Doctrine (By James Wm. McClendon)

Doctrine

By James Wm McClendon Jr.

(Reviewed by Ron Sanders)

 

            Doctrine is the second installment of James McClendon’s trilogy on Christian living.  The first volume, Ethics, was written to articulate how the church is to live in order to an authentic community of God.  The third volume, Witness, was written to articulate how the church is to be in the world.  This middle volume, then, is written to articulate what the church needs to teach in order to live out its practices in the world.  Doctrine is the broad and often overlapping categories of thought developed out of the Christian tradition that inform our living, the display the substance of our faith and that move into the world (21).

            McClendon argues that the forming of doctrine happens best (and really only happens) in the context of communal participation in the life of God that is grounded in the Scriptures—“if we think of the Bible as a single, great story, united by characters, setting, and plot we may describe the church’s Bible-reading task as the identification of its characters, the discovery of its plot and the exploration of its setting. (40) To this end McClendon offers an account of three of the major doctrines of the Christian tradition–the rule of God, the identity of Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Spirit—that are faithful to what he sees as the main story represented in the Scriptures:

 

Jesus came preaching the gospel of God’s coming reign; into that reign he summoned followers, who enrolled as students in his school, his open air, learn-by-doing, movable, life-changing dialogue.  It was surely exhilarating, yet the school of Christ was not an end in itself.  Followers were summoned to a transforming discipleship, a fellowship of studies, not with a view to a rustic life-style, but for training as witnesses, messengers, apostles, and teachers under the direction of a Master whose ‘good news’ for the world was evidently bad news for the principalities and powers of his day.  It was this purposeful program—clearer in his mind than in theirs—that required their costly apprenticeship to the radical Teacher. (32)

 

            The reign of God is God’s rule over all of life—his accomplishing of his ultimate purposes in the world by establishing a new counter-cultural political reality with Jesus Christ at the center.  The coming of Christ inaugurated this new political reality that moves toward ultimate redemption through the quiet working of God in the world which is accompanied by “historical signs.”  These historical signs are the validation of God’s activity and are represented by events like the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  This new reality is grounded in the formation of the alternative community—a people of peoples—who live in the world under God’s rule with Christ at the center of their lives.

            McClendon then argues for the identity of Jesus.  He sums up his view of the nature of Jesus through his notion of two-narratives:  God initiating through the person of Jesus and Jesus fulfilling all of human longing toward God.  In Jesus Christ, validated by the resurrection—God’s story and humanity’s story are at last indivisibly one.  The people of God live with Jesus at the center of their life through “remembering signs.”  Remembering signs are baptism, eucharist and prophetic preaching—practices that the church incorporates in their communal life to remember the real presence of the resurrected Christ in their midst.

            Finally McClendon argues for the powerful work of the Spirit in the community of faith.  The Holy Spirit empowers the people of God for their mission and communicates God’s nearness to his people.  This work of the Spirit is marked by  “providential signs;” signs that point to the intimate relationship between God and his people.

Much more needs to be said about this book, it is thought provoking and this is such a cursory treatment of the grander themes of the book.