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John Webster DISCIPLESHIP AND CALLING }OHN WEBSTER, KINGS COLLEGE, UNNERSITY OF ABERDEEN I'm very grateful for the opportunity to spend this time with you reflecting on some issues about the theme of discipleship. My intention is to set our minds to work by offering a theological account of Christian discipleship, and to that end I have divided the material into two themes: 'Discipleship and Calling', and 'Discipleship and Obedience'. In arranging the topic in this way, I am reiterating what I take to be a twofold gospel principle for the theology of the Christian life, namely, that grace both precedes and commands action. In this first session, I propose to reflect on the call to discipleship, and above all on the one who constitutes that call, Jesus Christ, who is himself the grace and command of God in person. Tomorrow I propose to go on from there to consider the shape or direction of discipleship in response to the summons of Jesus. Our questions, therefore, are: who is Jesus Christ? Who are those whom he calls to follow him? And how are we to characterise the life to which he calls them? Such, I hope to suggest, are the basic elements of a theology of discipleship. Before I move into the exposition itself, however, I want to stand back and speak a little more generally about the place which the topic of discipleship has in the more general theology of the Christian life. DISCIPLESHIP IN THE THEOLOGY OF THE CHURCH The task of a theology of the Christian life is to describe that form of human existence which is brought into being and upheld by the saving work of God. Most generally described, the concern of theology at this point is with what happens when, through the activity of the Holy Spirit, that which has been objectively accomplished in the incarnation, passion and resurrection of the Son of God is unleashed in human history, making sinful creatures into the children of God. In Protestant theology, mapping this reality is often done by offering a theology of the ordo salutis, the order of salvation. This term refers to an account of the history of salvation as it takes place in the Christian believer. A sequence of 'moments' is traced - including, for example, adoption, regeneration, conversion, faith, justification, sanctification, perseverance - in order to portray how through the Spirit God's grace in Christ shapes Christian existence in time. This SCOTTISH BULLETIN OF EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY portrayal is commonly filled out, further, by a theology of the church as the communion of saints in which Christian existence takes place, and by an account of the stance of the Christian in the world. It is then completed by an account of the glorification of the Christian in which the life of faith is brought to eschatological perfection. Within this scheme, the topic of discipleship has traditionally enjoyed little profile. At best, it has played an informal or illustrative role, with the main lines of the theology of the Christian life structured around the Pauline and Johannine theology of union with and life in Christ, rather than the Synoptic theme of following Jesus. There are, of course, counter­ examples. Discipleship is a prominent topic in those Anabaptist ecclesiologies which have exercised such a considerable hold on contemporary Christian theology and ethics. Above all, there is a single exposition of the theme in a book of quite extraordinary spiritual and 1 theological resonance, namely Bonhoeffer's Discipleship - perhaps the most potent piece of Christian writing to come out of the German church conflict, and certainly the most widely disseminated. It was Bonhoeffer's genius to perceive that appeal to the notion of discipleship could be immensely powerful in extracting the church from its hopelessly compromised stance; at his hands, discipleship became the clue to a radical ecclesiology and ethic marked above all by nonconformity and Christian integrity. Bonhoeffer, of course, was not attempting a comprehensive theology of the Christian life: his book is an emergency work, directed to a church in peril. We in our turn would be unwise to over-invest in the theme of discipleship and expect that everything which needs to be said about the Christian life could be said under that head. Discipleship is only one among a range of motifs in the theology of the Christian life. But it is, I want to suggest, uniquely qualified to draw our attention to one feature of that life, namely its eschatological character, that is, the drastic separation which marks the lives of those who are called to be the followers of Christ. Discipleship means dislocation; and that dislocation is in an important sense a permanent characteristic of the Christian condition. A church which is aware that confessing Christ and following him entails a measure of isolation and loss of esteem is a church which is taking its eschatological condition seriously, and so a church about which we may entertain some hopes. Where discipleship has become a strange idiom, D. Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001). 134 DISCIPLESHIP AND CALLING however, we may take that as a sign that the church may be disregarding its eschatological condition and fitting itself too snugly into the world. But the motif of discipleship is not the only motif in the theology of the Christian life, and should not be extracted from its place in the wider scope of God's dealings with humankind as creator, reconciler and perfecter. Discipleship ought properly to be expounded with an eye to the more systematic theology of the nature and ends of human creatures in the economy of God's grace; if it is not, then the eschatological aspects of the Christian life can be isolated and inflamed in such a way that Christian existence collapses into a single moment. Nevertheless, the theme of discipleship should serve to remind us that theologies of Christian existence which eliminate the eschatological find it acutely difficult to articulate Christian difference. One does not need to look far to see the sad compromises into which neglect of this can betray us. Let me move into the substance of my exposition with a few verses from the opening chapter of the Gospel of Mark: In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, 'Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.'... Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.' And passing along by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net in the sea; for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, 'Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men.' And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and followed him (Mark 1:9-11, 14-20). We can try to explicate this event of the summons of the Lord and the obedient response of his hearers by asking three questions: ( 1) who is this one who calls to discipleship? (2) what is the substance of his call? (3) who are those who are called by him? WHO CALLS TO DISCIPLESHIP? Who is this one who passes along by the Sea of Galilee and calls Simon, Andrew, James and John, and in calling them also now calls us? By what authority and with what legitimacy does he issue this summons to them, and so also to ,us? The one who calls is Jesus, the Father's beloved Son; 135 SCOTTISH BULLETIN OF EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY his call is supremely authoritative and lawful because it is the call of the one who is in person the saving rule of God and who brings help and blessing to sinners. Mark's account of the call of the first four disciples is preceded by his presentation of Jesus' baptism, which leads - after the brief interval of the temptation in the wilderness - to the announcement of the opening of Jesus' public ministry in Galilee. The baptism is especially important because of its character as manifestation: there Jesus is disclosed as the one who in a wholly unique way bears to us the presence and action of God himself. When Jesus calls his hearers to follow him, therefore, he calls in the power of what has been declared of him at his baptism. What is the content of this declaration? First, Jesus is the definitively new and unsurpassable revelation of God. At his baptism the heavens are 'tom apart' in a literally apocalyptic moment: God Almighty cleaves the world apart, comes down (cf. Isa. 64:1), and speaks to reveal the identity of Jesus. The sheer intrusive character of the event is striking. Jesus has not reached this point as the result of long ascetical training or study of the Torah: his status is simply declared in a single cataclysmic moment. In a real sense, Jesus does not belong here with 'all the country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem' (Mark 1:5); his baptism by John is not as it were his natural setting, reaffirming his kinship with others, but the occasion for an eschatological declaration of his difference.
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