The social ethics of nonresistance: The writings of Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder analyzed from a Roman Catholic perspective

This paper examines the social ethics of Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder from the perspective of Official Roman Catholic Social Teachings. Yoder grounds his social ethics on a biblical ethic of obedience to Jesus, an ecclesiology of the church as an adult, consenting, minority community, and an eschatology that posits two contemporaneous but opposed aeons. The first aeon is that of the "principalities and powers" which points away from obedience to Jesus and the second aeon is that of the "kingdom of the Son" witnessed to by the church.;Yoder perceives the state as an unredeemed social construct of the first aeon, one of the "principalities and powers." It can be an agent of God's wrath, but it cannot be Christian. Christians and the Christian church are to witness to the state by calling to conversion those agents of the state whom they encounter. Christians are to refuse to cooperate with any actions of the state that are coercive.;Catholic Social Teaching makes abundant use of extrabiblical sources, employs an ecclesiology of the hierarchical institution, takes responsibility for creating a just society, perceives continuity between present history and the realization of the future kingdom. The state is a good to be promoted rather than an evil to be tolerated.;Official Catholic Social Teaching raises challenges to Yoder's ethics, and is, in turn, challenged by him. The Catholic challenges to Yoder are: to construct a Christian ethic on the whole of the Scriptures, not on selected texts; to identify the efficacy of Jesus' redemption in history; to expand his ecclesiology; to reconcile the God of creation with the God of redemption; to identify more clearly the positive characteristics of the kingdom as it has already come.;Yoder challenges the Catholic tradition to confess its past failings, to allow the Scriptures to challenge present teachings and practice, to justify its recourse to extrabiblical sources for constitutive elements of its social ethics.;The mutual challenges provide an example of dialogue in social ethics that can enrich the entire Christian community.