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THE CONCEPT OF DISCIPLESHIP INCHRISTIAN EDUCATIONLeland Harder aa Mennonite Biblical Seminary , Elkbart, IndianaPublished online: 10 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Leland Harder (1963) THE CONCEPT OF DISCIPLESHIP IN CHRISTIANEDUCATION, Religious Education: The official journal of the Religious Education Association,58:4, 347-358, DOI: 10.1080/0034408630580404

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Religious education has been approached in terms of instruction, nur-ture, and experience. Each of these is limited and needs to be incorpo-rated into a larger scheme of things. Some writers have suggested thatwe should speak of Gospel-centered education. The following article worksout a point of view against this background in terms of

THE CONCEPT OF DISCIPLESHIP IN CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

Leland HarderMennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkbart, Indiana

P'R ONE WHO slipped into the academicparlor of Christian education through

the side door, an aspect of this field as atheological discipline which is most baf-fling is the diversity of conceptions abroadof the meaning of Christian education it-self. One might get initiated into thisfield through the writings of RandolphCrump Miller of Yale Divinity School; andfrom the first of his recently completedtrilogy of volumes, we learn that the pur-pose of Christian education is "to impartChristian truth."1 Although we would liketo think that what unites Christians is acommon confession of historic Christiantenets — the doctrine of the trinity, forexample — the first difficulty with Miller'sdeclaration is the wide variation of mean-ing which is still designated by the term,"Christian truth." James Smart criticizesMiller at this point when he writes, "Atno point does he take account of the actualsituation: that the Church's educational pro-gram already has, not only beneath it butinvolved in every detail of it, a number oftheologies, and that, because Christian edu-cators have failed to be critical theologians,the Church has lacked a department of the-ology that would help it, in its educational

Randolph C. Miller, The Clue to ChristianEducation (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,1950), p. 2. See also: Randolph C. Miller, Bibli-cal Theology and Christian Education (New York:Charles Scribner's Sons, 1956), pp. 4-7; RandolphC. Miller, Christian Nurture and the Church (NewYork: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961), pp. 184-186.

activities, to escape from false or confusedtheologies into a true theology."2

Smart's own conception of Christian edu-cation begins with a reaffirmation of thebiblical distinction between preaching andteaching as separate services required bythe "Word of God," with preaching desig-nating the proclamation of this Word toman in his unbelief, and teaching designat-ing the ongoing unfolding of this sameWord to man in his belief.3 Smart's ap-proach has the advantage of beginning witha biblical basis, but its difficulties are theever precarious differentiation betweenevangelism and Christian education and theproblem of integrating the various legitimatedimensions of the learning process (orprocesses) in the continuing education of aChristian.

Once we accept Smart's distinction be-tween preaching and teaching as both bibli-cal and valid operationally, we are con-fronted immediately with the problem ofthe relationship of these two ministries totheir single source in the Christian revela-tion, on one hand, the form of the humanresponse, on the other hand, and the legit-imate processes by which these ministriesbring about their desired response. "Man"in Smart's distinction is generic; and to theextent that areas of unbelief remain in thelife of each believer, man continues to be a

2James D. Smart, The Teaching Ministry of theChurch (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press,1954), pp. 66-67.

mid., p. 20.

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candidate for the preaching ministry. More-over, a given instance of communicatingthe Gospel (for example, Jesus' parable ofthe sower) may be simultaneously preachingand teaching, depending on whether it isproclamation for the response of belief orunfolding for the response of continuingobedience in the lives of the respondents.Thus, these ministries can be divided intothe three parts that constitute them: theChristian revelation, the processes by whicha person becomes and continues a Christian,and the human response that is required.

By "Christian revelation," I refer to theconfession of the Christian church that Godhas made himself known to us in history,that he has chosen to come to us andto show us what is his will for our exist-ence. As Christians we believe that Godhas done this uniquely and fully in JesusChrist. When we speak of God's revelationas "Christian truth," as does Miller, we refernot centrally to propositions in the Bibleor in oral tradition or about Jesus Christ;we speak of the person of Christ himself.4

In the Gospel according to John, it is Jesushimself who is the truth (Jn. 14:6). Like-wise, when we speak of God's revelation asthe "Word of God," as does Smart, we refernot centrally to the Bible, nor to any oraltradition that survives in the church, noreven to the universal experience amongChristians of many times and places thatChrist abides with us still; we refer to theperson of our Lord Jesus Christ, himself.5

Again in the Fourth Gospel it is Jesus him-self who is the Word of God, the supremerevelation of God to man. (Jn. 1:1).

CONCERNING THE processes by which aman becomes and continues a Christian, we

4 Although Miller stresses the centrality of "Chris-tian truth" in his interpretation of Christian educa-tion, it would be misleading to imply by this thathe is merely returning to a "transmissive form ofeducation" in the sense in which George AlbertCoe used this latter term. In his "trilogy thatpresents a modern, constructive approach to Chris-tian education," Miller has attempted to -work outa new integration of the content of the Christianrevelation (what he calls "truth-about-God-in-re-lation-to-man") and a life-centered educationalmethodology. The slogan for his approach is"Theology in the background; faith and grace inthe foreground."

have need to try to specify the operationalforms which preaching and teaching canlegitimately take as these ministries are im-plemented. Since the major part of thispaper deals with a description and analysisof four principal processes in the teachingministry of the church, the clarification ofhow these processes relate also to the preach-ing ministry can best be deferred to thefinal section of this paper.

