Harold S. Bender, Anabaptist Vision, and the Goshen School
ZACHARY J. WALTON
Following the previous chapter’s identification of the sixteenth-
century roots of Yoder’s theology, this chapter shifts to an assess-
ment of Yoder’s engagement with the twentieth-century renaissance in
Anabaptist studies.(1) Yoder’s theology developed in the midst of the new
Anabaptist Vision school of thought identified with Goshen College and
Harold S. Bender, Yoder’s mentor. In his influential essay “The Anabaptist
Vision." Bender challenged the centuries-long View that Anabaptists were
descended from such revolutionaries as Thomas Muntzer and the violent
radicals of Munster. Bender argued that true or evangelical Anabaptism
was a nonviolent movement begun by Conrad Grebel in Zurich. It had
three central characteristics: the essence of Christianity is discipleship to
Jesus, a brotherhood concept of the church, and nonresistance to evil.(2)
__________________________
1. Portions of this essay draw on Zachary J. Walton, ‘Achieving an Anabaptist
Vision.'
2. “The Anabaptist Vision” was Harold S. Bender’s presidential address at the an-
nual meeting in 1943 of the American Society of Church History It was first published
as Bender, ‘Anabaptist Vision” (CH), and then as Bender, ‘Anabaptist Vision” (MQR).
It was also published as a stand-alone booklet, Bender, Anabaptist Vision, and reprinted
in Hershberger, Recovery. Quotations in this chapter follow Bender, Anabaptist Vision.
Page 117
PART TWO-SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY
Many scholars have argued that Yoder simply followed in Bender’s
historical footsteps and extended the Goshen School(3) project in the
1950s. According to this understanding, Yoder provided little original
thinking in his presentation of Anabaptism. That is, he did not depart
from the Goshen School consensus concerning Anabaptist origins and
simply refined their conclusions.(4) Related to the claim that Yoder sim-
ply extended the Goshen school were those who marginalized Yoder’s
work as a simple repetition or defense of the Goshen School monogenesis
idea, which fell out of favor soon after the publication of the article “From
Monogenesis to Polygenesis” in 1975.(5) This article showed that contra
Harold S. Bender’s ‘Anabaptist Vision,” which had posited that all true
Anabaptism developed from a single point of departure in Zurich (thus
monogenesis), there were actually several different Anabaptist move-
ments that emerged independent of each other (thus polygenesis).(6)
________________________
3. This chapter refers to this movement interchangeably as Goshen School or Ana-
baptist Vision School or the Bender School of thought. For this chapter, the discussion
of Goshen School scholars is limited to Harold S. Bender and Bender’s confidant Iohn
Christian Wenger, who described the aim of his career as “to perpetuate the Anabap-
tist visionf’ See Wenger, “Sought and Found,” 173. Others who might be included in
a wider study of the Anabaptist Vision school include Guy E Hershberger, Robert
Friedmann, Melvin Gingerich, Donovan Smucker, and Cornelius Krahn.
4. For example, Ray Gingerich wrote that “Yoder was a product of the Mennonite
community and . . . creatively expanded the theological paradigm of his mentors but
never broke out of it.” See Gingerich, “Theological Foundations" 431- 32. Or, in a
review of Yoder’s Anabaptism and Reformation in Switzerland, Paul Doerksen com-
mented that Yoder’s work “aligned with Harold Bender et al. regarding belief in a ‘true
Anabaptism.' Doerksen, “Review of Yoder,” 81. C. Arnold Snyder denied any original-
ity to Yoder’s work; if anything, “his approach to the Anabaptist story and his work as
a whole fit comfortably within the mid-century North American Mennonite historical
project: rehabilitating the Anabaptists in the face of centuries of hostile Reformed,
Lutheran, and Roman Catholic historiography.” Snyder, “Doing History." 4.
5. Stayer, Packull, and Deppermann, “From Monogenesisf’
6. For example, Mark Thiessen Nation argued that Yoder followed Bender by
identifying a specific founder of Swiss Anabaptism; they differed only in their slight
and negligible identification of the founder of Anabaptism, with Yoder opting for Sat-
tler in contrast to Bender’s choice of Grebel. Nation, Iohn Howard Yoder, 38. In light of
the demise of the “monogenesis” idea, Karl Koop went so far as to question both the
validity and necessity of the long-delayed English publication of Yoder’s dissertation.
Koop wrote, "After all, Yoder’s scholarship reflects the Anabaptist historiography ofthe
mid-twentieth century and thus represents a somewhat outdated viewpoint of Swiss
Anabaptist origins. This raises the question of whether this publication [of Yoders
doctoral dissertation] is truly an event to be celebrated, as the editor of the volume
claims.” Koop, “Review of Yoder," 277.
Page 118
However, not all interpreters consider Yoder unoriginal nor conflat-
ed his work with Bender’s. Earl Zimmerman’s well-researched study of
the origins of Yoder’s theological ethics exposes some notable contrasts
between Yoder and his Goshen School mentors. In particular, Zimmer-
man’s work identifies a “bone of contention” which separated Bender and
Yoder from the beginning. Bender borrowed significantly from Ameri-
can Protestant organizational models for denomination structures,
whereas Yoder was sharply critical of this approach and instead argued
that these larger structures, foreign to both the New Testament model
and the ecclesiological organization of sixteenth-century Anabaptists, by
their very nature “did not respect the integrity of local congregations."(7)
As Zimmerman made clear in the previous chapter, the local congrega-
tion Was central to the ecclesiology that Yoder found in sixteenth-century
Anabaptism. Zimmerman is correct in identifying and stressing the
significance of this contrast between Yoder and the Goshen School. In
Yoder’s understanding of Anabaptism, discernment and dialogue at the
local congregational level are central to believers church ecclesiology.
This current chapter further explores the difference that Zimmer-
man identified between Yoder and the Goshen School. Using rhetorical
analysis, I will demonstrated that Yoder revolutionized the foundational
commitments ofthe Goshen School by locating the “essence” of sixteenth-
century Anabaptism in the early Anabaptists’ practice of communal dia-
logue and discernment. This ecclesiology flowed directly from Yoder’s
christological commitment identified in chapter 1 and he saw these same
commitments embodied in sixteenth-century Anabaptism.
Rhetorical Historiography
Rhetoric plays a major role in historical inquiry Thus a brief explanation
of the contemporary discipline of rhetoric and the practice of rhetori-
cal analysis will prepare us to contrast how the Goshen School and Iohn
Howard Yoder “saw” sixteenth-century Anabaptism.
Since the time of the ancient Greeks, rhetoric has been conceptu-
ally linked with persuasion. In the twentieth century, however, rhetori-
cal theorists began to think of rhetoric as the power of communication
to create networks of identification and identity. Influential rhetorical
theorist Kenneth Burke argued that rhetoric is the process by which
_______________
7. Zimmerman, Practicing the Politics, 46.
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PART TWO-SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY
individuals form a collective life.(8) Burke also argued that rhetoric pro-
duces the categories of human experience and that communication helps
individuals integrate themselves into collective groups. In other words,
rhetoric provides the power to join biologically distinct individuals into a
consubstantial relationship with others(9) Rhetoric, then, is not simply a
tool for persuasion (although it certainly is that), but also shapes humans
and their communities through identification.
Using this framework of rhetoric as identification, contemporary
rhetorical theorists posit that all communication is ultimately rhetorical
and have questioned the widespread assumption that historical inquiry
involves “descriptive” statements about the past. Since all historians must
make choices concerning what to include when telling the stories of his-
torical communities, all historians are rhetoricians to some degree:
The historian cannot recount all of “what happened,” and the
historian’s view of “what happened” is influenced by his or her
own perspective. Facts do not speak; they must be spoken for.
