The church-as-polis

In his excellent book Christ, History and Apocalyptic Nate Kerr criticizes the “church-as-polis” model in favor of a missionary conception of the church. For those schooled in the world of Stanley Hauerwas the “church-as-polis” model marks a basic conviction. In fact, if Kerr is correct in his criticisms, then many of us will need to radically rethink not only our indebtedness and relationship to Hauerwas, but also our theology of the church more generally. But Kerr’s criticisms do not apply only to Hauerwas and his followers, they also apply to John Howard Yoder.

Kerr’s criticisms of Hauerwas and Yoder revolve around two key points: 1) the political ontologization of the church and 2) the instrumentalization of worship.

What Kerr calls “the political ontologization of the church” is a way of conceiving of the church as an ontologically “stable” political body that exists prior to “encounter” with the world. In this perspective, the church’s worship is instrumentalized insofar as it tends to correlate or even identify specific practices of the church with the work of the Spirit. When the Spirit is identified with the specific practices of Christian worship, then the Spirit is domesticated precisely as the possession of the church. For Kerr, however, “worship only ‘is’ as an apocalyptic pneumatological event” (Kerr, 170). As apocalyptic event the Spirit refuses domestication and possession. If the church is constituted by the Spirit, who exists only as event, then the church, in Kerr’s perspective, never really “is” at all. The consequence of such a view of the Spirit’s relation vis a vis the church is the loss of any identifiable continuity. The “tradition” of the church is never stable, never certain, and can always be called into question by the ever newness of the Spirit’s action. Lest this view be misconstrued as another form of liberal Protestantism (think of the UCC slogan “God is still speaking”), the Spirit’s work, for Kerr, is precisely not in discontinuity with the “apocalyptic historicity” of Jesus of Nazareth.

Kerr’s worry is not only that the identification of the Spirit with the practices of the church stablilizes the church’s interior identity and domesticates the Spirit, but that such a view usually involves an instrumentalization of Spirit by positing “the church” as a counter political identity over-and-against “the world” (i.e. liberalism, capitalism, secularism, modernity, whatever). Such a move, according to Kerr, amounts to an inversion of Constantinianism. As Kerr puts it, “The ‘meaning’ of Christ’s lordship is displaced from the operativity of Jesus’ ‘independence’ and onto the operation of the church as a polis in history, such that the meaning of history is borne along precisely by the ‘social function’ of the Christian community, which is now bound to the world precisely as ‘a microcosm of the wider society’” (Kerr, 170). Kerr is worried about Yoder’s claims that “the ultimate meaning of history is to be found in the work of the church” and that “the meaning of history is carried first of all, on behalf of all others, by the believing community” (See Yoder, Royal Priesthood, 118, 151). Such claims are, however, absolutely central to Yoder’s ecclesiology. Contrary to Kerr, for Yoder, the church is a polis, almost paradoxically, precisely in its dispossession and deterritorialization. The meaning of history is to be located in “the church” not because of an easy identification of Jesus or the Spirit with the church and its practices of worship, but because redemption and reconciliation happens and this is what “the church” names. The church’s existence is always unstable—Jesus indeed remains independent—but the church is no less a political body. Moreover, the church-as-polis in Yoder’s vision resists the political ontologization of the church precisely because of its proleptic and secular character. The claim that the church is what the world is called to be ultimately is not a statement about the ontology of the church but about God’s work in the world to judge and redeem humanity.

The Shadow of Tegel Haunts Me

If there was one thing I was intent on avoiding as I ventured into a thesis on Bonhoeffer, it was spending too much time analyzing what the hell he meant by “religionless Christianity” and a “world come of age” in his letters from prison. In all honesty, it just seemed like too much work to sort through all the secondary literature on the subject, from John Robinson’s Honest to God to the “death of God” theologians. The general consensus today seems to be that Bonhoeffer was misunderstood by Robinson and most everyone else, and perhaps that is the case, but I just didn’t feel like getting into it. I didn’t feel like getting into an already convoluted discussion about a few letters Bonhoeffer sent to Eberhard Bethge. The letters, after all, are short and unclear, and open to a variety of interpretations, as the history of Bonhoeffer interpretation has aptly demonstrated.

