Abstract
Very great praise has already been lavished on this book elsewhere. It therefore seems best to draw attention here to some of the tensions and potential contradictions manifested or hinted at in this most engaging of memoirs, undoubtedly a breath of fresh air in the desert of contemporary theology.
It is the nature of this fresh breeze that is so tantalising, especially as the author eschews any desire to be original or creative (p. 135). His acknowledged debt to other thinkers, notably Barth and Yoder, is phrased in such extensive terms that it is hard to see how he could have left himself any scope for originality. He writes of learning respect for ‘the language of the faith’ (p. 52) as if there is only one such, and as if appeal to such a radically question-begging phrase can of itself transcend present ambiguity and historical complexity. A strong sense of allegiance to a particular form of Christian orthodoxy pervades this memoir, but how such orthodoxy is arrived at or secured against its competitors remains a puzzle for the reader.
The author writes of ‘the challenge I have mounted against the accommodation of the Church to the ethos of modernity’ (p. 237), but here again there is a curious lack of differentiation, this time in the concepts of accommodation and of modernity. This does not reflect any desire to return to a pre-modern way of being church, for from the viewpoint of this book the Constantinian form of church has had its day. Nor is it suggested that we can start again from scratch. Hauerwas’s great enemy seems to be liberal democracy, from which he seeks to distance the Church. What he is against is a perceived liberalising tendency in most churches, with his strongest animus of all being towards liberal Protestantism, with the provocative rider that in his opinion Catholicism in America has become a form of Protestantism (p. 164).
This last throwaway line is an egregious example of how annoying Hauerwas’s witty, over-simplifying one-liners can be. Despite his 14 years at Notre Dame he appears to have no insight into or sympathy for what he calls ‘self-hating Catholics’ (p. 107), by which he means those who blame everything on the hierarchy without accepting any responsibility. He fails to see that this syndrome is symptomatic of a deeper malaise generated by the abusive power-structure which dominates the Catholic Church these days. He is weak on power, as he is the first to admit: ‘I cannot resist wanting to run the world, although I am obviously no good at it’ (p. 232). He is clearly quite unable to cope with bosses he finds unsympathetic, towards whom his approach is to sock it to them and then walk away. Richard McBrien at Notre Dame and Dennis Campbell at Duke are described in eerily similar terms as more concerned about their own position in the institution than with any theological project.
Nor does our author have much insight into his critics, especially those who accuse him of advocating a sectarian, fideistic, tribal form of Church, notably his erstwhile mentor James Gustafson. Gustafson is charged with reducing him to a stereotype, which shows he has been misunderstood. The trouble is other people’s resistance to change, their liking for the answers they already have rather than Hauerwas’s attempts to change the questions (p. 208). This hopelessly one-sided analysis recalls a story he tells against himself. A friend said a lecture Stanley gave against racial segregation was so self- righteous that the friend was tempted to become a segregationist (p. 224).
As a child Hauerwas belonged to a Church where being saved was a ritualised event. He couldn’t do it, and was not prepared to fake it. This inability resulted in deciding to become a theologian instead. He became determined to pursue the truth or otherwise of Christian belief. Only at the end of writing this memoir has he been able to say that he is a Christian. He argues that what we believe as Christians ‘forces an unrelenting engagement with reality’ (p. 45), but he also notes his ability to deny reality in the interests of a theological fantasy (p. 192). Here again the question of how and where orthodoxy is to be located remains unaddressed.
Meanwhile two interesting definitions of faith are offered. The first is admitted to be an over-simplification: ‘Faith is but a name for learning to go on without knowing the answers’ (p. 208). This almost mystical definition stands in stark contrast with our author’s assertive aspect, where he appears to be insisting on very definite answers as required for Christian identity. For example we are told that ‘the God about whom we speak is, we believe, found decisively in Jesus of Nazareth, the very word of God’ (p. 236). Moreover, Barth held that ‘the world can be rightly known only if Jesus has been raised from the dead’ (p. 263). These two quotations manifest the violence of theology, a clunking, bullying insistence that is the worst of Hauerwas and at odds with so much in him that is wholesome and encouraging.
A second definition of faith gives a very different emphasis from the first: ‘faith is nothing more than the words we speak when we speak of God’ (p. 236). This connects with some fascinating reflections on writing. ‘My writing is exploratory because I have no idea what I believe until I force myself to say it. For me, writing turns out to be my way of believing’ (p. 136). ‘I write because writing is the only way I know how to think’ (p. 235). He is an academic because being such gives him time to think about ‘matters that should matter’ (p. 46). These wonderful admissions, at once incisive and unguarded, sit oddly with Hauerwas the Barthian dogmatist and unyielding pacifist. Elsewhere he ponders on whether he has allowed too much of his writing to be dictated by his theological opponents, and points up the danger of becoming defined by what you are against: ‘I have tried to learn to live a life not determined by what I was against. Peace is a deeper reality than violence. That is an ontological claim with profound moral implications’ (p. 231).
