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Review Summary: John Yoder gets it! |
Date: 2008-12-08 |
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Details: Truly excellent and biblically sound exposition on the ethical standards a Christian is genuinely called to strive for. |
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Review Summary: The most thorough and honest study of Jesus' political stances. |
Date: 2008-07-23 |
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Details: Always skeptical of any Christian book addressing politics, I found this book absolutely amazing. In it, Professor Yoder first presents the Kingdom that Christ established and the rules by which its citizens would adhere. All that proceeds from this idea, our role in this current earthly kingdom, our ethics, our duties, naturally follow from the fact that Christians have one Lord and Master and there can be no shared allegiance. |
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Review Summary: Greatest proponent or adversary |
Date: 2008-06-08 |
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Details: If you are looking for the single best argument for why Christians must be nonviolent, this is it. If you are a just-warrior or a Christian realist then it is your faithful duty to contend with this work. The first chapter covers the variety of ways we make everything but Jesus the norm for living and there is a brilliant chapter on Romans 13 that merits a very careful reading. Enjoy! |
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Review Summary: A conservative evangelical pastor responds |
Date: 2008-05-30 |
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Details: Should evangelical Christians who believe in the authoritative inspiration of scripture and in the gospel of spiritual rebirth to eternal life through the person of Jesus Christ look to this book for Biblical input regarding politics and social justice?
1. Overall this book was thought-provoking and included many good insights into the meaning of many passages of scripture. It's difficult reading at times. Many of Yoder's conclusions seemed overstated and one-sided, which he justified at one point late in the book as an attempt to counter-balance the prevailing views on the subjects he addressed in this book.
2. Yoder does take scripture seriously, and seems to accept it as conclusively authoritative, although he never clearly affirms a doctrine of the authority of scripture. I couldn't find a place where he dismissed any text as erroneous or inauthoritative.
3. Yoder does accept the reality of a personal God who is ultimately sovereign over world events.
4. His Christology is less clear, seeming to allow room for seeing Jesus as a human who was supernaturally ordained and empowered as Son of God rather than as pre-existent eternal God who took on human form.
5. He doesn't deny or affirm the miracles of Christ, even in his discussion of the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
6. The doctrine of justification in Romans is read not as a matter of personal righteousness through the penal substitution of Christ, but as primarily a matter of reconciliation of diverse peoples within the church, especially between Jewish and Gentile Christians. He ends up taking a more embracing approach to the requirements of the Old Testament Law than I believe Paul did. The same conclusion is drawn from Ephesians, where the second half of chapter 2 colors his understanding of the entire book and the first half of chapter 2 is ignored.
7. Yoder accuses most conservative evangelicals of being fixated on personal positional righteousness to the point of deemphasizing ethical righteousness in interpersonal relationships and in the wider society. He rightly maintains that inward faith-based righteousness leading to a neglect of behavioral change violates the claims of scripture (and he makes a convincing biblical case of this even without mentioning the book of James!). Most of the conservative evangelicals I know would actually agree with Yoder on that point, so I'm unclear about where he got his negative assessment of them.
8. He cites much 20th century Biblical scholarship, mostly liberal scholarship. On the other hand, he questions the conclusions of much of that scholarship by comparison to scripture. His favorite scholars to quote are Markus Barth, S. G. F. Brandon, Martin Dibelius (mostly critically), Hendrikus Berkhof, Oscar Cullmann, the Niebuhrs, Eduard Schweizer, Krister Stendahl, and Andre Trocme. A major emphasis is sifting through the contributions of these and many other scholars on the subject of his thesis. If you get this book, BE SURE to get the 2nd edition (1994) as Yoder added an epilogue to each chapter that updates his thinking with reference to new scholarship in the intervening years (1972-1994, when a LOT was happening in New Testament studies). He also comments in some cases about the reactions of others to his original work.
9. Yoder systematically refutes the popular notion that the various authors of the New Testament contradicted one another's teachings. On the contrary, their teachings were remarkably congruent in essence, although their emphases and their ways of expressing themselves differed. A superficial reading might miss these many congruences, but careful study makes them increasingly clear.
