Politics of Jesus Revisited [Article], The - John Howard Yoder

7/30/2019 Politics of Jesus Revisited [Article], The - John Howard Yoder

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THE POLITICS OF JESUS REVISITED

John Howard Yoder, unpublished, 1997. An assigned lecture at Toronto Mennonite Studies

Center, March 1997.

The 1972 bookPolitics of Jesus was written under assignment. The assignment came from the

Institute of Mennonite Studies, the research arm of the Associated Mennonite Biblical

Seminaries, under the impulsion of the Peace Section of the Mennonite Central Committee andthe Showalter Foundation of Kansas. They assigned the Institute to get someone to produce a

presentation of a "peace witness" which Mennonites could recognize as their own, yet which

would be aimed at non-Mennonite readers, would not be based upon a denominational identityappeal, and would make its way with a nondenominational publisher.

There was some exploration of the possibility of doing that in the form of a contemporary ethicalargument, perhaps engaging non-pacifist interlocutors..... but further consultation did not lead

that way. What finally came out was two books; a collection of essays called The Original

Revolution (Herald Press) and The Politics of Jesus. I have been asked here to review what hasbecome of the latter, which was published first in 1972 and slightly updated in 1994.

I can distinguish several kinds of themes that could be gathered under the above announced title.

Not all would be equally possible to say something about. Not all would be equally rewarding.

I/1) I note first one theme which is not worth pursuing in detail. Half of the book is a reading of

the Gospel narrative in the light of the question: "Do the documents describe Jesus to us as

apolitical?" The background to that question was the wide acceptance of the negative answergiven that question in most American Christian moral thought in mid-century. In my reading of

the Gospel texts, following mostly Luke's outline, my interpretations were drawn from thescholarship of the time i.e. before 1970. On that level my account was not original. Every

reading of a paragraph or of a verse from the Gospels can of course be challenged as having cited

the wrong recent scholar. Some of mine were challenged, but not sweepingly. Some of those

challenges were picked up in the epilogs which I added to some chapters in the 1994 revisededition; but in principle such details were not basic to the book's thesis. Not many reviews,

friendly or otherwise, in fact, made much of the readings of particular texts. I have not attempted

to catalog these responses or to answer them one by one.

Some readers and reviewers (e.g. Tom Finger in Sojourners December 1976) have said that I wasa scripture scholar. By no means. My agenda was theological ethics. I took my readers to theNew Testament to test a theme in theological ethics which had been dominant from the 1930's

through the 1960's, most bluntly in the works of Reinhold Niebuhr, namely that although Jesus

loved his enemies to the death, and said that his followers should do the same, we do not need todo that, since Jesus is not pertinent to our political world.

There are two partial exceptions to the above bracketing of exegetical detail:


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I/2) One of them concerns a single item in the Gospels, namely my echoing (with someambivalence) Andr Trocm's notion that Jesus' proclaiming the year of Jubilee in his first

Nazareth speech should be taken seriously as characterizing his message as socio-economic

"Good News," and as a particular kind of eschatology in realization. That theme has been found

fruitful since then by activists and publicists, as well as by some scripture scholars. I know ofthree supportive dissertations on the area, which I cite in the epilogue to the chapter in question.

There is also one negative dissertation I know of, done at Toronto by a Canadian Mennonite,

Jacob Elias, who sets the Trocm notion aside on general grounds of redaction criticism.

I/3) The second half of the book was an unsystematic set of soundings from different places in

the NT epistles, testing whether anything of the "political" impact of Jesus, described from theGospels in the first half of the book, can be confirmed from the apostolic testimonies of the rest

of the New Testament. The themes I selected were those which were already "out there" in the

scholarship of the time, especially those which might relate to the peace issue, and those which

might prima facie be embarrassing. What I generally found was that, although expressed in

quite different idioms in the face of quite different challenges, the apostles were respondingfaithfully and creatively to the impact of the Jesus events I had already described. The

widespread notion of some scholars of long ago, to the effect that the New Testaments shows usa profound qualitative or substantive shift from the impact of Jesus to the generation of the

Apostles, seemed largely to be refuted by the straightforward documentary evidence.

In this connection as well there is one exception to my bracketing the issues of exegetical

concern.

I/4) Under the heading "Justification by Grace through Faith" I reported in 1972 an orientation

which was beginning to revolutionize studies in the work and writings of Paul. To say it in termsof caricature, Paul the Lutheran was coming to be replaced by Paul the messianic Jew. For

centuries the notion of "justification" has meant forgiveness, whereby God sets aside the guilt

which the proclamation of the Law makes us aware of. I cited Krister Stendahl then as an early

speaker for a different vision, according to which the good news is not centrally or merely theremission of guilt but the creation of a new community. That vision has grown to the point of

dominating academic NT scholarship. It includes a deeper vision of Paul's continuing

Jewishness, and has in fact drawn Jewish scholars into the conversation. I found little needing tobe added to that chapter in the 1994 epilog, since its point had been made. Yet classical

"existential" understandings of Paul continue to be present.

