The Pacifism Debate

Ok, so having been spending so long on my essay on John Howard Yoder, I have had lots of conversations with people who think that he’s a crazy person.

So, here is the opportunity to put all the questions and critiques down in writing, so that they canbe considered seriously (rather than over a beer/girly drink)

Read the essay first, then post away!

Appropriate quote from Michael Jensen

“Waiting means resisting the powers and authorities where they counter Christ’s ultimate authority, and serving them insofar as they reflect it.”
From his lecture notes on Waiting in the Christian Life.

Yoder’s Ethics – Powers, Problems and the Gospel

I do not want to take away from the brilliant and challenging observations that Yoder made about how Jesus and the Church are supposed to impact on the social and political structures of our day. If you haven’t read the previous post, read it now. Yoder’s observations are brilliant. However, there are two big problems with Yoder’s argument that, while not undercutting his major insights, might alter how we integrate them in our ethics.

The first problem is the usual issues we find in Yoder’s thought – overstating a single definition. In this case, he defines the “Powers” in New Testament thought as almost exclusively political and social structures. Yoder doesn’t give a detailed argument for this. Rather, he moves from considering the wide, even ambiguous, semantic scope of power language, and concludes with the widest possible definition of power as the “capacity to make things happen” (p138). He then associates this capability with “the reign of order among creatures” (p141), and from that point on “Powers” and “structures” are used interchangeably. Even though Yoder quotes Ephesians 3:11, which refers to the Powers as “heavenly”, there is almost no mention of the possibility of Spiritual powers. He does recognise that other scholars (including Hendrikus Berkhof, whom he quotes heavily) think that Paul had a very specific meaning for “Powers”, but he never engages with the argument. Only at the very end of this chapter he recognises that people believe that there is a Spiritual aspect to the powers, but again he does not engage the argument. Instead, he maintains that “the ‘exousiology’ of the apostle, that is, his doctrine of the Powers, reveals itself to be a very refined analysis of the problems of society and history” (p143-4).

This is a continuation of Yoder’s non-Supernatural reading of the Bible. He has so far avoided Jesus’ miracles, and any reference to the Resurrection, and he down-plays Spiritual or Atonement models of the Cross. In this case, he avoids thinking about how the existence of actual spiritual and demonic Powers might affect the New Testament passages about the Powers. My hunch is that it doesn’t. In the limited scope of thinking about how Christians are to interact with social and political structures, Yoder is right in observing that Jesus has declared them defeated by asserting his Lordship over the whole world. He also broke their power to coerce us, not only with a death that refused to compromise, but with a death that forgave sin so that our death holds no fear for us, and a resurrection that defeated death and promises us an eternity with God.

The second problem is bigger. Yoder has effectively outlined a Gospel that focuses on temporal, social liberty, rather than sin and our relationship with God. “In this view of things, the condition of the creature, our fallen state the continual providential care of God which preserves us as human, the saving work of Christ, and the specific position of the Christian community in the midst of history are all described in terms of social structure and their inherent dynamics” (149-50 ). This is, essentially, a Liberation theology Gospel. The problem is that humanity is enslaved by fallen social structures. Jesus death, by refusing to participate or fight those structures, defeats them and shows that they have no authority. Our salvation comes from liberation from these structures and into the freedom to live God’s way. If this is the only Gospel that Yoder proclaims (and it is the only one that he commends in his book – see my posts on Yoder’s Gospel 1 2 3) then what he is proclaiming is essentially not Christian. Every New Testament book states that dies for our sins. They give various models such as penal substitutionary atonement, propitiation, expiation and redemption from slavery to sin. But all of them focus on sin, and our eternal relationship with God. To reduce salvation to redemption from slavery by social structures is to empty the Gospel of its most important meaning.

This does not negate the fact that our salvation does result in salvation from social structures in the way that Yoder describes. But it is by no means the central or most important effect.

Yoder’s Ethics Part 2 – Powers and Politics

Chapter 8 of The Politics of Jesus is where reading Yoder really pays dividends; where he shows the framework for his social ethic, and where he cements his argument that Jesus has political and social implications. The focus of his argument is on the New Testament concept of “Powers”, which he defines as social structures – “religious structures … intellectual structures … moral structures … political structures” (p142-3), examples of which include public opinion, justice, the state, government, tribalism, race and class.

