Michael J. Gorman > Quotes

“To be in Christ is to be a living exegesis of the narrative of Christ, a new performance of the original drama of exaltation following humiliation, of humiliation as the voluntary renunciation of rights and selfish gain in order to serve and obey.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross

“To pray for the coming of the kingdom, the coming of the Lord, is to commit oneself and one’s community to embody the values and practices of that kingdom-now-in whatever circumstances we find ourselves.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation

“Richard Hays has offered the following important comment on 2 Cor 5:21: Notice carefully what Paul actually says here: Not “so that we might know about the righteousness of God.” Not “so that we might believe in the righteousness of God.” Not “so that we might proclaim the righteousness of God.” Not even “so that we might be justified by the righteousness of God.” Rather, he says, “so that we might become the righteousness of God.” Our commission from God is that we as a community are called to embody the righteousness of God in the world—to incarnate it, if you will—in such a way that the message of reconciliation is made visible in our midst. And of course reconciliation made visible is something that can appear only in practices that show unity, love, mercy, forgiveness and a self-giving grace that the world could not even dream of apart from Christ.158”
― Michael J. Gorman, The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant: A (Not So) New Model of the Atonement

“This is the consistent witness of the New Testament: that the exalted Lord remains the crucified Jesus.20 And this one is “the true face of God.”21 When this witness is neglected or forgotten, trouble follows swiftly.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation

“Moreover, Revelation tells us not only who is really sovereign but also what kind of sovereignty the true God exercises, namely what many have called nonviolent and non-coercive “Lamb power”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“The defeat of sin and evil powers on the cross was being translated into the defeat of sin and evil powers in people’s real lives.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul and His Letters

“Eugene Peterson rightly notes, “The Bible warns against a neurotic interest in the future and escapist fantasy into the future” (Reversed Thunder,”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“That Revelation 2–3 contains an outline of church history seems rather forced and quite far-fetched. But the idea that these seven churches somehow symbolize the range of possible Christian churches—particularly the range of common dangers the churches face—is much more plausible.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“By juxtaposing the two contrasting images, John has forged a new symbol of conquest by sacrificial death.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“faith is an initial and ongoing participation in the faith (i.e., faithful death) of Jesus.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross

“Faith, for Paul, is a death experience, a death that creates life.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross

“G. K. Chesterton’s comment is apt: “though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.”1 So also Luther’s: “Some have even brewed it [Revelation] into many stupid things out of their own heads.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“In other words, its character as resistance literature is actually secondary to, and derivative of, its more fundamental character as worship literature, as a liturgical text.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Revelation as prophecy should probably be understood as anti-assimilationist, or anti-accommodationist, literature. It is also in this sense that Revelation is resistance literature—“a thorough-going prophetic critique of the system of Roman power” and “the most powerful piece of political resistance literature from the period of the early Empire.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Lamb Christology is inseparable from ethics. Paradoxically, the slaughtered Lamb reveals God and also reveals what it means to be faithful to God. It reveals how God saves humanity and how humanity in turn can serve God.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Holiness is not a supplement to justification but the actualization of justification,”
― Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul's Narrative Soteriology

“Those who respond in trust or faith to the faith of Christ are moved into Christ, into the sphere of his life. In that sphere, and there alone, is justification to be found. Simultaneously, those who move into Christ find that Christ has moved into them, so to speak.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross

“The power of the Lamb in Revelation takes two forms: the power of his death, the symbol of which is the slaughtered lamb, and the power of his spoken word, the symbol of which is the sword of his mouth (1:”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Faith, then, for Paul is first of all cruciform participation with Christ that liberates participants from the hostile powers that rule human existence and brings them into the powerful sphere of Christ's benevolent lordship and community.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross

“According to Revelation, in the church’s worship we should remember and honor the prophets and martyrs, not veterans and fallen warriors; faithful witnesses, not loyal patriots; the One who was slain to secure our true freedom, not the ones who killed and were killed to preserve (so it is claimed) our freedom. That this self-evident truth about worship seems so odd, so radical, simply demonstrates how comfortable the church has become in bed with the beast.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation

“It has often been said that the most common idols in the West are Power, Sex, and Money; with this I am not in any profound disagreement. However, inasmuch as these idols are connected to a larger vision of life, such as the American dream, or the inalienable rights of free people, they become part of a nation’s civil religion. I would contend, in fact, that the most alluring and dangerous deity in the United States is the omnipresent, syncretistic god of nationalism mixed with Christianity lite: religious beliefs, language, and practices that are superficially Christian but infused with national myths and habits. Sadly, most of this civil religion’s practitioners belong to Christian churches, which is precisely why Revelation is addressed to the seven churches (not to Babylon), to all Christians tempted by the civil cult.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation

“It is the vision of a slaughtered Lamb, not a ferocious Lion. “The shock of this reversal,” writes Richard Hays, “discloses the central mystery of the Apocalypse: God overcomes the world not through a show of force but through the suffering and death of Jesus, ‘the faithful witness [martys]”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Faith begins by acknowledging the faith of Jesus and dying with him by no longer relying on the law and the self for right relations with God. Faith continues by daily relying on Christ as the energizing force for all of life, and by allowing the faith of the Son
of God, expressed in his self-giving, loving death, to reexpress itself in the life of the believer”
― Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross

“Faith, therefore, is a liberation that is also an incorporation, specifically an incorporation into Christ the new lord, and into his body.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross

“To be sure, this justification is a gift, an unmerited act of sheer divine grace, but from start to finish the gift demands and offers complete identification with the cross of Christ, not only as the basis of a right relationship with God, but as the very shape of that relationship.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross

“Together they speak of theopolitical megalomania and of any collaboration of political power and religious sanction—civil religion—that falsely claims to represent the true God and God’s will.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“For Paul, the will of God is known in essence in the obedient death of Jesus. In concrete and specific ways, however, God's will is known only when one offers oneself and one's body daily as a living sacrifice to one's rightful Lord:”
― Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross

“faith is an inauguration into a community and into a life of dying, or cruciformity.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross

“The other corollary of this principle is an understanding of scriptural interpretation not merely as an academic exercise, but as an ecclesial practice. For theological interpreters, even the most technical and sophisticated academic biblical interpretation has the church as its primary location and ultimate focus. Good theological biblical scholarship is a form of prayer, communion , and, most importantly, service to the church.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Elements of Biblical Exegesis: A Basic Guide for Students and Ministers

“Human beings, even apparently faithful Christians, too often want an almighty deity who will rule the universe with power, preferably on their terms, and with force when necessary. Such a concept of God and of sovereignty induces its adherents to side with this kind of God in the execution of (allegedly) divine might in the quest for (allegedly) divine justice. Understanding the reality of the Lamb as Lord—and thus of Lamb power—terminates, or should terminate, all such misperceptions of divine power and justice, and of their erroneous human corollaries.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation