Wilderness W~nderings
Series Edifovs: Sf.Rnley M ,H a z r e ~ u ~Ds ,u k Ut~iucl'?;ify, and Peter Qckrs, Univeusifyuf Virginia
BOOKS I N THE SBRXES:
Wilderness Wanderings: Prc~bingTw-entieth-Century Theology and Philosophyt Stnrlley M . Eiazicrwns Revelatic~nRestored: Divine Writ and Critical Responses, Dazjid Weiss Halivni
Radical Tradiliotzs cuts new Lines of inquiry across a cmfuwd and cmfusing array of debates concerning the place of theolc>gyin mcjdernity and, more generally the status and rc~leof scriptural faith in contempc~rarylife, Charged with a rejuvenated confidence, spawned in part by the rediscovery of reason as inescapably tradition cmstituted, a new generation of theologians and religious scholars is returning to scriptural traditims with the hope of retrieving resources long ignored, depreciated, and in many cases ideologicaliy suppressed by modern habits of thought. Radical Tr~ditz'onsassembles a promising matrix of strategies, disciplines, and lines of thought that invites Jewish, Christian, and Islamic theologians back to the ward, recovering and articulating rncldes of scriptural reasoning as that which always underlies modernist reasc~ningand therefore has the capacity-and authority-to correct it, Far from despairing over modernity's failings, postcritical theologies rediscover resources for renewal and self-corredian wit&n the disciplnes of academic study themsLves. Postcritical theologies open up the possibility of participating once again in the living relationship that binds together God, text, and cornmunity of interpretation. Radical Badl'l-iolzs thus advocates a ""return to the text," which means a commitment to displaying the richess and wisdom of traditions that are at once text based, hermeneutical, and oriented to cammunal practice. Books in this series offer the opportunity to speak openly with practitioners of other faiths or even with those who prclfess nc, (or Limited) faith, bath academics and nonacademics, about the ways religious traditions address pivotal issues of the day. Unfettered by foundationalist preocrupatims, these boc~ksrepresent a call for new paradigms of reason-a t1Gnking and rationality that is more respon.sive than originative. Ely embracing a postcritical posture, they are abte to speak unapologetically out of scriptural traditions manifest in the practices of beliwing communities (Jewish, Christian, and others); articulate those practices through disciplines of philosophic, textual, and cultural criticism; and engage intellectual, social, and political practices that for too long have been insulated from theological evaluation. h d i c n t Traditic~rzsis radical not c~nlyin its cmfidence in nanapalogetic theological speech but also in how the practice of such speech challenges the current scycial and palitical arrangements of modernity,
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Probing Twentieth-Century ogy and Phi
I,
'
A Member of the Pcrseus Rooks Group
Radical Tradiliur~s:T/zealaa in n T30sCcuificaIK q
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reprcjduced or transmitted in any form or bp any means, electronic or mechlmical, including pl~otocopy,recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without. permission iin writing from the publislier,
Copyright:Q 1992 by Stanley M. Hauertvas PttbIisked in 1997 in the United States of America by Weshriew Press, 5500 Central Avenue, Boulder, Colorado 80302-2877, and in tlie United Kingdom by Westview Press, 12 Hidrs Copse Road, Curnnor Hill, QxEc3rcl. OX2 YJ Librar~iof Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData Wauerwas, Sbnley 1940Wilderness wanderings : prc3bing 20th-centuq tl~aologyand pl~ilosopl~y / Stanley M. Hauervvas, p. cm, .--- (hdical traditions) Includes bibliographical references and index, lSBN 0-8333-3349-0 (hardcover) -1SBN 0-8133-33482 (paperback) 1. Theology, Doctrinal-13istoy-20tI1 cenhxry 2. Liberafism (Religion).---Frotestmt church ontroversiat literature, I, Title. 11. Series. OT28.H333 1997 2363"09'o.44(121 32-136325 CTP
The paper used in this publication meds the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Libray Materials 239.4&19&4.
TQ Julinn Hartt, Xobrvt Calhourt, Gem@ Li~dbeck, Jalnes Gustafson, I-lnns Frei, Gene TeSrlle, Paul Meyev, Jaroslav Pelikan, Brevard Childs, Rowarr Grrrr, Lislon Pope, Paul I-lolmer, David Little, Robert King, W q n e M E E ~ Gay S , Noyce
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Contents
Tntduction: neological Intervcntims and Interrogations Pad 1 "Tnkitrg Leave": I)isclaimi~gtbre False ScclrviCy offfHomc" 1 Knowing How tcr Go On When You Do Not h o w M e r e You Are: A Responw to John Cobb
2 History as Fate: How Justificationby Faith Became Anthropology (and History) in America 3 The Irony of Reinhold Niebuhr: The fdeological Character of "Cl~ristimRealism,'kwi lhichnel Bntadsnrry 4 God as Participant: Time and Hilitory in the Work of James Gustafson
5 Can Aristotle Be a Z,iberal"?h/rartha
Nussbaum on Luck
6 Flight from Foundatio~~alism, or mings Aren't As Bad As They %em, zuith Phil Kenneson
7 Not 811.Peace Is Peace: Why Christians Cannot Makcz Peace with Tristram E~~gelhardtk Peace 8 Haw Cl~fistimEthics Became Medical Ethics: The Case of Paul Ramsey
9 Haw to Go C h Whez~You h o w You Are Gahg to Be Misunderstood, or How Paul FXolmer Ruined My Life, or Nfaking S n s e of Paul Hdmer
X
Confenis
Pwri: 3
roumeying On": Life on the Road, or the Long Journey Hofneruard IQ Murdochian Muddles: Can We Get mrough Them If God Does Not Exist? 11 Reading Jarnes McClendm Takes Practice: Lessons hthe Craft oaf neology 12 Creation, Contingency, and Truthful Nonviolence: A Milbankian Reflection
188
13 Remaining in BabyIon: Oliver OfDonovan'sDef ense of Christendom, with James Fodor
199
14 Remmberhg Martin Luther King fr. Remembering
225
Name lndlex Su bjecf Index
Preface I have been thinking about this book for years. Indeed, I have not just been thhking about this book for years, but: for years this book has been in the process of being writtm. That will be obvious to the reader, as the essays in this volume span a decade. A book about time, as well as "a time," hould not try ta hide its own. timefuhess. I have never tried to write for "the ages,"' Those with greater irttellectual power and erudition may so try to write, perhaps even successhlly, but I try tcr ~ m e r n b e that r my talents m d task are more modest. 1write in the hope that a space may be provided for those still to come to do theology with a confident expansiveness that, to me and many of my generation, is hrgely unavailable, C)ne of the characters in John Updibce's novel Tt;te Coziples observed that his generation was attempting with great difficulty to "break back into paganism." That surely is thc right way to put the matter. For it is no easy challenge to be a pagan in a semi-Christian world where too often Christianity has simply become another name for pagan reality*Wtness, for example, the idolatq of Cl-rristim love of nation. My own work has been m attempt ta imagine what it would mean to ""beak back into Christimity" in a world that is at best semi-Christian. Agah, that is not an easy undertaking, because the very assumption that one must ''break back into Cfiristimjty" means that one is mbbed from the very outset of whatever confidence that "king there" mmht have engendered. This side of the Holocaust-a lack of confidence m the part of Christians-may, one hopes, be a sign of faieh. The series Radical Traditions, however, is designed to providc a space fnr those who are "back into Christianity and Judaismef"That Wildenzess VVnlrdcritzgs is one of the first books to appear in the series is, therefore, somthing of an embarrassment. I was (and am) a bit ambjvalmt about puhtishing c ~ n eof my own books fn a series in which I am c ~ n eof the general editors. I have agreed to do s s only because Peter Ochs said 1 should-and I do what Peter tells me. Yet 1hope that this book represents what will be seen as a transitimai work in a way that the other books we puhliskt are a k a * in mny ways ""beyond." Wilderness Wnnderiys is transitiond in several senses. The book represents my continufng battle to break free from the modes of discourse in-
trinsic to liberal Protestantism as well as from thr modernist presumptions and practices in which that tradition remahs embedded. Yet attempts to ""beak free" too often only reproduce that f m which we Ree. I do not know &:he exact extcnt to which I may remain implicated fn liberal Protestantism, and in that rcspect this book cannot: help but document transitions in my work. However, the book is also transitional inasmuch as it charts for some people h w theology might be done when theologians no longer fear the prospect of living in the wilderness but embrace it instead as a challenge to "break back into Christimityetf W~en to this book, Peter Oehs read m earlier draft of the I~~troduction he observed that an ""agonized X"wwas the aut.hor-an astuk observation and challenge. If 1am "thoroughly postmodern," then no such "I" "should intrude itself. More importmt, the kind of theology this book is memt to represent, or at least move toward, requires no such "X." For such an "1'' usually indicates that the author (inthis case a theologian) is takirzg h h seff or herself far too serictudy in prttsumilng that the limits of his or her okvn subjwtkity are at least as interesting, if not more so, than what the church believes. Vet it would be dishonest for me to repress or try to hide the fact that the "I" still plays a role in my work. I am, after all, by training and nabit, a Protest-mt liberd. Habits, marewer, are hard to break. Habits of t h i n h g arc especiatly unyidding, since they are usuaily not rr-?crrpizedas habit;. If I have discovered one thing over the years, it is that- I have no ability to ""will" my way free of habits of thought (or any other W i t s for that matter) without friends. I think it thert-fore irnpmtant to indicate how significant it is that Peter Ochs honors me with hir; frielldship and wilfIngness to act as cocditor of the Radical Traditions series. That he is a Jew willhg to question me on why I am not a Jew I understalld to be a pmfcrund gesture of friendship. For it indicates not: only that he ""Xikes me,'%but more important, that he assumes that we, Jew and Chsistian, arc bound. in an inseparable embrxe..I hope that Radical Baditions will allow Jews and Christians (and Islamic thillkers as well) to discover that we cannot think without m e another. Miithout such friendship none of us will be capable of being freed from the "agonized I." nlthough such an "YYs undeniably present in this book, Wilderness Wanderings is also about other people or, at least, conversations I am having with other people- Vet I alreaefy clafmed that this is a book about time, even though the reader will find few paragraphs about time qua tirne. Pehaps it is in conversation with others that m e best learns how to think about time, because if one tries to &ink about t h e abstractly, as if time exjsted apart from such conversations, one usudly discovers that one has not been thinking about time. The same point holds true ~ g a r d ing any attcmpt to think or talk about God, who, as the reader will dis-
cover, is also the suhject of this book. Conversationsare required if we art. to make the connections necessasy for the display of what it means to worship a God who is as near to and as far from us as the God of Abraham, fsaac, and Jacob. n o u g h I am often critical of those with whom I am in cmversation, it shot~ldalso be evident that 1am so because of how detlply I ~ s p e ctheir t various a t t e q t s to understand the difference God makes for how we live, or equally, how m w h I admire thr attempt by some to teach us how to live when there is no Gad. This book is dedjcated to my teachers at Yale Divinity and Graduate School. Every generation of divinity school studentri, I s u s p ~ tdevelops , its own "black humor.'Turing my time at Yale a joke cilr-cztlated that, I thhk, was (and is) quite telling. It seems that John XXfII had. an archeohtgical t e r n in the Holy Land. One day the head of the team cailed him with the news that they had discovered Jesus' tomb. There was just one problem, however; the body was still in it. After thinking m d praying about the matter, John XXIlT decided he would phone his old friend, Rudy B u l t ~ ~ a m to, see if he might help him think through the implications of this manumental discovery, Even on the phone 'JohnXXllI could feel BuZtmann's shocked silence on being told the news. Finatly Bultmann responded, "So he r e d y existed!"Wy teahers durkg my years at Yale taught me that if Jesus had not really exist&, if the 'Jews were not God's promised people, then it is atl smoke and mirrors. That is what this book is all about and why, X think, even at the risk of embarrassing my teachers, I dedicate it to them, Of course, I arn not suggesting that all my teachers agreed on tbr claim as well as criticism of the so-called just made. The current identificatio~~ W e School cannot help but strike those of us who are allegcrdly members of that school as ftmny. .'Those of us cvho studied at Yale during the time in question had no idea that our teachers had any convictions, much less represented a school,'^ Yet somehow we learned as their students that theology tryas not just b o u t acquiring more information, but rather an activity that required practiced attention to the Christian tradition. 'That was a lesson for which f will always be grateful. For some time I have h o r n that there was a book in these essays. I could not have found it without the help of Scott Saye, Kcl1y fohnso~~, Diavid CLoutier, md, of COIITS~, Jam= Fodor, Scott, Kelly, and David are in the Ph.U. program in theology and ethics at Duke tlnkersity. Such students make me better than I am.X am.also indebted to Scott and Demry Bader-Saye for p ~ p a r i n gthe index, 'JamesFodor originally came to Duke from Cambrilige ldniversity via Canada, as a postdcxltoral fellow. Canada is obviously a superior society con?pa,red to the United States, since it is wil.lhg to h;md postdoctoral work in theology. 1 do not know if: Jinr has benefited from his postdoc-toraf work with me, but I h o w that I have.
Helping me to think through as well as to write this book has been, as we say in the SotlCh, a "godsend.'~AlthoughI hnvc lit* confidence h my ability to write theology as radical as are the hopes for Radlcal Traditions, I have every ccmfidence that Scott, Kefly, Dawid, Jim, and their colleagues and friends will be so able, Such students and friends are a source of hope and joy. 'That I cmtinue to be supported by new and old friends alike, I count as a s i g ~ of~God's providence and grace. The same cast of charactersDavid Burrell, Rcinhasd Hiitter, Robert Wilken, Mchael Cartwright, Nancy Murphey Jim MeClendon, Gwg fones, Bwtt Webb-MitchelZ, Charlie Pinches, Jean Elshtain, Rusty Reno, Jim Burtchaell, Alasdair MacIntyre, john How& Yclder-and., as they say, many others-continue to make my life and wlrrk possible. Most of them arc. in one way or ancrther academics. Academics are certainly important, but no less significant are friends such as Logan Jones and Kelii Mralker-Jones,Julia, and tarry Bowden, :Kyte and Jam Childress, Adam Hauerwas and Lama BoyntonHauerwas, Susan and Herb Alfred, David JenLl~s,m d numerous others. I have discovered, moreover, that I have a friend who was unexpected. She is Paula Gibert, and she is my wife. I am not surprised that I love her. 1live in wonder that she loves me, What I did not expect was that in m a r ~ i r t gwe would became such good friends. Marriage does not preclude friendship, but then neither does it require it. I am douhly blessed, therefore, that h u l a is not only my wife, but my friend. I have no idea how this happened, but I thank God for havjng such a friend as her, She, of course, nod only makes what I do possible; what is more, she makes the nonagonized "me" pp0b1e. God is great.
