In spite of the transition away from specific language of
discipleship in the Letters,[1]
the apostolic fathers[2]
revived the use of maqhthjs and its
related forms in their writings. In the Gospels and portions of Acts the term
“disciple” had a more general meaning, usually referring to someone who
followed a master in a physical sense. We demonstrated that in the Letters Paul
uses more appropriate terms for “imitating” the nature of Christ in the absence
of his earthly presence. The Fathers demonstrate in their use of the word
disciple that the term had developed a much more narrow, specific meaning in
the generations after the apostolic age. Wilkins observes that the Fathers
“tended to use disciple in a reverent
sense that emphasized in context the technicality of the discipleship life of
the Christian.”[3]
This “technicality” is not monolithic, though; the Fathers nuance the goals and
means of discipleship to accommodate the changing nature of Christianity in the
post-Resurrection world.
Ignatius of
Antioch (d. circa 98-117ad) uses the term for disciple (maqhthjV) more than the other Fathers combined. Given the
relatively narrow window of Ignatius’ life and writings to examine, though, it
is important to note that everything Ignatius says about the disciple’s life is
framed by his impending martyrdom at the hands of Trajan.[4] We
are therefore left to wonder whether Ignatius would have explained the concept
of Christian discipleship differently had he the opportunity or had his
writings survived.
The
relationship between martyrdom and discipleship is at least as complicated as
the meaning of maqhthjV in the
Fathers. Ignatius’ writings are telling in this way. Holmes comments that three
factors led to the Bishop’s seeming “eagerness” to be fed to the beasts[5]:
first, that Ignatius desired to imitate Christ in suffering that he might,
through martyrdom, he will “truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ.”[6]
Ignatius explicitly correlates suffering with discipleship, saying, “because of
their [the guards’] mistreatment, I am becoming more of a disciple.”[7]
Second, Ignatius may be demonstrating a fear of failure and attempting to
fortify himself by announcing his fidelity to the discipleship program that he
himself preached to his congregations. Third, Ignatius may see martyrdom as a
galvanizing act for his fractured congregation, implying that being faithful
unto death would remind his people of the nature of true discipleship for them
to emulate.
What is
known about Ignatius’ vision of the disciple’s life is representative of the
Fathers overall. Michael Wilkins identifies four primary ways in which the idea
of “disciple” is used in the Fathers: disciple (in its explicit use as maqhthjV); follower; brother/sister,
Christian, Saint; and imitator/imitate, example.[8]
Ignatius is not concerned with writing a treatise on discipleship in his
letters, however; instead he uses the idea of discipleship in multi-layered
ways that would be familiar vocabulary to the audiences of his letters who
looked to the Bishop’s life as testimony and for inspiration.[9]
The meaning
of the term maqhthjV is no longer
ambiguous for the Church in the second century as it was in the days of Jesus.
By the time of the Fathers the Church had come to understand discipleship as
the essential nature of every believer in Jesus Christ. Gone is the terminology
of literally following a master as the pagan philosophers; now every Christian
is expected to imitate Jesus even in his physical absence. Wilkins generalizes
the perspective of the Fathers vis-à-vis discipleship as “a personal
relationship with Jesus and an assumed progress of growth, especially with the
goal of imitating and becoming like the Master.”[10]
The process
of development within the life of the believer is the essence of the Fathers’
understanding of discipleship. “Becoming” a disciple is a life-long commitment,
one that Ignatius sees as both the beginning and the end of the believer’s
journey: “Having become His disciples, let us learn to live in accordance with
Christianity.”[11]
Whereas the Gospel writers understood the disciples loosely as those who
followed Jesus physically, even for a brief time, the Fathers equate Christian
discipleship to a progressive developmental identity that requires total-life
devotion through the teaching of the tenets of Christianity and through the
imitation of Christ.[12]
Two other
examples of early church discipleship emphasis are the Didache and the Apostolic
Constitutions, both of which illustrate the concepts and expectations of
believers of that era. The Didache,
written most likely between 50ce and 150ce, was “to provide catechesis for the
preparation of new Gentile converts in an extensive training at the hands of an
instructor prior to baptism.”[13]
Although the word maqhthjV does
not appear in the document, the very nature of the document is of discipleship
and was “intended…as a summary of basic instruction about the Christian life.”[14]
It is apparent that by the time of the writing of the Didache[15]
there was a need to distill and package those things that new converts would
need to know in order to fit into an extant Christian community without
necessarily being in the presence of the Bishop or founding believer.
The existence of such a document in the
early church is telling: the compilers of the Didache saw it necessary to help new converts assimilate into a
congregation of more mature, experienced believers by instructing them on more
than the elements of the Gospel. The Didache
teaches a believer and a congregation about ethics,[16] eating,[17]
baptism,[18]
fasting,[19]
prayer,[20]
and the Lord’s Supper,[21] the
sum of which a new believer would find overwhelming and would certainly take a
great deal of time to properly internalize. For the Fathers, such a document as
the Didache would have been an
indispensable resource for those maturing in their discipleship in the small
congregations of the age.
