I question whether Yoder’s really advocating an alternative messianism in the way that you’re seeing that he is, though. What Yoder does here and other places is more of Jesus-as-model, which at the end of the day, I’m not sure that this doesn’t lead us back to the ‘effectiveness’ motif of JW.

Long-time lurker, first-time poster. I simply want to affirm that your reading of Yoder is, to my mind, dead-on. Yoder can’t be used as support for some of the current efforts to find convergence between just war thinking and Christian pacifism.

However, I agree that Yoder very seriously engaged just war thought and challenged just war theologians to take their tradition seriously. However, he’s also very clear that he’s calling them to account on their own merits as something of a prerequiset for him having to take them seriously as his interlocutors. In other words, much of Yoder’s engagement with just war amounts to an insistence that just war adherents must show that their views have some sort of moral credibility before pacifists take their perspective seriously.

In a sense that is making a “contribution” to just war thought, but not in the sense that he felt just war was a worthy project that Christians should adhere to. He clearly does not, at least to my reading.

Also, in regard to your statement “He even reciprocated by writing articles on how JWT could inform pacifism.” Could you let me know what those articles are? I’d be very curious about them.

Now, it is true that those questions are pretty hard to answer satisfactory, which is why pacifism makes a lot more sense. Much like When War is Unjust, Yoder is attempting to make an honest contribution to the conversation of JWT, but it is hard to come away from reading that book without the feeling that JWT is totally unworkable. Maybe that might be considered a sort of “left-handed contribution,” but I think he approached it sincerely.