Book Review: Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction

Abstract

Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction. By Nicholas M. Healy. Interventions. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2014. ix + 144 pp. $23.00 (paper).One of central aims of work of Stanley Hauerwas has been to combat tendency of modern academic theology to see tasks of theology and of Christian ethics as fundamentally separate in their nature. This separation results in abstraction on both sides, with theology addressing itself to set of disembodied beliefs and ethics cataloguing behaviors that are perfectly intelligible without God as their backdrop. Nicholas Healy s book can be viewed and assessed as kind of grappling with this basic Hauerwasian motive, and its manifest ramifications in Hauerwas's writings, including latters rhetorical style, occasionalism, engagements with philosophy and social theory, and turn to liturgy as source for ethics. Healy claims to be quite in sympathy with this agenda. But Healy concludes that, all things considered, Hauerwas's work undermines its own agenda as much or more than it promotes it. Healy has therefore set out in this book to provide critique of one of most widely read theologians of last thirty years. By systematic I point to way Healy criticizes Hauerwas s work through application to it of abstract, typological categories. He reads Hauerwas s work as system of concepts orbiting around conceptual church.After an introduction to book and skillful treatment of development of Hauerwas's work in first two chapters, in chapter 3 Healy lays down his basic charge in succinct form. Hauerwas's theo-ethical writings evince what author calls ecclesism, defined as a distortion of Christianity consequent upon focus upon church as central and structuring locus for all inquiry (p. 40). In other words, he is claiming that, as system whose aim would be to provide conceptual map of Christianity, Hauerwas's work is compromised by its center, emphasis on church. Because of its emphasis on or reductive focus on church, both God and church are distorted within his work. First, church itself is idealized. Hauerwas's claims Healy, imagines more uniform process of forming its members, coupled with more sure structure of authority, than empirical studies and selfunderstanding of Christians can support. Further, Hauerwas's emphasis on formation through practices leading to visible witness tends toward exclusion of ordinary Christians. Second, Hauerwas's ecclesism tends to push God out of picture.To defend charge of ecclesism, Healy turns to David Kelseys distinction among three theological logics: the of belief, the of coming to believe, and the of Christian living. While each of these logics may properly steer inquiry, problems arise when they are conflated. They enable Healy to argue that Hauerwas's ecclesism is generated by conflating logic of Christian living (or, how one lives out Christian convictions) and logic of belief' (discourse about God taken as separable object), such that former crowds out latter. …