Thomas O'Loughlin Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches

Annotation

Discipleship - that being a Christian is about learning anddiscovering, acting and responding, choosing and collaborating - is both a primordial Christian theme anda re-discovery of the mid-twentieth century. But how does one discover its meaning? For some it means programmes -like turning out a product, ignoring theindividuality of each's path. Others emphasize the group, forgetting that everycommunity's richness is valuing its members' diversity. Is discipleship the wayof the loner and community-ignoring? But social beings learn discipleship incommunities. Community is not simply the club of like-minded individuals butshould model a new way of being. To uncover what discipleship means, we must read the New Testamentwith the awareness that how we see the world of the early Jesus followers isradically different from the inherited theological underpinning of manychurches. Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches takes ourhistorical awareness seriously, and examines what biblical, historical, andarchaeological research can tell us about discipleship today.