Was Jesus a political person? The question seems blatantly obvious now—of course he was! In 1972 when pacificist Mennonite scholar John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) penned the first edition of The Politics of Jesus, the answer wasn’t so certain. Western Christianity had enshrined the separation of church and state as a sort of modernist gospel. In the face of this dualism, Yoder’s language was bold: “Jesus is, according to the biblical witness, a model of radical political action” (2). The goal of his study was to state the connection between the Jesus story and social ethics so loudly that people could not ignore the connections.
I studied the second edition of Politics, published in 1994. The posts below walk you through the arguments of each chapter, followed by some of my personal reflections. Keep in mind that I studied this book in 2012, and things change over a decade.
A few years after my close reading of Yoder’s work, Rachel Waltner Goossen published a report on Yoder’s history of sexual abuse. This calls into question his credibility as a theologian and the posts below should be read with this in mind. You can read about this in Anabaptist World.
The Politics of Jesus | John Howard Yoder (Ch. 1)
I have been curious about Christian pacifism since the aftermath of 9/11. “Just war theory” had always been my official view, although I had no real idea what that meant. A few years ago the documentary, God of War, Prince of Peace was produced. (You can grab it for free on TheMovieBlog.com.) In it, Tony Campolo’s story about his inability to drop bombs while asking, “what would Jesus do” really struck me. Lately I’ve been reading Hauerwas, a pacifist theologian. (I didn’t know they made pacifists in Texas!) It turns out Hauerwas was a student of J. H. Yoder, a [...]
The Politics of Jesus | John Howard Yoder (Ch. 2)
Chapter 2: The Kingdom Coming Summary 1972: This second chapter is a tour through the Gospel of Luke designed to demonstrate that Jesus’ message was political and non-violent. Using one chapter to summarize an entire Gospel’s worth of evidence is difficult and Yoder strains at the task. He uses broad categories to plot the narrative of Luke, drawing relevant data along the way. He mentioned that there were many other points in Luke as well as the other gospels that could have made his thesis stronger if he wanted to go deeper. […]
The Politics of Jesus | John Howard Yoder (Ch. 3)
Chapter 3: The Implications of the Jubilee Summary 1972: The thesis of this chapter is simple: Yoder believes that Jesus proclaimed a Jubilee year in his Nazareth sermon. (The entire chapter is an adaptation of André Trocmé’s work, Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution.) Yoder sets out to discover allusions throughout Jesus’ ministry to the four elements of Jubilee: Leaving the soil fallow The remission of debts The liberation of slaves The return of family property […]
The Politics of Jesus | John Howard Yoder (Ch. 4)
Chapter 4: God Will Fight for Us Summary 1972: Here Yoder surveys key moments in Israel’s life where God fights so they don’t have to. This motif is grounded in the Exodus where Israel did nothing to destroy the Egyptians (Exodus 14:13). It continues on, being especially prevalent in 2 Chronicles. Even after the Exile, Ezra returned to Jerusalem without soldiers for protection because he trusted God (and was ashamed to ask). We need to consider how the Jewish people in Jesus’ day would have reflected on these accounts. While we modern readers question the inconceivability of a God [...]
The Politics of Jesus | John Howard Yoder (Ch. 5)
Chapter 5: The Possibility of Nonviolent Resistance Summary Chapter five is a mere three pages long with one page consisting of a lengthy quote from Josephus. In it Yoder demonstrates that there were ways the Jewish people of Jesus’ day could resist Rome without turning to violent Zealotry. Using Josephus, he showed how the Jews would rather die than accept Caesar’s effigies in their holy city. Pilate was moved by their passion as they laid bare their necks to his judgment. The second time they tried this Pilate massacred them. […]
The Politics of Jesus | John Howard Yoder (Ch. 6)
Chapter 6: Trial Balance Summary 1972: We agree that Jesus had a ethical-social vision of the Kingdom. Does that vision as recorded in the gospels translate into the rest of the New Testament? Again, we will not be exhaustive, but prove that Jesus’ ethical-social vision didn’t end with the ascension. When Paul speaks about imitating Jesus, he focuses exclusively on his suffering—his cross. That cross is “the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the Order to come” (96). Jesus suffered because he didn’t give in to the temptations of quietism, establishment responsibility, or crusade. He modeled Kingdom [...]
The Politics of Jesus | John Howard Yoder (Ch. 7)
Chapter 7: The Disciple of Christ and the Way of Jesus Summary 1972: Since it’s possible to posit a gap between the kingdom Jesus announced (as recorded in the Gospels) and the shape of the early Christian church, we will now reflect on the apostolic ethical tradition. One of the strongest themes that relate apostolic ethics to Jesus is the idea of participation/correspondence which is described primarily by two overlapping metaphors: discipleship and imitation. This theme is based on the doctrine of imago dei, given new reality by in the New Testament by the Spirit. […]
The Politics of Jesus | John Howard Yoder (Ch. 8)
Chapter 8: Christ and Power Summary 1972: Some have argued that Jesus’ radical personalism makes him irrelevant to questions of power and structure. When the post-Constantine Christians found themselves in positions of social responsibility, they had to look outside the New Testament for their ethical guidelines because Jesus had nothing to say about the subject. We need to examine the New Testament understanding of powers and see how it relates to modern views of the topic. […]
The Politics of Jesus | John Howard Yoder (Ch. 9)
Chapter 9: Revolutionary Subordination Summary 1972: Many point to the Haustafeln (e.g. Colossians 3:18-4:1; Ephesians 5:21-6:9; 1 Peter 2:13-37) as proof that the early church simply borrowed their ethical instruction from earlier Hellenistic (especially Stoic) and Jewish sources since Jesus didn’t provide an adequate ethical foundation for the growing church. Dibelius championed this view. This movement can be interpreted either positively or negatively. Yoder disagrees that the Haustafeln was mere appropriation. […]
The Politics of Jesus | John Howard Yoder (Ch. 10)
Chapter 10: Let Every Soul Be Subject: Romans 13 and the Authority of the State Summary 1972: Romans 13:1-7 has traditionally been appealed to in order to support the God-ordained role of the state to wield the sword. It follows that if the Christian is enlisted by the state, a God-ordained structure, then the Christian would be exempt from the prohibition against murder. This view was shattered by Nazism. It is the purpose of this chapter to deconstruct the traditional view in six ways. […]
The Politics of Jesus | John Howard Yoder (Ch. 11)
Chapter 11: Justification by Grace through Faith Summary 1972: One major objection remains to the premise that Jesus’ social ethic was active and important in the early church. The primary message of Paul has been understood to be justification by grace through faith, especially since the Protestant Reformation. Works (i.e. social ethic) has nothing to do with Paul’s major emphasis … or does it? […]
The Politics of Jesus | John Howard Yoder (Ch. 12)
Chapter 12: The War of the Lamb Summary 1972: With our focus on Jesus and Paul, other biblical witnesses have been left out, notably Revelation. Christian social ethics is obsessed with discovering the meaning and direction of history. It turns out this is no easy task because of the plethora of free agents in play. Revelation provides a better solution that trying to decode history. John reminds us that “the cross and not the sword, suffering and not brute power determines the meaning of history” (232). Indeed, Jesus’ faithfulness to the enemy led him to give up his own [...]