Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches

Discipleship--that being a Christian is about learning and discovering, acting and responding, choosing and collaborating--is both a primordial Christian theme and a 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 the individuality of eachs path. Others emphasize the group, forgetting that every communitys richness is valuing its members diversity. Is discipleship the way of the loner and community-ignoring? But social beings learn discipleship in communities. Community is not simply the club of like-minded individuals but should model a new way of being. To uncover what discipleship means, we must read the New Testament with the awareness that how we see the world of the early Jesus followers is radically different from the inherited theological underpinning of many churches. This book takes our historical awareness seriously, and examines what biblical, historical, and archaeological research can tell us about discipleship today.

Thomas O’Loughlin has been Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Nottingham since 2009. He has written twenty books and held various esteemed teaching positions in England, Ireland and Wales.