Re-membering an evangelical ecclesiology: How John Howard Yoder informs 21st century evangelical ecclesial ethics & justice.

摘要

North American evangelical ecclesial traditions suffer from memory loss concerning their history, ecclesiology and social ethics. Many evangelically-formed congregations are not aware of how ecclesiology, even if assumed or implicit, impacts theology, interpretations of the Word, and conceptions of social justice.;John Howard Yoder contends that ecclesiology is social ethics because "we know more from Jesus Christ and in the context of the confessed faith than we know other ways."1 Yoder's seminal call to recover the inherently political and social nature of Christ's work on the cross re-locates the ecclesia in central space in the world and orients it toward eschatological time. This frees the church to serve the world by being the church out of a diaspora posture that tells the truth in a foreign land.;If, as Yoder says, the church shapes how we receive the Good News, embody discipleship, and witness in the world, what does this mean for the evangelical tradition that has historically been shaped by a low commitment to ecclesiology and instead often interprets theology in highly individualistic, even anti-traditional, ways? Current evangelical traditions need to rebuild intentional ecclesiologies in order to embody orthodox Christian ethics. This task will be accomplished through remembering our own history, recovering a biblical definition of justice, re-appropriating strengths from within the Pietist inheritance, and conversing with John Howard Yoder's ecclesiology.;Addressing the memory loss within evangelical traditions by reviewing early history reveals ecclesial shifts related to the Reformation principles sola scriptura and "priesthood of all believers." Recent history reveals ethical shifts related to triumphal, racist, nationalist temptations and the Fundamentalist controversies that split practicing social justice from evangelism ("The Great Reversal.");Understanding evangelical history, along with appreciating aspects of Yoder's ecclesiology, provides the evangelical tradition with a framework for considering the church as distinct from the world, ordered intra-ecclesially as the inter-racial Body of Christ, and actively sent back into the world. It is through this three-fold sense of social ethics understood as embodying biblical justice that the church prefigures the call of the whole world and is free to be "in the world but not of it.";1John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 11.