A very helpful recent study is The Paradox of the Cross in the Thought of Saint Paul by Anthony Tyrell Hanson. By researches both broad and deep, Hanson demonstrates that the Pauline theme cited above (especially III/A) is far more widely present and more important for Paul and his successors than is usually discerned. Hanson brings to bear powerful erudition in three directions: the power of paradox as not merely a literary form but a theological value; a deep review of Paul’s scriptural citations and allusions; and a review of the overlap between Paul and his fellow believers saw themselves as continuing the work of the cross, in the way which the texts cited above state most simply.
In his chapter “Go Thou and Do Likewise” A. E. Harvey” reviews some of the nuances surrounding the notion of “doing as Jesus did.” He argues that where that imperative is stated most simply (e.g., 1 John 2:6, listed II/a above) what is meant is not any literal conforming of the disciples' lives to that of Jesus but the broad pattern of self giving love. Harvey agrees with Harnack that the notion of following ]esus’ example was absent from Christian thought until the age of Francis.
The Franciscan theologian Bonaventure cited as coming from Gregory or even Augustine the phrase omnis Christi actio rostra set instructio every deed of Christ teaches us. Yet Bonaventure’s intent in the citation is to distinguish between “instruction,” which is like “the broad pattern of self-giving love,” which is binding, and “imitation,” which disciples are not called to. He distinguishes six ways in which perfection “shines forth” in Christ; only one of the six is exemplary for believers. He describes it in six traits: poverty virginity obedience, praying through the night, praying for his enemies, and offering himself to die for his enemies. To fall short of perfection (thus defined as equal to the monastic state) by marrying, using property soberly sleeping through the night, and serving one’s prince in war, is not sin and requires no forgiveness.
None of these writers, contemporary or classic, seems to have been attending to the quite evident distinction between a naive outward (“franciscan”) replicating of the shape of Jesus’ life (barefoot itinerancy celibacy and manual labor), which never arises in the apostolic writings, and vulnerable enemy love and renunciation of dominion in the real world, which is omnipresent. The latter is far more concrete than “a broad pattern of self-giving love,” and the former is a red herring. Thus mainstream interpreters, even when intending to take seriously the originality and radicality of Jesus’ teaching in the original setting (as Harvey certainly does at the outset) wind up eviscerating or platonizing the concreteness of the ethic of gospel.