Historical scholarship is an interaction between the scholar and
the historical record. Necessarily then, it is interpretive.(10)
Burke famously argued that “even if any given terminology is a re-
flection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection
of reality; and to this extent it must function as a deflection of realityf’ For
Burke, the sets of terms we use in the attempt to describe the world act
like a color filter on a camera by allowing some concepts and identities to
be foregrounded, while forcing others into the background. Specific sets
of terms direct one’s attention in particular ways. By selecting some ele-
ments of a situation over others, they deflect attention from unaddressed
aspects of that situation. The terms that one uses direct attention in one
way or another to such an extent that “much that we take as observa-
tions about ‘reality’ may be the spinning out of possibilities implicit in
our particular choice of terms.” By directing attention in different sorts
of ways, particular terminologies lead to different “observations” or reali-
ty.(11) When it comes to doing history, in “the selection of some historical
______________
8. Burke, A Rhetoric, 21.
9. Ibid.
10. Zarefsky “Four Sensesf’ 20.
11. Burke, Language, 45, 46, 49.
Page 120
WALTON-Harold S. Bender
materials and not others, it is well to remember Burke’s dictum that a
reflection of reality is also a selection and a deflection."(12)
Historians also use rhetoric by imbuing meaning to particular
categories of human experience in their historical narrations. The two
most fundamental categories of human experience are space and time.
The rhetorical critic analyzes how the discourse historians use positions
audiences as closer or more distant to historical events. “Texts have the
capacity to position their audiences in different Ways, in some cases mov-
ing them ‘closer’ to an object or bringing the object into the ’presence’ of
the audience and in other instances moving them further ‘away’ from an
object.”(13) For example, a historian might narrate the past so that it be-
comes a source for inspiration and identification in their present moment
(such as how the twentieth-century Mennonite historians used the heroic
stories of sixteenth-century Anabaptists), or the past might be depicted
in a Way that the reader experiences as far distant or perhaps irrelevant.
The approach to rhetorical historiography used in this essay con-
siders and analyzes how “the inventional and presentational practices
of historians [create] a specialized discourse community.” This type of
rhetorical historiography focuses less on the primary historical materi-
als themselves and instead analyzes “how historians talk and Write about
history.” This approach also stresses that “historians not only argue about
history; they argue from it, using historical premises to justify current ac-
tions and beliefs.”(14) In this approach, the rhetorical analyst exposes how
historians configure different historical narrations through their use of
sets of terms and how these narrations are rhetorically generated. Here,
the rhetorical critic focuses not on the “accuracy” of a historical account
but on “stories and images as symbolic constructions of reality for their
publics [Which are] precisely the stuff of the rhetorical historian."(15)
In reading a text, audiences seek to identify with textual cues that
suggest how they should think and relate to the world. To analyze the
commitments of the resulting relationships, the rhetorical critic notes
“stylistic tokens” contained in texts. These “tokens” appear as metaphoric
terms or phrases and function as “cues that tell [auditors] how they are
___________________
12. Zarefsky “Four Senses," 20-21.
13. Jasinski, “Constitutive Framework," 77.
14. Zarefsky, “Four Sensesf’ 28. In addition to the methodology described here,
Zarefsky also discusses three other approaches to rhetorical historiography
15. Turner, “lntroductionz Rhetorical History," 5.
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PART TWO-SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’s THEOLOGY
to view the world, even beyond the expressed concerns, the overt propo-
sitional sense, of the discourse.” These tokens, at first glance, may appear
as marginal and disposable metaphors. However, from the perspective
of the rhetorical critic, these stylistic tokens indicate the ideal hearer or
reader implied by the text. Analysis of these stylistic tokens allows the
critic to connect the discourse to the epistemological commitments to-
ward which the rhetor-or, in our case, the historian-attempts to orient
an audience.(16)
All texts address their audiences as particular sorts of individuals
and thusly summon them into positions of identity and action. Even a
text as mundane as a toothpaste advertisement attempts to call its audi-
ence members to adopt a specific identity position, namely, that of a con-
sumer.(17) Historians also use stylistic tokens and we will find a number of
stylistic tokens indicating epistemological commitments in the historical
work of Goshen School scholars and in the early historiography of John
Howard Yoder. I now turn to an examination of the primary stylistic to-
kens of Yoder and the Goshen School.
Visual Metaphors in the Goshen School
Bender and his Goshen School compatriots reiterated the Western pro-
clivity to use sight as a ruling metaphor for knowledge and understand-
ing. The metaphor of proper sight-which appears often in the historical
discourse of Goshen School members and the historical work of Yoder-
is more than a simple turn of phrase. In traditional Western historiogra-
phy, “knowledge is gained through vision; vision is a direct apprehension
of a world of transparent objects. In this conceptualization, the visible
is privileged; writing is then put at its service. Seeing is the origin of
knowing." Descriptive historical writing, then, rather than inventive or
constitutive of knowledge, is conceptualized only as “reproduction [and]
transmission-the communication of knowledge gained through (visual,
visceral) experience.” While they might deny their use of rhetoric and
insist that theirs is simply a “descriptive” practice, “historian’s rhetorical
treatment of evidence and their use of it to falsify prevailing interpreta-
tions, depends on a referential notion of evidence which denies that it is
anything but reflection of the real.” This historiographic approach “takes
________________
16. Black, “Second Persona," 112-13, quote 113.
17. Jasinski, Sourcebook on Rhetoric, 107.
Page 122
WALTON-Harold S. Bender
meaning as transparent [and] reproduces rather than contests given
ideological systems-those that assume that the facts of history speak for
themselves.”(18) As we will soon see, Goshen School members and, later,
John Howard Yoder, used a number of visual metaphors that indicate
their foundational epistemological commitments.
Harold S. Bender and “The Anabaptist Vision”
The primary “stylistic tokens” used by Harold S. Bender in “The Anabap-
tist Vision” were the metaphors of “vision” and “sight” Bender suggested
that the “vision” caught by the sixteenth-century Anabaptists existed
even if it was imperceptible at a specific historical moment. However,
one had to have the “eyes to see” and this seeing took effort; it was only
after becoming “intimately . . . acquainted with the [sixteenth-century
Anabaptists] . . . [that] one [became] conscious of the great vision that
shaped their course in history and for which they gladly gave their lives.”(19)
For Bender, proper discernment of the “vision” that motivated
sixteenth-century Anabaptists was difficult because of the distortions
generated by centuries of hostile interpretations produced by Catholic
and Protestant church historians. Indeed, Bender wrote that “there may
be some excuse . . . for a failure on the part of the uninformed student
to see clearly [emphasis added] what the Anabaptist vision was, because
of the varying interpretations placed upon the movement even by those
who mean to appreciate and approve it.” In other words, the reader’s
view of the vision of the Anabaptists had been previously “obscured” But
Bender was now undoing these historical distortions and recovering the
historical outlines of authentic Anabaptism. He positioned the auditor
of “The Anabaptist Vision” as one who could now see past the distract-
ing, extraneous factors, and “aberrant” forms of Anabaptism to obtain a
glimpse of the vision which inspired sixteenth~century Anabaptists.(20)
