Scot McKnight

Christians believe in Heaven. It is our final destination at the end of life, our After-After-Life, our great hope for eternity. Nevertheless we don't all believe the same things about it. Popular images of heaven depict a whole lot of harp playing up there on those billowy white clouds.Our images of heaven and the after life are formed from pop-culture--movies, books, comics--and medieval art and literature. In contrast, Scot McKnight wrote The Heaven Promise to give us a picture of our show more Christian final hope, drawn primarily from the pages of the Bible.

It was perhaps only a matter of time before McKnight tackled the topic of heaven. Several years ago, this New Testament scholar and popular blogger and author, took on Reformed evangelicalism for reducing the gospel 'to going to heaven when you die' (See The King Jesus Gospel). However McKnight never repudiated heaven; his problem was with the ways the gospel (and heaven) were relegated to the afterlife.

McKnight divides The Heaven Promise into four sections. Part one is essentially an introduction to the question of heaven, our assumptions about the afterlife and where we got them. Part two looks deeper on what the Bible says about heaven: that it is promised to us by God, that this promise is sealed by Jesus' death, resurrection and ascension, that a bodily resurrection awaits those who share in Christ's resurrection, and that heaven begins wherever the reign of God is. Part three unfolds six promises about heaven:

1. God will be God (present in all his glory, majesty and power).


2. Jesus will be Jesus (central to everything as a reflection of the God of heaven).


3. Heaven will be a utopia of pleasures


4. Heaven will be eternal life


5. Heaven will be a global fellowship


6. Heaven will be the eternal beloved community

These six promises will have implications for what heaven will be like and for how we live our lives now.

Part four was the part of the book I read first. It is kind of a FAQ section. McKnight tackles ten questions people have about heaven. He answers questions about near death/out of body experiences, heavenly rewards, 'who get's in,' God's fairness, family in heaven?, children who die, cremation, purgatory and pets. In his final question "Why Believe in Heaven?" he gives a personal account of his belief in heaven.

I found this to be a well-written account of heaven grounded in biblical theology. McKnight has a gift for presenting complicated but important theological ideas in language that ordinary readers understand. In a few places, McKnight challenged my reading of particular passages and what that tells about heaven (i.e. he gives a fresh interpretation of Jesus' confrontation of the Sadducees).

McKnight doesn't simply rehash Bible verses about heaven. He talks about the implications of what our vision of heaven should have for our day-to-day life. For example, his chapter on the eternal beloved community (chapter 13) expounds on how the Bible's last book describes the end of the exploitation and injustice of Babylon. McKnight knows we aren't there yet. We live in a world with food deserts and unjust incarcerations (McKnight gives examples of each). He suggest that our heavenly vision of Justice and Shalom should cause us to seek to live out heaven now. For McKnight heaven isn't just 'pie in the sky when you die' but a vision we live towards.

This is a popular level book, so not exhaustive. You may not agree with Mcknight on every point. But if you want a book that gets you excited about heaven and presses into the implications for life, this one is great! I give it four stars.

Note: I received this book from Waterbrook Multnomah and the Blogging for Books Program in exchange for my honest review. show less

I resisted buying this book for quite a while because it was written by someone who was involved with a megachurch. I don't trust megachurches at all. I finally relented when someone I trust recommended this book.

This book tells how to spot a toxic church culture and how to spot a good church culture as well as how to create a toxic church culture and how to create a good church culture that won't allow toxicity to grow. The concept applies to all organizations, whether or not they are show more churches.

Toxic church culture will do some or all of these when evil things are done by those in power: discredit the critics, demonize the critics, spin the story, gaslight the critics, make the perpetrator the victim, silence the truth, suppress the truth, and/or issue a fake apology. "Toxic, flesh-driven cultures breed a lust for power, success, celebrity, control through fear, an emphasis on authority, and demands for loyalty."

A goodness culture will actively create a safe environment by nurturing empathy (resisting narcissism), nurturing grace (resisting fear culture), putting people first (resisting institution creep where the institution is more important than the people in the institution), telling the truth (resisting false narratives & observing Yom Kippur -- group repentance & confession of sins), nurturing justice (resisting loyalty culture), nurturing service (resisting celebrity culture), nurturing Christlikeness (resisting leader/CEO culture where a pastor acts like a businessman.)

