Gorman, Michael | Participating in Christ

Participating in Christ: Explorations in Paul’s Theology and Spirituality
Michael Gorman
Paperback: Baker Academic, 2019, 294pp.

Introduction

Michael Gorman’s 2019 book, Participating in Christ, is an essential work for understanding the Pauline vision of how we participate together in Christ in our local church communities.  A Professor of Biblical Studies and Theology at St. Mary’s Seminary and University, Gorman has argued in earlier publications that believers justified by faith in Jesus Christ undergo moral and spiritual transformation, both as individuals and as gathered communities.

According to Gorman, traditional Protestant notions of “forensic” justification, which hold that God simply “declares” individuals righteous on account of Christ, as in a legal verdict, are insufficient and do not cohere with Paul’s account of justification.  Participating in Christ is a collection of Gorman’s responses to critiques of his earlier works. He notes that this book is “neither a summation of those earlier publications, nor a complete, systematic treatment of participation in Paul” (xxiii).

Gorman here argues that Paul believes individuals called to faith in Christ by the Holy Spirit are morally and spiritually transformed.  They show this transformation by living lives according to what Gorman calls the “cruciform” way of Jesus.  Because Paul wrote before the Gospels were written, he knows the Jesus story from the oral traditions of the early Christian community, and from what he discerned about Jesus from his conversion on the Road to Damascus.  This transformation is possible according to Gorman, because those who have faith in Christ are able to participate in his power that makes love, service, and humility possible.

Participatory Worship

Participation in Christ, the central theme of this book, is undoubtedly for Gorman an act of worship, but he says little about the worship gathering as it is known in most churches, focusing more holistically on our participation with Christ. This book offers, therefore, a solid scriptural and theological foundation for the concept of participation on which the practical dynamics of participatory worship can be built.

Gorman is clear that we cannot passively be involved in the church. To be in Christ, is to participate with Christ. “[The] new life we live,” he writes, “is in fact the life of Christ within us. It is a life of participation. If Christ has been raised, then he is not dead but alive, and he comes to inhabit his people, both individually and corporately, to infuse them with his very life, which is in fact the life of God [see Galatians 2:19-20]” (260). We participate together in Christ as the Holy Spirit works in us, among us, and through us to demonstrate the love and character of Christ to the world. In Philippians 2:12-16, Gorman writes, “Paul is suggesting that the Christlike church is an obedient church, even to the point of suffering with and like Christ, faithfully displaying the “word of life” – the life-giving gospel – in both word and deed” (25).

Gorman also responds to critics who argue that his concept of “cruciformity” ignores the resurrection. He argues that in the lives of the justified, cruciformity and resurrection are simultaneous. We are enabled to follow Jesus’s example of love, service, humility, and endurance in the face of hardship because we participate in the life made possible by the resurrection. For Gorman, the resurrected Jesus is still the Jesus who was crucified, and he suggests that Paul believes that believers “carry in their bodies the death of Christ Jesus.”

Traditional Protestant accounts of justification are often based on the assumption that Martin Luther believed in a forensic account of justification, where God simply declares sinners righteous on account of a profession of faith. For Gorman, that account of justification ignores the connections between the justification and moral transformation that comes about by participation in Christ and participation in the body of believers in Christ.  He rightly notes that much newer scholarship on the Protestant Reformers show that their writings can also speak of empowerment by an indwelling Christ.

Radical Kinship

Although Gorman does not use the language of radical kinship, he does emphasize that the sort of reconciliation in Christ that undergirds radical kinship is an indication of the presence of Christ in the church community. Expositing 2 Corinthians 5, Gorman notes: “the justice/righteousness expected of the community includes the practice of what we would call restorative justice – that is, bringing people together with God and one another” (41).

Gorman goes on to explore God’s work of reconciliation as described by Paul in Romans 12-13. He writes: “Paul considers nonretaliation and enemy-love as constitutive of being in Christ; they are two of the cruciform practices that are characteristic of the new day, the new creation … In addition to being Christlike practices, however, they are also Godlike practices. To be like Christ is to be like God, for God was in Christ, loving enemies, reconciling the hostile world” (45).

Active Disciple-making

Gorman’s exegesis in support of his argument that Paul believed that believers were transformed by their union with Christ, is both detailed and convincing. Contra “prosperity Gospel” preachers, or those who claim that Paul offers believers a joy according to the world, Gorman argues that Paul’s vision of discipleship is rooted in co-suffering with Christ, humble service, forgiveness, and reconciliation–all of which is empowered by the example of Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit who makes resurrection life possible. Christian communities filled with the Holy Spirit are called to imitate this love in action.

Hence, Christian communities following this model are called to discern how they are to practice this ongoing love in the context of both church and world. Disciples are made as the Holy Spirit works in all members of the church, compelling us to imitate Christ within the contours of our particular time and place. Gorman writes: “Paul summons people not merely to ‘believe in’ Christ or even just to ‘believe into’ him (Gal. 2:16) but to become part of a community, the body of Christ, that ‘re-incarnates’ the Messiah in the world. His story becomes the community’s story, the in-Christ community bears witness – in word and deed – to the gospel of the crucified and resurrected Messiah” (24, emphasis in original). It is the Spirit in the gathering of Christ-followers therefore that makes disciples, and disciples are learning from one other as they embody the Gospel together and learn what it means to follow Jesus.

This book’s arguments are important guideposts for both individual and communal life in what Gorman calls “Communities of the Messiah Jesus.” Gorman’s careful historical exegesis of key texts in Biblical Greek makes significant contributions to our understanding of the scriptural basis for participatory Christian discipleship and transformation.