The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. How the Church Perfolins Jesus' Story Improvising on the Theological Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas Samuel Martin Bailey Wells University of Durham Department of Theology Ph. D. Thesis 1995 - 4 JUL 1996 How the Church Performs Jesus' Story: Improvising on the Theological Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas Abstract The model of improvisation in the theatre vividly expresses all the principal themes of Stanley Hauerwas' work, and resolves many tensions. I first accept Hauerwas' diagnosis of the flaws in the rational account of ethics. Hauerwas concentrates on person, rather than action or consequences. I argue that Hauerwas asserts (Aristotelian) efficient and formal causes as more significant than material and final causes. Hauerwas' epistemology avoids universally-held first principles. My second step is to show how the 'Christian story', in the hands of Hauerwas and Lindbeck, overaccepts smaller human narratives - that is, it fits them into a much larger perspective. Considering third the skills of the community, the communion of saints emerges as Hauerwas' key doctrine: Christian ethics imitates Christ in his way of confronting the powers that oppress us. The Church establishes an alternative politics which creates conflict without violence. Fourth, the latent eschatological implications of Hauerwas' ethics are drawn out. The community lives in a new time, and not in a separate space from the rest of society; it is an ironic satire on the 'world'. Reincorporation is at the heart of nonviolence because it imitates the way God in the eschaton rehabilitates all the 'stray' and neglected elements in the story. Because the community is not finally answerable for the destiny of the world it can take time for 'trivial' practices - such as having children - that embody its hope in God's sovereignty. Improvisation involves immersion in the Christian narrative, thereby learning the skills of patience, courage, hope, peaceableness, constancy: this takes moral effort. In a crisis, the community trusts the habits formed from those skills, and concentrates on doing the obvious. In this way it 'overaccepts' issues which come to it from its own experience and from the wider society, and transforms fate into divine destiny. 2 Contents 0. Introduction 8 0.1. Overview 8 0.2. Summary of Main Arguments 12 0.2.1. Hauerwas' Claims that I Uphold 12 0.2.2. My Own Original Contributions 13 1. The Description of Humanity: Character and Virtue 15 1 . 1 . Introduction: Virtue Ethics 15 1.1.1. The historical background 15 1.1.2. The theological background 18 1.2. The Rationalist Captivity of Christian Ethics: What Hauerwas Opposes in the Standard Account of Moral Rationality 20 1.2.1. Foundations, Facts and the Observer 22 1.2.2. Decisions and Actions 24 1.2.3. Principles, Violence and the Importance of Tragedy 26 1.3. Towards an Identifiably Christian Ethic: Hauerwas' Constructive Proposals 28 1.4. The Self as Agent 31 1.4.1. Indeterminism 31 1.4.2. 'Free Will' 32 1.4.3. Determinism 34 1.5. Causality 36 1.6. Narrative 42 1.6.1. 'Narrative from Above' or 'Narrative from Below'? 43 1.7. The Communio Sanctorum 47 1.8. Virtue 50 1.9. Summary of Chapter One 53 3 2. The Description of God: Narrative 55 2.1 Introduction: Hauerwas"Second Period' 55 2.2 The Postliberal World 56 2.2.1. Frei, Hermeneutics and Narrative 57 2.2.2. Lindbeck and Doctrine 60 2.2.3. Apologetics 63 2.3. Critique of Postliberalism 65 2.3.1. Internal Problems within the Antifoundationalist Position 67 2.3.2. External problems with Lindbeck's Argument 68 2.4. Stanley Hauerwas and the Comnmnio Scrnctorum 71 2.4.1. 'Narrative from Below' 71 2.4.2. 'Narrative from Above' 73 2.4.3. Performance 76 2.4.4. Truth as Performance: The Example of Jonestown 78 2.4.5. Principles and Performance: Reflections on Jonestown 80 2.5. Problems with Stanley Hauerwas on Narrative 81 2.5.1. Plurality 81 2.5.2. Donatism 83 2.5.3. Relativism 85 2.5.4. Hermeneutics 88 2.6. Summary and Resolution: The End of the Story 90 3. The Story of God in the Character of Humanity: The Church 95 3.1. Introduction 95 3.2. The Politics of the Church 96 3.2.1. Politics within the Church 97 3.2.2. The Constantinian Reversal 99 3.2.3. Responsible Social Ethics? 