Stanley
Hauerwas’ main argument in A Community of
Character has the dressing of ecclesiology. The opening sentences of the “Introduction” reveal that his
one concern is “to reassert the social significance of the church as a distinct
society with an integrity peculiar to itself” (pg. 1). Indeed, the compelling characteristic
of Hauerwas’ ethic is its commitment to the particular narrative of Christian
history as revealed and experienced in the church community. However, I think we miss the fullness
of the argument if we just focus on the community level of the Christian
narrative. What is needed is an
understanding of the foundational beliefs that support that community; Hauerwas
would agree, writing, “I contend that the only reason for being Christian … is
because Christian convictions are true; and the only reason for participation
in the church is that it is the community that pledges to form its life by that
truth” (pg. 1). With this in mind
– that the Christian community is nothing without a firm grasp of the truth of
its basic convictions – I contend that chapter 2, “Jesus: The Story of the Kingdom,”
is the hermeneutical key to understanding how the character of the Christian
community is formed and lived throughout history. The narrative ethics that Hauerwas proposes is certainly
about the community of God’s people, and so clearly ecclesiology plays a key
role in the discussion. However
behind the ecclesiology (really, behind any good ecclesiology) is Christology;
and so the basic conviction that supports the development of Hauerwas’ ethic
must be about Jesus Christ before it is about the church. Hauerwas accomplishes this balanced
ordering throughout the book by timely reminding us of the lordship of Jesus
Christ. In so doing, he draws the
Christian community into the daily adventure of following after Jesus Christ.
A Story to Tell
In
chapter 2, Hauerwas reminds us that “to be Christian implies substantive and
profound convictions about the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth” (pg.
36). These convictions, however,
must not just say something about what we believe, they must dramatically inform
how we act. This space between
belief and act is most readily bridged, for Hauerwas, by recovering the gospel
story. This move shifts the question
from “did Jesus have a social ethic” and instead allows us to see that his
story itself is a social ethic (pg. 37).
As the church proclaims the truth of Jesus’ story – that the Kingdom of
God is present – it then also sets out a way to live. The community has no direction apart from the gospel
narrative; there is no separation of Christology from ecclesiology (pg. 37).
Hauerwas
is concerned to hold up a “high Christology” while also recovering the
centrality of Jesus’ life. He is
not content to choose either between the “Jesus of history” or the “Christ of
faith”; for him, it is both (pg. 40).
The identity of Jesus is then only grasped in learning to follow him. In so doing, Hauerwas affirms that
“Jesus’ person cannot be separated from his work, the incarnation from the
atonement” (pg. 43). The challenge
comes in anchoring Jesus’ universal Kingdom in actual history. There is a narrative to the truth of
God’s sovereignty and lordship, and that narrative is lived out by Jesus’ work
in the church of history.
Beyond
navigating the “christological” or “historical” questions of Jesus, Hauerwas is
after something quite unique in his approach of viewing Jesus as a social
ethic. “If we pay attention to the
narrative and self involving character of the Gospels, as the early disciples
did,” writes Hauerwas, “there is no way to speak of Jesus’ story without its
forming our own. The story it
forms creates a community which corresponds to the form of his life” (pg.
51). Jesus’ preaching on the
Kingdom of God formed not just the community of disciples, it continues to form
the church community today.
A Story to Live By
The
basic conviction that God’s sovereign lordship is manifest in Jesus’
proclamation of the present Kingdom drives the narrative of character-forming
communities. And this narrative,
for Hauerwas, breeds adventure.
I’ll admit that “adventure” is not a theological or ethical concept that
first comes to mind when I think of the Kingdom of God; and it is not a point
that Hauerwas necessarily hammered home throughout the book. But as I read through these essays, I
became more and more convinced that a sense of the divine-human “adventure” is
just what the church needs.
