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.
Friday, August 08, 2008
Travis Kroeker on Yoder and Augustine: Common Bread Part 2
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
The Hit is Out
Eric over at Life's Paradox posted Nazbo Rap II. Little did he know the harm done in the video by mocking the Anabaptists in the opening.
(sorry this is terrible)
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Lebold Lecture
For those who may be interested I posted a copy of Jack Suderman's lecture that commented on below.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
The Lebold Dinner II
There was a small discussion group that met after the Lebold dinner to discuss the issued raised during the lecture. Refreshingly, the main theme was cultivating leaders with a strong sense of identity but also of imagination. Jack steered clear of proposing plans and strategies to get the church back on track. There was also not a sense of entrenching any artificial notion of what being "Mennonite" is. Rather he talked about fighting the "colonization of imagination" that results in being passively formed by your culture. In response Jack challenged us to believe, to truly believe that we are the primary vehicle for God's work of redemption and that God's Kingdom is actually among us. To wed our church strategies to any else would compromise the task of the church.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
The Lebold Dinner
Last night I attended a fund raising dinner a Conrad Grebel University College. The speaker was Jack Suderman, General Secretary of Mennonite Church Canada. He spoke on identity and leadership formation. One of the more intriguing moments in his speech was his experience in the 1980s of being part of a small group to have a personal meeting with Fidel Castro. Here are some of the excerpts,
We talked about a lot of things. He asked us what we had seen in Cuba and what our impressions were. He talked about his passion to provide health services to Cubans, and make sure that education was freely available to all. He talked about providing shelter for the homeless and more equality for the poor. He talked about the achievements of the revolution and compared conditions to the pre-revolution Batista times. And we indicated that we had seen fruit of these efforts, and that we were there to learn more. And he began to talk about the church, and about the Christian faith. He said that Christians are good and spiritual people, and he joked that we were surely concerned about getting to heaven. And he said: “You know, I think I should get to heaven too. From what you’ve seen about how we have helped the poor, do you think there’s room for me in heaven?”
And he held up a copy of a brand new biography of him that had just come out that week. And he pointed to page 29, and he said: “This biographer says here that the Cuban revolution was inspired by Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto. You know, that’s wrong. It was not inspired by Marx. The Cuban revolution was inspired by a carpenter from Nazareth who went up on a mountain to teach. And it was inspired by the sermon from that mountain.”
And he talked to us about his education in the Jesuit schools. And about how excited he was to learn about Jesus and his teachings, something he never had heard in church. And he asked his teachers how come he could never hear this in the Latin mass; and why they were not told what Jesus taught and how he lived. And he talked about how badly he wanted to know this Jesus better, and how excited he was about what little that was available to him. And then he made a statement that continues to be seared into my memory. Shaking his finger in his characteristic way, he said: “Remember that the Cuban revolution was in 1959; three years before the beginning of Vatican II. If the Catholic Church in Cuba in 1959 would have been like the Catholic Church in Nicaragua in 1980, there never would have been a Cuban revolution of the kind we know. But the church wasn’t doing what it was designed for, and so someone had to.”
Suderman continues that his sadness is seeing how the church failed to engage such zealous enthusiasm and wonders how it is that we can be doing the same without the institutional restrictions of something like pre-Vatican II Catholicism.
Suderman challenged us to pursue ecclesial identity and stir up imagination which believes that perhaps God's Kingdom is among us.
It was good night.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
The Future of Mennonites
Okay no more excuses about using YouTube. If I like it then its going to find its way here. I thought that now that I am a pastor at a Mennonite church I should see if there is anything on YouTube that would connect me with my roots and give me a broader sense of belonging. What I never realized was that I would stumble across the future of Mennonites . . .
(even if you are confused wait for the last robot, he is the best!)
