Advance Comment
A Mind Patient and Untamed
Assessing John Howard Yoder's Contribution
to Theology, Ethics, and Peacemaking

"In bringing together these sixteen essays on the work of John Howard Yoder, Gayle Gerber Koontz and Ben Ollenburger have done their former colleague a true honor and the rest of us a true service. These essays clarify Yoder's thought on a wide range of issues--from atonement theory to Christian-Jewish relations to the theological status of law and civil authority and place his thought in conversation with a remarkable host of thinkers, not only theologians such as Augustine and Anselm, but also a surprising set of interlocutors not normally associated with the Mennonite world, including Wittgenstein and Derrida, Paul Virilio and Edward Said. With this book, we are confronted, once again, with Yoder's clarity and precision, his wariness of method and theory, his calm refusal to allow Christian doctrine to be domesticated by the dogmas of professional ethics. Most of all, we are reminded of his patient insistence on the point of theology in the first place: to announce the victory of the Lamb that was slain and to show how this victory frees us to follow Jesus to the cross and embody His peace in the world."

"With this book, we are confronted, once again, with Yoder's clarity and precision, his wariness of method and theory, his calm refusal to allow Christian doctrine to be domesticated by the dogmas of professional ethics. Most of all, we are reminded of his patient insistence on the point of theology in the first place: to announce the victory of the Lamb that was slain and to show how this victory frees us to follow Jesus to the cross and embody His peace in the world.
—Michael J. Baxter teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame and is the National Secretary of the Catholic Peace Fellowship

"This book does exactly what John Howard Yoder did in person and in his writings by alerting us to how often we do violence by the way we read—so careful to control the history of our own minds! Let this book challenge the way you think, especially about what really matters for Christians. You probably won’t agree with everything in these writers’ critiques of Yoder’s vast and vastly divergent work, but then, if you read as Yoder taught us, you won’t agree any longer with your former self either."
—Marva J. Dawn, Theologian, Author, Educator with Christians Equipped for Ministry; Teaching Fellow in Spiritual Theology, Regent College, Vancouver, BC

"The lessons Yoder has to teach are hardwon because they so challenge our endemic laziness—a laziness that too easily accepts the assumption that the way things are is the way things have to be. The excellence of these essays, written largely by Mennonites, is a witness to the community that made Yoder’s work possible. . . . Yoder cannot be understood without the background of the faithful witness of his Anabaptist forebears. It is, therefore, appropriate that these essays representing the beginning of the hard work of receiving Yoder are by ‘his people.’ Hopefully, however, these chapters are only the beginning of the many we will need to help us understand the what and how Yoder has to teach us. Only a beginning—but what a wonderful one."
—Stanley Hauerwas, Duke University, in the Inroduction

"Never has there been greater interest in the theological ethics of John Yoder.  This wonderful collection of essays is indicative of the quality of the engagement with his work.  In fact, these essays should help bring the level of discussion and debate of Yoder's work to a new level."
—Mark Thiessen Nation, Associate Professor of Theology, Eastern Mennonite Seminary; co-editor, The Wisdom of the Cross: Essays in Honor of John Howard Yoder

A Mind Patient and Untamed orders:

• Cascadia Publishing House Online Order Form
• Cascadia, Herald Press, and other order options
• Credit card orders through A Mind Patient and Untamed page, MennoLink Online Bookstore.