Hauerwas foreshadows this theme of adventure in the acknowledgement
section of the “Preface.” He
writes, “Finally, I wish to thank my son Adam for his relish for life and his
unflagging enthusiasm to get on with the adventure” (pg. x). On the surface, this could mean any
number of things. After all, an
acknowledgment is for the particular person, and likely Hauerwas has a certain
nuance in mind when writing to his son about “the adventure.” But soon, “adventure” becomes a key
descriptor of the character-forming community that bears witness to the
lordship of Jesus Christ.
Watership Down, for example, is not just
about any kind of story-formed community; this is an adventure-story-formed
community. Hauerwas’ ten theses
toward the reformation of Christian social ethics (see pgs. 9-12) are not just
narrative based, but they are based on the adventurous narrative of Israel and
Jesus. What’s interesting to me is
how this adventure theme is so subdued throughout Hauerwas’ argument. But perhaps that’s what makes it all
the more compelling. “Adventure”
ties us to something bigger than ourselves in a way that few other
narrative-descriptors can. Watership Down demonstrates that the survival
of the community is based on the re-telling of their own adventurous
history. But is the gospel often
told as adventure? Hauerwas’
narrative ethics brings the gospel into this light, and it does so to offer
something not just substantive but truthful to the public social dimension.
To
show this, Hauerwas calls Christians to “courage” in chapter 8 “The Moral Value
of the Family.” Courage is
required to navigate any adventure, much less the Christian adventure. More than just courage, however, Christians
need to cultivate the courage of their convictions – especially in the context
of the family. Hauerwas gives an
example: “Morally I am convinced that Christians are necessarily committed to
the ethic of non-resistance. Yet
the temptation is for me to teach my son that such an ethic is but one option
among others” (pg. 173). Here,
Hauerwas is calling for the type of community support that calls on the
truth-telling revealed in the Christian narrative. Family values and morals are soon tossed about indifferently
without a courageous community to speak and teach their basic convictions.
Similarly,
the Christian community needs to speak more candidly and courageously about
sex. Young people, explains
Hauerwas, want a compelling reason as to why they shouldn’t roll around in the
backseat of a car. Trying to
remember complex ethical arguments don’t do much good in such a situation – and
Hauerwas doesn’t have an “ethic” in and of itself that will solve such
behavior. Rather, he explains,
“what the young properly demand is an account of the life and the initiation
into a community that makes intelligible why their interest in sex should be
subordinate to other interests.
What they, and we, demand is the lure of an adventure that captures the
imagination sufficiently that conquest means more than the sexual possession of
another” (pg. 195). Hauerwas
suggests in this particular essay that marriage and singleness for Christians
is such an adventure – and it is an adventure grounded in the hope-filled
presence of the Kingdom of God.
Hauerwas’
approach to abortion draws upon a similar narrative conviction. He presses the church to understand
“why abortion is incompatible with a community whose constitution is nothing
less than the story of God’s promise to mankind through the calling of Israel
and the life of Jesus” (pg. 224).
This focus on the community, and the community story, re-calibrates our
moral questions. Instead of
starting with “why abortion is wrong,” we can ask, “what is it about this community
that causes us to exclude abortion?”
Hauerwas explains that it is the basic conviction of the lordship of
Jesus Christ: life is not ours to take (pg. 225). What’s more – this creator is also our redeemer. What then does this mean for the
mothers who are considering abortion – what does a redemptive community that
values the sovereignty of God over all of life offer? For the Christian community, children are our hope; they are
our history. “Children are a sign
of the trustworthiness of God’s creation and his unwillingness to abandon the
world to powers of darkness” (pg. 227).
Welcoming children into the world then, for the Christian, comes not
from just a “sentimental fondness” for babies. Having children is a significant political act. Children are “an indication that God,
not man, rules this existence, and we have been graciously invited to have a
part in God’s adventure and his Kingdom through the simple action of having
children” (pg. 228).
The
Christian narrative of Israel and Jesus is not just an old dusty collection of
stories. It is a living adventure
that continues to form communities of deep conviction and character. The Kingdom of God is present in Jesus
Christ, and the Christian community remembers its history as it lives in the hope-filled
adventure of following after Jesus Christ.
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