Gino

“At its inception and in its best moments, the church as Christ’s body offered the world communion where there was previously animosity, ploughshares and pruning hooks from swords and spears, the peaceable kingdom come alive. The church not only welcomes the stranger, but is the stranger, constituted as she is entirely by migrants, herself a migrant through the world.”
― Stanley Hauerwas, Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections

“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

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