Ep. 448 Scot McKnight - The Pharisees Weren't Who You Think

In this episode with Scot McKnight, we ask whether the perception that the Pharisees were hypocrites, legalists with a religious spirit is the right way to view them. We move the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees from one of theological debate to one in response to charisma, the crowds, and power. We talk about what charisma actually is, why economic justice sat at the center of Jesus' movement, the seven things the Pharisees really were, and what it means to stop weaponizing the word against anyone we disagree with.

Scot McKnight (PhD, Nottingham) has been a Professor of New Testament for more than four decades. He is the author of more than ninety books, including the award-winning The Jesus Creed as well as The King Jesus Gospel, A Fellowship of Differents, One.Life, The Blue Parakeet, Revelation for the Rest of Us, and Kingdom Conspiracy.

Scot's Book:

Jesus, People, Pharisees

Scot's Recommendation:

Furious Minds

Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@shiftingculturepodcast.com

Go to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.

Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTube

Support the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link below

Transcript

Scot McKnight: 0:00

And I don't think Pharisees didn't like the idea of justice. They did, but Jesus was jumping the gun. He was ahead of other people, and he was pushing toward a vision of economic justice that would destabilize the Jewish economy, the Galilean economy, and it would destabilize those who are in power.

Joshua Johnson: 0:38

Hello, and welcome to the Shifting Culture podcast, in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host, Joshua Johnson. When I say the word Pharisee, what do you think? Well, most people in the church today would think hypocrite, legalists, religious, religious spirit. Then what we do is we take all of those things and then we use that word as an insult to others, to which we feel like they have the same type of spirit as well. Well, Scott McKnight, our guest today, wants to reframe the way that we see Pharisees. He wants to let the story breathe, so that when the Pharisees and Jesus were interacting, we could see that it wasn't just a theological debate that they were having. There was so much more going on behind the scenes. It was about charisma. It was about crowds. It was about power. So in this conversation, we talk about what charisma is, why economic justice sat at the center of Jesus's movement, the seven things the Pharisees really were, and what it means to stop weaponizing the word against anyone we disagree with. So, if you really want to see what was behind the story of Jesus and the Pharisees, listen to this. Join us. Here is my conversation with Scott McKnight. Scott, welcome back. It's a pleasure to have you back on.

Scot McKnight: 2:09

Joshua, good to be with you again.

Joshua Johnson: 2:11

Yeah, I think this is number five for you. Is is

Scot McKnight: 2:14

it really okay? Yeah,

Joshua Johnson: 2:16

making it a regular occurrence. I love it. We're gonna be talking about Jesus, people, Pharisees today, reframing a little bit of how we see Pharisees, Jesus's relationship with crowds. Let's start with Pharisees. What do people typically preach about Pharisees? What What's the typical thought around Pharisees these days?

Scot McKnight: 2:39

Well, I have some choice quotes in the book about that, but a Pharisee is seen in most people's mind as an irredeemable character who is marked by hypocrisy, sham, pickiness. I think the one of the words used is picayune. In other words, they are legalistic and killjoys. I think it was some great American writer who said that they wake up every morning worried that somebody in the world might be happy. So that's sort of the way people understand Pharisee, and as a result, I think that they fail to understand the way the New Testament, what the New Testament is saying, and what Pharisees are in reality. So it's that sort of thing,

Joshua Johnson: 3:37

and I want to get to the reality of what Pharisees are, but before that, I want to say because this is a historical type of of memoir, so give me just the place and the setting of where we are in the story of Jesus and the Pharisees in the crowd. What is happening, and just set us up with the with the context of This story,

