Apocalyptic Discipleship

Last updated on: July 16, 2018 at 12:10 am by Scot McKnight

Apocalyptic Discipleship 2018-07-14T10:41:44-05:00 Scot McKnight

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

What happens to discipleship in apocalyptic theology? One things seems clear to me: virtue ethics is shelved for later. But does apocalyptic discipleship look like?

Philip Ziegler, in his new important study on apocalyptic theology, Militant Grace: The Apocalyptic Turn and the Future of Christian Theology, presents a case for an apocalyptic discipleship. A few opening quotations to get the ball teed up:

Discipleship is a category with which theology denotes the dynamic form of Christian life that results from the gift of God’s gracious salvation in and through Jesus Christ.

n short, when we make discipleship our theme, we ask, How ought we to characterize a human life that, having been justified, redeemed, and reconciled to God by Jesus Christ, is now given time and place in which to live anew in and with Christ?

Ziegler then turns to various forms of framing Christian living in the church tradition, none of which are connected to Cappadocian or Orthodox theologians: the monastic forms, the revival of lay Christian living, and then he turns to the Reformers:

These Protestants commended as normative a single pattern of Christian life, characterized as the free and priestly service of all believers in the power of the Spirit (Lutheran), or Spirit-afforded grateful obedience to the law of grace (Reformed).

Such accounts—variously developed and amplified in particular by later Puritan and pietistic theologies during following centuries—typically emphasized the conformity of Christian life to the shape of Christ’s own humility and self-giving by stressing motifs such as self-denial, neighbor love, cross bearing, and submission to Christ “living and reigning within.”8 Yet they rarely spoke of “discipleship.”

Quite important here is the civic calling of the Christian to reframe Christian living:

In any case, leading Protestant accounts settled on the understanding that the Christian life cannot be solely one of evangelical discipleship but must always somehow combine discipleship and the prudential ethics suited to negotiating life in the world that is.

As an alternative to the Reformers’ approach, the Anabaptist ecclesiology was accused in its day of creating an alternative monastic life.

This leads Ziegler to Gerhard Forde’s very Lutheran (and more congenial to apocalyptic theology) set of warnings about framing the Christian life as obedience — it’s got to be grace or it becomes moralism (we contribute to our salvation) or unreality (the vision is too unachievable).

So now Ziegler lays out his major cards, and all italics are mine:

I suggest that if we are to discern the promise of discipleship while forestalling the attendant perils, we need a clear assertion and tenacious defense of the fact that the form and substance of discipleship is entirely derivative of the identity and saving work of the living Lord Jesus Christ.

More than any methodological commitment, what proves singularly decisive here is the real dynamic presence and activity of the living Lord Jesus Christ himself, eloquent in the power of the Spirit to announce with effect the forgiveness and sovereign claim of God, the advent of the Kingdom.

Each of the major terms at work in these italicized words asks for carefully nuanced descriptions, and Ziegler moves forward and here are his major further explanations of these big ideas:

The function of the discourse of discipleship is to recollect the living lordship of Jesus Christ—crucified, risen, and ascended—as the principal matter of the Christian life, and thus to ensure that such a life is suffused with and animated by the militancy of the eschatological gospel of God.

The relationship between the Christian and Jesus Christ is profoundly asymmetrical, far exceeding the ordering of the relations between teachers and pupils generally.

Jesus calls his disciples, then, not finally as an exemplar, a religious sage or teacher of the law, but in accordance with his unique and unsubstitutable identity as the Son and Christ of God.

The disciple is not in pursuit of an ideal, not even of an embodied ideal. Instead, disciples are laboring in the Spirit to remain in the wake of Jesus’s own singular work and way, with an eye on the difference that the dawning of the reign of God makes to their reality.

To be seized by divine grace in this way is to be bound in solidarity to Christ, to track his course, and to serve his cause in the world.

The semantic range of the biblical concept of “following” used in connection with the call of Jesus includes reference to the movement of warriors who have been called up to accompany their leader into the fray, an image also extended into the depiction of Israel “go[ing out] after the Lord” (e.g., Hos. 11:10).

Disciples are those “enlisted” into Christ’s service and standing at his disposal, rallied to him in the cause of his reign; faith in the captain takes the form of loyalty to his direction amid the fray; and the order and movement of the Christian community, like the order of a troop of combatants, arises from the commanding presence of their captain in their midst.The turning point in the eschatological contest to which Christ recruits is undoubtedly the  cross.

As concepts of kingship and captaincy are here subjected to radical redefinition in view of the actuality of the cross, so too is the meaning of that martial struggle into which the Christian is drawn.

Best statement of all:

The life of discipleship is a pragmatic answer to the question “Who is lord of the world?”

And he returns to the Forde worry:

The sterile opposition between understandings of Christian righteousness as a “legal fiction” and as the achievement of “work-saints” is surmounted only where salvation is seen in an eschatological perspective, where the invasion of divine grace in Christ does not merely “remove” sin while leaving the person intact but rather removes the person from the sin-ruled world and translates him or her into the Christ-governed world.

In any case the theological reality is but one: discipleship is and remains solely an eschatological possibility arising from the gracious call and command of Christ the Lord. As such, it is the shape of the human life of faith now militant in love during the time that remains.

Questions: Has apocalyptic colonized all theological and ethical discourses into one dominant rhetoric? Put differently, Do we need the rhetoric of demand in the Sermon on the Mount, the rhetoric of follow me as moral exemplar, the rhetoric of love and abiding, the rhetoric of warning, and the rhetoric the gracious invasion of God in Christ through the Spirit?

What happens to our ethics when the rhetoric of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount has to be re-constructed in order to fit into a theoretical (=apocalyptic) interpretation of Pauline theology?

Is not the impact of the Sermon on the Mount christological first (who is Jesus?) before it is anything about what to do or what time it is? (Matt 7:28-29)

Uncategorized

Previous Post

July 15, 2018

O Lord, Mercifully Receive

Next Post

July 17, 2018 Conflict Management: Two Models

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Acts of the Apostles Adam Advent Anabaptism Angels Anglican Apologetics Atonement Baptism BCP Prayers Bible Biblical Studies Birds Blogging Bloglossary Bonhoeffer Books Calvinism Christianity Church Church History Coffee Colossians Commentary Recs Conversion Creation Creeds Culture Death Ecclesiastes Economics Education Embracing Grace Emergent Emerging Movement Eschatology Essays Ethics Eucharist Evangelicalism Family Fasting Fathers Fellowship of Differents Footsteps Tour Fun and Whimsical Gospel Grace Happiness Heaven Hell Holy Spirit Irenaeus James Jesus Jesus Creed Job Justification Kingdom of God Law Lectures Lent Liberalism Love and Marriage Mabanteneni Manhood Mary Miracles Missio Alliance MissioLife Missional Missional Jesus Movies and Film New Perspective Northern Seminary OneLife Origins Project Orthodox Parables Pastor's Spouse Pastoring and Leading Pastoring and Preaching Patristics Paul Paul-John Tour Pharisees Pietism Political Theology Prayer and Formation Preaching Problems for Faith Psalm 119 Psalms Public Issues Purgatory Religions Resurrection Revelation Romans Rule of JCreed Science and Faith Sermon on the Mount Sports Ten Commandments Theology Third Way Top Ten Lists Translations Uncategorized Universalism University Ministry Way Out Weekly Meanderings Wisdom Women and Ministry Work Worship Writing & Blogging Youth Ministry

Select a Month July 2021 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 0000

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

In Revelation, how many lampstands does John see?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Twelve lampstands Seven golden lampstands Ten lampstands Four lampstands