The Politics of Jesus

Summary and commentary on John Howard Yoder's book

Thesis
I would like to say that Yoder’s argument is not easy to follow.
As noted by reviewers John Howard Yoder’s The Politics Of Jesus is a very valuable contribution in giving a biblical basis to the current thought on just war theory. He challenges biblical theologies that had managed to depoliticize the ethical significance of Jesus’ message. He put Jesus’ social ethics as the basis of his work, he is really consistent in this matter. Some people say that he is a pacifist, but in my opinion he is not a “cheap” pacifist, he has a solid basis to be a “pacifist” because he does not run away from the reality.

Yoder’s ethical work reminds us to the urge from Vatican Council II that moral theology has to back to its source, that is, the sacred scripture.


Context
In the preface of this first edition of his book, Yoder claims that his work is a simple rebound of a Christian pacifist commitment as it responds to the ways in which mainstream Christian theology has set aside the pacifist implications on the New Testament message. This work testifies to the conviction that, well beyond the question of formal orientation, there is a bulk of specific and concrete content in Jesus’ vision of the divine order which can speak to our age as it seldom has been free to do before, if it can be unleashed from the bonds of inappropriate a priori.

In the preface for the second edition, he said consistently that his work is strongly based on the sacred scripture, even though it is not just an exegesis. He said that his work had a great influence from what is called “biblical realism.”

Dennis P. McCann from DePaul University said that Yoder’s work in the second edition is no less provocative than in the first edition in contesting the reevaluations of New Testament ethics emerging from recent scholarship on the historical Jesus. According to him, Yoder presses beyond the question whether Jesus was political to ask what kind of politics is the mark of Christian discipleship.Max L. Stackhouse from Princeton Theological Seminary said that as Christians we are challenged by the work of Yoder in the political engagement.

From these reviews, it seems that Yoder’s work, which is strongly based on the sacred scripture, is a challenge to us as Christian to live out the biblical message whatever difficult it is. His work may broaden our mind as Christian that has been strongly based on Augustinian legacy for centuries, and set aside Jesus’ message. Yoder’s work reminds us always that we have to struggle for justice in this world and as Christians we cannot be apolitical, he reminds us to live a Christian hope that only God who can accomplish the work for justice totally. We are still living in the eschatological strain.

Analysis
God will fight for us
In this chapter Yoder is dealing with the problem from the Old Testament that many people cite to support their theory that God wills war. This makes the Old Testament seem totally different with the New Testament in dealing with war. Yoder argues that such a notion is wrong, because several wars that occurred in Israel were not God’s will, but man’s. He argues that Israel believed that God would fight for them. “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be still” (Exod. 14:13).

The war with the Amalekites was a human decision (Moses and Joshua). It is not reported that Yahweh commanded this war. And then this story tried to convince this belief by showing that if Moses turned down his extended hands, the Israel would be defeated by the Amalek. It means not to let Israel think that military strength or numbers had brought the victory, but trusting God for their survival as a people is the real strength.

The similar themes did occur in the era of the kingdoms in Israel.
After the exile, Israel’s faith did not change. Israel still looked to their nation’s history as one of miraculous preservation by Yahweh. Sometimes this preservation had included the Israelites’ military activity (note: the original pattern of “holy war” in Israel was only defensive); at other times no weapons at all were used. In both cases, however, the point was the same: confidence in Yahweh is an alternative to the self determining use of Israel’s own military resources in the defense of their existence as God’s people. God himself will take care of his people.

This understanding of the meaning behind the stories in the Old Testament is really important, because Jesus’ message in the Gospel is a prolongation of the original early Israel experience and vision, rather than as a rejection or reversal. It is showed there that God’s intervention in history is possible. For this reason we must be careful in reading and interpreting the war story in the Old Testament.