I thought I was relatively safe in making this move; after all, doesn’t Bonhoeffer deserve a careful interpretation of his much-neglected published works? The first chapter of my thesis, following Philip Ziegler, focuses on the “apocalyptic” character of Bonhoeffer’s entire oeuvre, extending Ziegler’s argument (which is limited to Ethics). Drawing from Nate Kerr, David Toole, and Douglas Harink, my second chapter is devoted to highlighting the work “apocalyptic” does for Yoder. But when I ran across this old presentation Yoder gave on Bonhoeffer, I realized that I had found a real gem here for my last chapter. Thinking back on it now, I suppose I should have drawn the line myself, but I have to say I was surprised to see Yoder speaking highly of Bonhoeffer’s references to a “religionless Christianity” in his prison letters. The secularity of Yoder’s Christ, that Dan Barber and Nate Kerr have highlighted so well for us, may indeed mark a rather serious point of connection between Bonhoeffer and Yoder. This is good news for me–because I was really searching for some point of connection, some reason to bring the two together in a thesis. This is bad news for me–because it means I have to explore the dirty waters of Bonhoeffer’s prison letters.

So, here’s my question to you all: what do you make of Bonhoeffer’s “religionless Christianity” and which Bonhoeffer interpreters have it right? John Robinson? Harvey Cox? Eberhard Bethge?

Discipleship and Secularity

In the previous post I quoted from a paper that John Howard Yoder presented to the Bonhoeffer Society at the 1987 American Academy of Religion conference. There are two points that I want to highlight about this quote, which pertain to the key differences and perhaps points of convergence between the theology of Yoder and Bonhoeffer: discipleship and secularity.

In his paper Yoder explores the concept of “discipleship” in Anabaptism and in Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Yoder concludes that the concept of discipleship carried a variety of different meanings within the Anabaptist heritage. The term, discipleship, took on something of an identity marker for Anabaptists especially after Harold Bender listed it among the key “principles” of the Anabaptist vision. This is not to say that discipleship was not important to Anabaptists before Bender, only that the term itself took on a more self-identifying function after Bender. Yoder, I think, rightly asks if Bonhoeffer had some role in bringing this out for Bender, as a core “principle” of Anabaptist faith.

Now, Yoder concludes that “Bonhoeffer neither began nor ended with a vision of discipleship cognate with that of the Anabaptists.” He makes this assertion on the grounds that what motivated Bonhoeffer’s Christology was “more dogmatic than exegetical or historical.” According to Yoder, Bonhoeffer “was not driven either to concreteness about the pre-passion Jesus nor to any abiding challenge to the axioms of Constantinian political ethics.” And this is Yoder’s central challenge to Bonhoeffer’s conception of discipleship. Bonhoeffer, according to Yoder, paid more attention to the dogmatic significance of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, while tending to sideline the concrete historical life of Jesus of Nazareth. For Yoder, if discipleship in some sense means a following after, then we must be given some clue as to what kind of person we are following. In Yoder’s interpretation, Bonhoeffer focuses heavily on the importance of obedience in his conception of discipleship. In Yoder’s words, “At the core, the issue put to a person by the ‘call to discipleship’ is a concern not first of all with how he will behave if he follows Jesus, but with the renunciation of self-determination and of one’s own reasoning.” The demand to renounce self-determination and one’s own devices is certainly a key feature of Bonhoeffer’s work, especially in Discipleship. Yet, Yoder points out that such demands could be made by any lord, or any moral teacher. Such a demand is not “intrinsically linked with how that particular master himself behaved, or with whether what he asks of me is the same as his own behavior.” Yoder does note that in Bonhoeffer’s discussion of discipleship he does speak of the importance of the cross. The disciple will suffer as Jesus suffered, by rejection. Yet, even here, Yoder does not think Bonhoeffer is concrete enough, as the discussion remains too much on the level of “existential self-understanding” and not enough on the behavior and concrete decision-making that leads the disciple to rejection and the cross. Other key questions remain for Yoder: will the disciple that follows Jesus by going to the cross be “a monk or a politician? An emigrant or a conspirator? Or does the meaning of bearing the cross exist on a level unrelated to such concrete decisions?” Even at the point when Bonhoeffer brings the Beatitudes into the discussion, it is still not concrete enough. The discussion of the Beatitudes focus more on disposition and tend to be stated by way of negations: the disciple is called to renounce power, honor, and violence, but there are no concrete examples in the affirmative about the way the disciple should then live.