This holds also for the distinction be-tween initial responses and continuing re-sponses to the Word of God, since thelegitimacy of this distinction is basedwholly on the legitimacy of the distinctionbetween preaching and teaching. The ques-tion of a distinction between "conversion"and "growth" in the Christian life has beenone of the baffling ambiguities in the litera-ture of Christian education. The use ofthese particular terms may be part of theproblem; but as soon as one accepts asvalid a distinction between preaching andteaching, it makes sense to speak of twotypes of human response that are required,namely, belief (i.e., initial responses, suchas accepting Christ as Savior) and obedi-ence (i.e., continuing responses, such as fol-lowing Christ as Lord).

In my reading in the field of ChristianEducation, I have discerned three dominantconceptions of the process of Christian edu-cation; and the pitfall of many educators istheir attempt to denote by any one of theseall that must be included in the term, Chris-tian education. These three conceptionsmay be labeled Christian nurture, Chris-tian instruction, and Christian experience.It is the thesis of this paper that thesemotifs are valid as processes of Christianeducation, but become perverted when used

BSmart, op. tit., pp. 19, 24-28. It is clear inthese two references that Smart identifies the"Word of God," not with the text of Scripture butwith the person of Jesus Christ. The gist of hisposition is found on page 25: "God's revelation ofhimself is not a communication merely of infor-mation about himself or of abstract truths whichcan be conveyed in words alone or trusted whollyto the pages of a book. It is God himself who isrevealed — not just something about God but atruth that is at the same time a life, a personallife. . . ."

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as criteria for the truth that is taught. Itis for this reason that a fourth conceptionis needed which can be grounded in theWord of God in a way that the others arenot. Such a motif is to be found in theconcept of Christian discipleship, whichoddly enough is infrequently used as a syno-nym for Christian education in the litera-ture. In the writer's opinion, this is the onemotif that can be used as the criterion forthe legitimacy of the others, connoting asit does a vertical relationship between JesusChrist as living Lord and the contemporarydisciple as one who learns from him.

As AN EXAMPLE of the problem thatis being posed, Randolph C. Miller in thethird volume of his trilogy has distinguishedbetween "instruction" and "nurture," theformer designating "the transmission of fac-tual information and its interpretation," andthe latter designating "the involvement ofthe pupil in the atmosphere and relation-ships of a community, including knowledgeabout it as a means of loyalty to it."6 Theimportance of this distinction according toMiller is that nurture is the broader term,semantically able to incorporate the mean-ing of the narrower term, instruction. Chris-tian education is then defined as "the nur-ture of the total person in all the relation-ships of life seen from the perspective ofmembership in the Christian community."7

For reasons that will be given below, I ob-ject to the attempt to compel any one ofthe current concepts of instruction, nurture,or a third which is usually labeled experi-ence, to carry the total weight of meaninginherent in the inclusive term, Christianeducation. The interesting thing is thatMiller seems to assert the same thing in thenext-to-last section of his third volume. Inthis section entitled, "The Limits of Educa-tion," he speaks of the restrictions of edu-cation conceived in terms of instruction,problem-solving [experience], and nurture.He goes on to write,

One way of putting this is to say that there

6Miller, Christian Nurture and the Church, p.ii.Vbid.

are six steps in the Christian commitment:a person must know, feel, worship, decide,join, and act. He can be nurtured throughthe first three steps, but in the moment ofdecision he must take a personal risk, knowinghe is surrounded by the members of the totalbody but that he alone is responsible, and thenhe becomes fully a member of the body.8

In the opinion of the present writer, Millerends where he should have begun. It isprecisely the last three steps as listed withwhich Christian education ought to havemost to do. Because of the way it isgrounded in the Gospel, a concept of Chris-tian education as discipleship is not subjectto the limitations which Miller correctlyattributes to the three processes which henames.

As I will attempt to show in the rest ofthis paper, discipleship always includes themotifs of nurture, instruction, and experi-ence; but the latter three motifs do not al-ways indicate discipleship.

I

THE FIRST motif is that of Christian nur-ture. By Christian nurture I refer to thelargely unconscious and informal assimila-tion of Christian beliefs and attitudesthrough the constant association with thoseChristians to whose fosterage one is com-mitted. The context of Christian nurturemay be the church; it may conceivably be aso-called Christian community or institutionor state; but the chief context for Christiannurture is usually thought to be the smallercircle of the Christian family.

The motif of religious nurture is as oldas the institution of the family itself, whichaccording to anthropological data takes usback to the dawn of human history. Inhis classical study of ancient Semitic re-ligions, W. Robertson Smith tells us that"A man did not choose his religion orframe it himself; it came to him as part ofthe general scheme of social obligations andordinances laid upon him, as a matter ofcourse, by his position in the family and in

mid., p. 194.

