For the Nations: Essays Evangelical and Public

Rating:
Summary: Yoder does not disappoint
Review: A text from the later years of JH Yoder's life, his consistent commitment to the politics of the cross reverberate throughout this volume of essays. Yoder spends time linking Old Testament themes of peace and justice with themes evident in the early Christian church in a way consistent with that of the work of Walter Brueggeman. As such, these essays do not disappoint and deepen one's appreciation for the need to trace themes throughout all of the Bible rather than just focusing on the New Testament per se. Yoder shifts seamlessly between current day issues and scriptural texts. His words are no less relevant today than they were when they were first penned--and seem in fact to directly address our modern day issues of a post-9/11 America and world. While his works and words do not always seem penetrable at first glance(I found the first chapter particularily difficult to plow through), let the reader be encouraged to remain engaged, for there is much wisdom to be embraced within these chapters. Moreover, while many have suggested that the theology of Yoder encourages followers of Christ to disengage and seperate from the world, here is a text that stands as inspiring evidence of Yoder's driving passion to engage in public conversation about life in the world, not on the world's terms but rather in the spirit of, and for the sake of Jesus Christ.

Rating:
Summary: Great essays on social action from Yoder
Review: This collection essays - being the last book that Yoder published before his death - in many ways forms an analogue and supplementation (corrective would be the wrong word) to Yoder's earlier collection, The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical. While the former focused primarily on issues that are "inter-ecclesial" (to put the matter very crudely), this volume focuses on how the church does not simply exist for its own sake, but rather forms a prophetic and paradigmatic presence in the world, and as such has much to say about the issues of the wider world. Yoder characterizes the relationship between the two books thusly,

"...whereas the corpus of older writings in The Royal Priesthood can be seen as fitting within a vision of the mission of the Christian community some call "sectarian" or describe as standing "against the nations," the essays in this collection are intentionally devoted to demonstrating the wrongness of that characterization of my stance. ...Each of the following essays argues, though each in a somewhat different key, that the very shape of the people of God in the world is a public witness, or is "good news," for the world, rather than first of all rejection or withdrawal. "(p. 6)

Thus, Yoder seeks to engage and refute the notion that his ecclesial and ethical position entails a "withdrawal" or "rejection" of the issues in the wider world. There is also a subtle echo in his book's title of Stanley Hauerwas's Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society. Yoder is clearly seeking to allay the strong repercussions of the provocative edge that is often taken by ecclesial and ethical postures similar to his own.

The book itself consists of four sections, the first dealing with the theological understanding of the church's position as a diaspora people who live in exile "for the nations." This understanding is articulated most extensively in Yoder's third chapter, "See How They Go With their Faces to the Sun." Here Yoder engages in a reading of Israel's history, chronicling how the Jews living in diaspora became the normative paradigm of Jewish existence, after the failure of the monarchical project. The Jews were thus spread throughout the world, their worship shifted from the centralized temple worship to liturgies of memory centered around the biblical text. Moreover, this presence of the dispersed Jewish people became their way of fulfilling the Abrahamic promise that all nations would be blessed through his seed. Thus, the Jeremianic vision of the exiles being called to "seek the peace of the city where I have sent you into exile" (Jer. 29:7) became the normative mode of life of Israel up to the coming of Christ.

Yoder notes that all attempts to restore the monarchy and nationalistic rule of Israel after the exile ended ultimately in failure. The paradigm of exile, then was the central Jewish self understanding, that pre-figured the church's understanding of itself in relation to the world (pp. 66-69). Yoder goes on to argue that just as the Jewish ethic of "seeking the peace of the city" had radical impact on the empires throughout which they were dispersed, so also the church should conduct itself in the wider world. It is pertinent to quote Yoder on this point,

"Seek the peace of the city" is too weak a translation for Jeremiah's command. It should be translated "seek the salvation of the culture to which God has sent you." Joseph's answer to Egypt's famine problem, or Daniel's role to which God reorganized the Persian empire into manageable satrapies, represents prototypically a Jewish role in contributing to secular well-being which is far more than minority survival. (p. 76, n. 60)

Following his discussion of the church's presence "for the nations," Yoder goes on to examine particular social issues such as the racial revolution and the arms race, with a chapter devoted entirely to Martin Luther King. Of particular interest is his interpretation of King's practice of social action as apocalyptic. Yoder thus affirms King's work for racial and classist equality as a movement to be embraced by the church. Yoder notes that King's work was apocalyptic in that it noted the true shape of reality, namely that the world to come is the true world, and thus "bearing the cross" is to fundamentally affirm the "lamblike" power that is truly effective, even in the absence of immediate, measurable results (p. 134-139). Thus for Yoder, "King had got it right." As he succinctly puts the matter,

Bearing the cross was for King, as it seem to have been mostly for the Gospel writers, an ethical and a strategic category. It signals the conscious choice of a path of vulnerable faithfulness, despite the knowledge that it will be costly. That makes it a piece of the cosmology already reviewed in the other words above, according to which the shape of the universe is such that to return good for evil is functional. (p. 147)

Yoder proceeds from this point to present a number of essays under the category of "Basics." Here the discussion moves back into a series of essays that dance around issues of social action, eschatology and ecclesiology. The first essay in this section is a reprint of the first chapter from Yoder's The Original Revolution: Essays in Christian Pacifism. This essay details concisely Yoder's conception of the eschatological origin of the church in the work of Christ. This is one of the most well-written and argued smaller essays that Yoder has produced on this issue. One of his most often-quoted statements about Jesus, the church and ethics comes from this essay,

When He called His society together, Jesus gave its members a new way of life to live. He gave them a new way to deal with offenders - by forgiving them. He gave them a new way to deal with violence - by suffering. He gave them a new way to deal with money - by sharing it. He gave them a new way to deal with problems of leadership - by drawing upon the gift of every member, even the most humble. He gave them a new way to deal with a corrupt society - by building a new order, not smashing the old. He gave them a new pattern of relationships between man and woman, between parent and child, between master and slave, in which was made concrete a radical new vision of what it means to be a human person. (p. 176)

Other essays follow that are a bit more vaguely related to the general theme of the church's presence "for the nations." His essay "The Biblical Mandate for Evangelical Social Action" bears some interesting arguments and implications, but unfortunately Yoder stops short of making any concrete applications or recommendations after laying out that the church is both paradigmatic for society and a means of influencing other social bodies (pp. 185-187).

The same is true for the book's final essays. In his chapter "The Spirit of God and the Politics of Men", Yoder does some excellent work contrasting the "politics of the Spirit" with the "politics of rebellious mankind." Moreover, he makes the excellent point that discussions of church-state relations need to be much more contextual and focus not on "definitions in the abstract, essences, and the ideals of the state as such." Rather, the discussion should center on "particular communities, regimes, rulers, in light of the concrete content of the kingdom" (p. 234). This move is, I think quite excellent and must be a necessary step in Christian political reflection and action. Yoder, however does not move on to make any concrete applications or recommendations to speak to the particular political situation of the church in America. While, such may not be the aim of this collection of essays, for a position that emphasizes concreteness in approaching social and political issues, there are very few concrete suggestions made toward how the church should be "for the nations" in the particular context of the church in America. Nevertheless, this collection does provide an important corrective to the caricatures of Yoder's position as sectarian. While there is a lack of concrete application, there is plenty of room for the readers of this book to make those applications on the basis of Yoder's many insights. And that is a great gift for which we should give thanks.