In all of this, Bonhoeffer’s understanding of discipleship runs parallel to the “mystical” and “moralistic” strand of Anabaptism which manifests itself by the logic of renunciation and obedience without question. According to Yoder, however, the most “original” and “socially realistic” strand of Anabaptism is the position that the church must be ready to “give up her control over society.” In Yoder’s words, “This realism perceived that the model of Christian social participation is not simply the cross of Christ in some symbolic or emotional sense, but also the attitude toward political office which helped to bring him, the Jesus of the gospels, to the cross.”

Yoder’s concern is that Bonhoeffer’s Christology leaps “from the crib to the cross.” What is perhaps most interesting in all of this is that Yoder finds Bonhoeffer’s suggestions about a “religionless Christianity” in his prison letters to point in exactly the right direction. An awareness of the secularity of Christ, the immanence of God’s action in Christ, opens up Christological reflection to attend to the constitutive life history of Jesus. Yoder points out that Bonhoeffer’s leap “from the crib to the cross” is “precisely to leave out of one’s christology the substance of (“secular”) social living in occupied, rebellion-torn Palestine.” Thus, the much disputed meaning of Bonhoeffer’s letters about “the world-come-of-age,” “secularity,” and “religionless Christianity” is perhaps the most interesting point of contact between Bonhoeffer and Yoder.

Yoder on Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer neither began nor ended with a vision of discipleship cognate with that of the Anabaptists . . . As his christological preoccupations were more dogmatic than exegetical or historical, he was not driven either to concreteness about the pre-passion Jesus nor to any abiding challenge to the axioms of Constantinian political ethics. Such a concretization would have been eminently compatible with the ‘non-religious interpretation of biblical concepts’ (for what could have been less cultic or otherworldly than Jesus’ social style?) but it did not occur to Bonhoeffer then. It would have put ‘God’s suffering in the world’ into the form of a politically relevant, ‘non-religious,’ ‘secular’ paraphrase; but instead those slogans were left to the Bultmannians, who somehow think that ‘existential interpretation’ is non-religious, and to Hanfried Müller, who assumes that socialist promises for party-led history are the same as ‘Mundigkeit.’

John Howard Yoder, “The Christological Presuppositions of Discipleship,” unpublished paper presented  at the 1987 AAR Bonhoeffer Society.

Yoder and Apocalypticism: toward a “non-analogical” mode of theological reflection?

A growing number of books and articles have highlighted the centrality of “apocalypticism” in the theology of John Howard Yoder.  That Yoder frequently drew on apocalyptic imagery should not come as a surprise to any one with even a cursory knowledge of Yoder’s most famous work The Politics of Jesus. Indeed, Politics devotes a number of chapters to explicating the theological and sociopolitical import of the New Testament’s apocalyptic language of the “principalities and powers” and the “lordship of Christ.” Yet, only recently, it seems to me, has apocalyptic as such been identified as among the driving categories of Yoder’s entire theology.

In a recent discussion in Political Theology Daniel Barber and Nathan Kerr make the provocative suggestion that the work of John Howard Yoder provides an “exemplary test case” for a “non-analogical” mode of theological ontology.  Barber wonders whether Yoder has something of an ally in Gilles Deleuze insofar as both, according to Barber, attempt to think politics “along the lines of immanence.”  Contrary to Barber, Kerr, I think rightly, asserts that Yoder’s so-called “non-analogical” mode of thinking is not reducible to an ontology of pure immanence akin to Deleuze, but rather offers us an altogether different way of conceptualizing the operation of God’s transcendence.  In Kerr’s view, it is precisely Yoder’s apocalypticism that helps us overcome the divide between analogical accounts of transcendence and univocal accounts of pure immanence. In this perspective, Yoder’s non-analogical mode of theological reflection is seen as providing the necessary resources to resist “the ontological machinations of the analogia entis.”

Despite the fact that Yoder himself never entered into debates about the doctrine of the analogia entis, I find Kerr’s suggestion about the function of apocalypticism in Yoder compelling on this point. For, when seen in this perspective, Yoder’s apocalypticism and perhaps even apocalypticism more generally refers to much more than merely a retrieval and generous use of certain kinds of obscure biblical imagery—though it most certainly includes this. Indeed, it takes on something of a formal, or foundational, character. Or, perhaps, more to the point, apocalyptic comes to name a sort of anti-formalism—particularly, a rejection of the metaphysical formalism of the doctrine of the analogia entis.

