Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction: A Book Review
Mainstream magazines seldom get involved in theological affairs—at least not in expressing approbation for theologians. Yet in 2001 it named one seminary professor “America’s Best Theologian,” to which he responded, “‘Best’ is not a theological category” [1]. This snarky reply is something of an attitudinal trademark of Stanley Hauerwas, who retired recently after many years as the Gilbert T. Rowe professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School.
Hauerwas spent his illustrious career teaching at three institutions, primarily at the University of Notre Dame and Duke. The elderly Texan has authored or contributed to well over forty books, and published hundreds of essays and articles. He has lent an influential, albeit not uncontroversial voice, to discussion of subjects as varied as philosophical theology, pacifism, medical ethics, and the American liberal tradition. Yet the defining emphasis of his work has been the church’s centrality to Christian ethics [2].
What may make my perspective on Hauerwas useful is that I had him as a professor once. I was enrolled in a doctoral seminar in philosophical theology that Hauerwas co-taught with Catholic theologian Paul Griffiths. I was challenged in this seminar in numerous ways.
The Dilemma
Despite the helpful insight that I have gained through reading Hauerwas, as well as some personal contact with him, there are significant problems. As a confessional evangelical (a Free Will Baptist no less), appropriating any notable theologian requires interpretation and translation. We can and should engage the best of the wider Christian tradition. If Moses plundered the Egyptians’ wisdom in preparation for the exodus calling (cf. Acts 7:22), then we too can learn from those accented voices not immediately familiar to our ears.
Yet this task isn’t easy. Though Hauerwas has described his theological affiliation in different ways, he most commonly refers to himself as a “high church Mennonite.” In his work one will also find influence from the Methodist, Anglican, and Catholic traditions. More significantly, however, is his commitment to a non-foundationalist epistemology, which shapes his ideas about doctrinal truth and Scripture.
Besides these differences, Hauerwas espouses other views that many conservative Christians will find unpersuasive at best, and heterodox at worst. That said, Hauerwas has been a powerful critic of abortion, Constantinean Christianity, and any attempt to separate doctrine from ethics (or theology from life, we might say) [3].
How can we appreciate and even appropriate such an important theologian, while at the same time maintaining a critical perspective that challenges his work where it requires it?
An Unlikely Remedy
Insert Nicholas Healy’s Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Eerdmans, 2014). Healy’s book is significant for multiple reasons. First, “Hauerwas’s work has not been subjected to the kind of exacting critical analysis that is appropriate for such a well-known and controversial Christian thinker” [4]. While many dissertations, articles, and sundry book chapters have engaged Hauerwas, as well as some other book-length treatments, none have been comprehensive, according to Healy. Instead they have either focused too exclusively on one topic, and/or they have failed to provide necessary modifications to his work.
Second, Healy reads Hauerwas sympathetically. He even agrees largely with the general and specific theological agenda behind Hauerwas’ writing. He simply fears that the problems with Hauerwas’s argument actually undermine his agenda.
Finally, Healy is a Roman Catholic. Readers will pardon this innocuous observation, but when an evangelical Baptist has to read a Catholic critique of a prominent Protestant theologian to resolve some problems, this is worth some pause.
Three Lines of Criticism
Healy’s criticisms concern Hauerwas’ method, social theory, and theology. This critique is developed carefully across four chapters. The overriding problem these areas create for Healy is that Hauerwas’ focus on Christianity’s ethical dimensions as reflected in his sole emphasis on the church as an ethic (or apologetic), ultimately causes him to distort Christian doctrine in some significant ways.
In chapter one, Healy provides the rationale behind his criticism and explains his approach to reading Hauerwas despite the challenges. He rightly notes that Hauerwas’ rhetoric often “makes it more difficult than need be to read him well” [5]. Healy also provides a helpful overview of how he intends to develop his argument.
Chapter two unfolds what it means to Hauerwas for the church to be at the center of his theological project. Although he has resisted providing a systematic presentation of his theology, it is clear that the church is the locus that drives the rest of his thought. Whereas most traditional theologians made God or Scripture the theological and methodological starting point for their systems, Hauerwas is unavoidably “ecclesiocentric.”
Hauerwas contends that the church has often neglected its role in the formation of disciples. Theological inquiry has often been turned into abstraction, obsessed with metaphysical claims as opposed to arising from the church’s effort to be an ethic (or apologetic) for the watching world. For Hauerwas, “The church’s function is to form its members in order that they may embody the narrative of Jesus of Nazareth and thereby witness by their very lives to the salvation achieved in him” [6].
Chapter three provides some of the book’s most interesting analysis. Healy surprisingly claims that Hauerwas, despite all his criticism of Protestant liberalism, is actually more like Schleiermacher in his method than any other significant theologian. Schleiermacher in his own way defended the plausibility of Christianity by focusing on the subject (the individual believer) and the church’s role in shaping their piety.
No doubt significant differences abound between these theologians. But Healy persuasively argues that both of their accounts of the church rest upon “social-philosophical theories,” a “contrastive definition” of the church, the person of Jesus as He relates to the church, a substantial apologetic interest, and a substantial apologetic interest, resulting in doctrinal revision [7].
The foundation of Healy’s critique borrows some distinctions that David Kelsey provides concerning three areas of inquiry which have driven theological work historically: (1) the logic of belief (more systematic in nature); (2) the logic of coming to believe (apologetic in nature); and (3) the logic of living our beliefs (ethical matters, broadly construed) [8]. Healy argues that Hauerwas often conflates these areas, often at the expense of the first one, which creates significant problems (especially in his approach to Scripture and ecclesial authority).
Chapter four explains and challenges Hauerwas’ social theory concerning the church’s presentation of the faith by embodying the narrative of Jesus. Healy contends that his account doesn’t adequately deal with the mixed nature of the church, or even “unsatisfactory Christians” [9]. This is one criticism that many pastors will appreciate. It is one thing to recognize the goal to which congregations should aspire in their witness to Christ and the truth of Christianity. It is another to place the full weight of Christian witness on ecclesial practices at the expense of verbal proclamation. Healy discusses how intentionality, diversity, and the imperfect pursuit of virtue create a more complex picture of Christian witness than Hauerwas seems willing to grant—which creates problems for his larger argument.
The final chapter deals with some problems in Hauerwas’ theology, beginning with how theologically thin it is at times. Healy believes his focus on moral description and application reveals a lack of interest in the logic of belief (an observation that will ruffle some Hauerwas admirers). Much of the chapter focuses on the theological inadequacies of Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of traditions and practices (which Hauerwas relies heavily upon) and offers some revisions.
Ironically, the book ends with Healy (the Roman Catholic) correcting Hauerwas (the Protestant) by developing an understanding of the Gospel and salvation that is more gracious! Hauerwas has said,
Salvation, then is best understood not as being accepted no matter what we have done, but rather as our material embodiment in the habits and practices of a people that makes possible a way of life that is otherwise impossible [10].
Healy sees this (as many would) as a confusion that can only be remedied by remembering that
the gospel assures us that reconciliation and life with our Lord is not conditional upon our doing or being something, including our having the luck to be formed within the right kind of Christian community. Rather, independently of anything we do or are, we are brought to life with God solely in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit within the church [11].
For Whom?
Healy’s critical introduction is an excellent example of how theological critique can give voice to some of the concerns that even appreciative readers of Hauerwas have. For Christians aspiring to engage in theological scholarship in North America, Hauerwas is an unavoidable figure. However, they should be prepared to confront his work critically.
I anticipate that this book will be much-discussed in the coming months, especially in light of Hauerwas’ recent retirement. Significant theologians deserve substantial attention. And Healy’s critical introduction provides this.
For most Forum readers, some of Hauerwas’ more helpful remarks on the church’s centrality to the Christian faith can be seen in one or two of the books found below [12]. Otherwise, the work of Mark Dever or the late Edmund Clowney will prove to be more consistent evangelical alternatives for ecclesiology.
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[1] http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1000859,00.html accessed on 20 March 2014
[2] Probably the best starting point to understand Hauerwas’ background and theological project is his memoir, Hannah’s Child.
[3] By Constantinean Christianity, Hauerwas refers to the many ways the Christian church is captive to various forms of civil religion in order to further its theological and spiritual agenda in the world. For more on this general subject, see Matthew Bracey’s essays here and here. The significance of theology to life has also been explored frequently on the Forum.
[4] Nicholas M. Healy, Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 1.
[5] Healy, 12.
[6] Ibid., 38.
[7] Ibid., 49-50.
[8] Ibid., 52. Taken directly from David Kelsey, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009).
[9] Ibid., 78.
[10] Quoted in Healy, 32; Taken from Stanley Hauerwas, Sanctify Them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), 74.
[11] Ibid., 135.
[12] Some of his most important and familiar books include, Resident Aliens (1989), A Community of Character (1991), In Good Company (1999), and With a Grain of the Universe (2001). Resident Aliens may be the best place to start to get a flavor of Hauerwas’s unique literary voice, and then to understand some of his concerns regarding the church and culture (it also happens to be the shortest of these titles).
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