Scot McKnight: 4:01

well, Joshua, the the Pharisees appear in the Gospels often. I mean, there's lots lots of references to them, but Jesus is in Galilee. This is where his ministry is predominantly. He is in Capernaum. That that's where I think people should just imagine themselves, and that he is Jesus is successful in that he preaches and teaches in ways that people are drawn to what he has to say. He acts in ways that people are even more drawn to what he has to what he's doing because of the attribution of miracles at the redemptive level. He's healing people who are, you know, Matthew 11 verses five and six say it like like this: the blind receive their soul. The lame walk; those with skin disease are cleansed. The deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news brought to them. So, Jesus is doing these sorts of things, and

here's the critical thing: 5:14

all of a sudden, Pharisees appear in text. Jesus, Jesus, and his disciples are walking through a farming area, and it's on the Sabbath, Shavat, and the disciples pluck off the top of wheat some grains and eat it, and the Pharisees evidently are watching them. Why they are, I don't know. They could be walking around with Jesus as well, but they criticize them for evidently for working on the Sabbath. Well, then that story turns into Jesus in a synagogue, assembly hall, community center is the best. I think one of the best ways of understanding a synagogue, and Jesus can heal a person, and they want to know if he's going to heal someone on a Sabbath, and because they don't think that this is appropriate, Jesus then exorcizes a demon from a man. This is what I say is Hemingway prose, verse 22. They brought to Jesus a demonized, demon-possessed man, who was blinded, mute, simple sentence. He cured him, simple sentence, so that the one who had been mute could speak and see. That's Hemingway type prose. All the crowds were amazed, and they were saying,"Can this be the son of David? Messianic idea. But when the Pharisees heard it, and that is they heard the crowds, they said it is only by Beelzebul, the prince or ruler of demons, that this man casts out demons. So here Jesus is doing these marvelous things, and the Pharisees seem to be itching to criticize what he's doing, I think this is the context in which Christians understand Pharisees, and in largely in the way that they are presented in the pages of the Gospels. And I was looking at the Gospel of Matthew, where the Pharisees figure even more. So that's sort of the context. There's tension.

Joshua Johnson: 7:23

There's lots of tension there. Why do you think that there's there's tension there? Is it primarily theological, or is it something else?

Scot McKnight: 7:32

Okay, this is the question, and this is the heart of why I wrote this book. And we we don't in the academic world, we can we don't get to our conclusions too quickly because we might give away the secret, the story. So, here's what happened to me. All right, I grew up believing what everybody else had said about the Pharisees that they were a bunch of hypocrites, and so it was not un it was not wrong. It was not unconventional or uncustomary for someone to see someone in a church or a setting and say that that person's a Pharisee or they're Pharisaical. Okay, I grew up with that. When I was a doctoral student, I read E. P. Sanders' famous book, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, which was really a book that this revolutionized my mental framework. That book, and it it did the same with many many people. the The big outcome was Pharisees were not seen as legalistic, Jews were not seen as legalistic. Judaism was not a works religion. Judaism was a covenant-based religion in which people obeyed the Torah because they were a part of the covenant. In other words, I can remember sitting in Nottingham and listening to Ed Sanders, E.P. Sanders say this, and I remember thinking his understanding of Judaism is the way I understood and understand the Baptists that I grew up with. In other words, I could say they were legalistic, but if you ask them, they believed that they had been saved by grace, and that therefore they didn't they didn't drink, and they didn't do certain things because they were saved by grace. It was a grace-shaped way of life that they were able to construct and create a community that lived like this, and people who didn't live like this were not saved by grace, or they were failing in their life by grace. So I grew up, and Sanders completely revolutionized thinking, and it made me conscious that I needed to talk about Jews in the New Testament differently, not based on. Works a religion that was based upon the covenant God made with Israel, but it also gave me a constant irritant in how the Pharisees were presented in the Gospels. All right, over and over and over, they're criticized, and over and over and over, I hear sermons, and I hear people saying Pharisees are legalists, and I hear this. I remember a church that we were attending. Sometimes the pastor would call me and say, "If I say this about the Pharisees, will I be accurate? They were worried of me about me sitting in there going, "No, don't don't say that sort of thing. But I was sitting one time at Willow Creek, and this is why I wrote Jesus Creed. I heard Bill Heibel say some things, and I said I have to write about Jesus in a way that counters this, and that's that's the origin of of my book, The Jesus Creed, in 2004, so 20 some years ago. So I I grew up realizing that this is the way people were going to talk about Pharisees, they were going to always accuse them of being killjoys and hypocrites. All right, so I did my best as a professor. I did my best as a writer, and I at times failed to realize that when I talk about the Pharisees, I too often pose them over against Jesus and make Jesus look better. So I've worked at that, but then not maybe I can't tell you the exact date. I think the book is right here somewhere. This is the book by Amy Jill Levine and Joseph Sievers, collected some essays in 2021 with the title "The Pharisees. And when I read the book, I said to myself, "I have to work this out for myself. I have to go back to the drawing board and work on the Pharisees. So, the book that just came out and just landed on my porch this week. So you're you're really up to date. I didn't have copies until this week. Is my attempt to put together what the Gospels say about the Pharisees, and and I and I think that book by Amy Jill Levine and Joseph Sievers, they're the editors. It's a great collection. I know they're doing a volume, a second volume on it as well.

