Synopses & Reviews
Between 1971 and 1996 the late John Howard Yoder wrote a group of ten essays with profound implications for Jewish-Christian relations. This new volume in the Radical Traditions series brings these important writings together for the first time.
Significantly extending the thesis offered in such previous books as "The Politics of Jesus" (Eerdmans), Yoder here argues that the historic Jewish-Christian schism "did not have to be." Building his case on compelling historical evidence, Yoder shows that, properly understood, Jesus did not reject Judaism, that Judaism did not reject Jesus, and that the apostle Paul's mandate for the salvation of the nations is best understood not as a product of his Hellenization but rather as belonging to the context of his Jewish heritage.
Editors Michael Cartwright and Peter Ochs make Yoder's positions even more clear by locating them in relation to his decades-long dialogue with the philosopher and rabbi Steven S. Schwarzschild as well as to Yoder's study of the Letter to the Ephesians. They also show how Yoder's perspectives on Jewish-Christian reconciliation has much to say about it means for Christians and Jews to share the God-given vocation to be "missionary" peoples to and for the nations.