Such an interpretation of Yoder should not strike one as entirely surprising considering the influence of Karl Barth on the theology of Yoder. I wonder whether what Barber and Kerr call Yoder’s “non-analogical” mode of theological reflection is similar to Barth’s rejection of the analogia entis. I wonder whether what Kerr means by apocalypticism in this context is perhaps akin to something along the lines of Barth’s analogia fidei or Eberhard Jüngel’s “analogy of advent.”  In other words, it is not analogy that Yoder is dispensing with tout court—but analogy as a tool for an ontological mediation between transcendence and immanence as such, that is, analogy as conceived of autonomously from the act of God’s apocalypse in Jesus Christ.

Whether or not one finds Barber and Kerr’s admittedly rather original appropriation of Yoder’s theology convincing in all of its details, there is certainly wide agreement that Yoder, following Barth, was deeply committed to seeking ways to avoid what they perceived to be the pitfalls of metaphysical systems that decide in advance the terms and mechanisms of ontological relation and mediation between God and creation. More precisely, Barth and Yoder were certainly both in the business of calling into question any and every philosophical or theological maneuver—whether it be under the dogmatic heading of “orders of creation” or “natural theology”—that eschews the definitive authority and normativity of God’s definitive self-revelation in Jesus Christ. When viewed in this perhaps more familiar context, I think the thrust of Kerr’s proposal—that apocalypticism generally, and particularly Yoderian apocalypticism, opens up the possibility of reconceiving the relationship between transcendence and immanence that in effect resists both the doctrine of the analogia entis as well as univocal accounts of pure immanence—becomes much less controversial.

Moreover, it should be noted that such a connection between apocalypticism and reconceiving the relationship between transcendence and immanence is not merely a speculative appropriation of Yoder for ends foreign to Yoder’s thought pattern. For instance, in the 1994 epilogue of chapter eight of The Politics of Jesus, “Christ and Powers,” Yoder explicitly states what I take Kerr to be maintaining: “It would not be too much to claim that the Pauline cosmology of the powers represents an alternative to the dominant (‘Thomist’) vision of ‘natural law’ as a more biblical way systematically to relate Christ and creation.”  Apocalypticism, for Yoder, then, provides an alternative framework for developing what has traditionally been called a “doctrine of creation.”  Yoder understands apocalypticism as a way of avoiding both Catholic Thomistic accounts of natural law and Protestant accounts of the “orders of creation.” For, in Yoder’s view, underlying both the traditional Catholic and Protestant approaches is the presumption that something called “creation” can be viewed on its own, that is, abstracted from redemption.

The meaning of resurrection for ethics

If you have yet to order the latest collection of John Howard Yoder entitled Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution, you should go ahead and do that now. It is freaking fantastic.

The present meaning of resurrection for ethics is that we are never boxed in. As believers, we are not to be calculating on the basis of the assumption that we are boxed into a world in which there are no new options. Many “saving” events in history were unforseeable, unplanned, but they happened. The resurrection was an impossible unforseeable new option, and it happened. We do not know what happened in such a way that we could take it to the American Medical Association and show them what shape the corpse is in now. We cannot show them how resurrection works with modern, scientific, causal models. Yet we are committed to confessing as relevant for our ethics that there is a power in history that reaches beyond the boxes in which we find ourselves. So one more reason that the cross is meaningful is that even though it fails, it does not fail if there is resurrection.

John H. Yoder, Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution, eds. Theodore J. Koontz and Andy Alexis-Baker (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2009) 319.

Reinventing Mennonite identity: on accommodating to Reinhold Niebuhr

In a recently published collection of lectures entitled Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution, John Howard Yoder observes the oddity that the major Mennonite identity crisis of the twentieth century is the consequence of accommodation to a professor of applied Christianity at Union Theological Seminary.  The professor, of course, is one of the major American Protestant theologians of the twentieth century, Reinhold Niebuhr. With the rise of Hitler, the liberal pacifist movement, so prominent after World War I, almost completely collapsed not least due to the stinging critiques launched by Niebuhr. If the threat of the Hitler regime pushed the liberal pacifist ethic to its limit, Niebuhr’s theological critique was just enough to push the movement over the edge. The remaining pacifists in America, found primarily now in the historic peace churches, were also forced to respond to the Niebuhrian challenge, but from a different angle. Niebuhr’s criticism of liberal pacifism questioned both the scriptural basis and the effectiveness of their position. According to Niebuhr, the Jesus of the New Testament teaches nonresistance as opposed to the type of strategic active nonviolence advocated by liberal pacifists. The problem with liberal pacifism, in Niebuhr’s view, is that it attempts to ground its absolutist position in an erroneous interpretation of the teachings of Jesus. Strategic active nonviolence is to be commended as a (sometimes) effective method of social change, but it is a form of coercion, a form of power that Jesus expressly rejects. Thus, liberal pacifists have no basis to attack non-pacifists. Pacifists of the Mennonite variety, however, in their simple obedience to Jesus’ teachings on nonresistance are at least biblically consistent, despite their social and political irrelevance. Niebuhr believed that Mennonites fulfill a particularly important vocation of the Christian church. By their social and political “withdrawal” Mennonites helpfully serve to remind the rest of the Christian church of the lofty ideals of Jesus. Yet, no matter how commendable, such an ethic of nonresistance can never serve as the basis of a Christian ethic that seeks to be responsible in the messy world of politics.

