yoder's theological ethic and voting
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An evaluation of Yoder's theological ethic and an exploration of how it shapes his view of voting within a representative democracy.TRANSCRIPT
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STUDENT I.D.: 10014453
UNIT: CT330 – Christian Ethics
QUESTION: Outline and critically evaluate the theological
ethic of John Howard Yoder.
ESSAY NUMBER: FIVE
WORD COUNT: 3298
DATE DUE: 7th October 2009
DATE SUBMITTED: 11th October 2009
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John Howard Yoder’s Theological Ethic and Voting within a Representative Democracy
SYNOPSIS
The theological ethic of John Howard Yoder applies a corrective to
Christian ethics by arguing that Jesus is both relevant and normative
to social ethics. Jesus is relevant because in his life an teaching we
can see a social ethic. And normative because Jesus establishes what
it is to be truly human. This essay outlines Yoder’s theological ethic as
presented in The Politics of Jesus and considers it systematically with
the tri-foci of Christology, eschatology and ecclesiology. Finally a case
study of Yoder’s ethic is done concerning the issue of Christian
participation in the voting process within a representative democracy.
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John Howard Yoder’s Theological Ethic and Voting within a Representative Democracy
Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried
in this world of sin and woe. […] Indeed, it has been said that
democracy is the worst form of government except all those
other forms that have been tried from time to time.1
According to John Howard Yoder, ethicists have failed to notice that
Jesus is ‘a model of radical political action’ and have assumed that he
is ‘not relevant in any immediate sense to the questions of social
ethics.’2 In response to this Yoder unashamedly builds a case for
seeing Jesus as ‘not only relevant but also normative for a
contemporary Christian social ethic.’3 On this basis Yoder calls
Christians to ‘“be like Jesus” as he went to the Cross’ as this becomes
the basis upon which God will bring about radical renewal through the
presence of the Christian community in the world.4 Initially this essay
will outline Yoder’s seminal work, The Politics of Jesus. This essay will
then follow Craig A. Carter’s classifications in order to systematically
outline Yoder’s theological ethic by observing Christology as its
source, eschatology as its context, and ecclesiology as its shape.5 This
essay will then consider the particular issue of voting within
representative democracies as a case study to further explore Yoder’s
1 Winston Churchill, Speech in the House of Commons, The Official Report, House of Commons (5th Series), 11 November 1947, vol. 444, cc. 206–07.2 John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994), 2; 5.3 Yoder, Politics, 11.4 Yoder, Politics, 131.5 Craig A. Carter, The Politics of the Cross: The Theology and Social Ethics of John Howard Yoder (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos Press, 2001), 27-28.
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John Howard Yoder’s Theological Ethic and Voting within a Representative Democracy
concept of Christian pacifism and how the Christian and the church
are to relate to the powers. From this vantage point an evaluation will
be made of Yoder’s theological ethic.
THE POLITICS OF JESUS
The most obvious place to begin an assessment of the theological
ethic of Yoder is with The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster, his
magnum opus. Yoder begins with the problem that Jesus has been
ignored in studies of Christian ethics because of a disjunction
between the disciplines of the ethics and biblical studies. According to
Yoder, the result of this disconnection is that “mainstream” Christian
ethics has lost its distinctiveness. Christian ethics was forced to look
elsewhere for guidance and effectively slid into ‘the theology of the
natural’.6 In response to this, Yoder seeks to demonstrate through
careful exegesis that ‘Jesus is not only relevant to, but also normative
for, Christian social ethics and contemporary, and mainstream biblical
scholarship supports this claim.’7
Politics engages in a detailed reading of Luke’s Gospel and concludes
it is impossible to ‘avoid his call to an ethic marked by the cross, a
cross identified as the punishment of a man who threatens society by
creating a new kind of community leading a radically new kind of
6 Yoder, Politics, 8-9.7 Carter, Politics of the Cross, 243.
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John Howard Yoder’s Theological Ethic and Voting within a Representative Democracy
life.’8 This ethic is fundamentally socio-political, renounces the use of
violence, re-establishes the jubilee, and establishes a new
community. Yoder argues that all these implications would ‘have been
understood by Jesus and his contemporaries’.9
Yoder then shifts from Luke’s Gospel to the Epistles of Paul in order to
show that at ‘only at one point, only on one subject […] is Jesus given
as our example: in his cross.’10 Yoder then argues that ‘the model of
Jesus as a politically relevant ethical example is carried consistently
throughout the rest of the New Testament’ and that it affirms ‘Jesus
as the model for a life given in faithfulness to God.’11 In order flesh out
his thesis Yoder anticipates a number of exegetical and theological
problems concerning powers, subordination, Romans 13, justification
by grace through faith, and the meaning and direction of history.
Yoder’s final conclusion is that ‘a social style characterized by the
creation of a new community and the rejection of violence of any kind
is the theme of the New Testament’s proclamation from beginning to
end, from right to left.’12
THE CHRISTOLOGICAL SOURCE
8 Yoder, Politics, 53.9 Yoder, Politics, 32; 46; 53; Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (London: T&T Clark, 1996), 242.10 Yoder, Politics, 95.11 Hays, Moral Vision, 243. 12 Yoder, Politics, 242.
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John Howard Yoder’s Theological Ethic and Voting within a Representative Democracy
According to Yoder, ‘God broke through the borders of our standard
definition of what it is to be human and gave a new, formative
definition in Jesus.’13 Because of this Yoder, following the way of
Barth, affirms that Jesus reveals the ‘true nature and vocation of
human beings.’14 It is from this point that Jesus, his life, his teaching,
and most significantly his Cross, become the source of Yoder’s
theological ethic. As we have observed already, according to Yoder
Jesus is relevant and normative to social ethics. Hays notes that the
cross is not just relevant for ethics but for Yoder it is ‘the focal image
through which the entire canonical story must be read.’15 But as we
look to the social ethic forged by Jesus through the Cross, what do we
see? According to Carter, Yoder demonstrates that ‘Jesus offers a new
way of living, but the implication of accepting his offer is a cross.’16
According to Yoder’s portrayal of Jesus and the writings of the
Apostles, ‘there is no general concept of living like Jesus in the New
Testament’ except ‘at the point of the concrete social meaning of the
cross in its relation to enmity and power.’17
It is on the centrality of the Cross and its inherently political nature,
that Yoder bases his particular kind of pacifism which is central to his
Christian social ethic. In the Cross, ‘servanthood replaces dominion,
13 Yoder, Politics, 99.14 Hays, Moral Vision, 243.15 Hays, Moral Vision, 248.16 Carter, Politics of the Cross, 105. 17 Yoder, Politics, 130-31.
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forgiveness absorbs hostility. Thus – and only thus – are we bound by
the New Testament to “be like Jesus.”’18 Following the way of the
Cross is ‘no longer any and every kind of suffering, sickness, or
tension the bearing of which is demanded. The believer’s cross is, like
that of Jesus, the price of social nonconformity.’19 It is on this point
that Yoder is emphatic,
Jesus was not just a moralist whose teachings had some political
implications; he was not primarily a teacher of spirituality whose
public ministry unfortunately was seen in a political light; he was
not just a sacrificial lamb preparing for his immolation, or a God-
Man whose divine status calls us to disregard his humanity. Jesus
was, […] the bearer of a new possibility of human social, and
therefore political relationships. His baptism is the inauguration
and his cross is the culmination of that new regime in which his
disciples are called to share.20
It is by imitation of the Cross, that not only the Christian, but the
whole Christian community reflects the politics of Jesus.21 It is here
that Yoder’s ethic finds its eschatological context. When the Christian
or the Christian community established by Jesus are tempted to take
matters into their own hands, by means of coercion and violence,
they should remember that ‘Jesus demonstrated that doing so is not
18 Yoder, Politics, 131.19 Yoder, Politics, 96.20 Yoder, Politics, 52.21 Hays, Moral Vision, 244.
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necessary for the one who trusts in the sovereignty of God over
history.’22 They are to live in the way of the Cross as ‘the Cross of
Christ is the model of Christian social efficacy, the power of God for
those who believe.’23 This is because ‘the cross is not a detour or a
hurdle on the way to the kingdom, nor is it even the way to the
kingdom; it is the kingdom come.’24
THE ESCHATOLOGICAL CONTEXT
According to Carter, Yoder ‘develops his social ethics on the basis of
an eschatological concept of Jesus, which […] is relevant to the
church conceived as an eschatological community.’25 Yoder’s
christocentric eschatology uses ‘his Barthian method of relating all
doctrinal statements to their true centre – Jesus Christ as he is
attested in scripture’.26 It is within this eschatological context that we
see Yoder’s Christology and ecclesiology combining in the formulation
of his social ethics.
Jesus’ announcement of and bringing forth of the Kingdom of God was
a real ‘social order and not a hidden one.’27 Yoder argues that this is
not an immediate or future ‘universal catastrophe’ but the ‘concrete
jubilary obedience, in pardon and repentance’ that opened up ‘the
22 Carter, Politics of the Cross, 98.23 Yoder, Politics, 242.24 Yoder, Politics, 51.25 Carter, Politics of the Cross, 139.26 Carter, Politics of the Cross, 140.27 Yoder, Politics, 105.
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real accessibility of a new order in which grace and justice are linked,
which people only have to accept.’28 This new order is triumphantly
affirmed by the New Testament which asserts that by proclaiming
that ‘Jesus Christ by His cross, resurrection, ascension, and the
pouring out of His Spirit, has triumphed over the powers.’29 However
this present period ‘is characterized by the coexistence of two ages or
aeons.’30 Yoder explains this tension by referring to 1 Corinthians
15:20-28 and Carter likens it ‘to the period of World War II between D-
Day and V-E Day.’31 The Cross introduces this ‘eschatological tension
of “already-not yet” that is embodied in an eschatological community
of disciples who both reject violence and live in tension with the old
social order, just as Jesus did.’32
THE ECCLESIOLOGICAL SHAPE
It is within that eschatological tension of “already-not yet” that Yoder
perceives the context for his social ethics. Its shape within this
context is fundamentally ecclesiological. As the church works in this
context it may take the form of a ‘pilot project, and podium,
pedagogical base and sometimes a power base.’33 That is, the church
28 Yoder, Politics, 105.29 John Howard Yoder, The Christian Witness to the State (Institute of Mennonite Studies Series, no. 3. Newton, Kan.: Faith and Life Press, 1964), 9. It is important to note here Yoder’s understands the powers to be the fallen structures and forces that order society. See Yoder, Politics, 141-43.30 Yoder, Christian Witness, 9.31 Yoder, Christian Witness, 9; Carter, Politics of the Cross, 145. 32 Carter, Politics of the Cross, 139.33 John Howard Yoder, The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical (Gran Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994), 126.
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is a representation of the new reality of reconciliation brought about
by Jesus, it is the place where Jesus is honoured and his will made
known. The church is also the base from which the wider society is
taught about Jesus and occasionally becomes a power base as it
declares and alternative community to that of the powers.
According to Carter Yoder views ‘the church as an eschatological
community of disciples who follow Jesus in rejecting violence and the
glorification of wealth and power and embracing love and
servanthood.’34 The church acts as a preview of what is to come.
‘Yoder’s vision of the Christian community as an alternative polis, a
new society in which God’s future intentions for human society in
general can be discerned.’35 That being said, ‘The church’s calling is
[also] to be the conscience and the servant within human society.’36 It
is a social structure through which ‘the gospel works to change other
structures’.37 The way this will be achieved, according to Yoder, is by
an attitude of “otherness” that is ‘rooted in strength and not in
weakness’ and ‘consists of being a herald of liberation and not a
community of slaves.’38 Here we see that Yoder’s social ethic with
have a distinctively ecclesiological shape.
