The NT Letters and the Political Jesus

In chapter 7 of The Politics of Jesus, John Howard Yoder continues to back up his claim that Jesus was, in fact, a political figure by answering this claim by his detractors: "even if Jesus saw his kingdom in terms of social ethics, his first followers did not." On the contrary, Yoder argues, the epistles urge two ways of relating to Jesus:

A) Following (external) - this is discipleship; Jesus is followed around by his pupils.
B) Imitation (internal) - this is a person’s inner conformity to the nature of Christ.

I. The Disciple/Participant and the Love of God
A. Sharing the divine nature is the definition of Christian existence (1 John 1:5-7; 3:1-3; 4:17; Col 3:9).
B. Forgive as God has forgiven you (Eph 4:32; Col 3:13; Mt 6:14-15).
C. Love indiscriminately like God does (Lk 6:32-36; Mt 5:43-48; 1 John 4:7-12).

II. The Disciple/Participant and the Life of Christ
A. "Being in Christ" is the definition of Christian existence (1 John 2:6).
B. Having died with Christ, we share his risen life (Rom 6:6-11; Rom 8:11; Gal 2:20; Col 2:12).
C. Loving as Christ loved, giving himself (John 13:34; John 15:12; 1 John 3:11-16; 13:34).
D. Serving others as he served (John 13:1-17; Rom 15:1-7; 2 Cor 5:14; 22 Cor 8:7-9)

III. The Disciple/Participant and the Death of Christ
A. Suffering with Christ is the definition of apostolic existence (Phil 3:10-11; 2 Cor 4:10; 2 Cor 1:5; Col 1:24).
B. Sharing in divine condescension (Phil 2:13-14).
C. Give your life as he did (Eph 5:1-2).
D. Suffering servanthood instead holding power (Mark 10:42-45).
E. Accept innocent suffering without complaint just as he did (1 Peter 2:20-21, 3:14-18, 4:12-16).
F. Suffer with or like Christ the hostility of the world, as bearers of the kingdom cause (Lk 14:27-33; John 15:20-21; 2 Tim 3:12).
G. Death is liberation from the power of sin (1 Peter 4:12; Gal 5:24).
H. Death is the fate of the prophets; Jesus was already following them (Lk 24:19-20; Acts 2:36, 4:10; 1 Thess 2:15).
I. Death is victory (Col 2:15; 1 Cor 1:22-24; Rev 12:10-11).

According to Yoder, readers (like me) who are unaware of the political dimensions of Jesus' ministry may understand the 'in Christ' references in the NT letters to be some sort of mystical, private process and the 'dying with Christ' references as a morbid psychological experience. However, if we believe that the apostles used their core memory of Jesus' earthly ministry to talk about social ethics, then the fact that they centered their ethics on the cross has to mean a social stance which is compulsory for believers and often costly.

Yoder is emphatic that the only place where believers are supposed to imitate Jesus is in the taking up of the cross. He does not want his arguments to become a blanket grounding for compulsory celibacy, for example. "Servanthood replaces dominion, forgiveness absorbs hostility" (131).

I'm still one of those old fashioned guys who thinks that only part of what Yoder is saying is spot-on when it comes to kingdom living. But I do not follow Yoder wholesale in his belief that every single thing Jesus did was to send a political message. Yoder seems to think that the characteristic which leads to persecution for believers is their nonviolence. I believe, on the contrary, that though this might be a characteristic of the faithful, it is their proclamation of the spiritual message of the Gospel, which is offensive to the natural man which can will result in persecution.

The Possibility of Nonviolent Resistance in the 1st Century

A few years ago, as I recall, Stanley Hauerwas wrote an editorial/letter to First Things complaining that a recent article declared pacifists to be out of the loop in matters of politics because they opposed the use of violence. In response to this, Hauerwas retorted that the Christian has much to say about politics, even if he cannot use violence. He pointed to the same thing Yoder does in this very short (about four pages long) chapter, where he offers two examples from the first century to show that even though Christians may not take up the sword or use force, "effective nonviolent resistance was not at all unknown in recent Jewish experience.

