Dulles: Church as Community of Disciples

Models of the Church by Avery Dulles is a favorite of book of mine largely because models serve to organize data much like theories do in the social sciences.  Dulles original book came out in 1978. He enlarged it in 1987 by adding a chapter at the end, “The Church: Community of Disciples.”  In an earlier post on Dulles, What is the Church Jim did not mention this model.  Perhaps that was because he could not find his copy of the book, or perhaps he was more familiar with the earlier edition. 

Review of Dulles Initial Models 

Dulles says that by its very constitution the Church is a communion of grace (Model 2: Mystical Communion) structured as a human society (Model 1 Institution) While sanctifying its own members it offers praise and worship to God (Model 3 Sacrament). It is permanently charged with the responsibility of spreading the good news of the Gospel (Model 4 Herald) and healing and consolidating the human community (Model 5 Servant)

For Dulles, models emphasizing different aspects of the Church were necessary; no super-model could adequately comprehend its mystery. Dulles realized that in practice theologians articulated a model and then incorporated aspects of other models into their favorite model. 

Dulles stated his own preference was for sacramental model as the starting point.  He was very much against using the institutional model as a starting point. However in his revision he admits that the anti-institutional biases of the sixties might have influenced him. Today, however we recognize that the sacramental model is also a strongly clerical model.  The importance of the clergy can be exaggerated both by the sacramental model of Catholicism and the herald model of Protestantism. Both the mysticism of the priesthood and charismatic preacher can promote clericalism.

Community of Disciples Model

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Dulles developed the “Community of Disciples” chapter as a variant of Model 2, the Church as Mystical Communion.  Pope John Paul II had used the phrase briefly in his first encyclical. Dulles thought that discipleship emphasized the personal, fallible, human aspects of the Church that were not captured by images such as the Body of Christ, or People of God that had been used to promote the Church as mystical communion

Dulles was attracted by the fact that “disciple” was one of the words that was used frequently in the New Testament as a designation for Christians. There are others including saints, brethren, believers, the assembly, and the way.. 

Dulles also recognized that disciples had more than one meaning, specifically that its use in the Gospels was different from it use in Acts. In the Gospels it usually refers to only people who accompanied Jesus on his journeys whereas in Acts it refers to all Christians. 

Dulles Misinterpretation of Disciples in the Gospels

(In criticizing Dulles, we must recognize that he regarded himself as a systematic theologian rather than a scripture scholar or pastoral theologian. I am sure his response to this critique would be that these are all interesting points but someone else’s job to correct).

Dulles presents an overly idealistic picture of the disciples. While he acknowledges differences between the Gospels and Acts he does not come to grips with different uses of the word.  Rather he claims that Jesus developed the disciples as a specialized group much like the modern Roman celibate priesthood or religious life. This misreading of the term disciple is easy to make from the Gospels. 

Misreading the Gospels as a Model for Church

What we have in the Gospels is very different from what we see in the Pauline Letters and Acts where there are communities which have an abundant outpouring of the Holy Spirit on many people besides Peter and Paul. 

Much of the time the Gospels present Jesus as a teacher. It is tempting to turn these public teaching sessions into a model of the Church as a gathering or assembly. Many of our parishes and congregations seem to replicate what we have in the Gospel teaching sessions. There is a pastor who models Jesus, a staff who models the disciples that immediately surrounded Jesus, and the congregation which models the crowd.

Dulles “Community of Disciples” model has been well received in parishes. People who engage in various parish ministries can easily see themselves as living in a community of disciples.

My Summary of the two meanings of the Greek word for disciple. 

The first meaning is a technical term, a physical and social relationship of a student to a teacher. Both Jesus and John had disciples in this sense, i.e. people who spent most of their day with the teacher, including sharing meals with him and receiving private teaching, and attended him when he gave public teachings. 

The second meaning is metaphorical, one can be a student of Plato, Socrates, or Moses without being physically in their presence. That is the meaning of the word in Acts. In the classical world, philosophy was not simply an intellectual subject. Disciples of Plato, Socrates, Moses and as well as Jesus were expected to actually live out their beliefs.

My Analysis of "Disciple" in the New Testament

Most of the time disciple in the Gospels is used as a technical term. It describes the small group of male students that regularly surrounded Jesus as he went from place to place. Other people who showed up at these teachings are usually described as followers. People who gave hospitality to Jesus were not called disciples, nor where the women who provided physical and financial support. Many followers and supporters could be considered disciples in a metaphorical sense but this sense is not generally used until after the resurrection of Jesus. The flavor of the technical term can be easily experienced just by simply substituting words such as assistants, or staff. These describe well what is taking place in the Gospels.

