity is that each generation has to think it through afresh.

And I always do this aloud, or at least at a mumble level, making sure I am doing more than just glancing at the psalms or prayers. Glancing at prayers is the fastest path toward vain repetitions I know of. For that reason, the church has always advocated reading our prayers aloud so we will go more slowly and concentrate more on what we are saying. Prayer books are designed to be read aloud.

On the basis of what the New Testament does say, the final home should not be called "heaven" but instead the "new heavens and the new earth," and this makes a significant difference for understanding that what we do now really does matter—for we will continue doing it on the other side of life after death.