The Centrality and Lordship of Jesus
For Yoder the central theme of the Bible is not a theological concept or ethical principle, such as justification by faith or liberation, but the saving acts of God in Jesus ([x-ref] 85) and, therefore, the story of Jesus ([x-ref] 114): Jesus the teacher, the exemplar, the Lord. “The issue [about the “normativeness” of Jesus] is whether Jesus Christ is Lord” ([x-ref] 62). To affirm Jesus as Lord is to make a commitment in how to read the Bible—in the interest of discipleship ([x-ref] 58), “under the claim of a liberating Lord calling us to be the servants of our neighbors” ([x-ref] 65), in order to extend “in a compatible way the process of conforming to the foundational events” of the New Testament story, just as the New Testament writers appealed to those foundational events ([x-ref] 105).
Thus “the story of Jesus is the canon within the Christian canon” ([x-ref] 115). Throughout all of his writings, Yoder is especially keen to emphasize Jesus’ rejection of domination and his embrace of non-violence, not as the manifestation of political apathy but precisely as the true politics, the politics of God. The reality of Jesus’ non-dominating lordship, therefore, functions for Yoder both as the fundamental datum of the New Testament and, consequently, as the fundamental hermeneutical principle of Christian scriptural interpretation. The “what” and the “how” of Yoder’s biblical interpretation coalesce in the affirmation of Jesus’ servant-lordship.
The Church: Called to be Public, Political Witness
Inasmuch as Jesus the crucified servant-Lord was not “apolitical,” neither can the church be. A summary of Yoder’s project can be found in Nancey Murphy’s words: “The moral character of God is revealed in Jesus’ vulnerable enemy love and renunciation of domination. Imitation of Jesus in this regard constitutes a social ethic.”20 The “politics of Jesus”—his way of being in the world—becomes the way of his disciples, the church. Or, in an apropos line, not from Yoder but from Hauerwas: “The church does not have a social ethic; the church is a social ethic.”21
With this basic conviction about the church, Yoder is again fighting against two closely related tendencies within the Christian tradition, especially among Protestants: individualism and privatism, or quietism (being “apolitical”). For Yoder, we hear the word and do the word not primarily as individuals but as the church, as a community ([x-ref] 121). And we do so, not merely to receive our own personal comfort or assurance of salvation, but in order to be constituted as an alternative way of being in the world. Thus to hear the word truly is to be transformed into a community that practices the way of Jesus in new circumstances; the church is, therefore, a public, social, political entity—a witness to its Lord. The church is thereby inherently “missionary” (Yoder’s term), or missional, not merely in its proclamation, but also—indeed first of all—in its very being. This mission is rooted in God’s activity attested in the canon, which speaks against “all apoliticisms” ([x-ref] 131) and is itself “a book about politics” ([x-ref] 132)—about a new humanity, a “cosmos . . . shaken by the cross,” “a universe being reordered by the Word of the resurrection” ([x-ref] 135).
Although the foundational events of the church provide the fundamental shape of the church’s missional witness, the church’s faithful embodiment of those events—like the canonical documents themselves—is always occasional and contextual ([x-ref] 108–19). This is the meaning, for Yoder, of his favorite quote from the Puritan Robinson about “more light and truth.”22
•••
When one reads Yoder speaking about Scripture, one cannot help but be impressed at how sophisticated—even prescient—he was in identifying some of the main currents of contemporary biblical study and hermeneutics. His interests in the narrative character of Scripture, the significance of orality in the formation of the canon and the church, and the particularity and contingency of the biblical documents are all very much in vogue at this writing. Moreover, his passion for a pastoral, theological, and missional reading of the text that is aided by, but not enslaved to, critical methods anticipates the growing contemporary vitality of theological and missional interpretation among biblical scholars. At times in this volume we see foreshadows, for example, of James Dunn (on orality), of N.T. Wright (on the overarching biblical narrative), of Stephen Fowl (on theological interpretation), and of George Hunsberger (on missional hermeneutics).
This is not to say that every detail of Yoder’s approach—or even every major theme—can be taken over uncritically by us. Nevertheless, in provocative ways the themes we have identified in this book can—and, I would argue, should—offer significant guidance to us who read the Bible as Scripture, for discipleship, after Christendom. Richard Hays agrees, concluding that
Yoder’s hermeneutic represents an impressive challenge to the church to remain faithful to its calling of discipleship, modeling its life after the example of the Jesus whom it confesses as Lord. . . . Yoder’s vision offers a compelling account of how the New Testament might reshape the life of the church.23
To summarize the themes from this book that we have considered, we may point once again to the words of John Howard Yoder himself. Before his death, he dedicated To Hear the Word to Paul Minear and Hans-Ruedi Weber. Minear had been a professor of biblical theology at Yale. Known for his studies of biblical imagery and language, Minear also wrote an important book called The Bible and the Historian: Breaking the Silence about God in Biblical Studies. Weber was a prominent leader in the ecumenical movement, serving for three decades on the staff of the World Council of Churches, and the author of studies on the laity and on biblical interpretation in the life of the church, including The Book that Reads Me and The Cross: Tradition and Interpretation.
In the dedication, Yoder describes Minear and Weber as people “who have molded for a generation the straightforward ecumenical, missionary, and pastoral reading of Scripture.” Yoder’s tribute contains words that we may now apply to him. He guides us toward a truly ecclesial yet missional reading of Scripture, with a profoundly Anabaptist yet ecumenical and catholic spirit, in historically astute and literarily sensitive ways that are nonetheless “straightforward” and pastoral. Or, as he would himself say, he guides us toward a reading of Scripture that proceeds from and focuses on Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster, Eum Sequamur; “Our Lamb has conquered; let us follow him.”
1. For the influence of Barth and Cullman on Yoder, see Earl Zimmerman, Practicing the Politics of Jesus: The Origin and Significance of John Howard Yoder’s Social Ethics (Telford, PA: Cascadia, 2007) 101–39.
2. For a fuller biographical sketch, see Mark Thiessen Nation, John Howard Yoder: Mennonite Patience, Evangelical Witness, Catholic Convictions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006) 1–29. I am grateful to him for reviewing a draft of this foreword.
3. The lecture was published as “The New Humanity as Pulpit and Paradigm,” pages 37–50 in Yoder’s For the Nations: Essays Evangelical and Public (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997).
4. The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994 [orig. 1972]).
5. Joel B. Green, “The (Re)Turn to Theology,” Journal of Theological Interpretation 1 (2007) 1–3.
6. Using the language of the day,