34 Carter, Politics of the Cross, 181.35 Carter, Politics of the Cross, 181.36 Yoder, Politics, 157. 37 Yoder, Politics, 154.38 Yoder, Politics, 148.
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CASE STUDY: VOTING WITHIN A REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY
Yoder’s theological ethic leads to interesting insights as we
considering the Christian’s approach to voting within a representative
democracy. To begin with Yoder reminds us that the government
makes up part of the powers that structure, rule and order the earth.39
According to Paul in Acts 17 these powers were created by God, have
rebelled and are fallen, and ‘despite their fallen condition the Powers
cannot fully escape the providential sovereignty of God who is still
able to use them for good.’40 As creatures we find ourselves in the
situation where we ‘cannot live without them’ as they are ‘a part of a
good creation’ but also ‘we cannot live with them’ as they harm and
enslave us.41
However Christ, through his ‘genuinely free and human existence’
leading to his death at the hand of the powers, made a public
example of them, triumphed over them, and disarmed them.42 This
victory over the powers is, firstly the means by which the church is
liberated, secondly the message for the church to proclaim, and
thirdly it provides the freedom for the church to establish an
alternative community. According to Yoder, the church and the
Christian must follow Jesus’ example by refusing to exercise certain
types of power without necessarily withdrawing from society. The
39 Yoder, Politics, 141.40 Yoder, Politics, 142.41 Yoder, Politics, 142.42 Yoder, Politics, 144-45.
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church is to proclaim to the wider society ‘that Christ is Lord, a
proclamation [that] is nonetheless a social, political, structural, fact
which constitutes a challenge to the Powers.’43 However this
proclamation is pessimistic about the possibility of the church itself
bringing about the redemption of the powers as this is solely the work
of God achieved in Christ’s victory on the Cross.
This places the Christian in an interesting position when drawn into
the processes of government through the electoral system. The
Christian is inescapably part of the system but yet participates in a
rival and alternative social reality.44 Yoder attempts to achieve a
balance for the Christian as they relate to the powers. On the one
hand Christians are to embrace the Gospel as a genuinely political
reality that brings about and ‘constitutes an unavoidable challenge to
the powers that be and the beginning of a new set of social
alternatives.’45 On the other hand as the Christian follows the way of
the Cross, they will imitate Jesus’ social non-conformity while still
renouncing non-involvement.46 Yoder synthesises his thoughts with
‘Paul calls for […] subordination. […] Subordination is significantly
different to obedience. The contentious objector who refuses to do
43 Yoder, Politics, 157.44 This is particularly the case within Australia where voting is compulsory.45 Yoder, Politics, 39.46 Yoder, Politics, 186.
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what government demands, but still remains under the sovereignty of
that government accepts the penalties which it imposes’.47
The Christian is then require to work how they might interact with the
political system in a way that expresses Jesus’ refusal ‘to concede
that those in power represent an ideal, a logically proper, or even and
empirically acceptable definition of what it means to be political.’48
This will occur by being Jesus’ voice declaring to the powers that ‘your
definition of polis, of the social, of the wholeness of being human is
socially perverted.’49 The Christian ought to attempt to do this whilst
also finding themselves being subject to government and the
electoral process. This is because ‘we subject ourselves to
government because it was in doing so that Jesus revealed and
achieved God’s victory.’50
DEMOCRACY IN PERSPECTIVE
When it comes to representative democracy, Yoder calls the Christian
to think rightly about the reality of democracy. ‘It is argued that the
advent of popular franchise has transferred integrally to “the people”
