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

ringing one’s gift to the altar. ‘If we celebrate this meal’, said McClendon, ‘according to our regular practice, after Scripture is read and the sermon preached, our offerings will be brought to the table, with the 45 Unfortunately I do not have time or space to defend this argument here. Thankfully, however, the notion that the moral life is guided primarily by vision has already been persuasively argued for in the PhD thesis of my teacher, P. R. Parushev, ‘Walking in the Dawn of the Light: On the Salvation Ethics of the Ecclesial Communities in the Orthodox Tradition from a Radical Reformation Perspective’ (PhD Thesis, Fuller Theological Seminary, School of Theology, 2006), available through Proquest UMI NO. 3260231. See pages 60-120 for an account of the way in which Matthew’s kingdom vision can be used as a framework for the moral life of the present-day faith community. 46 In an article entitled, ‘Three Strands of Christian Ethics’, Journal of Religious Ethics, 6 (1978), pp. 54- 80, McClendon draws on the insights of Aristotle, Aquinas and Hauerwas to argue that, action is ‘logically inseparable from the forms of community, in particular from the shared forms of language, while the notion of a responsible choice-maker or agent was tied to the continuity of selfhood which we call character’ (pp. 71-72). 47 McClendon, Doctrine, p. 40. 48 J. W. McClendon, Making Gospel Sense (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1995). 49 Ibid., p. 3. 50 Ibid., p. 7 (emphasis added). 51 Ibid. 48 Journal of European Baptist Studies bread and wine of our meal, and we will say together a certain prayer.’ 52 McClendon realised the forgiving power that is inherent in such ‘regular practices’ as sharing a meal together at the Lord’s table or praying in 53 unity. Complementing McClendon’s emphasis on the way in which the kingdom vision is embodied (or, indeed, distorted) 54 in the practices of the faith community, Stassen refers to the normative necessity of the practice of forgiveness in terms of the individual. He declares bluntly that anyone ‘who does not live by forgiveness must have some other kind of religion and should not be called a Christian’. 55 From Jesus’ teachings on the Sermon on the Mount, Stassen posits the following norm: ‘Do not be the kind of person who regularly condemns others, but the kind of person who regularly practices forgiveness and repentance.’ 56 He then offers a series of short stories arising out his own experience in order to illustrate the ways in CT which the norm of forgiveness becomes embodied in practices. McClendon also cannot be charged with totally failing to provide a justification for the normative value of forgiveness as a central community practice, for he asserts that forgiveness ‘sets the character of Christian community, just as the imperatives of the Decalogue had pointed a CO direction with regard to Israel’s community practices’. 1 The normative value of the pr