Abstract
It may seem odd for many readers to receive the encouragement of reading first the Conclusion of a book. Many people these days do this due to lack of time and the pressure to get on with their own projects. Nevertheless, this is not the reason why I am encouraging readers to start this book with the Conclusion. In fact, I think a prospective reader need only engage with the first three pages (pp. 209–11) of the Conclusion, then go back to reading the entire book from the beginning. In my opinion, these three pages could have been incorporated, mutatis mutandis, as the first section of the Introduction. They have the potential to hook all kinds of readers, not only those we might call Hauerwasians or Barthians. The reader would truly open herself to follow ‘the making’ of Stanley Hauerwas as a model of one's own character-making by finding out that Hauerwas was less interested to answer the question ‘What would Barth say about X?’ but rather to formulate a theological-ethical response that would incorporate Barth's thought, regarding the question ‘What does it look like to live as if X is true?’ (p. 210).
Living one's life theologically, that is without splitting theology from ethics, is not something that should exist only on paper, in the writings of some special class of people. As Hauerwas puts it in the foreword to Hunsicker's book, ‘Barth is a miracle’ and a ‘great theologian’, while he modestly follows ‘at a great distance’ (p. ix). Thanks to Hunsicker's work, this kind of ‘diastasis’ (p. 51) between Barth and Hauerwas appears to be more and more overwhelmed. As the author argues, on one hand, Hauerwas draws successfully on Barthian ideas in his postliberal approach to ‘speak about human agency after Barth’ by clarifying ‘the relationship between Christian convictions and Christian practices’ (p. 10), and on the other hand to go beyond Barth in his understanding of ‘the church's witness today’ (p. 67), as well as in casuistry and the imitation of Christ ‘as part of a larger process of deification’ (p. 167). Thanks to Hunsicker's work, a simple member of the church may be encouraged to think that, if the ‘great distance’ between Barth and Hauerwas has been overcome, then the step further would be to find practical ways to overcome the ‘great distance’ between elite theologians and the humble, anonymous members of the church, whose character formation absorbs much of Hauerwas’s reflections alongside liturgy and peculiar narratives and practices.
From this perspective, Hunsicker has sought to offer, especially in the first part of the book, a more friendly face to the scholarly outlook of the volume by integrating it within wider narratives of twentieth-century American theological culture, Hauerwas's early formation as a student, and his intellectual development throughout the years. The story of how ‘ethics became divorced from doctrine’ (p. 15), together with the story of ‘how Christian ethics in America became about America instead of Christianity’ (pp. 15, 21–45) are informative and appealing to students of theology and perhaps to non-American readers. A third narrative is added in the fourth chapter as the story of how a son of a bricklayer was formed by his family into a life ‘centered around the church’ and came in contact initially with the Protestant liberalism of his community and later, during his student years, with the works of theologians such as R. G. Collingwood, H. R. Niebuhr and John Howard Yoder, which had a lasting influence on his formation and thinking (pp. 89–98).
Parts 2 and 3 deal with two specific objections regarding Hauerwas's use of Barth. The first objection we may call ‘the Schleiermacher thesis’, addressed to Hauerwas by Nicholas Healy (p. 125). Healy suggests that Hauerwas's use of a renewed form of casuistry understood within ‘ecclesial ethics’ (p. 126) is initiating a return to the separation of ethics and theology that Barth rejected. As a response, Hunsicker contends that the kind of ‘casuistry’ that Hauerwas is using is not the traditional casuistry that Barth rejects, namely, ‘rules applied to specific cases’ (p. 166), but rather a way of making ‘judgments’ (p. 166) and ‘testing’ our past actions in accordance with the dynamics of the story of Christ and his church (pp. 161, 166) in order to learn how to become ‘honest with ourselves about our shortcomings’ (p. 166). Hunsicker sees this development of Hauerwas's understanding of casuistry as a reaction to Protestant liberal ethics, which emphasises the doctrine of ‘creation’ or ‘natural theology’, such as the positions of H. R. Niebuhr, James Gustafson and Max Stackhouse. The author argues that this reaction determined Hauerwas's ‘turn toward Christology’, which is Barthian in spirit, since christocentrism remains always the deeper dimension of Hauerwasian ecclesiocentrism (pp. 168–69). It should be noted that Hunsicker only develops this point in his conclusion, arguing, perhaps too briefly, that ‘a great deal of tension could be relieved if Hauerwas would simply give up the language of casuistry and use instead the language of wisdom or discernment’ (p. 166).
The second objection might be termed ‘the Ritschl thesis’ and it is advanced by John Webster and Nigel Biggar. They charge that, given his ‘sociological’ use of Scripture, which contrasts with Barth's ‘theological’ use, Hauerwas ends up developing a Christology that mainly understands Jesus as nothing more than an ‘ethical exemplar’ to be imitated or transposed in a Christian person's life (p. 171). Hunsicker argues that this apparent difference in exegetical approach between Barth and Hauerwas may be understood according to the different theological context of each theologian. If Barth was preoccupied to counterbalance the temptation for ecclesiastical authority over Scripture as it was formulated in terms of the infallibility of the Pope during the First Vatican Council (p. 178), Hauerwas writes keeping in mind the contemporary Roman Catholic position that flows from Vatican II's Dei Verbum, according to which the Word of God is to be served by the church through its teaching office (p. 183). This position seems preferable to the use that North American Christians make of the Scripture in a cultural context dominated by individualism and ‘common sense’ philosophy that paves the way to the enslavement of the Bible by nationalism and other ideologies (p. 182). Hunsicker's response is that while Hauerwas does not seek to figure out how Barth would have developed his theological thought within the American context, he simply thinks with and beyond Barth, without diluting the theological use of the Bible. In this way, Hauerwas refocuses the use of Scripture on church life rooted in ‘the peaceable kingdom’ embodied in Jesus’ life (p. 207). As members of this kingdom, Christians everywhere are ‘resident aliens’ (p. 207), who do not take Jesus’ life as a mere example, but rather look toward salvation through their active participation in the body of Christ (p. 205).
