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The Christian Witness to the State: Nicholas Wolterstorff on John Howard Yoder

Document Type

Book Review

Language

English (en)

Publication Date

2015

Publication Title

Journal of Law and Religion

Abstract

Reading The Mighty and the Almighty called to mind a graduate seminar on John Howard Yoder that I took with Stanley Hauerwas. At some point during a discussion of Yoder's Politics of Jesus, I asked a question more personal than academic. Prior to graduate school, I had served as a military attorney at the Pentagon. I had spent most of my time litigating government contracts and conducting major investigations. Complicit in the violence of the law, to be sure. But I was not drawing battle plans or launching weapons systems. Most of my issues were along the lines of determining whether the people providing support services at a military base had fairly been awarded their contracts, or how we might address the problems of sexual assault at the service academies. I pressed Hauerwas on the point: Was all of this compromised? I anticipated a takedown, but Hauerwas's response was far less strident and far more pastoral than I would have predicted: Maybe but maybe not. Who were my friends, and what were they telling me? How should we navigate within places of compromise to act in the world as we find it? What are the compromises of any job (whether mine as a military lawyer or his as a university professor) that tempt us with power?

Keywords

Political Theology, Church-State Relations, Stanley Hauerwas, Nicholas Wolterstorff, John Howard Yoder, The Mighty and the Almighty

Publication Citation

John D. Inazu et al., The Christian Witness to the State: Nicholas Wolterstorff on John Howard Yoder in Polycarp’s Dilemma: A Discussion of Nicholas Wolterstorff’s the Mighty and the Almighty: An Essay in Political Theology Book Review Roundtable, 30 J. L. & Religion 496 (2015)

Comments

In Polycarp's Dilemma: A Discussion Of Nicholas Wolterstorff's The Mighty And The Almighty: An Essay In Political Theology - The Mighty and the Almighty: An Essay in Political Theology. By Nicholas Wolterstorff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. 190.

(cloth) ISBN: 9781107027312. $29.99
(paper). ISBN: 9781107673809.

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