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Putting on Christ: Spiritual Formation and the Drama of Discipleship

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Putting on Christ: Spiritual Formation and the Drama of Discipleship Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care Copyright 2015 by Institute for Spiritual Formation 2015, Vol. 8, No. 2, 147–171 Biola University, 1939-7909 Putting on Christ: Spiritual Formation and the Drama of Discipleship Kevin J.• Vanhoozer Trinity Evangelical Divinity School Abstract. C. S. Lewis called for spiritual formation long before the term became pop- ular: “Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else” (Mere Christianity, 171). Lewis’s call to become little Christs recalls Paul’s exhortation to “put off” the old self and “put on” Christ. This paper explores what this change of costume involves from the perspective of what a “theodramatic” approach to theology that I have developed in The Drama of Doctrine and Faith Speaking Understanding. I there argue that the role of doctrine is to (1) indicate what is in Christ and (2) direct those in Christ to participate in Christ by playing their parts in the drama of redemption. This theatrical model raises an important issue concerning the disciple’s self-understanding: Is it healthy for Chris- tians to think in terms of “acting out” what is “in Christ” (their new identities as Christ’s disciples) or does this encourage a false sense of self – a “put on”? I respond to this question in four steps where I (1) present a theodramatic anthropology, (2) describe discipleship as the project of growing into/putting on Christ, (3) consider three objections to my previous work about the relationship between persons/roles and role-playing, and (4) respond to the objections by offering a dogmatic descrip- tion of putting on Christ (i.e., spiritual formation) in soteriological, pneumatologi- cal, and eschatological terms. Introduction: “But We Have the Mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16) “We have the mind of Christ.” This is an extraordinary declaration, whether one reads it as making a theological or a psychological claim (I think it is both). The apostle Paul is not simply saying that we have the same beliefs, much less the same brainwaves, as the historical Jesus. Disci- ples are neither carbon nor cerebral copies of Christ. In context, Paul is ex- 147 148 Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care plaining to the Corinthians why the wise men of this age do not understand the wisdom of God: they cannot accept, or even comprehend, the thoughts of God, much less the wisdom of the cross, because they do not have the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:11). Conversely, truly spiritual people – those who have the Spirit – understand how God is reconciling all things to himself through the cross. They have the mind of Christ, at least as concerns the plan of salvation. In a different context, however, Paul issues not a declara- tion but an exhortation: “Have this mind [of Christ]” (Phil. 2:5).1 Does the Spirit give us access to Christ’s mind or not? 2 A preliminary question is how people who are not Jesus Christ can have his mind. Is Paul encouraging us to be schizophrenic or, worse, in- advertently giving us a recipe for hypocrisy? On the contrary: what is ulti- mately at stake in claiming to have the mind of Christ is our understanding of how we come to be in our own right minds, and how we come increas- ingly to share in Christ’s life. The question of how disciples progressively come to embody the mind of Christ is therefore an appropriate ground on which to negotiate the way forward in the discussion between theology, Christian psychology, and pastoral care, especially if the pastor’s prime imperative is to grow mature persons whose maturity is measured by “the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). 3 This process of maturation – the post-conversion process of becoming more like Christ, of “growing up…into him” (Eph. 4:15) – is what I mean by drama of discipleship.4 Discipleship is dramatic because it involves both call (“Follow me”) and response. Discipleship is dramatic because it is possible to deny one’s calling, at least on certain occasions (Peter did it three times). Drama means doing, and the assumption is that the disciple is somehow active in his or her becoming like Christ. How much drama is there in the life of an ordi- nary disciple? According to Paul, quite a bit, for those who have been raised 1 All Scripture taken from ESV unless otherwise noted. 2 In the context of 1 Corinthians 2 Paul is arguing against those who claim to be spiritual, and thus in a position to judge him, yet regard the cross as foolishness. The truly spiritual person is the one who discerns the wisdom of God in the cross of Christ through the Spirit, who knows and reveals the mind of God. In the context of Philippians 2, by way of contrast, Paul is addressing those who intellectually under- stand the cross but need to display the same humility in their corporate life as Christ did in becoming obedient to the point of death on a cross. To have Christ’s mind in this context is to have the same dispositions. As we shall see, having the mind of Christ is tied to having the Spirit, and this in turn explains the already/not-yet char- acter of the Christian life: the Spirit is an eschatological reality. 3 See James G. Samra, Being Conformed to Christ in Community: A Study of Maturity, Maturation and the Local Church in the Undisputed Pauline Letters (Lon- don and New York: T&T Clark, 2006). 4 See also “The Drama of Discipleship: A Vocation of Spiritual Formation,” in my Pictures at a Biblical Exhibition: Theological Scenes of the Church’s Worship, Witness, and Wisdom (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016). Vanhoozer: Spiritual Formation and the Drama of Discipleship 149 with Christ have put to death (put off) the old self and “have put on the new self” (Col. 3:10). What is the nature of the change Paul has in mind in speaking of putting off/putting on? How are we to understand the relation- ship between having the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 12:16) and being directed to have the mind of Christ (Phil. 2:5)? In particular, to what extent can people change and what contribution, if any, can people make to their own trans- formation? Pastors and counselors are particularly interested in changes that encourage proper functioning, which is another way of saying, changes that make disciples more like Jesus Christ, the exemplar of true humanity. Our question is not, “What must I do to be saved?” but rather, “What must I do to be sanctified?” What must I do to have the mind of Christ? How does character formation – in this case, coming to have the mind of Christ – actually happen? In the sixteenth century Anabaptists agreed with Luther that Christ, the righteous one, is a donum, a gift to the believer. But they went on, beyond Luther, to say that Christ was also an exemplum, an example to follow. In response, Lutherans called the idea that a true Christian must follow in Christ’s steps “the first article of the Anabaptist heresy,”5 thereby bequeathing to disciples striving to conform to Christ not one but two theological H-bombs to worry about: heresy and hypocrisy. The latter is a danger when a person’s external action (behavior) fails to coincide with a person’s internal disposition (heart). To avoid confusion, we need first to distinguish converting from sanc- tifying grace. While in one sense conversion is a lifelong process, the grace that transfers sinners from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light marks a definitive break: only God can make the blind see; only God can make dead hearts beat anew. My immediate concern is with counseling Christians, that is, those who have experienced the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit and have responded in faith to the gospel word about Jesus Christ. To be sure, born-again Christians too can suffer from various psy- chological disorders. Yet even persons who receive a clean bill of psycho- logical health may display a conspicuous lack of conformity to Christ: to be in one’s normal mind is not yet to have the mind of Christ. My primary interest in this paper is not with people who have certifi- able mental illnesses but with everyday Christians who seem to be func- tioning normally yet are nevertheless dysfunctional insofar as they lack conformity to Christ. How can dysfunctional disciples become people who have the mind (which as we shall see includes the heart) of Christ? From a theological point of view, all of us have sinned (Rom. 3:23) and fallen short of psychological health due to the noetic effects of sin, in particular our ten- dency to suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18–21). To the ex- tent that we fail to coincide with our true selves, then, all people, Christians 5 Cited in Malcolm B. Yarnell III, Formation of Christian Doctrine (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2007), 13. 150 Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care included, need therapy. Discipleship itself is, I submit, a kind of therapy for rightly ordering lives that are still disordered, even after conversion. Stated differently: the drama of discipleship is another way of addressing the dy- namics of spiritual formation. This essay examines the “turn to drama” in theology and argues that it yields helpful insights into the process of Christian maturation. But first: What is theodramatic anthropology, and how can it help? I.
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