Vad inkarnationen inte innebär ...

Halden har hittat ett lysande Yoder-citat som bör vinna spridning ...

“The incarnation does not mean that humankind in general, or human nature in general, or human history in general was stamped with God’s approval or transformed by God’s indwelling, but rather that a particular story, the words and work of a particular man, is the key to the very nature of God. That particularity is even more scandalous if we reckon deeply with the fact that the historicity of the incarnation committed God to the particularity of an ongoing history. God entrusted the incarnational disclosure not only to a first generation of witnesses of the man Jesus, but also to the necessarily ensuing chain of specific bodies of tradition-bearing, fallible people who through the centuries would unfold and distort the message. It is not a regrettable mistake of church strategy contrary to the divine plan, when we find ourselves needing to deal with the unfinished quality of the definition of the Christian story.”

~ John Howard Yoder, To Hear the Word, 97-8. (New Edition forthcoming from Cascade Books)

Yoder vs. Kuyper

På Faith & Theology pågår just nu en intressant diskussion som startade med att Ben Myers ställde den reformerte teologen Abraham Kuypers gamla dänga om att:

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’

... mot följande Yoder-citat:

“It is remarkable how the meaning of Christ’s lordship has been reversed in modern ecumenical discussion. In New Testament times the lordship of Christ meant that even that which is pagan, the state, was under God’s rule. Today exactly the same expression means that Christians have been sent into all areas of public life, including every political position, and that there as Christians they are to do their duties according to the rules of the state – in other words, the opposite of the meaning in the New Testament”

Själv tycker att jag att Hauerwas ger viss vägledning i ämnet:

"I’m not asking you to withdraw from politics. I’m just asking you to be there as a Christian."

Dagens Yoder

There is no 'public' that is not just another particular province.

- John Howard Yoder