Introduction: Theological Interventions and Internogations
Theology is best done without apology*1 therefore have no intention of apologizjng for the unapologetic character of this book.' That E refuse to offer such an apolow puts mo at odds with a great deat of modem Cheoto g . which has adopted as its task to "expfain"'-either to our cultural despisers or to what is a growing and more characteristic population, the indihrent-what Chistians believe. This explanatory enterprise is mdataken on the presumption that theologians, I k e GJlristians in generalt will be more or less tolerated if they underwrite views on which general agrecrne~~t prevails. The current sparsity of agreements about agrecments, however, renders such a position extremely pr&lematic. For one thing, tbrologians who adopt such an explanatory task often find themselves quickly out of date, having sided with agreemellts that often bec m e the site of lur.ther disagreements, Accordingly, the status of theology is fur&er undermined because of the concomitmt impression that those who ellgage hsuch activities lack integrity. The situation of the thologian mirrors the sociology of the church h social orders like that of the U ~ ~ i t eStates, d Chmhes are &ought to be a "good thing"-by those both within and without the church-to the extent that churches support what we care about most as a society or nation. This presumption is true for people on the politicai kft and right. Thosc on Che left want the churches to be "for cconomic justice," Ml)nereas those on the right want the churchs to be good ""for the family." A s a resdt, churches find thems&es in a difficutt bind, particularly at the national level: They struggle to find ways to be inclusive without at the same tirne forgoing their distinctive "prophetic" ailing to speak out or take positiom on thjs or that issue. m a t churches m d theologims occupy a space that by its very nature is cmprornised should come as no surprise. E have no interest in blamillg anyone for the harsh reality that as Christians we find ourselves in such a
doutntful, ambivalent position. Rather, in this book I try only to locate a facing those of us who c m about theology, namely, central cha:lle~~ge how theology in our tirne might reclaim a voice that speaks with authority, a voice h o s e power compels without coercion and persuades without denigration. Accomplishing such a feat =quires, at the very least a cmpetence in writing and speaking in such a manner that our language as Christians actuatly does some work. By ""doing work'" mean that our language is not simply a means of "saying what everyone already knows," but is deployhg and engendering linguistic practices that enable Christians to discover and simultaneously to bear witness to a reality that we ( m d alf that is) are God's good creation. In short, theological language that ""does work"' consists of those discourse practices that truly make a difference. (Lmguage that ""makes" a difference, of course, does so precisely because it also “"reveals" important differences.) The attempt to discover such differences has always been the mimating center of my work. I have never &ought, however, that the discovery of difference is an end in itself, sjnce the discovery of diffe~rzcccleariy does not preclude the discwery of simifarities as well. Nor have I ass u e d that "difference" implies that Christians are "better" &an anyone else. Such moralism X find repugnant in the light of Christ" cross. Given the cosmic struggle Christians believe took place in that cross and resur~ c t i o nthe , idea that its significance can be reduced to who is "better" belittles both God and those of us who worship and strzlggk to obey God. The project of discoverillg the differences has been my atteznpt to explore, in a modest but singutarly significant fashion, how Christian clains about the wobld truly and faithfz~1lydisplay the way things are. I acknowledge that this project has put me in tension with much of conto the temporary thedogy and church practice. In an atternpt to ~ s p o n d of theola$y; many theologians assume that their compromised positio~~ task is to show how theologiral speech could mlce sense given the epistemologicai pmsun-tpticms of modernity-that is, they see their mandate as renderjng intelligible to the world at least some of what CI-tristians believe. A cormlative politics and ethics is thus developed in the hope oi putting the church on the side of what are assumed to be the most progscssive aspects of our ci\?.ilization.Such a politics and ethics appear quite prophetic insofar as they call, for exmple, for greater economic justice in the interest of egalitarian ideals. Unfortunately the extent to which such a politics and ethics accommodate trhelnsclves to th.e presumptions of modernity is effectively concealed, In contrast to this dominant outlook, I have ~ p e a t e d l yargued that the centrat theological task is to render the world inteliigible to Christians. For m th question is not "How can theologians make Christimity intelligibk in the modern worlci?" but "How can theologians make sense of
TI:zeologicnfIlz temmtio~fs and lnterrog~t ions
3
the worldf giwn the way we Christians are taught to speak in and through our worship of Cod?" X therefore have very little sysnpalhy with attempts to trmslate Christian speech into terms h a t are assumed to be generally availde. I ~ s i sthat t prf?ject not because I think there is some unchanghg ""care" of Christim convictio~zsthat must be protected come hell or high water,' but because 1have a number of theological and philosophical misgivings about the very idea of translation. '2he notion that Christian speech can or must be trmslated if it is to be acceptarble to modem people too often embodies shplistic views regarding the nature of language. For imtmce, such views of the linguil;tic charactcr of the t h e e logical task fail to understmd t-hat the theologian shodd be trained as an adequate, skil.2ful speaker of a language,Tf;rm my perspective, if Christian theological clahns are no lmger doing any work, they are best given up, for it is far better to abandon such futile endeavors than subject them to a resurfacing operation (a ""face lift"') that tries to show that they really mean something elseS4 The theologian's task is to articulate why and in what ways certain practices are intrinsic to Christian discourse, As X suggest in Chapter 9, that was one cJf the reasms I hecame an "ethicist." I thought that ethics provi,ded an i,nte:llechaal,opportunity to explore t-he diffe~ncesChristim speech could and should make, 1 did not anticipate then the ways in which this pro~ectwoulLi force me to (re)discover the significance of the church as Che primary set of anguage g m e s not onIy in wf"licjil Christians learn to speak, but in which our speech already is a practice with a significant difference. Such claims about the sig~zificanceof the crihurch invite cou~zterassertions by contemporary Christians and theologians to the effect that there have been so many diffemnt ways to be ""church"or to do theology in Christian tmdition. I have no reason to de~zypast and cttrrent differences between churches or the conflicts that theology both n a m s and to a certain extent:perpetuates. I have little use, hcrwever, for the easy affirmation of variety in the Clhristian tradition or for appeals to plufalism to legiti-. mate the view that theologians get to decide what they want Christianiv to be. The Christian tradition is a given, albeit a complex given, that invites and rcquiscs, ralher than inhibits, argument. That I became an ethicist first and foremost for theoiagical reasons helps account for s w e of thr misunderstanding, as well as the vehement criticism, generated by my work. "'Ethics'\va~ and continues to be the project of Protestant liberalism, particularly in the United States. That project, which is the Protestant project, has been to put the church at the service of making ours a society like no other. Ethics thus became the way to pursue that task to the extent that ethics purportedly n m e d what was "really irnp"rtantff about Christianity in order to Leave behind what
was dubbed ""traditionai thecllogicat ccmvictions." For me, by ccmtrrast, et-hies refers to the kind of practices that shape the way Christians must live if we arc to enrbody in our lives the confession that jesus Christ is Lord.?Such language may make it difficult, perhaps even irnpwkible, for Christians to "fit in," But X have never understood, let alone have I been persuaded by, the assumption that Christian theo1ogi.n~are supgosed to help Christims "fit."' I hope that- this book will make clear the theological agenda that has aliways animated my work as an ethicist. At first blush, this volume may look like just another book about other fieologians and philosophers. it is at Least that. Indeed, I trust that by rcading the ehapters on Niebuhr, Ramsey Stout, Nussbaurn, and the others treated herejn, the reader will gain a greater appreciation m d understanding of those thinkers. If of course, hope the reader will also understand m better by considering my undastanding of the people discussed in this book. Yet 1 trust it will be clear that this is not a book primarily ""about other people.""Rather, it is an attempt to make clear one central poht, namely; that whatever my reputation may or ma)i not be as an ""ethicist," from begiming to end my concerns have always been theokgicai. fn this book not cmly do E try to display what I take to be the task of theology, but I actudly do some theology. I have always been about the doing of theology but here it may be presmt in a form mom recopizable to tbose who are. accustomed to having their theology done "straight." Fur me to claim to be a theologian, of course, in no way assures grezlttrr understanding or agreement. In fact, it simply shifts the site cJf the cmtroversy, since liberat theology is stilf Cheology "Doing elhict;" was one of the w q s I tried to avoid the way theobgicd guestions were put in the litberat traditim-questions like "What is the experiential basis of theology?" or " M a t does it mean to say God acts in histary?"%e essays in this h& contirrue that avoidance strategy, but I hope they also help clarify M;hy such questions are best made redundant and thus forgotten through the discovery of ~rroreinteresting questions. That 1 do theology in conversation with others is nut accidental. It is through clmversaticm that E discover wbat I think theologically. Actually the langmge of "'conversation'~stoo weak to characterize Che essays in this book, 'They are, as the title of this htroductim suggests, more like hterventions and interrogaticms. That is to say, most of these essays aw not so much "atte~rrptsat understandirmg" as they are intertiel~tiorrsin another" aagenda in order that 1 might better understand my own, But they are atso interrogations, rttfkcting the ways in which E differ or agRe m search for greater clarity Accordingly these essays are characterized by the klnd of questioning that detectives eznploy when they do not know "who did it,'%but are equally sure that a crime has been commftted.
TI:zeologicnfIlz temmtio~fs and lnterrog~t ions
5
On finishing this book the reader wiIt not discover "who did it." h r one thhg, I do not b o w how the story will end. For ano.trher, I do not have a finished theological, system nor do 1believe in such a thhg. I do not h o w what a finished theological system would look like, and even if I knekv, I m pretty sure that I cvould not want it. My suspicion is that Ihe desire to have such a system may indicate the theologian" lack of faith in the church. fndeed, the church across the centuries and through the comrnunian of saints believes more than. my theologian could possibly say. The theologian is therefore free to wander and wonder, hawing that the truth of what the church bciieves is not threatened Zly the thedogians to "put it all together." That the theology done in this book may seem to wander is not accidtmtal. The essays, particularty in the first half of this book (Chaptrtrs 1-23), challenge the presumption of us Christians in America that we are finally ""l-me"-that after two thousand years of wandering in the wilderness we have finalry got to where we we^ meant to be. 'lb be sure, even those of us who assume we are at home believe there are still a few kinks to work out, Christians of the left and the right have different accounts of those kinks, but it is commonly assumed that whatever the problems may be, we nonetheless have the resources to accomplish that task. Tn contrast, 1 assume that the church (md the theology that serves that church) must not be surprised or afrajd to discover itself still in the wilderness. This is not a condition exclusive to the church's position in America, though America presents peculiar challenges for the church, but rather reflects the character of a church that by its very nature must always be on the way Wldcrness thology will prove, 1 hope, to be a bit wild. After all, we have nothing left to lose, inasmuch as we are unsure where we are in the or first placea7I remain cmvhced that nothing is quite as u~~cmtrolled radically ranpredicthle as Christian orthodoxy 7i, learn to see uur lives (as well as the cosmos) as created; to learn that out of all the nations God chose the Jews; to learn that our destky lies in the crucified and resurrected Jesus; all of that is to leam to see the world charged with God's grandeur. Surely a theology that has at its cmter a God of such wildness cmnot be enclosed. I believe that these essays, even in their critirisln of others, suggest the confidence that comes when Christians know that even h the wilderness we have nothing to fear except our own unfaithh h e s s to God.
The Plot Theologkally speaking, my primar)i purpose in this book is constructive. But having said that, I cannot deny that m e of tbe reasons I have put
these essays together is also to rebut the charge that E have no interest in, xlnr m X able to engage, those who differ from me, whether they be Christian or non-Christim. E find such criticism odd, not only because of the considerable time E spend reading and talking with those who do not shnre my views, but also-and just as important to me-because the way E think as a theologian is due hno small way to what I bave learned from them and from those diverse engagements. It is true that I do not think there is in principle m y way to ensure that the Gospel can be made intelligible to someone who is not a Christian, but that does not m a n that there is nothing we have to say to each other. Oftentimes you have to wait and see (but also test and try, probe and prove) what you may have to say to each other. For anyi n t e ~ s t e din the guestim of whether those of us identified as "postliherals" can talk across traditions, the chapters in this book do not need to be mad in sequence. If you want to know what I thhk about Iris Murcioch, for instance, you can read the chapter on her without reading any of the others. Yet t-he chapters are =ranged with a certain plol.[ine in mind.. The first eight cbagters are accounts of theological. and phibsophical alternatives from which I find that I must finally distmce mysdf. Chapter 9, on I'ad Molmcr, marks a turning poiat in the book. I intended that Chapters 10-14 fill out some of the background that supports the kind of criticism I make in the first part of the book. The book begins with " K n ~ w h gHow to GO 011When YOU Do Not h o w Where You. Are: A :Respmse to John CobbU-to his essay, "The Christian Reason for Being Progressive.'"" I know I am asking much of rcladers by having them begin cvith my reply to a piece that m y ol them will not have read, I think, however, that the reader can gather from my response a sufficfent understanding of Cobb's position to make my criticisns inteUigiHe. Moreover, commencing with Chapter 1 on Cobb is important because it signals the ways in which he h s helped me understand how it is that Protestant liberaiism bequeaths to Christians a misguided sense that they actually h o w where they are. Liberals are convinced that particular knowledges are certain in a manner that Christian orthodoxy cannot be. By representing the faith in a manner that- will appear both intellectually respectable and politically responsible, liberal Protestants try to help the rest of us "fit in." I share COW'S presumption that theology cannot be divmceei from poli.tica1 and economic q.ilest.ions, but X obviously embrace quite a clliferent theology and politics. Chapters 2 and 3, on Rei&old Mebuhr (")?istory as Fate: Ilow Justification by Faith Became Anthropology [and History] in America" and "The Irony of Rrrhhold Webuhr: The Ideological Character of 'Christian Realism"'), exemplify the interrelation between theological and political
TI:zeologicnfIlz temmtio~fs and lnterrog~t ions
7
questions discussed in the chapter on Cobb. At first glance, Niebuhr and Cobb may seelB to be u111ikely allies. But closer seruthy reveals that they share a critical attitude toward the Christian tradition, all the white seeking to justify Christian support for liberal causes. Particularly important the relatio~~ between l;i_&eraf, theology and is how they bath u~~derstand their own suppwt of liberal political arrangements. Both authors exemplify the project of social Christianity in the TJ11ited States, albeit fn quite different ways." am aware that some may stiiil find it strange to treat Niebuhr as a theological liberal, but he certainly mderstoad himself as such and thou@t his liberatl theologicai views were essrJntiai for his support ol pditical liberdism,'"" As 1 have noted above, me of the major themes running through this book is the interplay between liberal tbedogy and liberal political theory and practice. h order for Chistianity to gain intellectual and political intel2igibility within tlne world of political liberalism, it m s t first be transformed into (i.e., ~ d u c e d to) ""helifs." "f'heway this transformation is accomplis:hed is to focus on the '"problem of history." History becomes the shorthand term for mailrtajnixrg a causal account of human behavior to which God can only be an "externalityr."Such an accorant then pmduces the qraestion ""How, if at alX, c m God act in history?" 'That ~ e s t i o npresupposes that history names a world that is not God3 ccrcation.'"t is that presumption which this book is rwant to &&age. C)f course, discussions surroundi,ng the "problem of t.listoryr'were, and continue to be, more complex than the preceding paragraph suggests.12 Yet I believe that framfng the issue in these stark terms iflurnines the interplay between theolow m d politics wi.lhin liberal cultures..Put quite simply, the overriding issue becomes: 'Wow can hope be sustained in a world that is not created?'" In such a world, history is but another name for rclsignal.ion, the stoic acceptance of our fate. 'The irony, of course, is that :Reinhold. Niebuhr" life was one of hope that his theology belied. That such was the case is a testimony to Niebuhrfs rootedness in the church. Yet for Chose of us not so moted, his theology can easily hccome, as 1think i a d i in the later stages of his life, a justification for the liberal presumption that "hthe beginnhg was violence-If Chapter 4, on the work of James Gustafson ('"God as Participant: Time and History in the Work of James Gustafson"") was lfor me an essay h discovery. Gustafson war; (formerly) my teacher and is (currentty) my friend. And it is precisely this friendship that impelled me to u ~ ~ d e r s t m d how it is that :I find myself at such a different place than Gustafsm, all the while conceding that that difference is partly due to what I hawe learned fmm hint. In his spirjted reply to those of us who contributed essays on his work in the kurnal ofReligiorcs Ethics, Gustafsm Observes that his work, beginning with Treastkres ill Earflze~?Vessels, has been motivated
