Scot McKnight
Patheos
New York, NY, United States
Contact Scot
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Past articles by Scot:
Weekly Meanderings, 4 January 2020
Our first Meandering of 2020! A white reindeer of beauty! A Christmas miracle? We think so. A Norwegian photographer spotted a rare sight while he was hiking with friends. He captured a beautiful photograph of a white reindeer calf in the mountains of northern Norway. Mads Nordsveen, 24, from Oslo, captured the → Read More
A Movement Formerly Called “Evangelical”?
In his new book called Restless Faith, former Fuller Seminary president Richard Mouw dips into the question of labels and asks if we should call evangelicalism a "former movement." He's unwilling to give up on the term. I find the term, at least in the USA, well-nigh useless today. Is it? I don't want to come off as → Read More
A new discipleship curriculum – Following King Jesus
By Becky Castle Miller Becky Castle Miller is on the pastoral staff at Damascus Road International Church in Maastricht, Netherlands, as Discipleship Director. She is the co-author, with Scot McKnight, of the discipleship curriculum Following King Jesus,. She conveys her five kids around town on bikes and studies New → Read More
What is a “Sacrifice of Atonement”?
By Geoff Holsclaw: a professor and pastor, offering a free mini-course on The 3 Forgotten Reasons for Jesus’ Death, to help expand your understanding of Jesus’s death. Is the “sacrifice of atonement” in Romans 3:25 referring to a propitiation (appeasing God’s wrath), an expiation (cleansing human sin), or the mercy → Read More
Reprise: Is that sermon yours, preacher?
A number of varied sources recently have led me to learn that some well-known preachers and speakers are preaching sermons they, in effect, did not write and use research they did not do themselves. I know some names and I’m not afraid to use them but I won’t do that in this post. To get more specific, some pay → Read More
The Shedding of Blood and Christian Faith
By Geoff Holsclaw: a professor and pastor, offering a free mini-course on The 3 Forgotten Reasons for Jesus’ Death, to help expand your understanding of Jesus’s death. While it might seem gross and barbaric, all Christians confess that salvation is through the blood of Jesus (Eph. 1:7). But what does that really → Read More
5 Reasons Baseball is a Spiritual Discipline
By Geoff Holsclaw: pastor and professor, and baseball fan. Baseball is the American pastime, marking our collective consciousness like no other sport. And it can help us remember what spiritual disciplines are for. Photo by Ben Hershey on Unsplash What other sport has influenced common speech like baseball? She hit a → Read More
When Morality Lost Its Authority
James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedelisky tackle the cultural trend (if not more) of thinking we can resolve our moral debates by greater science. Their book is called Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality. Important to their discussion is tracing the history of how morality moved away → Read More
Hey Preacher, Is That Sermon Really Yours?
A number of varied sources recently have led me to learn that some well-known preachers and speakers are preaching sermons they, in effect, did not write and use research they did not do themselves. I know some names and I’m not afraid to use them but I won’t do that in this post. To get more specific, some pay → Read More
Twelve Lies that Hold America Captive
Twelve Lies that Hold America Captive, by Geoff Holsclaw Geoff Holsclaw is a theology professor @ Northern Seminary & a local church pastor. Get his FREE “5 Ways for Finding God’s Presence” checklist. Jonathan Walton, in Twelve Lies that Hold America Captive and the Truth That Sets Us Free, delivers an honest—and → Read More
Whiteness, Race, and Slavery in the USA
The big picture is this: profit requires labor, labor requires laborers, white North Americans wanted profit, they needed laborers, and African slaves became their laborers. Not all at once, claims Jemar Tisby in his new book, The Color of Compromise. Indentured servants and laborers over time became slaves, and → Read More
Why Don’t People Believe Science?
FIONA MACDONALD One of the biggest cultural shifts in recent years is the rise of fake news - where claims with no evidence behind them (e.g. the world is flat) get shared as fact alongside evidence-based, peer-reviewed findings (e.g. climate change is happening). Researchers have coined this trend the → Read More
Jesus’ View Of Jesus
I'm taking a few stops at James D.G. Dunn, Jesus According to the New Testament. The central message of the NT is not justification by faith, it is Jesus -- Jesus is the gospel, the gospel is Jesus, and how one thinks about justification or any other centralizing theme -- God's love, reconciliation, God's justice -- → Read More
Praying For Our Nation’s Leaders
O Lord our Governor, bless the leaders of our land: That we may be a people at peace among ourselves and a blessing to other nations of the earth. Teach all people to rely on your strength and to accept their responsibilities to their fellow citizens, that there would be wise decisions for the well-being of our → Read More
You don’t need to go to church to be a Christian and other fairy tales
By JASON SWAN CLARK (Jason and I have known one another since the emerging church days, and we contributed to a book with Kevin Corcoran some years back). He gave me permission to repost this -- part of a project he's working on. (Hear this article in full as an audio recording) And let us not neglect our meeting → Read More
The Dream Of The Speech
Here's the text of Martin Luther King's famous speech/sermon/address in Washington DC. I remember watching it as a kid on TV. I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. I am happy to join with you today in what will go down → Read More
Jesus According to…
In my first teaching appointment, a student approached me with a humorous quip: "You've been talking so much about Jesus' teaching about X, Y, and Z, when will we get a lecture on Jesus' teaching on Jesus' teaching?" He had a point. Another point can be added to it: Back up one step and we have to ask about Jesus → Read More
Behind, Under, Around The Old Testament
I'm reading John Goldingay's distinct translation of the -- ahem -- First Testament, and I can't begin to count the number of times I have asked myself questions about context and connections. One can spread the Old Testament out over more than a millennium of dates and contacts and connections and contexts, so → Read More
When Is Resistance Actually “Resistance”?
In Matthew Gordley, New Testament Christological Hymns, a case is made that Colossians 1:15-20 is a kind of resistance literature or poetry. We are asking How we know when something in the NT is resistance-of-the-empire literature or statement? I will argue that the kind of argument Gordley makes diminishes the → Read More
How The Church Of England Began
One of the world's truly great historians today is an Oxford scholar of the English Reformation, and his name is Diarmaid MacCulloch (Dur-mudd). Years back I read his massive book Thomas Cranmer, and just a year or two ago I read his All Things Made New, a collection of shorter writings on the Reformation. Now he → Read More