McKnight presents and largely endorses Jesse Nickel's book on Jesus and violence, taking from it that Jesus rejected violence and that peace, understood as wholeness and restoration, defines the kingdom. He reads the Sermon on the Mount's Beatitudes as descriptions of the people God blesses rather than as commands, and he qualifies Pennington's "flourishing" reading of blessing. He argues that Jesus' teaching on non-resistance calls for active, nonviolent, generous resistance to evil.
Reviewed
Its text teaches none of the positions Doxa lists.
Violence and justice are not allies of virtue, and human anger does not produce God's righteousness.
- Endorses a source· Jesse P. Nickel, A Revolutionary Jesus: Violence and Peacemaking in the Kingdom of God
Jesus steadfastly refused to use violent force of any kind to accomplish his ministry's goals, because violence has no place in the kingdom of God, which is marked by restoration and life.
- Adopts· Jesse P. Nickel
Peace defines the kingdom of God and exists when there is peace between humans and God, creation, and one another.
- Adopts· Jesse P. Nickel
Biblical peace, as in Jesus' "Go in peace," is wholeness, restoration, and harmony rather than merely an end to conflict, and going in peace is a mission statement for living in the kingdom Jesus has formed.
- Rejects· Jonathan Pennington
The Greek makarios in the Beatitudes is reduced if it is defined only by the Hebrew ashre as the happy state of one who lives wisely.
Those who live as God wills will flourish, since human flourishing is living the way God wants humans to live.
The Beatitudes are not commands but reminders of the people God favors, reversing conventional status. Their blessing comes from God and is eschatological, with its fullness awaiting the fullness of the kingdom.
Peacemaking is the way of a follower of Jesus and involves all six contrasting statements of Jesus in Matthew 5:21-48.
In teaching non-resistance, Jesus calls his followers to give up proportionate retribution and to practice active, nonviolent resistance: exposing evil for what it is without becoming evil, and imitating God's generosity by trusting him to meet their needs.
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