Working off various New Testament sources, Yoder argues that these Powers were part of God’s created order, and were created to be good. They supplied order to creation and humanity. However, the Powers have fallen because they failed to have the appropriate modesty that would have conformed them to God’s creative purpose. Instead, they claimed absolute value and authority. Because of this claim, they have enslaved humanity (p143). This is the fallen situation of humanity today. However, this is not to say that the Powers are totally evil, rather they still function in some good ways as part of God’s providential care for his world, continuing to provide order for humanity in which they can live.

Yoder then poses the obvious question; “If our lostness consists in our subjection to the rebellious Powers of a fallen world, what then is the meaning of the work of Christ?” (p144). The answer is that Jesus broke their sovereignty “by living a genuinely free and human existence. This life brought him, as any genuinely human existence will bring anyone, to the cross … He accepted his own status of submission. But morally he broke their rules by refusing to support them in their self-glorification; and that is why they killed him.” (p144-5). In short, the Powers killed Jesus because he lived a morally pure life that was outside of their authoritative pretentions. “Therefore his cross is a victory, the confirmation that he was free from the rebellious pretentions of the creaturely condition” (p145).

The really good bits in this chapter are found in a couple of large-block quotes from a theologian called Hendrikus Berkhof (Christ and the Powers), who seems like a very good person to read. The point that Berkhof makes is that, Jesus exposed the Powers by showing that the power they had over was not real power. He made a public example of them, unmasking them as failing to control him, because death was an acceptable option for him. The cross has now disarmed the powers, for because the weapon they have – the threat of death and the illusion of absolute authority – are impotent. Christians cannot be threatened because no Power can separate us from the love of God in Christ.

In a second quote, Berkhof discusses how Christians are to interact with the social structures and Powers in our world. Since Jesus has already struck the victorious blow against the Powers, the Church’s role is to proclaim that victory. The existence of the church is, by itself, a powerful and aggressive attack on the powers. It is by living a life free of the powers (racism, money etc) that we attack them. We announce their already-defeat and their upcoming final failure. However, any action by the Church against the evil wrought by the Powers will be unfruitful unless the church’s life is, in itself, the attack. The only way that the Church can fight injustice is to first live a corporate life of justice. “The church must be a sample of the kind of humanity within which, for example, economic and racial differences are surmounted. Only then will it have anything to say to the society that surrounds it about how those differences must be dealt with” (p150-51).

Thus the Church cannot withdraw from social structures, nor can it compromise in order to participate in them (and thus change them). Rather, it must exist within society as an alternative that declares the bankruptcy of the Powers. This can result in either conscientious participation or conscientious objection, depending on the situation. But objection “is not a withdrawal from society. It is rather a major negative intervention within the process of social change, a refusal to use unworthy means for what seems to be a worthy end” (p154). There is also a positive role for the Church; “The church’s calling is to be the conscience and the servant within human society …we are called to contribute to the creation of structures more worthy of human society” (p155).

Even though I have some serious concerns about some of the theology, this understanding of political structures has a lot going for it. I am convinced that Yoder’s (and Berkhof’s) analysis of the impact of the Gospel on political and social structures is accurate and biblical. However, the usual criticism of Yoder’s theology raises his head – that he ignores or marginalises equally valid (and potentially more important) aspects of the Gospel in order to make his point. However, to prevent a critique from taking away from the many excellent points that have been made, I’ll discuss this in the next post.

Yoder’s Ethics Part 1 – Chapter 7

Chapter 7 of John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus is the start of his next section. Having established that Jesus is rightly at the center of ethics, Yoder proceeds to consider what Jesus has to say about it. The vast majority of this chapter is a collection of Bible verses showing  themes in Jesus’ teachings that were continued in the Epistles. All these themes are about imitating Jesus. Yoder makes the point that we are not called to imitate Jesus in every way – we are not called to be poor, barefoot, celibate peripatetic preachers. Even when Paul is discussing the benefits of celibacy, he does not invoke imitation of Christ. Rather, we are called to imitate Christ in only specific ways. These ways are essentially to love and forgive indiscriminately and self-sacrificially and serve others. These are not simply commands, but calls to respond and imitate Jesus – just as Jesus loved, forgave and served us, so we are to love, forgive and serve.

