Politics of Jesus: Reflections I (of ?)

Reflections on
The Politics of Jesus
by John Howard Yoder

I

---

1. Christocentric Ethics: The Normativity of Jesus in the Gospels
(from ch. 1, “The Possibility of a Messianic Ethic”)

At a popular level many Christians appeal to Jesus as a model for life and for right action. When I was a teenager (what seems like a very few short years ago), Christian teenagers were being taught (by the advertising media of the subculture, which of course infiltrated our church youth groups) to ask “What Would Jesus Do?”. (Incidentally, I have sometimes wondered: Would Jesus buy and wear WWJD bracelets and jewelry?) But how much direct help does scripture give us in answering that question? Does the New Testament present us with a substantive notion of what Jesus would do, based upon which we can do Christian normative ethics, or do Christian ethicists need to look elsewhere (i.e., in natural rather than special revelation) for our ethical foundations?

Yoder advances the hypothesis that the New Testament (read in the light of the Hebrew scriptural tradition that shaped its authors & audiences--Yoder is no proponent of the Marcionite heresy) does in fact give us a platform for social ethics. (The term “politics” in the title of the book is not meant to suggest that Jesus wants his disciples to take an active part in secular institutions of government; the term has a broader application to how his disciples are to live and act as members of society.) The project of The Politics of Jesus is to dig up confirming evidence for this hypothesis in the theology of the canonical New Testament writings. (Yoder does not consider himself qualified to attempt historical reconstructions of Jesus and his teachings that go behind the texts as we have them today; he comments more than once in a footnote, however, that the evidence in the canonical texts suggests that any such reconstruction would only strengthen the case for his hypothesis).

In his first chapter, Yoder surveys some arguments, common among Christian scholarship, for the thesis that Jesus and his teachings in the Gospels do not provide substantive normative answers for Christians’ questions in social ethics. Proponents of this thesis argue that Christians need to look elsewhere for answers to ethical questions; Yoder refers to these as “natural law” ethicists, broadly speaking. Here are some of the arguments of Yoder’s opponents: [note: my summary below does not exhaust Yoder’s presentation at this point of his argument]

1. Jesus gives only an interim ethic
Since Jesus expected the end of the present age to come soon, his ethical teachings became more and more irrelevant as the Church came to terms with the delay of the parousia. “Thus at any point where social ethics must deal with problems of duration, Jesus quite clearly can be of no help. If the impermanence of the social order is an axiom underlying the ethic of Jesus, then obviously the survival of this order for centuries ahs already invalidated the axiom.” (16)


2. Jesus gives only a personal (i.e., non-public) ethics
Jesus’ ethical teachings were intended to apply only to interpersonal relationships, not to social problems of a large scale. “His radical personalization of all ethical problems is only possible in a village sociology where knowing everyone and having time to treat everyone as a person is culturally an available possibility. … There is thus in the ethic of Jesus no intention to speak substantially to the problems of complex organization, of institutions and offices, cliques and power and crowds.” (16-17)


3. Jesus gives only an ethic for the powerless minority
Christians have ascended to positions of power in society (e.g., economic and political power). But “Jesus and his early followers lived in a world over which they had no control.” Christians in positions of power must look elsewhere for moral guidance in making the kinds of decisions they have the responsibility to make. “…the Christian is [today] obligated to answer questions which Jesus did not face. The individual Christian, or all Christians together, must accept responsibilities that were inconceivable in Jesus’ situation.” (17)


4. Jesus gives only spiritual (not social or ethical) teachings
Everything Jesus taught must be interpreted in light of the gospel of personal salvation. The point of his ethical teachings was not our obedience, but some spiritual aim, such as a recognition of our need for grace. The point of his life was not his ethical teachings, and we should not take his behavior with respect to social authorities as a model for our own, because Jesus’ life had the unique purpose of ending with a vicarious sacrificial atonement. The primary concern of the Christian life is not being ethical, but trusting in grace alone for our salvation. “For Roman Catholics this act of justification may be found to be in correlation with the sacraments, and for Protestants with one’s self-understanding, in response to the proclaimed Word; but never shall it be correlated with ethics.” (19)



Reflection #1
Response to (1):
(a) Perhaps to be faithful to the teachings of our Lord, we should continue to live as if the end of the present age is imminent. Perhaps we should not make our choices based on the assumption that the money we put in the stock market today will be there for our retirement in thirty or forty years. Perhaps we should give up all our allegiances to earthly institutions, knowing that they will not last.
(b) Perhaps the end of the age did come in Jesus’ lifetime, or immediately following his death & resurrection. Perhaps his ethics were not for the short span of his life only, but for the new age in which we presently live. Again, perhaps we should abandon all allegiances to the institutions of the old age.
(c) Remember that if there was a development in the theology of the early Church, during the writing of the New Testament books, toward accommodating the delay of the parousia, Jesus’ teachings as recorded in Matthew and the other Gospels were among the latest canonical works to be produced by the early Church. So these teachings should be intended by the scriptural authors as relevant for the long-term wait for Christ’s return at the end of the age.

