John Howard Yoder: Quotes about personality

John Howard Yoder was 20th century American Mennonite theologian. Explore interesting quotes on personality.
John Howard Yoder: 30   quotes 0   likes

“After Constantine … the ruler, not the average person or the weak person, is the model for ethical deliberations. A moral statement on the rightness of truth-telling or the wrongness of killing is tested first by whether a ruler can meet such standards.”

John Howard Yoder

Source: The Priestly Kingdom (1984), p. 138

Truth , Personality

“For the early Church, "church" and "world" were visibly distinct yet affirmed in faith to have one and the same lord. This pair of affirmations is what the so-called Constantinian transformation changes (I here use the name of Constantine merely as a label for this transformation, which began before AD200 and took over 200 years; the use of his name does not mean an evaluation of his person or work). The most pertinent fact about the new state of things after Constantine and Augustine is not that Christians were no longer persecuted and began to be privileged, nor that emperors built churches and presided over ecumenical deliberations about the Trinity; what matters is that the two visible realities, church and world, were fused. There is no longer anything to call "world"; state, economy, art, rhetoric, superstition, and war have all been baptized.”

John Howard Yoder

"The Otherness of the Church" (1961) in A Reader in Ecclesiology (2012), p. 200

War , World , Faith , Art

“Radical Protestants have always been concerned for the inwardly authentic quality of personal experience and commitment. From this perspective one judges the run-of-the-mill piety which is satisfied with conformity to easily attained patterns of expression. This critical perspective on hypocrisy and superficiality presupposes a more authentic alternative, which is very difficult to define. Once it is clearly defined, that new, more authentic form becomes inauthentic in its turn; yet that kind of preoccupation always belongs as part of the radical Protestant vision. The "civil religion" is judged for being feasible; its demands are too attainable.”

John Howard Yoder

Source: The Priestly Kingdom (1984), p. 175

Religion , Parting , Personality