This call to imitation extends into suffering and death. Yoder points out that suffering is part of the cost of following Jesus. Just as he was persecuted, so will his followers be. In that situation, we are called to suffer innocently and gladly, because we are sharing in Christ’s sufferings. In general, I think Yoder’s analysis if excellent.  However, I get the feeling that he thinks that Christians are not just supposed to accept, or even welcome, suffering, but we are to invite it. He quotes four passages that describe Jesus’ death as a victory, and concludes that death is a victory (p126). I’m not quite so sure; human death is a bad thing, it is a result of sin in our world. Jesus’ death was a one-off victory over sin and death, but only because of who he was and only because of his resurrection. So I have to ask, why does Yoder think death is a victory? Again, Yoder describes the cross as “the political, legally-to-be-expected result of a moral clash with the powers ruling his society” (p129). In this schema, Jesus’ death is a victory because he resisted the powers-that-be non-violently and accepted the suffering that results. In that line, our death is a victory if we do the same thing. Indeed, Yoder says that suffering is only meaningful before God if it is innocent and the result of another’s evil intentions (p129). There doesn’t seem to be any concept of suffering for the Gospel.

Jesus’ death was, indeed, “the political, legally-to-be-expected result of a moral clash with the powers ruling his society”, but that’s not why it was a victory. Jesus did not found a movement of pacifist activists, he founded a movement of forgiven people who have a relationship with God, possess the Holy Spirit and are one with Christ. These people are (or should be) pacifist activists, but is not their identifying description. I am increasingly getting the feeling that Yoder is missing something very important in his ethics by removing the resurrection and the atonement from his foundational framework.

The Common Room = Good stuff

I’ve actually got around to listening to the Common Room podcast. It’s really quite good. Some bits can be a bit techy, but any thinking Christian can get a lot from this.

Go, listen.

Yoder gets to the good stuff

So I’m up to chapter 6 of John Howard John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus, and it’s starting to get good. The start of this chapter is sort of a summary, where Yoder draws together some of what he has said so far –that the sayings and life of Jesus had very strong ethical and political themes, and that the teachings of the later church echo these themes.

Next, Yoder shifts the foundation of this argument, and becomes focused on the dual nature of Christ. He argues that many problems around taking Jesus seriously in ethics comes from underplaying either his humanity or his divinity. Scholars who underplay Jesus’ divinity treat him as a good teacher, but are happy to take or leave the bits that they like. To those people, Yoder reminds them that God is in Jesus in a unique and authoritative way, and that his ethical model overrides all others. He gives a valuable (if partial) description of the incarnation: “God broke through the borders of our standard definition of what is human, and gave it a new, formative definition in Jesus” (p99). Jesus, by nature of his divinity, unalterably redefines what it means to be human, ethical and political. On the other hand, scholars who underplay Jesus’ humanity see him as a unique event that is completely unable to be replicated – there is no reason to imitate Jesus because he came to do a one-off job as God-on-earth. Reinforcing Jesus’ humanity shows that Jesus’ new definition of what it means to be a person applies to us – as fellow humans.

Yoder then proposes a number of false dichotomies in Christian ethical thought, which are (mostly) absolute gold:

1)      Jesus of History vs. Jesus of Dogma – You cannot simply jump from Jesus’ birth to his death to Romans, and ignore his life and teaching. Nor can you marginalise the Jesus of history by saying he is not the Christ of Faith (this is the incarnation issue restated) (p103).

2)      Prophet vs. Institution – I didn’t understand this one L (p104).

3)      The reign of God as External and Catastrophic vs. Internal and Subjective – The Kingdom is not just “the end of the world” and it is not just “living in your heart”. It is here and now lived out in the church. (Yoder here goes a bit too far and implies that it is ONLY in the social entity of the church, not the other two options) (p104-5)

4)      Political vs. Sectarian – We are not faced with a choice of either being politically effective by “playing the game” or withdrawing into our enclaves. The alternative social group that is the church has political influence simply by being an alternative social group. Nonviolent / non-forceful activism can be politically effective (just not comfy) (p105-7).

