Sixteenth-Century Anabaptist Roots

PART TWO

Sources of John Howard Yoder’s Theology

Those who knew John Howard Yoder in person were sometimes awed

by his powerful intellect, the breadth and depth of his knowledge,

and his seemingly effortless ability to move between as well as to integrate

the fields of theology, biblical studies, and ethics. But that wide grasp of

data and issues did not just happen. It reflects the program that he fol-

lowed in his graduate studies, an orientation that he continued to expand

for the rest of his life. The chapters in this section display the important

elements that oriented Yoder’s scholarship for his life work, and thus also

give visibility to the elements that shaped the theological orientation de-

picted in chapter 1.

Chapter 2 describes Yoder’s roots in Anabaptist history But as the

chapter makes clear, Yoder’s interest in Anabaptist origins was more theo-

logical than historical. When he could not pursue a dissertation in Ana-

baptist theology per se, he chose a historical topic that would allow him

to approach theology from a different direction. He pursued research in

historic Anbaptism as an example of a movement that returned its fol-

lowers to the Jesus of the New Testament. By studying historic Anabaptist

origins, he thus hoped to develop the basis of a theology that would be

more true to the New Testament narrative of Jesus than the classic theol-

ogy of the established churches of Christendom. Thus chapter 2 makes

visible one root and impulse of the idea of a theology true to the narra-

tive of Jesus that would be in conversation with but not beholden to the

classic creeds of Christendom, the theological orientation that is clearly

visible in chapter 1.

PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY

Another source of Anabaptist influence on Yoder was the ‘Anabap-

tist Vision” of Harold S. Bender, Yoder’s mentor in Goshen. Some critics

have displayed Yoder’s Anabaptism as a near clone of Bender’s. Yoder did

learn from Bender, but Yoder’s version of Anabaptism also challenged

Bender. Chapter 3 uses rhetorical analysis to display Yoder’s differences

from as well as similarities to Bender.

Yoder was significantly impacted by the biblical scholarship of the

postwar era in Europe as churchmen and scholars sought to understand

how the churches had gone so wrong during the war just concluded.

Chapter 4 displays important elements of Yoder’s thought derived from

those conversations. It includes his View on the kingdom of God and on

a biblical approach to the state that he learned from Oscar Cullmann, as

well as material from André Trocmé on Jubilee and the understanding of

the Powers that he adopted from Hendrik Berkhof. Correspondence by

Yoder cited in this chapter again displays his intent to develop theology

with reference to the New Testament but not beholden to the received

theological tradition.

Some scholars have identiiied Yoder as a Barthian, perhaps a pacifist

version of Karl Barth. Chapter 5 describes ways that Yoder did indeed

learn from Karl Barth. However, the use of deconstruction in this chapter

also displays how Yoder “went beyond” or extended Barth to develop his

own, unique approach to theology that expressed the presence of God in

Jesus and used the story of Jesus as the basis from which to address any

issue.

The chapters of Part Two fill out our understanding of the elements

that shaped the theological perspective depicted in chapter 1. And noting

the multiple ways in these chapters that Yoder’s methodology pointed

back to the root, namely the narrative of Jesus, displays why he is a radical

theologian.

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Sixteenth-Century Anabaptist Roots

EARL ZIMMERMAN

One root of John Howard Yoder’s christological orientation takes

nourishment from the sixteenth-century Anabaptist movement.(1) It

seems important to emphasize that point in light of recently expressed

skepticism about the task of developing and articulating a distinct and

comprehensive theology shaped by Anabaptist convictions that can

critically engage theologies rooted in classic Protestant or Catholic tra-

ditions.(2) Such skepticism is strange given Yoder’s own considerable ef-

fort to develop that theology, which was demonstrated at length in the

first chapter of this book. Since Yoder’s theology was also a dialogical

_________________

1. Parts of this chapter draw on my discussion of John Howard Yoder’s dissertation

on the disputations between the Swiss Anabaptists and the Swiss Reformers in my

book Practicing the Politics, 140-72. Used by permission of the publisher.

2. See Peter Dula’s critical comments about ]. Denny Weaver’s lifelong commit-

ment to articulating a distinctive theology shaped by Anabaptist or peace church

assumptions. Dula, “For and Against Hauerwas," 379-80, 379 n. 15. Dula’s article in-

sightfully identifies the challenges posed to Anabaptist theology by Stanley Hauerwas,

who afhrms John Howard Yoder`s pacifism but rejects his free church ecclesiology.

Dula’s theological commitments should parallel Weaver’s more closely than his critical

comments indicate, given his own expressed “confidence in the future of Anabaptism,

of radical free church communities committed to lives of discipleship together.” Ibid.,

396.

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PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY

pursuit, one can appreciate the recent comparative impulse to put Yoder

in dialogue or conversation with various contemporary theologians or

philosophers.(3) However, this approach to Yoder’s thought will become

increasingly opaque and distant from the tradition that informed it un-

less it also actively engages the task of doing theology shaped by Ana-

baptist convictions rooted in the shared life and history of free church

communities committed to following Jesus.

The description of Yoder’s work as a fragmentary, ad hoc collage,

which was noted in the Introduction, certainly misses the mark as well.

This characterization too may lie in the failure to recognize or take seri-

ously the fact that Yoder’s theology is deeply rooted in Anabaptist con-

victions. This chapter therefore revisits Yoder’s historical research on the

Swiss Anabaptists in order to better understand his construction of such

a theology.

Why Study Anabaptism?

In the 19508, many young Mennonite scholars were doing historical

research on the sixteenth-century Anabaptist movement, but few were

working in theology. History was a safer endeavor. Most North American

Mennonite churches held traditional or fundamentalist understandings

of the Bible and distrusted theology. The anti-modernist volume, Doc-

trines of the Bible.(4) which had borrowed heavily from Protestant fun-

damentalism, still functioned as a kind of catechism in many Mennonite

communities.

'That fundamentalist-shaped, cultural and religious ethos was slowly

changing. Mennonite scholar John Christian Wenger had recently writ-

ten Introduction to Theology.(5) It moved away from the Bible doctrines

____________________

3. Various articles in recent, edited books on Yoder’s thought, while erudite in

other ways, certainly do not demonstrate a profound understanding of Anabaptist

sources or the motivation to develop a contemporary theology shaped by Anabaptist

assumptions that energized Yoder. For example, see the collected essays in Dula and

Huebner, The New Yoder. Similarly, it is noteworthy that Craig Carter, whose book

purports to be a comprehensive synthesis of Yoder’s theology and ethics, lists none

of Yoder’s historical writings in the section on “A Beginners Guide to Reading John

Howard Yoder." Carter, Politics of the Cross, 243-47.

4. Kauffman, Doctrines. For an account of the doctrinal orientation of North

American Mennonite communities in the first half of the twentieth century, see

Juhnke, Vision, Doctrine, War, 112-19.

5. Wenger, Introduction to Theology (1954).

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ZIMMERMAN--Sixteenth-Century Anabaptist Roots

motif, but was still a conservative Protestant theology that incorporated

various Anabaptist beliefs in its outline. It could be argued that it actu-

ally moved Mennonites closer to conventional Protestantism. Thus a real

need existed for theological work from within the Anabaptist tradition.

Given his talents and interests, it is understandable that John Howard

Yoder wanted to undertake that task. It was also risky.

However, the initial resistance Yoder experienced did not come

from his Mennonite community. When he began formulating a proposal

for his doctoral dissertation at the University of Basel in Switzerland, Yo-

der discovered that it was impossible to find a theologian in a European

university who would allow him to do theological work from an Anabap-

tist perspective. If he wanted to have an Anabaptist focus, he would need

to do historical research. Yoder was in conversation with Fritz Blanke, a

professor at the University of Zurich known for his work on the Anabap-

tists. In a letter to his friend Paul Peachey who was also doing Anabaptist

studies in Europe, Yoder wrote,

The reason for not working with a theologian is that in Blanke’s
estimate they really aren’t open-minded enough to let something
they basically disagree with through, so the Dogmengeschichte
lets you write on the same questions but with a broader-minded
professor. If the thesis itself tried to be systematic the professor
would be obliged to call in a systematiker, and none . . . would
let Anabaptist stuff through.(6)

Consequently Yoder decided to do historical work under the direc-

tion of Ernst Staehelin from the University of Basel. Blanke would serve

as an outside consultant.(7) He divided the dissertation into two parts,

a historical section that he submitted for his doctorial examination in

1957, and a historical theological section that reflected on his primary

historical research.(8)

______________________

6. Yoder, letter to Paul Peachey, April 8. Peachey also added a question. Accord-

ing to Peachey Fritz Blanke had a reputation as a Sammler (a collector) rather than

a systematic thinker. That appears to be a derogatory assessment. Peachey suggested

that working with a more systematic dissertation advisor would be better. See Peachey,

letter to John Howard Yoder, April 4.