by a desire to force Christim theologians to modify, if not correct, their exaggerated clainns about the "Spirit" or the ""Church,"particularly wfien those clalrns are tacitly empirical ones.'%ccordingly, he characterizes as "very natufalistic" his construceive suggestions in Chrtsf and the Moral L@ as well as in Cnls Ethics Be arislian? I am extremely sympathetic with Gustafsods ""exnpiricism," if he means by that attention to the work that theological clailns in fact do. But I am not at all convinced that that requires those same claims to be cmstrued "mturalistically."' For example, Gustafson takes me to task when, in my effort to differentiate myself from h, I say, "Iremain stuck with the claim that through Jrrsus' resurrection God decisiveXy changed our history. nerefore :Ibelieve we must contjnue to begin with the "articular,' with the historicat, not because there is no other place to begin but because that is where God beghs." Gustafsm expresses uncertahty regarlfing who mi&t be included and excluded from the pronominal "our'" in that opening scmtence; the second sentence he simply finds "ludicrous." He says, "I can only infer that nat-ure is of no theological significance, and that God was absent, or something, until Jesus" resurrection, God is not sovereign over nature, I take it, Nature is also, then, of no ethical si.gnificance as a source oE djrection in Mauerwas's ethics, Hauerwas becomes a twentieth-century version of Marci~n.'~'~ Gustafson fur&er cl-ralienges what he takes to be my ""rdical historicism," which I use to try to force hint to choose between being a historicist or a universafist. He rightly poirzts out that Ernst Troeltsch's and H. Richard Niebuhr's basis for being '%istoricist" was philosophicaliy grounded, as they rightly saw that one cannot sustain on stridly historical grounds a claim for a radically historicist perspective. Challenging further my Christology and ecclesiolctgy, Gustafson concludes that "Hauerwas is an intellectual and moral sectarian of the mast extreme sort; thus he keeps a clear disthction between Christianity and the rest of life alive but forecloses apologetics of any kind and limits the range of the ethical- Hauerwas's God becomes the tribal God of a minority of the earh's population. I could argue cogently, I believe, that it is very unibiblical in many respects."'"' I have recounted Gwtafson"~response to my astide not o d y because I think it fair to do so, but aXso because I think it helps locate the argument 1 am tryir7g to make. I agree that little hangs on whether one is a "historicist," "vcn the lack of clarity s~rroundingthat &signation. Nor does much hang on the alternative between particuZarisrn or uni.versalism. Rather, the issue is fmdarnmtdI8 theologicai, and Gustafson is right to orr more exacdy, the character of out exfocus on the questjm of ereatio~~ istence as determhed by a Gud who h e l y crcates. The claim Gustafson fhds ""ludicrous" concerns my remark about the God who creates as the
TI:zeologicnfIlz temmtio~fs and lnterrog~t ions
9
onty God worth cmsidering, a God vvho is found not only inthe cross and resurredio~zof Christ but also in the co~zthuhgworkkg of the Spirit-16 The doctrhe of c ~ a t i o nonly makes Christian sense as part of the doctrine of the Trinity*b r Christians, tbr doctrine of the Einity is necessary if we are to render the world intelligible as we find it and as we hope it will be, Such a claim is "empirical,"' not in the sense of being verifiable,17 but in the sense that it ~9uirc.sa tradition-determined community to narrate the way the world is and, given the w y the world is, hokv Christians must be h such a wodd. As I will discuss in Chapter 1.2, such. a narrative may be ""totalizing"in a mamer Gustafson fears. However, Gustafsm's fears are unfou~zdedbecause the cm~teni"of that narrative shot~ld,if understood rightly, prevent those who arc shaped by it from forcing others into living as we do. All Christians seek to be is witnesses of that hope.'" But it is a wimess whose very posfii1it.y and efficacy resides in the certain ""uncertainty" of hope, h other words, Christians are able to wih-ress to that hcrpe, not because they know befmhand the direction of history, but. precisely because they do not. Un Gustalson%account, God gets to be a participant. Similarly, we too get to participate in the histmical (md natural) processes in whjch we find ourselves. Unfortux~ately,this participation is neither a thcology nor a politics that holds out any prospect of radical chmge, For '"participation" tends to be the lmguage of the liberal manager and bureaucrat, those who assume that the way things are is about as much as one can expect. Just as Stoicism, often =presented great wisdom for the Romans and for those who would rule Rome, so I think Gustafson" ethic represents great wisdom for the growing bureaucratic and managerial classes that mle li_beralsocial orders. Were Christianity false, then clearly some form of stoicism would be the best alternative. Yet Christians cannot be stojcs. For the Cod Chrjstians worsf-rip creates and redeems, thereby making possible (but also makirtg imperative) that we live in a manner fully consistent with the anticipation cJf God's kingdom. Soxnehow the at east as it is used in liberal social orders, language of ""parti,cjpati,onfU represents too pale an irnage of the Christian God, and subsequently of the people God has called to be his own. Hence, Christians rightly believe that God requires justice and hope ract.ler than bureaucratic "participation," which is why the poor find the proclamation of the Gospel such good news. Chapters 5,6, and 7 ('"CmAristotle Be a Liberal? Mart-ha Nussbaum on Luck'"; "Flight from Foundationalism, or Things Aren't As Bad As They Seem"; and "Not All Peace Is Peace: Why Christians Cmnst Make Peace with Tristrm Ex~gelhardt'sPeace") are &out philosophers, not theohgians. 1 have i n c u e d them because not only do 1 admire the work ol: NussZlaum, Stout, m d EngeIbarcit but also I believe each in quite differ-
ent ways has helped Christians begin to ilnagine what our world locks like in God's eclipse. Nusslnaum and Stout are serious thinkers seelcing to show us how to go m in God's absence. It was soon after Nussbaum's Fragility of Goitdszess was published that I wrote the essay. I have included it, in part because in it 1 mticipated her increasing sympathy with Kmtian modes of m r a l analysjs and her correlative support of liberal political arrangemclmts;" h t more important, the essay crrntinucs to bo ~ l e vant in the way it articulates perhaps the central issue in liberal moral and political theory-luck, Liberalism is the moral passim that seeks to free our lives from the deof our birth," and all other vicissitermination of bad luck, "accide~~ts tudes of history. Historyf from a liberal perspective, is the study of the past in order to render the past impcrtmt for the ongoing dekrminations of our lives. In short, history becomes the way to put the wrongs of the past truly and irrevocably in the past through a Zcind of forgetfuhess, The pcrli.tical arrangements of Gbcllrafism seek to free us from history by creating social,orders inwhich "we can be what we wmt to be." Yet the mems necessary to secure such "freedom" han egalitarian manner creates sock eties that make our tives all the m m etetermified by powers we do not recoglnize as powers" :Nusc;baurn,therefore, makes candid some of the ontological and political commitments that, in rrty essays on Nkbuhr and even more m Gustafson, 1 began to suggest were inherent in Protestant: liberalim: namely, a reconfiguration of Clhristianit). in stoic terms, These themes are extended and deepened in Cbapter 12, on Milbank, and Chapter 44, on Martin h t h c r King Jr. In brief, my piece on Mibank is an atrt-emptto suggest an alternative ontology required by the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Even more important as I am sure Milbank would agree, is the witness of redeemed memory-as exenplifed in Ihe life and work and wih-tess of Martin Lather King Jr., a man who =fused to forget. FIis refusal to forget derives, of course, from the cmiction that our world is cmstitnted by a Cod who makes .forgivenessand, thus, hope possible."" Jeff Stout and %is Engelhardt in different ways repmsent aMempts to sustain tiberal results wiZhout the epistetmdogical cmceits crf Liberalism. I adm,ire Stout's attempt at hriccllllcyr. as welt as his quite syntpnthetic acknowledgment of those of us who persist in trying to remain Christian. I-lowever, 1must confess that I am as sympathetic with his project as I am He is right, of course, in usillg whatever doubtld of its po~sjbgity.~' moral resources happen to be at hand; but I remain uxlconvinced that such resources can be made fully intcltigibk, given that they remain abstracted from comntnni.t.ies of memory necessary to form peopk of virtu9. Stout would no doubt agree about the importance of such commlanities. Baseball and medicine are t w important resources; but in the
TI:zeologicnfIlz temmtio~fs and lnterrog~t ions
12
absence of a community for communitks) with a more determinative narrative, I do not see how they can resist distortion in the liberal market. The chapter on Engelhardt provides an opportunity to expore the question whether fie p a d t i e of medicine as the unqualified care of the sick can be sustained, given cr~~rrent liberal political.arrangements. Engelhardt, like Stout, seeks no "foundation" that might ensure him a place to stand outside history. Rather, like his fellow Texan, t)indon bhnsm, he orzly asks that we "reason together," assming that we wiill prefer peace to c d i c t , Yet I fear that the sort of peace he has in view is boutght with too heavy a price; for it asks us to equate peace with fie absence of violence. I douht any society built on such an ilusinn can long keep more overt forms of violence at bay. I have followed the chapter on Engelhardt with an accowt of Paul Ramsey, "How Christian Ethics Became Medical Ethics: 'The Case of Paul Ramsey" (Chapter 8). 1 did so not only because it continues the focus on medicline,22but more important because Rmsey is helpful in returning us to the presuppositions (or at least the practice) of Pmtestant liberal, theology*Ramsey would be shocrked, to be counted among the Protestant liberals, since he thougbt of hirnscrlf as more fieologically and politically cmservative than anyone in that tradition. But it was Ramsey WhO also made the mistake of assuming that binhofd NiebuXlir befieved what Ramsey befieved.". As a result, he thought he could "' use" Niebuhr's redism without reproducing Niebul-tr's Christology (or lack t h c ~ o l )Just . to the extent that Ramsey accepted the role of the ""etlnicist,"' he could not help but make his theological convictims appear as afterthcrughts. The title of Chapter 9, "Haw to Go On Wherz You h o w You Are Gohg to Be Misunderstood, or FIow Paul H o h e r Ruined :My Life, or M a h g Sense of Paul. Hohelr," i s an obvious allusion to the title of this book, As I indicated above, the essay orz H o h e r =presents something of a turn in the plot oi the book. It is not so much a plot reversal as an attempt to say more explicitly and cmstructively what I think by directing attention to those who have taught me both what to think and how to think. The essay on Holmer in particular makes explicit the Wittgcnsteinian resonances that some may have already noted in this Introduction and, it; they are discerning readers, in all that I have written. I do not prete~zd that this chapter is aything more than a gesture needing mre adequate defense, but I hope the reader will nofietheless find it a he:tpful gesbre.. For if the position X have tried to argue in this bnok is close to being rig%lt, the only "'adequate dcfense" is precise@ the kind of display each of the c h a p t a h this book, X hope, represents. Chapter W, on Iris Murdoch ("'Murdochian Muddles: Can We Get Through Them If God Does Not Exist?"'), may at first seem to belie my claim that the rest of the chapters in the book are about thinkers with
whom I m in general apement. Yet I hope my immmse debt to Murdoch is apparent even as X disagree with her "theology." "deed, one of the things I find most fascinating about Murdoch is her willingness to believe h o s t everythiq Protestmt liherats would wmt her to believe, yet she does so wit;klout seeing any reason why that would entail believirrg in God, let alone a God wha creates, At the very least, my mgagernent with lier work has forced me to be much more candid about the metaphysical entailments required by the Christian conviction that a11 that is, is createdeZ4 Not only will Chapter 11, on fames McClendon" work ("Reading James McCtendon Takes Practice: Lessons in the Craft of Theology'"), give the reader a sense of what my kind of "systematic theology" might look like, but it also extends the material convictims that inform the perspective of this book. For exampie, McClendon's claim that war and its violence turn out to be antihistorical is exactly the kind of redescriptive work Christian speech must paform if it is to command the serious attention of Christians and non-Chsistims alike. Of course),such a claim hvites m d reyuires much ""wplanatim," which, turns out to be the kind of work thecllogians are supposed to be about. 'f'hat McCleneion works so patie~ztlyand well to that end is why I find his work so compelling, an important beacon in our time. By the t h e readers come to Chapter 12, on John Mlhank ("Creation, Conlingency, and Truthful Nonviolence: .h Mgbankian Reflection""), they may well feel it is superfluous, since heguent reference to and. use of his work appear throughout the previous chapters. In a singular way, Milbank has charted a new directjon for theology for Which, &as, this book is only a footnote. ?i, be sure, Mllbank's attack on the social sciences as providixig theociicaf legitirnaticlns for the violence of liberal social orders can initially be off-putting because of its uncompromising character. Exposing the in.visibility of the liberal nasrative and practices (which are invisibfe exactly because they are now more or less identified with "the way the world ist'")annot help but appear as a violent exercise, But E, would contend that the violence unveiled characterizes more the subject matter than either the one doing the exposing or the melfiods of unconcealSnent. My only difficulty with Milt?ank is the fear that in dismantling the mastefs house too many of the master" tools may have been used. Nevertheless, Milbank is surely correct in claimiag that fjnail,y all one can do is provide a better narrative. X remain agnostic whether "a better narrative"' =quires that we /'out-narrate'ball comers, but there can be no question Chat we must learn again how to do Christian history. Indeed, Milbank" Tfzeteol~~w nrzd Sucinl Theory may well be the closest thing we have in modern theology to Augusthe's City of God. Such a comparison
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13
is obviously not fair to Milbank, but at least it suggests the genre within which 1think his work is properly judged. WIdenzess W ~ n d e r i ~ gthe s , title of this book, c m to m while rereading the essay describing Oliver 0"Uonovan's work (Chapter 13,""Remnining in Babylan: Oliver O'Dmovan's Defense of Chri~tendorn")~ O'Uonovan has done what my criticism of Protestant liberalism suggests we must do. He has sought, not to reach an accommodation with liberal culture, but to shokv why liberal cuiture is ul-rintelligjbk hvithout the God we Christians worship. His is a Constantinian project on the grandest scale before which E can only stand in awe. :Not only do E stand in w e of what he has attempted, but: I also stand in much agreement. He and I concur, of course, in our assessment of liberalism and its antithetical character to Christimity.'%Rut our agreements are deeper in that he too seeks no "transcexrdental" point t h f might free us from our obligation to be faithful to biblically nasrated history. The crucial diffi" culty with WUonovan's narrative, howevw, is that it attempts to help Christians rccover the home we thought God had m d e for us in "the West," In contrast, I a s s m e that one of the most important duties of Christians is conthually to resist a esia; that is, we must not forget the ariably passes through wilderness sense in which our earthly j o m e ptaces. For a people who live bewetm the times, it should c o r n as no surprise that we shodd find owseftles, more often than not, still in the wilderness. The bonk closes with Chapter 14, ""RememberingMartilr Luther King Jr. Kernernbering" n a good Protestmt liberal. At least Martfn Luther King Jr.was a good Protestant liberal when he c m e to write his theology King's li:beralism no doubt contributed to his power, which sureIy is an indication that much good remains fn liberaf theology. Yet as E suggeskd atowe, King's life and work wcx shaped by a peopfe wln.o h e w they could not forget their ancestry or their history. They could not forget those who had gone before and whose past sufferings make present memories (and identities) possible. By remembering Martin iJuther Kitlg Jr., those of us who are not Afsican-Americans are presented with a crucially important opportunity to become engrafted into a practice that makes us part of a history that, through Cod's grace, we might learn to acknowledge as our own, King did not m d could, not lead us uut of the wilderness, but without him, and others like him, we would not have enough hope to sustain our wanderjng. Such is this book" plot, There are subplrzts within the main plot that I trust some readers will find of interest. Indeed, t-he plot I have provided is only one way that these essays can. be read m d thus 1 am cmfident that s o m readers will find more interesting ways to ptot the book, Certainly my hope is that my outlink, will not inhibit, obstruct, or prevent such
reaclings-or, worst of all, discourage some readers from reaeSing the book dtogethes. Perhaps one should not worry oneself overly much about things &out which one has little, if any, control, Paonetheless, I would be dishonest ff I did not conkss that central to my aspir;ltions for this book is that it might szlggest to some readers how wonderful it is to serve a God who has more interesting things for us to do &an to make our world safe. .A Few Concluding Remarks
