John Howard Yoder: Discipleship as Political Responsibility

[Discipleship as Political Responsibility, John Howard Yoder, Translated by Timothy J. Geddert, Forward by Stanley Hauerwas, Herald Press, 2003]

In speaking of the temptations which the crowds presented to Christ, to make Him King after He multiplied the bread on the mountainside and again after His triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, Yoder says:

[T]he political temptation is not yet over. What was his prayer all about when, in the night of temptation, he prayed, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matt. 26:39). What would it have meant for him to want the cup to pass from him? What would have enabled him to sidestep the cross? “Edifying exegesis” has hardly ever asked the question. For “political exegesis” this question is central. How could he have avoided the cross? We do not know in detail what other way of acting he considered in that hour. But we can hardly be wrong in assuming it would have required a holy war. [page 56]

I can suggest another meaning to our Lord’s words — “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me”. As a human being, I will die one day, but I won’t truly know death because I’ll cease to exist at my death until God resurrects me — if He chooses to resurrect me. To die is to cease to exist as a mortal creature and, by definition, we can’t know death just as we can’t truly imagine or think about something coming into existence from nothing. Whether something is coming to be from nothing or disappearing into nothing, we can’t imagine non-existence and we can’t experience it.

The Son of God knew the true horror of death because He, true God in His immortal nature, experienced the death of His human nature. In a sense, He experienced non-existence. It would be reasonable that He, in His human nature, was terrified of that upcoming experience. Only His love for the Father would have led the Son to accept His mission on earth and then to go through with it.

On the other hand, I’ll agree with Yoder’s instincts that the life and death of Christ was soaked with political meaning, just as it was soaked with moral and social meanings. The primary meaning came from the true nature of Christ’s act of submission to the Father’s will — this was the reason for which He came and not to save us or to teach us moral or political lessons. The world was created so that Christ could be crucified. I know of no other possibility consistent with the all-powerfulness of God who knew all that would happen before He created the world.

Jesus’ cross was not some unexplainable and undeserved evil that came upon him accidentally, like a disease, a storm, or an earthquake. No matter how much love we have, and want to demonstrate, for victims of disease and accident, the issue for Jesus was not some inescapable suffering. On the contrary, Jesus’ cross was a form of suffering that Jesus could very well have avoided. It was the cost of his obedience in the midst of a rebellious world. [page 60]

Almost. As I pointed out above, this act of obedience, this sacrifice of His holy self to the Father’s will is the point of it all, of all Creation. The rebellious world was created so that Christ could be crucified, could sacrifice Himself in obedience to the Father.

Yoder’s criticism is generally right on target. We cheapen our own beliefs and the self-sacrifice of Christ if we talk about carrying our crosses when we bear natural evils.

The essence of following Jesus is not grasped if we view it primarily as a commandment to become the same as Jesus, or to act the way Jesus did; rather following Jesus really means basing our action on our participation in Christ’s very being. … Following Jesus is the result, not the means, of our fellowship with Christ. It is the form of our Christian freedom and not a new law. [page 61]

Also quite true and this is part of the reason I remain a Catholic though disenchanted with the oh-so human American Catholic Church. Our fellowship begins with giving ourselves over to Christ in the Eucharist, when we invite Him in. Once He’s infused us, we can move on to become His disciples. He is truly and really here with us, offering us a true fellowship, and He is present on the altar in a special way.

The state represents human activity outside of faith; through its sword God acts. The church is the form of human action within the context of faith; through its cross God acts as well. Only the Christian cannot do both of them at the same time, as God can. The state is there for the sake of the church and not vice versa. [page 62]

I’m very uncomfortable with this conclusion, though my discomfort doesn’t come from one aspect. My discomfort also, most certainly, doesn’t mean Yoder is wrong because he is right though I believe only in part.

I’m more optimistic about the possibilities of government than Yoder might be but I go beyond him in my discomfort with centralized governments, especially if they receive their power directly from submissive individuals. Local governments, though they can be abusive as well, have much potential for doing good at the human scale. And we have to remember that families and church communities can also be abusive and exploitive. We have to realize that those who call on a central power to handle a local problem might be suffering greatly but we also have to remember that they open the door and let those powers and principalities into our communities. Anything which grows beyond the human scale, government or business or even sports teams as we’re learning, creates a pool of wealth or power which is guaranteed to attract the attention of the greedy and the overly ambitious.

I have a different way of viewing these problems than did Professor Yoder but my way of looking at political and social matters, a more Catholic and distributivist way, came into focus under the implicit criticism of Yoder when I first read some of his key books about three or four years ago. At the very least, Yoder has put up a challenging analysis that can force all Christians to be honest with themselves and perhaps most especially Catholics who tend to be too optimistic about centralized power and centralized authority, though American Catholics tend to ignore authority when it speaks inconvenient words. More importantly, authority has its proper scope and a wise human authority leaves as much as possible to local authorities. Rome hasn’t always been wise in this regard for sure, though Rome hasn’t been nearly as abusive of her authority as some would think.