7. Yoder, letter to Paul Peachey, April 8. Some scholars have asked why Yoder dis-

engaged from the world of sixteenth-century Anabaptist studies after the early 1970s.

See Nation, John Howard Yoder, 39. Yoder’s personal letters help answer that question.

They demonstrate that he was always more interested in theology than in Anabaptist

historical research.

8. Yoder published both in German. The historical section appeared as Yoder,

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PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY

Yoder carefully chose the topic of his dissertation, focusing on the

early conversations between the Anabaptists and the Protestant Reform-

ers in Switzerland. That choice allowed Yoder to study the theology of

the sixteenth-century Anabaptists as it emerged in those conversations.

In this way, he was able at least partly to work around the barrier to his

desire to do a theological dissertation. In addition, it allowed him to fur-

ther the historical project of Anabaptist historian Harold Bender, who

had been Yoder’s undergraduate mentor at Goshen College. Bender had

done his own doctoral work on the Swiss Anabaptists and his project

led to a historical renaissance that would provide Mennonites with what

historian Paul Toews calls a “usable past.”(9)

Chapter 3 to follow depicts how Yoder both used and altered Bend-

er’s vision. Here it suffices to say that like Bender, Yoder was not interested

in sixteenth-century historical research as an end in itself His historical

research and his theological examination of issues between Anabaptists

and the Swiss reformers enabled him to develop the theological structure

that informed his “politics of Jesus.” That structure became central to his

lifelong theological project.

Yoder believed that many of the central concerns he addressed in

his “politics of Jesus” had already emerged in the sixteenth-century dis-

putations between the Anabaptists and the Protestant Reformers. One set

of issues came from Anabaptist ecclesiology, with its focus on the local

congregation and its distinction between church and society This focus

informed his understanding of the church as a distinct community of

discernment within society and his argument against the Constantinian

synthesis of church and civil society. Accordingly, Yoder would argue

that the very possibility of tolerance and religious freedom follows the

Anabaptist understanding of the relationship between church and civil

society.

Another set of issues emerged from Yoder’s understanding that

Christian social ethics should be based on following the “earthly way

of Jesus.” Yoder believed he had discovered this radical commitment

to Christian discipleship in his Anabaptist research. Discipleship is not

just a matter of imitating Jesus’ actions but of being fully present in the

world in the same way that Jesus had been. Such presence means being

___________________

Taufertum und Reformation: Schweiz. The second section, which he called a dogmatic

examination, was later published as Yoder, Tiiufertum und Reformation: Gesprach. More

recently these volumes appeared in English as Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation.

9. Toews, Mennonites in American Society, 84.

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ZIMMERMAN--Sixteenth-Century Anabaptist Roots

willing to experience the same kind of persecution and suffering that

Jesus experienced.

In this respect, interpreting Yoder as a Barthian theologian,(10) as a

proponent or critic of creedal orthodoxy, or as a Mennonite apologist,

easily become diversions for other theological agendas.(11) Such interpreta-

tions tend to obscure the central passion that gave life to Yoder’s theology.

In some ways, he was all these things, but none of them adequately de-

fines his “Politics of Jesus,” which was rooted in his Anabaptist theologi-

cal commitments and his passion to have the church take Jesus seriously

in social ethics. His “politics of Jesus” needs to be understood as the cre-

ation of a contemporary theology shaped by Anabaptist convictions, with

his doctoral dissertation on the Anabaptists a central part of that task.(12)

Yoder’s primary theological convictions, and their formulation

throughout his career, drew from his historical theological research on

the Swiss Anabaptists.(13) His basic theological orientation, however, was

formed before he began his doctoral research. It was already present in

his desire to write what he called an Anabaptist Vergegenwéirtigung (a

contemporary updated Anabaptist theology) as a young student.(14) While

Yoder was committed to Bender’s project of recovering a usable past for

Mennonites, he was even more committed to articulating an Anabaptist

social and political ethic in ecumenical circles. He believed that this theo-

logical ethic was not merely a Mennonite distinctive that other Christians

__________________

10. The fact that Yoder was not even able to have someone like Barth serve as a

reader for his dissertation indicates that there was considerable theological distance

between them. Chapter 8 to follow explores Yoder’s relationship to Barth in detail.

11. A. Iames Reimer argued that Yoder’s theology is incompatible with Trinitarian

Christology. Contra Reimer, Craig Carter argued that Yoder had a deep commitment

to creedal orthodoxy. As is apparent from J. Denny Weaver’s argument in the first

chapter of this book, neither Reimer nor Carter fully understood Yoder’s approach.

See Reimer, “Theological Orthodoxy? and Carter, Politics of the Cross, 113-36.

12. A comment Yoder made to Ray Gingerich, a former student of his, confirms

the relationship between Yoder’s Anabaptist research and his "politics of Jesus.” Ging-

erich talked to Yoder about the need for a contemporary work on Anabaptist theology.

Yoder’s response was that he had already written it-it was his book The Politics of

Jesus. Interview with Ray Gingerich, October 8, 2003.

13. Support for this statement includes Michael G. Cartwright in Yoder, Royal

Priesthood, 5, and Nation, John Howard Yoder, 31.

14. A letter to Harold Bender expressed this interest. Yoder, letter to Harold

Bender, January 12. For another comment from Yoder that expresses the desire to

develop Anabaptist theology that bypassed the theology of Christendom, see the quote

referenced by note 3 in chapter 4.

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PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY

could easily dismiss. It was the gospel and belonged to the heritage of the

ecumenical church.

From his historical research on the disputations between the Ana-

baptists and the Protestant Reformers, Yoder observed that it was the

Anabaptists who almost always initiated the discussions. He was im-

pressed with their non-defensive stance in those discussions and their

willingness to change their position in light of new evidence. Even to

enter into conversation with their powerful adversaries, who could rely

on government religious sanctions, was a considerable risk that they were

willing to take because of their commitment to share and proclaim the

gospel.(15) The historical research on those conversations gave Yoder the

ability to revisit the crucial issues they raised. There was an uncanny syn-

ergy between what Yoder was discovering in his sixteenth-century Ana-

baptist research and the heart-searching conversations about what had

gone wrong with the Christendom paradigm that he was immersed in as

a doctoral student in postwar Europe. This nexus enabled him to change

the questions that had shaped the conversation in theological ethics for

centuries.

Historical Anabaptist Research

Yoder’s historical research focused in particular on the disputations

between the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli and emerging Anabaptist

leaders, such as Conrad Grebel. He then traced the development of

Anabaptism, especially through the influence of Michael Sattler, and the

crystallization of the Anabaptist position in the articles of the Briiderli-

che Vereinigang or Brotherly Union, popularly known as the Schleitheim

Confession.

Swiss Anabaptist Separation from Zwingli

Yoder made the historical argument that the Swiss Anabaptists emerged

out of the Zwinglian reformation. Conrad Grebel, a key Swiss Anabaptist

leader, had said that Zwingli had brought them into this matter.(16) Begin-

ning from that premise, Yoder examined the conversations between the

Swiss Anabaptists and the Swiss Reformers with the goal of clarifying

_______________

15. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 118-21.

16. Von Muralt and Schmid, Ziirich, 89.

PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY

could easily dismiss. It was the gospel and belonged to the heritage of the

ecumenical church.