5)      Individual vs. Social – Jesus ethics were not just how you live as an individual, they have social implications at the same time. (p108-9)

6)      Love vs. Effectiveness – You don’t have to be violent / forceful / unloving to be effective.

Sadly, again, in his desire to affirm a truth (that Jesus is political and ethical), Yoder denies another truth (that he is cosmic and spiritual). This is particularly obvious in reference to the temptation and the cross. Firstly, he argues that the ONLY temptation that Jesus faced was to use force to achieve his aims (p96), or to believe that “the exercise of responsibility through the use of self-evidently necessary means is a moral duty” (p98). Secondly, he describes the cross primarily (if not entirely) as the result of Jesus’ non-violent ethic meeting the force of the authorities. Any “spiritual” interpretation of the cross, such as propitiation or atonement, is only ever referred to negatively, such as in this quote:

His disavowal of Peter’s well-intentioned effort to defend him cannot be taken out of the realm of ethics by the explanation that he had to get himself immolated in order to satisfy the requirements of some metaphysically motivated doctrine of the atonement; it was because God’s will for God’s servant in this world is that he should renounce legitimate defence (p98).

Yoder also argues against Niebuhr’s desire to include the doctrines of the Father (created order) and the Spirit (the historical teaching of the church) as “modifications” of a Jesus-only ethic. This argument, which is very brief, implies that Yoder rejects including any concept of created order in his ethical framework.

Yoder and the OT

So far, Yoder has shown that Jesus’ life and teachings have clear political implications. He has also shown an unfortunate trend towards minimizing the spiritual or non-political implications, including overlooking the Resurrection. In chapter 4, he turns to the Old Testament.

The point that Yoder wishes to make is that the main theme of the OT is that God looks after his people Israel, not through their strength or power, but by his. He surveys a number of incidents in the OT to justify this position. Though I am at times surprised at which incidents he considers and which he does not (there is a massive gap between Judges and 2 Chronicles 16), I agree with the conclusion. Some times there is war. Sometimes there is not. Either way, the OT is not a manual for justified war on the part of God, it is demonstration of God’s sovereign power to save his people his way, without his people getting any fancy ideas and trying to “help” God. Clearly this is part of Yoder’s defense against Christianized “just war” theories.

The second point that Yoder tries to make is somewhat fuzzier. He tries to define how the contemporaries of Jesus would have heard his preaching, based on the OT. First, he rightly asserts that Jews did not see God’s promises as only being fulfilled in the distant future, but have been fulfilled in the nation of Israel in the past. Secondly, though, he seems to be saying that the Jews would have only expected God’s promises to be fulfilled historically. He opposes “apocalyptic” future-oriented expectations with the experience of Israel in having promises fulfilled historically. To do this would be to ignore the impact that books like Ezekiel, Isaiah and Daniel had on 1^st Century Jewish thought. Yoder doesn’t consider these books, just the historical ones. Again, in his enthusiasm to show that God is capable of acting in the present, Yoder has swung too far away from the potential future-orientation of Jewish thought, and of Jesus’ teachings.

In chapter 5, Yoder further emphasizes the non-violent forms of salvation. To demonstrate that 1st Century Jews did not expect God to act only violently, he gives three examples of non-violent resistance against occupying Rome. Two of these examples resulted in success, one in a bloody massacre of the Jews.

Putting these two chapters together, Yoder’s main point comes clear. The 1st Century Jewish mind did not consider only two forms of resistance: fight or withdraw into the desert. Instead, there was the very real possibility of salvation either through God’s sovereign intervention, passive non-compliance, or both.

Yoder chapter 3 – the Jubilee Year

I’m starting to annoy myself with the length of this prolegomenon.