With this idea of a newly recovered vision, the text addressed and
thereby treated the auditor as one who is involved in and invited to redis-
cover what was already present in Anabaptism, but left dormant and “ob~
scured” over the centuries of prejudicial church history This rhetorical
positioning orients audience members to see a “non-rhetorical” history of
__________________
18. Scott, “Evidence of Experience” 775-76, 778.
19. Bender, Anabaptist Vision, 4-S.
20. Ibid., 11.
Page 123
PART TWO-SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY
Anabaptism and acknowledge its “obviousness”; indeed, Bender claimed
that there was “no longer any excuse” to question this new vision.(21)
Subsequent Mennonite discussions would extend, rather than depart
from, Bender’s metaphorical logic and attempt a “recovery” of the vision(22)
or concentrate on “refocusing” it.(23) J. Denny Weaver recalled that, doing
Mennonite history prior to the advent of polygenesis historiography in
the 19705, “we who stood in the line of Anabaptism were admonished
to ‘recover’ its vision."(24) This metaphorical logic, rather than exterior or
peripheral to Bender’s propositional claims, instead is intrinsic to its epis-
temological foundations. Indeed, the eclipse of monogenesis and the rise
of polygenesis brought about a potent dissolution of this metaphorical
logic: “With the disintegration of a homogenous vision emanating from a
single point of origin, not only are we [Mennonites] puzzled about what
to recover, but the recovery motif itself is also discredited and abandoned
by the wayside."(25)
John Christian Wenger
John Christian Wenger placed more emphasis than Bender did on evan-
gelical winning of converts to the faith and witnessing to the wider world
the truths of the gospel, and he used Bender’s vision metaphor in order to
make his case. For example, Wenger wrote that for the sixteenth-century
believers, their “original Anabaptist vision [consisted] of bringing the
gospel to all men [sic] and gathering the believers into God’s kingdom,
the church.” By witnessing to and making converts of all people and all
nations, the original Anabaptists were attempting to return to the pure
example of the first century church, for “the reproduction of the apostolic
church was the vision [emphasis added] which the Anabaptists earnestly
sought to realize.” Reformed churches in the sixteenth-century fell well
short of achieving either of these two dimensions and “needless to say
this vision, if the state churchmen had it at all, was an empty dream for a
people’s (provincial) church.”(26)
________________
21. lbid.
22. Hershberger, Recovery.
23. Roth, Refocusing.
24. Weaver, ‘Anabaptist Vision,' 69.
25. lbid.
26. Wenger, Glimpses, 186, 8, 170; my italics.
Page124
WALTON--Harold S. Bender
Wenger used the metaphor of a flame to describe the original Ana-
baptist vision, its weakening in the intervening gap between the sixteenth
and twentieth centuries, and its subsequent “rediscovery” and “rekin-
dling.” Once the early Anabaptists earnestly read the Bible, they realized
that
God had to be obeyed at the cost of liberty, yea, of life itself The
Brethren saw the issues; they knew what the consequences of
their decision would be; they did what they knew God required
of them. And thus was Swiss Anabaptism born. God Himself
kindled the light that has shown, though at times rather weakly,
for more than four centuries. To Him be all the glory.(27)
Here, God was seen as solely responsible for the fire that enlightened the
hearts of the faithful. For Wenger, God was the primary agent and cause
in the development of Anabaptism.
Wenger described the original sixteenth-century leaders of Ana-
baptism, such as Conrad Grebel and Menno Simons, as heroic figures
and highly competent leaders of their flocks. Under their guidance, the
original Anabaptists’ vision was like a fire that shone a spiritual light out
into the darkness of the fallen world. Wenger also indicated that after the
first generation of Anabaptist leaders, the movement gradually lost its
passionate engagement and the fire began to die down, primarily due to
violent suppression, After the executions of the early heroes of the faith,
“the able leaders of the first years, some of them former priests and schol-
ars, were in most cases succeeded by men of less ability.” With the heroic
leaders of Anabaptism undercut by persecution, “the missionary zeal of
the Anabaptists was effectively dampened, if not extinguished altogether,
during the dreadful persecution of the sixteenth century”(28) The fire that
God had kindled with the founders of Anabaptism had spread, but began
to wane with less competent tenders.
Without heroic leaders to guide the Anabaptist movement, it be-
came complacent and withdrawn. As a result of the persecution, Men-
nonites physically withdrew from prophetic and missionary engagement
with the world into closed communities where, according to Wenger,
“they would henceforth seek only to perpetuate their faith in their fami-
lies.” 'This total withdrawal was a departure from the zealous traditions
of their ancestors, and the flame which blazed in the sixteenth century
_________________
27. Ibid., 25; my italics.
28. Ibid., 185.
Page125
began to die down until “the fires of evangelism and missions had burned
out.”(29) However, Wenger could prayerfully thank God that “although Thy
church has fallen into grievous error throughout the centuries Thou hast
not allowed the light of Thy work to be entirely blotted out.”(30) The fire that
appeared to have been visibly extinguished through unfaithfulness, was
instead invisibly maintained by God. Once again, Wenger appealed to
an ahistorical and invisible essential grounding-in this case God-in
order rhetorically to make sense of the historical failings of Mennonites.
When Mennonites were faithful to God, one could clearly see it in the
historical record. When they were unfaithful, God sustained the essence
of the people invisibly and ahistorically. In any case, Wenger argued, the
Anabaptist people were never truly extinct, no matter how greatly they
deviated from the patterns set by their original founders.
The metaphors of “vision” and the spiritual “flame” of Anabaptism
indicate foundational epistemological commitments and provided a per-
fect frt for the narrative logic promoted by Goshen School Anabaptism.
Both metaphors expressed an epistemological understanding that nar-
ratively preserved the essence of Anabaptism even when the View of it
was “obscured” or the fire had died down.
In addition, these visual metaphors provided a flexibility for the
rhetors to artistically lit the historical data into their normative narrative.
W'here the historical record indicated harmony with the Goshen School
ideology, such as “evidence” of the heroic faith of (particular) sixteenth-
century Anabaptists, the rhetors could argue that, at this time, the “vision”
was clear because the “fire” burned bright. But when, according to the
historical records, future Mennonite behavior did not Ht the normative
narrative of the Goshen School, the rhetors reconfigured the metaphors
to express invisibility or concealment. Poor history from hostile church
historians had “obscured” vision and, in the case of the the metaphor,
unfaithfulness meant that the flame burned low and was nearly extin-
guished, but was not utterly snuffed out. These metaphors also permitted
a narration of a contemporary “recovery” of that which was nearly lost:
the lies and historical distortions that “obscured” the proper apprehen-
sion of the Anabaptist vision were removed, and in the case of the fire
metaphor, if Mennonites began acting like their Anabaptist forbearers,
the flame would burn brightly, with God’s help.
________________
29. lbid., 186.
30. Wenger, Separated Unto God, 87; Wenger’s italics.
Page 126
The Rhetorical Metaphors of John Howard Yoder
Like his Goshen School mentors, Yoder’s early historiography utilized a
number of directional, spatial, and visual metaphors-“stylistic tokens.”
Much as in the case of Bender and Wenger, these “tokens” denote signifi-
cant epistemological commitments.
Recall that the rhetorical and metaphorical use of the categories of
time and space are not merely empirical givens. Rather, as many con-
temporary theorists and critics observe, they constitute symbolic frame-
works through which we understand historical narratives. Some might
be tempted to argue that Yoder’s “stylistic tokens” aligned him with the
Goshen School. However, they instead indicate a number of epistemo-
logical commitments that were a bit more complex than those of the
Goshen School writers.
Like the members of the Goshen School, Yoder followed the West-
ern tradition of using visual metaphors to stand in for knowledge, which
denotes epistemological assumptions. Yoder’s historiographic discourse
positions the auditor as one who “sees” or “observes” certain historical
events. When noting a change in Zwingli’s theological commitments,
Yoder wrote that it can be “observed” that Zwingli held two different po-
sitions concerning the church’s relation to the state and that “later there
is one clearly visible difference of posture.(31) In his dissertation, Yoder
commented in much the same way saying “we have previously observed
among the Anabaptists, namely that Zwingli was still in agreement with
them inwardly, but remained silent only out of fear of the authorities.”(32)
In seeking to analyze Zwingli’s change, Yoder prompts us to see whether
or not “a turning in the position of Zwingli can be observed.”(33) This, of
course, is the language of empirical observation, which assumes ideas
standing in a visual field can be “seen.”
