Recently I read The Making of Stanley Hauerwas, a book adapted from David Hunsicker’s doctoral dissertation. Hunsicker is a Presbyterian minister in Alabama and former theology professor. Published dissertations usually aren’t a type of reading material that gets me very excited, but the subject matter of this one intrigued me.
For the last thirty years, Stanley Hauerwas has been among the most discussed and debated theologians in the Anglo-American world. He taught most of his career at Duke Divinity School and at Notre Dame for many years prior to that. He’s provocative and passionate but perceived differently by theologians of various stripes. Having sat under his teaching and read many of his books, I would say I have a “love-hate relationship” with him.
The Issue
Hunsicker’s recent book specifically investigates the relationship between the thought Hauerwas and Karl Barth, expressed in the subtitle, “Bridging Barth and Postliberalism.” Barth looms largely over the landscape of modern theology. Most historians argue that he is the most influential theologian of the twentieth century.
To be sure, those in our theologian tradition will disagree with more aspects of these theologians’ work than that with which they will agree. Yet we should be aware of such theologians since they’ve had such an influence over others. Quite often someone reads a theological book and may not recognize the background influences on the author’s work. Being able to identify those background ideas and arguments helps us to be more discerning readers.
Despite my many disagreements with Hauerwas and Barth, I wanted to share an excerpt from Hunsicker’s book that I found very helpful:
One of the ways Hauerwas thinks Christianity abandons its own particularity in order to make itself relevant to the modern world is by artificially divorcing dogmatics from ethics. According to Hauerwas, ‘Once there was no Christian ethics simply because Christians could not distinguish between their beliefs and their behavior.’ This changed, however, with the Enlightenment. In an attempt to create stability and consensus in the midst of deep theological disagreement, dogmatics and ethics were severed. Ethics was the name given to the pursuit of morality grounded in universal reason, and Protestant theology became the attempt to prove that Christianity was still relevant to society as an ethos. (54–55)
This insight parallels something that I explored in an article in Integrity, volume 6. We have a serious problem in modern theology and in the modern church with separating doctrine from practice, orthodoxy and orthopraxy, belief and behavior. Hauerwas’ interpretative narrative of how this state of affairs emerged is interesting, and I think compelling at many points. But regardless of the specific reason as to why theology and ethics diverged, I appreciate the effort to reconnect the two.
Now, how we go about doing that is crucial. We have to start by ensuring that we have a clear understanding of biblical revelation and how we must always root theology in revelation. But then we always pursue this theological task mindful of the essential, lived expression of that theology (let’s call it ethics). Instead of searching for some elusive neutral ground upon which all people can agree, Christians serve the world best by being convictional and clear about who God has revealed himself to be, which the Bible records, and how that undergirds our moral arguments.
Assessment
This latter account, however, would probably be one of those areas where Barth and Hauerwas are of limited value. They reject natural theology to the point that general revelation itself is rendered non-existent. Moreover, we have to be clear that when we root our proclamation in the Christian story, we do so not just because “this is the story God gave us.” We root ourselves in that story because it is the true story of the whole world. It deals with real things that happened in time and space. (One thinks here of Francis Schaeffer’s notion of “true truth.”).
I wish that Barth and Hauerwas both would be clearer on this latter point. They can be evasive or dismissive of these concerns, which we evangelicals believe require a forthright affirmation.
Still, Hunsicker’s treatment of where these mens’ views converge and diverge is really stimulating. I appreciate the time that he invested into this study. Theological libraries all over should consider adding this title to their collection. Others who should read this book are those interested in these two theologians, the relationship between dogmatics and ethics, the problems with Protestant liberalism, or the biographical quality of theologians’ intellectual journeys.
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