The first example Yoder offers comes from Josephus, who wrote that at one point, Pontius Pilate decided to abolish the Jewish law. He set up idols of Caesar around Jerusalem, and when the Jews found out, they argued with him for days to remove the idols. On the 6th day, Pilate had the soldiers hide, and when the Jews came, the army appeared, surrounding them. Pilate told the people that unless they stopped disturbing him and went home, they would be immediately killed. Rather than acquiesce, they laid on the ground and declared that they would willingly die rather than allow their law to be broken. At this event, Pilate was deeply moved by their desire to uphold their law and he commanded the idols be removed from Jerusalem.

The second first-century example which Yoder points to (he calls it Ghandi-like) is when Caligula demanded formal worship of himself and became apoplectic when the Jews refused to do this. He ordered a Roman commander to put one of his statues in the temple at Jerusalem. The response by the Jews was a general strike. Fields were left untilled and tens of thousands of Jews petitioned the Roman commander to remove the statue. The Jews insisted that they didn't want war with Caesar but were prepared to give their lives and those of their wives and children to prevent the threatened sacrilege. The Roman commander finally went back to Caesar Caligula and argued on the Jews' behalf.

Thus collective nonviolent resistance by the Jewry of Palestine was successful against the Roman forces twice within a decade...[this] does suffice nonetheless to negate the sweeping assumption that in rejection the Zealot option Jesus' only other conceivable alternative would have been the end of the world or a retreat to the desert; in other words, to reject the responsible sword is to withdraw from history. (Pg. 92)

God Will Fight for Us: Is the Old Testament Pacifist?

In chapter four of his book The Politics of Jesus, John Howard Yoder recognizes that many perceive a great roadblock to his pacifist interpretation of the ethical import of Jesus in the “holy wars” of the Old Testament, particularly in Exodus, Judges, and Joshua, as the Hebrews were occupying and subduing the land which was promised to them. He says:

We ask, "Can a Christian who rejects all war reconcile his position with the Old Testament story?" If the generalization that “war is always contrary to the will of God” can be juxtaposed with the wars of the Old Testament, which are reported as having been according to the will of God, the generalization is destroyed (76).

Yoder says that the approach mentioned above seems to hide the fact that “for the believing Israelite the Scriptures would not have been read with this kind of question in mind.” Yoder apparently desires to maintain the above stated “generalization,” by viewing the Old Testament narrative in the way that the people of Israel (for example, in Jesus’ times) would have viewed that narrative.

By Yoder’s reasoning, one dominant characteristic of the OT story is that Yahweh is seen “as the God who saves his people without their needing to act.” He argues that the modern reader looks in the story for moral judgments of the rightness or wrongness of the “holy wars,” but that the Israelites would not have said, “judging from this text, it was good for us to go to war.” Instead, he says that they would have seen God, their savior, “where Israel was saved by the mighty deeds of God on their behalf” (76). By the rules of hermeneutics, Yoder proposes that we read the narrative as those who received it would have read it.

The Exodus Era
Yoder quotes as support for his thesis here from each of Israel’s different eras, and he begins with the Exodus, where we read:

Fear not, stand firm,
And see the salvation of the LORD,
Which he will work for you today;
For the Egyptians whom you see today,
You shall never see again.
The LORD will fight for you,
And you have only to be still.
(Ex. 14:13)

In Exodus 17, Yoder is careful to note that Moses and Joshua decide to go to war against the Amalekites without a recorded command of God.

It is a general rule of proper textual interpretation that a text should be read for what its author meant to say and what its first readers or hearers would have heard it say. Whether the taking of human life is morally permissible or forbidden under all circumstances was not a culturally conceivable question in the age of Abraham or that of Joshua. It is therefore illegitimate to read the story of the planned sacrifice of Isaac or of the Joshuanic wars as documents on the issue of the morality of killing. Although the narrative of the conquest of Canaan is full of bloodshed, what the pious reader will have been most struck by in later centuries was the general promise according to which, if Israel would believe and obey, the occupants of the land would be driven out little by little (Exod. 23:29-30) by “the angel” (23:23) or the “terror” (v. 27) or the “hornets” (v. 28) of God, or the most striking victories of Joshua over Jericho (Josh. 6), or Gideon’s defeat of the Midianites (Judg. 7) after most of the volunteers had been sent home and the remaining few armed with torches in order (7:2) not to let israel think military strength or numbers had brought the victory: To “believe” meant, most specifically and concretely in the cultural context of Israel’s birth as a nation, to trust God for their survival as a people.

