Continuity
I am sometimes tempted to criticize Yoder or other thinkers for their emphasis on ‘doing ethics for Christians’ or on the scandal of Christian ethics vis-á-vis worldly ethics. They’re right, I think, to insist that the example of Jesus above all is normative for Christian obedience. It’s only that they sometimes seem to unhinge a dialectic that Paul maintains, that on the one hand the cross is ‘foolishness to those who are perishing’ but that on the other hand all creation strains toward the fullness revealed in Jesus. (Yoder says this last point, but I don’t think it ever fully takes root. There is only rarely the acknowledgment that what comes to us in Jesus might be recognizable if always impossible to fully anticipate–and he certainly shows little interest in fleshing out what this last point means.)
But on other nights, like tonight, I think their emphasis is crucial. It may be necessary for a systematician to elaborate on the continuity between creation and revelation–completely disconnecting them would only be Marcionitic–but an occasional and pastoral theologian like Yoder sees that too much talk of this continuity has often undercut real Christian faithfulness. Rather, what bears repeating for us today is this reverse side of Paul’s dialectic, discontinuity and scandal and opposition, in keeping with Jesus’ repeated warning: “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20).
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