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the nation."8 This is rather crassly put,but it is quite apparent that nurture was thepredominant form of religious educationamong the ancient Hebrews, at least untilthe time of the Exile. "In this long forma-tive period there were no formal schools,and yet this people carried on an effectiveeducation in which religion was intertwinedwith the other affairs of daily life."10 Thisform of religious education at its best isspelled out in the sixth chapter of Deuteron-omy:

Heat, O Israel: The Lord our God is oneLord; and you shall love the Lord your Godwith all your heart, and with all your soul,and with all your might. And these wordswhich I command you this day shall be up-on your heart; and you shall teach themdiligently to your children, and shall talk ofthem when you sit in your house, and whenyou walk by the way, and when you lie down,and when you rise."11

It was the 19th century theologian, HoraceBushnell, who took this Old Testamentimage of nurture and crystallized it in away that has dominated a large segment ofthe religious education movement in thiscountry to the present time.12 In his classi-cal work entitled, Christian Nurture, Bush-nell employed two principal arguments tosupport his thesis that "the child is to growup a Christian, and never know himself asbeing otherwise."13 The first of these was

»W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of theSemites (New York: Meridian Books, 1956), p.28.

10Lewis J. Sherrill, "A Historical Study of theReligious Education Movement," Orientation inReligious Education, P. H. Lotz, ed. (New York:Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1950), p. 13.

"Deuteronomy 6:4-7.12"Nurture" has been by far the most popular

term used in the titles of volumes in the field ofChristian Education by 20th century writers. Iwould strongly suspect that this reflects a ratherdirect influence of Bushnell on main-line Protestantthinking, in which the term has been adopted as adesignation for the church's total teaching man-date, and for obvious theological reasons. Cer-tainly, denominations practicing infant baptismwould like the term because it fits a doctrine ofthe church which is continuous with other formsof organic existence, beginning with the familyand ending with the total society.

13Horace Bushnell, Christian Nurture (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1947), p. 4.

the so-called organic unity argument: thatthe values and character of the fosteringgroup is propagated in the children of thatgroup as naturally and by a law as trulyorganic as when the sap of the trunk flowsinto a limb. Of course, Bushnell was speak-ing mainly of the family as the fosteringgroup; and the validity of this applicationwould be accepted in principle by most ofus. But according to Bushnell, the familyis but the first of three great forms of or-ganic existence which God has appointedfor the race, the other two being the churchand the state.14 It would have been as im-possible for Bushnell to deny the responsi-bility of the family and church for thesolidarity of a monolithic society as it wasfor numerous Constantinian synthesizers be-fore him. This for reason of the secondargument, that the modern compact betweenthe Christian family, church, and state, iscontinuous with the ancient covenant thatbound Jehovah and the nation of Israel.

IF SOME OF US cannot bring ourselves toconform to this concept of the family andchurch as institutions of society, those whoaccept this view should know why. To usit seems important that the new covenantbetween each person and our Lord, by whicha person becomes and continues a Chris-tian, is always the criterion of whether or-ganic connections are truly Christian, andnot vice versa. The first indication that ourLord intended to found a believers' churchwas the way he called men out of theirhomes and institutionalized organic connec-tions to follow him.

Let there be no doubt that Christian nur-ture possesses a large measure of authen-ticity as a vital dimension of the educationof Christians. It capitalizes on the intrica-cies of the mental and emotional growth ofa child. It stresses the informal relationsbetween parent and child, and betweenchurch and child, insisting that the wordswhich are piled upon words in the instruc-tion of our children do not have absolutemeanings apart from prior experiences ofpersonal relationships. It emphasizes the

id., pp. 122-3.

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importance of living our faith in the pri-mary relationships of one's own home ante-cedently to any Christian vocation in thewider social context

The principal criticism of an extremereligious nurture philosophy is what hasbeen called the propagation of bad faith. Inhis chapter entitled "Jewish Education,"Lewis J. Sherrill pointed out that it wasthe Hebrew family itself that was mostvulnerable to the alien influences of sur-rounding pagan cultures.15 Similarly, in adevastating critique of the religious estab-lishment in America, Peter Berger showshow a typical Christian nurture in Americatoday "provides the individual with thameans by which he can hide from himselfthe true nature of his existence." It "reas-sures and strengthens him in his social roles,however 'inauthentic' these may be." It"thus tends to be an obstacle in the progresstoward 'authenticity" as a Christian per-son."18 These things it does because ofthe dangerous Bushnellian assumption thattrue Christian faith can be propagated"seminally,"17 without a break with the in-stitutional forms of a culture-bound Chris-tianity.

II

THIS LEADS US historically as well astheologically to a consideration of the sec-ond motif in Christian education, which ishere labeled Christian instruction. By Chris-tian instruction I refer to the formal studyof the literary treasures of the Christian lifeand thought, usually through formal school-ing. Presupposed in Christian instruction is

15Sherrill, The Rise of Christian Education(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1950),pp. 37-41.

16Peter L. Berger, The Noise of Solemn Assem-blies (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Company,1961), p. 102.

17Bushnell, op. tit,, p. 173. It is difficult toknow when Bushnell is speaking figuratively andwhen he is speaking literally. Apparently he wasentirely serious when in his chapter entitled "TheOut-Populating Power of the Christian Stock" heargued that Christians have more virility than non-Christians.

a library of accumulated written materials,with the Holy Scriptures as the paramountresource.