By pointing to the Christological basis of Hauerwas's ecclesiology, Hunsicker has successfully achieved his scholarly goal of presenting Hauerwas's work as ‘bridging Barth and Postliberalism’ (p. xx). In particular, Hauerwas is credited with grounding the how of the human agency as conceived by Barth's theology in Christology (p. 209). Hunsicker's argument coherently deals with the two questions described by Barth, the what (dogmatics) and the how (ethics) which, according to both Barth and Hauerwas should never be alienated from each other (p. 73). Nonetheless, by the time the Conclusion arrives, the reader may be left wondering whether the author should have spent more energy to answer a third question, which is the why. Why does this discussion matter for our contemporary times? Note that this question is not only a scholarly one. Of course, it matters to formulate responses to Protestant liberal theologians who have criticised Hauerwas's ‘self-understanding as a Barthian’ (p. 209). But beyond these theological debates in the American cultural space, why is this discussion relevant for the life of the church as an ‘alternative political community’? (Stanley Hauerwas, ‘Why the “Sectarian Temptation” is a Misrepresentation: A Response to James Gustafson (1988)’, in John Berkman and Michael Cartwright (eds.), The Hauerwas Reader (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001), p. 102).
Given Hunsicker's methodology (to summarise at the beginning and the end of each chapter what his intentions are and how much progress he has made with his argument), a reader might expect to find in the conclusions a summary of the entire argument. Instead, the conclusions contain a more extensive, but nevertheless insufficient, critique of Hauerwas's thought. Here, Hunsicker recommends that Hauerwas should ‘try and situate his own ecclesiology in closer proximity to Barth's Christological ecclesiology’ and to engage the work of the missional theology movement (pp. 211–18). These points warrant a more extensive treatment and, together with reflections already contained in the body of the book, such as the analysis of Barth's and Hauerwas's positions on abortion (chapter 3), or on salvation (chapter 10), they would have formed the basis for a fourth part, in which the author could have investigated the why.
This hypothetical extension could also have included some potential discussions that were passed over. There was space for the author to remind readers that, as valid a project as it is, the effort to restore theology to the heart of moral relationships within the church demands that we still take the Enlightenment project seriously. It remains the case that, today, too many Christian churches are cultivating antagonistic approaches.
One may also struggle with both Barth and Hauerwas regarding their rejection of natural theology and Protestant liberalism. Hunsicker shows that Barth had been disappointed by many of his teachers and fellow theologians who all-too-easily accepted and supported the politics of the regimes of their day (leading to the First and indirectly to the Second World War) (p. 41). The author rightly emphasises that, for Hauerwas, this did not appear as a ‘contextual move’, but as ‘the beginning of true theology’ (pp. 52–53). More should have been said on this point, because, as admirable as they are, Barth's gesture and Hauerwas's approval of it are presented in such a way that they seem to overlook the issue that, in this case, the motivation for the rejection of Protestant liberalism appears to be more cultural and political, rather than theological. The difference is perhaps imperceptible, but remains significant: it is primarily not because we are disillusioned with society, its morality and politics that we turn to God, but rather because some-One feels absent from our lives. No matter how prosperous, how pacific, and how harmonious life on earth might be, this will never be enough if we are not living in Christ. On Hauerwas’s own terms, this makes all the difference between earthly politics and the Gospel's message and perhaps more could have been said.
One last thing pertains to Hunsicker's referring to John Howard Yoder at times as ‘the hero to the story of Christian ethics in America’ or even as one of the ‘saints’ of the contemporary church (pp. 43, 116). These statements might be read by many Christians as ironical at best. Hunsicker dismisses this important issue in a footnote where he seems to be placing the responsibility for his not being able to say more about this on Hauerwas's silence over the years regarding Yoder's abusive behavior (p. 115, n. 40). It is indeed somehow ironic that Hauerwas spent so much effort during his life to overcome the split between theology and morality by using the arguments of an author who, in his everyday commitments actually used his theological prowess as a tool for exploiting and manipulating victims. Above this, as Sarah Shin informs us, not only Yoder's life, but also Barth's own biography, troubled by his extramarital affair, challenges the way current generations read his theology (Sarah Shin, ‘The Challenge of Biography: Reading Theologians in Light of their Breached Sexual Ethics’, Studies in Christian Ethics 2021, online first, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F09539468211059485). This shows that the debate regarding the split between doctrine and morality is far from over. The church has barely started to find theological modes of engagement with the moral character of its contemporary ‘saints’ or elite figures. This perhaps entails the move, already suggested by Hauerwas (Stanley Hauerwas, Sanctify Them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified (London and New York: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2016), p. 84), of theologically engaging with the stories of the life of those anonymous, or ‘peasant’ agents of holiness that the church has never been short of.