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Against Hauerwas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Theo Hobson
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Abstract

This essay questions the theological position developed by Stanley Hauerwas over three decades. It first traces the origins of his thought, and argues that the alliance of radical Reformation ecclesiology with postmodern philosophy leads to an intensely idealistic ecclesiology. Hauerwas's exaltation of particular communal practices is ultimately unreal, as he fails to locate these practices in a particular institution. Due to the unreality of his ecclesiology his attack on Christendom and Constantinianism lacks substance. In the end he undermines his own position by identifying the truth of Christianity with the concrete practices of a distinctive community that he cannot identify.

Keywords

Critique of ecclesiologyStanley Hauerwas
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 88 , Issue 1015 , May 2007 , pp. 300 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2007. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2007, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

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References

1 Hauerwas, Stanley, Vision and Virtue: Essays in Christian Ethical Reflection (Indiana: Fides, 1974), p. 49.Google Scholar

2 Hauerwas, Stanley, Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence (London: SPCK, 2004), p. 224Google Scholar.

3 Hauerwas, Stanley, The Peaceable Kingdom: a Primer in Christian Ethics (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), p. xxiiiGoogle Scholar.

4 Stanley Hauerwas 1974, p.214.

5 Ibid., p.216.

6 bid., p.221.

7 Stanley Hauerwas 2004, p.203.

8 Ibid., p.215.

9 Stanley Hauerwas 1983, p.85.

10 Ibid., p.94.

11 Ibid., p.97.

12 Ibid., p.100.

13 Ibid., p.102.

14 Ibid., p.107.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid., p.xxvi.

17 Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘The Reality of the Kingdom: an Ecclesial Space for Peace’, with Sherwindt, Mark, in Hauerwas, , Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985), p.112–13Google Scholar.

18 Hauerwas, Stanley, After Christendom?: How the Church is to Behave if Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation are Bad Ideas (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991), p.35Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., p.26.

20 Ibid., p.6.

21 Ibid., p.8.

22 Ibid., p.7-8.

23 Ibid., p.93.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid., p.99.

26 Ibid., p.110.

27 Hauerwas, Stanley, In Good Company: the Church as Polis (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), p.10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 bid., p.67.

29 Ibid., p.67-8.

30 Ibid.

31 ‘What Would Pope Stanley Say?: a Conversation with Stanley Hauerwas’, interview by Rodney Clapp, Books and Culture, Christianity Today, Nov/Dec 1998 (online), p.4.

32 Hauerwas 2004, p.233.