Yoder Essays

Our community offers Monday Night seminars most weeks of the year. My friend Allan taught a series on the theologan John Howard Yoder. Yoder is a fairly contemporary Mennonite theologian that I have heard a lot about, but never taken the time to read up on him before. This time I was able to attend a lot of the meetings and read all the essays. It was very good stuff for me, since I spend more time thinking about the nature and purpose of the Christian church than some people.
Yoder brought a lot of good insight to many of the thoughts I have dabbled in before. I'll just write about the stuff I can think of without returning to the papers.

When Constantine was emperor and made Christianity the state religion, this was "the fall of the church". Having the nation relate to a faith from the top down is a bad idea, and hurt the church in many ways: Now priests and people of religious service were automatically serving two masters. People who were previously outside of the faith were now considered inside the faith though nothing in their life had changed. Secular activities and cultural behaviors were "baptized" into Christian activity... A very big problem. The course of church history has followed without questioning the fusion of nationalism and faith in Jesus. Yoder and the Mennonites before him were astute to distinguish church from world, and to be clear that nationalism is belonging to the world.

At this point I can see that the stuff I got out of Yoder's work is exciting to me, but maybe not the most fun for those of you reading this web log.
Let's say I really liked Yoder's essays. They helped me to think through a lot of Church history and theology about the Kingdom. And I can leave it at that.