Re-Thinking the Bible

July 15, 2025

Good afternoon

( John Howard Yoder was a serial sexual abuser/harasser. Over the course of decades he abused a generation of young Mennonite women theologians and scholars. The Mennonite Seminary , where he taught,  knew about the abusive behaviour. Yoder was invited to move on to the University of Notre Dame. The Central District Mennonite Conference  brought these accusations to Yoder, and at first he entered into the process of healing, but later left it. The Conference revoked his teaching and ministerial credentials. )

Book four of my top ten is: The Politics of Jesus. John Howard Yoder . 1974

This book is a hard read, a theologically dense book. I still do not understand many of the concepts or words that he uses. But it changed my view of the Bible, and the reasons for the life and death of Jesus. Yoder works through the book of Luke and then the letters of Paul. So, I read the Politics  book in the spring of 1981. I had never thought where the Bible had come from. I just took it as God’s word. Maybe it just dropped out of heaven ? Yoder explains that real people wrote it, to real people. God didn’t give any of the writers the exact words, but all the writers were inspired by the Spirit. It makes the Bible more real to me.
Yoder explains that Jesus was killed because he threatened the powers and principalities. He did not die for our individual sins, but wanted to establish a new community made up of both Jew and Gentile. A radical idea at the time, and radical even today, as we move to include the whole world into the church. at the end of the church on ” The Disciple of Christ and the Way of Jesus .”:   “This is at the point of the concrete social meaning of the cross in its relation to enmity and power,         

             servanthood replaces dominion,       

                           forgiveness absorbs hostility . 

                                    Thus. and only thus, are we bound by New Testament thought to ” be like Jesus. “

Each paragraph has to be read at least twice and maybe three times, at least for me. His writing has freshness to it even though it is over fifty years old. Although I was shocked by Yoder’s actions, I still think he has something to offer in following Jesus. It has been a journey for me in thinking about his sinfulness and my sinfulness.

 Fred

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