Joshua Johnson: 12:28

Let's get back into the context, and then we'll talk a little bit about the Pharisees and and maybe reframing the Pharisees that we see. You start with charisma and Jesus and charisma and the crowds and building a people movement on jubilee, on economic restitution, when he rolls out the scroll of Isaiah in Luke chapter four, like he, this is the moment of jubilee. What is charisma, and how is that used in this people movement that Jesus is building, charisma is so fascinating to me. Yeah, and

Scot McKnight: 13:06

and I got to tell you, this is one of the most enjoyable parts of this study for me because it tied together some things that I did not have tied together that way, and I don't think that well. All right, charisma is understood by most people as a dynamic possessed by certain gifted individuals. So we would say that Andy Stanley is charismatic in the sense he has charisma. Now we also use the word charismatic, of course, for people who speak in tongues, etc. But that's not the point. Charisma is understood at a social level as someone who has a skill that exceeds what other people have. So they're they're you know they're really good at what they have. Sociologists have broadened the sense of charisma in a way that has changed its meaning. If the former generation, and it's represented by the famous German sociologist Max Weber Weber, the newer understanding is that charisma is a dynamic that occurs between an audience and a person, so that to say that Jesus had charisma was not simply to say that the guy could really speak public. Let me

interrupt this: 14:39

the Apostle Paul's criticism by the Corinthians basically was that he did not have charisma. Is that he they would consider Second Corinthians 1010 your public speaking is terrible. All right, so Paul we we have to imagine that Paul did not have that. Charismatic gift that we would associate with successful preachers, but Paul was amazingly characterized by charisma because the audience was attracted to him and it propelled him. Jesus had charisma because he had a relationship with ordinary people in Galilee in such a way that he spoke their language, and he Jesus himself learned from them the language that he needed to speak to them. So it was a back and forth, and I I read a scholar who said his name is James Crossley, who said if Jesus hadn't appeared, someone like him would have somehow. Well, that's a little too much for Christians, you know, to say there's another Jesus on the on the rise. But I I think that there's something to what he's saying, namely, that Jesus was able to capture the vision, the and and speak that vision in ways that drew the crowds to him, but at the same time, Jesus needed those crowds in order to speak the language that he spoke. It's a back and forth. That's charisma, and it characterizes the whole of Jesus. And this has been the center part piece of my study of the Pharisees. Is that what what made Jesus dangerous, and what gave Pharisees grounds for criticism is that Jesus had the crowds on his side. He was he was popular in that sense. He was to mainline churches what Rick Warren was in California, what Andy Stanley Is in Atlanta what Bill Hybels was in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. They are drawing the crowds, and as a result, Jesus is drawing the crowds. The crowds are drawn to Jesus. They're saying, "This is the guy that is saying what we once said. This is the guy who sees our problem. This is the one who can bring us redemption, and Jesus then had the relationship with those kinds of people to be able to listen to them so well and capture their vision that he could bring this all together. That's the charisma that Jesus had.