The image of religious instruction is alsovery old, but in no case can it be datedprior to the development in any society ofthe art of writing. The historical setting ofthe 22nd and 23rd chapters of II Kings isa classical instance of this motif. Josiahbecomes King of Judah, and during his 31-year reign a great reformation takes place.The altars of the Baals are destroyed and thetemples restored. In the process of restora-tion, a roll of manuscript is discovered; andwhen Josiah has finished reading it, he isso moved he rends his clothes. He callsfor an assembly of all the people to hear thewords of the Lord which had been found inthe house of the Lord. We read that thepeople followed Josiah in renewing thecovenant with their Lord, to walk in obedi-ence to his commandments which were writ-ten in this book.

The publication of this document aroundthe year 621 B.C. was one of the greatlandmarks in the history of Judah, for herreligion began henceforth to be a religionof a book. After the Exile, Ezra regularlyassembled the people to instruct them fromthe Book of the Law, committing them stillmore deeply to a book as embodying thewill of God. Later, when the Prophets andso-called Writings came to be recognizedas authoritative as well as the Law, therecame the day when it was thought to benecessary to declare once and for all whichbooks were to be included into the canonand which were not — canon meaningliterally "final rule of faith and practice."

It was during this same period that formalschools were established to supplement ifnot to replace the more primitive nurturesystem; and the curriculum of these schoolswas predominantly the Hebrew scriptures— Law, Prophets, and Writings. One ofthe most significant insights in Sherrill'sstudy, The Rise of Christian Education, ishis interpretation of the failure of Jewishnurture in the home to guarantee survivalof a covenantal religion, and the solution

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that was sought in the establishment of aformal school system.18

How is one to interpret this total develop-ment? At the risk of over-simplification,I would suggest three stages in this develop-ment. First, Josiah rediscovers a Scripturaldocument, and in it he finds an authoritativenorm for his reformation. Second, Scripturaldocuments continue to be produced and col-lected and used with varying degrees of au-thority until a time when men feel com-pelled to declare once and for all which areto be considered orthodox, and which arenot. Third, if then this canon is the finalauthority in matters of faith and life, ad-herents must be thoroughly instructed in thecontent of this canon, requiring a systemof schools with graded curriculum and in-struction at many levels.

W E CAN OBSERVE this same process inthe history of the Christian church;19 andI am about to propose that in steps twoand three of this scheme, there is a deadlyperil which again can turn this secondimage of Christian education into a perver-sion. But first, let there be no doubt thatChristian instruction is another authentic di-mension of the education of Christians,especially when the object of our study is"the strange new world of the Bible." Un-less the Bible is rediscovered in the lives ofeach of us in some similar manner, ourfaith, too, will become warped, for the Bibleis the locus of our own encounter with therevelatory events of our faith; it is the placewhere we meet the historical Jesus.

The perversion of Christian instruction,like that of nurture, comes at the pointwhere it is compelled to carry the totalweight of the meaning of Christian educa-tion. It is at this point that Christian edu-

rill, op. cit., pp. 54-5.19For example, Luther agonized over the salva-

tion of his soul, and rediscovered the norm ofScripture in the words of Paul in Romans 1:17,". . . the righteousness of God is revealed throughfaith . . ." At the Diet of Worms, he pronouncedthe formal principle of the Reformation — solascrlptura. Finally he translated the Bible into thevernacular and promoted schools at several levelsso that the masses could have accessibility to thisso-called final authority in matters of faith and life.

cation degenerates into transmitting precer-tified content as an end in itself withoutnecessarily contributing to the central pur-pose of the pupil's continuing encounterwith the risen Lord. It is at this point thatour goals become fixed-end knowledge "out-comes," with the tendency to manipulate thepupil to produce the end desired. Fortu-nately (or unfortunately, depending on one'sviewpoint), it can never be precertified thatthe Bible has any authority in itself. Whenwe speak of a biblical authority, we are re-ferring to a derived authority, derived fromthe Word that was made flesh; and by thiswe mean that the Bible is authoritative forus only when it becomes the locus for ourencounter with Jesus Christ. We believethat the Bible is a means by which the liv-ing God speaks to living men in the livingstruggle of every generation; but in ourteaching we are always tempted to reducethe Bible to a precertified blueprint fromwhich we abstract the celestial specificationsfor the Christian life. "It follows [then]that this is the standard you try to conformto, a kind of law you obey, the pattern youtry to induce or condition in the young."20

We believe that the Bible is able to speakfor itself and that the Word of God is self-authenticating; but because the people findit difficult to understand, "We are . . .under the temptation to take away the veryliberty which we profess we are offering.In taking it upon ourselves to proffer thehelp which people ask, we expose them andourselves as well to the very risk which wedeplore; namely, creating a doctrine aboutthe Bible which will then stand betweenthe people and the Bible so that they nolonger hear what it speaks."21

Ill

THESE PERILS lead us logically to a con-sideration of the third motif in Christianeducation, which is designated by the label,

20J. Donald Butler, Religious Education: TheFoundations and Practice of Nurture (New York:Harper & Row, 1962), p. 137.