I confess I love to write introduclions ljke this- I keep t-hinking that perhaps if I persevere long enough I will be able to articulate what I have been on about, not only to myself hut to others as well. Perhaps I harbor the unrealistic hope that if people just understand what: 3. am trying to do, they will not be so critical. 'This book, and in particular writirrg this Introductbn, has certainly helpftd me understand what I am trying to cfo. But the more 3. understand, the more I understand what yet needs doing. That seems to me a good thing, if you think, as I do, that theology if it is to reflect truthhlly on God, must remah forever ttnfh~ished. Never bejng able to finish, of course, can be a fruSfrafj.on.Yet it can also be an invitation for others to help. I am gratjfied and sustajned by those who are pw"uing, with deep= historical k~owledgea d theological insight than I possess, the kind of agenda represented by this hook. In particular, I am grateful to Michael Broadway, Phil Kennesun, and James Fodor for writing three of the essays (Chaptefi 5 6, and 13 ~spectivefy) with me, "Writing with me" i s too weak a description to do j~~stiee to their individual contributions. For each coauthomd piece reflects hours of discussion before, duringf and after the writing. 'I'hey have taught me much. Some may wonder why the book has no separate cbapters on Alasdair Maclntyre or John Howard k d e r . One answer is that 1 have witten so often about both of them that it wodd be redundant to include chapters on their respective work in this volume." E think, however, the more hportant rczason is that every chapter in this book is so depencient on what Nliachtyre and Voder have taught me that- the book is, fsom beginning to end, about them, 1 say that with some hesitancy m d misgiving, since I: h o w that each of them, for quite d i f f e ~ nreasons, t feels some ambiguity about their hfllae~~ce on my work.;" Rut it kvould, be disingenuous of me not to acknowledge their influence. I hcrpe that if this book does nothing else, it embodies my ccmviction that theology is a communal endeavor*The essays that constitute its cmtent manifest my debt to those with whom I agrce and my even greater debt to those with whom I disagree. Disagreements are precious achieve-
Tlzeologz'cnfIlz t e m mtiotfsand lnterrog~t ions
15
ments indeed, not easily had and even mortr rarely appreciated. Mistakes are m d c atl the time, and we ought to be grateful to alf those who are kind enough to point them out. To those people we remain indebted.. But them is no g ~ a t e compliment r than to discover that you have made a mistake that truly matters. 1 hope that such mistakes as may be found in what E have done here may lead to new and grezlttrr discoveries that will help ali of us know better h w to think and live as Christians, as those traj,ed to wander and wonder, with cllriosity and courage, but afso with faith and confidence, in tke one God who has promised to guide us in places that m m d t m look like wilderness than home. Notes l . William Placher has illumined these matters in Ulznpologetic TIzeolngy: A Clln'sltzr;7n Voice izz n Pluralistic Con-r~elsal.ian(LouisviXle: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989). 1 have no reason to deny the possibility of what some, following Hans Frei, call ad hvc apologetics. 1 remain cmvinced, hc)wever, that theology is most compelling when it is dtme with cmfidence. 2. The very notion of a core of beliefs that allegedly constitutes ""what Christianity is all about" is ane af the most dangerclus assumptions in theology. Protestant liberal theology went to ruin trying to find an "essence." This search for a core E take to be the cmtinuing legacy of the Kefc-nrmatian,which gave Christians the misguided notion that they could freely range over Christian tradigon deciding what we like and do not like. At the risk (albeit small) of exaggeration, the attitude that most characteskes Protestants is "How much of all the past stuff that Christians used to believe do E need to continue believing in order to still think of myself as a Cl~ristian?"h contrast, Catholics tend to think: "Gcmdness, took at all the great stuff we get to believe!'' Catlrctlics rightly understand that they do not have to ""believe" X or U as an indiuidzial believer, since that is the fundim af the whole church. What matters is not what the individual may believe, but what the church believes. 3, Became Christians are committed to witness, 1 suspect that they must by necessity learn what MacEntyre calls ""second first languages." The learning of such languages always presents certain challmges, but Christians have no reason to belletre that such a prc>cesswill not enhance their understanding of their first first language, After all, we believe aur God will be found in the stranger. See Alasdair Macfntyre, WfzoseJustice? Wlzz'dt Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Nstre Dame Press, 119881, pp. 366365, 4. I certainly do not think Christian convictionti are invulnerable to challenge and revision. Indeed, E think it imperative that Christian theuloe be respomive to the best science of the day, If you could demonstrate, for example, that physics requires matter to be metaphysically eternat, then I would be compeXted to view as problematic what Christians believe about creation, Of course, what one means by 'matter'
issues in her Theology itz ttic Age of Scietzt$f;;eReaclsorjing (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). 5, Consider, for example, this quote from Max Stackhause, who is one of the most distinguished Christian ethicists currently writing: ""T'e ethical power of Christianity is based in the affirmation that Jesus Christ is the ontological embodiment of t k loving and justifrying relationhip between God and humanity, the One whose lifet death, and resurrection are the prirnazy historical evidence that we are loved and justifid. Thus, in Jesus Christ, we find a direct, personal relationship between the divine and the human whereby the triune reality of God reaches beyond God" internal existence and o>vercomesthe distance between the divine and the human. Thereby the material, psl)rchologicat, social, and political realities of human existence are empawere8 toward the integration af ethical pcossibilities. This embodying event gracefully invites the fragile, easily distorted, subjectir~e,suspicious person to believe that our existence is covenantal in character, even @ven the ambiguities of wamanted historical evidence. This vertical intersubjective relationship thereby pmmpt-s and enables us to seek the formation of those relative covenants of justice and love possible in historical relatiomhips that they may become channels of grace in the horizontal-intersubjective relationships af life?both in the church and in the fabric of civilization. Indeed, they are to socieq as the soul is to self." "The Vc~cationof Christian Ethics Today," Princeton Seminay BuEleti~z16, 3 (new series, 4995): 2%. Staekhcouse uses "orthodox" language, but note that according to him Jesus exemplifies a "prior relationshipF" which makes very unclear why Jesus was put tcr death. Wc3ulcd not his birth have been sufficient? Moreoveu; the assumption that Trinity names Gad's reaching "eyond" God's internal existence can only be described as bizarre, since orthos dox Christian doctrine p ~ s u m e Trinity is God's internal existence. W h t 1 think the reasoning in this paragraph exhibits, and this is not peculiar to Stackhouse, is the impatience that many "ethicists" have toward theology, What these etEcists really want is to get on with working out- the '"eiative covenants of justice and love," if that sicounds a lot like Reinhold Niebuhr, it is by no means accidental. 6. Peter Hodgson, in Gad in Hktory: SIzapes of Freedonz (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 198f)),tzrishes to claim for himself a ""postmodern" perspective, but as the title of his book indicates, he continues to embrace the assumption that God must somehc>wbe fitted into ""hstory" X>be sure, he prc>videsa quite sophisticated account of the latter, disavowing all grand theories. Vet, as he acknowledges, his position is in some ways quite similar to that of John G~jbb"~ as like Cobb he assumes that tzre need an "overview" in order to make e n s e of history (239). Indeed, it is not clear how Hctdgson% considerable erudition does not result in underwriting a high humanism in the interest of providing a theological justificatian of liberal causes. For example, consider this quote: "God is present in specific shapes or patterns af praxis that have a configuring, transformative power within historical process, moving the process in determinative directions-that of the creative unif cation of multiplicities of elements into new wholes, into creative syntheses that build human solidarity, e d a n c e freedom break systematic oppression, heal the injured and broken, and care fc~rthe natural" (205). William Thompson provides a striking contrast to Hodgson" '%accountMof God in his 'The Strugglefor T!zeologyS Soul: Go~testi~zg Scrz'pfzlreiz Cl~ristolon(New
TI:zeologicnfIlz t e m mtiotfs and lnterrog~ t ions
17
York: Crctssrc~ads,1996). Considel; fc~rexample, Thompson's meditation on the first chapter of John: "The Prologue and the entire Gospel of John are inviting us to consider that we are moving, not simply from the man 'Jesusto God, but fram the God-bwome-Man Jesus to the trinitarian Wcrrrd. We learn about the trinitarian Word because that trinitarian Word is as and in Jesus. The 3theoXctgic3ere is from Cod to humanity. That is, only Gecl can make God known" (426). Thompst~naccordingly does thecrrfogy with the assumption that the theologian" task is to explain our existence, not God's, I confess T simply d o not understand how theologians like Hctdgson (and Cobb) became so sure that they could know where God '"is present" once the language of "presence" is divorced from the people of Israel and JesusAeath and resurrection, It is as if speculative theological language has become the primary discourse of faith. 7. By "unsure'" I: am not calling attention to the Xirnits of my subjectivity, thaugh such limits are surely p ~ s e n t Ratheu; . by "unsure'" mean the unceasing demand to fc3rm judgments concerning the situation, the exact specif-icity of which always eludes the theologian, since there is no one universal, invariant standard and since the theologian enjoys nc, privileged vantage paint. 8, Clc;;bb% essay alang with my response, tzras orignally given as the Shaffer/ Mars Lecture at Northwestern University. Each essay was subsequently pubXished in TIzeslogy Today 51, 8 (January 2995): 54&562 and 56S569 respectively. I: also commend to the interested reader John Cc-bb%gracious respc3nse to my response, ""Ally or Opponent? A Response to StanXey Haue~was,"in the same issue of TI~eulogyToday, 570-573. 9. See fox example Cary Dr~rrien'scompelling account of this tradition in Soul in Society: The Makilfg nud Reuezual of Sodnl Cltristiafiity (Minneapolis: F~rtress Press, 299.5). Dorrien rightly sees Cobb's economic views as a challenge to Niebuhr" acceptance of the capitalist market, but in many ways the kind of perspective Cobb assumes that Christians should adopt in modernity was first made pcjssible by Reinkold Niebuhr: Far an appreciative review of Dorrien" boc~k,see my review in Mt~dcrr-2TIzeology 13,3 (July 1997: 448421. 10. In his 1914 M.A. thesis, ""Te Validity and Certainty of Religiow Knowledge," which he wrote under the direction of D. C. Madntosh at Yale Divinity School, Niebuhr makes the fc>llc)wingclaim: "To put it as briefly as gc~ssiblewe may say that the demand for religion is the demand br persc>nality.W find ourselves in an impersonal rmiverse, Its taws do not rspect those things which are dear to us and, as we think necessary for our happiness. We cannot understand oursel[ves] except in the light of moral bw We find our file without purpose if it has not the purpose of striving for the right and the just. But the univerrjcl does not appreciate the moral order. It has no glace b r moral values. The laws of the external, of nature totally disregard the peculiar spiritual realities of man. It desbclys them. And yet we know that there can be no morality if it be not etei-nal, Man could not be brought to make a single moral struggle if he we= forced to beXieve the results he achieves to be without permanence, It does not matter now whether or not man finds permanence and eternity of the values in himself necessary whether he can be satisfied to know that the fruits of his struggle will be conxwed in the universe. But the fact does matter that man can not understand himself tzrithout the morai order nor the moral order tzrithout sclme warrant of permanence, This is the demand for an efficimt God, for a Gcxi who insuws the
moral order and the permanence of moral values and personal realities. It is the need Jarnes assumes when he calls religion a consciousness of the highest social values" "1-12). I: am aware how unfair it may be to quote this early work of Niebuhr, much of which he would disavcyw as he grew more sophisticated-.Yet I do not betiere Ni&uhr ever abandoned the view that ""science" has rendered irnpc~ssiblethe belief that God ever did, dc~es,or wilt do things in the tzrorld, Henry Clark forthrightly acknowtedges and defends Niebuhr" '"insufficient Christology" on pounds that "the quest for mythogoetic profundity leads to an a p p ~ c i ation of the greatest insights of biblical faith and avoids the errors of fundamentalism or unyielding orthodoxy" %e Serenity, CozdrngeI nlzd Wisdom:77tc Er-zduring Lcpcy I?J: ReZr~lloldNicbgiJtr (CXeveland: Pilgrim Press, 19(316),g. 350. One wonders what could have ever led Christians to die for "mythopoetic prt~fundity." 11.Spinoza, of course, wrote the script for this accc~untc ~ the f tzrorld. It was not just Protestants that accepted this narrative of the world, however; but also Jews. David Novak, in 'The Elcctiorz of- Israel: Tltc Idea of Efzc Cfioscn People (Cambfidge: Cambridge University Press, 4995), observes that even if many jewish thinkers did not accept Spinoza" particular religio-palitical conclusions, they did accept I-tis general premise+which meant they were led to after radically "the classical Jewish doctrines of creatic~n,election, revelation and redemption into the ideas of origin, destiny, insight and progress. Creation was changed from the fc3unding cosmic event into the perpetual origin of cosmic pmcess; election was changed from external choice into an intuition of one" s3wn destiny; revelation was changed from the voice of God to man into the insight of man about Cod; and redemption was changed frorn an apc~calypticevent into culmination of historical pmgress" (47').No better description could be given of the project of Protstant liberal theology exemplified by Niebuhr, Cobb, and Hodgsicm. 12. The relatio>nbetween history and what historians do remains a philosophical conundrum. Though they seldom explicitly appear in my work, I have never ceased thinking about or stclpped learning from the kind of issues raised by Collingwoc~d~ Dray, Gardinel; and Danto. In fact, much of what I have done in ""ethics" has been an attempt to transpc~sewhat I have Xearned Erc~mthem (and Aristotle and Aquinas) into the language of character, virtue, and narrative, Considel; for example, this wonderful passage frorn Danto: ""Te present is cleared of indeterminacy only when history- has had its say; but then, as we have seen, history never completely has its say So life is open to constant re-inteqretation and assessment. It nevertheless remains the ideal of history-as-scienw to eradicate the discwpmcies between historical reality and history-fc~r-us,Tc) the degree that it succeeds, we live no differently in history than we do outside history: we live in the light of historical truth. It is, of course, not altogether plain that truth is to be preferred to illusion, nor certain that it will make us free, It is only that we have no choice in the matter once we achieve historical consdsusness, for we cannot wilt falsehood or inconsist-ency." %e Ngrrtlfion and Knowledge (New Ysfrk: Colurnbia University Press, 1985), p. 441. Banto suggests that we must wait for historyas-science to have its say so that we will know our past-a wan fiape from my gerspect.i.3-e.For a book that at once exhibib an honest, but unsuccessful, attempt by pmfessional historians to wrestle with these questions, see Joyce Applebyr tynn Hunt, and Margawt Jacob, Telli~tgttw Eztlh About EJktary (New York: W. W. Norton, 1"394),
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19
It is to his great credit that Luke Timothy Jnhnson (in The Real Isus: The Misguided Questfor the Historictail jeszis n ~ fke d P~dtl~ offhe Tradz'fio~znl Gospels [San Francisco: HarperCollins, 19961) exposes the philosophically questianable presumptions about history behind the so-called quest for the ""historical Jesus." The resurrection constitutes history (and nature) being a "new creation," W-hlchin turn implies that historical research is not without theological significance. Indeed, it is my view that however misguided the search for the "historical Jesus"" at least it served to challenge the gnosticism inherent in Protestant pietism. David Keck puts it well in Forget?tti~l;g Wlzose We Are: AIzher'l~erS Dr'sease and flze Love #God (Nashvilte: Abingdon, 1996) by noting that the hlstorical-critical method, "ddespite its apparent historicity?has in fact made the church less historical; over the past two or three ccmturies, chul-ch people have grown less and less confident about their own past" "(61). 23, James M, Gustafson, ''A Response to Critics," "~-1rrzalof Religiotls Elltics 23,2 (Fall 1985): 185-209 (Gmstafson makes this obsevvation about his work on p- 198). The essays on Gustafstln appeared in the Journal of Relkiotas Ethics 13, 1 (Spring 39851, ed. Jarnes Childress and Stanley Hauewas. Though we meant the issue to honclr Custafson"~ work, he was, as we say in Texas, "none tcm pleased" by most of the essays. 24, Gustafson, ""A Response to Critics,'" p. 191. I: think Gustafson mistakenly assumes that a strong distinction can be made beween nature and history. I assume that "nature" is not dumb but alive with God's grandeur. That It is so means no hard distinction can be drawn beween nature and history- becauw human history is nature. 15. Custafson, ""A Response to Critics," p. 496, The last sentence is subjunctive because Gustafson does not want to give the Bible such authority. For what it is worth, my own views about these matters are exactly put by Bavid Novak in his characterizat.ic>nof how Jews should understand the significance of historical research. He notes that historical research cannot be rejected out of hand, any more than natural science can, without "the worldly weight of the Bible being simultaneously surrendered and the Jewish readers of the Bible being relegated to the level of obscurantists. The Bible within our tradition, where it is the primary source of truth, is also found in other contexts. This has been demonstrated convindngly by modern historical means. And the doctrine of creation surely implies that there is truth in the wider world, however subordinate it must ultimately be to the truth of revelation, Neverthefess, historical research must always be seccjndary precisely because the Bible is the bcyok that Jews have never stopped reading. it is a book addressed to them in all their generations. Modern historical research on the Bible, conversely, has been conducted on the assumption that contemporary readers of the Bible are reading about someone other than themselves. Occasionally, the Rabbis too recognized the gap between the historical cmtext of their own generations and the historical cmtext of certain biblical texts. Howeverf the notion that the Torah speaks just to its own time is only rarely mentioned. Much more often it is assumed that the Torah speaks Ear beyond the time in which it was originally uttered." "avid Novak, Tke Election of Israel: The Idea of tile CIzosen Peloyfcl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 39"3Ei),g. 113.