Joshua Johnson: 17:41

You quote Molly Worthen here in her book*Spellbound* as she talks about charisma as relationship between the leader and follower. What then she she goes on to say is that charisma and those with charisma have been distinctly offputting, if not downright repulsive, to observers who are outside the power of the story that they tell, and so that's that's one of the the tensions that happen, right? The people that find themselves outside of the story, they're going to find Jesus repulsive as message. We got to stop this or shut down the the crowds, tamper them down because we don't like that. Where do you see that come into play with with Jesus?

Scot McKnight: 18:25

Well, this is exactly what happens then. Jesus has Jesus is in a charisma envelope in Galilee with the crowds. He is attracting crowds. I mean, if you go around healing people, you're going to attract crowds, okay? But if you then speak their language, you're going to seal the crowd's interest in you, and if you promise those crowds a transformation of their life and their society, you're going to attract even more, and that's what Jesus did. But as you just quoted from Molly Worthen, who is the one who sent me on to the theme of charisma, as you as you quoted her, is that people on the outside may very well become critical, and that's what happens with the Pharisees. Jesus, this is the dynamic that I explored that I think is ignored in most scholarship about Pharisees because I'm just fascinated by this question. All right, the Pharisees' responsibility was to keep the crowds in line, and the this is this is something that ordinary ordinary Christians simply do not understand. The Pharisees were popular, and we. I imagine you want to talk about characteristics of Pharisees, but let's keep it in this theme of charisma, because because of the charisma that is surrounding Jesus in the crowds, the Pharisees, in a sense, are losing status with at least some in the crowds, and they recognize this. It's not simply, you know, there. It's not simply a pastor saying you're going to another church, which would hurt most pastors. It is some of that, but the the point is that all of a sudden there's something going on in this kingdom network, this kingdom movement that Jesus has created, that is drawing the people into a new orbit, and that orbit was the responsibility in some ways of the Pharisees. So there's that's the charisma and the opposition that I think we need to talk about in the Gospels.

Joshua Johnson: 20:59

I mean, I think we could bring it back into ourselves. Like if I feel like my job is to like make sure that the crowds are in line, and I want to keep things smooth. I think one of the things you talk about the Pharisees is they want to smooth stones, right? They want to make sure that things are are smooth and easy. And I'm playing almost both sides, making sure that I have one foot in the halls of power of where you know people are, and I have one foot with the the crowds, and and I'm the one intention. It's really difficult if I'm if something is off balance. That means that I'm off balance. What do you think that was doing to the the Pharisees to make them off balance in their role in the story that they were even telling themselves.

Scot McKnight: 22:49

Well, okay, this draws in the whole point, the the thesis that I'm drawing out in the book, and that is, if you study the Gospels carefully, you will notice. And I was so glad when Dale Allison wrote a blurb of the book and said, "Finally, someone's looking at the crowds. The crowds appear everywhere in the Gospels. They're all over the place, and I even included a full sketch concordance of the terms about crowds in the Gospels at the end of the book. The crowds are everywhere. This concerns the Pharisees, but it concerns even more Jerusalem. It concerns the high priest in Jerusalem, whose name is Caiaphas, Joseph Caiaphas. It concerns ultimately Pilate, who's in Caesarea Maritima, who is also connected to Rome, it concerns Antipas, who is the king or whoever is the leader, a Rome-based leader in Tiberius, which is visible for Jesus when he's in Capernaum. He can see Tiberius. He knows where Antipas is, and some of the inside circle, two Antipas, are connected to the followers of Jesus. All right, so so it concerns those leaders that there's a crowd developing, and even more, it concerns Tiberius. It concerns the Roman emperor, because the Roman emperor. If there's anything, and I quote Suetonius in this, if there's anything a Roman emperor is concerned about, it's crowds, because crowds cause tumult, and then crowds cause riots, and then crowds cause rebellion, and if there's enough of them going on, there's a revolution. That's the issue with the crowds, and no one is counting numbers in the Gospels to tell us how big these crowds are around Jesus. But it's more than just a couple people. It's more than 12. I don't think we should imagine the kinds of crowds that we see in Washington D.C. et cetera, or are in protests in the United States. But we should imagine a sufficient number of people are interested in Jesus with enough disturbance, as it were, that it got it got the Roman leaders and the Rome-appointed leaders in Galilee and in Judea concerned about Jesus, and the Pharisees have a responsibility to keep these people in line, and Jesus is a threat to the Pharisees' stabilization of society. And it's not simply, in other words, this is not simply a theological problem. Is that they're legalists and Jesus is a freewheel and liberal? That's not the point at all. It's the. Point that for me that Jesus is attracting crowds, and crowds can turn into who knows what.