From his historical research on the disputations between the Ana-

baptists and the Protestant Reformers, Yoder observed that it was the

Anabaptists who almost always initiated the discussions. He was im-

pressed with their non-defensive stance in those discussions and their

willingness to change their position in light of new evidence. Even to

enter into conversation with their powerful adversaries, who could rely

on government religious sanctions, was a considerable risk that they were

willing to take because of their commitment to share and proclaim the

gospel.” The historical research on those conversations gave Yoder the

ability to revisit the crucial issues they raised. There was an uncanny syn-

ergy between what Yoder was discovering in his sixteenth-century Ana-

baptist research and the heart-searching conversations about what had

gone wrong with the Christendom paradigm that he was immersed in as

a doctoral student in postwar Europe. This nexus enabled him to change

the questions that had shaped the conversation in theological ethics for

centuries.

Historical Anabaptist Research

Yoder`s historical research focused in particular on the disputations

between the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli and emerging Anabaptist

leaders, such as Conrad Grebel. He then traced the development of

Anabaptism, especially through the influence of Michael Sattler, and the

crystallization of the Anabaptist position in the articles of the Briiderli-

che Vereinigang or Brotherly Union, popularly known as the Schleitheim

Confession.

Swiss Anabaptist Separation from Zwingli

Yoder made the historical argument that the Swiss Anabaptists emerged

out of the Zwinglian reformation. Conrad Grebel, a key Swiss Anabaptist

leader, had said that Zwingli had brought them into this matter.” Begin-

ning from that premise, Yoder examined the conversations between the

Swiss Anabaptists and the Swiss Reformers with the goal of clarifying

_______________

15. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 118-21.

16. Von Muralt and Schmid, Ziirich, 89.

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ZIMMERMAN--Sixteenth-Century Anabaptist Roots

emerging Anabaptist theological and ethical commitments. He recon-

structed the formal disputations and other conversations between the

Anabaptists and the Reformers in order to identify the crucial issues

that eventually caused them to go separate ways.(17) Yoder noticed that

there are more recorded conversations between the Reformers and the

Anabaptists than between other church groups in the sixteenth century

and was impressed that the Anabaptists had generally initiated the con-

versations.(18)  In turn, throughout his own career, Yoder emphasized the

importance of ecumenical dialogue.

Yoder asked how it was that that the differences between the Swiss

Anabaptists and the Zwinglians became so great that the Zwinglian

party eventually banned the very existence of the Anabaptists. Yoder

maintained that it was not the issues themselves that became intractable.

There was initially a broad agreement as all parties worked together at the

task of reforming the church, including matters such as the propriety of

charging interest, the reformation of the Mass, and infant baptism. What

eventually led to the parting of ways in 1525 was Zwingli’s decision to

involve the Zurich City Council in the implementation of the reforms.

Yoder insisted that it was Zwingli’s move from reform based on toler-

ance to mandatory reform applied to all citizens through government

enforcement that created the intractable division between Zwingli and

those who had been his followers. He wrote,

By thus seeing the basic nature of Zwingli’s shift in position wehave at the same time found the crux of Grebel’s clash with him.To place the unity of Zurich above the faithfulness of the churchis not only to abandon the church; it is also the demonization ofthe state, for persecution becomes a theological necessity.(19)

________________

17. In addition to Zwingli, the other Reformers included Wolfgang Capito and

Martin Bucer in Strasbourg. The two most prominent Anabaptist leaders were Conrad

Grebel, the son of a patrician Zurich family and a close confidant to Zwingli, and

Michael Sattler, the former prior of the Benedictine monastery in the Black Forest.

Yoder produced a separate book in which he translated and edited materials related to

Sattler and the formative Anabaptist council at Schleitheim in 1527. See Yoder, Legacy

of Sattler.

18. Yoder, Legacy of Sattler.

19. Yoder, “Turning Point,” 140. This article, taken from his dissertation, demon-

strates how much significance he placed on his argument about the basic difference

between Zwingli and the Anabaptists.

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PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY

As a consequence of their rejection of government authority in reli-

gious matters, the Anabaptists were beginning to rethink the role of gov-

ernment, including the use of force. In this struggle the Swiss Anabaptists

were gradually developing their own congregationally based ecclesiology

in opposition to the emerging Zwinglian Reformed ecclesiology, which

made the civil authorities sovereign in matters of ecclesiastical discipline.

The Legacy of Schleitheim

The subsequent persecution by the Zwinglians threatened to destroy the

budding Anabaptist movement. Internal dissensions also threatened the

movement. In response to this crisis, a group of Anabaptist leaders met in

the village of Schleitheim near the Swiss-German border in 1527. There

they drew up the articles of faith often referred to as the Schleitheim

Confession.(20)

According to Yoder, those articles of faith represented a further

development in Anabaptist congregational ecclesiology. Baptism, com-

munion, and church discipline were understood in relation to the dis-

tinction they made between the church and the civil society. All these

practices now fit together as a whole. Their rejection of violence was not

just a literal citation of New Testament passages but was underpinned

theologically by this ecclesiology.(21) According to Yoder, Schleitheim

“must be recognized as the coming of age of a distinct, visible fellowship

taking long-range responsibility for its order and its faith.(22)

The influence of Michael Sattler, the former prior of St. Peter’s

Benedictine Monastery in the Black Forest, appears in the theological

commitments of Schleitheim. Yoder notes that Sattler was recognized by

both critics and admirers as the most significant first generation leader of

the Anabaptists.(23) Sattler had not been involved in the disputations with

Zwingli but, several years later, was in conversation with Martin Bucer

and Wolfgang Capito, the leading Reformers in Strasbourg. As in Zurich,

_________________

20. The Briiderlidfze Vereinigung or Brotherly Union is not a full confession of

faith. Its more limited purpose was to define the critical areas of agreement in the

fledgling Anabaptist movement. For Y0der’s historical overview of this period in the

Swiss Anabaptist history, see “Persecution and Consolidation" in Dyck, Introduction

to Mennonite History, 36-43.

21. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 130.

22. Yoder, Legacy of Sattler, 29.

23. Ibid., 10, 17 n. 5.

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ZIMMERMAN--SixteenthCentury Anabaptist Roots

the fundamental disagreement concerned the Reformers’ commitment

to a uniform reform program enforced by government authority versus

the Anabaptist congregationally based, voluntary reforms. Sattler op-

posed the use of force against religious dissidents and pleaded with the

Strasbourg Reformers:

Be mercifully considerate, I pray you, of those who are in prisonand do not permit a merciful judgment to be superseded by ablind, spiteful, and cruel one. Those who are in error (if that theywere) are not to be coerced but after a second admonition tobe avoided. Christians admonish benevolently, out of sympathyand compassion for the sinful, and do not legalistically coercepersons this way or that.(24)

Bucer and Capito always spoke Well of Sattler and considered him a

Christian martyr when Austrian authorities burned him at the stake on

May 20, 1527.(25)

The legacy of Schleitheim and Michael Sattler is significant for

understanding Yoder’s own theological commitments. He believed that

Sattler and the Swiss Anabaptists were the most authentic representa-

tives of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists. Their core beliefs, which he

discovered in his historical research, became the building blocks of his

constructive theology.

The Core of Anabaptist Beliefs

John Howard Yoder's historical theological examination of the discus-

sions between the Swiss Anabaptists and the Reformers identified the

central elements of sixteenth-century Anabaptist thought that he could

use to construct his contemporary theology.(26) It was the “usable past” that

he would use in his theological project.

Yoder wanted his theological project to have ecumenical signifi-

cance. For that reason, it was necessary to explore the disagreements

as well as the places of agreement between the Anabaptists and the Re-

formers. He thought the disagreements were actually more instructive

and that they should not be covered over out of a shortsighted desire

__________________

24. Sattler, “Letter to Bucer and Capito," in Yoder, Legacy of Sattler, 23.

25. Capito, “Letter to Biirgmeister and Council at Horbf’ in Yoder, Legacy of Sattler,

87.

