Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before the Watching World
Overview
Binding and loosing, baptism, Eucharist, multiplicity of gifts, and open meeting—these five New Testament practices were central in the life of the early Christian community and some of them are still echoed in church practices today. But the full social, ethical, and communal meaning of the original practices has often been covered by centuries of ritual and interpretation. John Howard Yoder reveals the original meaning of the five practices and shows why the recovery of these practices is so important for the modern church’s social, economic, and political witness.
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- Examines the original meanings of five New Testament Christian practices
- Discusses the importance of recovering these practices
- Provides deep engagement with modern ecumenical discourse
- Binding and Loosing
- Disciples Break Bread Together
- Baptism and the New Humanity
- The Fullness of Christ
- The Rule of Paul
Top Highlights
“Measure’ is not like a yardstick, to evaluate quantitatively, some people’s enablement being bigger than that of others. ‘Measure’ here is like a dipper which apportions to each person at table his or her own share.” (Page 48)
“When human and divine activity coincide in this way, that is what some denominations call a sacrament.” (Page 1)
“In sum: To be human is to be in conflict, to offend and to be offended. To be human in the light of the gospel is to face conflict in redemptive dialogue. When we do that, it is God who does it. When we do that, we demonstrate that to process conflict is not merely a palliative strategy for tolerable survival or psychic hygiene, but a mode of truth-finding and community-building. That is true in the gospel; it is also true, mutatis mutandis, in the world.” (Page 13)
“To ‘bind’ in rabbinic usage is to respond to a question of ethical discernment: We still have the root in our word obligate. To ‘loose’ is to free from obligation: In the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had warned that whoever ‘looses’ any commandment will be ‘the least in the kingdom.’ Thus the activity has two dimensions: moral discernment and reconciliation.” (Page 2)
“Paul called Christ’s body is to function as a social organism, a polis.5 To be political is to make decisions, to assign roles, and to distribute powers, and the Christian community cannot do otherwise than exercise these same functions, going about its business as a body.” (Page ix)
A crucial advance in recent philosophy and theology is (re)discovery of the fact that we do not know what our words mean if we do not know how to put them into practice. Yoder’s Body Politics embodies this understanding of the intimate dialectic of thought and life, doctrine and liturgical practice.
—Nancy Murphy, professor of Christian philosophy, school of theology, Fuller Theological Seminary
If the church’s ‘internal’ life is a precursor to the future of the world, then Yoder’s Body Politics sheds new light on the role and mission of the church in the world. Perhaps more importantly, it then also sheds new light on the future role of the world in the church.
—Robert J. Suderman, Mennonite Church Canada
- Title: Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before the Watching World
- Author: John Howard Yoder
- Publisher: Herald Press
- Publication Date: 2001
- Pages: 88