An Augustinian-Anthropological Approach to Anglican Disciple Formation: Response to Lambeth and Vision36

Abstract

From the Season of Intentional Discipleship through the 2023 Lambeth Call and Vision36, the Anglican Communion has developed a coherent program of discipleship, evangelism and church planting. Its documents identify Baptism, whole-life transformation, Scripture, prayer, worship, service, witness and the Spirit as constitutive of discipleship. These commitments reflect a substantive theology of baptismal vocation, participation in Christ’s life and mission, formation within the worshipping community and the Spirit’s transformation of persons and communities for the world. What they do not yet provide is an integrated developmental anthropology relating these elements to the formation, disorder, restoration and integration of the person. This essay argues that the imago Dei – distorted in the Fall, restored in Christ and realized through the indwelling Spirit – supplies that architecture. Extending Augustine’s analogical project in De Trinitate , it derives three dispositions (intellect, spirituality, communion), two dynamics (maturity, unity) and their culmination in the disciple as Anthropos .