In fact the persons called “disciples” are often portrayed in very unflattering ways. Sometimes this is a literary device, the disciples ask the dumb student questions that give the teacher the opportunity to shine.

However the Gospel of Mark has a clear agenda to point out that it is Jesus whom we are to imitate not the disciples. Many scholars have recognized this and suspect that the earliest gospel was written in a time of threatening persecution, and Mark wanted to make it clear that we cannot depend upon church leadership (look how they failed Jesus in his time!).  Rather only Jesus is our model.

Matthew and Luke tone down Mark’s criticisms of the disciples, and begin to build toward a positive notion of discipleship that reaches its height in John’s use of the “beloved disciple” as an ideal Christian. Quite obviously the term in early Christianity usage migrated from its original technical use at the time of Jesus to a metaphorical use in Christian communities at the time the Gospels and Acts were written.  

It is very interesting that the Pauline letters, our earliest NT writings, never use the term disciple!!! Why? Obviously Paul was never a disciple in the original technical sense so he was not motivated to use the term for himself. In fact those who were actual disciple of Jesus during this lifetime may have questioned Paul’s authority. Paul regular uses another term, brethren, also widely used as a group identifier by Christians. Finally Paul developed the notion of the Mystical Body of Christ out of his personal revelation when Jesus asks “Why do you persecute ME?”

Some Examples in Mark

In Mark we see that Jesus calls two sets of brothers to leave their fishing boats to follow him. What did that mean?  Did they like modern priests and religious give up family and the family business?  No. We see Jesus with them in the house of Peter, and later they use the fishing boats in Jesus’s public ministry. My interpretation of their following (Mark does not use the word disciple although this section is often titled the call of the disciples) is that the fishermen reoriented their families and their livelihoods to the service of Jesus and his mission.

This story of two pairs of brothers is more about the universal brotherhood of Christians who are called to love one another as brothers in a new community formed around Jesus rather than about becoming disciples (students) in the technical sense. It is no accident that Mark portrayed two sets of physical brothers becoming members of a spiritual brotherhood by following Jesus.

Jesus pursued his mission in many places, not just in the synagogues or even the houses which would become the new places of Christian assembly in future decades.  He was in the marketplace and in the workplaces of seashore and agriculture. He went to the people rather than requiring the people to come to him, although some people did seek him out.. 

While a network of welcoming synagogues, houses, cities and towns developed, there is little evidence that Jesus asked his followers to separate themselves from people who did not follow him. In fact the early Jesus movement was an outward movement toward all those who were needy rather than inward movement to isolate and differentiate themselves from others as did the Pharisees.

Conclusion

The imitation of Jesus requires not just assembling for teaching (model 2) and sacraments (model 3) it requires going out to proclaim the Gospel in deeds more than words (model 4) as well as in service to others (model 5). 

Although the model of the community of disciples acknowledges the sinfulness of the Church it too easily can be used to justified the elitism of the standard phrase “the clergy, the religious, and the faithful”  in which the clergy does the teaching and ruling, the religious set the example and the laity has little to do other than the conventional “pray, pay, and obey.”  It also can be easy used to set up an elite within parishes and congregations of those who are known for their “discipleship”.

The community of disciples model can too easily become an inward church institutional model that fails to see a community of discipleship in the family, civic and work environments. It also can become a too intellectual model focusing upon beliefs and words rather than deeds and service to others.

Can the community of discipleship model be re-conceptualized to give stronger leadership roles for the faithful beyond those of merely assisting the clergy and religious as volunteers and lay ecclesial ministers ?  Can such discipleship be experienced in the world as well as in Church?

Yes if we recognize that leadership and discipleship are two sides to the same coin. 

Writers such as Greenleaf in Servant Leadership recognize that leaders can lead only if people follow (i.e. become disciples) and that followers discernment of true leaders, e.g. servant leaders, is just as important a choice as is the choice of becoming a servant leader.

Greenleaf's concept of servant leadership is really one of a community of leaders/disciples in which we are all sometimes leaders and sometimes disciples.  It is as applicable to the corporate world as to religious institutions. It offers a path to rethinking Community of Disciples in ways that avoid clericalism and elitism.