The Kingdom Era
Other Scripture accounts of God’s salvation:

O LORD, there is none like thee to help
Between the mighty and the weak.
Help us, O LORD our God, for we rely on thee,
And in thy name we have come against this multitude.
(2 Chronicles 14:11)

Yoder sees 2 Chronicles 16 as a one chapter commentary on the wrongness of taking things into one’s own hands, rather than relying on the salvation that God will bring. Consider God’s chastisement of Asa for forming an alliance with the Northern Kingdom.

You need not fight in this battle ;
Take your position, stand still,
And see the victory of the LORD on your behalf,
O Judah and Jerusalem.
Fear not, and be not dismayed;
Tomorrow go out against them,
And the LORD will be with you.
(2 Chronicles 20:17)

And the fear of God came on all the kingdoms of the countries, when they heard that the LORD had fought against the enemies of Israel (20:29).

Do not be afraid or dismayed before the king of Assyria and all the horde that is with him; for there is one greater with us than with him. With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the LORD our god, to help us and to fight our battles (32:8).

Post-Exile Era

Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava,
That we might humble ourselves before our God,
To seek from him a straight way…
For I was ashamed to ask the king for men,
Soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way;
Since we had told the king,
“The hand of our God is for good upon all that seek him,
And the power of his wrath is against all that forsake him.”
So we fasted and besought our God for this,
And he listened to our entreaty.
(Ezra 8:21ff)

For Yoder, this text is important, because it supports the thesis of this chapter, namely that those who read the accounts would, looking back, not be making moral judgments upon the texts, but instead would be reflecting upon the salvation that God brings. “It had thus become a part of the standard devotional ritual of Israel to look over the nation’s history as one of miraculous preservation” (83).

The LORD will cause your enemies
Who rise against you
To be defeated before you;
They shall come out against you one way,
And flee before you seven ways.
(Deuteronomy 28:7)

He will guard the feet of his faithful ones;
For not by might does one prevail.
(1 Samuel 2:9)

Not by might, nor by power,
But by my Spirit, says the Lord of Hosts.
(Zechariah 4:6)

Implications
Given this background “legend” which the Israelites would have studied and known extensively, Yoder suggests two serious implications for the meaning of the “Kingdom Inaugural” sermons of Jesus:

(a) The modern reader is struck by the improbability…of any such saving event as a generalized jubilee or an adversary leaving. Since he or she assumes Jesus could hardly have meant this, the reader’s mind is sent to meander down the sidetracks of paradoxical or symbolic interpretations. For Jesus’ listeners, on the other hand, as believing Jews, the question of possibility was not allowed to get in the way of hearing the promise. They therefore did not prejudice their sense of what might happen by knowing ahead of time what Jesus could not mean.

(b) In correlation with our sense of impossibility we tend to think of “apocalyptic” promises as pointing “off the map” of human experience, off the scale of time, in that they announce an end to history….Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom was unacceptable to most of his listeners not because they thought it could not happen but because they feared it might, and that it would bring down judgment on them (85).

Yoder believes that if we as modern readers learn to see Jesus’ statements in light of the Jewish peoples’ background history and “legend” (in the social sense, not the “inaccurate” sense), then we will see that there is much greater political import to what he said. In addition, he says, we will stop scouring the OT texts for moral judgments on the rightness or wrongness of the “holy wars.”

"And when the Lord your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword...in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes" (Deuteronomy 20:13,16). The entire chapter of Deuteronomy 20 leaves me scratching my head. If the entire Old Testament is a testament to the fact that God fights for his people, then why would God command in his law for every single inhabitant to be put to the sword? It might be responded that Deut. 20 is not spoken directly by God, but I wonder what such a response might mean for our understanding of any of the Old Testament texts which do not consist of God's own actual words.