These visual metaphors abound in Yoder’s historiography He often
likened the creation of historical narratives to painting a particular sort
of picture. When Yoder added other data to support his conclusions,
he wrote the evidence “fills in the picture in some ways.”(34) Indeed, by
analyzing “different eyewitness testimonies, we must attempt to recon-
_________________
31. Yoder, "Evolution oj Zwinglian Reformation," 95.
32. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 53.
33. Yoder, “Evolution of Zwinglian Reformation,” 95.
34. Ibid., 113.
Page 127
PART TWO-SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY
struct a picture of the events." History is like an incomplete puzzle, to
which the historian and reader collaborate in order to “see” the gaps and
the pieces. However, not all can be known and tracing “out a positive
depiction of the Anabaptist solution . . . can in no way be a complete
picture.”(35) Zwingli’s involvement in social reforms in Swiss society, Yoder
wrote, “could understandably have an effect upon his picture of history
and his understanding of the church."(36) Zwingli’s use of the “rule of love”
for example, or the Reformers’ reluctance to respond to calls for dialogue,
cannot adequately sum up the essential nature of the conflict. Instead
these are only “the fruits, and not the roots of the separation .... One
cannot proceed from them to sketch a believable total picture of what
the Reformers wanted, let alone draw a proper picture of Anabaptism."(37)
Like his Goshen School mentors, Yoder thought that the main con-
tribution of Goshen School historians was their clearing away obstruc-
tions or distractions from the core understanding of Anabaptism. He
commented, a “major-portion of the clarification in our generation comes
from establishing clear distinctions among the dissenters of the Reforma-
tion Age."(38) In this, Yoder and Bender shared an appreciation that the
removal of historical distortions had been the primary innovations of
twentieth-century Mennonite historical scholars. When surveying earlier
historical work, Yoder described Bender’s generation as “rediscovering”
historical truths of the early Anabaptists.(39) The job of the historian was
to clear away the obstacles which impaired the clear “seeing” of essential
nature of Anabaptism.
While Yoder appreciated the challenging of poor and biased church
history achieved by Bender and other Goshen School members, he also
recognized a greater difficulty than they did in distinguishing the earli-
est Anabaptists from other Reforming groups. It is here that a difference
between the Bender school and Yoder becomes apparent. For Yoder,
there were no clearly identifiable “marks” which distinguished the early
sixteenth-century Anabaptists from their contemporaries apart from
their distinctive practice of community dialogue. To delineate these re-
lationships, Yoder used spatial rhetorical figures, such as “paths." “lines,"
________________________
35. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 29, 260.
36. Yoder, "Evolution of Zwinglian Reformation,"119.
37. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 217.
38. Yoder, “Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision," 8.
39. Ibid., 7.
Page 128
WALTON--Harold S. Bender
“directions,” and “locations” which, for him, denoted the gradual unfold-
ing of different theological notions in the larger dialogue. This is espe-
cially apparent in Yoder’s description of his methodological assumptions
in his doctoral dissertation:
If it is the case that both opposing groups, Anabaptism and the
Reformation, grew from one and the same root, then it would be
an error to want to consider Anabaptism as an independent de-
velopment. But in addition, it would be improper to begin from
the moment of visible separation or from the closest disputed
loci (for example, infant baptism) .... The difference in the re-
spective paths can only be understood as coming from the place
where the two groups were in agreement, or at least believed
that they were. Only from here can it be seen what fundamental
decisions led to the separation.(40)
Yoder compares Zwingli and Anabaptism on the number of steps
in a direction that one group took with the other and progressing along
a path. The true essential core of Anabaptism~those attributes of the
movement that constituted uniqueness and defined its differences from
other Reformation groups-was not, for Yoder, readily apparent to the
historical eye, as Bender and his Goshen School compatriots assumed.
Rather than a simple overthrowing centuries of biased church history it
required a laborious tracing out of the dialogues of the time.
If we look back over the path we have traveled thus far, we must
conclude that the clearly asked questions we have extracted
from the discussion material still have not provided us with the
key that completely opens up our understanding of the Ana-
baptism-Reformation opposition. Certainly we have found
points of opposition, and indeed, some important ones. Still the
impression remains that the centre of the dispute lies elsewhere,
and the core of the controversy remains hidden. The differences
dealt with in the discussions appear to be secondary ones, de-
rived from that hidden core.(41)
Yoder’s historical method did not assume Bender’s “obvious” con-
clusion that Anabaptism was the logical climax of the Reformation. In
his doctoral dissertation, he took great pains to trace the emergence of a
distinct and “genuine” Anabaptist alternative to Zwinglisim. According
____________________
40. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 143.
41. Ibid., 204-5.
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PART TWO--SOURCES oOF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY
to Yoder, “history is interested not only in knowing when we can see the
first hints of a later difficulty; it is just as important to know when the
actors in the drama themselves became aware of the problem."(42) This sug-
gests that the job of the historian is to make visible distinctions that are
less than obvious and that the true “question is when [problems became]
discernible to the participants, or to the historian." Indeed, it is the case
that the historical eye, with the benefit of hindsight, could “see” the situ-
ation more clearly than the original historical participants. Thus Yoder
notes that one should not be shocked that Zwingli could not see impor-
tant developments in his theological positions because “the perception of
such a quality in one’s own thought, and of the point where one strand
gets a definite edge over the other, is linked with one’s social power.”(43)
Contrast this admission of the difficulty of “observing” the historical gen-
esis of early Anabaptism with Bender’s complaint that Anabaptism was
“obscured” simply by centuries of biased church history.
Like the Goshen School historians, Yoder described the Anabap-
tists as motivated by the desire to overcome centuries of unfaithfulness
that “obscured” the vision of faithful Christianity. Anabaptists wanted to
restore the church “only because [the] apostolic order was no longer vis-
ible.” For Yoder, the Anabaptists experienced knowing as an occurrence
in a visual field. When they were certain of their theological commit-
ments, “on the side of the Anabaptists, things were just as clear."(44) The
Anabaptists possessed great faith that “the Spirit of God actually did
work in a unique and historical way so as to make clear truths which had
for centuries been hidden."(45) Again, truth for Yoder possessed a visual
component; the original Anabaptists would have submitted themselves
in a “humble manner in the face of a newly seen truth.”(46)
Yoder concluded that Anabaptism took root in the fertile soil of
Zwinglism. Anabaptism, for Yoder, was not the result of a radical break
from other reforming movements, but rather it was Zwingli whose devel-
opment of thought led him to depart from the original intention of the
Reformation. He described this change by Zwingli as a “shift” although
he did not think that Zwingli “veered” from a free church orientation to a
___________________
42. Yoder, “Turning Pointf’ 129.
43. Yoder, “Evolution of Zwinglian Reformationf’ 109, 1 12.
44. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 193, 123.
45. Yoder, “Hermeneuticsf 303.
46. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 121.