Joshua Johnson: 26:09

So there are a lot of different power dynamics at play.

Scot McKnight: 26:13

Yes, I agree.

Joshua Johnson: 26:15

The crowds, 90% of them are on subsistence living or below subsistence level poverty. What's happening in these power dynamics with Jesus and the Pharisees when it comes to, especially his vision of economic justice for the

Scot McKnight: 26:37

poor? It's a good point. A significant number of Jews, Galileans, Judeans, are living at the subsistence level, which means any kind of disruption in weather, in economics, in a bad economic decision, and you have you have people who are really upset. You have disruption. Okay. Jesus promises economic justice, and he didn't say this because he was the first. Jesus is connected to John the Baptist, and John the Baptist has an economic vision that makes a Democrat think that they're conservative. The crowds ask John the Baptist, "What should we do? And John says to the crowds, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise. Even tax collectors come to be baptized by John, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do? And he said,"Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you. Now that that's radical. That means probably not much more than there's not that much profit. Soldiers also come to him, and they said, "What should we do? And he said, "Do not extort money. Now the soldiers could be Jewish and they could be Roman. Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages. John the Baptist preached economic generosity, if not economic distribution and redistribution. Jesus is a follower of John. His first sermon in Nazareth is a message about economic justice in Luke chapter four. He quotes Isaiah 61 in that context, and in that context, Jesus says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to bring the gospel of the kingdom of God To the poor, now the poor are are people who are living on subsistence. He has sent me to proclaim release to captives. This is people who are probably in debtor's prison, and recovery of sight to the blind, and to set free to liberate those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. This is the language of jubilee from Leviticus chapter 25. So John preached economic justice. He gets it from Deuteronomy. Jesus preaches economic justice. He gets it from John the Baptist and from Deuteronomy and the prophet Isaiah, the vision is the poor are oppressed because of oppressors, and Jesus wants the poor to be liberated, and he wants to start a movement that would be characterized from bottom to top of economic justice. Well, I think the crowds liked that, and I think it's pretty obvious that they did. And I don't think Pharisees didn't like the idea of justice. They did, but Jesus was jumping the gun. He was ahead of other people, and he was pushing toward a vision of economic justice that would destabilize the Jewish economy, the Galilean economy, and it would destabilize those who are in power. All right. Now, this, Joshua, this is something that, if you'd have said to me 30 years ago, I would have said,"This is liberation theology. I probably would have said this is the social gospel. I didn't know about liberation theology probably 30 years ago, maybe a little bit. I guess I had heard of Gustavo Gutierrez, and I think that the social gospel of of Roush. Bush, and I think the liberation theology of Gutierrez has their hand on significant texts in the Bible and in the vision of the kingdom of God that Jesus and John the Baptist preached, and I think that this is a part of the dynamic of why the Pharisees are irritated with Jesus, and I am utterly convinced that this is one reason the crowds love Jesus. Redemption for him was was holistic.

Joshua Johnson: 31:38

Yeah, it's a holistic redemption. So, so how do we reframe the way that we see Pharisees in light of of all of this? Because so far, as we're looking at this context, I'm like, okay, now we know that it's mainly not just theological. Maybe there's there's power dynamics at play, and they're trying to make sure that there's stabilization in the land, and the land is stable. What reframe happens for us for the Pharisees? Who are they that we don't just call people out as as Phariseeical and heretical?

