In a brilliant essay in For the Nations, “Are You the One Who Is to Come?” Yoder delivers one of his utterly succinct and brilliant series of reflections, in this case on the issue of nature and grace:
“For still longer than the Lutherans, Roman Catholics, or at least the Schoolmen among them, have been concerned to clarify that nature and grace stand not in opposition but are integrated in a complementary or organic way. The behavior God calls for is not alien to us; it expresses what we really are made to be. Yet, unfortunately, later Catholic strategy has foreshortened the critical potential of that vision by confusing the ‘nature of things’ with the way things are now in the fallen world, especially in ethnic and national definitions of community and patriarchal definitions of order. When society has been defined as the nation and social order as patriarchy, then it is no longer true that grace completes nature; in the face of that definition of ‘nature,’ the word of YHWH has to be like a fire, like a hammer that breaks rocks into pieces.”
This is a quintessential statement of what has come to be referred to, at least in a lot of our theoblogging circles as an apocalyptic theology of nature and grace. What Yoder really gets at here is that grace must be a sort of apocalyptic fire, an interruptive disturbance, a shattering intrusion into “nature” when nature is defined on the basis of ideologies which enslave humanity. But this hardly means that such an apocalyptic theology means an antipathy toward the created world as such:
“Yet when the ‘nature of things’ is properly defined, the organic relationship to grace is restored. The cross is not a scandal to those who know the world as God sees it, but only to the pagans, who look for what they call wisdom, or the Judeans, who look for what they call power [1 Corinthians 1:17f]. This is what I meant before, when I stated that the choice of Jesus was ontological: it risks and option in favor of the restored vision of how things really are. It has always been true that suffering creates shalom. Motherhood has always meant that. Sertvanthood has always meant that. Healing has always meant that. Tilling the soil has always meant that. Priesthood has always meant that. Prophecy has always meant that. What Jesus did—and we might say it with reminiscence of Scholastic christological categories—was that he renewed the definition of kingship to fit with priesthood and prophecy. He saw what the suffering servant is king as much as he is priest and prophet. The cross is neither foolish nor weak, but natural.” (p. 212)
This is really a great statement of what an apocalyptic theology of nature and grace looks like. The only issue I would point out here is the rhetoric of vision that Yoder deploys. At point it makes it sound like all we need to do is undergo a sort of optic shift in order to ‘see things right.’ What this might miss is the fact that the principalities and powers cannot be overcome simply by an adjustment of vision. The world is definitively not transformed into the world of YHWH’s eschatological promises. Rather we await that promise in hope, even as we bear witness to the apocalyptic foretaste of that promise that is given to us through the mission of the Holy Spirit, who continue to break into history, invading it in all of its contingencies with the radical agape of Christ, which we proclaim as the future of the world—the world as it truly, naturally will be.
Halden, these are wonderful quotes. But I don’t think Yoder is stuck in a rhetoric of vision: immediately following the statement about vision, he goes on to say that “suffering creates shalom,” and then names a bunch of ways in which shalom is brought about in that way — motherhood, servanthood, healing, tilling, priestly and prophetic action. In these ways the principalities and powers are indeed defeated — participating in Christ’s kingly reign through our cruciform royal actions.
Yes, I certainly see that those notions are clearly present. And my comments clearly were meant to manifest plenty of reserve about making a criticism (“sound like,” “might miss,” etc.)
We just simply need to be clear that what is at stake is not just correctly seeing what “already” the case, but participating in the apocalyptic unfolding that ongoing event(fulness) that is God’s missional activity in the world in Christ and the Spirit.
And certainly I don’t think Yoder misses any of this, it just may not be completely obvious in this quote, or at least some might take it wrongly if it is read in isolation.
I didn’t get the impression, from what you quoted, that Yoder was merely calling for an optical change; it seems that he provides some concrete, and even ontological changes as his examples. In other words, faith seems to be the basis of the “change;” which to me is more than a “vision change”— albeit vision is a “symptom” of that kind of change.
I also like these quotations, but I do think that Yoder cannot single out “later Catholic strategy” as confusing the natural with the fallen. I take these to be a widespread error and problem within Christianity as a whole.
I agree. It does seem, though, that he’s at least trying to include the Lutherans in it as well. And in other places in his writings I think similar things are said about the Reformed tradition.
“When society has been defined as the nation and social order as patriarchy, then it is no longer true that grace completes nature”
I think Halden’s near-critique was more accurate or more interesting. One never gets the feeling in Yoder that he is looking for an irruptive act other than the practice of the historical Jesus ‘back then’. Rather, we have it in us to do the same and were made to do it.
Here Yoder names the problem for the continuity of nature and grace as merely being the nation-state and the cultural practices of patriarchy. Both are within our grasp to change and would require nothing remarkable to alter (unlike what the ‘waiting in hope’ rhetoric of the apocalytic blogger implies).
In other words, Yoder doesn’t take the biological roots of human ‘nature’ seriously. It’s all cultural-political with ‘nature’ and ‘grace’ naming two temporal choices which are easily brought into harmony (in such ho-hum practices as motherhood and tilling soil).
Notice it’s only the political kingship practice (politics) that needs reform (‘It’s the violence stupid’). Priestly and prophetic roles are left uncritiqued because Yoder has little interest in such ‘supernatural’, for lack of a better word, ‘mumbo-jumbo’.
I am not convinced that when Yoder says, “The cross is not a scandal to those who know the world as God sees it” he requires anything more than what one could get from a deep secular reading of Bono. Just to be provocative…..
“… Priestly and prophetic roles are left uncritiqued because Yoder has little interest in such ’supernatural’, for lack of a better word, ‘mumbo-jumbo’.
I am not convinced that when Yoder says, “The cross is not a scandal to those who know the world as God sees it” he requires anything more than what one could get from a deep secular reading of Bono. Just to be provocative…”
James-Yeah…without reading a lot of Yoda, this is what I get too. Yodaians response?
the more I read Yoder, the more I think this is correct, Roger. Are the Ted Grimsruds and Walter Winks the rightful inheritors of Yoder, and not the Chris Huebners and the Michael Cartwrights? Hmm…
I have no idea what any one is talking about here. Please help me understand.
Do or do not; there is no try.
There is no ‘real Yoder’ to get back to – it’s what use we make of him. (That was slightly sarcastic.)
But neither the Grismund/Winks nor the Huebners/Cartwrights have a definitive claim. The point is to spend is always to spend enough time with those we’ve learned from so that their concerns to some degree become our own, and we re-state them in hopefully appropriate and even better ways.
For my money, it’s the Harinks and (more recently_ the Barbers and Kerrs that are appropriating the logic and rationalie of his work in the most fruitful ways.
Well, it true that nobody has a definitive claim, but there are some folks who use Yoder for purposes that are alien to his own agenda. I would point out Jim Wallis, Gerald Schlabach and David Cortright who shallowly use him as an advocate of their world peace plans through police actions.
I n my view Yoder’s legacy hangs in the balance as to whether he was an advocate of pacifism or just war in that debate.
I address this in an upcoming book:
Andy Alexis-Baker. “Unbinding Yoder from Just Policing.” In Power and Practices: Engaging the Thought of John Howard Yoder, edited by Jeremy Bergen and Anthony Siegrist. Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 2009.
I think Doug Harink has a great essay on Yoder in the Mind Unpatient and Untamed. I just reread his essay in light of some work I am doing on Yoder’s unpublished course on missions and ecclesiology (and that work would probably correct some of what Doug says there about Yoder focusing mosly on Jewish faithfulness not God’s, which is a very valid point, but Yoder wasn’t finished :) ).