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

uable insights into how Jesus’ teachings on the Sermon might be used as a realistic resource for discipleship and healthy spiritual formation. Stassen provides a helpful analysis of Jesus’ teachings, arguing persuasively for their normative value and asserting and illustrating their applicability to the contemporary context. McClendon, on the other hand, provides us with a ‘baptist vision’ which maintains that Jesus’ moral teachings can be typologically recast into the contemporary context to provide a framework for moral living for Christ’s present-day followers. This vision also provides a unifying focus into which all the transforming initiatives of Stassen cohere. Many questions requiring further elucidation arise from this paper, each of which invites discussion from a variety of perspectives. For instance, how might the conceptual synthesis of Stassen’s normative practices and McClendon’s baptist vision be applied constructively at the grass roots level of congregational life? Could this synthesis be applied to the wider society or is it restricted to the moral life of the church? How can the ‘narrative approach’ of both McClendon and Stassen be used to clarify some of the issues raised in this paper? Also, what potential for mission 60 P- 61 62 J. H. Arnold, Discipleship: Living for Christ in the Daily Grind (Farmington: Plough Publishing, 1994), 122 (emphasis added). Ibid., p. 100. Ibid., p. 84. 50 Journal of European Baptist Studies arises out of this understanding of Jesus’ words as an invitation to participate in the vision of the present reality of the kingdom of God? These are questions that arise from this paper and which need to be picked up by other scholars if the church is to continue in the process of the rediscovery of the relevance and applicability of the Sermon’s teachings to the contemporary context. It is impossible to avoid these questions, for as Stassen and others have pointed out, one of the foremost tasks imposed upon theological ethicists today is to lead the church in the process of the rediscovery of the Sermon as a reliable and realistic guide to discipleship and healthy spiritual formation. It is my hope that this paper will contribute in its own way to such a rediscovery or that it might, at least, prompt others to engage further with the issues raised regarding Jesus’ life-giving words, spoken on the mountainside to the admiration of his hearers (Matt. 7:28). Once we hear these words as the living Word spoken to our own context, it is my hope that the church will not merely admire Jesus’ teachings but that it would be challenged to practice everything which Jesus commanded it to do, thereby fulfilling the Great Commission (Matt. 28:20). Joshua Thomas Searle is a research student at Trinity College, Dublin in Ireland and an MTh in applied theology alumnus of IBTS. 51 Christian Mission in an Orthodox Context Each year IBTS, Prague, offe