26. Yoder, letter to Harold Bender, Ianuary 12.

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PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY

for church unity that ignored real differences.(27) The tragedy of Reforma-

tion history, Yoder thought, is not that there were differences, but that no

constructive way was found to deal with them. When they could not be

resolved theologically, the Reformers resorted to police action.(28)

The challenge, for Yoder, was to find the center that defined these

differences. His problem was not only that insufficient resources were

available on the Anabaptist position, but that the Anabaptists had no

center of their own which held together by itself Anabaptists under-

stood the existence of their communities as a necessary consequence of

the failure of the Reformers to bring about the needed changes they had

initially embarked on. In Yoder’s analysis, the Swiss Anabaptists were

in basic agreement with the initial teachings and objectives of Zwingli

and believed they were implementing those teachings in the life of their

communities.(29)

In his work of reconstructing Anabaptist distinctives, Yoder fol-

lowed earlier attempts to find deeper assumptions behind the confronta-

tions over specific issues such as infant baptism. He was building on the

Work of Harold Bender, who had defined the Anabaptist vision in terms

of discipleship, a voluntary church, and an ethic of love and nonresis-

tance. Yoder said that trying to understand such Anabaptist distinctives

systematically is made more difficult because the Anabaptists did not

think in systematic categories.

According to Yoder, the opposition between the Anabaptists and the

Reformers did not grow out of competing theologies but out of the imple-

mentation of a common body of belief associated with the Reformation

in Switzerland. In discussions with their opponents, the Anabaptists kept

insisting, rightly or wrongly, that the Bible alone should be the norm. Few

of them were trained theologians, and they had neither the time nor the

educational resources needed to develop a sophisticated theology.(30)

Because of those factors, Yoder believed that any theological re-

construction of their thought could only be an interpretation and a hy-

pothesis. We need to ask, he said, if we are dealing with the legitimate

possibility of a theology that is worthy of interpretation. The implied

________________

27. The significance of difference in ecumenical conversations was a lifelong focus

for Yoder. See, for example, his posthumously published article “On Christian Unity.”

28. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 142.

29. Ibid., 142-43.

30. Ibid., 148-49.

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ZIMMERMAN--Sixteenth-Century Anabaptist Roots

answer was “yes,” but only the expressed opinion and believability of the

Anabaptists can provide that answer. In such a reconstruction, central

Reformation issues such as justification by faith will not occupy the cen-

ter of discussion. Instead, other issues will emerge. One should guard

against too quickly deciding what is central. Yoder wrote,

Things for whose sake the one side was ready to persecute, andfor which the other side was ready to suffer persecution, are fun-damentally important-even if they lie only on the periphery ofsystematic orthodoxy, they can become the center point of thetest of obedience and witness.(31)

Dualism and Monism

One of the issues that divided the Reformed and Anabaptist positions,

according to Yoder, was Zwingli”s penchant toward a platonic, spiritual

dualism, which the Anabaptists rejected. Zwingli”s dualism allowed him

to make a distinction between divine justice (which is ordained for

heaven) and its implementation in sinful human society Because of the

reality of sin, divine justice can never be transferred to human society.

Correspondingly, one cannot talk about Christian social ethics. Within

a Christendom ecclesiologv Yoder explained, a Christian social ethic

would mean applying those ethics to the whole society in a way that

makes no distinction between church and society Hence, the Reformers

assumed it was impossible to apply the teaching of Jesus beyond private,

personal ethics.”

Yoder noted that the general assumption is that it was the Luther-

ans, with their interest in justification for the individual, who left out

social ethics, while the Reformed tradition drew political consequences

from their striving for a holy community. He argued, however, that in

the disputations he studied, it was the Reformed side that drew distinc-

tions between the inner and the outer, while it was the Anabaptists who

insisted that obedience to God’s commandments and Christ’s work was

relevant for social ethics.”

________________

31. Ibid., 150.

32. Ibid., 152.

33. Ibid., 162-63. An insight from Abraham Friesen’s historical work on Erasmus

and the Anabaptists supports Yoder’s contention that such dualism undercuts Chris-

tian practice and social ethics. Erasmus, the sixteenth-century humanist and biblical

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PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER,S THEOLOGY

The other side of Zwingli’s spiritual dualism, according to Yoder,

was a covenantal monism that identified Christian baptism with Old

Testament circumcision. The discussion soon went far beyond that of

covenantal signs and raised the issue of the relationship between the Old

Testament and the New Testament. Zwingli understood the unity of the

two testaments to be based on God’s covenant formation of the people of

God. In this way, he could appropriate those parts of the Old Testament

in which the community of faith was identified with a national commu-

nity that had political backing.(34)

For Yoder, Zwingli’s approach brought out a basic issue in Anabap-

tist biblical hermeneutics. The Anabaptists obviously could not agree with

the way the Reformers associated Old Testament covenantal signs with

baptism, As a consequence Anabaptists had to endure the charge that

they had rejected the authority of the Old Testament. They denied that

charge, arguing instead that they understood the relationship between

the two testaments differently-as a relationship of promise and fulfill-

ment. The Old Testament had to be interpreted through Christ, who was

the fulfillment of God’s promise.(35) Yoder appropriated this hermeneutic

for his own interpretation of the Bible.

Yoder noted that the Reformed leaders wanted to interpret Christ

through God’s covenant with Abraham. In contrast, the Anabaptists in-

sisted on interpreting Abraham through the new covenant with Christ.

Prom a Reformed perspective, everything was essentially the same be-

cause God’s inclination toward humanity always remained the same. For

the Anabaptists, everything has become new because it is only in obedi-

ence to Christ that humanity can be in right relationship with God.(36)

From an Anabaptist perspective, in their relationship with Christ,

the people of God are distinguished from the civil society According to

_________________

scholar, noted in the Annotations to his Greek New Testament that the command to

teach and make disciples precedes baptism (Matt 28:19). Friesen claims that the Ana-

baptists were the only Reformation-era group to put that insight into practice because

they read Erasmus’ work without the customary Platonic overlay that separates ideas

and ideals from particular expressions in the world. See Friesen, Erasmus, the Ana-

baptists, 38, 44-48. The issue of abstract Platonic thought reemerges in Yoder’s dispute

with contemporary Protestant ethicists such as Reinhold Niebuhr, who claimed that

God’s law of absolute love could not be socially interpreted. See Niebuhr, Moral Man

and Immoral Society, 76-82.

34. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 166-68.

35. Ibid., 168-72.

36. lbid.

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ZIMMERMAN--Sixteenth-Century Anabaptist Roots

Yoder, the Anabaptist distinction between church and civil government

became a source of misunderstanding with their Reformed interlocutors

who assumed either that they wanted to impose a radical communitarian

ethic on all of society or were anarchists. Instead, the Anabaptists were

developing a free church or believers church ecclesiology That ecclesiol-

ogy is another core Anabaptist conviction that became central to Yoder’s

theology.(37)

The formal expression of the Anabaptist distinction between church

and civil government is seen clearly in the Schleitheim Confession. It

reads, “The sword is an ordering of God outside the perfection of Christ.

. . . but within the perfection of Christ only the ban is used.”(38) Accord-

ingly, the ordering of God has two levels, but only the church is within

the completeness of Christ, which is a new social and ethical reality for

those who confess Christian faith.(39)

In summary, Yoder argued that both Zwingli and the Anabaptists

attempted to grasp the duality of human existence. For Zwingli, this dual-

ity is platonic-ontological. It encompasses both an inner spiritual reality,

in which Christ reigns, and the outer world, characterized by sin and

compromise, in which we live. In this outer world no distinction exists

between the national society and the people of God or between God’s

elect and the non-elect.(40)

The Anabaptist dualism, on the other hand, is historical-eschato-

logical. The present age is embodied not only in individual sinfulness but

also in authoritarian and violent social structures and the shortcomings

of the old covenant with Abraham. The coming age is already being real-

ized in the church through the new covenant with Christ. Baptism is the

sign of entering into this community that was formed at Pentecost. It

indicates our entrance into a new life described as the “completeness of

Christ.”(41)

_______________

37. Ibid., 172-73.

38. Yoder, Legacy of Sattler, 39. In this sixteenth-century Anabaptist parlance the

word sword refers to coercive state power and the word ban refers to the simple avoid-

ance of someone who has not responded to a process of church discipline and initia-

tives for dialogue. It was understood as a more humane approach to church order, in

contrast to the Protestant and Catholic use of coercive government measures, includ-

ing torture and execution, to discipline people charged with heresy

39. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 172-73.