Scot McKnight: 32:11

Okay, I don't know if you preach, but here's

what I say to my students: 32:16

When you talk about the Pharisees, every time you're going to talk about the Pharisees, process what you have to say through these seven categories of the Pharisees, and these seven categories are not based upon the Gospels directly. Indirectly, they're confirmed. They're based upon a contemporary writing about the Pharisees by people who are not Pharisees or who were former Pharisees, I'm talking especially about Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and in part some of the rabbinic writings about the Pharisees. All right, not much Maccabees. We get a little bit. The first thing is the Pharisees were politically cautious, and I'm going to go through all seven of these pretty quickly. Then you can ask questions about one of them. They were politically cautious. Their basic beliefs and observance were characteristic of Judaism. All right, and that would mean Jesus and the Pharisees overlap dramatically on their basic beliefs. All right, they are they were observant of the Torah, and in my Second Testament translation, I translate Pharisees with the word observant. These are those who are observant, but they're precise in their observance. So, to me, they're evangelicals in that sense. Evangelical Christians say, "No, that's not what the Bible says. You know, so they're precise. That's that's the way the Pharisees work. All right, they were, however, also progressive or expansive in the law, and I like to look at the Pharisees as people who were expansive judges on interpreting the law. You know, activist judges is what conservative Republicans call Democrat-appointed Supreme Court justices, and we've got activist judges right now from the right. Is that they're trying to advance the agenda of the right? But the Pharisees were progressive. Now this is important to understand. In the first century, the Pharisees were not seen as conservative, legalist, picky. They were seen as progressives. They were the liberals of the Jewish society because they were willing to expand the law to include practices by people that were struggling with the way to understand the law. So let's just say that you you asked a question: Can we pick grain from the wheat fields on on the Sabbath? What Jesus says to his disciples would have been seen by other people as that's the way Pharisees act. So the Dead Sea Scroll community, the Essenes, had all kinds of negative terms for the Pharisees, but they they called them loose in their they were seekers of smooth things. Now that's the language that I grew up with for liberals in my community. So the Methodists and the Presbyterians they were seekers of smooth things. All right, they were popular. Another characteristic is that they were popular, and this is stated by Josephus so many times that it's it's it's got to become a characteristic. In a sense, they had some charisma. Pharisees did, is Josephus says they were extremely influential among the townsfolk, and they the people had to observe their teachings because the multitude would not otherwise accept them. They were prophetic. The Pharisees were prophetic. Now I I think that this is a minor characteristic. I don't know how characteristic it is at the time of Jesus, but the Pharisees at times had people who arose out of their midst who had prophetic gifts and would speak a word about what needs to happen and what's going to happen. The final characteristic for me of the Pharisees is that they were agents? They became mediators. Think of it this way: think of Jerusalem with Caiaphas and the priestly establishment around him, who are answering perhaps to to Pilate, and Pilate is answering to Tiberius in Rome. Actually, he's not. Sejanus is Tiberius is on on an island off the coast of Italy. All right, so the Caiaphas has to answer to Rome. He's got to keep Rome off his back, and the minute he starts having riots and rebellions in Jerusalem, Rome is going to be breathing down his neck and get rid of him, or come in with their army. The Pharisees were mediators between Caiaphas, Antipas, ultimately Pilate and Tiberius to the people. They were the mediators. If if Caiaphas needed to know what's going on with the people, they would he would solicit Pharisees. Now this is stereotype, but it's the general hypothesis that I work with, is that he would have sent Pharisees to find out what's going on. So we find in the Gospels numerous times where the Pharisees or the scribes have come from Jerusalem to Galilee to figure out what in the world's going on with Jesus. I see them as moles, as information carriers, as reporters. Their job is to go back and inform the leaders what's going on in Galilee with this Jesus guy and these language about the kingdom, which is scary-that's empire-type language-and at the same time, then the people knew that the Pharisees were those who could convey their concerns to Caiaphas, to Antipas, to Pilate, ultimately to the Rome-established authorities in the land of Israel, so the Pharisees become agents rather than, let's say, self-appointed critics of what's going on in the land. They're not there to inspect Jesus theologically. In that sense, they show up with Jesus because there's concerns about the significance of this person in Galilee and the trouble that could arise because of his charisma or because of the charisma that he's enveloped by.