For whatever reason he is too often defensive, or defensive/aggressive, as in his readiness to charge those who disagree with him with idolatry. An instance would be his conclusion that if Jesus is not both fully God and fully human ‘we Christians are clearly idolaters’ (p. 136). In the context of serious theological discussion the adverb ‘fully’ as used here is opaque, but clearly intended to repel rather than invite further discussion. Again that note of violent exclusion of those who would offer something more tentative, more—dare I say it?—exploratory. Yet he notes plaintively that ‘people who focus on my “exaggerations” too often fail to see how they function to invite thought’ (p. 226).
The book is studded with admissions that in many contexts he did not know what he was doing, or why he was doing it. In one of the most moving passages he ponders on whether his ability to keep things together did his first wife a disservice, in the sense that she did not have to take responsibility for her own sadly distressed state (p. 152). Likewise he confesses that when she left he missed the job of looking after her (p. 200). When I first came across this writer’s work I was struck by his characterisation of marriage as a heroic enterprise. Here we are given insight into the experiential background undergirding those words, although the author is eager to maintain a sharp distinction between his theology and his experience. This insistence is in its turn bewildering, not least because he also stresses the extent to which friendship, and in particular focused conversation with friends, plays a vital role in the formation of his thought. He recognises that he cannot separate what he thinks from who he knows (p. 196).
It is most reassuring to come across a glowing tribute to the 1960s, which Hauerwas might have been expected to decry. Far from doing so he presents that period as a challenge to imagine a different world. This challenge, he says, remains a gift (p. 84). The Hauerwasian paradox persists, however, even here, as many of the questions and thought-currents then prevalent do not find in this reviewer a sympathetic ear. Yet his commendation carries conviction in the light of his eschatology, his impatience with the focus on decision and choice that dominates ethical theory (p. 115), and his conclusion, prompted by his sad departure from Notre Dame, that Christians have no home (p. 121). There is also his view that ‘we are God’s imagination for the world’ (p. 222), a compellingly attractive if dangerous notion.
There is something seductive about Hauerwas’s self-deprecation, often couched in take-it-or-leave-it one-liners of which this paragraph offers a selection. ‘I have never pretended to be a scholar’ (p. 53). In his childhood ‘Jews and Catholics…came from another planet’ (p. 51). He speaks of depending on a ‘strange brew of Catholic and Anabaptist sources’ (p. 135), this aperçu of course running parallel to his famous, jokey self-designation as a high-church Mennonite. Having suggested that he may have been forced to grow up through painful experience with his first wife, he immediately counters by saying he is ‘not sure about being grown-up’ (p. 137). He recognises the possibility that during that painful time he needed Adam (his son) ‘even more than he needed me’ (p. 153). As a theologian ‘You get paid for believing in God’ (p. 159)—though he does not think he has been tempted to pretend for the sake of the money. ‘I do not know how to hedge my bets’ (p. 234). (Having seen and heard Hauerwas in action in heated discussion I can vouch for the truth of this last!) He doesn’t write books, but puts essays together to make them look like books (p. 239).
He would like to be remembered most of all as a teacher, while describing teaching as ‘just another form of persuasion’ (p. 232). His reputation as a PhD supervisor is legendary, and with good reason: ‘I try to let students write dissertations shaped by their deepest passion. That means that my students are allowed to take risks in a manner that is unusual, given the power of disciplinary expectations that usually determine the way things are to be done’ (p. 241). He is conscious of ‘the restrictive power of the scholarly guild’ (p. 240).
Hauerwas’s scatter-gun approach helps to make him at his best an arresting thinker. The Holocaust is a challenge to the truthfulness of Christianity (p. 51). Theological positions ‘far too easily get in the way of thought’ (p. 60). He thinks that ‘learning to live with the mentally disabled might be paradigmatic for learning what it might mean to face God’ (p. 112). Medical ethics is too often considered in terms of what doctors do, but far more important is what kind of people we should be to be patient patients. Otherwise our expectations of medicine will be corrupting (p. 114). He asks why the specific tasks of seminaries should be intellectually limiting (p. 189), a question which could find its sharpest application in Catholic seminaries. Hauerwas is wise on the unwisdom of theodicies (pp. 207-208), and on other matters for which there is no scope here.
A word on Hauerwas’s politics. Through Yoder’s influence he came ‘to understand that the politics of Jesus was a public affair, with cosmic consequences’ (p. 160). He seeks ‘a Church capable of reminding those who think they rule the world that they are in the grip of a deep delusion’ (p. 231). This, it seems to me, could have considerable purchase as we come to realise how little in our lives is really under our control. Finally, our author insists that ‘the fear of death is at the heart of the American inability to sustain a less murderous presence in the world’ (p. 270). Hauerwas sees that the beatitudes are not moral injunctions but rather descriptive of a transformed way of living (pp. 38-39).