2iLewis J. Sherrill, The Gift of Power (NewYork: The Macmillan Company, 1957), p. 94.

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Christian experience. By Christian experi-ence, I refer to learning by first-hand en-counter with the problems of existence asdistinguished from the institutionali2edstudy of those problems in the environmentof classroom or library. More specificallyI refer to the acquisition of special skillsand abilities through actual personal per-formance, occasionally with some form ofadvance tutelage but always with consider-able trial-and-error.

The teaching which our Lord gave to hisdisciples was predominantly in the midstof life situations. To be sure, he gave themexplicit instruction about the Kingdom ofGod; but about his own role in inaugurat-ing the Kingdom he was mysteriously secre-tive. The explanation of the so-called"Messianic Secret" in the synoptic gospelsis to be found in Jesus' own words to hisdisciples, "Having eyes do you not see, andhaving ears do you not hear?"22 It wasnot until Caesarea Philippi, after months offirst-hand encounter, that the identity ofJesus as the Christ was revealed to them andconfirmed by our Lord. To be sure, hegave them explicit instruction about the na-ture of discipleship; but he taught themhow to be "fishers of men" by sending themforth into encounter with men. In themissionary training of his disciples, it ispreposterous to suppose that our Lord mighthave established a Jesus of Nazareth Insti-tute of Evangelism, or a Son of Man Bibli-cal Seminary.

Twentieth century Christian educators —such as George Albert Coe, William Clay-ton Bower, and Harrison Elliott — wereright when they asserted that much of whatChristians are to learn can only be learnedin the crucible of life situations. They wereright when they observed that there is inthe Gospel itself a certain appeal to ex-perimentation as a way of coming to knowthat the Gospel is true and vibrant.

THE ERROR of these same men, as with

22Mark 8:18. The term "Messianic Secret" re-fers to the repeated refrain in which Jesus asksthose who had discovered his true identity to keepsilent about. See Mark 1:44, 3:12, 5:43, 7:36,8:30, 9:9, etc.

the other systematizers we have mentioned,is that they took one important dimensionof Christian education and tried to force itto carry all of the weight of its inherentmeaning. In this case they so exalted theimportance of immediate experience as tomake it the primary criterion by which theGospel is known and interpreted. This isthe criterion of pragmatism, which assertsthat to determine the meaning of any idea,put it into practice in the objective worldof actualities and whatever its consequencesprove to be, these constitute the meaning ofthe idea. According to Elliott, it can neverbe certified that Christian truths are al-ready known by virtue of some externalcriterion, but that such truths are alwaysdiscovered in and through the educationalprocess.23 I quite agree that it is im-possible to confine the living experience ofChristianity within any so-called authorita-tive interpretation; but I am troubled bythe ease with which Elliott moves fromno authoritative interpretation of Christian-ity to no authority whatever in Christianity.It is quite evident that the only "authority"which Elliott recognizes as legitimate isthat which is inherent in the educationalexperience itself.2*

It was H. Shelton Smith's book, Faithand Nurture, that laid bare the theologicalpresuppositions of the modern experience-centered religious education movement,showing how these presuppositions haveled to an attenuated Christianity, and howtheir practical application has had the con-sequences of undercutting their own ends.28

An example of how these presuppositionscan lead one to misinterpret the way inwhich Jesus is the starting-point of Chris-tian education is Bower's volume, Christ andChristian Education. According to Bower,Jesus began not with formulated beliefs butwith living persons where they were in theirexperience of life, seeking to educe within

23Harrison S. Elliott, Can Religious Educationbe Christian? (New York: The Macmillan Com-pany, 1947), pp. 309-319.

2iIbid., p. 319-321.25H. Shelton Smith, Faith and Nurture (New

York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948).

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them a certain "quality of life" that wouldpermeate the totality of their behavior."Rather than give them ready-made solu-tions, Jesus threw people back upon theirown resources."26 Bower believed that theearly church obscured the true image ofJesus as a great moral teacher by deifyinghim; and this, apparently, for two reasons:a sense of mission to declare a messagerather than share an experience, and a senseof need to define the beliefs of the newreligion as a fixed point of reference for thefuture.

THE CONTEMPORARY dissent from thisinterpretation is well grounded both inbiblical research and theological critique.Studies by such scholars as C. H. Dodd,27

John Wick Bowman,28 and T. W. Man-son,29 have shown clearly that the "sense ofmission" which Bower attributed to theearly church was not invented by theapostles but given as a mandate by the de-liberate intention of Jesus. Certainly it ismuch less possible for Christian educatorstoday to picture Jesus as merely going aboutsharing a "quality of life" with people, andto fail to see him as one who was very con-scious of a Messianic destiny and who ac-counted himself and his church as God'schosen agents for the redemption of man-kind. C. S. Lewis put it rather dramaticallyas follows:

A man who -was merely a man and said thesort of things Jesus said wouldn't be a greatmoral teacher. He'd either be a lunatic . . .or else he'd be the Devil of Hell. You mustmake your choice. Either this man was, andis, the Son of God: or else a madman or some-thing worse. You can shut Him up for afool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as ademon; or you can fall at His feet and callHim Lord and God. But don't let us comewith any patronizing nonsense about His be-

26William C. Bower, Christ and Christian Edu-cation. (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press,1943), pp. 23-24.

