So, the issue for Yoder is not whether JW is good or bad, but whether it could be conceived of outside Christendom. Dan Bell has an interesting book coming out on JW as an ecclesial discipline, which may tease some of this direction out.

I have my doubts as to whether the Dula and Huebner book is the new Yoder, or rather an ‘other’ Yoder than the original one.

There is a clear distinction between pacifism and JW. The latter assumes that in the face of conflict it somehow has the ability (morally, theologically, etc.) to decide. In other words, for the JW practitioner, violence is never out of the question: it remains a possibility when conflict arises.

For the pacifist, the decision has been made a priori that violence is out of the question. There is no ‘exception’ to which violence may be used. Here is where we find Yoder – messianic, missional, principled.

Yoder’s engagement with JW was never a move to legitimize it as falling in line with the politics of Jesus. Yoder engaged JW because it was a dominant theory, and because it has never ever lived up to it’s own standards – seriously, how many more wars do we have to endure, while JW Christians salute the flag, before we call their theory bullshit? I see Yoder’s engagement as necessary to challenge it to live up to it’s own “standards.”

And, it may we be worth pondering, when is it time to entertain the reality that the evolution of war and violence has left the tradition categories of JW and pacifism. In a world where the ‘principalities and powers’ wield weapons capable of destroying the world ten times over, how could any war be just?

While we are on the topic of Yoder books, keep an eye out for: The New Yoder (Edited by Peter Dula and Chris K. Huebner), (Eugene, OR: Cascade) forthcoming 2009.

What complicates this whole question is that Yoder was NOT a pacifist of principle, but a missional pacifist, or ‘messianic pacifist’ or something along that line, i.e. that if we are in history, but not in charge of it, then we receive that which comes to us as a possible sign of God’s movement in history. Now, whether this is compatible with Yoder’s insistence on the primacy of Jesus or not (given that history for Yoder continued to unfold toward the eschaton offering new avenues for peace etc etc), is a different question. But Yoder was in fact open to JW dialogue and did in fact see promise in it in the instances when it reformed its thinking.

But, I think attempts like this by high church mennonites to link Yoder heavily to JW theory is severely misguided. Yoder was a militant pacifist, he did not think JW theory revealed any semblance of the politics of Jesus whatsoever. Whether or not JW theory presumes against violence is not issue, JW theory has done little if anything at all to prevent spilt blood.

Power and Practices: Engaging the Work of John Howard Yoder, edited by Jeremy Bergen and Anthony Siegrist. Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 2009.

http://store.mpn.net/productdetails.cfm?PC=1328

The thing that really irritates me about Stassen is that he just assumes and insists that his project is the same as Yoder’s. That is simply false.

Here is a quote:

“In Kingdom Ethics, Glen Stassen and David Gushee contended that ‘discipleship-pacifists,’ who see nonviolence as a way of life, are ‘slightly more flexible than rule-pacifists,’ who see nonviolence as a rule to follow. They cited Bonhoeffer’s support of a plot to kill Hitler and Yoder’s distinction between war and policing as examples of that flexibility. (Kingdom Ethics, 166–67)”

In general there is a movement to define Yoder’s legacy in terms of the just war by renaming just policing and appealing to Yoder who made the distinction. I am trying to debunk that use of Yoder, because it turns him not into a dialogue partner with the just war, but an advocate of the position. I am very unhappy with Schlabach, Cortright, Stassen, Wallis and some others who are doing this nonsense.