The Hauerwas Reader - Hardcover

Hauerwas, Stanley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822326809 ISBN 13: 9780822326809

Verlag: Duke University Press, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

Stanley Hauerwas is one of the most widely read and oft-cited theologians writing today. A prolific lecturer and author, he has been at the forefront of key developments in contemporary theology, ranging from narrative theology to the "recovery of virtue." Yet despite his prominence and the esteem reserved for his thought, his work has never before been collected in a single volume that provides a sense of the totality of his vision.
The editors of The Hauerwas Reader, therefore, have compiled and edited a volume that represents all the different periods and phases of Hauerwas's work. Highlighting both his constructive goals and penchant for polemic, the collection reflects the enormous variety of subjects he has engaged, the different genres in which he has written, and the diverse audiences he has addressed. It offers Hauerwas on ethics, virtue, medicine, and suffering; on euthanasia, abortion, and sexuality; and on war in relation to Catholic and Protestant thought. His essays on the role of religion in liberal democracies, the place of the family in capitalist societies, the inseparability of Christianity and Judaism, and on many other topics are included as well.
Perhaps more than any other author writing on religious topics today, Hauerwas speaks across lines of religious traditions, appealing to Methodists, Jews, Anabaptists or Mennonites, Catholics, Episcopalians, and others.

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Stanley Hauerwas is Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics in the School of Divinity and Professor of Law at Duke University. In addition to having published over three hundred scholarly articles to date, he is the author or editor of more than thirty books, including Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth-Century Theology and Philosophy, and Christians among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and Modern Ethics.

John Berkman is Assistant Professor of Theology at The Catholic University of America. Michael G. Cartwright is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Indianapolis.

Stanley Hauerwas is Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics in the School of Divinity and Professor of Law at Duke University. In addition to having published over three hundred scholarly articles to date, he is the author or editor of more than thirty books, including Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth-Century Theology and Philosophy, and Christians among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and Modern Ethics.

John Berkman is Assistant Professor of Theology at The Catholic University of America. Michael G. Cartwright is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Indianapolis.

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"This collection is obviously a labor of love. Fortunately, it is also a labor of editorial care and precision. In addition to first-rate introductory material, the writings of a master provocateur are gathered here in a fresh, synthetic format. Re-reading these essays was humbling."--Jean Bethke Elshtain, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics, University of Chicago

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The Hauerwas Reader

By Stanley Hauerwas

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2001 Stanley Hauerwas
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780822326809

Chapter One

How "Christian Ethics" Came to Be (1997)

This essay provides the fullest account of how Hauerwas understands Christian ethics to have evolved as a discipline in relation to the practices of the Christian faith. After tracing developments from patristic writers Tertullian and Augustine, through the rise of medieval penitential manuals, to Aquinas and Luther, the essay explores how Christian ethics came to be seen as a problem in the context of the intellectual ferment of the Enlightenment. Hauerwas engages issues that emerged in the work of Kant, were given systematic theological expression in the writings of Schleiermacher, and received their strongest critique in Barth's Church Dogmatics. For Hauerwas, like Barth, theological ethics proceeds from the first-order discourse (doctrine) of the Christian faith. Therefore, ethics is a part of the theological task, and Christian theology is first and foremost an activity of the church.

The notion of Christian ethics is a modern invention. At one time Christian ethics did not exist. That does not mean that Christians did not think about how best to live their lives as Christians. There are obvious examples of such reflection in the New Testament as well as in the Church Fathers. That may well put the matter too lamely just to the extent that the New Testament and the early Christian theologians thought about little else than how Christians were to live their lives. For the ancients, pagan and Christian, to be schooled in philosophy or theology meant to submit one's life to a master in order to gain the virtues necessary to be a philosopher or a Christian. Ethics, in such a context, was not some "aspect" of life, but rather inclusive of all that constituted a person's life.