the attributes of the former king-by-divine-right. It is now said of the
populus, as it had been said of the king […] that his voice is the voice
47 Yoder, Politics, 209.48 Yoder, Politics, 107.49 Yoder, Politics, 209.50 Yoder, Politics, 209.
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of God.’51 But in reality, ‘for two centuries they have been telling us
that we, the people, were governing ourselves, and we have been
believing it.’52 Yoder puts this more strongly in The Christian Witness
to the State, ‘It is still the fact that some men exercise power over
others, with a view partly to personal benefit and partly to selfish
purposes.’53 This is because Yoder brings his scepticism of the powers
and experience of democracy to observe that ‘the exercise of
government is by nature oligarchical and domineering. Democracy
does not differ from other forms of government fundamentally, but
only in shading.’54 Thus, ‘the vote does not mean we are governing
ourselves.’55 Voters are so far removed from the actual making of
government decisions that they have a ‘less morally blameworthy
involvement in executing those decisions’.56 Therefore, by voting a
Christian is not participating in the powers or exercising rule within
the secular political realm.
COMMUNICATION BY VOTE
51 John Howard Yoder, ‘The Natural Ritual: Biblical Realism and the Elections’. Sojourners. October (1976): 29-30.52 Yoder, ‘The Natural Ritual,’ 29.53 Yoder, Christian Witness, 26.54 Yoder, ‘The Natural Ritual,’ 29.55 Yoder, ‘The Natural Ritual,’ 30.56 Yoder, Christian Witness, 27.
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Upon adopting Yoder’s realistic approach to democracy, the Christian
is now free to see voting as an opportunity to communicate to the
powers that rule over them. For the Christian community this forms
part of their proclamation. Yoder laments that typically, ‘for most
Christians the decision about how to vote is not the expression of any
careful evaluation of what needs to be said to the authorities’.57 For
Yoder, voting ‘is one way, one of the weaker and vaguer ways, to
speak truth to power.’58 This shift in thinking from ‘ruling-by-vote’ to
‘communicating-by-vote’ will change the way that Christian’s think
about and approach the act of voting.
Within these thus lowered expectations as to real control, we can
be less tense about which side to take, for the criteria which
guide us may be more varied. We need not longer assume that as
little Constantines we must always decide on “The Right.” Other
things being equal, we may vote for the weaker side in order to
counteract the winners margin of self-righteousness. […] We may
ask to be counted against the system by abstention or by a throw
away vote, supporting a hopeless cause like Prohibition or Dr.
Spock.59
57 Yoder, Christian Witness, 27.58 Yoder, ‘The Natural Ritual,’ 30.59 Yoder, ‘The Natural Ritual,’ 30.
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As well as a form of communication with the powers, Yoder
surprisingly encourages participation on the grounds of a retrieval
ethic with the goal seeming to be ‘to retrieve as much good as one
can in the situation and limit as much harm as is possible.’60 Yoder
concedes, ‘A system in which the subjects are consulted, and in which
the oligarchy can be changed non-violently, is better than other
systems, so we shall participate gratefully with low expectations’.61
60 Michael Hill, The How and Why of Love: An Introduction to Evangelical Ethics (Kingsford, N.S.W.: Matthias Media, 2002), 133.61 Yoder, ‘The Natural Ritual,’ 30.
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Yoder does not conclude one way or the other about whether a
Christian should vote or abstain. For Yoder it is to be decided on a
case-by-case basis depending upon what needs to be communicated
to those who are ruling. However, Yoder does consider that voting
may be a good thing for the Christian to do as a way of “speaking”
and also as a way of supporting a system that, although far from
perfect, allows the changing of “rulers” in a non-violent way.62 When it
comes to how a Christian should vote, ‘there would ideally need to be
common deliberation and common action if the Christian witness is
not to be a testimony more to confusion than to truth.’63 For Yoder,
the deliberation and organisation of a Christian vote is done with the
purpose of communication and not simply to favour one particular
party of candidate for which he criticises the Roman Catholic
Church.64 However ‘too often, Yoder claims, Christians vote in secular
elections to “become politically powerful and to use that power in the
interest in ones own goals.” Such a strategy is “hardly reconcilable
with that of the New Testament church.”’65
62 Yoder, ‘The Natural Ritual,’ 30.63 Yoder, Christian Witness, 27-28.64 Yoder, Christian Witness, 27-28.65 Andy Alexis-Baker, ‘When There is Nothing to Vote For: Liberalism, John Howard Yoder, and the Church,’ pages 10-22 in Electing Not to Vote: Christian Reflections on Reasons for Not Voting (eds. Ted Lewis; Eugene, Ore: Cascade Books, 2008), 21; Yoder, Christian Witness, 27.
