Book Review: Approaching the End: Eschatological Reflections on Church, Politics, and Life

Abstract

Approaching End: Eschatological Reflections on Church, Politics, Life. By Stanley Hauerwas. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2013. xvii + 251 pp. $24.00 (paper).Reflecting on Barth's doctrine of creation, Stanley Hauerwas suggests know there was a beginning because we have seen (p. 12). Something similar might be said of this book, situated toward end of Hauerwas's near half-century in academe. Yet, this collection is anything but a swan song (p. xiv), let alone an attempt to close canon, ossify old arguments, or clinch unresolved debates. On contrary, indefatigable Hauerwas here seems bent on keeping colloquy ever open unsettled. Those unfamiliar Hauerwasian oeuvre encounter a denouement that piques interest in precursoiy conversations, while those who have pored over every keystroke be reacquainted quintessential Hauerwas that keeps them coming back for more.The book's thirteen interweaving essays explore end inaugurated realized in Christ. John Howard Yoder Karl Barth are consistently (perhaps now predictably) remedy for much that ills. Barth's eschatological (hence christological) rendering of creation offers a corrective to Jean Porter's natural law ethic (chap. 1, The End is in Beginning). Yoders of the Lamb's lordship (p. 25) complements (completes?) J. Louis Martyn Douglas Harink on church qua apocalypse (chap. 2, The End of Sacrifice), setting up a subsequent reflection on sacrifice state (chap. 7, War Peace). Barth's assertion that is God helps us to see why and in politics is a theological misstep, though faith in humanity of God means no account of church is possible which does not require material that is rightly understood as politics (p. 85, chap. 4, Church Matters). Barth's rumination on health, a will to live in response to God's command, offers what an Aristotle problematized by Jonathan Lear cannot (pp. 211-212).Longtime engagements Aquinas are renewed in chapters on God's self-revelation (chap. 3, Witness, written Charles Pinches) bodily character of virtues (chap. 9, Habit Matters). Rounding out book are reflections on faithfulness amidst hubristic Baconian projects, especially technological imperative of medicine as secular salvation (p. 180). Hauerwas revisits Presence, asserting storied body (p. 177) over against what Jeffrey Bishop has termed anticipatory corpse (chap. 10, Suffering Presence). With Joel Shuman, Hauerwas belies bioethical musings on cloning by looking at Paul on baptism (chap. 11, Cloning Human Body). Jean Vanier Sam Wells commend with (p. 234) as Eleonore Stump reminds us why non-propositional knowledge matters (chap. 13, Disability). These are familiar themes for any acquainted Hauerwas. Yet what we find here is less repetition, more recapitulation-at once a summing up a carrying forward.The lifelong Methodist is notably keen on Anglicanism in this volume. After a chapter on The End of Protestantism (chap. 5), Hauerwas looks to Anglicanism as an epitome of Yoder's ecumenical vision an ecclesial expression of Alasdair MacIntyres tradition-constituted rationality (p. 114, chap. 6, Which Church? What Unity?). Trading heavily on Bruce Kaye's construal of Anglican ecclesiology (marked by Gallicanism, Catholicity without Leviathan, a of love), Hauerwas holds up Anglican catholicity as a way of being together amidst the challenge of Christian unity (p. …