Niebuhr’s back-handed compliment to Mennonites in his critique against liberal pacifism helped to create a division in Mennonite theology along the lines of a dichotomy between withdrawal and responsibility. In response to the criticisms of Niebuhr many Mennonites felt compelled to distinguish themselves from the liberal pacifist position by accepting the role of pacifism as an apolitical socially irrelevant vocation that Niebuhr had created and commended. Yoder observes a strikingly similarity in the responses of the conservative Mennonite biblical scholar John R. Mumaw and the liberal Mennonite Donovan Smucker to the challenge of Niebuhr. In order to section themselves off from Niebuhr’s critique of liberal pacifism, both thinkers chose to accept the role given to them by Niebuhr: to become more fully that nonresistant sectarian withdrawing enclave of Niebuhr’s imagination, in the name of renouncing the type of pacifism that is concerned with effectiveness and responsibility. Yoder observes that more than anything Niebuhr’s impact served to reinforce “a Mennonite tendency to dualistic analysis…that says we cannot do anything in the wider world—because we want to be different from those pacifists who are naïve about the possibilities of the good” (297).  Such a position, however, did not stem from the history of  Mennonite faith, but was rather learned from Mennonite “accommodation to Reinhold Niebuhr.” In short, such a position was invented by “accepting the backhanded compliment that Niebuhr gave us when he said we are consistent but irrelevant” (298).

Yoder on the creeds

In one of his more favorable readings of the Creeds of the Christian tradition, Yoder states:

The Creeds are helpful as fences, but affirming, believing, debating for, fighting for the Creeds, is probably something which a radical Anabaptist kind of faith would not concentrate on doing. Yet that gives us even less reason to join with Bishop Pike and Bishop Robinson in fighting against the Creeds. They are part of the only history we have. It is a fallible history and a confused history. A lot of dirty politics was involved in geting them defined, in explaining their meaning, and still more in applying their authority. But this is the history to which God has chosen to lead his confused people toward perhaps at least a degree of understanding of certain dangers, certain things not to say if we are to remain faithful.

John Howard Yoder, Preface to Theology: Christology and Theological Method (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2002), 157-158.

How to talk to a liberal

Craig Carter’s central enemy is “liberalism.” In Carter’s view, “liberalism” manifests itself in a variety of ways. He speaks of “liberal modernity,” “left-liberalism,” “the liberal state,” “liberal theology,” and “liberal fascism.” For Carter, modernity is a thoroughly liberal affair. Liberal modernity has caused capitalism and liberal democracy, socialism and communism, atheism and secularism. Liberalism spawned the “sexual revolution”  has led to a “theocracy in Iowa” on the issue of gay marriage, and is the reason why so many fetuses are aborted. According to Carter, Walter Wink is a liberal because of his “demythologizing” of the principalities and powers. And, although he doesn’t say it out right, John Howard Yoder would be a liberal on this point as well. But, of course, it has become extremely questionable as to whether Carter understands Yoder at all. But, that is for another post.

For now, let’s talk a little more about Carter’s enemy: liberalism. Carter is enthralled with liberalism–he really thinks it is the root of everything wrong in the world. Although Carter goes to great pains to understand and define liberalism, he nevertheless necessarily equivocates when he applies the term to both “neoconservatives” and people like Obama. On the one hand, Carter wants to talk about liberalism in the classical sense of the word. On the other hand, he wants to talk about liberalism in the popular North American sense. So, we have liberalism in the classical sense: key representatives are people like Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, etc. Today, liberalism is the dominant viewpoint–it is the implicit framework of both the Republican and Democratic parties in the U.S. But, in trying to find the roots of this political viewpoint, Carter stretches back to the very foundations of “modernity.” Despite his Baptist affiliation, more and more, Carter is becoming convinced that the Protestant reformation and the nominalists before it really spurred on modernity and therefore all of the problems Carter sees in the world. Next, we  have liberalism in the popular North American sense: liberals are people like Obama and Jim Wallis. Although Carter thinks that the Republican party and particularly the neoconservatives work within a broadly liberal framework (in the classical sense), in his mind they are less liberal. Or, at least they oppose abortion and gay marriage. For Carter, abortion and gay marriage is the height of what he calls liberal fascism–the word “liberal” here is used in the classical and popular sense. One thing is certain in all of this: Carter is decidedly not a liberal.