40. Ibid., 174-75.

41. Ibid.

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PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY

These Anabaptist theological understandings of biblical hermeneu-

tics and of the church in relation to Christ, the world, and eschatology be-

came the driving force in Yoder’s theology. Recognizing such Anabaptist

motifs in his theological ethics underscores the importance of studying

his historical research on the Anabaptists for an adequate understanding

of the development of his thought.

Authority and Tradition

Another aspect of Yoder's thought is the careful way he worked with the

authority of the Whole Christian tradition from an Anabaptist perspec-

tive.(42) Such attention to tradition is evident in his Anabaptist historical

research. He noted that, in their break with Catholicism, the Reformers

had argued for the primacy of Scripture over that of church tradition. But

almost immediately they found themselves in the position of protecting

their young tradition from challenges by the Anabaptists, who appealed

to the same grounds of biblical authority. The Reformers were in the un-

comfortable position of arguing that the re-baptizers were schismatic and

prone to cause uprisings because they did not respect the authority of

church traditions.(43)

The irony of the situation was not lost on some of their Catholic

opponents, who said that the heretics knew how to protect themselves

against other heretics only by resorting to the authority of the church.

One Protestant answer to this charge was that the “errors” that had

caused their break with Catholicism (i.e., celibacy, papal authority and

monasticism) could be rejected because they were not part of the univer-

sal teaching of the church. Infant baptism, on the other hand, had been

accepted by the Whole church. The Anabaptists, in turn, argued that not

even infant baptism had been universally accepted in church history.(44)

A complicating factor, according to Yoder, was that the three par-

ties to these discussions had different perspectives on the church. Each

claimed to be the one true church on the basis of their respective claims

about the nature of the gathered community. The issues included epis-

copal hierarchy, historical continuity, biblical authority, and the Work

_________________

42. As described in chapter 1, Yoder's respect for the theological tradition, without

being totally dependent on it, is evident in his Preface (2002).

43. Yoder, Pnjace (2002), 56-58.

44. lbid.

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ZIMMERMAN--Sixteenth-Century Anabaptist Roots

of the Holy Spirit. 'The Catholics emphasized historical continuity and

episcopal authority. The Anabaptists emphasized biblical authority and

the gathered community as a manifestation of the work of the Holy Spirit.

The Protestant Reformers ended up in the uncomfortable position of ar-

guing the one side of this debate against the Catholics and the other side

against the Anabaptists.(45)

Yoder said that the Protestants did not necessarily represent a mid-

dle position between the Catholics and the Anabaptists. In some respects,

such as an emphasis on concrete expressions of discipleship and on the

role of government authorities in church matters, Catholics and Anabap-

tists were more in agreement with each other than with the Protestants.

One instance is that when Zwingli referred reformation matters to the

Zurich City Council, the Catholics had also protested that civil govern-

ment oflicials were incompetent to decide on religious matters. Another

instance is that both Catholics and Anabaptists thought that discipleship

was undercut by the Protestant theological claim that justification was by

faith alone. It was not an accident that the Reformers sometimes accused

the Anabaptists of developing a new monasticism.(46)

The Anabaptists also made historical arguments. Yoder insisted that

they were not merely biblicists who could not think historically. Their

whole position actually depended on their historical argument about

the development of the church. Like the Reformers, Anabaptists insisted

that historically the church had gone terribly wrong and needed to be

restored. The Reformers had located the place of deviation and error

with the papacy and medieval developments. The Anabaptists located

the problem much earlier, with the developments symbolized by Con-

stantine that had made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire.

For Yoder, it was not only a question of reforming the medieval church,

but of reestablishing the community of the New Testament before it had

taken on the trappings of empire.(47)

The Anabaptist argument against the Constantinian shift that had

taken place in church history became central to Yoder’s theology. He

discovered that the new postwar era (which many had begun to label

the post-Christendom era of the church) had produced a new audience

for the argument against Constantianism. It was not only a sectarian

_______________

45. Ibid.,65.

46. Ibid.,65-70.

47. lbid.

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PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY

argument, but a matter that concerned the whole church. It could eve

serve as the basis of interfaith dialogue about the nature of the church.(48)

The Church as as Community of Discernment

A crucial question for Yoder was why the Reformation failed in its central

mission. It was not only the loss of the deepest views of the Reformation,

which had become a wooden orthodoxy by the second generation, nor

was it the splintering of the different Reformation groups. It was not even

that the Reformers felt compelled to persecute dissidents. Nor was it that

the Reformation churches became subservient to the emerging nation-

states. These all constituted secondary problems. Yoder wrote,

The deepest tragedy of the Reformation, from which all otherproblems arose, lies in the fact that what everyone believed didnot show itself to be true. This was the belief that Scripture alonewas suificient to clearly decide all questions that arose concern-ing_ Christian teaching and Christian life.(49)

_____________________

48. Yoder, “Disavowal of Constantinef’ As represented by Drake, Constantine and

the Bishops, recent scholarship has altered considerably the picture of Constantine

and his era since Yoder hrst analyzed what he called the Constantinian shift. Since

Yoder used now somewhat dated secondary literature on Constantine, some scholars

have challenged Yoder’s credibility as a historian and his theological analysis of the

shift; an example is Sider, “Constantinianism Before and Afterf’ Peter Leithart, who

quotes Sider, published a book-length effort to defend Constantine and refute Yoder’s

analysis (Defending Constantine). Leithart says that there is little in the New Testament

to indicate that Jesus rejected the sword. Thus Leithart can depict Constantine’s wars

and cruelty while claiming, contra Yoder, that no fundamental change occurred in

the church’s attitude toward the sword between the New Testament and Constantine.

Along with the material in the current volume, for wide-ranging discussion of rejec-

tion of violence by Jesus and the New Testament, see Weaver, Nonviolent God. I would

also argue that Yoder was concerned with the beginning and the end of the trajectory

from the New Testament to Constantine. The recent developments in historiography

change the details of how the shift occurred, but do not fundamentally impact Yoder’s

theological analysis of the significance of the change symbolized by Constantine. For

detailed critique of Leithart’s thesis, see Roth, Constantine Revisited, particularly the

first three chapters, by John Nugent, Alan Kreider, and Mark Thiessen Nation.

49. Yoder, Téiufertum und Reformation: Gespriich, 99-100 (author’s translation).

The translation in Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 218, is cumbersome and con-

fusing. The original German text reads as follows: “Das tiefste Verhéingnis der Refor-

mation, aus dem alle andere hervorging, liegt darin, das das sich nicht als wahr erwies,

was alle glaubten, niimlich, das die Heilige Schrift geniige, alle auftretenden Fragen

christlicher Lehre und christlichen Lebens eindeutig zu entscheiden."

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ZIMMERMAN--Sixteenth-Century Anabaptist Roots

It was not only that Zwingli and Luther could not talk with the

Anabaptists, Yoder said. They were also unable to talk with each other.

The basic problem was the heroic simplicity and the unquestioned and

unquestionable trust they placed in the divine Word, believed to be au-

thored and interpreted by the Holy Spirit, which they used to reject the

teaching office of the Catholic Church. They failed to consider the fur-

ther problems of theological knowledge; consequently they identified the

Word as they understood it with the Word itself In the practical applica-

tion of the principle of sola scrzptura, the place of theological knowledge

was not the church but rather the thought of the individual theologian.

Thus a theological opponent could not be seen as a brother or sister but

only as an enemy of God.(50)

Yoder asked if sola scriptura inevitably leads to hopeless subjectiv-

ity. What would have been necessary for mutual understanding and a

common confession? The answer, which he saw in the Anabaptist com-

munities, was to see the local church as a community of discernment. The

community stands under Scripture and over the theologian.(51)

In this model, the gathered congregation listens to the various argu-

ments and decides which is in accordance with the teaching of Christ.

