Church and Mission in the New Testament

1 credits · Divinity School

This seminar examines the subject of ecclesiology through the lens of the New Testament writings. This course seeks to understand what sort of vision(s) of the Church the New Testament documents encourage and what kinds of ordered ministries (apostle, evangelist, prophet, bishop, teacher, etc.) they describe. The approach taken is historical, theological, exegetical, and missional—how did the New Testament writers envision the character, structure, and purpose of the early Christian community? How, in the context of the long history of diverse Christian understandings of the Church, should the New Testament writings inform current approaches to conceiving and shaping the corporate existence of ecclesial communities and their ordered ministries? This course will help orient questions of the church's missional identity today through close reading of the New Testament, both in foundational texts like the Book of Acts as well as in reference to NT epistles and Revelation.