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WALTON--HAROLD S. Bender
state-sponsored one. However one rhetorically characterizes the changes
in Zwingli’s thought, Yoder hypothesizes that he was able to conceal or
otherwise “obscure” the shifts in his thought so that tensions were not ad-
dressed for some time. Yoder claimed that “it is now visible that Zwingli
did shift his ground .... but his concession could still remain hidden
under the ambiguities which had been present from the beginning.”(47)
A critique from Robert Walton(48) would later prompt Yoder to tem-
per the metaphor of Zwingli’s “shifts” Instead, Yoder wrote that Zwingli
“drifted” from a congregationally focused ecclesiology to one that adapt-
ed to the state church. The drift “did not take place in a striking turnabout
but gradually, with every gradation almost imperceptible when taken
alone.” Indeed, the development of Zwingli’s thought gradually emerged
and became clear over time, “but” Yoder insisted, “we cannot speak of it
as a change in direction.” Here, Yoder exchanged metaphors so that the
“impression we get is one of not a sudden shift but an almost uncon-
scious drift.”(49) While modifying the language of Zwingli’s transformation
of thought from a “shift” to a “drift” implies less of a dramatic change,
the directional epistemological expressions of the metaphor remain
unquestioned.(50)
Meanwhile, Anabaptism continued in the same trajectory and did
not “shift” or “Veer” in any significant way The progress of the movement
involved disclosing theological commitments present but unseen from
the beginning. Since there was no “shift” for Anabaptism, it developed
in a liner direction, according to Yoder, and “continued to take shape in
a straight line.” While Zwingli changed his conception of the nature of
the church community the Anabaptists took the original concept and
“carried it further, made it more precise . . . and [brought] forth an al-
ternative to the state church."(51) Thus Anabaptism did not shift or deviate
from its original theological impetus, but rather came into its own and
______________
47. Yoder, “Evolution of Zwinglian Reformationf’ 105.
48. Walton, “Was There a Turning Point of the Zwinglian Reformation?”
49. Yoder, “Evolution of Zwinglian Reformationf’ 113.
50. While Craig Carter is correct in stating that the conflict between Walton and
Yoder certainly consisted of more than a disagreement over the proper use of histori-
cal facts, he understates the case by suggesting that the conflict was instead a matter
of clashing “interpretative frameworks.” This chapter demonstrates that the metaphors
deployed in historical texts indicate differing foundational epistemological commit-
ments, rather than being simple interpretive approaches to historical material. See
Carter, Politics of the Cross, 37.
51. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 221, 125.
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PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY
defined itself in and through continual struggles with civil authority. In
contrast, Zwingli’s thought gradually transformed in order to accommo-
date governmental authority Thus, while Zwingli may have “shifted” the
Anabaptists stayed true to directional momentum present in the earliest
Reformation movements.
Yoder used directional metaphors to describe Anabaptism’s rela-
tionship With both the past and the church’s future restoration. He in-
sisted that the early Anabaptists, rather than ignoring or being ignorant
of history, instead took history quite seriously because their “right to
exist stood or fell on whether their understanding of the historical de-
velopment of the church was correct or not.” For them, the church had
fallen into unfaithfulness from its original founding. Thus reforming the
Roman Catholic church would not be efficacious “but rather the New
Testament community needed to be re-established, and thus begin again,
because the entire train had derailed."(52) This metaphor of a train ex-
pressed a deep epistemological perspective in which travel is carried out
in a straight line with a determined beginning and end point. In addition,
this linear metaphor was future oriented and involved forward motion.
The Anabaptists rejected the notion of “leaping back into the first century
or of repeating in some childish Way the exact patterns of the primitive
church. The concern Was for faithful restoration and moving forward, not
for an impossible reversal of the course of history."(53)
As we will soon see, the only Way that differences from Zwingli and
others came to the fore, and therefore provided antithetical “lines” for
Anabaptism to define itself against, was through the activity of com-
munity dialogue and disputation. For Yoder, the practice of communal
dialogue exposed disagreements and provided opportunities for Ana-
baptism to “emerge” as a distinct theological alternative.
The Bender School Rhetoric on Protestantism
and the Reformation
Bender’s primary claim in “The Anabaptist Vision” was that the Anabap-
tist movement represented the high mark of the Reformation, rather than
a derivative and marginal movement as previous church historians had
insisted. Sixteenth-century Anabaptism Was, according to Bender, “the
______________________
52. Ibid., 194.
53. Yoder, “Hermeneutics," 302.
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WALTON--HAR0LD S. Bender
cumulation of the Reformation, the fulfillment of the original vision of
Luther and Zwingli, and thus . . . a consistent evangelical Protestantism
seeking to re-create without compromise the original New Testament
church, the vision of Christ and the apostles."(54) In his interpretation,
Anabaptism was not a derivation from Protestantism, but rather the logi-
cal zenith of the Reformation.
Bender argued that the Reformers had attempted to revive the ethos
of the first century church in their era and that “the original goal sought
by Luther and Zwingli was ‘an earnest Christianity’ for all . . . [but] the
level of Christian living among the Protestant population was frequently
lower than it had been before under Catholicism.” While both Luther
and Zwingli had originally envisioned a church constituted by true and
fervent believers set apart from the mass of nominal “Christians” they
had given up this lofty vision and “both reformers decided that it was
better to include the masses within the fold of the church than to form a
fellowship of true Christians only.” The leaders of the Reformation gradu-
ally came to believe that “they reckoned with a permanently large and
indifferent mass” and that the sacraments, distributed to all, would have
a minimal effect in improving this mass.(55)
While some might see these more as adaptations and less as “com-
promises” in Bender’s interpretation, “in taking this course, said the Ana-
baptists, the reformers surrendered their original purpose, and abandoned
the divine intention [emphases added] .” Provocatively, Bender posed the
rhetorical question “may it not be said that the decision of Luther and
Zwingli to surrender their original vision was the tragic turning point of
the Reformation?” Bender certainly believed so. The Anabaptists, how-
ever, refused the compromises made by Luther and Zwingli and strove
to set themselves apart from “the world” They refused to compromise
the will of God for political or pragmatic reasons: “The Anabaptists . . .
retained the original vision of Luther and Zwingli, enlarged it, gave it
body and form, and set out to achieve it in actual experience.”(56)
Wenger, following Bender, demonstrated that the results of the re-
forms of Luther and Zwingli did not lead to higher standards of living for
their followers and fell well short of the achievements of the Anabaptists
to reform the daily lifestyles of believers. Luther’s and Zwingli’s followers
_________________
54. Bender, Anabaptist Vision, 13.
55. Ibid., 17-18.
56. Ibid., 19, 18.
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PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY
realized a lower level of Christian living than the Anabaptists and “large
numbers of them did not take the matter of religion very seriously, as the
reformers themselves lamented."(57) For Wenger, this turn of events was
“tragic [because] the Reformation did not result in the reestablishment
of Christian congregations patterned after those of the New Testament.”(58)
He speculated that the original “Swiss Brethren must have been bit-
terly disappointed in Luther . . . and in the fruits of his reformation."(59)
Whether due to timidity or outright political expediency, Wenger argued
that Reformation leaders betrayed the radical implications of their own
Reformation.
Rather than outright compromise, as in Luther’s “tragic” case,
Wenger stated that the original Anabaptists broke from Zwingli because
he showed timidity and slowness in carrying out, with prompt “earnest-
ness” necessary radical reforms. Although Grebel was originally part of
Zwingli’s movement, Wenger claimed that over time “disappointment
began to color the attitude of Grebel and his colleagues toward Zwingli.”
Grebel believed that “Zwingli was going too slowly and too mildly in
his reformation. Greater earnestness was required, [Anabaptist leaders]
thought, than Zwingli was manifesting.” Zwingli’s delays left remnants
of Catholic practice in worship and doctrine; therefore the Anabaptists
were forced to “set up their church because Zwingli did not go far enough
in his deviation from Catholicism.” In contrast to the timidity of Zwingli,
Grebel manifested true biblical bravery which motivated all his efforts;
according to Wenger “once Grebel began to read God’s Word with an
earnest determination to follow God in everything, he simply had to
come to a break with the Roman priest, Zwingli.”(60) A simple and earnest
reading of the Bible on the part of the original Anabaptists exposed the
fault lines of Zwingli’s compromises.
