Book
John C. Nugent, ed. Radical Ecumenicity: Pursuing Unity and Discontinuity after John Howard Yoder. Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 2010.
Reviewer
Andy Alexis Baker, PhD candidate, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI
Radical Ecumenicity brings together several essays from those in the Stone-Campbell movement (Churches of Christ, Independent Christian Churches, and Disciples of Christ -- hereafter called SCM), essays from three non-SCM Yoder scholars (Mark Thiessen Nation, Gayle Gerber Koontz, and Craig Carter), and two previously published essays from Yoder on ecumenical dialogue.
Church of Christ scholar Lee Camp argues that Yoder provides resources for SCM churches to redefine restoration not as a “patternistic emulation of the New Testament, but as a return to the gospel of reconciliation” (27). He thus reframes traditional SCM thinking on restoration to center on reconciliation and “participating in the peaceable kingdom of God.”
In this way, reconciliation is a concept that demands the Churches of Christ recognize Christians in other traditions while at the same time embodying NT Christianity. This would be in line with what Yoder himself outlines in the two essays at the end of the book. One of the more important points he makes is that such unity in conversation will not come from human works or institutions, but from the Holy Spirit.
Yoder’s lifelong commitment to dialogue and reflection on church unity, observes Gayle Gerber Koontz, not only affirms with SCM churches that the local congregation is the primary locus of discipleship and unity but also allows room for change based in the NT itself. Mark Thiessen Nation provides a helpful overview and introduction to Yoder’s theology that counters a trend to reduce Yoder to a “Rauschenbusch-type social gospeler.” Yoder could hold together both traditional Christian faith and peacemaking, Nation persuasively argues.
Craig Carter writes on the same theme but unpersuasively. In order to “save” Yoder from liberal misappropriation, Carter advocates that Yoder’s readers “accept Karl Barth’s ‘practical pacifism’ in place of ‘absolute pacifism’ so as to leave the door open a crack for the possibility of God commanding Christians to exercise lethal force in extreme situations” (99), that they “incorporate a vocational pacifism into a church that also allows for participation in just war for those not called to vocational pacifism,” and that they admit that “Reinhold Niebuhr was basically right in affirming vocational but not absolute pacifism” (100, 103). So, in order to save Yoder from liberalism, we have to accept Niebuhrian liberalism.
John Nugent and Branson Parler indirectly address some of Carter’s concerns. Nugent’s essay addresses the issue of vocation. For Yoder, despite the diversity of occupations Christians may hold, they have “received a single, all-encompassing vocation, which is to announce and bear witness to Christ’s reign in the context of Christian community to all creation” (165). This would rule out Carter’s reading strategy that boxes Christians into Niebuhrian vocational pacifism.
Parler’s essay responds to Paul Martens’s claim elsewhere that by the end of his life Yoder was “merely presenting a form of Christianity that is but a stepping stone to assimilation into secularism.” Against this misreading, Parler convincingly argues that Yoder did not reduce theology to sociology. In fact, for Yoder theology, liturgy, and ethics are not separate but different aspects of the same thing.
Joe Jones’s persuasive essay uses Yoder as a medium through which to challenge SCM churches to take trinitarian thought seriously. Although Yoder used trinitarian language and was thus not anti-trinitarian, Jones argues, Yoder’s concern was not to elaborate or apply the doctrine in any deep way. If he had done so, we would clearly see that Christology necessarily entails trinitarian doctrine to keep from falling into polytheism.
Moreover, Jones argues, if Yoder had reflected more deeply on the Trinity, he might have challenged SCM churches to reform themselves based on their identity as radical disciples of the triune God. Absent truthful language about God, the church will inevitably creep into chaplaincy for the reigning politics and economics of the world.
Paul Kissling uses Yoder’s “macrolevel” reading of the Old Testament to correct SCM readings that dismiss the OT and also to help SCM churches “see that the narrative trajectory of the Old Testament leads us to reject violence and trust in the Lord to secure our future” (133). In the process Kissling offers insightful, up-to-date corrections to some of Yoder’s readings, particularly regarding Ezra-Nehemiah.
What unites these essays into a single book, Nugent remarks, is that they “address two prominent themes in the Stone-Campbell tradition, unity and continuity, albeit in a Yoderian key” (12). This volume represents a growing interest in Yoder from those outside the Mennonite faith who have in the last few years produced an expanding library of secondary literature. Not only do these essays challenge the SCM tradition, they will also challenge Mennonites.