Week 9 – Bevans Chapter 9
March 10, 2008
Bevans remarks:
Like the prophets of Israel, perhaps the greatest service Christians today can render to humanity is to be a sign of God’s “No” to the world because of God’s deeper word of “Yes,” and to be an instrument and foretaste of what Christians beleive will surely arrive as a “new heaven and a new earth.”
It seems an apt response to today’s tendency toward consumerist, watered-down theology. Without disrergarding the dangers of this approach (as rightly noted by Bevans), I affirm the place of centrality given to the gospel within this model. It seems, perhaps moreso than other approaches, to recognize the efficacy of the gospel itself as a transformative agent.
I also, however, waiver on Bevan’s characertization of the approach because he so heavily emphasizes Yoder and Willimon. While much of what these authors assert in Resident Aliens comes as fitting critique of a Christendom mentality, I would also suggest that their approach errs in its tendency to centralize “community” over and above the gospel itself. (This is not to belittle community as a central part of the Christian life, but only to assert that it is a rightful outflowing of the gospel, rather than its source or its equivalent).
“Resident Alien” isn’t a term Yoder ever uses and he tends to be somewhat critical of Hauerwas on his tendency to be against/counter to the nations. Whereas Yoder’s theology, especially as you will find in “For the Nations” and the “Politics of Jesus” is about just how transformative the gospel really and is always “for the nations.” But even saying that hauerwas put the community before the gospel would be (in my mind) an unfair criticism. He would say that the gospel is and can only be something that is embodied in the community of believers and doesn’t exist “somewhere” out there, so I don’t think that’s the same thing. Anyways, good thoughts here, I’m glad you’re draw to this model, as am I!