27C. H. Dodd, History and the Gospel (NewYork: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938).

28John Wick Bowman, The Intention of Jesus(Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1943).

29T. W. Manson, The Teaching of Jesus (Cam-bridge: University Press, 1948).

ing a great human teacher. He hasn't leftthat open to us. He didn't intend to.30

As Christians we confess that Jesus Christis the central authority for Christian faithand life, and we affirm in reply to Elliottthat this is always an authority that is ex-ternal to our human experience. To besure, this authority is not arbitrarily im-posed, as the crucifixion of our Lord bearswitness; but it remains an authority whichis outside of ourselves. To all who acceptChrist's authority, he gives the power tobecome children of God; but even thosewho reject it are not able ultimately to es-cape it in its eschatological form.

IV

THIS LEADS US, finally, to a fourth con-ception of Christian education, which is thatof Christian discipleship. The word dis-ciple means literally learner; and by Chris-tian discipleship I refer to a direct personalrelationship with Jesus Christ as Lord inthe context of his church through whichone learns how to live daily in Christ'seternal Kingdom. Jesus said, ". . . take myyoke upon you, and learn from me" (Mt.11:29).

The first problem that we face in at-tempting to visualize the image of Christiandiscipleship is that within history the Chris-tion life seems invariably to become routin-ized in the process of settling down to per-manency as part of the ongoing naturalsocial order. Perhaps, for this reason, weshall come closest to a true image of disciple-ship if we listen to the testimony of onewho has been a disciple for only four years:

What is it to learn of Jesus Christ? Inthe beginning of my Christian experience Iwas convinced I knew all about Him. Witha great sweeping gesture of abandon, I "soldall" and flung myself after Him, I thought!Now, I see that I didn't know Him at all.Quite suddenly He had invaded me, but 1 wasstill too blinded by my own "light" to see Hisface. Then, a little later on, when my ownlight began to die out, I was too dazzled byHis light to see His face at all.

When we begin to be puzzled by Jesus

30C. S. Lewis, A Case for Christianity (NewYork: The Macmillan Company, 1946), p. 45.

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Christ, I believe that is good. It is doubtfulthat He -would ever turn out to be like ourconception of Him. How could we conceivea Lord whose face is "set like a flint" andwho stands like "an angel with tears in hiseyes" at one and the same time? How couldwe conceive a Lord who "hath torn and yetwill heal us? Who hath smitten, and yetwill bind us up"? At these times of utterdismay about Jesus Christ, we feel we arebeing drowned in darkness. We begin torealize that there is a great distance betweenJesus Christ and us. He is up ahead. Wemust run faster. We must pray more. Wemust spend more time with Him. Somehow,O God, somehow we must get closer to JesusChrist! He is up ahead. He is up ahead.We cannot reach Him, and yet He said:

"Learn of me!""How can I learn of you, Lord? Where

will I begin?""If any man will come after me, let him

deny himself, take up his cross daily, andfollow me."

My Lord's answer: "Deny yourself, takeup your cross daily, and follow me." Hard?Yes. Without His grace and His strength itis impossible. With Him, "all things arepossible." And so wondrous and so greatlyto be desired.31

There is in this excerpt an image ofChristian education which is admittedlyrather vague, because there is so much thatremains mysterious about Christian disciple-ship. And yet in the writer's opinion it isthe only one which can be safely absolutized,for the reason that what makes educationChristian is precisely that which is distinct-ive about discipleship — the life of faithand obedience in response to the confronta-tion and call of our Lord. Discipleshipalone can incorporate those aspects that arevalid in the other motifs. Nurture, instruc-tion, and experience may or may not implydiscipleship; but discipleship always in-corporates the other three.

Certainly we can say that Christian dis-cipleship includes the dimension of nurture— the nurture of our children, and especi-ally as it relates to our own fostering at-tachment to Jesus Christ in the context ofhis church. The image of discipleship parexcellence is the total picture that we get of

the informal relationship between Jesus andhis first entourage of disciples. On oneend of this relationship was the person ofour Lord, who by all evidence following hiswilderness experience had a distinct Messi-anic self-consciousness. At the other endof this relationship were the disciples, forwhom the existence of Jesus was to mean inturn a call to follow him, a response ofradical decision, and many subsequent claimsfor their total allegiance as they were ledstep by step along the way. The contextfor Christian nurture in the disciple groupwas no longer primarily the organic family,for the organic family had now been tran-scended by the "family" of disciples. "Whoare my mother and my brothers?", Jesusasked, when notified that these members ofhis organic family were asking for him.And pointing to those who sat about him,he said, "Here are my mother and mybrothers! Whoever does the will of Godis my brother, and sister, and mother"(ML 3:33-5).

IMPLICIT IN the foregoing paragraph aretwo problems for the modern theology ofChristian education, the analysis of whichwould take us beyond the scope of thispaper. One is the doctrine of the church asthe structured environment in which nurturetakes place. Modern theologians have yetto wrestle sufficiently with a charismaticconception of the church in distinction toroutinized conceptions.32 The other prob-

31Eugenia Price, Discoveries Made from LivingMy New Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publish-ing House, 1953), pp. 77-78.

