Book
Earl Zimmerman, Practicing the Politics of Jesus: The Origin and Significance of John Howard Yoder’s Social Ethics. Telford, PA: Cascadia Publishing House, 2007.
Reviewer
Mark Thiessen Nation, Eastern Mennonite Seminary, Harrisonburg, VA
Interest in the theological ethics of John Howard Yoder shows no signs of slowing down. I am delighted – and sometimes amazed – at the level of scholarly interest in Yoder’s writings today.
Practicing the Politics of Jesus: The Origin and Significance of John Howard Yoder’s Social Ethics is composed of seven chapters. The first six attempt to identify what shaped Yoder in ways that gave rise to his most influential book, The Politics of Jesus. The last chapter, which seems rather artificially connected to the others, provides Earl Zimmerman with an opportunity to state the significance of “the politics of Jesus,” as he sees it, for peace-building efforts today.
This book’s unique contribution is that it offers the fullest account to date of the influences on Yoder during the years he was in Western Europe (1949-1958). Having named some of the North American Mennonite influences, the book attributes most of the “background” to his Politics to these European influences.
Zimmerman is right to say that the realities of post-World War II Europe were quite significant for the young Yoder, who arrived in France in April 1949 to serve orphans and help French Mennonites recover their commitment to pacifism. And undoubtedly the debates about war in which he engaged during those years were shaped by memories of Naziism and the horrors of the war.
The author’s discussion of Barth’s influence on Yoder is framed differently from that of Craig Carter [see his The Politics of the Cross]. My sense is that Carter knows Barth’s thought better than Zimmerman does. But probably the careful examination of Yoder in light of his studies with Barth (as compared to other influences) will continue to generate discussion and debate.
Zimmerman has certainly provided a fuller account of NT scholar Oscar Cullmann’s influence on Yoder than has been done before. This is helpful.
The chapter on Yoder’s doctoral work on sixteenth-century Anabaptism is also the fullest summary we have of that work and its connections to his Politics, although it would have had greater significance before the recent publication of an English translation of Yoder’s dissertation. But Zimmerman’s work will help those who haven’t noticed these connections before to see them now.
We are fortunate with The Politics of Jesus because, aside from his doctoral work, it is Yoder’s most heavily footnoted book. However, in addition to his wide reading and formal teachers, it is important to say, as Zimmerman does, that Politics did not simply emerge from a study. According to accounts from French Mennonites, young Yoder empathized with those who had lived through several years of Nazi invasions.
Zimmerman could also have included Yoder’s exposure to Latin America. In the mid-’60s and again when working on Politics, Yoder spent time with Latin American Christians living in the midst of revolution. According to theologians Samuel Escobar and René Padilla, he empathized deeply with them while delivering timely, biblical messages (thus Yoder’s being made an honorary member of the Latin American Theological Fraternity).
One might get the impression that Yoder did not engage Reinhold Niebuhr’s writings nearly as seriously as, say, J. Lawrence Burkholder (26, 57ff, 107). That impression would be wrong.
While in high school, Yoder took a course with a former student of Niebuhr’s at the College of Wooster, in which Niebuhr himself lectured once. Approximately fifteen years later, Yoder did significant research on Niebuhr at the University of Basel before he gave his first lecture on him, and that produced an article. Finally, years later, Yoder wrote two substantial lectures on Niebuhr that were included in the informally published Christian Attitudes to War, Peace and Revolution: A Companion to Bainton (soon to be formally published).
Again, one could get the wrong impression from the statement that Yoder “basically depended on Roland Bainton’s historical survey of Christian attitudes toward war and peace for his historical scheme” regarding the “Constantinian shift” (198).
Yoder was an historical theologian. For many years he taught courses surveying the history of Christian attitudes toward war, peace, and revolution; he read numerous and varied primary and secondary sources germane to those lectures. He had therefore studied relevant sources well before publishing the main essay articulating his claims.
I don’t have space to discuss issues raised in the last two chapters of summary and interpretation for contemporary peace-building. Here serious questions emerge regarding contemporary appropriations of Yoder.