Imitating Christ: The Disputed Character of Christian Discipleship

by Luke Timothy Johnson

Overview

Is discipleship about personal sanctification or social reform?

Believers are divided on a question central to Christian identity: what does it mean to follow Jesus? For centuries, imitating Christ meant the pursuit of holiness, conforming the self to Jesus through self-sacrifice in order to join him in eternal life. But some Christians today consider this model to be self-centered. Instead, they say, true disciples ought to imitate Jesus in confronting corrupt social systems on behalf of the oppressed.

In Imitating Christ,esteemed New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson seeks the origin of this fissure. Surveying the New Testament, medieval mysticism, modern theology, and more, Johnson shows how twentieth-century social-gospel and liberation theologies created a new model of discipleship. He then evaluates the theological implications of the two models and asks what we can learn from each. Inspired by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Thomas Merton, Johnson puts forward a vision of discipleship that can revitalize Christian witness in the world today.

Replete with keen exegesis and spiritual insight, Imitating Christ reorients Christian living toward pursuing sainthood. Pastors and interested lay readers alike will rediscover a rich heritage in these pages.

Catholic Media Association (CMA) Book Award Spirituality Contemporary Third Place (2025)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802883100
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	08/06/2024
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Luke Timothy Johnson is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Christian Origins at Candler School of Theology, Emory University. He won the 2011 Grawemeyer Award in Religion for his Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity. Johnson’s many other books include The Revelatory Body; Brother of Jesus, Friend of God; The Writings of the New Testament; and the two-volume work The Canonical Paul.

Editorial Reviews

CHOICE
“Recommended.”

“Luke Timothy Johnson offers a remarkable survey of what it has meant to follow Jesus, and how that intention has been characterized and altered over two thousand years. Equally comfortable in New Testament exegesis and historical summary, sharp in theological analysis and unafraid in offering judgment and pointing to a better path, Johnson offers a wise, wide-ranging, and absorbing account of the heart of being a Christian. Those of conservative and progressive strands alike will discover here the origins of their convictions and the weaknesses of their assumptions. Johnson’s impressive narrative is both a lament for what Christianity has lost and an inspiring call to what it perhaps has never had. This is a book to ponder, digest, and discuss, with an argument to appreciate, embody, and put to work.”
—Samuel Wells, vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, UK

“With characteristic force and clarity, Luke Johnson argues that the last two centuries have seen the emergence of a deep fissure in Christian understandings of discipleship, with the transformation of society challenging the traditional focus on transforming the self. Beyond tracing the history of this development, moreover, Johnson’s assessment of these two models of discipleship makes Imitating Christ a touchstone for thinking about what it means to follow Jesus.”
—Ian A. McFarland, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Theology, Candler School of Theology, Emory University

“Luke Timothy Johnson is a generous, thoughtful, and incredibly wide-ranging theologian from whom there is always much to learn. This book is the culmination of decades of thought about what it means to follow Christ as a disciple. Deeply rooted in his lifetime’s service as a scholar of the New Testament, bolstered by his extensive learning in the Christian tradition, and showcasing his gift for insight and clarity, Imitating Christ offers us both a compelling thesis about the whole history of Christian reflection on discipleship and a vision of how we should embrace the different aspects of that tradition with open hearts if we are to live what we preach.”

—Lewis Ayres, professor of Catholic and historical theology, Durham University, UK

“Johnson’s book is a thought-provoking exploration of the shape of Christian discipleship from its roots in the New Testament, through the lives of martyrs, monastics, and mystics, and to what Johnson argues are its profound changes in the last three centuries. It is also a persuasive plea for the deep union of the life of prayer (love of God) and the life of engagement with the world (love of neighbor).”
—Rebekah Eklund, professor of theology, Loyola University Maryland

“Exemplifying the cogency, lucidity, and critical sharpness that we have come to expect of his writing, Luke Timothy Johnson dissects the two prevailing—and conflicting—visions of discipleship in American Christianity. He has given us a sweeping overview of Christian spiritualities and a penetrating analysis of their transformations in the modern world.”
—E. Brooks Holifield, author of Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War

From the Publisher