102 3.2.4. The Church is not the World 107 3.2.4.1. The Church is not the World 107 4 3.2.4.2. The Church Understands the World 108 3.2.4.3. The World is not the Church 110 3.2.5. Summary 11• 3.3. Apostolic Holiness 112 3.3.1. Jesus and the Sovereignty of God 113 3.3.2. The Imitation of Christ 115 3.3.3. Participation - the Mystical Union 117 3.3.4. Ethics and the Life of Christ 118 3.3.5. Ethics and the Death of Christ 120 3.3.6. The Problem of Perfectionism 122 3.4. Unity and Catholicity 124 3.4.1. Consequentialism 125 3.4.2. Who is the Real Sectarian? 127 3.4.3. Unity and Power 128 3.4.4. Detachment Better Serves the World 131 3.4.5. Pacifism Demands Politics 132 3.4.6. Summary 133 3.5. Christian Nonviolence: A Test Case 135 3.5.1. Introduction: Le Chambon-sur-Lignon 135 3.5.2. The Practices of a Community are Formed by a Narrative 136 3.5.3. The Narrative of Jesus Reveals God's Way with the World 137 3.5.4. Virtue Arises more through Habit than through Decision 138 3.5.5. The Community is open to Luck, Surprise and the Stranger 139 3.5.6. Christian Nonviolence Provokes and Demands Imagination 141 3.5.7. Summary 142 3.6. Conclusion 142 4. The Description of Time: The Ethics of the End 145 4.1. The Shape of the Christian Narrative: Why Ethics Needs an End 145 4.2. How Eschatology Relates to the Christian Narrative 148 4.2.1. Creation and Eschatology 148 4.2.2. Salvation and Eschatology 153 4.3. The Significance of Time 157 4.4. The Content of Eschatology 160 4.4.1. Resurrection: Living Forgiven 1-listories 160 4.4.2. The Millennium: Time to Make Peace with the Jews 162 4.4.3. Second Coming and Judgement: An End to the Story 164 4.4.4. The Kingdom of Heaven: The Community of a New Time 167 4.5. Eschatology and Irony 170 4.5.1. Tragedy 170 4.5.2. Beyond Tragedy 172 4.5.3. Irony as the Genre of Eschatology 174 4.5.4. Ethics Without Irony 176 4.5.5. The Dangers of Ironic Ethics 177 4.6. An Eschatological Practice: Having Children 179 4.6.1. Having Children is a Vocation 182 4.6.2. Having Children Demonstrates the Virtue of Patience 184 4.6.3. Having Children Creates Time 186 4.6.4. Having Children is an Ironic Practice 188 4.7. Summary 189 5. The Description of Ethics: Improvisation 191 5.1. Vision and Imagination 191 5.1.1. Vision 191 5.1.2. Imagination 193 5.2. Performance 199 5.3. Improvisation 202 6 5.3.1. Keeping the Story Going 203 5.3.2. Blocking and Accepting Offers 205 5.3.3. Overaccepting Gifts 206 5.3.4. Skill 214 5.3.5. Reincorporation 216 5.4. The Testimony of Mental Handicap 221 5.4.1. Step One: Accepting the Offer 221 5.4.2. Step Two: Overaccepting 224 5.4.3. Step Three: Forming Skills 226 5.4.4. Step Four. Reincorporation 227 5.5. Summary 229 6. Conclusion: Some Criticisms Revisited 231 7. Bibliography 236 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. 7 Introduction 0.1. Overview Stanley Hauerwas was born in 1940 in Texas, the son of a bricklayer. He grew up as a Southern Methodist. He studied at Southwestern University before moving to Yale where he took his Ph.D. in 1968. From 1970 he taught at the Roman Catholic foundation of Notre Dame, Indiana. In 1985 he moved to Duke University, a Methodist foundation in North Carolina. He has published fourteen books, and edited four others. All but three of these books are collections of essays; altogether he has published more than 250 scholarly articles, including those reproduced in his eleven collections. The occasional essay plays an important part in his approach to Christian ethics. He is shy of the thorough systematic ordering of theology, since he fears that this kind of disembodied scholarship can become a substitute for living the gospel through the disciplined practices of a particular Christian community. For it is in such communities that he perceives the heart of Christian ethics to rest. His writing is intended to make clear the way Christian communities are formed by the Christian story, the kinds of practices that this story entails, and the way the Church relates to such issues as arise in community and society. A faithful Church does not dominate the secular agenda: it has no big battalions to win consent and enforce its notion of truth. But it does have a distinctive story to tell, and the task of theological ethics is to show how the distinctive claims of that story shape the life and practices of the Christian community.