I very recently read Charity Detox by Robert Lupton. He encourages churches/non-profits to think like a corporation in judging the effectiveness of their charitable efforts. I'm trying to figure out how to merge these two ideas since Tov is against a business model. I think that measuring the results of a church shouldn't focus on raw numbers. Definitely not on the number of parishioners, the quantity of financial support, and the money spent on programs. I think that it should be human-oriented. You need a list of parishioners or people that the charity had contact with over the course of time. You sit and ponder if each person is in a better position overall now than at previous points in time. If you need to have numbers, you rate them on a scale of 1 to 10 with 5 being no change. If someone is in a worse place in life or unchanged, the organization might have failed that person. If your average and median are less than 5 (if a 1 is bad), your organization is probably failing. But the evaluation needs to be person-centric. I think that these 2 books can be compatible with each other.

I believe that this book can be applied to churches, non-profits, and businesses. Businesses can be personality cults just as much as churches can. (I'm thinking of Apple which is failing post-Steve-Jobs and Microsoft which protects Bill Gates from the fallout of his affairs with employees.) Businesses need to nurture empathy, nurture grace instead of fear, tell the truth, put people first, nurture justice, nurture service, and resist authoritarianism/rule-following. So very many companies need to put people first and profits much lower in priority.

In my personal experience with multiple toxic churches and parachurch organizations, the red flags of toxic culture have been flying loud and proud. For 20 years, I was in a denomination that has made toxic culture its modus operandi, and everything in this book rings so very true. Every sign of a toxic culture was there and none of the signs of a good culture were there.

This book is definitely worth 5 stars. I highly recommend it to everyone, especially anyone who is a member of a church, and even more especially to anyone in a leadership position in a church. If you aren't a Christian, you will probably be annoyed with all of the many references to the Bible, God, Jesus, and examples from churches, but creating a culture of goodness applies to every group of people that wants to prevent their organization from being abusive. show less

In this book, McKnight tackles the difficult issues of contextual reading and spiritual discernment in a way meant to make these difficult concepts understandable for the average reader without specialized training in or familiarity with the discipline of biblical hermeneutics. He succeeds admirably, I think, in making the book accessible to a wide range of readers, though those of a more scholarly bent might find some of his explanations and/or examples a bit simplistic.

I agree with show more McKnight that it is important to properly qualify our claims of "literal" application and obedience to Scripture; we are often more selective in this than we would care to admit. However, even some of McKnight's readings, especially of the rules related to modest clothing and hairstyles on women in II Timothy 2 reflect the very subjectivity that he is critiquing. (He reads these texts with no acknowledgement of how they have been read and understood within the Holiness and Mennonite strands of the Christian tradition.)

Most concerning of all to me though, was this statement on pg. 143 related to the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15: "Was the Jerusalem council messy? Yes, it was. Did they discern what to do for that time? Yes, they did. Was it permanent, for all time, for everyone, always, everywhere? No." I wonder if that means McKnight feels there will ever be a contemporary context in which Christians SHOULD become Jewish proselytes in order to be a part of the Church... I would hope not, but that statement seems to leave that as a logical possibility at least.

I think that illustrates both the importance and the challenge of addressing the "contextual" nature of Scriptural interpretation. There is a constant tension between discerning what is "universal" and what is "particular." And I couldn't agree with McKnight more that it is this interpretive tension that necessitates an active role of the Spirit in our reading of Scripture.

Finally, McKnight spends several chapters addressing the perennial issue of the role of women in church ministry as his kind of "test case" or "working example" of the kind of contextually-sensitive/discernment-oriented hermeneutic he is promoting. Though he doesn't break much new interpretive ground in his work on the so-called "silence passages" (1 Cor. 14:34; 2 Tim. 2:9-15), he does nicely pull together a coherent and compelling response to the traditional prohibition of women holding roles of spiritual and/or teaching authority within the church. (Having already been convinced of a strongly egalitarian view, McKnight only confirmed what I already thought.) Just this section alone might be worth the price of the book.

McKnight's book is really most valuable in that it is such an easy read. He keeps the tone conversational rather than didactic, and peppers the book with enough personal observations and stories to maintain the reader's attention. I think the book has value as a way to introduce some of the thornier questions of hermeneutics to beginners. There is much more than can (and must!) be said than what McKnight says here, but at the very least, he provides a book that helpfully frames some of the most important questions we as followers of Christ will ever have to answer. show less

Excellent resource for challenging you to be more intentional when reading the Bible. It helps you understand what you're supposed to be doing when you read, what you're supposed to bring to and take from your reading.

Also an excellent discussion about women in leadership in the church.

Only criticism: those willing to pick up this book are probably already willing to accept its thesis; those who need to hear this thesis probably won't be interested in this sort of book (ie, it preaches to show more the choir -- though the choir does still need to hear this sermon!) show less