Imitating Christ: The Disputed Character of Christian Discipleship, Luke Timothy Johnson. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802883100) 2024.

Summary: Contends our understanding of Christian discipleship has shifted in recent centuries from personal sanctification to social justice.

C.S. Lewis made the case for reading old books as offering us a different (not better or worse) perspective on our world by which we may better evaluate our own. New Testament and Christian origins scholar Luke Timothy Johnson offers something of that kind of perspective taking on the matter of Christian discipleship. He argues that the prevailing understanding of the church for the first eighteen centuries was that discipleship was imitating Christ, growing in holiness through walking in the way of the crucified one, which included suffering and martyrdom as well as spiritual practices. Such discipleship resulted both in devotion to God and loving service of others. Johnson traces this shared understanding from earliest Christianity up to and through the reformation.

But everything changed with the advent of modernity. The church was weakened and changed by four factors in his reckoning:

1. The ideology of enlightenment wedded to technology.
2. The weak and fragmented state of Christianity.
3. Dramatic social change in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
4. The ideological attack on Christianity from science and philosophy in the nineteenth century.

The dramatic social change combined with the intellectual attack led to a shift from inner to activist expressions of Christianity and the rise of the Social Gospel and concerns for abolition, women’s suffrage, and other social needs in an industrializing society. The combination of scientific attacks and biblical criticism led to an increasingly ethical rather than theological focus. Instead of imitating Christ as growth in holiness, discipleship was framed by imitating the deeds of Jesus.

The heart of this book, for me, was chapter 6, “A Critical Analysis of the Two Visions.” Johnson contrasts the use of scripture and the theology of the two visions. For example, he contrasts the two visions understanding of the world, God, Christ, Salvation, Anthropology, and Eschatology. Johnson recognizes that the shift in focus reflects an attempt to engage with modernity. However, he holds that apart from the classical understanding of discipleship, a focus on social activism is rootless, as valid as the concerns to which it responds are. Thus in the latter two chapters he explores resources that integrate the two approaches ranging from Mother Theresa in Calcutta to Tim Keller in New York City.

He concludes with considering Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Thomas Merton as models. He offers three reasons for this. First, they are radicals rather than progressives, going to the roots rather than aligning with a party. Second, while intellectually engaged with culture, they did not submit to modernist epistemology but to scripture. Finally, they read all of scripture as both for them and the world.

The choice of these two as models, as fascinating as their lives and works were, was questionable to me. Both were arguably moving away from orthodox belief later in life. Stronger examples for me might be Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, and the Catholic Worker Movement, and John Perkins, at Voice of Calvary Ministries, a pioneering movement in Christian Community Development.

However, this should not distract from the clarion call to re-examine our lives and thinking around Christian discipleship. I think Johnson spots the danger in our social activism that it can lose its rootedness in Christ, ceasing to be Christian in any recognizable sense. Meanwhile, he affirms the need in the context of modernity for discipleship that imitates Christ in the world. A thought-provoking book to be sure!

____________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.