16.1 cmfess to remaining perplexed, given Custafson's own theological ccmstraints, about how he comes to the conclusion that God creates. Moreover, 1 would challenge the assumption that Christian attitudes toward "natuw" are peculiar to the doctrine of creation when the latter is not displayed in relation to Cod's trinitarian character. 1 do not deny that these are complex matters, which the recent emphasis on history as the issue before theology has ill p ~ p a r e dus to face. Clearly what must be recovered is a sense of the cosmic character of Christ's person and work. See, for sample, Bavict Yeago, "Jesus of Nazareth and Cosmic Redemption: The Relevance of $tie, Maximus the Confessor;" Modern TlzeoEogy 12,2 (Aprif 1996): 463-493. Likewise, just as I find it hard to understand why Gustafson assumes that God creates, it puzzles me that he continues to think God is one. The many pclwers that bear clown on us are, after all, just that-many 17. By " k i n g vmifiable7Yam simply calling into question any correspondenm theory of truth that presumes that an isalated prc>pasitionmust fit an equally imlated fact. 18.1 cannot refrain from obsewing how- Gustafsc~n"humility does not prevent him from providing a "naturali~tic"account of Christian convictions, whether or not those holding such convictions would describe their lives as Christian. 19, Nussbaum most recently has written, "My own preferred version of the ethical stance derives from Aristcjtle, but ever~pthlng1 say here could be accommcldated by a Kantianism modified m as to give the emotions a carefully demarcated copitive role.'" Poetic justice: The tr'temry Imgirzatiolz n ~ BlibEic d Lfe (Bostm: Beacm Press, 19951, p. xvi. I have no doubt that there are readings of Aristotle and Kant that might make it possible to defend this claim, but one must wonder if a self-prc~claimedAristotelian could ever begin a sentence with the phrase, "My own preferred versian of the ethical stance . . ." For her defense of political liberalism, see Nussbaum, jf"AristoteXianSc~ciaXDemocracy;" in inibernlisnt and the Csod, ed. R. B, Dr>uglass,C, M, Mara, and H, 5, fiichardson (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 203-252. Nussbaum has increasingiy mo>vedto a defense of what I can only call ""high humanismff and a corresponding commitment to modernist presumptian about how texts should be read, Xn both these respects Stout represmts quite a different alternatitie. 20. Fur a wonderful exposition of the Christian practice of forgiveness, see L. Grego~yJones, Enzbtjtdyi~tgFo~giveness:A Thce;tl~~gl;cnl Analysis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995). 21 . John How-ard Yoder also has written appreciatively of Stout while questioning, as Phil Kenneson and 1 do, StoaLxs "timeless" accr>untof slavery, Uoder points out that it is hardly news to Christians, at least Christians without Constantinian pretensions, to be tcrld that they live "after Babel,"%e Yoder, "Meaning After Babble: With Jeffrey Stout Beyond Relativism," Jloz-lrrzalof Religious Etlzics 24, 1 (Spring 4996): 425-138. Uoder rightly sees the problem is not ""Babel" but %abbleM-that is, ""the intentional confusing of language by human users'"1127). 22. The demand that medicine do more and more to alleviate our condition is necessary if we are committed to the eliminatian of ""bd luck" through political and wonomic arrangements. Sickness and death, on such a view, are so "unfair."' 23, Steve tong, in Tragedy, Pgditiun, B~~lsformism: Tke Ethics of .Paul Rnmsey (Boulder: Weskiew Press, 1993), prc>videsthe best account of Reinhold Niebuhr's
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21
influence on Ramsey, In a wonderful (and appreciative) paragraph, Long suggests that "Ramsey was a casuist who worked Emm a particular tradition, but who did not have any institutional practices to sustain that tradition. He was a particularist forced to use the leveling, generalized putatively universal language of modernity in hopes that his particular tradition might find sc~meromm in the modern era. The end result is that his work is much too pa&icufar to Christianity to be usehl as a common, universal politics of speech, and it is much too unlversal to be useful as a politics of speech for the creatian of an alternative Christian community Yet Ramsey" work does offer an alternative to the dominant ideology undergirding much of ethics, and his work tzraits for the creation of those institutional practices that will give it life" "03). 24.1 cmtinue tcr believe that Aquinas" account of these matters is without parallel. His refusal to separate God's essence and existace (without tvl~icfiany account of God" simplicity would be impassible) seems to me to remain the heart of the matter, For a powerful account of Aquinas's doctrine of God, see Eugene Rogers, Jr., R~omnsAquitzas and Karl Bartlt: Sacred DocCrir-zcand fire N~fzilmlKY~owIedgmoJCnd (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame 13ress, 1995). 25. Xn an odd way fl)"Xl)ono>van% ddefense of Christendom makes him more a ""sedrian"3h.a t I allegedly am, For he prclpases nothing less than a restoration of Christendom in liberal cultures. Indeed, from O'Donovan" perspective my c>wn ecclesial alternative might be far too easy for liberalism to accommodate. 26. See, for example, the chapter on Maclntyre in Charles 13inchesand Hauerand Modwast CGhrislin~tsAmo~zgthe Vfrtzles:Tfzeological Cunversntiorzs -euiEfr Atzeie~~t e m Ethics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997). %myears ago Paul Wdetl and 1 wrs>tean extensive review of After V i r fzrc in Tke Thontist 46, 2 (April 1982): 313-321.1 have more rwmtly written on Voder in the Christkn Century series on Christian classics. My suggested titie for the article was "Why the Politks il?ffesusCannot Be a Classic." The article tzras published as "When the Potifics 19Jesus Makes a Difference," CGtislian C e n t u y 110, 28 (Octc~ber22, 1993): 982-987, I have alsa tzrritten on Uoder for an Australian audience in "Yoder Down Under," "F!z and Freedom 5,1-2 (June 1996):44-46. 27. For example, Yocier &serves (in "Meaning After Babble") that my critique of ""English-Speaking Justice" as a set of "bad ideas'" is too simple if pluralism as a dvil arrangement is better than any of the hithert.0 alternatives (135). 1 knowthat many share the sentiment that 1 too often resort to exaggeratian when I: need to be more exact. Yet 1 do not think that Yoder is right about my critique of "hnglish-Speaking Justice" because I am quite exact about the liberal theories of justice 1 am critiquing. 1 am not at all cmvinced, far instancef that Ycfder is right to use "fiuralism" as an accurate description of our sclcial arrangements. I certainly carnot pretend to be as *'carefttft' as I: should be, but in spite of what some believe, I try to speak and write with care,
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PART ONE "Taking Leave": Disc se Security of "Home"
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1
Knowing How to Go On You Do Not Know Are: A Response to John Cobb
that I just do not h o w as much as John Cobb. This confessian does not mem that- I am less knowledgeable than Cobb, though I: may well be. Besides, humility has never been my long suit. Ratbrr, what I mean is that I sirnply do not have the basis to know what Cobb seems to h o w since I have learned to distrust the very practices that have prodlxced the howledge he professes, Put differently, I think Cobb would like to be a pcrsmorden^list, but he relnains caught in the di,scourse of modernjty-discowse, for example, that would. have us talk of '"Christ evmts" in preference to talkin.g about Jesus Christ. Of crrurse, that is not a prtiblem peculiar to Cobb but may well be the probkrn of a n p n e caught in a time waiting for a world to be born. Let mc. try to explain these obscure remarks Zly calling attentim to the title of Cobb's paper, "The Christian Reason for Belng Progressive." One should. not make too much oi titles, but at the very least t h i s title implies that Cobb has some idea of what it m a n s to be "progressive." Moreower, the title also seems to suggest that being progressive is a good thing, s o m t h h g Chistians should support, since anyone who is progressive appears to be square@on the side of the "good guys." But if you already know, on gromds differcw from Christian practice, what the goods are, then it remains uncllear why one should worry ton much whether being Christian makes much difference c ~ n eway m the other. C)f coutse, Cobb starts with the confession that fie reail,y is deeply conservative, since he belongs to a communj.ty that hithfuZIy shapes its life accorcjing to norms derived from ancient events. As he puts it, "To submit oneself to the memjngs and. norms hherc3mt in such ancient events is surely a conservative stance," h u s t admit I: am not so sure. I: am not so certair~because I I unclear where exactly Cobb thinks he is s t m d h ~ gin MUST CONFESS AT THE VERY OUTSET
26
A Respouse to jdzn Cobb
order to decide M;het:her to submit. By raising this question I am not at this point questioning Cobb's account of the Christian tradition-though 1 will raise s o m questions about that later. Rather, 1 am wonderhg on what grounds he believes he can take a position for or agai~~st the tradition that will then allow him to decide whether he should submit to it. Just to the extent that he thinks this vantage is possible, he certainly h s w s more thm I h o w , Moreover, 1take the bowledge that allows him to assulne such a position to be characteristic of modernity and modernity" faith in progress; or,perhap" more accurately put, the preswption of modern people h a t progress names a good Ching. For X take it., as Clhristopher Lascln suggests inhis True and Only Heaven: Pmgress and Ifs Critics, that what is so orighd about modernity%conception of h i s t q is ""not the promise of a secular utopia that wodd bring history to a happy e1ndin.g but the promise of steady improvement with no foreseeable ending at all."" Thus Cobb celebrates the development oE 'kodern demcracy human rights, science, techoXogy and historical cmseiousness and criticism," even while acknowledging their ambiguity. 1suppose that such a litany is more or less required if you want to appear to be on the side of the good guys, to say not.hing of ""History."But X mu& confess that X am less than sure I know what such terms mem or, even more, if they arc a good idea. I need to be as candid as I can about my doubts concerning these matters, for they derive f r m a quite different set of theological presuppositions than those of Cobb. His is a theology shaped by the attempt to make Christian ccmvictions amenable to the epistemlogicai c m e n t i m s underlying the modern project The very eonfidmcc he has in bowing where he is betrap his indebtedness to modemiv. By modernityI 1mean the project to create social orders that would make it possible for each person living in such orders ""e have no story except: the story they choose when they have no storyY''That is to say, moderniy is the attempt to so dis-embed and estrange peoples from the pecwiarities, distinctiveness, and conli.nga~ciesof their respective traditio~nsas to form, the ilksion that the d y stoq- now worth telling is one mtirely of their own devising. For cm moefemity's terms the past as such does not t d y exist, nor can it have any bearing on our present choices. Hence, the only story countenanced by modernity is one that is predicated on the false belief that since we are unencumbered by any received stcrry we are truly free to fashio~nde n w o any nalrathe we wjsh and thus mke (and remake) of ourselves whatever we will," One of the main engines of the project cailed modernity was the division of labor that is intrinsic to Chose econolnic systems that Cobb now finds so destmctive, Cobb would like to reject the economic character of modernity while prtrserviw its cultural, theological, and political charac-
ter. It is nice wlrrk if you can get it, but I think such a strategy fails to see the close relation between the political systems that Cobb seelns to favor and the correlative economic systems that require constant growth, Indeed, the very p~srtmptionthat we can separate ecmomks from pditks is itself a liberal isrvezztion. The primary goal of those societies we identify as progressi:ve is freedom. Correlatively, equality a d justice are thoufl;ht to be the sufficimt moral norms to determhe social and political arrmgements.-"Egalitarimism thus becomes the opium of lhe masses, ixrsofar as it presumes, falsely that since who we are is a matter mtirc~lyof our own choclsi~~g, we artl by definition free. Of course, the irony d this project is that m s t modernists, like Cobb, fail. to notice that they themselves did not choose their w n stories-namelb they did not choose the dict (the "storyff)that they should have no story except the story they chose whesz they had na story. Correlatkely, democratic ideologies operate to hide those powers that hold us captive. This is not to deny that Cobb is right in presumhg that most Christians, whether conservative or liberal theologically, assume that they ought to be m the side of a history that favors such social s)istems. They do so, of coursef precisely because they suppose Christianity to be a civilizatimal religion of which modernity is but the continuation? Like their modernist counterparts, they profess to believe in f ~ e d o mof religicm, the inportancc of keeping religio~zoat of pubjjc po:[icy decisions, and so on.But because they are sociafly conscious-which is usually expressed at; "the need to be responsiblem-they must try to infuse the social order with the Christian spirit. Cobb thus assumes that he writes for eve"o n e - a r at least everyme who counts (which m e m , all goad demmratic liberals). Accordingly; Christian theology is assuzned to be a discot~rseavailhie to a y m e . R a t is particularly true when it comes to language about, and concomitantly knowledge of, God. 11%this respect, I am struck by h w much Cobh knows about God. He believes, for example, '"hat God is working to save the crcation and especially the human species,"' even though he does not believe "that God is Lord of History in the sense that God wjll unilaterally intervene to save us from the cmsequences of our actions." 1 must confess that 1: find such a claim baffling. I wonder how Cobb knows that. As Paul Ramsey was fond of saying, "God intmds to Ell us all in the end." hssume that Ramsey's assertion also included the human species. I see no reason to beXieve that Go&s salvation througfn Jesuskcmss m d ~surrectionwas &out ensuring that the human projec-t is going to come out all right in the etnd, I am aware that this appeal to cross and resurrection ma)i suggest that I am one of those who, as Cnbb puts it, clings to past embodiments of
er that blocks Christ" present working. I may be witling to plead guilty to that charge except I find it hard to so characterize my positinn, given that 1 am a pacifist. I believe that anyme professing to worship God weaied in Jesus' life, death, a d rttsur~ctioncan only do as a nonviolent disciple. -Therr-.fore, I must say that those so fajtl-rf~tlly Christians who thought they were following the '"present working of Christ" through their acceptmce of violence have made a disastrous mistake. The reasons for that acceptance were various, but certainly for many it represent& the attmpt to be on the ""progmssive" "side of history. I have to co~~fess, moreover, that I believe that Christian nonviolence is unintelligible if Jesus was but an exempIificatian of ""creative transformation." lam always curious how those that would so construe Jesusf life account for the fact he got himself killd. If all Jesus was about was helping us see that God is that '"factor in the world that introduces freedom, novelty, spontaneity, life, creativity responsibility, m d love," "I& see why anyosle wouM think it worth his time to kit1 him, I need to be quite dear that f am not disagreeing with Cobb" sugge* tion that any tradition worthy of our interest is il-rvolved in constant change even whezz it is at its most cronservative. AS Stmley Fish s~~ggests in D o i ~ gW h t Comes Natzkmlly: Change is not a problem if one posits independat agents who can check their accounts and descriptions against an equally independent realiv; for then change is easily explaillctd as a function of the cmstraints placed by reality on our interpretation~of it. But the neafness of this picture is sacrificed if one conceives af persons not as free agents, but as extensions of interpretive communities, communities whose warranting assumptions delimit what can be seen and therefore what can be described; for then the describing agent, the object of description, and the descriptive vocabulary are all transformations of:one another and there wc~uldnot seem to be enough rcoom between them to make change a possibility, . . . This impasse [can be] negotiated by demonstrating that neither inte;l-pretive communities nor the mind of community members are stable and fixed, but are, rather, moving projects-ngines of c h a n g e w h o s e work is at the same time assimilative and self transforming, The conclusion, thereforet is that change is nat a prablern; and, indeed, to the extent that there is a pn>blem, it would seem to be one of explaining hew anything ever remains the same; or, even more precisely, how @ven the vision of a system and of a p n t s continually ""on the move," mn one even say that a change has occurred since the very notion of change requires, as Robert Nisbet has pointed cout, ""some clbjed entity cor being the identity of which persists through all the successive differences,"<
Fish answers the pltoblem of how we can account for continuiv by ohserving that not everwing ever changes at once. ""lterpretive commu-
nities am no more than sets of institutional practices; and while those practices are cmtinualfy bejing trmsformed by the very work that they do, the transformed practice identifies itself and tells its story in relation to general purposes and goals that have slrrvived and form the basis of a continuity I call attention to Fish" account because I think it makes clear that the question is not whether change is possble, but rather how to account sufficienlly for continuity so as to ellable the telli.ng of an intelligjble s b r y T have a prublem, for example, accounting for continuity as a Christian committed to nonviolence, since it is usual:ty ctaimed that most Christians througl?out the history of the church have thought kiiling to be a permissible, if not a positive, good. Of course, as one of my feminist students pofnted out, nmiolent Christians art- not a mimmity if you recognize that most Christians, by ~rirtueof the fact that they were wornell, were not allowed to fight in war. That this was perhaps nonvoluntary makes this observation no less significant. What I find mefear in Cabb's attennpt to "clain? the center" in Christian tkoliogy is how ""creative transformation" works to claim, such a center. heteecl, once something cafled "creative transformation" is seen as the norm of the tradition, I see no reasoll why you need the Jews or jesus for any account of that tradition. I see no reason,for example, to believe that God belt in Jesus in a "'peculiarly intlmate wayer"That sounds too much like making the claim that Jesus had some kind of cxpcsiencewhich is, to be sure, a very Methodist thing to think m d thus puts Cobb in good company. Rut then American Methodism is surely only quite incidentally related to Christianity (That is not to say that Methodists are without any convictions. Quite the contrary. For now that I am back ammg the Methociists, I have discovered that they do have a conviction: It is that Gad is nice. Moreover, since Methodists are a smctilicatio~~ist peopte, we have a correlative: We ought to be nice too. I must admit, one of the t h i ~ ~ g that s bothers me about Cobb's God is that she is just too damned nice!) HRWme understands the sipificance of Jesus Obviously has imptications for one%understanding of God. In that mspect, I cannot resist commenting on Cobb's criticism of male images for God. I wish to be clear that 1have no objection to feminine imager)' for God, but I do not believe that tbr trinitarim hther, Son, and Holy Spirit is an imqe. Ratl-rer Einity is a rime. Christians do not believe Ihat we first come to h o w s m e thing called God and only then further learn to idcntify Gud as Trinity. Rather, the only God Chistians have come to know is Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I am deepfy syntpathetic with feminist critiques of generalized fatherhood langmge for God, tJRough some feminists might oklject to my rea"
30
A Respouse to jdzn Cobb
sons for being sympathetic. The mly possible reason I can think to call God Father is that Jesus is the Son. That means that fatherhood is not analogous to the cultural presumption that men define the nature of fathehood. The pecwiar prtrsumption that God as fatJRer derives its irzteliigibility fmm anthropological assumptions about men as fathers was a development made possible only after Protestant liberalism gave up the conviction that Jesus is the messiah. The lrequently heard claim that those who have had an abusive father have trouble catling God father may be psychologicafly true, but theologically uninteresting. For if you see tbat fatherhood is a grammar clmtrtriled by Christoiogicai convictions, then thosc who have a tmubled relation with their bidogical fathers are perhaps in the best conditian to worship a tP.initarian God. It is hard for us to understand thjs last point because of current Christian sentimentalities about the family. I confess once again that X am not nearly so confident as Cobb that Christianity has aIways been as patriarchal as he suggests. My doubts about that iwolve problems with the essentialization of gender that seem intrinsic to such elairns*I do think, however, that the ""fmilizatian" of Christianity since the Reformation has had disastrous results for everyone. By ""fmilization" h e a n the presumptim that the first way of life amnng Christians is mrriage m d Ifamilly, Forgotten in that prewmptbn is the Christim practice oE singleness as the necessary form of:the church's eschatological convictions. For the single Christian is nothing less than an indispensable rernindtztr that the church gmws, not by necessity or Gzrou$ biology, but by wit-nesf;to the Christians had a negative stranger. "Ihrat is not because, as Cobb s~~ggests, attitude toward. sex, but because by becoming God" ppeople Christians understood that their true family was n w the chwch. A Cbristim's first loNty is always to church, not to family or nation. In this respect, I find C&b% praise of "ccovenantal refationships"' as the best place for the "expression of sexuality for homosexuals and those heterosexuality inclined" to toe rather charming but unconvincing. That seems to underwrite m a n t i c conceptions of sex and.marriage that X take to be c r e a t a many of our cwrrcllnt problems. I have always assumed that one of the hardest aspects of Christianity is the adrntonition for Christians to love one another even if they arc married. The assumption that marriage is primarily a relation between two people for their mutual fdfilfment represent-s the depctlilization of marriage in thc interest of ttne poiitics of liberalism, Again one of the disastrous aspects of this emphasis on the family as the hallmark of Christianity is what it does to our understmding of the cross. What it means for Jesus to call God father surely means that in this man's life more is at stake than spontaneity, c~ativity,and love. WIzat is
at stake is a battle with p w a h a t would have us killed in the name of protecting the family. If one believes that we are engaged in that kind of batttcr, then it makes sense that you need all the help you can get tc:,survive. tn particular, you will need a commmnity of people who have the ability to transmit across generations the skills necessary for survbal. That community we c d l church; it names a reatity that is constitutive of, anci not simply incidental to, being Christian. In short, that is why there is no salvat-im wilhout the church. I am aware that such claims sournd imperialistic and they certainly have so sounded whenever the church has been associated with C-o~nstmtinian social policy But when you remember that Z assume that the church is at most a struggling minority quite unsurt, where it is, then s~tcha claim appears quite different. For example, I take it that s~tcha church, although not opposed to dialogue with other religions, assumes that its first task is to wihess to what we know rather than seek agreement about "creative transformation." Accordingly, I do not desire nor wwld 1 know how to give Christian rt?asms for being "'progressive," I seek, rather, to know h w to go on when I do not h o w where 1am, 1assume that is not a new condition for Christians to be in, as being a m m b e r of the church becomes necessar). exactfy because the claims of Jesus are meant to put us out of ccmtml. mwevcr, once wc Christians learn how to Erne our pelnchant for control (or, to put it bhntlq.; our felt need to run the world), to pretend that we h o w not only where we are but also where everyme else is or should be, maybe W will be able to live such joyful Eves that others m y actwally be attracted to the cejebration we call worship.
