Yoder on effectiveness
"The relationship between the obedience of God’s people and the triumph of God’s cause is not a relationship of cause and effect but one of cross and resurrection."
- John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 238.
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Genocide
5 weeks ago
5 comments:
Yoder is brilliant. and possibly my homeboy.
I've enjoying him secondhand as I've been reading some Stanley Hauerwas. Like Hauerwas though, I'm not convinced by his eschatology (though still discovering what this is...).
Yoder is superior to Hauerwas in many ways, however. Especially on ecclesiology--Hauerwas' church is a naval gazer, focused only on itself. Yoder's church is community/gemeinde, but it seeks the shalom of the city wherein God sends us. It is missiological.
Thus, Hauerwas can write books with titles like, "Against the Nations," while Yoder, in reply, wrote "For the Nations."
Hauerwas translates Yoder's Anabaptist polemic against Constantine and all "Christendoms" (which I share) into a polemic against democracy. Yoder, like Bonhoeffer, sees democracy as a penultimate good--certainly not part of the gospel, but not to be pooh-poohed either.
Thanks Michael - I haven't read much Yoder. Was it Y or H who came up with the phrase "Against the world for the world"? (i.e. putting the two titles together)
"Against the World for the World" was an early slogan of the World Council of Churches. Yoder may have commented on it, I don't know.
I suspect any recent use of this phrase to mediate between Yoder and Hauerwas would be by H & his students since JHY died one year after writing For the Nations.
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