I have combed the Old Testament over quite vigorously (as Yoder says we should not, now, have to do; Oops!), and while I am left with a lot of unanswered exegetical questions, I can find no overt or direct commands from God (but I'm open to some help from others with this, since OT history isn't my strong suit) for the Israelites to go to war which do not, as Yoder points out, also promise that it is God who will do the fighting. In my preparation for a response to Yoder, I believed a case in opposition to Yoder's arguments would be very easy to assemble. What I discovered, however, is that Yoder's reading of the Old Testament (if you grant that he is right that that israelites would not have read the Old Testament like we do, looking for moral judgments and such) is far closer, in my opinion, to the teaching of the text than I ever could have guessed. With the exception of a few challenging verses in the Old Testament, I am half tempted to agree with Yoder that the dominant theme of war in the Old Testament is one where God consistently promises to fight Israel's wars on her behalf, if she will only let him.

I look forward to some outside input on this matter. Maybe someone else can make the case against Yoder's OT reading for me.

Yoder and the Implications of the Jubilee

The Jubilee year included four prescriptions:

1. Leaving the soil unplanted
2. Cancellation of debts
3. Freeing Slaves
4. Each family gets back its original property.

When I was reading Calvin's commentary on Luke, I was a little surprised to see that he has no problem with the idea that Jesus was reinstituting the Jubilee during his reading of Isaiah 61 where he declared "the good year of our Lord." In this chapter, Yoder does the footwork to show where and how Jesus reinstituted the jubilee and what that meant/means for Christians.

1. The Fallow Soil: Yoder is honest that there is no explicit command to leave the soil unplanted, but he does point to Leviticus 25:20-21 to show that following the Jubilee meant trusting in God.

'If you say: "what will we eat the seventh year, since we will not sow nor harvest?" - I will give you my blessing on the sixth year and it will produce enough for three years.

According to Yoder, this is similar to Jesus' call for the fishermen to leave their boats in Luke 12:29-31:

‘So don’t be upset, always concerned about what you will eat and drink. (For the pagans of this world are always concerned about all these things.) Your Father knows that you need these things. Instead, be concerned with his Kingdom, and he will provide you with these things.’

Personally, I find this to be a bit of a stretch, but we'll continue, nevertheless.

2 & 3. Cancelling Debt & Freeing Slaves: Christians today do not, for the most part, plant fields, but Yoder says that these next two characteristics are quite relevant to understanding Jesus' thinking. He points to the Lord's Prayer where Jesus says we should pray, "remit us our debts as we ourselves have also remitted them to our debtors." He justifies this more monetary-sounding translation by citing the greek word opheilema. Since I don't know much about greek, I have to take Yoder's word for it, but he says that this word "of the Greek text signifies precisely a monetary debt, in the most material sense of the term" (62). Yoder says very plainly, what this means for Christians:

"Jesus is not simply recommending vaguely that we might pardon those who have bothered us or made us trouble, but tells us purely and simply to erase the debts of those who owe us money; that is to say, to practice the jubilee."

Yoder also points to the parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18:23-25 as another example of Jesus desire for Christians to consistently practice the debt forgiveness called for by the Jubilee.

4. Redistribution of Capital: According to Yoder, Jesus states very clearly that we should redistribute capital. "Sell all your belongings and give the money to the poor" (Luke 12:33). My first immediate thought on this is that this was an individual command to a man whose materialism Jesus wished to challenge, but I will again digress and give the floor to Yoder. Yoder is critical of those who argue as I have suggested, but it could likewise be turned back on Yoder, because even Yoder does not believe that Christians should sell all their belongings as a wooden reading of this verse demands. So even here, Yoder still ends up watering down Jesus' command; something he is critical of when done by others.

Let there be no misunderstanding here; Yoder does not believe that Jesus was commanding Christian communism. When he said "sell what you possess and practice compassion," he wasn’t creating a constitution for a communist (*cough* or socialist *cough*) state. Yoder believes (and I agree with him) that giving to the poor should be voluntary and done from a joyful heart, not begrudgingly. Those who [in supposed obedience to Jesus] wish to take from people by the forceful arm of government (again, at the point of the sword since that's what you face if you disobey the state) and give that money to whom it sees fit (some needy, and some not-so) are robbing Christians of the joy of obeying Jesus' command to love others, to help the poor and the widow, and to clothe the naked and feed the hungry. These things are to be done with a willing heart and not by bureaucrats at the point of the sword (or gun). Most of all, this robs the church of much of its witness to the world.

According to Yoder, the Jubilee is supposed to be a permanent defining trait of the church. According to Yoder in his epilogue to this chapter, a permanent state of jubilee also fits well with what we read about the life of the early church in Acts (2:42-47; 4:32-36; 11:29-30).