An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Tdfeology Today (January 2995). Reprinted by permission. 1. Christopher tasch, The True nlzd Only Hc~urn:Progress nlzd Tts Critics (New York: Norton, 1991), p. 47, 2. T am indebted to Jarnes Fodor for this way of articulating the matter. 3, For a tzrrmderful accr~untof how liberalism must work with a far too thin account of moral vt~cabulariet;,see Ronatd biner, W?zntiskhe Matter with Liber~lisnt (Berkefey: University of Califijmia Press, 1992), pp, 39-97, 4. For my general perspective on these matters, see Stanley f-lauerwas, After Clzristendni.n,7?(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 11991). 5, SIanXey Fish, Doing What Conzes Naturally (Durham: Duke University Press, 1983),pp. 152-153. 6. Ibid., p. 253.
2
History as Fate: How Jttstificaication by Faith Becnme Anthropology (and History) in America
"God has granted American Christianity no &formation. He has given it strong =vivalist prt-acl-zers,churchmen, and theolngians, but no Reformat-ion of the church of Jesus Christ by the word of God.'" R a t was Dietrich Bonhoeffer's judgment about American Protestantism-a judgment that =mains one of the most insightful accounts available of Protestant that could well have been made Christianity in America, It is a judgme~~t by Gerhard Sautes, who has patiently tried to remind his American friends that ""the f~edcrmof the church is not where it has possibilities, but only where the Gospelt really and in its pokver makes room for itself on earth, even and precisely when such possibilities are offercd to it."'" I think it is therefore appropriate, in an essay hmorkg Sauter, tcr call attention to Karl Wwith's critique of Reinhold Niebuhr. For Liiwith, like Bonhoeffer, went to the heart of the m t t e r by challenging Niebuhr" sccount cJf history.' Niebuhr has often been criticized for ""anthr~poiogizingf2heology and, in particular, for justification by faith, but L6with rightly saw that even more problematic was Niebuhr's understanding oi history. Fr>rNiebul-rr's accomt of history is dewoid of an eschatology, and Sauter has rightly helped us see that such m eschatology is the necessary background for the doch-ine of justifi~ation.~ Lbwith" essay, which is cmly eight pages long, appears in the famous anthology m NiebtJhr edited by Kegley and BretalS,.Wost of the essays in that volume are either celebrations of Niebuhr's accorrrpIishments or sympathetically critical cJf some aspect of Niebuhr's work. Lijwithls piece, however, challemges not: just Niebuhr's answers but the very way he poses the questions, As a result, his essay could not help but appear as the proverbial h g in the pmch bowl. Polite people kmw that the best
way to hande frogs in such circumstances is by prlttending they are not there, and that, it seems, is the way LiStvit-;htscontribution was received. Yet I thirtk the issues Liiwith raised should. not be igored because they ~ m a crucial h for h w we think about theologicaf anthropology and, thus, about R e h o l d Niebuhr. Liiwith begins lkITisto9and Christiaxlity" by making some genera1 ohservaticms about why modern man places so much significance on history as the defining mark of the human enterprise. Me suggests that overestimathg the importance of history is the result of our loss of any sense of human nature. withfn n a b at large. We presumptut.,ut;lyassrtme that world history is the hislory of the universe. But, I:.,iiwith&serves: if history has to be defined by and delimited to man's sillful enterprise, the question about its meaning is itself historically conditianed, It is a specifically Western cmcern which presupposes that history has a purpcjw as telas andtjnis. This belief in a final purpose has originated from the faith in the purposeful will of God with regard tc~his creation. With the secula rizatic~nof the Christian theologies of history to the mc~8e1-nphilosophies of history, the will of God became replaced by the will of man and divine Providence by human prevision. The pc~ssiibilityof a philosc~phyof history rests on secularized eschatology. (282)"
Liiwith notes that classical Christian theology never assumed that history was the decisive scene for determi~~fng questions of human existence and destiny. Far Christians history is not a realm of human errdeavor or progress, Rather, it is a realm where sin and death, reign and thus it is in need of ~demptictn.The eschatological character of Christhat history can he construed tian conviction Challenges any ass~~rnption as a continuous, or even progressive, process. Jesus is not a worldhistorical link in the chain of historical happenings, but the unique redeemer. What really begins with the appearance of Jesus Christ is not a new epoch in secular history, called ""Christian" but the beginning of an end. The Christian times are Christian insofar as they are the last times. Because the Kingdom of God, moreover, is not to be realized in a continuous process of historical development, the eschatological history of salvation also cannot impart a new and progressive meaning to the history of the world, which is fulfilled by having reached its term. The ""meaning'kf the history of this world is fulfiHed against itself because the story of salvaticm, as embodied in Jesus Christ, redeems and dismantles, as it were, the hopeless history of the world. In the perspective of the Mew Testament, the history of the world entered into the eschatofogical substance of its unworldly message only insofar as the first generations after Christ were still involved in it, but without being of it. (PIG, 283)
Lbwith does not dmy that Christianity-may have spanned modemity"~ sellse of history, but that is only because the early church" eeschatological. outlook required a perspective toward a future fulfilhent. Modem historical consciousness, in short, is the Christim sense oE history's having a beginnng and an end hut wilbout. the belief that Jcszls Christ is the beghning of the end. Thus the very idea of '"Christian histor)." is nonsense, sizrre Christian eschatological convictions preclude any processive account of history that can be disccmecf,much less an account of history as actual progress. From Lbwith" perspective, t b e ~ f othe ~ , very way that Niebuhr sets up the problem of "historyf?s alrcady a mistake. Niebuhr, according to Liiwith, poses the question of the relation between faith and history on the presramptim that Christims have a stake it.% providing a gmeral account of history as the "problem of history," thereby underwriting thc assumption that something called ""history" exists in ontological independence from God. That is, history is mderstood as the growth of man's power and freedom through which every huntan perplexity will be resolved; indefinite progress by itself wiii redeem history. Niebuhr, of course, is critical of the views of history that ""absoiutize the relative," yet he conthues to arp;txe that progressive viecvs oE history are closer to the Christian view of history than the ahistorical spirituality of the Greeks. According to Liiwith, for Niebuhr the perplexing problem of how the Christian story of salvation is embodied in the history of the world seems to be resolved in a dialectical balance between the common experience of visible history and the individual experience of faith in things unseen by the rather conventional and unexamined assertion that there are "facets of the eternal in the flux of time." Tangents of moral meaning in history are supposed to point toward a suprahistorical center. Being assured af this center of meaning and orientation by a faith which reduces the doctrines of creation, incarnation, resurrection, and cc~nsummationtcr mere ""smbuis" (which have, however, to be taken ""seriousty'" but which would be embarrassing when taken literally), Niebuhr has little difficulty in asserting the superiority of the Christian interpretation: "It is above the alternatives of despair and cornplacmcy, evolutionary op"Eirnsm and defeatism, secularism and escapism, pietistic sectarianism and Catholic institutionalism, worldliness and asceticism, and so on. The Christian interpretation of history is more adequate than alternative interpretatic~nsbecause it is dialectically mare comprehensive,"' QHC, 285-286)7
tiiwith &serves that one cannot help but wonder if such a criterion of superiority is not more Hegelian than Chistian, a mmifcstali.on of the ot help but always be superior to the too sin of pride inasmuch as it c simple alkmathes.
More seriously Li'iwith challenges Niebuhr"s satisfaction with the ""dalecticat methodu-that is, the assusnption that the linits of virtue, wisdom, and power exist only to be answered and completed by faith. The secular thinker, &er all, can respond by challenging the asswption that the contradictions and ambiguities in fact require "ultimate""resolution. On the cmtraq, maturc stoical resigation and endurmce is the appropriate attitude. If the only way to establish the truth of the Christian Gospel i s ""atthe very limits of all systems of meming,'"then theologians will have to demonstrate the validity of their apologetic on more than dialectic grounds. Niebuhl; according to Liiwith, fillally tries to have it both ways; namely, he maintajns that Christian llrzve not only does not extend. kistorical potentialities of the human project, but makes historical surviwal problematic. Yet he also hsists that it is necessary to ""incorporate" what is tme in the modem discovery of 2-tistory as a form. of development into the truth of the Christian faith, Thus, the intellectual power and t~ersatlilityof Faith and Histoy leaves us with a profomd ambiguity: The author of the book shares neither the modern, now obsolete, faith in his tor)^ as such, nor the ancient faith in the Christ-with whom the time was fulfilld, but makes the attempt to salvage by means of a libera! faith in symbols some fragments of the mc>dernbut shaken belief in the meaningfulness and purpwefutness of the historical pmcess. (HC, 287)
But the crucial difficdty with this viewI according to Liiwith, is that those who have faith in Christ believe neither in the ultirnate nor in the provisional meaningfulness of history, but experience instead the "radical disproportion between the history of the world and the succession of faith as implied in the story of the great flood" "(WC, 287). Christians, of cowse, experience "h,istoryf"like anyone else, but they refrain from trying to explicate the story of satvation in terms of the world" history. For they believe profane history has the character of a sign, vi,sibly intimating that h i c h is lrnown onty to faith. Disasters may thus be interpreted as intimations oi the last judgment but the last judgot be comprehended in terms of, or subsumed under, the general category ""dsaster." Moreover, since the story of salvatiron does not refer to historical empires, nations, and civilizations but to each human soul, one cannot dismiss the thought that Christianit~that is, faith in Christ, is essentially indifferent over against world-historical differences, even over against the differences beween civilization and baharism. Both reveal under different circumstances the same human nature, though man appears better than he really is if orderly and civilized conditions do not put him to the test. Even atomic warfare would not change what human nature essentially is, fHC, 289)
So mns Li'iwith's argummt agahst Niebuhr, It is m argument that obvinusly goes to the heart of the mattex; not ml,y int e r m of Niebuhr's pot debates. For to suggest that sition, but also in terms of c u r ~ ntheological the threat of amihilation of the human species should not change how Christians understand their faith challenges some of the most deeply held convictions by Christians. His critique is tkreforc not just of Niebuhr but af many who continue to share Niebuhr's sense af the Christian's stake in the survival of nations and empirczs. Mowever, before addressing that set of questions, we must first ask if Liiwith has been fair to Niebuhr.
Anthropology as History It may well be Objected that even if Liiwith is Tight about :Pdi&uhr% sderstanding of history he nonetheless fails to appreciate that Niebuhr's views =quire a fuller account of: anthropdow. In other words, it is The Nafzcre and Desfirzy of Maz to which we should attend, not Faitli azd Hist o y . :I think such an objecticm entails a far too restricted smse of anthropology and, in particular, Niebuhr's anthropology. For Niebuhr was never interested in a doctrine of man as st4c.h but in how mthropological ~flectionprovided the sources for an extenshe commentary on history and otrr co~~temporar)i situation. Mistory, for Nie&u%tr,is the playgmund of ideas. The task of Christian theology is to understand the naturc of those ideas h the hopes of sustalnlng the social expertise. Tfie N n t m and Desfilzy $Man starts wi& a h i l i a r Niebul-trian theme: The obvious fact is that man is a child of nature, subject to its vicissitudes, cl-rmpelled by its necessities, driven by its impulws, and cmfined tzrithin the brevity of the years which nature permits its varied organic forms, allowing them some, but not too much latitude. The other less obvious fact i s that man is a spirit who stands outside of nature, Xife, himslf, his reasrrrn and the wcjrId."