32It has been interesting to note that contem-porary sociologists are grappling with the kinds ofproblems that one might expect would be of con-siderable concern to the theologians. In his at-tempt to differentiate between the "church," the"denomination," and the "sect," in American or-ganized religion, Joachim Wach observes that"historically seen, the process of the gradual sub-stitution of official for pneumatic (spiritual)charisma which the development of the earlychurch of the first two centuries represents, repeatsitself in the history of practically all Christiangroups." See his Church, Denomination, and Sect(Evanston: Seabury-Western Theological Semi-nary, 1946), p. 11. A highly significant contri-bution to the same problem was made by the Ger-man sociologist, Max Weber, who gave origin tothe concept of "routinization of charisma." Seehis The Theory of Social and Economic Organiza-tion, tr. A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons(Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1947), pp.363-391.

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356 CONCEPT OF DISCIPLESHIP

lem is the Christian education, of adults asdistinct from and in one sense discontinu-ous with the Christian education of chil-dren.33

CERTAINLY WE CAN say that Christiandiscipleship includes also the dimension ofinstruction. I include here the Christian in-struction of our children; but I refer espe-cially to those times when our Lord mustteach us through more formal and systematicdiscourse concerning the meaning of hisGospel. James Smart refers to "the neces-sity that the disciples should be instructedmore fully in the truth of the Gospel, sothat they might leave behind their old in-adequate understanding of God, of them-selves, and of all things in their world."As an example of this, he refers to "thefact that not until after the death of Jesusdid the disciples give up their Jewish ideaof the Messiah as one who would suddenly,by a demonstration of supernatural powers,inaugurate a universal kingdom in whichJerusalem would become the center of worldgovernment."34 I suspect that, in our ownday, we do not grasp much more readilythe secrets about the Kingdom of Godwhich are yet "hid with Christ in God."Following our Lord's call of the twelve, hewent up on the "mountain" where he gavethem some intensive instruction regardinglife in the Kingdom. In this manifesto aradical love and nonresistance were declaredto be the new basis for a disciple's rela-tions with others. A more scandalous teach-ing has hardly ever been heard in humanhistory, unless it would be the instructionwhich Jesus gave these same men on theroad to Jerusalem, "Whoever does not bearhis own cross and come after me, cannot bemy disciple. For which of you, desiringto build a tower, does not first sit down andcount the cost, whether he has enough tocomplete it?" (Lie. 14:27-8).

I frankly confess that I don't know the

33In this regard John Fry's book, A Hard Lookat Adult Christian Education (Philadelphia: TheWestminster Press, 1961) must be read with asmuch seriousness as we read Shelton Smith's book.Faith and Nurture, over a decade ago.

34Smart, op. tit., p. 85.

full meaning of these teachings of our Lordfor Christian existence today. For me, asfor the Mennonite Church in which I havebeen nurtured, they mean Christian paci-fism; but I strongly suspect that in the mindof our Lord they mean vastly more thanthis. I think I see some connection betweenhis Messianic calling as it was clarified inthe wilderness, his teaching in the Sermonon the Mount, his admonitions on the roadto Jerusalem, and his conquest on Calvary.Beyond this all I can say is to echo thewords of the Christian convert who wasquoted before, "He is up ahead. He is upahead. We cannot reach him, and yet hesaid, "Learn of me!"'

The implication of this for a moderntheory of Christian education are several,which again can only be formulated withoutelaboration. One is a reorientation to theBible as the locus for our own encounterwith the scandalous instruction of our Lord—an instruction which will open unto us asit did for those first disciples a new futureof grace, if we have the courage to let it.Another, which is corollary to the first, isthat the key to any modern design for cur-riculum in Christian education is obedienceto the instruction of our Lord, which meansa curriculum that permits us to study thebiblical sources before rather than after de-ciding what their relevance to contemporaryChristian living is supposed to be.

CERTAINLY WE CAN say further thatChristian discipleship includes the dimen-sion of experience. Here again I mean thefirst-hand experience of our children withthe realities of the Christian faith; but I amreferring particularly to the cutting edge ofthe mature Christian's encounter with theworld. In 1952 I graduated from seminaryand was "prepared" for my first church as-signment. A week or two later came theinstallation as pastor of a small missionchurch on the south side of Chicago. Al-though my wife and I entered that workwith a strong sense of mission to carry outthe preaching and teaching mandates whichour Lord gave to his church, it didn't takeus long to discover how remote to our situ-ation was so much of what we learned in

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LELAND HARDER 357

seminary. Now desperation itself becameour teacher. In our predicament we learn-ed how to pray. In our impasse we dis-covered resources which are largely inac-cessible until they are provided in the exis-tential situation as God's gift through faithand obedience. Those years in Chicagowere an internship in the practice of theChristian life which can never be transmit-ted through the nurture of a Christian homeor the instruction of a Christian classroom.

