Incarnational Discipleship In A Secular Age By Glen Stassen

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Recommended: Understanding world religion reflection paper

Jorge E. Lopez
Book Review #2
03-04-2104

A THICKER JESUS: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age by Glen Stassen

This book indeed is one of those books that every Christian should read. The author did a great job translating his knowledge and experience into this concise book that contain many insights useful for our ministries. In summary, out of the many questions implied in the book, perhaps one of the more important ones to summarize the book is, what does it mean to be a Jesus’ disciple in a materialistic world like the one we have today? Another one is to ask, does being a Jesus’ follower have ethical implications in a pluralistic world like ours? Well! In this book, Glenn Stassen tries to investigate our situation as followers of Jesus in the present age suggesting an “incarnational discipleship” that addresses the lack of discipleship our world experience today. In order to this, Stassen proposes us with an ethical vision that can build our identity to enable believers to live devotedly in the secular world in which we live today.
Within the pages of the book, the author gives a significant exposition of the “atonement theory,” something he calls an “incarnational theory.” This atonement theory easily departs from “penal substitution” being just more than a sign of love in which morality should be exercise the right way to follow Jesus. Furthermore, this atonement theory says the author, is an indication of Jesus’ peaceful hostility leading to the question of divine love as spoken in the Sermon on the Mount. However, the author remembers how Bonhoeffer dealt with the more committed way of Discipleship focusing on “denial without public engagement.” The call to divine love is not to resist evil but to struggle ...

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...style, names, words but the way to church renewal in world-wide discipleship. What is really needed in this secular society and church is a “discovering again of Jesus,” explaining it as “a thicker Jesus.” Therefore, one last insight the book taught me was to think about discipleship interactively. It is not a passive but an active message. It is by going into the flied of spiritual battle that true discipleship follow the ways of Jesus. It is not a commitment one but of many who shares and advocate for the same rights and duties to exercise what was recommended by their Leader. What the book implies as the main theme is that discipleship must be active and incarnational meaning that all believers should feel anxious to support the cause of Jesus in a world that although dead in their sins is safe under the divine umbrella of the power of incarnational discipleship.

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