Journal of European Baptist Studies, Volume 9, Number 2, January 2009

s that ‘what is indispensable for making any society one society is that it shall have a narrative tradition whose function is to provide a setting for several practices of that society, one that unites them in a single web of meaning’. 41 McClendon’s approach, therefore, starts out with the unifying vision and examines how the practices of the faith community fit into this vision. The shortcoming of this approach, however, is that in his emphasis on vision, he sometimes fails to explain why it is that the practices outlined in the Sermon on the Mount have normative value as individual moral acts. For instance, in the final part of Ethics, McClendon considers whether pacifism is a realistic ethical stance for Christians today, and after considering the matter from the standpoint of Jesus, and subsequently 35 J. H. Yoder, quoted in, ibid., p. 182. See also. Virtues and Practices, edited by N. Murphy et al, p. 94. 36 Ibid., p. 67. 37 ju;a 38 Ibid., pp. 213-241. 39 Ibid., pp. 301-324. 40 McClendon writes (Doctrine, p. 395) that ‘by the baptist vision our task is not mere replication of primitive Christian behaviours, but acting in our own context with an understanding of what we do formed by our identity with Jesus’ first disciples’. 41 McClendon, Ethics, p. 177. 46 Journal of European Baptist Studies refuting the arguments against pacifism, he then argues that it is indeed possible for Jesus’ followers to be peacemakers today in accordance with Jesus’ teaching on the Sermon on the Mount. 42 Thus McClendon argues that Jesus ‘evoked and guided a program of nonviolent action that transformed human conduct for its participants’ and that the ‘core of that program lies in the Sermon on the Mount’. 43 What is lacking from his argument, however, is any explanation of why the practice of peacemaking is a moral norm. This deficit, conversely, is supplied by Glen Stassen who argues persistently that transforming initiatives are moral norms derived from the Beatitudes. 44 In contrast to McClendon, Stassen, as we have already discussed, gives considerable explicit attention to the crucial question of how these moral norms translate into practical guidance for spiritual formation through Jesus’ ‘transforming initiatives’. We can conclude, therefore, that what is lacking in Stassen’s account (a discussion of how the separate transforming initiatives of the Sermon on the Mount can be brought together under a guiding vision of spiritual growth) can be supplied by McClendon’s ‘baptist vision’; and that, conversely, what is rather unclear in McClendon’s argument (the issue of the normative value of Jesus’ teachings) is elucidated by Stassen’s thoughtful and detailed consideration of this issue. It may be objected, however, that such a synthesis is much too abstract to provide a workable model for spiritual growth that will be of service to today’s disciples. In order to counter this criticism, the next