Curious Christian

Reflections on culture, nature, and spirituality from a Christian perspective

The Politics of Resurrection

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Matt Stone

2008-10-27

I think its worth spending some more time contrasting the politics of pragmatism with the politics of resurrection, so here is a quote from John Howard Yoder in The Politics of Jesus:

The key to the obedience of God’s people is not their effectiveness but their patience. The triumph of the right is assured not by the might that comes to the aid of the right, which is of course the justification of the use of violence and the other kinds of power in every human conflict; the triumph of the right, although it is assured, is sure because of the power of the resurrection and not because of any calculation of causes and effects, nor because of the inherently greater strength of the good guys. The relationship between the obedience of God’s people and the triumph of God’s cause is not a relationship of cause and effect but one of cross and resurrection.

Brian McLaren suggests everything must change. Including politics. Yoder suggests that everything has changed. Already. That through the resurrection God has disarmed the rulers and authorities of their ultimate weapon, death. But we need to awaken to this. Politically as well as personally.

Tags Politics, Resurrection

4 responses to “The Politics of Resurrection”

Brett Peatman

2008-10-28

I’m with Yoder on this one. One of the things I am uncomfortable with in the Emerging Church conversation is the way that so much of the mandate for change seems to come from the change in society. I agree that we need to be continually changing, as in always reforming, and we ought to meet people where they are (1Cor9), but it seems to me that the mandate for change does not come from society but the resurrection itself.
It seems to me that some are abstracting the Incarnation as a justification for pragmatism, where rightly understood the resurrection (which presupposes the Incarnation) is the fundamental call for change, a call for transformation.
If you want to see how mission is thought of, in Acts particularly, it seems to be strongly linked to the resurrection.
This is a big topic, and I recommend checking out Oliver O’Donovan on this one, although he is very heavy reading.
Try:
Resurrection and moral order : an outline for evangelical ethics
and then his book on politics:
The desire of the nations : rediscovering the roots of political theology
The danger of pragmatism is that of consequentialism, that the end justifies the means. However, in view of resurrection and the Lordship of Christ, how we do things is just as important as what we do. This is seen, in part, in the strong emphasis on obedience throughout the New Testament.

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Matt Stone

2008-10-29

“One of the things I am uncomfortable with in the Emerging Church conversation is the way that so much of the mandate for change seems to come from the change in society … but it seems to me that the mandate for change does not come from society but the resurrection itself.”
A superb reflection Brett.
You know, I recall a number of observers of the New Age Movement making the observation some way back that the story of the “post-modern paradigm shift” which gave birth to the movement in many ways functioned for them as a rival eschatology to historic Christian eschatology. That would suggest that Christians should be wary of buying into the post-modern paradigm shift narratives uncritically. The paradigm shift to rival all other paradigm shifts happened 2000 years ago. You’re 100% correct. You might notice too that I have been speaking a lot less about incarnational living and a lot more about the resurrection life in recent months. Maybe I should write about this more, but basically I went through a shift of my own reading through Acts and the letters of Paul.
I was trying to formulate an “ascending missiology” that would dovetail with an “ascending Christology” and realised we’d been overplaying our hand with “incarnational” language and were forgetting that Paul more frequently grounded his mandate for engagement with culture in the cross, and his call for unity in diversity in the raising up of Jesus. i also found that the resurrection story is far more robustly resistant to syncretism than the incarnation story. I now tend to emphasize incarnation as a post-resurrection insight. Or to put it more technically, although the resurrection is ontologically grounded in the incarnation, the incarnation is epistemologically grounded in the resurrection. It is through the resurrection that we HEAR our mandate. The good news the apostles preached was the resurrection, not the incarnation, nor the post-modern paradigm shift, and its important we get that strait too.

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Matt Stone

2008-10-29

I should add, those same observers also identified the enlightenment story as a rival eschatology, with the implication being that both modernity and post-modernity equally stand in the shadow of the resurrection.
There is neither modernity nor postmodernity,
enlightened age nor new age,
established church nor emergent church,
but all are one in Christ Jesus.

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Steve Hayes

2008-10-29

That’s why, asn an Orthodox Christian, I feel much closer to Mennonites than to other Protestants. They speak our kind of language.

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