Reading Yoder
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
This summer I am reading John Howard Yoder with some friends. We are only a couple of weeks into it, but it has been a tremendous experience so far. I had not read a line of Yoder before, not even his famous book, The Politics of Jesus.
I want to blog about Yoder from time to time over the course of the summer. But first I'd like to ask the readers of this blog if you all have read Yoder before, and if so, what your experience with him has been like.
Labels: John Howard Yoder
posted by Andrew C. Thompson at 10:19 AM
3 Comments:
he is on my summer reading list too
I'm with Andrew this Summer reading Yoder, so I'll simply share something here he's already heard me write/say about Yoder. As a 'mainline Protestant', it's striking to me to encounter Yoder's deep commitment to the witness of the Bible that displays a rigorous intellectual consideration as well as deep knowledge of other critical exegetical voices who have spoken on the texts in question. He doesn't 'cherry-pick' proof texts either; he deals with the Scripture-- all of it, even when the words on the page make all of us wonder just how it is God might be present therein. (Take the example of Yoder's explanation of the presence of war in the Old Testament or the Household codes in the epistles-- texts that we might be inclined to simply decide are "mistaken" and consequently, ignorable.) This post is way too long already, but here's just one quote:
"...it is clear in the New Testament that the meaning of history is not what the state will achieve in the way of a progressively more tolerant ordering of society, but what the church achieves through evangelism and through the leavening process. This ‘messianic self-consciousness’ on the part of the church looks most offensive to the proponents of a modern world view, but it is what we find in the Bible.” (Yoder, “If Christ Is Truly Lord,” in The Original Revolution, 78-9).
In short, Yoder is pushing me to take the scripture even more seriously. This is a good thing.
Last thing: here's a link to another blog I found somewhere: "Reading Yoder":
http://readingyoder.blogspot.com/index.html
Thanks, Andrew... Peace.
I am a big Yoder fan and The Politics of Jesus is one of my favorite books. As a supporter of nonviolence, I began reading Yoder (and Hauerwas) while in seminary, as an antidote to the Niebuhr & Tillich schools of thought, which I just couldn't embrace, and which dominated at PTS. I envy you all, reading Yoder for the first time. May God bless your journey this summer!
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