I'he p a t problem, acrorcling to Niebuhr, is how to do justice both to the uniqueness of man, usually identified with our rational capacity; and to man" affinities with the world of nature. The temptation is either to lose the individual's uniqueness by allowing it to be absorbed by universal reason or to bury it i,n nahare or the social organism by succu,mbi.ng to that romantic desire &at wodd still the pain of self-knowledge. This theme, Mxhich has iz~fhitevariations throughout Niebhr" work, provides him with the perspeclive to get on with his primary wnrk of cultural commentary. nesefore, the first chapter of The Mature anti Destiny ofMan is an attempt to substantiate the claim that modern culture is the battleground for the confhct between two views of man: the classical
and the biblical. Modem culture, a c c d i n g to Niebrahr, is beset by unres&ed ankornies that result front our be.ing inheritors of these Ilundamental options-for example, the conflict between idealists and naturatists, the conflict between individualism and collectivism, and fhally the culttrrc's iinabiiity to deal with the problem of evil. n o u g h it is certaixlly true tfiat Niebuhr was primarily concerned with developing an adequate anthpology, we will misunderstand hirn if we fait to see that his anthropological jnterests wcre subservient to this larger agenda. That agenda was nothjng less than the devehpme~tof a philosophy of history sufficient to sustain civitizaticm, Niebuhr's anthropology i,n fact, hecoms the occasjon for a romp t h m g h hi.story in the hopes oi providjng a new synthesis to save ""our" civilization, must in the second volume of The Natum a~zdDesfiTly of Man, Niebuhr says that of our "when W are confronted with the task of reorienting the ctIjtu~(3 day, it becomes ixnportant to discriminate carefully betvrreen what was true and false in each movementm-namely, the Renaissance and the Reformtim (ND, 205). Niebuhs's kistorical judgments are often criticized, but he has little stake in whether he bas rightly intevreted Augustine or tuthr?r or whether it is even possible to make generalizations about the "classical" or ""b.ib%icalf\riew of man. Rather, what: is important for Niebuhs is whether these terms do not in fact represent eternal possibilities that we must now try to bring into a new synthesis irr order to be able to save "Western civilia;atimfhsa viable enterpri~e.~ For Nicbuhr history and anthropology go hand in hand. As he says in Faith and Histoy: The whole history of man is thus comparable to his individual life. He does not have the power and the w i d o m to overcome the ambiguity of his existence. He m w t and does increase his freedom, both as an individual and in the total human enterprise; and his creativity is enhanced by the growth of his freedom. But this freedom also) tempts him to deny his mortality and the grc>wthof freedom and power only increases the temptation. But evils in history are the consequences of this pretension. Confusion follows upon man" effort: to complete his life by his own power and solve its enigma by his otvn wisdom, Perplexities, too simply solved, produce despair. The Christian faith is the apprehension of the divine love and power which bears the whole human pilgrimage, shines through its enigmas and antlnomies and is finally and defkitively ~ v e a l e din a drama in which suffering love gains triumph ower sin and death. This revelation does not resolve all perplexities; but it doces triumph over despairt and Leads to the renewal of life From self-lowe to love. (FH, 233-234)
In short, the individual is for Niebuhr but the micracasm that illumines the macrocosm of world history. On thr basis of this overview, :l think that there is no question that I:.,iiwithfscriticism of Niebul-\rfsviews on history is disectly relevant to
questions cJf Niebrthrfs anthropology. It is quite another matter, h w w e r , whether Liiwit-,hhas in fact accurately =presented Niebuhrfs views. At least initiial.yf one is indined to doubt the fairness of Liiwith" d ~ i c t i o n of Niebuhr 's views, since the very criticism he makes of Niebuhr sounds brery much like Niebuhr's criticism of those who assume that some kind of fulfillment is possible in history LGwith, in other words, has failed to appreciate the dialecticai character of Niebuhr 's thought and has mistakenly overtmphasized Niebmhr's sense of mankind" s e r e n t historidty. In order to see if this judgmmt is sound, we must look at what l"dieb&r says about man" historicityIn Serand fhe Dmmlrs of History, Nihuhx says: Tt is obvious that the self" freedom over natural processes enables it to be a creator of historical events. Bath its memory of past events and its capacity to prcjject goals transcending the necessities of nature enable it to create the new level of reality which we know as human history. But the self is not simply a creator of this new dimension, far it is also a creature of the web of events, of which it participates. 'I
Thus history is at once the realm of freedom m d fate. But the issue must be put even more paradoxically because for Nicbuhr our frcedm, our history, beccrmes our fate. 'l'hrough history man is able to emancipate himself from subjection to natural necessity; but in the process he becomes subject to the means of his freedm. The assumption that we have become master of our destiny is, ironically the source of our lack of freedom. l;J&~vith's contention that Nieblnhr continued to presuppose a progressive view of history, therefore, seems probkmatic in the light of Ni&uhrfs constant emphasis on the theme that history c fulfilhent. As Niehuhr says: The problem of the meaning of history is always the problem of the meaning of life itself, since man is a historic creature involved, and yet not involved, in the flux of nature and time, but always in the pasition either of negating the meaning of history or of completing it falsely, if he seeks to complete it from the standpoint of his own widom. Yet it can be completed by a revelation, the acceptance of which is possible only through a contrite recognition of the human situation of sinfulness. Such repentance is possible, in turn, only if the judgment overhanging man is known to be prompted by love and to be crc>wnedby forgiveness. (FH, 140)
Nicbut-ir assumes that this ""problem" is precisety what justificatian by faith is about-namely, that judgment hangs over every human achievement. Man thus cannot finally crcate a meanixlg that can satis@his own abjlity to create meaning, that is, history. Our "historic existence can not have meaning without faith" (W,,579, for the maning of history cannot be
completed with itself. Rather, the meaning of history can come only h m beyond itself though a faith that apprehends the di\rine forgiveness, thereby overcoming our attempt to secure meanhg withirz history, yttt we cmtinue to resist this tmth, as we do not come easily to a =cognition of Che contingent chaackr of our existence. F r m the perspective of Christian belief, therefurc, history remins to the end morally ambiguous. That is why it is not passible to speak of a "Christian phiosophy of: hit;tory""or why it may not even be poskble to have any adequate "philosophy of history" because such philosophies cannot help but reduce the antinofie, obscurities, and variety ttf forms of I-ristoq to a too simple form of inteltjgibility (fH, 1,3h). Nevertheless, there can be a Christian theology of history that "makes sense" out of life and history but only insofar as the "final clue to the myskry cJf the divine pocver is found in Ihe suffering Love of a rnan on the Cross*"This, of course, is '"nota proposition which follows logically fmm the cibservable facts of hist~y'7FE-E~ 137), which is exactly the reason why the cmss and the cmss alone is able to "en?body the perplexity of history into the solution" "of how God Etas overcome human recalcitrance (FH, 143). The Christian Gospel, accordkg to Niebuhr, can finally be validatred only negatively The Christian philosophy of history is rational, therefore, only in the sense that it is passible to pmve that alter-natives to it fail to do justice to all aspects of human existence; and that the basis presuppositiom of the Christian faith, though transcending reaso)n, make it possible to give an account of life and history in which all facts and antinomies are comprehended. (EH, 138)
Optimists therefore rightly insist that pessimists do not appreciate the dignity of man, the integrity of human rczason, the ability of man to establish provisional realms of meming in history The pessjmists, in contrast rightly criticize the optimists for failing to randerstand the misery of m n in the ambiguity of his subordination to and transcendence over nature. The pessimists also criticize the optimists' false estimate of the stability of cultures, which derives from their failure to mderstand the destmctive character cJf human pretensions. The wisdom of the Gospd is distinguished from both pessimisn and optimism, able to comprehex-rdboth, because it is derived from a source finaliy not subject to the contingencies of history ( M ,la).ll Lijwit-h's Argument Assessed Although obviously much more can be said about Niebuhr's sriews on history, X t:hjn.k we now have sufficient basis to assess Lijwith" aarguments against Niebuhr. First, however, w e ought to let Ni&uhr speak for himseif. There is precedence for this: At Ihe end oE the Kegley and Brebll
votrxme Niebuhr responds to each of the essays in the b d . Under the general heacling "Friencfly Critics,'' in ddisnctim to "'Substantive Criticisms," Niebtlhr remarks that the essential difference between Liiwith a d himself is that the former finds na tangents af meaning in the historical drama tzrhich are clarified by Christian revelation. He sererrns to me to be saying that the drama is "f1111 of sound and fury, signifying nothing," and that only revelation and salvation rescue life fram meaninglessness, 1 know how easily any "Christianf' interpretation of history can give it false meaning$ analogc~usto the false meanings elaborated by Hegel or other philosophers, I know that Christ is the ""light that shlneth in darkness." The question beh-een us is how- absolute the darkness is, If it is as dark as he assumes, there cannot be any relevance b e w e n faith and our life as historical creatures. Professor tiiwith says that responsibility is a moral and not a religious categov. Is this distinction absolute? Is there not wisdom in the Christian faith which might prevent a pawerftrl nation and a secure culture from plunging into catastrophe by its pride? Or wKch would prevent individual Christians fram fieeing into cornplete irresponsibility about the fate c ~ their f civilization'ilEZ
Niebuhr goes on tcr say that it is very important to be clear cm wbat is at. stake between him and 1,Gwith. For if '"history" is declared to be totally meaningless, individuals are thereby absolved of responsibility for the culturr and civitizations that make us the stuff of history*The Christian hi&, as a result, ofiers only individ,u,al transcendme from thc ambigujties of cdkctive life. Even though "'world. history" is not specifically mentioned in the New Testament, Niebuhr argues that he cannot see haw the meming of the New Testment faith. requires that we abandon all concern with ""world history." That is particularly the case if we remember that the prophetwwere certainly ccmcemed with the sovereignty of God over the hjstory of dl nations and MIhether such a historical d r m a involving nations and empires had meaning. ot help but think that Niebuhr's respmse is a classical exanlple of a "failme in comnunieatian." He fails to respond to the substance of Ltiwith" argument because he sirnpv fail: to appreciate how fundamntai Lijwithlt; aiticisms are for the way he hitially defined the problem of history I:.,iivvithtschallenge is not simply whether history m y be read as having ""lngents of moral meacrhg" or the question of whether Christians should assume respomibility in the cultures in which they reside, but whether the very meaning Niebuhr attributes to "history'hdequately appreciates the eschatological character of the cross and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, If Christ i s a '*stlIutionff(admittedly a "ttranscendent solution") to the afnbiguity of history, then the cross is m&to be an answer to a question the Gospel does not ask. What must be challenged, accorciing to L&with,is not whether the fdfiliment of h i s t q
comes from m immment or a transcendent source, but whether the very notion of history as a coherent eweryrjse determ,jned by h m a n action entails a false eschatology. It is no wonder, therefore, that Lbwith and Niebuhr tend to pass each other as ships i,n the night, For if Ni&nhr atrt-mdedto L6with's challenge, it would require a completely different understandillg of what anthropology is and how it should be done in Christian theoiogy. Rathr?r than begilming with a general accoul-rt of our being caught between nature and history, between finiteness and transcendence, Niebuhr would be forced to attend to our being caught between t i w times, two etifkrent histnries-the one a time and history of:the world., the other the time and history of God. That contrast is not, as Niebuhr would have it, between the pmvisionai a d the ultilnate but between those who have and those who have not become citizens of God's kingdom initiated trhrough Jesus of Nazareth.l' Lbwith is therefow not impressed (and rightly so) with Niebuhr" denial that he holds a "progressivef\\.liew of history To be sure, N i e b h r stresses the ambiguity of LalX historical achievements; of course, Niebufir never tires of reminding us that the '"rofoundest truth may be the source or bearer of grievous errorf"(FH, 196); but such emphases continue to presuypose that we can assume a perspecthe on history that finally lets us read its ambiguities. It is not sufficient to appeai to the necessity of maintaining a "dialecticd" perspective, as Niebuhr does, for the very abili.ty to maintaill that perspective presupposes a position that is prof omdly nondialectical. Put differently, t,iiwith is at once challenghg N'icbuhr to be less and mort. ""hstorical," Nicbuhr is acutely awarc of the problem of historlical rc-.lati\lism.He suggests, for &stance, that historicd rczlativism fc~rcesmodern man, who claims to be increasingly the master of historical destiny, into periodic modes of skepticism as he analyses his dubiow position as obser~erof historry. The prc~blemis, how a man, nation, or cutlure inudved in the mutabilities of history can achieve a sufficiently high vantage point of wisdom and disinterestednet;s to chart the events of history without using a framework of meaning which is emditioned by contingent circumstance of the class, natbn, or period of the d e r v e r , fFH, 116)
But h a t Niebuhr fails to see is the very statement of the "prabtem'" p=supposes a standpoht that is radically &istsrical. h co~~trizst, L6withfs eschatologkal perspectjve requires us to accept the contingent character of our existence in history in a more radical mmner than Miebuhr is wiflk g to do. Such a criticism may seem extremely odd, since it is Niebuhr more than any other Christian theologian who has emphasized the centrality
and unavoidabflity of history as a category of Christian theology. Yet ironically his very p ~ s a l t a t i o nof "the problem of history">esults in an account of Christim convictions that renders their historicity virtually ir~levl-tntto the meafiing and/or truth of their own existence. In short, Niebuhr's account ol the cross is finally but another variation ol the Gnostic tmptation to turn the cross into a knowledge that is meaningful sepa"te from the actual death of a man called Jesus. It sounds like orthcr doxy to claim, as Niebuhr does, that the cross is the "solution" to history, but the stmngth of such a claim is undercut by Niebuhr" iinsistence that the cross is first and last a ~'symbolf"namely, the name for the eternal possibility that transcer~dsthe antbiguities of history. Niebuhr would, be shocked by such criticism, as he goes to great length to disassociate himself from Bultmmn, who, Niebuhr believes, mistakthe "kerygma" (the proclmation of the Gospel) with exisenly ide~~tified tential philosophy According to Niebuhr, such m identification is a mistake because all "ontological" accounts of the Christian faith mdercut the temporal character of our reconciliat-ion with Cod, Nib* therdore criticizes Bultmanxl for failjn.g to distinguish between prescientific myths and pumanent myths, as the latter "describe some meaning or reality which is not sub~ectto exact analysis but can nevertheless be verified in experience. The experience which verifies it and saves the myth from caprice is usualiy in the realm of history and of freedom beyond the structures and laws of existe~~ce.'"~ According to Niebuhr: that "God was in Christ recmciling the tzrorld unto Himself" is verifiable in the experience of everyone who experiences the mercy and new life wl-rich flows .Erurn true repentance in the encounter with Cod. It is also verifiable by the proof that alternative methods of explaining or dissolving the mystery and the meaning which gc>vernsand surrounds us lead to o~bservablemisealeulatic~ns in regard tcr the nature af man and af history.f5
But the experience of "true repentmce" i s no longer the response to the cross of Jesus but rather a rclsponse to a universal human possibility that at best confirms, and at worst determines, the meaning of the cross of Jesus. It is extremely hard, to criticiz Niebuhr in this m er wit.hout having a sense of being unhir. For Niebuhr so often seems to say things about the "classical" or ""modem'hview of hjstory (or man) that appear similar to Liiwith" criticism. Thus, for example, Niebuhr suggests that the m s t obvious de8lli"cionof "history" is a record or memory of past events. More profoundly considered it is a dimension of existmce in which present realities can be rightly interpreted only thrc>ughthe mernoT of past events.