My summary thus far is preface, in that it explains how my "revisiting" the book in March 1997

is not really about updating any of the detail of its distillation from the New Testament. The

challenges it matters to address come from elsewhere.

II. What is then the status, in moral theology today, of an appeal to the New Testament?

II/1. I have been called both "fundamentalist" and "pietist" by unsympathetic readers, since they

put me in an already-closed slot in their minds, to which they had relegated the use of the Bible.They did not read me carefully enough to be aware that my reading of the scriptural texts was


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post- and not pre-critical. I did not offer that reading as a validating appeal to particular scriptural

propositions, but rather reflexively as a test of the position of others who had set the ethic ofJesus aside on the ground of his being "apolitical." It may be that the reason the book stayed in

print, by staying on the reading lists of church college courses, was that some teachers saw its

stance as "evangelical," but that was not the readership for whom the book was intended. The

intended readership was ivy league seminarians, who by and large did not read it, because theirteachers did not, because Niebuhr had already closed their minds. They were the intended

readership, because they were the persons impressed by the depoliticization of Jesus by the

niebuhrians.

II/2 One important alternative to both fundamentalism and liberalism, in the thought of the

1960's, was referred to then as "biblical realism." It was a post-critical but pre-cynical way ofletting canonical texts speak for themselves. It was never doctrinaire enough to become a

"school," but competent independent spirits like Otto Piper, Paul Minear, and Markus Barth

belonged in it. I referred to it in my 1972 preface, in a way which could be over-interpreted and

was. The book was taken up by some as if it were an instance of a special hermeneutic stance. I

have been assigned several times to report on "how I read the Bible." I denied that; yet I do notmind admitting that to take no special stance, and to stand there reading carefully, is itself

something that can have to be explained, in an age dominated by the need to classify.(1)

II/3 The response of Richard Mouw, a well-intentioned Calvinist friend, was formally similar.

Even though most of the sources I cited were from mainstream Lutheran and Reformed NTscholars, Mouw put me in the pigeonhole he had already labeled "Anabaptist," which the

Reformed creeds until recently instructed him to "despise," rather than attending to my reading

of the texts. Mouw would believe in principle in respecting an appeal to scripture, though he didnot attend to that in his response to me.

James Gustafson said that my position is worthy of attention, although he did not himself do that

attending, because he had juxtaposed me to his own pietistic Evangelical Mission Covenant

origins. Gustafson does not believe in the relevance of a close reading of canonical texts. That

sharpens the next question, to which I now intend to point.

This is then a fitting theme for the present "revisitation." What is the place of ancient scriptures

in the discussion of Christian identity in our time? If we outgrow fundamentalism, what replacesit? Can there be a new vision of constructing a responsible theology with no canonical anchor?

What anchor would replace it? Or is "an anchor" the wrong metaphor when we are invited to

navigate on the high seas of oecumene?

III Between the question of whether to be biblical at all, which I just touched on, and the earlier

question of how to read particular texts, which I set aside at the beginning, there is the medianrange, wide and more arbitrary, of things which are clearly there in the texts, which we are not

sure what to do with. Here the "revisiting" to be done today applies to our total appropriation of

the canonical witness, and only glancingly to the fact that my book touched on them. Thechallenges I now note are addressed not to my reading, but to what was there for me to read.

III/1. Is the ethic of discipleship, assuming that my book reads it correctly as far as the NT is


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concerned, convincing as a way that we, as comfortable North Americans in the 1990's, want to

live? This question was sharpened by attention a few years ago to the traveling museum exhibitaroundThe Martyrs' Mirror and to the semi-centenary remembering of Harold Bender's

"Anabaptist Vision." Mennonites are glad to go beyond the line of duty to be recognized as do-

gooders around the world, and domestically in tornado relief and advocacy for indigenous rights,

but we would prefer not to bear the cross. Suffering servant rhetoric does not really describewhat most of us want to do most of the time. It is not what our schools train for. We want our

children to be solid citizens, ethical and creative enough to prosper honestly, and prosperous

enough to be generous. But in North America, especially in this most hospitable Canada, wereally don't resonate to the church/world dualism which the New Testament takes for granted. If

that is really what Jesus calls for, then, won't we need to learn to read Jesus through a more

realistic grid? It is not fair, some tell us, to fund raise from those in our cultural network whohave earned disposable wealth, and then to project a normative discipleship vision drawn from

Jesus.

Stating this question has nothing much to do, you will note, with revisiting The Politics of Jesus

as a document. It is rather about its subject matter, as a contemporary challenge. The responsewhich it would call for would not be given by exegesis, but by moral or pastoral theology.