10. Scripture cannot be expected to reliably match the fashionable political correctness of any time period, and Yoder doesn't hesitate to attempt faithfulness to scripture even when it runs counter to today's conventional wisdom. For example, his treatment of willing subordination to societal structures in the cases of slavery and unjust governments focuses on the model of Christ's non-resistance to his suffering. Yoder admits that he took a lot of heat about those conclusions from folks who mostly favored his other conclusions.
11. Some of the imperatives of social ethics that Yoder does find in scripture are ideas that aren't as clear to most readers who accept the authority of scripture and the reality of supernatural events.
a. The utopian example of the rightly-functioning church is God's primary strategy for spreading social utopia throughout secular society, as well as attracting new disciples.
b. Jesus was declaring a Year of Jubilee in Israel during his preaching ministry, advocating the Fallow Year in agriculture, remission of debts, liberation of slaves, and redistributing capital.
c. The "powers" of Paul's writings are predominantly social structures like governments, not supernatural entities except as a figure of speech.
d. Pacifism is one of the central doctrines of the New Testament, demonstrated not just through teachings but in the refusal of Jesus to violently defend himself (in His passion) or act selfishly (in His temptation) through supernatural or natural means, and in the endurance of the saints in the Book of Revelation. There is, therefore, no valid participation for Christians in coercive functions of government: the armed forces and law enforcement. I have to question whether Yoder was a Pacifist prior to his serious study of scripture who then allowed his preconceptions to color his conclusions. Or, (and this I doubt) was he previously a militarist whose views were corrected by the Word of Truth?
In conclusion, I find that most of the conclusions of this book would be hard to sell to a congregation of sincere-hearted saints who DO have a strong social ethic of living with integrity alongside of their vital personal relationship with the living God (loving God the 1st commandment, and loving people the 2nd but absolutely NOT to be ignored). I imagined myself preaching Yoder's conclusions and backing them up with my own explanations of Yoder's reasoning. The imaginary result is looks of disbelief, people thinking, Ken, I want to believe what you preach, but I don't understand at all how you got that conclusion out of this biblical text, out of this New Testament. And for the most part, I had to agree, not with Yoder, but with the saints.
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Review Summary: THE POLITICS OF JESUS by John Howard Yoder |
Date: 2008-02-16 |
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Details: The Politics of Jesus is John Howard Yoder's treatise on Jesus' political inclinations, based on and in response to twentieth century biblical scholarship. Yoder was a Mennonite biblical scholar, theologian, and professor of theology. The 1994 version of this book is a revision and expansion of his original version, published in 1972.
Yoder points out early that this book is an ethical methodology, not an exegesis. Indeed, he spends the majority of the work building on and responding to the thought of innumerable other twentieth century scholars. His primary target is twentieth century Christian systematic theology that argues for various reasons that Jesus is not a valid source of personal ethics. Yoder does a thorough job of demonstrating that Jesus was indeed politically-minded, and one of the consequences of this is the discovery that Jesus has intended us to follow his pacifist lifestyle.
Contrary to what at least one reviewer has complained, Yoder does address the Old Testament as it relates to a modern Christian pacifism, albeit briefly. Yoder's treatment of Romans 13, however, is thorough.
Most of the criticism of this book seems to be from people who are inherently opposed to Christian pacifism as many arguments are from that ground rather than on anything Yoder has done incorrectly. That is, people tend to reject his arguments based on their personal beliefs and traditions. Many arguments say "Yoder didn't address such and such"; but a book can only be so long.
The book does contain a lot of the vocabulary and jargon of Christian scholarship, and people unfamiliar with such may have a little trouble with it.
The Politics of Jesus is the finest book on Christianity I have read in a long time. Yoder does an excellent job highlighting parallels and themes running through Jesus' life, and of making the case for Christian pacifism. I recommend this book to everyone.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED |
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out of 19 Reviews
