A New Kind of Discipleship
In his new book, A Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age, Fuller seminary’s Christian ethicist, Glen Stassen, proposes a new kind of discipleship — a discipleship fit for a secular age and for a public faith. He calls this model “incarnational discipleship.” Framing an ethic, or discipleship, for the public sector will lead me to questions about the church as our politic, but we need to hear Glen out.
Scot McKnight
December 5, 2012
In his new book, A Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age, Fuller seminary’s Christian ethicist, Glen Stassen, proposes a new kind of discipleship — a discipleship fit for a secular age and for a public faith. He calls this model “incarnational discipleship.” Framing an ethic, or discipleship, for the public sector will lead me to questions about the church as our politic, but we need to hear Glen out.
What model do you use when you think of how the Christian engages the State? In other words, what is your politic?
- The Constantinian takeover?
- Luther’s two-realms?
- The Reformed theory of influence through spheres of sovereignty?
- The Anabaptist ecclesial politic?
- Where does Stassen fit?
Stassen wants a “thicker” Jesus — not just a vague ideal or a principle, nor an ideal so high no one could achieve it, nor one restricted to “internal church relations” [OK, Glen, now we've made Jesus a public square Jesus] … the thicker Jesus is one that gives concrete and specific guidance and one that rejects a two-realms dualism and one that summons us from the ideologies of our day....
[A recent example of intergrating faith with society may be reviewed in my most recent
...So [Stassen] proposes [the idea of an] “incarnational discipleship,” and there are three dimensions defining it:
1. A holistic sovereignty of God and the Lordship of Christ through all of life.
2. A thicker Jesus who is God incarnate, historically embodied, and realistic.
3. A Holy Spirit who is independent from all powers and authorities, calling us to repent from ideological entanglements.
Stassen finds embodiments of this thicker Jesus incarnational discipleship in what can only be called the progressive Christian approach to the relationship of Christ and culture (or world). His major models are The Barmen Declaration, Bonhoeffer’s early resistance during his writing of the Sermon on the Mount, André Trocmé, the righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust, Martin Luther King Jr and Clarence Jordan, the Revolution of the Candles, and Dorothy Day and Muriel Lester.
He stews this new kind of discipleship in the work of Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, and applies this thicker Jesus/incarnational discipleship model to issues like democracy, science, individualism, sin, the cross, love and war.
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AMAZON REVIEW
Book Description
Release Date: October 25, 2012
Why have some Christians, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King Jr., been able to speak truth to power at great personal cost, while others readily capitulate to injustice? In this magnum opus, Christian ethicist Glen Stassen argues that such robust Christianity stems from believing in a "thicker" Jesus, who is Lord over the whole of life and not just one compartment of it. Belief in this thicker Jesus results in "incarnational discipleship" and can help Christians deal with the challenges of what Charles Taylor has identified as a secular age. Stassen elegantly weaves the characteristics of incarnational discipleship as correctives to secularism.
About the Author
Glen H. Stassen is the Lewis B.
Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena,
California. His book Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary
Context, with David Gushee, received Christianity Today's Award for Best
Book of 2004 in Theology or Ethics. He is also the author of Living the
Sermon on the Mount, Just Peacemaking, and other books.
Most Helpful Customer
Reviews
5 out of 5 stars
November 22,
2012
By John
Mustol
Today American evangelical churches are in serious moral
difficulty. We are in dire need of spiritual and ethical repentance and renewal.
In this book, Dr. Glen Stassen, the Louis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at
Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA, calls Christians to this needed
repentance and renewal through his ethics of incarnational discipleship within
the context of our modern secular age.
A "thick Jesus" means that Jesus
Christ our Lord and Savior was a historically situated, flesh-and-blood person
who walked the dusty roads of Palestine. A Jew thoroughly immersed in the
Hebraic tradition, especially that of the prophet Isaiah. He lived, taught, and
worked within the historical, physical, social, spiritual, and political,
realities of his time and place. In this [way] Jesus revealed God's character and
provided norms for guiding our lives today. Like Jesus, our ethics must be
historical, social, spiritual, and political. They must be embedded in the
"thick" realities, struggles, and particularities of earthly life, not in the
"thin" conceptualities of platonic idealism or sectarian perfectionism. Stassen
wants followers of Jesus to "enter into" the world and be deeply (thickly)
engaged in all its flawed messiness in this "age of interaction."
Toward
this end, Stassen offers his Trinitarian paradigm of incarnational discipleship:
(1) the holistic sovereignty of God and Lordship of Christ,
(2) God revealed
thickly in [the] historical [personage of] Jesus Christ, and
(3) the Holy Spirit, independent of
all powers and authorities, reminding us of Jesus and calling us to repentance
from ideological entanglements (p. 17).
Grasping the narrative character of
human cognition, Stassen emphasizes "historical drama" in Jesus and in our
living out of the Christian life. He believes that the true test for the
validity of an ethic is its historical fruit... how it performs in the "crucible"
of history. In this regard, the great German theologian and martyr Dietrich
Bonhoeffer plays a prominent role. Stassen is a leading Bonhoeffer
scholar.
Seeking an integrative and holistic approach to ethics and life,
Stassen draws on diverse sources: Nancey Murphy's conception of scientific
research programs (based on the philosophy of Imre Lakatos), Charles Taylor's
analysis of modern individualism and secularism, his own background in
scientific procedures and methods, the existentialist novels of Albert Camus, as
well as careful analysis of biblical texts. Drawing on Bonhoeffer, Stassen
offers an intriguing "incarnational" theory of the cross (atonement).
Finally, Stassen reiterates his interpretation of
the Sermon on the Mount, giving it a central place in his ethics. For him, the
Sermon is not idealistic perfectionism but concrete realism. He presents his
"fourteen triads" for interpreting the Sermon and summarizes his ten
"transforming initiatives" for just peacemaking, which is one of Stassen's
central concerns as a Christian living in today's conflicted world. Stassen is
on a mission to see Christians live out their faith in a morally credible way in
the real world. He wants to see Christian churches pass the moral test of
history. His passion for this is evident in the book.
Stassen is a man of
remarkable character and vision, extremely knowledgeable, widely read, a
brilliant and accomplished scholar and thinker. Yet he remains a profoundly
personable and humble man. And he puts feet on his faith. He is not content to
stay in his office writing books or hobnobbing with his fellow professors. At
age 76, he is an activist involved in the rough and tumble problems of the world
such as peacemaking in the Middle East. In the book he tells of his extensive
work in the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
The book is dense in
places, and Stassen's sense of urgency sometimes leads him to try to put too
much meaning into too few words. Also, if you are not familiar with some
concepts, such as Nancey Murphy's theory of scientific validation, you may find
parts of the book a little hard to understand. It also would have been nice if
Stassen had placed Jesus and ourselves more realistically in the ecological
contexts in which all earthly life is located. But, overall it is an excellent
and easy read. Stassen's message comes through loud and clear.
All
Christians (and a lot of non-Christians) ought to read this book. And it is, or
ought to be, required reading for all students and scholars in Christian ethics.
When all is said and done, Stassen wants only one thing - that all of us who name
Jesus as Lord follow him realistically, incarnationally and in so doing bring
glory to God. As his final sentence asks: "Will you join me in the apostolic
witness to a thicker Jesus-in the tradition of incarnational discipleship?" (p.
221).
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