Everyone, including the unordained, should have the right to speak. The

community acts with the confidence that God’s Spirit is guiding them in

the discernment process. Consensus is reached when the silence of the

community indicates that all objections have been answered. One need

not be overly concerned that the many local communities, acting inde-

pendently, will bring confusion, because the Word of God, interpreted

through Christ, serves as an objective standard. It is the freedom of the

local community that is a precondition to unity.(52) Rhetorical analysis in

chapter 3 to follow shows that this dialogue within and from within the

community is intrinsic to Yoder’s ecclesiology, which was not true for the

Goshen School of Anabaptism with which Yoder was in conversation.

__________________

50. Yoder, Anabaptisrn and Reformation, 219.

51. lbid.

52, Ibid., 220-24. I add one caveat, namely that as part of the process of discern-

ment, the local church will want to draw on all the hermeneutical resources available

to it within the ecumenical body of Christ. In other words, the interpreting, discerning

community needs to be bigger and wider than one local congregation. This is an af-

firmation of Yoder’s congregational, free-church hermeneutic and ecclesiology, along

with a desire to see it further developed and refined as a discernment practice in the

gathered life of contemporary congregations. Chapter 13 expands this need of further

development.

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PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY

This Anabaptist understanding was an extension of Zwingli’s early

teaching. The first disputations in Zurich followed such a congregational

model of decision-making. When Zwingli later began to refer decisions

to the city council, the Anabaptists used the historical precedent of the

first disputation in their arguments against Zwingli. This understanding

of what constituted a correct process of discernment helps explain why

the Anabaptists complained that they had not been heard in the Zurich

disputations. Being heard was more than being allowed to speak. It meant

that their concerns should be recognized in the decision-making process.

If the Word and the Spirit agreed, there should be consensus. Instead,

the Reformers forced agreement through coercion. According to Yoder,

it was the inability of the Reformers to discuss differences that led to a

theologically and historically distinct Anabaptist community.(53)

These congregational and ecumenical discernment processes,

which Yoder discovered in his historical research, became central to his

constructive theology. He was deeply committed to a discernment pro-

cess in which consensus arises out of open conversation. He called such a

process the “rule of Paul” (1 Cor 14126-33). Closely related was his com-

mitment to “ecumenical patience” and a willingness to be in conversation

with one’s theological opponents.(54)

Intolerance and Secularization

A central argument of Yoder’s dissertation was that Zwingli’s earlier em-

phasis on following Christ, human powerlessness, the omnipotence of

God, and a suffering church gave way to an emphasis on the power of

the preached Word, the doctrine of predestination, the invisibility of the

church, and a reevaluation of the role of the civil government. At each

step of the way, in the process of reform, the challenge for Zwingli was

to initiate reforms without creating a backlash from those with Catholic

sympathies while pacifying those who wanted to move more rapidly.

_________________

53. Ibid.

54. Yoder kept developing this Anabaptist hermeneutic and applying it to con-

temporary processes of discernment. He attributed the term “The Rule of Paul” to

Zwingli, from whom the Anabaptists learned this process of discernment. See his ar-

ticle “Hermeneutics of the Anabaptists.” Also see his chapters “Binding and Loosing”

and “The Rule of Paul” in Yoder, Body Politics, 1-13, 61-70.

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ZIMMERMAN--Sixteenth-Century Anabaptist Roots

Grebel remained in basic agreement with Zwingli, as long as the Refor-

mation proceeded on the basis of tolerance.(55)

The momentum of events in Zurich made Zwingli change his re-

form strategy. He had great faith in the power of the preached Word and

confidence in his rhetorical gifts as a preacher. His initial confidence that

this strategy alone would gradually weaken resistance became unrealis-

tic. At the same time, his political clout was growing. This combination of

factors made Zwingli decide not to move ahead with reforms until he had

secured the backing of the city council and he had the political power to

make them mandatory for all the citizens of Zurich. This meant that the

Reformation had to become more authoritarian and would proceed on

the basis of religious intolerance. That decision, according to Yoder, was

the breaking point between Zwingli and Grebel.(56)

Grebel advocated proceeding on the basis of tolerance and begin-

ning to implement reforms in those churches that were ready for them.

According to Yoder, this approach made it impossible for Zwingli to un-

derstand the Anabaptists. Zwingli always considered the problems of the

Reformation in terms of their implementation in the whole society When

the Anabaptists advocated a more rapid implementation, he thought they

wanted to force reform on the Catholics. When they talked about more

economic sharing, he thought they wanted to abolish private property

in the civil arena. When they talked about nonviolence, he thought they

wanted to abolish the civil government. Even though the Anabaptists

kept insisting that they had no such intentions, he was convinced that

they wanted to take civil power into their own hands.(57)

According to Yoder, Zwingli’s decision to turn the implementation

of the Reformation over to the Zurich City Council made intolerance

mandatory Using the civil authorities to force a unitary expression of the

Christian faith had the added consequence of making the civil authori-

ties the custodians of religious faith. Because it was so closely tied to the

_________________

55. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 246-47.

56. Ibid., 241-47. Yoder postulated that this change of direction involved an inner

crisis for Zwingli. Zwingli later wrote that the Lord had revealed to him the necessity

of waiting to abolish the Mass until he had the unequivocal support of the state to

abolish it in all parishes. Otherwise, he would run the risk of having uncontrolled

conventicles functioning independently. Yoder thought such an appeal to direct divine

revelation indicated Zwingli’s awareness of the fundamental shift in strategy he was

making. It also indicated the personal struggle involved in making such a decision. See

Yoder, "Turning Point,” 139.

57. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 246-47.

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PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’s THEOLOGY

implementation of the Reformation, their custodial role in suppressing

Catholic and Anabaptist dissidents was inevitable. Zwingli may have

wished that the authorities had used less violence in their suppression of

Catholic and Anabaptist nonconformists, but nevertheless, he approved

of suppression in principle. When there was tolerance in the course of

the Reformation, it was often lenient statesmen who defended freedom

of belief against the theologians.(58)

As a consequence of using civil authorities to enforce unity of faith

within the Reformation territories, Yoder argued, the church as an inde-

pendent sociological entity was removed and its authority was transferred

to the emerging nation-state. The official churches became a branch of

the organizational apparatus of the absolutist state to a degree not seen

in medieval Europe. Even when a separate church administration existed

within the Reformation, it was still a part of the state and not an inde-

pendent entity. Church discipline became a function of civil authority.(59)

The further consequence of this policy was the secularization of

Christendom. The Anabaptists have sometimes been hailed as the fore-

runners of democracy and modern religious pluralism. Yoder insisted

that this is only true with reference to issues such as religious tolerance

and the separation of church and state. It was the Reformers and not the

Anabaptists who delivered the fatal blow to medieval Christendom. The

Reformers had tied their project integrally into the various municipali-

ties and city states that were called on to defend the Reformation. Conse-

quently, only one choice remained. Either one waged religious war until

the enemy was unconditionally defeated, or one made an agreement in

which the matter of truth was put to the side. The latter is what happened

in the peace of Westphalia, where it was agreed that each ruler would

decide the religion in his territory. With that agreement, the emerging

nation-states had become secular in order to put an end to the religious

wars.(60)

Consequently, according to Yoder, the medieval religious and social

synthesis collapsed. The nation-state had become autonomous along with

the economy and the professions. The autonomous state had replaced

the sacred realm of Christendom. The guidelines for Christian social

conduct became patriotic and pragmatic. The concept of human justice

______________

58. Ibid., 247-50.

59. Ibid., 252-53.

60. lbid.

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ZIMMERMAN--Sixteenth-Century Anabaptist Roots

now served the concerns of the nation-state and the emerging capitalist

economic order, even when it was justified in the name of God.(61)

Constructing an Anabaptist Theology

On the basis of these observations, John Howard Yoder could now be-

gin to sketch the outline of a constructive theology from an Anabaptist

perspective. It could not be a complete picture, but it could show the

uniqueness of the answer the Anabaptists gave to the question of creating

Christian communities in the sixteenth century Yoder wrote that various

factors make this a risky endeavor:

It includes the working hypothesis that Anabaptism, as a formof justified theological thought, can be taken seriously, and thattrains of thought can be developed further, for which the Ana-baptists had neither the time, the freedom, or even the neces-sary conceptual material at their disposal. But if one is aware ofhow little reason or opportunity the Anabaptists had for think-ing dogmatically, then the astonishing thing is not the lack ofdogmatic material in the sources preserved for us, but rather theclarity and unity of the starting points that these sources offerfor carrying these trains of thought further.(62)

As Yoder saw it, these Anabaptist avenues of thought raise two central is-

sues for contemporary theology. "lhe lirst is the relationship between the

church and the world or the structures of human society. The second is

the need to ground Christian ethics in a Christology that takes disciple-

ship seriously. He began to draw out more fully some of the implications

of these issues.