The Politics of Jesus Chapter 2: The Kingdom Coming (Part 2)

The Platform: Luke 4:14ff
Yoder is careful to note that both John the Baptist and Jesus use the phrase, “The kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the good news.” There is no getting around that fact that the average reader sees “gospel” and “kingdom” and that they understand the meaning of “kingdom” even more than they do “the gospel.” The idea of a kingdom of God is decidedly a political concept (35).

He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor;
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives;
And recovering of sight to the blind;
To set at liberty those who are oppressed,
To proclaim the acceptable year of Yahweh.

This passage from Isaiah 61 was read by Jesus in the synagogue and then turned upon himself. Yoder argues that this verse (particularly the last sentence) is a proclamation of the start of a new Jubilee year by Jesus. This is a reading of the text which I certainly have no issues with.

If anyone does not hate father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters,
Yea, and even his own life,
He cannot be my disciple.

The Christian is called to a lifestyle, whereby the cross is the culmination.

The kings of this earth lord it over their subjects;
But it shall not be so among you…
For I am among you as one who serves.

Yoder notes that, “In none of the accounts where this word is reported does Jesus reprimand his disciples for expecting him to establish some new social order, as he would have had to do if the thesis of the only-spiritual kingdom were to prevail. He rather reprimands them for having misunderstood the character of that new social order which does intend to set up (46).

Characteristics of the disciples conducive to social change (46-7):
-A visible structured fellowship
-Sober decision guaranteeing that the costs of commitment to the fellowship have been consciously accepted
-A clearly defined lifestyle distinct from that of the crowd
-Commitment to an exceptionally normal quality of humanness. This distinctness is not a cultic or ritual separation, but rather a nonconformed quality of (“secular”) involvement in the life of the world.

Other evidence of the political import of what Jesus was doing:
1. The formation of the inner-team comprising former Zealots and former publicans
2. The symbolic number twelve
3. The first mission of the twelve (which was Herod’s first perplexity about Jesus (47).

Basically, Jesus wasn't just a moralist whose teachings were of some political import. Nor was he mainly a spiritual teacher whose teachings were unfortunately seen in a political light. He was not simply a sacrificial lamb biding time to his sacrifice.

Could this be Yoder's greatest weakness? It seems that the Bible is more than a book about just being saved, but likewise it seems that those who follow Yoder fall into the opposite tendency of being primarily political and known for what they hate (war, injustice, poverty, etc.) than for what they love. In other words, those who spiritualize everything are wrong, but those who politicize everything are mistaken, as well.

Kingdom life is lived out by people who are dual citizens - citizens of heaven and citizens of earth. This means that we must find a way of living as Christians, but it doesn't necessarily mean changing the world around us through legislative means (and by implication through the sword, since those who are disobedient are threatened by the sword of the state), but rather by persuasion. This, as I understand it, is a sentiment shared both by Yoder and those who are of the two kingdoms persuasion.

Yoder accuses those of the two-kingdom persuasion of having an under-realized eschatology (of course, as an amillenialist I think it's important to remember that we are not yet in the "age to come," so in a sense, my eschatology cannot be realized until Christ comes in judgment on this world). But one might likewise accuse Yoder of the opposite error.

The Politics of Jesus Chapter 2: The Kingdom Coming (Part 1)

In his book The Politics of Jesus, Yoder argues that John the Baptist was wrong about the nature of the fulfillment that Jesus brought, because John the Baptist expected Jesus to be a figure who would break the bondage of his people in some sort of literal or political sense. Yoder cautions, however, that he was not completely wrong to assume that Jesus brought a socio-political change. “If the difference had been of that character, Luke would have had to begin his story differently. There would have been some hint in these first three chapters to warn us of the impropriety of the hopes of Mary and Zechariah as well as John.”

