Gino

“The church is constituted as a new people who have been gathered from the nations to remind the world that we are in fact one people. Gathering, therefore, is an eschatological act as it is the foretaste of the unity of the communion of the saints.”
― Stanley Hauerwas, In Good Company: The Church as Polis

“The disciples’ love is witness-bearing; it is missional communal theosis. It is how “everyone”—literally “all” (pantes)—will come to know that the disciples are disciples of Jesus (13:35; cf. 17:21–23). This could sound like a rather minimalist goal, conveying knowledge of identity. But far more is at stake. The disciples’ mutual love is necessary for an effective witness that ultimately points not to themselves, but to Jesus the Son and to God the Father, that is, to the One whose own love is the means and mode of the world’s salvation (cf. 17:20–26). The goal is for others to enter the eternal life that consists, not in knowing facts, but in knowing the Father and the Son (17:3).”
― Michael J. Gorman, Abide and Go: Missional Theosis in the Gospel of John

“My oft-made claim, a claim that many find offensive, that the first task of the church is not to make the world just but to make the world the world, is rightly understood only in light of these eschatological convictions.”
― Stanley Hauerwas, Approaching the End: Eschatological Reflections on Church, Politics, and Life

“The lives of the saints are the hermeneutical key to Scripture.”
― Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer In Christian Ethics