Church and Society

It is imperative, according to Yoder, to make some kind of distinction

between the church and other social entities such as the nation-state.

National structures are a part of the world and cannot be integrated into

the church. Yoder argued that it was only in the cultural world of Europe

in late Roman history that one could conceive of fusing church, state, and

civil society. Even there, it was ambiguous and temporary. People who

______________

61. Ibid., 254-55.

62. Ibid., 260.

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PART TWO -- SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY

find the Anabaptist way of formulating the relationship between church

and society absurd stand in this European arena.(63) When the state is ex-

pressly non-Christian, there is logically no other way of thinking about

the relationship than the way the Anabaptists did. That is true for the

New Testament churches in their world as well as for the vast majority of

Christians in our world.”

For the Anabaptists, it was not just a matter of turning back the

clock to the pre-Constantinian world of the early church. They perceived

that combining church and state was dysfunctional in their century.

When the Reformers brought church and state together in a way that had

not even been true in medieval Europe, it became destructive. They lost

any sense of a world in relation to the church. In doing that, they lost the

church as a viable theological and sociological entity”

Yoder argued that the refusal of contemporary Christian social ethi-

cists to consider the Anabaptist conception of church and society made it

difficult to renew the church in the twentieth century. The twentieth-cen-

tury world was much closer to the pre-Constantinian social world than

to the sixteenth century. The problem is that most theologians are still

caught up in such Reformation ways of thinking, even when the result

has been so disastrous and has contributed to a post-Christian atheism.

Yoder wrote,

The church community did not want to separate itself from theworld, so the world had to separate itself from the church com-munity The state had to establish itself against the church thathad wanted to dominate it, by taking the form of nation andreason.(66)

____________________

63. Stanley Hauerwas, one ofthe most well-known interpreters of Yoder’s thought,

thinks he can ailirm Yoder’s pacifism while rejecting his ecclesiology. Hauerwas at-

tributes this to his own “lingering longing for Christendom.” Hauerwas, “Christian

Differencef’ 50-51, 58 n. 40. See also the perceptive comments of Peter Dula, a former

student of Hauerwas, concerning Hauerwas’ rejection of Yoder’s ecclesiology. Hauer-

was can have it both ways only by failing to acknowledge the incipient violence embed-

ded in all Christendom visions of church and society which is the other side of failing

to recognize that Yoder's paciflsm needs the voluntary ecclesiology he described. Dula,

“For and Against Hauerwas,” 375-76. Peter Leithart is more perceptive when he sees

Yoder’s free church pacifism as the biggest challenge to his defense of Constantine and

Christendom and his effort to apply Yoder’s view of church to a contemporary mass

church ecclesiology. See Leithart, Defending Constantine.

64. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 259-64.

65. Ibid.

66. Ibid., 264.

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ZIMMERMAN--Sixteenth-Century Anabaptist Roots

Yoder argued that whoever approves of the alliance between the

Reformation and government authorities, with the pragmatic reasoning

that it was a matter of survival, must also take account of what actually

came of such an alliance. It tied the church to anti-church forces such as

rationalism and nationalism, which led to the defensive situation of the

church in later centuries. It is this situation that has made faith in Christ

unbelievable for many people today.(67)

To understand the outlines of the church, Yoder claimed that we

need to understand the world as a sociological fact. In the language of the

New Testament, the world is understood as the fallen, disobedient, social

entities of this age. Such disobedience is embodied in the state, in civil

religion, in class economics, and in the demonic aspects of autonomous

human culture. When the world as such became invisible to the Reform-

ers, the church also became invisible.(68)

In contrast, Yoder noticed that the “world” and the “church” were

very pregnant concepts for the Anabaptists. The tension between these

two realms does not necessarily imply unrelenting animosity or public

persecution. The world can decide that it is in its own best interest to

have the church in its midst. It may even favor the church if this appears

to be useful. But, such recognition and freedom does not give the church

reason to baptize the world in a way that has happened since the fourth

and fifth centuries.(69)

This refusal to baptize the world, Yoder claimed, does not mean that

the Anabaptists were unconcerned about social and cultural matters.

They saw the church as having an educational effect on the world, but

this impact can be accomplished only with the kind of patience that God

displays. Such patience allows the World to be the world and respects its

prerogative not to accept the Christian message. It also refuses to equate

society and culture with the nation-state and its coercive power, as many

interpretations of human history do.(70)

______________

67. Ibid. Yoder is concerned about the ever-tempting subordination of the Chris-

tian community’s own distinct way of being in the world rooted in Jesus’ politics of

suffering love in order to serve the often violent politics of empire or the nation-state.

This subordination undercuts the evangelical core of the gospel. Peter Leithart’s de-

fense of Constantine as a wise and honorable Christian emperor sidesteps the problem

and does not negate Yoder’s concern. Leithart, Dqfending Constantine. For a longer

response to Leithart, see note 48 and Roth, Constantine Revisited.

68. Yoder, Anabaptisfn and Reformation, 265.

69. Ibid., 264-67.

70. lbid., 268.

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Yoder said that many are inclined to see the Anabaptist position as

only dualism and withdrawal from the world. He argued, however, that

nobody can get around such dualism. On the one hand, there is the Ana-

baptist model of a visible church living in tension with a visible world. On

the other hand, there is the Zwinglian model of divine justice withdraw-

ing into an inner spiritual realm, to make room for the state, allied with

the church. Furthermore, the true church is understood to be invisible.

One needs to ask, Yoder indicated, which model has the greater tendency

to withdraw from history.(71)

Stated positively, the Anabaptist model, according to Yoder, sees

worth in the world. It does not leave it to its own devices. The world,

even in its non-belief; still stands under the lordship of Christ and the

Christian can testify to the world about what that lordship means.(72) It

means rejecting theocracy. The Anabaptists insisted that we should not

impose our beliefs on others. The outlines of this Christian witness to the

social order maintain a distinction between the church and the world,

which contains an inherent dualism. Christian social ethics begin with

the Christian community, but they have relevance for the rest of society.(73)

Yoder would spend the rest of his life explicating the concrete implica-

tions of the Anabaptist model of church and society in the many different

situations that arise out of the church’s life in the world.(74)

Christian Social Ethics and the “Earthly Way of Jesus”

Yoder’s study of the Swiss Anabaptists may appear to be a circuitous

way to come to his notion of the “politics of Jesusf’ But there is logic to

it. In a broad sense, one can even argue that his historical study of the

________________

71. Ibid., 270-71. On the Anabaptist rejection of philosophical or theological du-

alism that distinguishes between the ideal of Christ and the imperfection of Christ`s

church, see also Biesecker-Mast, Separation and the Sword, 90-91.

72. Biesecker-Mast, Separation and the Sword, 281. Stating that the world is “un-

der the lordship of Christ” indicates Yoder’s indebtedness to Oscar Cullman's New

Testament studies at least as much as to his sixteenth-century historical research. (See

chapter 4 below.) While the difference is not necessarily contradictory, the Anabaptists

did not formulate the relationship between church and world in this way One way to

see this difference is to compare it with the Schleitheim statement that “the sword is an

ordering of God outside the perfection of Christ."

73. Yoder, Anabaptisrn and Reformation, 281-85. 

74. Some of Yoder’s books in which this explication is most evident are Christian

Witness, Priestly Kingdom, and Body Politics.

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ZIMMERMAN--Sixteenth-Century Anabaptist Roots

Anabaptists prompted Yoder to research the social and political ethics of

Jesus. In his sixteenth-century historical research, Yoder was impressed

by the extent to which the Anabaptists insisted that “the earthly way of

the person Jesus should be normative for the obedience of every Chris-

tianf’ He noticed that this conviction had been lost for the normal person

in the medieval era but showed up again in the humanism of Erasmus.(75)

Early in his career, Zwingli was drawn to Erasmus and consequently

made following the way of the human Jesus central to his understanding

of Christian faith. Grebel and other followers of Zwingli, who later be-

came Anabaptists, brought this conviction to the Anabaptist movement.”

