Yoder offers a vision of particular dialogical communities that practice generous solidarity precisely through creative uses of conflict and a vulnerable receptivity to the “least of these” within the church and outside it. Few today offer as compelling a vision for pursuing justice and political engagements in heterogeneous societies. Yoder interprets the binding lordship of Christ as the opening of dialogical relations between the church and the world in which giving and receiving happens in both directions. Vulnerable relations with outsiders (...) are integral to the otherness of the church. When this understanding of caritas is forgotten and unpractised, the church loses its otherness and assimilates to the violence of the world. (shrink)

In this volume of essays John Howard Yoder projects a vision of Christian social ethics rooted in historical community and illuminated by scripture. Drawing upon scriptural accounts of the early church, he demonstrates the Christian community's constant need for reform and change. Yoder first examines the scriptural and theoretical foundations of Christian social ethics. While personally committed to the "radical reformation" tradition, he eschews "denominational" categorization and addresses Christians in general. The status of Christian community, he argues, cannot be separated (...) from the doctrinal content of beliefs and the moral understanding of discipleship. As a result, the Christian's voluntary commitment to a particular community, as distinct from secular society, offers him valuable resources for practical moral reasoning. From a historical perspective, Yoder reviews the efforts of sixteenth-century radical (or Anabaptist) reformers to return to the fundamental ethical standards of the New Testament, and to disengage the community, as a biblically rooted call to faith that does not imply withdrawal from the pluralistic world. Rather, radical commitment to Christianity strengthens and renews the authentic human interests and values of the whole society. His analyses of democracy and of civil religion illustrate how Christianity must challenge and embrace the wider world. (shrink)

This book provides a new introduction to Augustine's "City of God" and his doctrine of the two cities, sources of this doctrine in Manichaeism, (Neo)Platonism and the pre- Augustinian Jewish and Jewish-Christian traditions.

Written in the intense political and intellectual tumult of the early years of the Weimar Republic, Political Theology develops the distinctive theory of sovereignty that made Carl Schmitt one of the most significant and controversial ...

In this work, legal theorist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt argues that liberalism's basis in individual rights cannot provide a reasonable justification for sacrificing oneself for the state.

This highly original interpretation of Paul by the Jewish philosopher of religion Jacob Taubes was presented in a number of lectures held in Heidelberg toward the end of his life, and was regarded by him as his “spiritual testament.” ...