A second collection of documents that
deserves mention from the age of the Fathers is The Apostolic Constitutions. The Constitutions is a collection of instructions for the ancient
church concerning ethics, church polity, and a primitive canon law for the good
order of Christianity.[22]
The purpose of the collection appears to have been as a “manual of instruction,
worship, polity, and usage for both clergy and laity.”[23]
The nature of the instruction tends toward the Bishop’s leadership of the
congregation and on the ordination of the deaconate. However, one helpful
section deserves our attention here, that is, Book VII “Concerning the
Christian Life, and the Eucharist, and the Initiation Into Christ.”[24]
The first section of Book VII is an expanded
version of the Didache[25]
and offers further advice on the ethical requirements of those belonging to
Christ. As in the Didache, the term maqhthjV is not mentioned, yet the
content of the Book is directly related to the expectations placed on believers
in the ancient Church. It is evident by the content of the Constitutions that by the time of the Fathers a robust practice of
catechism was in place for the instruction of new converts and in preparation
for their baptism.[26]
What stands out in this Book is the language
concerning the instruction of a disciple. Baptism, it seems, was not the
beginning of discipleship, but rather its conclusion. In preparation for the
official immersion of a catechumen, they were to be instructed in the:
…knowledge of the un-begotten God, in the understanding of
His only begotten Son, in the assured acknowledgment of the Holy Ghost. Let him
learn the order of the several parts of the creation, the series of providence,
the different dispensations of [God’s] laws. Let him be instructed why the
world was made, and why man was appointed to be a citizen therein; let him also
know his own nature, of what sort it is; let him be taught how God punished the
wicked with water and fire, and did glorify the saints in every generation and
how God still took care of and did not reject mankind, but called them from
their error and vanity to the acknowledgment of the truth at various seasons,
reducing them from bondage and impiety unto liberty and piety, from injustice
to righteousness, from death eternal to everlasting life.”[27]
The catechumen is to be taught unto
a knowledge-level understanding of the meta-narrative of Scripture. This
certainly would not have been a quick, momentary thing that let to an immediate
baptism; rather the disciple would have invested much time into the process of
learning the truths of the faith and would have (presumably) demonstrated
sufficient growth to proceed in instruction.
Conclusion
Though every era of the lives of
God’s people discipleship has been a key to understanding the relationship
those people are to have to their God and to one another. This limited survey
has hopefully provided a sufficient demonstration of the pervasive nature of
discipleship terminology and themes in the Old Testament, the New Testament,
and in the era of the Fathers. After such a survey, it should be clear that
discipleship is neither an exclusively Christian idea and that this life of
following the Master has been the demand of God upon God’s people from the
beginning of God’s redemptive activity until today. Much more will be said
about the nature of discipleship below in terms of the realistic expectations
of maturity implicit in these terms and themes.
[1]
See above, Discipleship in the Letters.
[2]
Info about ANF.
[3]
Wilkins, Following the Master, 323.
[4]
Cf. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers,
166; 169-70.
[5]
Holmes, 169.
[6]
Ignatius, Romans, 4:2.
[7]
Ibid, 5:1.
[8]
Wilkins, Following the Master,
317-322.
[9]
Wilkins comments that Ignatius uses the term maqhthjV
in contradictory ways, sometimes referring to Christians in general, and
at other by using the word in its historic “follower” meaning. It is
unnecessary to force a clear definition or delineation in the use of maqhthjV or its cognates, though, since
the communities to which Ignatius would have written would have also used the
concept of disciple in multi-layered ways representative of the emerging
identity they were forging in the competitive atmosphere of the second-century
Roman Empire.
[10]
Wilkins, Following the Master, 323.
[11]
Ignatius, Magnesians, 10:1.
[12]
The theme of imitation will be treated more thoroughly below.
[13]
Draper, The Apostolic Fathers: the
Didache, 179. Draper concludes that the Didache
is a document most concerned with the adaptation of Torah Judaism into the
revelation of Christ in the Church. He says, “It presents us with a moment
frozen in time, a community which still lived within the Jewish world-view and
practice, competing with the successors of the Pharisees for control of the
same social space. It remains focused on the Torah and its fulfillment in
practice, even though it admits Gentiles without requiring them to become Jews.”
[14]Holmes,
The Apostolic Fathers, 335.
[15]
There is scholarship demonstrating that the Didache
is a composite document pieced together over generations and that it reflects
the evolving needs of a specific Christian community. He does, however, leave
open the possibility that future discoveries and insights will bring more
clarity to the origin and literary development of the document. See Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers, 336-7.
[16]
Cf. Didache, 1:2-5:2.
[17]
Ibid. 6:3.
[18]
Ibid. 7:1-4.
[19]
Ibid, 7:4-8:1.
[20]
Ibid. 8:2-3.
[21]
Ibid. 9:1-10:7.
[22]
Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7,
CCEL.org.
[23]
Donaldson in Schaff, ANF, 874.
[24]
Schaff, ANF, 1025-54.
[25]
See above.
[26]
See The Apostolic Constitutions, Book
VII, Sec. III.
[27]
Schaff, ANF, vol. 7, 1048.
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