Lordship and Discipleship

by Eduard Schweizer

A classic study of Christian Iife in changing cultures, between the New Testament and the present day, first published in English in 1960 and long unavailable. `It is impossible to distil a pure creed. Every generation must proclaim the gospel in its own terms. It is foolish to withhold belief from the creeds of another generation simply because we cannot use their language today. But it is just as foolish to assent to all the creeds together, as if orthodoxy were like some cafeteria where you are obliged to eat something of everything... The New Testament contributors were courageous enough to be one-sided. They made their choice, and preached the message in terms their hearers could grasp, opposing clearly the special dangers of their time and place. Must our younger generation (or to take a quite different example, the Japanese people) first be converted to a Hebrew or Greek way of thinking in order to be able to receive the gospel? Or may we, without denying the old creeds, proclaim the same truth in the West, perhaps in terms of the meaning of God's acts for our existence, and in Japan, perhaps in quite different terms?'

144 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1987

Reviews

[Richard Brand · Rating 2 out of 5]

It may not be fair to give this work a two star rating, because I could never really get a grasp of what he was attempting to do so I do not know if he did it well or not. It seemed to be focused on two or three different ways to do about analyzing the early christian preaching and the formation of the creeds. There was much debate about whether the incarnation, human history, crucifixion and resurrection had any importance for the Hellenistic culture. There did seem to be a concern as to how what happened in Christ became real for those who are in Christ as the church. Schweizer seemed to be concerned that an emphasis on one part of the gospel about the pre-existing Christ and the exaltation might be heard as the gnostic notion of philosophy. While another part of the preaching might make it sound like just another Jewish sect. I have read 28 of these Studies in Biblical Theology and this is the first one that I could never figure out what the heck was the significance of what he was trying to argue. Must me by age