In Bender's narrative, Anabaptism was not part of the historical con-
tinuity of reforming groups but rather was a deliberate departure from
all of Christendom and prior history. For Bender, Anabaptism was the
attempt to make manifest, in the purest way ever attempted and without
any compromise, the first-century church; the Anabaptists “preferred to
make a radical break with the fifteen hundred years of history and culture
_________________
57. Wenger, Doctrines, 52.
58. Wenger, Separated Unto God, zoo.
59. Wenger, Glimpses, 15.
60. Ibid., 19, 8, 25.
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WALTON--Harold S. Bender
if necessary rather than to break with the New Testament.”(61) This rhe-
torical maneuver collapsed the distance between the sixteenth-century
Anabaptists and twentieth-century Mennonites because “by describing
Anabaptism as a recovery of the church of the New Testament, Bender’s
formulation separated Anabaptism conceptually from the rest of church
history."(62) Other Goshen School scholars would follow Bender’s logic and
imply that ‘Anabaptism in its genus essentially had no history. . _ it sim-
ply emerged from an unfettered reading of the Scriptures."(63)
While committed to the modernist historiographical assumptions
of his day, Bender attempted to articulate the “essence” of Anabaptism
rather than simply its exterior “form” Indeed, for Bender, “the content
was more important than the form. Thus, by opposing form to content
and by associating religious liberty with mere form, Bender constituted
his own vision as an essence that could fill out the purely ‘formal’ con-
cept of religious liberty."(64) For Bender, the confusion-taking the outer
forms of Anabaptism rather than considering its inner “essence”-had
been one of the primary historical mistakes of previous historians and
he sought to amend those errors. He argued that the true “essence” of
sixteenth-century Anabaptism could be found in three distinct marks-
voluntary discipleship, the praxis of the church as brotherhood, and an
ethic of absolute nonresistance. According to him, these marks consti-
tuted the “central teachings” and “major points of emphasis” of “genuine
Anabaptism.”(65)
When Anabaptism is perceived as the culmination of the Reforma-
tion and the necessity of separation understood in terms of ecclesiologi-
cal practices and ethics-discipleship, brotherhood, nonresistance-both
Bender and Wenger could then claim that the Anabaptists shared a theo-
logical foundation with the Reformers. I. Denny Weaver has identified
this shared theological foundation as a trend in Mennonite theology to
posit two major sections or “lists” of theological commitments. The first
list is often dedicated to the doctrinal similarities between Anabaptists
and evangelical Protestantism, while the second addresses Mennonite
“distinctives” such as nonresistance,(66)
_______________
61. Bender, Anabaptist Vision, 19.
62. Weaver, ‘Anabaptist Visionf’ 74.
63. Sawatsky, History and Ideology, 129.
64. Biesecker-Mast, “Towards a Radical Postmodern Anabaptist Visionf’ 60.
65. Bender, Anabaptist Vision, 20.
66. Weaver, Keeping Salvation Ethical, 24.
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PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY
The existence of these two theological “lists” is assumed in “The
Anabaptist Vision,” where Bender called Anabaptism “consistent evan-
gelicalism Protestantism."(67) Other comments from Bender fill out the
theological content of “evangelical Protestantism.” His “two lists" as-
sumptions come into View when he writes,
All the American Mennonite groups without exception stand
upon a platform of conservative evangelicalism in theology, be-
ing thoroughly orthodox in the great fundamental doctrines of
the Christian faith such as the unity of the Godhead, the true
deity of Christ, the atonement by the shedding of blood, the
plenary inspiration and divine authority of the Holy Scriptures
as the word of God.(68)
Bender insisted that the Anabaptists were in agreement with Reformed
theologians on the central doctrines, such as “the sole authority of the
Scriptures, grace, and justification by faith, [and] in the classic Chris-
tian loci of doctrine” and in fact “they had much in common with the
Reformers."(69)
Like Bender, Wenger also perceived that few scholars had consid-
ered how closely original Anabaptism clove to core fundamentals of the
Protestant Reformation. The closeness on fundamentals is clearly evident
in writings by Wenger, especially in his perhaps most influential book,
Introduction to Theology.(70) This book is primarily a statement of the theo-
logical “first list”: Mennonite alignment with Protestant orthodoxy He
articulated what is essentially evangelical theology with little mention of
the unique contours of Mennonite history and even less attention to Gos-
hen Circle style historiography. Both lists appear in Wenger’s Glimpses
of Mennonite History and Doctrine; notably the chapter on theology has
two major sections, “Major Doctrines” and “Mennonite Emphases.”(71) He
writes, “Since Anabaptism was simply a radical form of Protestantism, on
the so-called fundamental doctrines the Anabaptists were in agreement
with the Lutherans and the Reformed. This basic unity on the major doc-
_____________________
67. Bender, Anabaptist Vision, 13.
68. Bender, “Mennonitesf 79.
69. Bender, “Walkingf 102.
70. Wenger, Introduction to 'Theology (1954). This book was later reprinted with
subtitle revised to ‘ZA Brief Introduction to the Doctrinal Content of Scripture Written
in the Anabaptist-Mennonite Tradition.’
71. Wenger, Glimpses, 137-79. For additional examples of this two-list approach to
theology, see Weaver, Anabaptist Theology, 51-65.
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WALTON-Harold S. Bender
trines of the Christian faith has often been overlooked by writers on the
Anabaptists."(72) In contrast, as the following section demonstrates, Yoder
rejected the foundational disjuncture between the performative form of
Anabaptism and its content, placing emphasis on ethics and ecclesiology
over and against doctrinal orthodoxy Yoder’s linking of theology and
ethics and his willingness to bypass the terms of standard orthodoxy
were described in different categories in chapter 1.
John Howard Yoder on Protestantism
and the Reformation
At first blush, Yoder’s historiography, like Bender and his Goshen com-
patriots, seems to align Anabaptism as realizing the highest hopes of
the Reformation, and thus orthodox as defined by the dominant Prot-
estant reformation. In his historical work, Yoder seems to indicate this
relationship in his use of a directional metaphor: “the Anabaptist stood
not only geographically, but also theologically in close proximity to the
Reformation.” Indeed, Yoder wrote that “in relation to justification and
other fundamental Protestant truths, the Anabaptists remained in thor-
ough agreement with the Reformers.” Also, like Bender, Yoder critiqued
the Mennonite search for “pre-history” of Anabaptism by writing “we
certainly can bring into question the sympathetic-sounding attempt in
Mennonite circles and among some researchers to derive the Anabaptists
from the Waldensians in the sense of a kind of apostolic succession of
dissidents."(73)
Like his Goshen school mentors, Yoder hypothesized that the
Anabaptists eventually came to a low opinion of Zwingli and were dis-
enchanted with the sluggishness and reticence on his part to carry out
necessary reforms. In using phrasing reminiscent of Wenger’s narration
of the split between early Anabaptists and Zwingli, Yoder wrote, “Even if
Zwingli gave other reasons for his decision, in the Anabaptist view these
could only be attempts at covering up his fear.” This discourse parallels
the Goshen School’s reading of the Anabaptist evaluation of both Luther
and Zwingli. In this narrative, once Zwingli claimed extra-biblical rev-
elation for this reforming program, ‘Anabaptism necessarily became the
entity that would unrestrictedly carry the Reformation impulse forward
________________
72. Wenger, Glimpses, 137.
73. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 115, 142, 121-22.