That we do not find explicit treatises on Christian ethics in Scripture or in the work of the Patristic writers does not mean they were unconcerned with giving direction to the church. They simply did not distinguish between theology and pastoral direction as we now do. Tertullian's On Patience may well have been the first treatise by a Christian on what we think of as a specifically moral topic, but there is no indication that he would have understood this treatise to be anything substantially different from his other theological and pastoral work. Augustine did the most to shape what would later be thought of as Christian ethics. In his On the Morals of the Catholic Church, he suggested that the fourfold division of the virtues familiar to pagan philosophers could rightly be understood only as forms of love whose object is God. Thus, "Temperance is love keeping itself entire and incorrupt for God; fortitude is love bearing everything readily for the sake of God; justice is love serving God only, and therefore ruling well all else, as subject to man; prudence is love making a right distinction between what helps it towards God and what might hinder it."

Augustine's conflict with the Pelagians resulted in a particularly rich set of treatises dealing with topics such as grace and free will, but also marriage and concupiscence. Equally important is Augustine's City of God, in which he narrates all of human history as a conflict between the earthly and heavenly cities. The earthly city knows not God and is thus characterized by order secured only through violence. In contrast, the heavenly city worships the one true God, making possible the collection of "a society of aliens, speaking all languages. She takes no account of any difference in customs, laws, and institutions, by which earthly peace is achieved and preserved-not that she annuls or abolishes any of those, rather, she maintains them and follows them, provided that no hindrance is presented thereby to the religion which teaches that the one supreme and true God is to be worshiped." How to understand the relation between the two cities becomes the central issue for the development of what comes to be called Christian social ethics.

The Church Fathers and Augustine did much to shape the way Christians think about Christian living, but equally, if not more important, is the development of the penitential tradition. In 1 Corinthians 5 Paul had insisted that the Corinthians were to "root out the evil-doer from the community," but the question remained whether such an evildoer should be received back into the community after due repentance. This issue was not resolved until the Council of Nicaea in 325. Nicaea set a policy for the readmission of those excommunicated after appropriate periods of penance. This was particularly significant since often the sin they had committed had been apostasy during times of persecution. Sins involving idolatry, adultery, and/or homicide all required public penance which was quite onerous and available only once in a person's life.

A major development occurred in this tradition largely by accident. Drawing on the monastic practice of spiritual direction of one monk by another, there developed in Ireland the practice of private confession to a priest with forgiveness of sins offered after appropriate penance. This practice resulted in the development of books called Penitentials that were meant as aids to confessors so that the appropriate penance would be given for the corresponding sin. Their organization was quite varied with little or no attempt at theological rationale. For example, The Penitential of Theodore stipulated the following with regard to avarice:

1. If any layman carries off a monk from the monastery by stealth, he shall either enter a monastery to serve God or subject himself to human servitude.

2. Money stolen or robbed from churches is to be restored fourfold; from secular persons, twofold.

Penitentials differed markedly from one another, indicating different Christian practices at different times and places.

These books were carried by Irish missionaries across Europe and soon became the rule throughout Christendom. Though they were not explicitly theological, they depended on the continuing presumption that the church through baptism was to be a holy community. They were no doubt open to great misuse, but they also became the way the church grappled with the complexity of Christian behavior through the development of casuistry, that is, close attention to particular cases. From these beginnings there developed as part of the church's theological mission a special task called moral theology. Under the guidance of Pope Gregory VII the church's practice concerning moral questions was made more uniform through canon law and the development of Summae Confessorum. The latter were pastoral handbooks that gave theological order to the Penitentials so that priests might be given guidance in the administration of what had become the sacrament of penance.

Thus a clear tradition was established in the Penitentials, in canon law, and in the Summae Confessorum in which ethics was distinguished from theology and doctrine. There was, moreover, specialist training for each of these tasks, as canon lawyers, moral theologians, and theologians were given distinctive training for their different roles. However, these diverse tasks were, in fact, one insofar as their intelligibility depended on the practices of the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2001
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0822326809
• ISBN 13: 9780822326809
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 752
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar