Abstract
This is a collection of conference papers which includes a sermon and essay by Stanley Hauerwas and eight essays by leading scholars including Jennifer Herdt, Gerald McKenny and Hans Ulrich. The theme is assessing the legacy of the Reformation and attempting to answer the question Michael Mawson articulates: ‘Can central Protestant claims and commitments provide compelling and viable accounts of the Christian life?’ (p. 2) ‘Freedom’ hearkens to Luther’s 1520 reflection on the Magnificat, which is beautifully explored through Barth’s rubric of command in Chapter 4 by Brian Brock as the ‘riskiness of living with God’ (p. 77). A hopeful narration of Christian freedom runs through these papers. Ulrich appeals to ‘messianic time’ (p. 45), Rachel Muers casts this freedom as necessarily a pneumatological reality and Herdt calls to awake to the ‘joy of obedience’ (p. 171). Overall, Luther’s argument is affirmed and explored that, ‘faith not only frees Christians from the world, it frees them to be in and for the world in a new way’ (p. 3).
But there is also a shadow side to this freedom as the legacy of the Reformation is complicit in the world as it now stands made. Asserting the freedom of Christian ethicists may be just another way of admitting that we are homeless and destitute in this post-Protestant, post-Christendom era. Both Church and world are in upheaval (are we post-apocalypse?), and moral problems thought decided require revisiting. What are the landmarks that can help us take stock of our surroundings and gain our bearings? And how do we make sense of our legacies, including the various Reformation legacies these essay highlight? I am not suggesting this volume offers answers to these questions, but reading it did help me articulate and sharpen them.
These questions find concrete exemplification in Paul Marten’s attempt to assess Yoder’s (and Anabaptism’s) legacy in light of his decades’ long sexual predation. Interestingly, Martens begins quoting Calvin who freely admits disdain for Anabaptists and refusal to give them serious consideration. Calvin rejected and refused to understand, much the way we cannot understand Yoder as sexual predator. Our disdain clouds our understanding right at the critical moment when the violence inherent in Yoder’s nonviolent logic is exposed and must be rendered intelligible. Mawson comes closest to breaking through Yoder’s obfuscation by inverting the tendency to read Bonhoeffer through Yoderian lenses and showing that Yoder’s ‘concept of possibility rationalizes reality’ (p. 134), even violent, sexual predatory reality. As Bonhoeffer exemplified in word and deed, freedom for the Christian is always freedom for obedience, freedom for community, freedom for holiness, freedom for justice. It is never freedom to do as you please at the expense of others. Sin persists as a threat to our freedom and a reality in the community, making the ban impractical as Calvin expressed. The cross is a political alternative that can only be embraced voluntarily. Foisting a cross on another as a means to some idealized ‘freedom’ for one’s self is not politically alternative but a return to the violent status quo.
Overall, I found these essays (especially Mawson’s) very thought provoking both in wrestling with the Yoder issue and thinking through what freedom and obedience look like in this fearful new world. Mawson asserts, ‘There is no Christian ethical thinking or action apart from the call of Christ and human obedience’ (p. 138), and those are just the courageous words we need.