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PART TWO-SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY
and would hold firmly to the unconditional validity of the Word of God."(74)
In another discussion, Yoder evoked Bender’s “vision” discourse to insist
on Anabaptism’s alignment with fundamental Reformation impulses:
“The Anabaptists demonstrate[d] a continuity with the best vision of
the medieval church, and it [was] Luther who _ . . [took] a radical new
position.”(75) Here, Luther, like Zwingli, departed from the linear trajectory
of faithfulness followed by the Anabaptists.
Unlike the Goshen School, however, Yoder did not attempt to posit
an essential ahistorical nature of Anabaptism outside of the communal
process of dialogue and discernment. He noted that the original Anabap-
tists had no desire to found a separate movement and that ‘Anabaptism
did not wish to have a centre that it held ‘for itself” The only reason,
Yoder argued, that Anabaptists separated into distinct communities was
based simply on the “the failure of the official Reformation churches.
They never wanted to be anything other than the church community the
Reformation had initially wanted, but then did not bring about.” Ana-
baptism, according to Yoder, was then to be defined in its negation of
numerous other options which threatened its restorationist momentum.
Anabaptist identity, Yoder wrote, developed by standing in opposition
to deviations and “in drawing the boundaries on the right and the left,
above and below, and in the elaboration of its own line of thought, the
Anabaptist understanding of the church community now took on a form
of its own.” It was only through the insistence of dialogue, by discursively
drawing lines of agreement and opposition, that “the Anabaptists . . .
show themselves to be a unified group with definite boundaries."(76)
Yoder described the sixteenth-century Anabaptists as much more
concerned with conducting open dialogue within the church than with
the community’s alignment with any external orthodox standards. For
example, he noted that the early Anabaptists treated,the Apostolic Creed
as part of the historical tradition of Christianity Without imbuing the
creed with any final dogmatic authority over Christian life and belie.(77)
In contrast to both Catholic and Protestant theology, which-in differ-
ent but related ways-assumed that the creeds were equivalent with the
Bible, the Anabaptists placed the community of believers as central to
___________________
74. lbid., 290, 154.
75. Yoder, “Hermeneuticsf 296.
76. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 142, 130, 135-36.
77. Yoder, Preface (2002), 222.
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WALTON-Harold S. Bender
Christian discipleship and therefore regulated the creeds to peripheral
and contingent elements of their historical situation. According to Yo-
der, the early Anabaptists thought “the fact that one is a member of the
church community and is therefore a participant in the communal pro-
cess of theological discernment is more important than the orthodoxy
of previously-gained knowledge.” Rather than alignment with orthodox
claims and creedal statements that appeared “outside” of communal
dialogue, the Anabaptists’ basis for truth was communal participation in
dialogue on the basis of the biblical texts. For Yoder, this becomes most
evident in disputations where “We find no attempt to lead the opposi-
tion . . . back to basic systematic lines. In the dialogues, the Anabaptists
demanded of their opponents always, simply that the Scriptures should
count as the norm.”(78)
The sixteenth-century Anabaptists called for dialogue because it was
the necessary precondition of their ecclesiology which was an outgrowth
of their radical christological convictions. Yoder wrote that “the Ana-
baptists repeatedly called for dialogue . . . [this call] arose out of a fully-
developed theological epistemology, yes, an ecclesiology” The basis of the
Anabaptist communities was not an external set of creeds ororthodox
statements, but rather the communal practice and praxis of discernment,
disputation, and dialogue. This trust in dialogue as a defining practice
took “seriously the promise that the Spirit would be granted to those who
assembled in the name of Christ .... the dialogue that they demanded
was not called a discussion, but rather, a community.” Yoder states that
the Anabaptists believed that belonging to a community of faith was a
necessary precondition for valid knowledge of God. The participation in
the dialogue at the level of the local faith community constituted a nec-
essary epistemological basis for the Christian life. Even with their most
bitter opponents, the Anabaptists demanded to be heard and “their right
to be heard really stems from their inexhaustible will to dialogue.”(79)
________________________
78. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 272, 149. An example of this relationship
of the community to classic creedal statements appears in a story about Yoder told to
me by I. Denny Weaver. Weaver asked Yoder about Menno’s nonstandard Christology.
In Weaver’s account, Yoder said that rather than using Menno’s Christology to show
that he was a bad theologian and an example of why we should stick to the classic
creedal formulations, we should rather give Menno credit for attempting to articulate a
Christology shaped by the new Anabaptist ecclesiology of discipleship to Jesus. Gerald
Mast explored this idea in Menno at significant length; see Mast, “Jesus' Flesh.”
79. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 223, 219, 136.
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PART TWO-SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER'S THEOLOGY
The Anabaptists, therefore, took strong objection to Reformers and
others who extinguished dialogue through violence or coercion. Persons
or institutions who would preempt or otherwise constrain dialogue
became especially questionable for Anabaptists and indicated to them
divisions between themselves and others. It was the “inability to dialogue
that finally made the Reformation churches questionable for the Ana-
baptists and led them, both theologically and concretely-historically, to
form communities.” While the Anabaptists believed that every person
who claimed to be a Christian should be addressed as such, refusal to
dialogue raised the most suspicion of one’s authentic faith so that “only
one’s refusal to enter into dialogue allowed the confessing community
to consider someone a nonbeliever (Mark 18:18).” Dialogue opponents
who identified themselves as Christian did not have to be persuaded to
change, but it was only “until they show[ed] by way of a refusal to ‘listen’
that they [were] unwilling to be spoken to. Only this conviction explains
why the Anabaptists always called for dialogues.”(80)
Within the community, the Anabaptists trusted that dialogue would
expose difference and clarify positions, which accounted for their re-
luctance to pass judgment on their friends and even their enemies. For
these believers, “even regarding those excluded from their communities
the Anabaptists did not venture a final judgment.” With such a trust, the
Anabaptists did not see recantations as a blow to the community, but
rather a clarification of where individuals stood. Indeed, Yoder suggests,
“it is not as paradoxical as it might seem at first glance, to see the ‘recanta-
tion’ of some Anabaptists as final evidence for their readiness for discus-
sion.” Success in dialogue was not necessarily winning over the other, but
coming to a new understanding of where the participants stood and, for
these Anabaptists, “life under the ‘rule of Christ’ saw to it that immature
confessions would mature, and that incorrect confessions would reveal
themselves as such.”(81)
In addition to potentially winning over others, the goal of disputa-
tions was to clearly define “lines” or positions, and Anabaptists dispu-
tations achieved their goals when showing that “the lines were clear
between those inside and outside of the community Community dia-
logue did not always lead to consensus, but for Yoder, this did not make
them any less valuable or necessary. Occasionally, the primary advantage
_______________
80. Ibid., 224, 275, 274.
81. Ibid., 273, 100, 121, 273.
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WALTON-Harold S. Bender
of dialogues and disputation was the exposure of deep and previously un-
known differences to which communities struggled to respond. Through
dialogue, especially disputations, the “hidden” divergences in thought
become apparent. An example was the first Zurich disputation in January
1523, during which, “despite the appearance of agreement and victory
real problems [became] visible for the first time.”(82)
Yoder argued that by observing shifts in dialogues and disputa-
tions, one could see previously hidden or unobserved dimensions of
ideas rise “to the surface” For example, when teasing out contradictions
in Zwingli’s theology, “we . . . observ[e] how an inner contradiction be-
tween two strands of Zwingli’s theological personality gradually comes
to the surface.”(83) When reflecting on how contemporary historical and
theological questions differ greatly from those that were active or even on
the horizon of imagination for the sixteenth-century Anabaptists, Yoder
observes, “These questions could not really come to the surface in the
sixteenth century .... the intellectual tools which we currently use for
dealing with such questions were not available, and they could hardly
have come to the surface in this particular form."(84) It was only through
continual dialogue, in the form of disputations, that these differences
came to the surface and were exposed.