Yoder found their emphasis on the earthly way of the human Jesus in

his Anabaptist research. Using modern biblical research methods, he

brought that same emphasis to his “politics of Jesus.” It is this emphasis by

Yoder on Jesus as the root of Anabaptism as well as of his contemporary

ethics that earns for Yoder the title of “radical theologian” in this book.

Yoder argued that such discipleship only achieves its full radicalism

when it goes beyond personal ethics. Following Jesus in personal ethics

would not upset the status quo. It only becomes controversial when the

Christian community chooses between the historically lived incarnation

of Jesus and other criteria in social ethics. Such ultimate clarification is

required in the relationship between the church and the state. Here, typi-

cally the appeal is to other standards such as human justice, natural law,

or the order of creation. Consequently it becomes imperative to demon-

strate the difference between such ethical systems and Christ’s revealed

divine justice.(77)

For the Anabaptists it was not a simple matter of imitating Christ’s

actions but of being socially present in the world in the same way Christ

was. For the state church, this option was excluded and discipleship

became a secondary motive. That is why Zwingli, arguing against the

Anabaptists, insisted that Christians should only follow Christ’s example

of humility and that the Old Testament kings should serve as the model

for social ethics. Picking up the Anabaptist side of the argument, Yoder

insisted that Zwingli’s perspective undercut the ultimate ethical relevance

of Jesus’ earthly life, as well as the cross and the resurrection. In contrast,

_______________

75. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 285-86.

76. Ibid. This focus may also be indebted to the influence of the Benedictine tradi-

tion that Michael Sattler brought to the Anabaptist movement.

77. Ibid.

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Yoder’s notion of the “politics of Jesus” sought to demonstrate the rela-

tionship between Christ’s incarnation and Christian discipleship.(78)

The meaning of suffering became especially poignant for the Ana-

baptists. For baptism candidates, this very act included a readiness to

face certain persecution. In the most evident way possible, they recog-

nized that following Christ meant taking up one’s cross. Yoder claimed

that the cross did not mean enduring natural calamities, nor did it refer

to suffering that God brought to them to purify them. Instead, it had a

hard ethical meaning. It was the result of their battle with the evil social

structures of the world.(79)

This ethical commitment to “following Jesus” and the “way of the

cross” powerfully shaped Yoder’s thought. He committed his academic

career to retrieving this Anabaptist social ethic and making that same

argument again in the last half of the twentieth century when the synthe-

sis between church and state was increasingly being questioned.(80) Church

leaders and scholars, Yoder believed, were now more ready to critique

the legacy of Christendom that was inherited from the medieval world.

Perhaps the Anabaptist argument for a consistent Christian social ethic,

following the example of the human Jesus, would have a new opportunity

to be heard.

Though that is still true, it has to be recognized that the motivation

to use religion in the service of national politics is ever present. Politi-

cians are always tempted to use religion for their own ends and religious

leaders are always tempted by the perks that come from the cozy associa-

tion with national political power. At the beginning of the twenty-first

century, the so-called global war on terror has again raised the specter of

a “Christian nation” fighting its enemies in the name of God.

Conclusion

It was out of a combination of both interest (a desire to work on a con-

temporary theology from an Anabaptist perspective) and necessity (the

fact that European Protestants were unwilling to approve such a doctoral

___________________

78. Ibid., 287.

79. Ibid., 289-92.

80. This statement does not ignore the formal separation of church and state in the

United States since its founding. Instead, it recognizes the cultural establishment of

Protestantism that exists in the United States even in the twenty-first century

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ZIMMERMAN--Sixteenth Century Anabaptist Roots

project) that John Howard Yoder decided to do his doctoral work in his-

torical theology by focusing his dissertation on the disputations between

the Swiss Anabaptists and Protestant Reformers. That allowed him to do

both historical and theological research. A central purpose of his his-

torical work was to discern the avenues of Anabaptist thought that the

disputations helped develop. With such concepts he built the theological

structure of what he came to call the “Politics of Jesus."

At one level this chapter has described one root of the approach to

theology demonstrated in chapter 1, It has shown that one source for Yo-

der’s insistence that Christian theology and ethics begins with the Jesus of

history is found in the Anabaptist theological history that Yoder studied

for his dissertation. In that sense this chapter is a complement to chapter

1. But more than displaying one source of Yoder’s theology, this chapter

has demonstrated that Yoder’s Anabaptist convictions were integral to his

entire theological and ethical program.

The two key concepts of Anabaptism, according to Yoder, were

community and discipleship. Ethical commitments such as nonviolence,

truth telling, servant leadership, and economic justice are integrally re-

lated as aspects of these two key concepts. If one views these concepts

from the perspective of the breaking point between the Anabaptists and

the Reformers, the concern for a visible community becomes dominant.

But when one asks why such a community is necessary, it is a result of

the central commitment to follow Jesus. Following the narrative of Je-

sus inevitably results in a visible community coming into existence. This

community is more than an individual ethic of imitation. It is the body

of Christ coming into existence as a distinct community in the world.” As

valuable as was Yoder’s articulation of this understanding of the visible

community, his personal failure to live up to its insight points to the need

to develop better Ways to deal with individual failure so that such failure

does not appear to challenge the validity of the theology of the commu-

nity. Chapter 13 to follow makes suggestions along that line of inquiry

The focus on community and discipleship, as extensions of the com-

mitment to follow Jesus, were also the basis of Yoder’s critique of classic

Nicene Christology. As he noted, the formula did not model following

the way of Jesus in the life of the church as the body of Christ. Such fol-

lowing requires reaching back to the narrative of Jesus in the Gospels,

________________

81. Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation, 299.

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PART TWO--SOURCES OF JOHN HOWARD YODER’S THEOLOGY

116

which Yoder said took Jesus’ humanity more seriously than did Nicaea

and Chalcedon.(82)

This distinct community in the world was the core of the “usable

past” Yoder found in his sixteenth-century historical research. That work,

along with his biblical scholarship, informed his theological articulation

of “the politics of Jesus.” There is no question about the quality of his

historical scholarship and the contribution he made to sixteenth-century

historical research on the Anabaptists. But his biggest contribution

would come in theology. The avenues of thought Yoder developed from

his findings in sixteenth-century Anabaptism had a far-reaching impact

in academic circles as well as in the church and in various initiatives for

social transformation. It spoke to concerns in the last half of the twenti-

eth century in ways that he could not have imagined.

The following chapter develops a related component of Yoder’s

theological orientation, namely, his relationship to the so-called Goshen

School of Anabaptist scholarship. The representatives of the Goshen

School treated are Harold S. Bender, who wrote the seminal essay “The

Anabaptist Vision,” and Bender’s confidant John Christian Wenger, a

prominent advocate of “the Anabaptist Vision."

_________________________

82. It is instructive to study Yoder’s nuanced affirmation and his critique of the

classic creeds in the construction of his Anabaptist-shaped theology as has been dem-

onstrated in the first chapter of this book. Various interpreters of Yoder’s theology

take his claim that his view of Jesus in his Politics of Jesus is “more radically Nicene

and Chalcedonian than other views” as an affirmation of classic creedal orthodoxy;

see Nation, “Politics of Yoder.” 39, and Nation, John Howard Yoder, 128-29. How-

ever, rather than affirming, Yoder was actually giving a subtle critique of the creedal

formulations from the perspective of the scriptural narrative and confession of the

person and work of Jesus. It is understandable that the high church tradition affirmed

the Nicene formula, he says, “because the king was finally on that side.” An especially

troublesome matter from an Anabaptist or free church perspective is the undercur-

rent of coercion and violence contained in the claim that the creedal formulations

are supernatural truth. See Yoder, Preface (2002), 205. This claim has been used to

anathematize and persecute ecclesial opponents for political reasons and to forcibly

undergird the establishment of Christendom. For an historical account of this coercive

politics, see Jenkins, Jesus Wars.

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