The Possibility of Nonviolent Resistance
There are two significant cases of the possibility of nonviolence resistance in the history of Israel, namely, the case of Pilate and Caligula.
Josephus Flavius reported that when Pilate moved from Caesarea to Jerusalem to abolish the Jewish law, he brought and set up Caesar’s effigies in Jerusalem. The Jews protested him by demonstration. When Pilate ordered his soldiers to kill them, they would choose death rather than transgress the wisdom of their law. Pilate gave up and withdrew his plan.

Later, Caligula tried to place his statue in the temple of Jerusalem, a profanation of the sacred temple of the Jews by ordering Petronius. The reaction was a strike. Fields were left untilled in the sowing season, and by the tens of thousands the Jews gathered to entreat Petronius for over a month. This unity could not be broken.

Those cases showed to us that there is possibility of nonviolent resistance (as opposed to the Zealotes), to reject the responsible sword is not to withdraw from the history. These experiences then were echoed in Jesus message: “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” (Mt. 26:52, par.)

Trial Balance
In this chapter Yoder talks about the theology of the Cross. In his argument this theology is not merely a personalistic one, but a theology that should be the basis of social ethics. He talks about the politics of the cross. This theology could be a significant contribution to our understanding on the just war theory. He tries to convince his readers that Jesus’ way is the way of the cross, and his way is not the soteric way in the sense of pietism, but actually, it is a social justice way.

Theology of the Cross has been lived since the early Church. Paul spoke of his own ministry as a sharing in the dying and rising of Jesus (2Cor 4:10-11; Col 1:24; Phil 1:29. 2:1-5; Eph 5:25). The letters of Peter, the letter to the Hebrews, the letters of John and the Gospels proclaim the important of the Cross in the life of the faithful. We could argue that the concept of imitation of the Christ is not applied by the New Testament as Franciscan and romantic devotion has tried most piously to apply it, but those NT proclamations are all the more powerfully demonstration of how fundamental the thought of participation in the suffering of Christ. The NT church sees it as guiding and explaining her attitude to the powers of the world. This message is consistently proclaimed in the NT.

Yoder argues that the believer’s cross is, like that of Jesus, the price of social non-conformity. It is not just an inward wrestling of the soul with self and sins; it is the social reality of representing an unwilling world to the Order to come: “The servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me they will persecute you (Jn 15:20). The temptation of Jesus is not a spiritual temptation, but a temptation to choose or not choose the Cross. Yoder’s argument is confirmed by William Barclay in his exegesis of the Gospel of Matthew. Barclay said: “Jesus made his decision. He decided that he must never bribe men into following him, he decided that the way of sensations was not for him, he decided that there could be no compromise in the message he preached and the faith he demanded. The choice inevitably meant the Cross – but the Cross just as inevitably meant the final victory” (p.70).

For Yoder, incarnation is that God broke through the borders of our standard definition what is human, and gave a new, formative definition in the man Jesus. It means that for us as a man, there is nothing impossible to do what Jesus did.
Then radically Yoder gives the readers moral choices that need to be chosen, as follows:
Jesus of history or of dogma. We should choose the Jesus of history (e.g. Albert Schweitzer), because in all his eschatological realism, we find an utterly precise and practicable ethical instruction, practical because in him the kingdom has actually come within reach. In him the sovereignty of Yahweh has become human history.

The prophet and the institution. We should choose to become a prophet that condemns and “crushes” under God’s demand for perfection, by convincing people of their sinfulness and pointing toward the ideal.
To conceive of the reign of God either as external and catastrophic or as subjective, inward. The kingdom of God is a social order not a hidden one. It is not tomorrow, it starts from now on, although it is not finished yet.

The political and the sectarian. The Christian should not be apolitical or sectarian. Christian should be political, but we have to note it well, we are called to be political in Jesus’ way, namely, rejecting the sword. Jesus’ way is not less but more relevant to the question of how society moves than is the struggle for possession of levers of command; to this Pilate and Caiaphas testify by their judgment on him. Jesus refused to concede that those in power represent an ideal, a logically proper, or even empirically acceptable definition of what it means to be political. He did not say as some sectarian pacifists or some pietists might, “You can have your politics and I shall do something else more important.” He said, “Your definition of polis, of the social, of the wholeness of being human socially is perverted.”

