THE PARTICULARITY OF JESUS AND THE TIME OF THE KINGDOM: PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY IN YODER

John Howard Yoder's work, while appreciated in many respects, is not generally read in a philosophical register. This essay attempts to alter this situation by proposing a relation between his theology and a philosophy of particularity. The project articulates a logic of Jesus that is independent from and antagonistic towards the Powers. This logic is resolutely secular, revolutionary, and creative. I contend that Jesus' “equality with God” amounts to a radical affirmation of history and temporality. Yoder's work is presented as a zone of interference, a particular vantage from which a simultaneous practice of philosophy and theology becomes possible.