As I read between Yoder and Cavanaugh I keep thinking that Yoder is not theological enough and that there is a crucial ontological difference between their two projects. Having read Travis Kroeker's article, "Is a Messianic Ethic Possible: Recent Work By and About John Howard Yoder" (Journal of Religious Ethics, 33: 141-174) I realized that in fact ontology itself is a key difference between the two figures.
Yoder intentionally tries to reinstate a Hebraic-historic approach which he pits against a philosophical-Hellenistic mode which is associated with Constantinianism (the whole articulation of the Gospel in terms of ontology then falls into this camp). What this leads to for Yoder are 'sacraments' that translate fluidly into 'secular' practices (i.e. the breaking of bread is the distribution of economic goods) which he calls 'mediating axioms.' It was at this precise point that I was a little at uneasy with Yoder. In Kroeker's article he compares Yoder to Augustine. Augustine is discarded by Yoder for his Hellenistic influences but Kroeker argues that Augustine is nothing if not an exegete. He then goes on to site an article by Gerald Schlabach who sees Yoder as "an interlocutor in the Augustinian tradition, providing a pacifist ecclesial social ethic in answer to Augustine's definitive question: How are we to seek the peace of the earthly city without eroding loyalty to the heavenly one?" It is here that Kroeker offers an important clarification between Augustine and Yoder. He writes,
While Yoder's elaboration of an ecclesial social ethic specifies more clearly the normative material implications of Augustine's own messianic realism in a creative politics for the pilgrim city that 'uses' well the peace of the earthly city, Augustine's more robust theology of creation prevents Yoder's useful 'mediating axioms' from developing into liberal pragmatic compromises of the voluntarist sort. That is, in Augustine's view, 'mediating axioms' that truly reflect the divine ordering of love and therefore contribute to the ordinata concordia of peaceable earthly communities, must have some kind of 'metaphysical' status beyond the value projections of human wills. Otherwise they would not be 'useful.'
[emphasis mine]
Kroeker remains convinced that Augustine is someone to read Yoder in order to develop his thought. At what point does one betray someone's thought in service of another. To what extent does it matter when we offer the common bread of communion? Was Yoder simply wrong in this area? I will probably be offering a few more excerpts from Kroeker's paper.
Showing posts with label augustine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label augustine. Show all posts
Friday, August 08, 2008
Travis Kroeker on Yoder and Augustine: Common Bread Part 2
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Williams on Augustine on Speaking God
What cannot be said may still be sung. Sung not only in the hymns and psalms of which he is speaking in the Confessions passage, but in the wordless 'jubilus', the almost formless chant of the laborers in the fields:
Singing to God is singing "with jubilation" [in jubilatione]. Now what is this singing with jubilation? Think of people singing as they go about some hot and exhausting job at harvest-time, say, or in the vineyard. They start celebrating in their happiness with the words of familiar songs. But they end up turning away from words and syllables, as if they were filled with so much happiness that they couldn't put it into words. And off they go into the noise of 'jubilation.' This kind of singing [jubilum] is a sound which means that the heart is giving birth to something it cannot speak of. And who better to receive such 'jubilation' that the ineffable God - ineffable, because you cannot talk about him. And if you cannot talk about him, and it is improper just to keep silence, why, what is there left for you to do but 'jubilate' - with your heart rejoicing without words, and the immense breadth of your joy not rationed out in syllables? (en. in Ps. 32.8)
That is one of Augustine's most memorable images of Christian prayer and praise. But more profound and suggestive if another image drawn from music, occurring in the last few pages of the Discourses of the Psalms, expressing so much of his teaching on grace, desire, purification from the world's ways, and the sheer beauty of truth that it might well serve as a summary of his vision. He is commenting on the words, "Let them sing praises unto him with tabret and harp" (Ps 149.3)
We should not pass over the mysterious meaning of 'tabret and harp' in silence. On a tambourine you have a skin stretched out, and in a stringed instrument you have catgut stretched out. So in both instruments ordinary flesh is being 'crucified.' That man who said, "The world is crucified to me and I to the world" (Gal 6.14) must have sung praises really well on this 'tabret and harp'! And he who loves a 'new song' wants to take you to be that harp, that tabret. He gives you his instructions when he says, "Whoever wants to be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Do not let him throw away his harp and his tabret. Let them be stretched out on wood [of the cross], and all fleshly desire dried out on them. Strings or sinews sound more sharply the more they are stretched out. And what does Paul the apostle say about making his harp sound more sharp and clear? "Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call" (Phil 3.13-14). So he stretched himself out; Christ touched him, and the sweetness of truth gave tongue. (en. in Ps. 149.8)
- Rowan Williams The Wound of Knowledge, 97-99
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