In the rhetoric of Bender and other Goshen School members, Ana-
baptism was the “cumulation” of the Reformation and an “inevitable”
outgrowth of faithfulness and the movement of God’s Spirit, whereas in
Yoder, this came about by continual dialogue and disputation within the
specific body of believers called the church. Thus, the true mark of Ana-
baptism was not simply their refusal to use state resources as at least one
interpreter of Yoder has concluded,(85) but rather that Anabaptists refused
to use state resources to silence critics or to preemptively interrupt the
process of dialogue. Yoder wrote,
If one seeks to find the breaking point on which the Anabap-
tists separated themselves from the Reformation, then the first
concern is for the community, its visibility, and its capacity for
action. But if one asks why the community should be visible and
capable of action, and one finds this answer: It has to do with the
_______________
82. Ibid., 56, 128, 7.
83. Yoder, “Evolution of Zwinglian Reformation,” 109.
84. Yoder, “Hermeneutics,” 294.
85. Snyder, “Doing History,” 7.
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PART TWO-SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY
light of Christ in his members. Both are ultimately inseparable
simply because discipleship is not a Franciscan ethic of imita-
tion for the individual, but rather a work of the body of Christ.(86)
For Yoder, the “hermeneutical community was always before, the
setting for, and the final arbiter of any system of argumentation. The pro-
cess of discernment includes what he called the ‘walk’ or socially engaged
praxis of the community”(87) Ultimately this communal ecclesiology was
rooted in a radical Christology that Yoder saw operative in the sixteenth-
century Anabaptists. Thus, unlike Goshen School scholars, Yoder es-
chewed a “fruits, not roots” metaphorical logic in describing the early
Anabaptists. He refused to conceptualize the Anabaptists’ performance
of suffering and patient love, as embodied in non-coercive dialogue, as
a secondary “distinctive” practice somehow subordinate to an ortho-
dox “core.” This refusal also characterizes the overall content of Yoder’s
later theology, which considered the practice of nonviolent suffering love
made visible in the Christian life and ministry as the essence of Christian
discipleship. At the same time, as indicated by Yoder’s hurtful sexual be-
havior dealt with in chapters 12 and 13, additional elements need to be
added to this discipleship ecclesiology.
Conclusion
Like all historians, Goshen School writers utilized metaphors, or rather
“stylistic tokens,” which expressed deep epistemological convictions.
Bender’s use of the metaphor of “vision” accounted for both the histo-
rians’ and the Mennonites’ unawareness of their own illustrious past, in
spite of the fact that Mennonites were “clearly” and “obviously” the direct
heirs of the Anabaptist’s vision. Wenger's use of a fire metaphor com-
municated a clear message: the essence of the people existed and was
passed on through time. In those intervening dark centuries, the fire had
simply burned low but was being rebuilt by Wenger’s Mennonites, so
that they could once again “see” clearly the evangelistic and radical vision
of Anabaptism. This dialectic, implicit in their metaphors between vis-
ibility/invisibility and concealing/revealing, expressed an epistemology
that tempered the search for the “exterior” and “visible” marks not fully
reducible to the “essence” of Anabaptism.
________________
86. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 299.
87. Zimmerman, Practicing the Politics, 178.
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WALTON-Harold S. Bender
In a similar fashion, Yoder equated proper historical knowledge
with having a clear “vision” that shared a number of rhetorical sensi-
bilities with his Goshen School mentors. He conferred meaning on not
only the propositional arguments of “The Anabaptist Vision,” but also
the metaphorical conception regarding the “visibility” of any historical
“picture,” and the notion that the Anabaptists unswervingly held to origi-
nal Reformation impetuses. Yoder, however, departed from the Goshen
School by stressing communal dialogue, discernment, and disputation as
constitutive factors that distinguished the Anabaptist community and to
such a degree that even alignment with orthodox Christian claims was of
secondary concern when compared with the process of defenseless dia-
logue with the other. Certainly this stress on the necessity of communal
dialogue would later find expression in Yoder’s most important theologi-
cal works and become a constitutive element of his broader theological
edifice. To the extent that the dialogic process of the community took
precedence over orthodox commitments and with the Christ-centered
community investing great trust in God’s participation in communal dis-
cernment, Yoder argued that the “shape” of Anabaptism was determined
by communal praxis and constituted its primary “mark."
By using the tools of rhetorical analysis to understand and com-
pare the historiographical work of Bender and Wenger to that of Yoder, I
have shown the error of reducing of Yoder’s historiographic program and
epistemological assumptions to simply another reiteration of the Goshen
School consensus. A rhetorical, rather than historical, analysis of the
Anabaptist historiographies generated by the Goshen School members
and John Howard Yoder offers a deeper, or at least different, perspec-
tive on their similarities and Yoder’s departures. This rhetorical analysis
has demonstrated the centrality of the metaphors in the articulation of
Anabaptist history and the degree to which Goshen School scholars’
metaphors of “vision” and the spiritual “flame” of Anabaptism are not
exchangeable or reducible to more essential meanings. Rather their met-
aphorical character provides the basis for their ideological functioning.
Likewise, Yoder’s insistence that that true outline of the Anabaptist pro-
gram “surfaced” or “emerged” so that the reader and historian could “see”
it and “fill in a picture,” while also tracing the “lines” of the dialogues,
constitutes a central aspect of his historical discourse.
By understanding the ethic of dialogue that Yoder observed in the
sixteenth-century Anabaptists, one discerns a consistent communicative
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PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY
ethic that embodied theological principles of respect, patience, and
vulnerable enemy love that ultimately drew from a deep source of radi-
cal defenseless Christology. As Earl Zimmerman has observed, Yoder’s
epistemology was “indebted to his historical work on the congregational
process of discernment among the Swiss Anabaptists, where the silence
of the community indicated that all objections had been met.”(88) Yoder also
saw historical work as a method of deepening and enabling ecumenical
dialogue that allowed participants to discern the commonalities of their
origins and expose differences.”(89) So, for Yoder, the primary task was that
of listening and, in his words, “instead of the question of who is right, we
would rather take as our standard the openness to dialogue itself The
question of who is ultimately right is not decided by dogmatic history in
any case.”(90)
Thus rhetorical analysis has also underscored the dialectical aspect
of Yoder’s thought. Chapter 1 dealt with Yoder’s approach to Christology
with the narrative of Iesus serving as the basis of his theology and ethics.
Chapter 2 identified sixteenth-century Anabaptism as one historical root
of this christological orientation, and argued that Yoder saw the Ana-
baptists’ ecclesiology emerging from living out of the narrative of Iesus.
In chapter 3 we have now observed the way that ecclesiological dialogue
is an intrinsic element of Yoder’s ecclesiology. These findings concern-
ing the inseparable elements of Christology, ecclesiology and dialogue
in Yoder’s thought thus challenge some contemporary applications of
Yoder. In particular, these findings challenge those who affirm Yoder’s
pacifism apart from his ecclesiology,(91) and render questionable any effort
to apply Yoder’s ecclesiology without pacifism to a contemporary mass
church ecclesiology.(92)
____________________
88. lbid.
89. Blough, “Introduction,” xli-xlii.
90. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 146.
91. Hauerwas “cannot have both Yoder and nostalgia for the papacy” Dula, “For
and Against Hauerwas,” 375-96, quote 394.
92. Leithart, Dqiznding Constantine, esp. 333-42.
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