The individual and the social. Jesus did not differ the individual and the social aspect in man’s life “sharply”, he doesn’t know anything about radical personalism. The personhood which he proclaims as a healing, forgiving, call to all is integrated into the social novelty of the healing community. Jesus’ view and work is holistic. In this view the cross is not folly or weakness, but the wisdom and power of God (1Cor 1:22-25).

The Disciple of Christ and the Way of Jesus
In this chapter Yoder gives us a large collection of texts on how the disciple of Christ to follow his way. We can read the detail nuances in his writing. One thing that we should understand clearly here is the idea of “imitation.” Yoder said that there is one realm in which the concept of imitation holds. This is at the point of concrete social meaning of the cross in its relation to enmity and power. Servanthood replaces dominion, forgiveness absorbs hostility. Thus and only thus are we bound by NT thought to “be like Jesus." Again in this chapter the role of Jesus’ cross has been stressed.

Christ and Power
Yoder spoke at length in this chapter about the meaning of powers. Because of natura vulnerata (fallen nature) in everything, and in powers as well, so that the worldly powers tend to be perverted. The structures (powers) of the world fail to serve us as they should. They do not enable humanity to live a genuinely free, loving life. They have absolutized themselves and they demand from the individual and society an unconditional loyalty. They harm and enslave us. Yoder stresses, "We cannot live with them."

If then God is going to save his creatures in their humanity, then the powers cannot simply be destroyed or set aside or ignored. Their sovereignty must be broken. This is what Jesus did, concretely and historically, by living a genuinely free and human existence. This life that brings him to the cross. He struggled to free himself from the Jewish religion and Roman politics. Morally he broke their rules by refusing to support them in their self-glorification; that’s why they killed him. Therefore his cross is victory, the confirmation that he was free from the rebellious pretensions of the cruel condition. Here we have for the first time to do with someone who is not the slave to any power, of any law, or custom, community or institution, value or theory. He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him (Col. 2:15).

But then, how does the Church deal with this power of Christ? What should the Christian do? According to Yoder the Church should not be seduced by the worldly powers, but by existing, the church demonstrates that her rebellion has been vanquished. Then the Christian should change the fallen structures (powers) by building a true Christian community. It is not a utopia, it works and it has been the success of the early Church (cf. Act 2:43-47). This is not pietism, this is a political movement, a refusal by not withdrawing from society, but this is rather a major negative intervention within the process of social change, a refusal to use unworthy means even for what seems to be a worthy end. With this the Christian can be the conscience of the world.

Conclusion
The role of Jesus’ cross has been profoundly stressed in Yoder’s work. This is what the Christian should live out. The meaning of Cross here, however, is not a narrow pietism or individualism. Jesus’ cross is the only answer to this broken world, and it should be the basis of the Christian nonviolence political movement. Violence creates violence. We should move to stop violence with nonviolent movement. Pope John Paul II in his encyclical letter Dives in Misericordia said: “The experience of the past and of our own time demonstrates that justice alone is not enough, that it can even lead to the negation and destruction of itself, if that deeper power, that is love, is not allowed to shape human life in its various dimensions. It has been precisely historical experience that, among other things, has led to the formulation of the saying: summum ius, summa inuria. This statement does not detract from the value of justice and does not minimize the significance of the order that is based upon it; it only indicates, under another aspect, the need to draw from the powers of the spirit which condition the very order of justice, powers which are still more profound" (art. 12).

That power of love is the Cross of Jesus. Let me summarize it in one sentence: the answer of mysterium iniquitatis (the mystery of evil) is mysterium crucis (the mystery of cross).


Questions

Can Elijah’s case, namely, killing hundreds false prophets (2 Kings 18:20-40) which is not cited and described by Yoder be a “stumbling block” for his argument in his work?

Could the theology of the Cross be the basic principle of a just war theory? Or is this theology not relevant anymore to this modern world? If it could be applied, where is its place?