4/13/2005

Very Cool--Scot McKnight is blogging

One of my favorite seminary profs is now in the blogosphere--Scot McKnight.

He was one of my favorites because he always was willing to speak his mind bluntly and swim against the tide of modern evangelicalism--he actually thought E.P. Sanders was right! (For those of you who are into N.T. Wright's re-reading the Gospels and Paul in light of 1st century Judaism, he's written A New Vision for Israel: The Teachings of Jesus in National Context and even wrote a commentary on Galatians from the "new perspective").

His latest book, The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others, is on my "gotta read" list.

I like these thoughts from his blog about how we wrongly define social justice in the USA:

"Justice is what enables me and others to have freedom, and that means enables me to have rights, and when I get freedom and rights, I will be happy because I will be able to do whatever I want as long as I do not hurt another. In other words, justice is defined as freedom to do what I want (with very few restrictions)."

"Justice, as defined by the Bible, is determined not by what I want, or by my own freedom and rights, but by the will of God. What is "just" is what conforms to the will of God. Anything less is morally deficient and anything else is not Christian. Now, let us suggest, as I do in my new book, The Jesus Creed, that the ultimate and final will of God is that humans love God and that humans love others."

1 comment:

Scot McKnight said...

Now, Bob, I've got a favorite student of all time!