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EVALUATION
When it comes to evaluating the theological ethics of Yoder there is
much of his work that must be praised. Yoder displays a deep
commitment to the Bible as the means by which a theological ethic
should be determined and sets about this task with serious exegesis
and rigorous engagement with biblical scholarship. Hays, although
not convinced by Yoder at every exegetical turn, acknowledges that
‘he is working seriously and deeply at the exegetical task, presenting
his findings for all to see and inviting challenges to his exegesis of
particular texts.’66
This being said, Yoder’s exegetical work of the Jubilee appears to over
state its place in the person and work of Jesus. Another frustration is
that despite choosing the Gospel of Luke as the main basis for his
analysis of Jesus’ social ethic, Yoder devotes very little time to Acts.
Given the prevailing scholarly consensus of the unity of Luke-Acts, it
seems that a study of Acts would have been a natural place to go to
follow the Christian communities enactment of the ethics of Jesus.67
Another omission in Yoder’s use of scripture is that despite the fact
that he ‘never denies that the specific rules found in scripture are
66 Hays, Moral Vision, 240.67 Luke Timothy Johnson, ‘Luke-Acts, Book of’ Pages 403-20 in vol. 4 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary (eds. David Noel Freedman; 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992), 404.
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binding on the Christian community, he places little emphasis on
them.’68
It also could be stated that Yoder’s ethic is insufficiently shaped by
the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection for Yoder can appear to be
merely the vindication of Jesus going the way of the Cross. If the
resurrection played a more central role in his ethics there may be the
scope for the Christian to speak with more clarity about the future of
history. The resurrection also confirms God’s approval of the creation
and is the first fruits of his work to bring about its redemption. The
Christian may then, trusting in God, work for the renewal and
restoration of the world around them because of the future hope for
creation secured in the resurrection.
Yoder’s call for Christians to entrust the future to God, just as Jesus
and the ancient Israelites did, is an admirable. However it may not
necessarily mean that they do not participate in social action within
wider society as Yoder argues. Is it possible that a Christian, fully
trusting in God to determine the future, is active in pursuing social
and political change within the powers that exist? It may be argued
that reliance upon God and active participation are not mutually
exclusive as Yoder presents.
68 Hays, Moral Vision, 248.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexis-Baker, Andy. ‘When There is Nothing to Vote For: Liberalism,
John Howard Yoder, and the Church.’ Pages 10-22 in Electing
Not to Vote: Christian Reflections on Reasons for Not Voting.
Edited by Ted Lewis. Eugene, Ore.: Cascade Books, 2008.
Carter, Craig A. The Politics of the Cross: The Theology and Social
Ethics of John Howard Yoder. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos
Press, 2001
Churchill, Winston. The Official Report, House of Commons (5th
Series), vol. 444, pages 206–07; 11 November 1947.
Hays, Richard B. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community,
Cross, New Creation: A Contemporary Introduction to New
Testament Ethics. London: T&T Clark, 1996.
Hill, Michael. The How and Why of Love: An Introduction to
Evangelical Ethics. Kingsford, N.S.W.: Matthias Media, 2002.
Johnson, Luke Timothy. ‘Luke-Acts, Book of’. Pages 403-20 in Vol. 4 of
The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by David Noel Freedman. 6
vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
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Yoder, John Howard. The Christian witness to the state. Institute of
Mennonite Studies Series, no. 3. Newton, Kan.: Faith and Life
Press, 1964.
_____. ‘The Natural Ritual: Biblical Realism and the Elections’.
Sojourners. October (1976): 29-30.
_____. The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster. Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 1972.
_____. The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical
(Gran Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994)
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