As we enter chapter 3 of Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus, he is still setting up his interpretation of Jesus, particularly in the Gospel of Luke. This time, he is expanding a point from his previous chapter about the incident where Jesus from Isaiah 61 in a synagogue in Nazareth. Yoder argues that the “year of the Lord’s favour” that Isaiah and Jesus are referring to is the Jubilee year. The Jubilee year is command in Leviticus 25 and should occur every 49 years.  Yoder identifies four things that are supposed to happen in the Jubilee year: 1) leaving the soil fallow, 2) the remission of debts, 3) the liberation of slaves, the return to each individual of his family’s property (p60). The rest of chapter 3 is dedicated to tracing these themes through the Gospel of Luke to demonstrate that they are common themes.

The evidence that Yoder marshals is minimal; one line of the Lord’s prayer, parts of the sermon on the plain and two parables. This is enough to show that the themes that he identified as Jubilee themes are present in Luke. It is probably enough to show that they are important. It is not enough to show that the actual concept of the Jubilee year is present in Luke, or that it is crucial to understanding the gospel. If Isaiah was directly referring to the Jubilee, then why didn’t he use the actual word? Or why didn’t Jesus?

Yes, the themes of debt and forgiveness, slavery and freedom are prominent in Luke. But, again, Yoder goes too far by trying to fit them in the purely socio-economic framework of the Jubilee year.

We still haven’t actually got to any ethics yet.

Yoder’s Jesus Part 2

Yoder highlights some very important texts that show a distinctly political edge to Jesus’ ministry. The songs of Mary and Zechariah, and the early ministry of John, all have distinctly Maccabean / political flavours to them. Equally, the Son of God, Kingdom of God and Messiah language are grounded on the geo-political entity of Israel and her King. Even as Jesus expands the meaning, it requires a lot of foot-work to remove any political inferences. There is also a level in which the resistance against Jesus was on political grounds – he was building a big following, and those sorts of people at that time tended to lead revolutions eventually.

The problem comes with Yoder’s antitheses. He is not content to show that Jesus is political, he wants to show that Jesus is political instead of spiritual. In his first reference to the crucifixion, Yoder states “the cross is beginning to loom not as … Propitiation but … alternative to both insurrection and quietism”. It is this not/but language, rather than both/and, that is troubling. Obviously I have only read three chapters so far, but I can’t help wondering if this is going to affect his ethics substantially

This (false) antithesis is shown in Yoder’s handling of the text. In his brief survey, Yoder only handles a few incidents. He deals with the first four chapters in detail: the birth narratives, the baptism and temptation and the incident in a synagogue where Jesus reads Isaiah. He then skips to chapter 6 – the sermon on the plain, then to the feeding in Luke 9. After this, he discusses parts of Jesus’ teaching in chs 12-14 before accelerating to the triumphal entry in ch 19. The last days of Jesus are covered in more detail with one notable exception: the resurrection.

The only verses referred to in Luke 24 are used to demonstrate that the disciples expected a political action from Jesus, but were disappointed. There is no comment on the fact that a man formerly dead is now alive! There is no consideration of how God’s miraculous intervention extends the concept of the Kingdom of God from being just political to eternal and spiritual. In short, his ethic of the cross is not modified by any theology of the resurrection.

One of the effects of this is that Yoder excludes possibility that Jesus was misunderstood by everybody (p51). The fact that everyone heard Jesus’ language as political (even the disciples on the road to Emmaus) is used as proof that Jesus meant what they heard. There is no consideration that the Resurrection, and what Jesus taught about it – including on the road – was what made the disciples realise their mistake and understand Jesus properly

Omitting the resurrection is easily Yoder’s biggest mistake, but it is not his only one. Apart from the feeding of the 5000, he never mentions a miracle. Calming storms, defeating demons and healing sicknesses are all things that Jesus did to show the nature of his Kingship. To ignore these will affect your understanding of Jesus almost as much as ignoring the resurrection. Yoder also makes references to source-critical considerations, suggesting that he considers that parts of Luke are not accounts of what Jesus actually said or did (e.g. p35, 42n6). This reveals an over-all down-playing of miraculous or spiritual issues that makes me wonder whether Yoder even believes about the Resurrection, miracles and inspiration of the Bible. If Yoder’s God is not the kind who raises from the dead, heals miraculously or communicates himself divinely and (at least reasonably) clearly, then this will have massive effects on his ethics.