Following Jesus

Discipleship in the Gospel of Luke and Beyond

Phillip C. Thrailkill

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781666743463
  9781666743470
• eBook ISBN:
  9781666743487
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Two questions are braided together in Luke's Gospel. Who is Jesus, and what does it mean to be his student and apprentice? The church has spent much of its intellectual energies on the first question, but not so much on the second. We are precise in our Christology and vague in our Discipleology (my new word!). Of the four biographies that open the New Testament, Luke is perhaps the best equipped to answer the question of what it means to follow Jesus along with others, and what we can expect in the process. Luke's Gospel is dense with story after story about Jesus's stumbling, goofy, persistent disciples. And his second volume--Acts--continues the tale. There is a deep continuity, as Luke teaches, between Jesus's original disciples and the ones who later declared their allegiance to him after his resurrection. We walk in the footsteps of pioneers in this new way of living with a Jesus who is always near but just beyond sight. The aim of this book is to plunder the fruits of New Testament scholarship, especially the tools of rhetorical and narrative criticism, to highlight what an incredible adventure came with the call to follow me.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: A First Caution
• Chapter 2: A Second Caution
• Chapter 3: Our Inheritance
• Chapter 4: Mapping the Shape of the Text
• Chapter 5: Key Discipleship Passages In Luke
• Chapter 6: A Summary of Luke’s Teaching on Following Jesus
• Chapter 7: What Biblical Scholars Are Saying about Discipleship in Luke
• Chapter 8: What Researchers Are Saying About Discipleship
• Chapter 9: So What? What Now?
• Chapter 10: A Better Reading Of Matthew’s Great Commission
• Chapter 11: Discipleship and Doctrine
• Chapter 12: On the Use of Discipleship Assessments
• Afterword
• Appendix 1: Identifying Luke’s Thought Units
• Appendix 2: Synoptic Comparisons
• Appendix 3: The Raw Materials of the Holy Trinity
• Appendix 4: Contrasting Biblical Discipleship and Modern Church (Club) Membership
• Appendix 5: What the United Methodist Church Teaches on the Incarnation
• Appendix 6: Bishops Coke and Asbury Notes in the 1798 Book of Discipline (KJV).1
• Appendix 7: Luke and Roman Imperial Theology and Propaganda.
• Appendix 8: A Checklist of Possible Spiritual Openings For Evil
• Appendix 9: The Women in Luke’s Gospel
• Appendix 10: A Few Thoughts on Biblical Power Encounters
• Appendix 11: A Psychiatrist And The Demonic
• Appendix 12: Scriptural Echoes in Luke 19:28–48
• Appendix 13: What is a Disciple? A Sampling of Definitions
• Appendix 14: Jesus’ Method and Other Rabbis of His Day.
• Appendix 15: What Researchers Identify as the Primary Characteristics of Maturing Disciples
• Off My Shelf: For Further Reading on Discipleship
• Bibliography