A few comments are in order. To be against liberalism in the classical sense is not necessarily to make one a conservative, because we’re talking about a particular philosophical viewpoint not a place on a spectrum. In contrast, in the popular sense the opposite of liberalism is indeed conservatism. And so we have the Democrats and the Republicans. But, let’s be clear on this: both parties are liberal in the classical sense. Carter, however, does in fact believe that the opposite of liberalism in the classical sense is conservatism, but if liberalism is not a place on a spectrum, what is conservatism in this context? For Carter, “true conservatism” is basically anything pre-modern. In Carter’s own words, “What I call true conservativism is a political philosophy that historically and logically precedes modernity and calls into question all the nominalism, individualism, rationalism and materialism that flows from the Enlightenment and is expressed in the two great Enlightenment religions: Capitalism & Marxism. True conservatism emphasises the family, localism, agrarianism, tradition, religion, duty & natural law.” So, there you have it, true conservatism in one word is a magical view of something called Christendom.

Carter loves all things genuinely conservative and hates all things liberal. He despises the “evangelical left” for their “socialism” and for their pro-choice politics. He despises Obama because he’s a liberal fascist baby killer. He really despises what he calls “liberal theology” which as far as I can tell is pretty much anyone he disagrees with or anyone who draws at all from modern critical methods. What he identifies as liberal theology is highly problematic in my view. Rowan Williams is a liberal? Oh come on… However, he talks about how he likes Milbank, MacIntyre, Yoder, Barth, de Lubac, von Balthasar, even William Cavanaugh! Yet, he doesn’t seem to be at all aware that all of these folks accept and use modern critical methods. He opposes socialism, but seems totally unaware that many of these folks were or are in fact socialists!

Carter’s criticism of liberalism leads to his criticism of capitalism, but the alternative is not socialism. For him, in economics and increasingly on political and ethical issues the alternative is Catholic social thought. Interestingly, what Carter finds in Catholic social thought is a way out of his predicament between capitalism and socialism. But, what he fails to understand is that the strands of Catholic social thought upon which he draws is thoroughly influenced by liberalism and modernity. In his opposition to socialism, John Paul II took a decidedly liberal path–he advocated some form of tempered capitalism, even at a global level. Indeed, whereas much of previous Catholic social thought had been ardently anti-liberal and anti-capitalist, in many ways he opened the door for a Catholic acceptance of the liberal order, including democracy and capitalism.

So, there is a great deal of irony in all of this. As Carter has opposed liberalism in the classical sense he has found himself opposing liberalism in the popular sense. He wants to be a “true conservative” which places him both on the pre-modern side of things and the conservative side of things on the popular political scene. But his move toward a popular political conservatism, which stems from his hatred of the “evangelical left,” ironically leads him to tacitly accept a sort of tempered liberal politics in Catholic social thought. Thus he finds himself in line with the First Things crowd because they complain and equivocate a lot about liberalism and they oppose abortion and gay marriage.

In my last post I pointed out that he distorts the views of the dead. By this I mean he misinterprets and distorts the views of theologians like Yoder, Barth, de Lubac, and von Balthasar. Yet, even these folks are beginning to feel unsafe for Carter because of their liberalism or modernism or whatever. So, reaching back to Augustine and Aquinas and the pre-moderns is the only answer.

Now, the more serious point that I would like to make is related to the reception of John Howard Yoder. If Carter thinks his politics are in line with Yoder’s then he is out to lunch. Carter’s nostalgia for Christendom, his appeals to natural law, his anti-socialism, his anti-modern stance, his apparent acceptance of capitalism, is not in line with Yoder’s thought at all. Moreover, Carter’s entire theological framework is the epitome of what Yoder called Constantinianism.

Distorting the views of the dead

I think both John Howard Yoder and St. Augustine are crying in their graves at the sight of this man’s distortion of their politics.