My current position, and still tentative, is that Yoder is more right about the state as we know it than he himself seems to believe, though I think, in later years, he came to question his own early teaching that a Christian could work in the welfare agencies, or other ‘non-sword’ agencies of the state. As the United States has been steadily mutating into an empire, the welfare systems and such programs as urban renewal have been of central importance in consolidating the power of the Federal government over its own population while the sword has been rarely used internally. Dorothy Day was more consistent in seeing the State as the enemy whether it was sending soldiers overseas or sending out welfare checks. I don’t know if she ever thought about the difference between centralized political power and distributed political power but she understood the evil that comes from centralized political power. (Though she was surprisingly submissive to her bishop’s authority even on prudential matters.)

Evil typically grows along with piles of power or wealth, though it’s present even when the stakes are small. Those piles of power and wealth attract the greedy and overly ambitious but the centralization of power draws our governments away from us, protecting decision-makers from moral responsibility of the sort that comes when you have to look into the face of those you’ve harmed or those you’re taking money from. Idealists of various stripes might not like this but there is a look-in-the-face aspect to moral politics and moral business management. Tip O’Neil was not stating a fact so much as he was making a moral claim when he said all politics is local. (I’m not sure if he was aware of the full truth of the matter.)

I’m inclined to think Yoder’s position about the State and Christians in the New Testament was a little simplistic for a reason he admitted but then dismissed: the State in the New Testament was the Roman Empire.

Let me digress. The Mongol Empire was a simple beast from political and economic viewpoints. You had one political genius, Genghis Khan, who had a particular talent for finding and developing military geniuses. You had mobile herdsmen prepared to fight blitzkrieg style wars against empires and other sorts of states which weren’t prepared to defend against such warriors.

The Roman Empire, like the American Empire in formation, came from a republic that won several wars that left all competitors prostrate. Gold and other fungible assets flowed into a society founded upon agriculture and some significant competence in various industries that produced tools and weapons and other practical goods. With a highly liquid economy, the central power was able to increase taxes, building welfare systems that secured them the direct loyalty of citizens as individuals. Speculators got to work liquifying all assets, even farmland and family businesses. The central power increased taxes, built up its police powers and established a large professional military class. By the time this had happened, the fascist state — adolescent empire, had gutted itself economically, having reduced much of its working class, tradesmen, and craftsmen to poverty. The state couldn’t support either its welfare programs or its military and began to expand beyond its already distant defensive boundaries in order to find fresh sources of loot and steady streams of taxes. The Empire had matured and was now stealing what it could no longer make or grow.

Around 1970, in a manuscript she hadn’t finished, Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt saw the U.S.A. as having largely completed such a process and predicted that early in the 21st century, Americans would have to choose between poverty or a conversion into a full-scale, brutal empire. Make of this what you will.

There aren’t demons involved here nor is human government inherently evil. The problems are at the human level: greed and moral laziness and shortsightedness. Distributed government can be very good indeed, but liquid wealth will destabilize it. Local leaders, unless bound by very strong traditions such as those of the Amish or Mennonites, will sell out the future generations to get a share of the revenue generated by the greater taxing power of a central government. Parents will jump at the opportunity to better their situation in the short-term even if it means they’re conceding power over their children to public authorities and even if it means they’re liquidating assets that future generations will need. (For those who take life as a spectator sport, we’re about to see one of the greatest shows in history: the United States, government and citizens, have sold off the future to get current revenue but many of those assets which hold the key to the future are being bought by another young, potential empire — China. The American State may have given China the power to make the US the shortest-lived great empire in history. China would then have a chance to storm onto the world’s stage as perhaps the greatest power in history.)

In any case, we don’t have to fear or fight demons. We have to fear our own laziness and lack of vision. We have to fight against the tendency towards moral decay when times are good. We have to develop our minds and our moral characters so that we can see and understand what’s happening, what’s been developing for decades, and then have the courage to do something about it.

The State as we know it in the modern world is a bloated and cancerous organ of the earthly Body of Christ but that organ, government, is a foreshadowing of an aspect of that Body when it’s fully realized in the world of the resurrected. The Church (as opposed to Yoder’s ‘church’) is a foreshadowing of the Body as a whole, to be sure. For various reasons, the Pilgrim Church isn’t capable of carrying out all the functions of the Body of Christ — that’s possible only when Christ Himself is heading the Body. He will take over as our one and true High Priest, leading us in worship and prayer, and He will also be King.