III/2 Is an ethic of subordination and turning the other cheek an adequate response to the militant

evil in a racist, sexist, militarist world? One level on which we face this is the social. In the old

dualism, carried over whole from the first century to the sixteenth, to the nineteenth, it madesense to let the gentiles run the government, such as there needed to be, and for the nonresistant

folk to lie low, helping with neither defense nor offense. The peace church minorities were too

small to be of much help in defending Christendom, and there were decent landlords and rulershappy to count on our nonviolent ancestors' loyalty while they kept the peace.

For many of our contemporaries, however, including leading members in Mennonite churches, to

do that today would be irresponsible. There are more of us now, and the powers of evil are more

blatant. We must not fail to stand up to be counted; if not, we share the blame for the evil we do

not help to resist. Some would then say that we need to dilute our nonviolence in order to usestate power responsibly for good. A few would say that with enough creativity nonviolent action

itself can enter the conflict arena redemptively without any selling out on the issue of violence.

In either case, the challenge lies beyond the purview of the NT model, as its answer must.

III/3 The same challenge arises as well on the individual level. It is destructive, we are told, to

encourage underdogs to be content with their lot, even if that was the apostles' advice back then.Victims should not be encouraged to tolerate the system which has hurt them. A few would say

that the apostle's advice was right, was good news, back then, but that in a changed world (and a

changed church) it no longer reaches far enough. Others would say that the apostles were wrongfrom the outset. Any delay in the empowering of the underdogs is unacceptable. They should be

encouraged, ennobled, enabled, to restore the cosmic balance by being in a position to do to their

oppressors what was done to them. As Gandhi used to say, to renounce retaliation is no victory if

there is no capacity to retaliate, which one possesses in the first place, which one can then freelyrenounce. Deciding to go the second mile can only come after we are back on our feet.


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The chapter of my book which was subjected to the most angry criticism, the rejection based

least on the texts I was reading, was the one on "Revolutionary Subordination." It was subject toboth of the above objections (III/2, III/3). This is the point at which Saul/Paul reaped the most

angry apriori rejection, even though the so-called Haustafeln were not his idea alone. The prior

criterion of contemporary judgment, which no ancient witness can withstand, is the imperative

which our politically correct age is sure of, namely that of empowering individual dignity, at thecost of whatever other values may stand in the way.

III/4 The thinnest chapter of The Politics in terms of textual depth is the last. It argues, in a waythat did not need to be changed decades later, that the eschatology of the NT was a vision of

cosmic combat led by the Lamb. That vision challenged the geopolitical commonplaces of the

time then, as well as of our time. Yet the argument to that effect was not presented at depth in

The Politics, as I have sought to do several times since then:(2)

The question remains open whether in our day any eschatological vision, i.e. any understanding

of the nature of things not echoing the market-regulated, state-regulated pragmatism of our

master culture, and yet still affirming meaningful action within history, can be taken seriously.

Some of our neighbors will acknowledge that the renunciation of violence can be imperative ifand only as long as we can promise that nonviolent conflict can deliver the same goods. Some

will listen to criticism of the death penalty, or of escalating incarceration rates, if and only as

long as we can promise to make the streets safe again. Some will be open to caring more for thepoor but if and only as long as it can be done without slowing down economic growth.

There used to be a periodical gathering of Mennonite academics and ecclesiastics called "PeaceTheology Colloquium." One early session of that forum, meeting in Kansas City in October

1976, discussed The Politics of Jesus. It did not make me much wiser, though it opened helpfulnew questions. The critique I remember, which I have not yet played back here, was the call for

me to back up the particular reading with a general system of social ethics. Both Glen Stassen

(then at Southern Baptist Seminary, now at Fuller Theological Seminary) and Richard Mouw

(then at Calvin College, now also at Fuller) lifted from their encounter with the Jesus book aprior agenda in general social ethics which they asked me to treat.

Our intellectual culture has trained us to be skeptical of particular truths if they are not sustainedby a priori methodological generalizations, and to trust in general affirmations if they sound

sure enough. Unless we know how the rest of the possible questions still to be asked will play

out across the spread sheet of all possible issues, we are programmed to doubt the claim of theparticular canonical witness. Unless the call to discipleship is translated satisfactorily into some

modern general idiom like "the problem of power," it does not merit a hearing.

I do not at all mind responding to that kind of challenge. That may be the necessary next stage of

the conversation. Yet I cannot grant that the claims of the particular canonical witness should be

contingent on prior systematic validation. The annunciation that "the Kingdom is at Hand" and

the call to discipleship does not need to be accredited before the bar of some modern consensusbefore we decide whether to take it seriously. It is rather the systemic claims which need to be

validated by demonstrating how they can make sense of the interface between the canon and the


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1. I have therefore gathered some of my thoughts on the subject of interpretation in a desktop

packet on "How to be read by the Bible."

2. "To Serve God and Rule the World" in Royal Priesthood;

"Armaments and Eschatology" Studies in Christian Ethics 1988; "Ethics and Eschatology" exauditu 6 (1990) 119-128.

3. Luke T. Johnson, Ben Witherington, Richard Hays, N. T. Wright...

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