And that is the problem: is it really credible that a body of literature which has formed the community of faith from one generation to another should now be regarded as largely of historical interest only?

Well, that depends on the extent to which the Hellenization of the Christian worldview in the early centuries constituted a departure from – a forgetting of – the original Jewish narrative framework that accounted for the story of Jesus and the emergence of an international church. That there was a departure seems undeniable. So it doesn’t seem to me too preposterous to suggest that with the (OK, disputed) end of Christendom we are at last emerging from this captivity to a worldview that is intrinsically alien to the biblical worldview, in which case we are bound to ask to what extent the understanding of scripture that has prevailed since then has been skewed by the Greek-Roman view of things.

The church as the community of faith has always been on the margins of society, as it is of the world - in every context in which it finds expression.

That is a rather snobbish and self-righteous view of the church. The fact is that for 1500 years or so Europe regarded itself as a Christian culture and sought to export that culture to other parts of the world. Yes, the ‘true’ church always tried to distinguish itself from a corrupt Christendom, but I would argue that both in its dissent and in its worldview it was still a product of Christendom. The Reformation, for all the good intentions of the reformers, was only Christendom cut down to national proportions. In America many of the deep cultural assumptions of Christendom are still powerfully at work – hence my friend Rita’s distress about the level of vitriol directed by conservative Christians against Barack Obama.

My problem with your defence of traditional formulations of the faith is that I suspect you are still in captivity to the Christendom or modern paradigm. My view is that the best hermeneutical strategy we have available genuinely to critique that paradigm and generate an authentically biblical alternative is the historical-narrative one. It differs from your approach essentially in that it places at the centre of our theology the historical existence of a community rather than the faith of the believing individual. That suggests the need to take seriously the present historical circumstances of the church. So although there is certainly something to be learnt from the transitional experience of the early church as it journeyed from nationhood to Holy Roman Empire, we have to consider the particular challenges of our current post-Christendom context.

It seems to me that it is highly appropriate biblically to regard this situation as eschatologically significant, but a narrative theology warns us against thinking of this in cyclical terms, as though every challenge can be resolved by going back to the early church and trying to recapture its pristine condition. Equally, discipleship needs to be adapted to the particular circumstances that we face. Jesus’ disciples had enough trouble dealing with their own situation. Why do we imagine that they were being trained by Jesus to deal with the situation of the post-Christendom church in the 21st century? That is historical nonsense.

My argument is not against discipleship per se. Your home group experience is beside the point. I am arguing against a model of discipleship that is either too narrow (fitted to the limited religious experience of the modern church) or historically anachronistic (a fictive attempt to imagine that we are called to do what Jesus’ disciples had to do).