Response to (2):
(a) Perhaps we should fight the cultural trend of depersonalization and establish communities of our own in which to live out these personal ethics. Perhaps we should not concern ourselves with larger social, global problems—or perhaps we should not approach such problems from a large perspective. Perhaps we should not let the ethics of complex organization override the ethics of interpersonal relationships.
(b) Jesus did confront some institutional figures in his lifetime: the Temple, the Sanhedrin, Herod, Pilate (and not just during Passion week!).

Responses to (3):
This is a tough one. Should we remain a powerless witnessing minority, and shun power when it is offered to us? Or should we be distinctively different when in power? If Jesus teaches us to love our enemies, what will this mean for a Christian who is elected as commander in chief of the United States armed forces?

Response to (4):
The gospel in both testaments clearly (as it seems to me) involves a call to those who have accepted grace to live out God’s law, and the commandments of Christ—a call that we are expected to fulfill, not to perpetually fall short of.
How to see Jesus’ journey toward the cross: as both political and spiritual, only spiritual, only political, or something that defies the distinction of political and spiritual?—this is a challenge for me.


Reflection #2
Consequences for our Christianity:
Either Jesus (and more broadly the New Testament revelation) introduces into our lives a distinctive ethic, or else it does not. Where does either option leave us, as Christians?

Suppose we are forced to look to natural revelation for our ethics.
“Is there such a thing as a Christian ethic at all? If there be no specifically Christian ethic but only natural human ethics as held to by Christians among others, does this thoroughgoing abandon of particular substance apply to ethical truth only? Why not to all other truth as well?
…what becomes of the meaning of incarnation if Jesus is not normative man? If he is a man but not normative, is this not the ancient ebionitic heresy? If he be somehow authoritative but not in his humanness, is this not a new gnosticism?”(22)


Suppose Jesus does call us to a distinctive set of ethical standards.
Must we all then turn our lives upside-down?

------

"He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)

Read the full post.

The Politics of Jesus and the disciple's cross

Now Reading:
The Politics of Jesus, by John Howard Yoder

---

I have gotten about 40 to 50% of the way through the book by now. For those who don't know, John Howard Yoder was a Mennonite theologian who taught at Notre Dame and the Mennonite seminary in Elkhart and wrote many books during his academic career. One of his noted students is Stanley Hauweras. Yoder himself was a student of Karl Barth at the University of Basel.

The Politics of Jesus is perhaps Yoder's best known book; he published it in the early seventies.

I liked the first chapter very much, for a beginning. He is good at articulating the positions and arguments of others. In the first chapter of Politics of Jesus, Yoder lists off a number of different arguments mid and late twentieth-century Christians have given for why the life and teachings of Jesus are not of immediate practical, political relevance. Yoder also clearly distinguishes his own project from the then-popular notion of Jesus as a generic political revolutionary to whom one can appeal in support of whatever radical political views one wishes, and from a "WWJD" model of moral discipleship, which looks elsewhere (e.g., natural law) for one's ideas of what right conduct is, but uses Jesus as a motivator for doing the right thing no matter how unpopular or inconvenient it might be. Yoder is interested in drawing a concrete, socio-political Christian ethic out of the teachings of Jesus--and he argues for continuity of such an ethic across the teachings of the New Testament writings.

In the next couple of chapters he quickly outlines the message of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke in broad strokes, and connects it to the restoration of the Jubilee year in the Hebrew Law. (Every seventh year, Israelites were to (a) not farm their land and trust to God to provide for their needs by an abundant crop the sixth year, (b) release all indentured servants/Hebrew slaves, forgiving their debts, and (c) restore the former slaves to their ancestral land which they received under Joshua in the original conquest. Yoder argues that Jesus' gospel was in essence a declaration that God wanted His people to put the Jubilee year into practice as a community, with all of its economic implications, together with even more radical injunctions such as loving one's enemies. That the Jews were not in a position of political dominance in Judea and Galilee was irrelevant, as God's people are to trust Him to take care of military and political victories--not to fight for themselves as the militant Zealots wished to--and simply obey the word of the Lord.

Yoder goes on to characterize Jesus' life and message as essentially a rejection both of quietism or withdrawl from the political arena (Christianity a pure, apolitical religious movement) and the violent, military revolutionary methods of the Zealots. Jesus fearlessly preached a politically charged message, was recognized by both Jewish and Roman leaders as politically dangerous, while refusing to defend himself or take up a sword and fight. Jesus is repeatedly tempted to take the easier road to kingship by the use of the sword and repeatedly rejects it in favor of the inevitable suffering of the political execution that awaited him at the end of his ministry. He told his disciples likewise to reject lordship and to reject violence, and to "take up your cross and follow" him on the road of carrying this particular nonviolent political message and being executed for it by the armed political authorities.

Yoder's book is not focused on the atonement. He rejects an exclusively spiritual interpretation of Jesus' cross, or the cross of the disciple. But I don't think he would reject the evangelical notions of sin and atonement through the cross. But even if he does, I think his views deserve careful consideration, and could be made compatible with an evangelical view of the atonement.

Still reading and still processing...
I don't have the book with me at the moment; I might post in more detail later for anyone who might be interested.

------

"He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)

Read the full post.