There are not two definitions of disciple-ship — one for the original twelve andone for us — it is one and the same move-ment of Christ's church into the battlefrontsof the world. Although we sense thatevangelism belongs to the essential beingof the church, the fact is that most of usare trying to do this work of our Lord byproxy rather than by first-hand involvement.Yet, I doubt whether any of us will everreally understand the meaning of Pentecostuntil we ourselves become directly involvedin the spread of the Gospel in our day. Theimplication of this comment for a moderntheory of Christian education is a curriculumin which the motif of experience emergesanew as an essential concomitant of instruc-tion. What about an adult church schoolclass whose objective is to learn how tocarry out the task of evangelism and whoseparticipants come together each Sundaymorning to discuss the experiences they hadin their assigned house calls of the previousweek? Not only is this legitimate Christiancurriculum, but it comes closer to being sothan the traditional approaches most of usknow about in which the "Bible" is pur-ported to be the curriculum.

One of the reasons that discipleship sys-tems in history seem invariably to becomeroutinized as time passes on is that sooneror later the original leader dies. The prob-lem of succession must then be met in avariety of possible ways, all of which leadeither to legalized or traditionalized formsof reorganization. In Christian disciple-ship, however, there is within the revela-tion that produced the movement a realitythat completely destroys the logic of theargument of inevitable routinization. If the

original Master has not in fact disappeared,but as the first-fruits of those who havefallen asleep he has been raised from thedead to become the abiding Lord of hischurch (I Cor. 15:20), then the problem ofsuccessor does not arise for there is no prede-cessor. This does not mean that Christianscan now substitute some mystical conceptionof the Christian life for the structuredobedience that characterized discipleshipin the Gospel accounts. It does recog-nize, however, that it is quite possible todevelop a time-locked doctrine of disciple-ship in which the object of the continuingresponse is the Jesus of the Bible ratherthan the Christ of the Eternal Present, inwhich case a living discipleship must stillbecome routinized by replacing it with ad-herence primarily to a written tradition.The nature of continuing discipleship issuch that we can never predict with cer-tainty what Christ's leading will be in eachnew situation. If this were the case, wewould soon end up following our own pre-dilection of next steps in place of the exis-tential leading of our risen Lord.

Christian discipleship, then, means tolearn this day in the yoke of the livingChrist. "Take my yoke upon you, andlearn of me." If there is any validity to mythesis that discipleship is the only image ofChristian education that can carry the totalweight of inherent meaning of this theo-logical field of study, it is because Jesushimself becomes our teacher in the contextof his church.

V

IN THE PRECEDING SECTIONS of thispaper, four motifs in Christian educationhave been discussed — nurture, instruction,experience, and discipleship. We have saidthat the first three of these motifs are validas processes of Christian education, but be-come perverted when used as truth claims.Discipleship is also a process, but it is morethan a process. It is grounded in the Wordof God in a way that the other three proc-esses are not, since it alone requires a per-sonal relationship to Jesus Christ, who is

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358 CONCEPT OF DISCIPLESHIP

the Word of God. Thus, discipleship isboth a process of Christian education and acriterion of whether any other educationalprocess is authentic. It is both an aspectof the Gospel and an end-product of theGospel. It remains, finally, to relate thesenotions to the distinction between preach-ing and teaching, on one hand, and the re-sponses of belief and obedience, on the

Word of God

Ministry ofPreaching

Ministry ofTeaching

PROCESSES:

NurtureInstructionExperience

End Product: Discipleship

Informal Assimilatioi,Formal Study

Problem Solving

Response ofBelief

Response ofObedience

other. The following diagram may help toindicate how these relationships are beingconceptualized.

The circle symbolizes the processes ofnurture (informal assimilation of a sponsor-ing group's values), instruction (formalstudy), and experience (problem solving),all of which are legitimate dimensions in thecommunication of the Word of God. ThisWord is communicated to man through theministries of preaching and teaching. Thefact that this dual communication can besimultaneous is indicated by the way inwhich the three processes can serve the pur-pose of evangelism as well as of Christianeducation. The distinction between preach-ing and teaching is nevertheless requiredbecause certain aspects of the Word of Godare more amenable at times to preaching,and other aspects to teaching, depending onwhether the desired response is "initial" be-lief or continuing obedience. The end prod-uct of the communication of God's Word(whether by preaching or by teaching) andof the response of man (whether by be-lief or obedience) is Christian discipleship— the unique relationship between therisen lord and the contemporary believer-follower in the context of the living church.Although authentic discipleship in con-temporary times is clothed in considerablemystery, a curriculum for an education thatis truly Christian must incorporate this con-cept in new and creative ways. This is oneof the most formidable tasks confrontingChristian educators in our generation.

CAN THERE BE A CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY?(continued from page 346)

priate these truths without loss to their ex-istential reality. However, the Christian phi-losophy envisioned by Wild has not yetcome into being in the West, he says, butwhen it does, it will give an understandingof the "life-world" which avoids the errorsof partiality, inaccuracy and superficiality.Like Gilson, he holds that authentic Christianphilosophizing can produce the better phi-losophy, but he agrees with Collins that the

purpose is understanding rather than salva-tion, demanding a philosophic order of dis-covery, while he differs from the Catholicphilosophers by holding dogma to be an ob-stacle to freedom of faith and freedom ofthought. Broadly speaking, all three canbe called Christian philosophers in thesense that in their philosophic use of reason,these Christians do not deprive themselvesof the light of their own Christian faith.

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