Evidence that Jesus’ relation to John the Baptist was of political import:
-“John’s ministry had a pronounced political character, and to some extent, Jesus took up his succession” (29). He appeals to “the time linkage in Matt. 3:12.
-John’s instruction to his hearers for “an immediate community of consumption (Luke 3:11)” (29).
-The only “categories of listeners indicated by Luke in addition to the ‘multitudes’ (Matthew names Pharisees and Sadducees) are the socio-politically slanted publicans (3:12) and soldiers (3:14)” (29).
-According to Josephus (Antiquities xviii.5.2), “John’s imprisonment was connected with Herod Antipas’ fear that he might foment an insurrection” (29).
-The report of Jesus’ ministry “leads Herod to see him as a possible successor to John (9:7ff). He sets in juxtaposition his fate and that of John (16:16 and par)” (29).

The Temptations of Jesus: Luke 3:21-4:14
1. Yoder sees Jesus’ first temptation to turn the stones into bread as a temptation to become king by feeding his many followers and thus establish himself as their earthly leader. Jesus would not have been satisfied by crusty bread, Yoder argues, but by establishing an earthly kingdom (which was a temptation throughout his ministry). “That this is no idle imagination, the later story was to demonstrate. Feed the crowds and you shall be king” (31).

Yoder's interpretation of the first temptation differs quite dramatically from that of many traditional commentators. One example of this is Calvin, who argued that this was not a temptation to physical food - for himself or for others - but rather a temptation to disbelieve the Scriptures. Calvin concludes this from the verse which Jesus quotes to defeat the Tempter: "Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." I can't help but feel that Yoder's interpretation of the first temptation attempts to place political temptation where the text makes no such indication.

2. The next temptation is possibly the most socio-politically obvious of all the temptations. The promised reward: “All the kingdoms of the world;…all this authority and their glory.” For Yoder, the question is, what would “bow the knee to me” have meant? “Are we to imagine some sort of satanic cult? Or does it not yield a much more concrete meaning if we conceive of Jesus as discerning in such terms the idolatrous character of political power hunger and nationalism?” (32).

Once again, we see the contrast between Yoder's reading of this temptation and a more traditional interpretation. Where Yoder sees temptation to political ambition, Calvin sees a temptation that "Christ should seek, in another manner than from God, the inheritance which he has promised to his children." To rob God "of the government of the world," and claim it for himself. It is up to the reader to discern which interpretation (amongst the many other possible interpretations) is warranted by the text itself.

3. The third temptation of Christ is equally socio-political for Yoder, and he appeals to Niels Hyldahl for his answer to this third temptation. “Being thrown down from the tower in the temple wall…into the Kidron valley, followed by stoning, if necessary, to bring death, was the prescribed penalty for blasphemy. The testing would then mean that Jesus was tempted to see himself as taking on himself the penalty for his claims to divine authority, yet being miraculously saved from the consequences.” Hyldahl sees this as part of a recurring temptation for Jesus, to escape from the consequences of his claims.

For example:
a. Peter’s plea is directly attributed to Satan (Mark 8;31ff)
b. The temptation for a possible angelic deliverance in Gethsemane (Matt. 26:53)
c. The mocking call to come down from the cross (Luke 23:35 and par.).

Yoder also thinks that this interpretation of the third temptation makes the most sense, since – if Jesus’ temptation was to receive marvel and accreditation as a miracle worker – “would not an unexpected apparition from above have been the most self-evident way for the messenger of the covenant, in the words of Malachi (3:14), to come ‘suddenly to his temple to purify the sons of Levi’?”

Once again, as a form of contrast, we see that in Calvin's view, this temptation was a temptation for Christ

"to exalt himself unduly, and to rise, in a daring manner, against God...Now [the tempter] exorts him to indulge a foolish and vain confidence, - to neglect the means which are in his power, - to throw himself, without necessity, into manifest danger, - and, as we might say, to overleap all bounds...The design of Satan...was to induce Christ to make trial of his divinity and to rise up, in foolish and wicked rashness, against God."

To Yoder's credit in his understanding of this temptation, he seems to take into account the significance of the location where the temptation is taking place. Of all Yoder's interpretations of the temptations of Christ, I certainly find this to be the most plausible and least forced. I do, however, have trouble seeing his understanding of this temptation as being so overtly political.

One thing to keep in mind is that Yoder is attempting to draw an overall picture of Christ as a political figure; to be sure, Christ did many things of political import, and it would be a mistake to discard all of them; to disagree with Yoder's conclusions does not force one to contend with each and every assertion. The mistake which I find in Yoder is when he seems to dig for political meaning when the natural reading of the text does not permit such interpretation; but I digress.