Joshua Johnson: 39:26

Do you think that this changes or shifts any way that we now follow Jesus in this type of culture and political environment that we live in? Does this help shape any way that we start to to follow Jesus in this.

Scot McKnight: 39:42

Well, you know, my concern is that we talk about the Pharisees accurately. I'm being a Pharisee about Pharisees. I want it to be precise and more accurate. Okay, I think that we see similar situations in the church and in the in the United States today, that we see in the pages of the Gospels, we see people with a little bit of a progressive slant who somehow are drawing the crowds, and we find critics of that of those leaders who are drawing those crowds, and that is the dynamic of the gospels right there. I think the criticism that we see in the in evangelicalism. Let's just say that Pastor X on the corner now all of a sudden is having to build a new building because he's going to have 5000 members in his church, and the local Baptist church only has 400, or the local Presbyterian church only has 400, and they decide that this guy's a little bit liberal, and he's telling people what they want to hear. Okay, my prayer. Problem with saying that these mainline leaders or these Baptist leaders are being Pharisees is that they're not understanding that the true Pharisees in the United States today would be the popular preachers, and the critics, the critics would be more like the Essenes, or they would be more like the Romans than like so. So the critics of Andy Stanley's church are not the Pharisees. Andy Stanley is the Pharisee. Now don't tell him I said that because people think of Pharisees as negative. He's got a way of communicating with the people that the people want to hear. That that church, that movement, is the charisma of the first century. Okay, the critics of that right there, are not the Pharisees. The critics are the Essenes, maybe the zealots. They are the temple priestly establishment, not. But the issue in the first century was not that they're more popular or that they're theologically off the with Jesus. The issue was you start attracting crowds? We're going to have a rebellion. We could have riots. We could have a revolution. We're going to get. We're going to Rome is going to come take over, and we're going to be all in trouble. That's the issue of the first century. So there's nothing quite like it in the church today. But I I believe this is to me the really important point is we've got to quit calling people Pharisees unless they're liberal and when you do and when you do people will go I don't know what you're saying that doesn't make any sense to me and then I'll say good so don't use the word don't criticize but I I tell I tell my students all the time, you can't call anyone a Pharisee in my class.

Joshua Johnson: 43:06

I like it. I think that that's a great place for us to be. I want to get back into a little bit of charisma. What I like about Molly Worthen's book, and I think it was one of my favorite books I read last year, but because it talks about the different movements in America and how charisma was yielded to bring about these people movements is what Jesus was doing, right? Is bringing about this people movement. It seems like there's competing movements that are happening today. So you're looking at an anti-institutional type of move and a charismatic move to almost tear down institutions, and then maybe build something new that seems new. But then there's also a charismatic movement that wants to make sure that the establishment is still established. Right, we are are settled in in who we are. It's the the charismatic of the the MAGA group. Trump was a good storyteller. People want to be part of that stories. Like we've lost some things. He's going to bring back what we have lost. How do you think that this Jesus movement that we're still caught up in can bring about some some real change in competing charismatic stories that we're seeing today, where can this Jesus movement actually take hold in America?

Scot McKnight: 44:34

You know, I want to say that all the church rivals that were talked that you brought up here all want to think that they're a part of the Jesus move. Okay, so all right, so we're gonna. I'll just say, let's not pretend that there's only only going to be one group that has any connection to

