Comments on: A Yoderian Conversation

By: roger flyer

roger flyer — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:14:49 +0000

We’ll ask him to write it while we haunt the finer place of the Athens of the South he has shown us.

By: R.O. Flyer

R.O. Flyer — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:59:39 +0000

Hey Nate, while you’re at it, could you write the last chapter of my thesis?

By: Halden

Halden — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:20:39 +0000

I’m sure we will both be eagerly awaiting Nate’s next book, for precisely these reasons.

By: ken oakes

ken oakes — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:19:17 +0000

I don’t know Yoder half as well as most people here, but from conversations with some friends, putting the issue of a doctrine of creation solely in terms of a doctrine of Christ and the powers seems fairly restrictive, and might not fully represent the scope of Yoder’s position.

In one sense, I can agree with you. My worry would be that a doctrine of creation done in this way becomes a wholly reactive and negative undertaking (retrospective yes, and that aspect is fine with me), and will probably lack a full account of God’s creative intentions that were then and now being thwarted. It is the *positive* side of a doctrine of creation that interests me, and that is what I think is absent from a lot of works done in a more Barthian or Yoderian vein.

By: Halden

Halden — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:40:08 +0000

I suppose I didn’t need the jerk quotes. What I was trying to get at though, was how, for Yoder there is no such thing as a doctrine of creation that could be understood as something independent of the New Testament’s theology of Christ and the powers.

By: ken oakes

ken oakes — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:23:28 +0000

Nate,

Your productivity puts us more snail-ish type scholars to shame.

If your piece doesn’t already have a name, may I suggest a working title that Scott Prather and I have been kicking around for some book that will probably never be written: “A Good Doctrine of Creation – Finally!”

By: Nate Kerr

Nate Kerr — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:02:33 +0000

Ken:

I am working on this exact question right now. It will be the first essay in my next book.

By: ken oakes

ken oakes — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 06:32:24 +0000

Why is “doctrine of creation” in scare-quotes? One of the main questions that both Barthians and Yoderians need to answer (although probably not Barth and Yoder themselves) is what to do with a doctrine of creation.