Jesus, but let's just say this: 44:50

if you're going to be connected to Jesus consistently, you're going to embrace his dynamic vision of the kingdom of God. So I want to know what you mean by kingdom, and I've worked on this pretty hard in a book called Kingdom Conspiracy. All right, so and I believe that too many people have embraced the word kingdom with really weak definitions. It's not connected to Jesus. But let's just say these are some some of the characteristics. Let's just say that the major characteristic of the kingdom of God is holistic redemption at the hand of Jesus, and a life that is consistent with that holistic redemption that Jesus presents. All right, living together in community. All right, so let's say this. Kingdom for Jesus is going to mean that there's a King, and that's Jesus, and it's going to mean that there's a people, and that's the people of Jesus who embrace His kingdom vision, and they're going to experience redemption that is connected to Jesus, and they're going to follow His teachings, His law, and they're going to do so together in a land, and that means in physical space, they they're spatially occupying places in this world that are being redeemed by the holistic vision of Jesus. Characteristic of of Jesus's teachings, again, is holistic redemption. Holistic redemption means spiritual, and I don't put any one of these as the prior element. Spiritual, material, physical, social, economic. All right, those are the arteries fueling the heart. However, I'm probably not being medically correct here. I'm as one pastor introduced me one time. This is Doctor McKnight, but he has the kind of doctorate that doesn't do anybody Any good, okay? So the pastor's name was Nathan. So I said that you're a gift of God in reminding me that I'm not doing anything that's helping people. But those are those are the things that I would say is that if someone today wants to resurrect a kingdom vision experience in the modern church-they're going to be characterized by those features. They're not going to be characterized by how big a church is, how many people get baptized, et cetera. They're not. Those are not going to be the measurements. They're not going to be measured by quantifiable numbers. They're going to be measured by transformative experiences, where holistic redemption is occurring in individual people who are drawn to Jesus and who want to keep the story about Jesus the secret to the secret sauce to everything they do. It's

Joshua Johnson: 48:18

beautiful, and let's live into that. But what's a hope that you have for this, for Jesus, people, Pharisees? What hope do you have?

Scot McKnight: 48:27

You know, I would like to redeem the story of Pharisees and turn them from caricature and stereotype into living, breathing human realities that would not be our typical responses to the powerful vision of the kingdom of Jesus, and I would say that we need to resurrect. You know, I would want to resurrect a powerful kingdom vision for that Jesus presents in the church today. But in doing so is to redeem, to rehumanize the Pharisees out of being stereotypical legalists into people who had genuine, had a genuine responsibility to keep people in line, and they had to go after Jesus because he was causing trouble.

Joshua Johnson: 49:24

That's good. I'd love to get a recommendation from you. So, anything you've been reading lately that you could recommend?

Scot McKnight: 49:30

I just read a book by a woman named Laura Field. It's called Furious Minds. It's a book about the New Right MAGA New right, and it is it is so informed about so much that I knew nothing about that it's a bit overwhelming. I did not know the intellectual voices in the MAGA movement and how entrenched they are with one another. This is a serious intellectual movement. Even if I think their intellectual powers are distorted dramatically, and she does, but she is exposing names that I I just had never heard of. I mean, one one name after another. I don't know who these people are. And Joshua, I've been studying evangelicals my whole life, and I've read books on evangelicalism since the '80s. I've been reading books about evangelicalism, and this MAGA movement is populated by a series of people that I just knew nothing about. I have a Substack about it. I don't know if it was today or yesterday, and I characterize and I sketch what's in this book. And I'm. It's it's one of those books where you go. I couldn't put it down because. I was learning so much, and it was coming at me. And I'm thinking, I I need to process this.

Joshua Johnson: 51:06

Well, Scott, this book, Jesus, People, Pharisees, is out august 4. Anywhere books are sold, people can get that book. I know you want to point people to your Substack, so you can find Scott McKnight on Substack. Anything else? Anywhere else you like? That's good.

Scot McKnight: 51:22

That's good. Great. That's good enough. Yeah, I appreciate you mentioning those.

Joshua Johnson: 51:26

Perfect. Sounds good. Well, thanks, Scott. This is fantastic. Help us reframe the Pharisees. Help us see Jesus and the charisma he used his relationship with the crowds. It was fantastic. Loved our conversation. So thank you.

Scot McKnight: 51:40

Thank you. Good to see you again.