Since both present and past realities did not fc3llow necessarily from previous events, the bewildering mixture of freedom and necessity in every histcrrical concretion is rightly understood only if the particular and unique acts which constitute the flow of events are remembered in their uniqueness. ( E H , 48-19)
Memory is fiereforc. tl-te cmcial power fiat allows us to retaitl unique events, whether they fit into a cmceptual mold or not. If develoiped theologirally this sense of the significance of memory could pmvide Niebuhr with the resources to meet Liiwith" chatlenge. Ur7fortwately, on Nihuhx's account memory is but another mems we have to cseate freedom from nature and history. Niebuhr suggests that the Christian faith is not merely a faith which gives meaning to history through memovf contrasted with a philosophy which seeks abortively to give it maning by forcing it into the mold of natural recurrence, Memory alone can not p r d u c e a universe of meaning above the level of the life of the indiuidural or a ti-Ibe or nation. Religons of memory, whether tribal ar imperial, can nclr rise to the level of envisaging the story of mankind in its tc>taliQ.Meither can they deal with the theat to fife's meaning arising from the fact that the freedom of man contains the pussibiliq of defying and destroying the COherence of life, The sipificance of Christianity as a ""hgh" religictrt is partly derived from the two facts, ( 1 ) that it comprehends the whole of history; and nclr omXy the story of a parlicular pec)ple in its univerw of meaning, and (2) that it deals with the problems of evil ultimately and not merely from the standpoint of what may appear to be evil to a particular individual or coXlwtive agent in h u m n history in the acGons;of competitors and foes. (FHr21-22)
In the Iight of this quote I think Chat &re can be littie doubt that the main lines of r,iiurithfs Fnterpretation and critiqrre are correct. Niebuhr cannot be satisfied with history understood as a particular community's remembered past, but hi,story nnuH he that cvhich ""comprehends the whole." As a result, Niebuhr is simply unable to caprehend. the radical eschatological perspective found in the New Testament. His not being able to do so, I suspcct, is a result of his thinlcing that w i t b u t such a cmprehensivc history he will lack the means to develop a social ethic to save Western civilizatim, to save it from its own pride. Rut if Liiwith is right, Njcbuhr's xcoumt of history, and ironically of sin, is itself but a manifestation of that selfsme pride. Mart as Sinner What are the implications of all this for Niebuhr's account of sin and what are the implicatims of our appropriation of his account to infom
our work today? This is a crucial question, given the fact that most who turn to Niebhr as a theological resource are primarily attracted to his striking analysis of sin. They assume that they rely on Niehuhr because even if the kind of criticisms developed here are c o r ~ c tNiebuhr" , account of sin is not futtndamentaay affected. N'ibwhrian insights are still valid even if the theological hamework inwhich they reside may need to be rethought. 'f'hough I think it true that many of Niebuhr" hir~sightsmay be separabfe from his methodological assumpt.ons-for example, his treatment of sensuality as the attempt to escape from the pain of selfknowledge-I am not convinced that his account of sin can bt, abstrarkd .from this broader t-heologicalagenda, For the irmy of Niebuhr" saccount of sin is that almost in spite of h h self he makes sin intelligible-tha is, sin becomes a universal. of the huio~~ man cmdition that corresponds to m d underwrites the a s s ~ ~ m p tthat all of history as history can be comprehended as a ""problem." We sin, according to Niebuhr, because as finite creatures who can comprehend our .finiteness, we arc anxious. Unable to ~ m i in n a state of anxiety, we seek premature resolution by giving unconditioned loyalty to the contingent. Such an account no doubt describes for many how "sin feels,'"ut yet I think it cannot be accepted or appropriated \zrithoul qualif cation. Sin is not a universal condition. Rather, it is the ~ h s aofl some to believe when confronted with the Gospd of Jesus Christ. The very assumption that we can I;now what sin is prjor to knowledge of Christ is but a f o m of our sin, of our attempt to claim that we can comprehend the meaning of our existence. From this perspective, :r\liebuhrfsaccount of our sistfuhess i s a Protestant form of natural law that attempts to make intelligibk, m gruunds of general h u m n knowledge, what can only be known in the light of the kingdom established in Jesusf cross and ~ s u r rection. That i s why it was possible fos so many of Nibuhs's contemporaries to have been attracted to PJiebuhr" accomt of the human condition and his corresponding political realism without sharing his theological co~~vidions. Anomalies internal to Niebuhr" account of sin confirm this analysis. For exam*, he codd o n b assert that our finik stabs is not equivalmt to sin; but he was never able to show why, theologically, oat aaniety as creatures does not necessitate shfulness. All he could say was that our anxiety is the "p~condition'"of sin, but h w a preconliition is dit;urent .from the actuality is not easily mderstood (MD, 1, 183). Moreover, because of the necessity to treat sin as a universal condition, he had no way to mark morafly different kinds of sin. As a result, hr clahned that even though WC are all evally sinners, we are not alf equally guilty-the latter being determjned primarilf: by the extent of bad consequences that result from our sin (W,1, 219-227). It seems rather odd, but yet nonetheless
true, that Niebuhr's insightful account of sin cannot help but end underwriting a shallow utiljtarian calculus. Even more troubling is how Niebuhr % account of ""our"' historical condition served, and continues to serve, as an ideology for a liberal-techcr logical social and pdtical order. For i,n spite of his oftm telling critieism of American self-righteousness, he failed to see that liberalism is based on a philosophy of history committed to overcoming the role of chance, that is, history through technological organization.lVhe freedom Mebuhr celebrated as the equivalent to history requims an atkrnpt to domilnate all h u m and nohuman refationships in order to sec- the only good that lihcral societies c m envisage-survivd. What: NjCE7Uhr &led to see, because he had, accepted the liberal account of history as the imposition of human witf m an accieiental world, is that in such a world justice and the quest for jwtice become u17intelligi)31ee On Beginning with an. End
I am acutcly awarc that in criticizing Niebuhl: I have not developed any inteltigible alternative. tncieed, I am not even s m that I bave succeeded inbreaking the hold Ihat Niebuhr's positios~has on my own ifnaghation. For Niebuhr has been such a powerful influence because we bave ass u e d that even if his answers were insufficiclmt, he at teast had the questions right. 'That assumption, of cotrrse, is kvhat T have tried to challenge. But once you challmge the very way you have learned to put the question, it is not always clear where to go next. My sense is that our task is not to develop an mthropology alternative to that of Niebufir, Rather, we will. only be in a position to h o w better what we think of the human condition when we are able, as Lijwith suggests, to think from the position of the etnd, that: is, klrhcn our sell% of history rcflects our eschatology rather than history becoming the form uur eschatological cmvictions take. 'Ib do that witf require. not only cmceptual skills, but also a differetzi: stance as Christians toward o w respective social orders, Only when we learn to exist in history without the power to determinefilly the meani~~g of that history will we be ready, I suspect, to h o w as well as articulate what it mems to be human. Notes I. Dietrich Bnnhoeffer, No Rusfy Szoclrds, e d , Edwin H. Robertsan (New York: Harper and Rowf 1965), p. 117. This is, of course, a passage from &>nhoeEfer%famous essay, ""Protestantism Without Refc,rmation." 2. Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Szuords, p. 104 (italicized in Bonhoeffer)..Sauter has been unfailingly generous in his attention as well as his judgments about the church in America. Yet his unwavering BohoeEfer-like insistmce that ""doctrine
matters" cannot help but be a judgment on the American churches" general disdain far do>ctrine. 3, Bonhoeffer was quite appreciative of Niebuhr, caling him the "sharpest critic of contemporary American Protestantism and the p ~ s e nsocial t order.'" He notes that Niebrrhr is attempting to find the "right way" between neo-orthodoxy, for which Jesus Christ becomes the ground for human despair, and a true liberalism, for which Jesus Christ is the ideal and the revelatic~nof our essential being. Yet Bonhoeffer concludes that ""a doctrine of the person and redemptke work of Jesus Christ is still missing" in Niebuhr (p. 116) He was, of counief right about Niebuhr" Christology, tzrhich, I hope to show, had a disastrous effect an Niebuhr" view of history; 4.1 originally wrote this paper for a colloquy on Reinhold Niebuhr beween the faculties of theology of Duke and Born. I was supposed to write on Nieb&rfs anthrc~palogy,but 1 felt that t11e world simply did nat need another paper on that all-too-commonly treated subject. I: therefore used Lliwith to raise questions about Nic?buhr%view of history not only- because T thought the latter was more interesting, but also because 1 thought that many who criticized Ni(r?buhrfsanthropology cmtinued to share the mc3thodologl"cajt presuppositions of Protestant liberal views about history. At the time, 1 am embarrassed to say, I did not know Sauter" work wefl. X now understand that X was lucky to find a way to criticize Niebuhr that was commensurate with =me of Sauter" theological motifs. I am grateful to be able to publish that payer far the first time in this context, as 1 hope it serves to express my admiration for Sauter's work but also his character as a theologian of the church. 5. Karl L6with, "History- and Christianit~"" in Reir-zFsald Niebzrhr: His Religious, Social and Pzolifiml Thnzrghf, ed. Charles Kegley and R ~ b e r tBretall (New York: Macmillan Company 1956), pp. 281-290. All page references to Z,ijw-ith%ccuntribution therein will appear in the text preceded by HC. 6. Liiwith" full pc~sitionon the matter was worked out in his Meaning ir-z History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1413469).There tijwith says, 'The interpretation of history is, in the last analysis, an attempt to understand the meaning of history as the meaning of suffering by historical action. The Christian meaning of history in particular, consists in the most paradoxical fact that the cross, this sign of deepest ignominy could cmquer the world of the conquerors by oppc~sing it. In our time crosses have been borne silently by millions of people; and if anything warrants the thought that the meaning of history- has to be understcx~d in a Christian sense, it is such boundless suffering, In the Western tzrorld the problem of suffering has been faced in two different ways: by the myth of Prometheus and by the faith in Christ-the one a rebel, the other a servant. Neither antiquity nor Christianity indulged in the modern illusion that histmy can be concehed as a prc~gressiveevolution tzrhich solves the problem of evil by way of elimination"" (3).Because tijwith assumes that all modern accounts of "history" are but forms of the Promethean myth, he tater claims that ""Christiansare not a historicat people" "(195).Contrary to Lijwith, Christianti are a historical people, since our Christ is a Jew; but more profoundly we are eschatological people. One of the tricks mc>bei-nikyhas played on us Christiam is that which succeeds in cmvincing us that history is a more basic concept than providence.
7. Niebuhr, in Faitfr alzd Hisfofy (Mew York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 4951), explicitly uses the phrase ""tangents of moral meaning in history'' (132).As we shall seef however, mow trr~ublingto tiiwith is Niebuhrfs assumption that I-tistory itself is the realm of meaning created by man. Page references for Fraif!~alzd History wilt appear in the text preceded by FH. 8. Reinhold Ni&uhr; The Nature nud Destiny ofn/mn, vol. 2 (New York: Charles Scribner's %>ns, 1949), p. 3. Page references will appear in the text preceded by NI>.It is intermting how seldom it was not-iced, at the time that The N n t ~ r eand Destir-zyofMnn was published, how deeply Niebulnr drew on the idealist tradition for his account of the human condition. Everyone's attention was captured by his strong stress on the inevitability and power of sin. As a result, few noticed the way in which Niebuhr assumed the broad outlines of Kant's udderstanding of how freedom is possible in a Newtonian world. 9. In spite of his stress on the centrality of history, there is a peculiar ahistorieal character to Ni&uhr's work, For what is important is how history exhibits eternal characteristics rather than how cc~ncretehistorical figures or mc>vernentsactually changed the world, Of course, he was not alone in this respect, as Bultmam, for example, has quite similar views. 10. Reinhold Niebuhr, Tlze Self a~zdthe Drarnas of History (New York: Charles Scribner" Sc>ns,319551, p. 41. It is hard to see how this book adds anything to the work Nieb&r had done in Faiffr.and kll'slorp. What is interesting about the two books, howweu; is how they show Niebuhr's fascination with the "problem of I-tistory." 21, As we shall see, however, if the cross is not subject to the contingencies of history then it canno>thelp but be a ""symbol" that lacks hjst-orical part.icularity Put simply, Niebuhr" failure to a p p ~ c i a t ethe eschatological reality of the cross means that the historical character of the cross must be translated into the language of eternal possibility. 12. Reinhold Nj&uhl; 14Rep13j;'' in KegXey and Bretalf, eds., Reinllald NiebuIzr, pp. 439440. 13.1 suspect this is also the reason why Niebuhr never felt the nwessity to develop a pc~sitiveseme of the role of the church. 2 4, Niebul-rr, The Sevatzd fhe Dr~)-rzns of History, p-97, 15. Ibid., p. 98. 2 C;, For a well-devdopect argument defending this assertion, see George Parkin Grant, Englislz-Speaking Jzlslice (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 4985). Grant" work has revolved around the "prc~blemof history," and he has taken quite a different tack than Niebuhr. For an excellent presentation of Grant's thought, see Joan E. O"Pomctvan, Georgc Gratlt a ~ C dh Twilight tIf-]z~stic~ (Torc~nto: University af Toronto Press, 1984). Grant saw clearly, in a way that Niebuhr BCES not, that the modern sichess is marked by an insatiable but clearly cmtradictory hmger; namely, that most want at the same time to have the freedom offered by hists.trieism and the consolation of a nonhistorical past.
3
The Irony of Reinhold Niebuhr: The Ideological Character of "Christinn
Realism" with Michael Broadway
Revisiting Reinhold Niebuhrk Realism Robin Lovin observes that Christim Realism names the belief that h the end truth about God must prove consistent with every other kind of truth we can h a w . 5 o understood, we cannot imagine a Christian who woUM not want to be a Christian Realist, Yet as L w i n m k e s admisabty clear, we learn little by such a designaticm, since "realism" n m e s not one but a whole family of positicms, C,ovi,n, for example, di,stinguishes between political, moral, and theological realism, observing that some Christian Realists have held versions of all three. Yet it is equdly the case that holding o m h r m of realism does not entail holding the otherse2 In this essay we will explore as well as critique Nirbuh.rfsunderstanding of Christian Realism as a politics. In particdar, W will exptore the intplicat.ions of N'iebuhrfs realism for his understanding of the role of the church. We think this is particujariy hportant because many wish to dissent from this or that aspect of :Niebuhrfstheology, d l the wbie continuing to think his account of how the Christian should approach politics is still valid. We want to challmge that psesurnption by s h w i n g how Niebuhrfs accomt of realism provides more a legitimating ideolo a for Etmerica's political arrangeme~ntsthan it does a faithttt explicaticm of a political, theology rooted in Scripture, We shoutd not be surprised that it did so, as that was exactly what Niebuhr meant it to do. That N'iebuhr's "realism" proved to be such a codorting position for Christian political participation in democratir politics s e a s counterintuitive.' Niebuhr % sacr~mtof rmlism was meant to challenge, by exposing the idealisms that hide self-interest and power, a too easy t?cceptance of the status q u ~Realism, . ~ was meant to force Christians, tmpted by their idealisms, to face the necessity of power and violence Niebuhr
thought unavoidable in history and politics. Realism was a kind of "spirituality" "tended to sustain Christian participation in politics without such participation tempting the Christian to give in, to cynicism.' Yet we will try to show that the irony of Reinhold Niehuhr is that it is precisely his antil.iberal sociai criticisln that turns out to provi,dc a justification of liberal politics. To clairn to be a ""ralist'beems such a tmmp agaitlst any of the alternathes. The realist seek to see beyond aypearance, is commit-led to unm a s h g illusion and, therebq:. to overthrowing f a l s c h d . AccordhgIy, the realist seems to assume the superior position, namhg other posiliions as illusory, utopian, idealistic, c a l h g them prejudice and even lies, Certahly Niebuhr's c l a h to be a realist functioned rhetorically to give him the high gromd not only morallyFbut also intellectually k'et for us what is morc3 troubling is the way in which Niebuhr's justification of rclalism reproduced the liberal psesuppositim that a strong distincticm can be made betwen the spheres of religion and politics."eligion becaxne for him the realm, of ideals, of personal morality, of knowledge of the crcator. Politics names the realm of humm nature, oi hrtman collectivities, of power m d conflict. Redism a s s m e s that any collective behavior is necessarily confIictual and thus religion cannot help but be "illusim."" Without the clear divisim between religion and pcl)ftics, this ontology of conflfct would quickly corne into question in lighl. of the ideals of religion. Mowever, by separating the two, N'iebuhr is able to free the political space for a discourse based on the prudential limitation of conflict. In TIze r'daltrrc? ancl Destiny $Man, Reinlnold Niebuhr s-ks to ground his political analysis further by developing a psychological account of hrtman si~~fulness as a natural foundatrion for his theory of social relations? Finite hurnan beings hevitably reach beyond their grasp to claim ever-expanding power and authority. This sinfulness cannot be overcome in the wodd; it can mly be tempered and contahed. Religion provides ideals for partial control of egoism, but its effcictiveness is linzited to individual motivations.' This naturalized theory of the human response to finitude merges with the politics of group conflict to flesh out Nihuhr's realim. Me summarizes this argument briefly in The Structure of Natill~~s and Enzpires: Tt is interesting that a valid psychiatry has come to the same conctusions with respect to the individual as those at tzrhich a valid palitical science has arrived in regard to curnrnunlties. This cmclusion is that it is not possible permanently to suppress, by either internal or external pressure, the ccjncern of the self far itself. . . . A valid moral outlook for both individuals and for groups, therefore, sets na limits to the creative pc~ssibilityof cclncern for c;)thers, and makes no claims that such creativity ever annuls the power RE self-
cmcern or removes the peril of pretension if the force of residual egcjtism is not acknowledged .1'3
Claims of "realism," such as those of Niehuhr, provide the perfect setting for t.he development of a severe case of ideofogical blindness. 'The eventual convergence of ReAold Nicb~xhx's"realism""wiIb accepted doctrine of h e r i c m foreign policy in the 1950s and 196%" further confirms tJle suspicion tbat many &eologians had accepted a version oE reality that was easily compatible with the views of the dominant groups of the society N o m C:homskyfcertahly unsympathetic wjth Niebrrhr, writes: It is easy to see tvhy his [Niebuhr's] attitudes tvould generally have endeared him to po~stwarintellectual opinion. In his avoidance of fact and argument, and the praise that such practice elicited, NiebuFtr tvas enjoying the luxury affoded anyone who remains firmly within cowentional orthodoxiest playing the game by the rules. . . . The reverential atve his words evoked reflects, in part, the shallowness and superficiality of the reigning intellectual culture, a sign of mc)st times and places, no doubt, But- to explain his status as ""official establishment theologian" we must also attend to the lt)fisons drawn from his exhol"catlions.[Richard] Fox comments that the Kenndy liberals ""did not sa much 'use" Niebuhr" name as feel indebted to his perspective. He helped them maintain faith in themselves as political actors in a tmubled-tvhat he termed a sinful-world. Stakes were high, enemies tvere wily, responsibility meant taking risks: Niebuhr tau&t that moral men had tcr play hardball. . . . " The inescapable "taint of sin on all historical achievements,'" the necessity to make "cconxious choices of evil for the sake of goodw"----these are soothing doctrines far those preparing to "face the responsibilities of power,'kr in plain EngXish, to set forth on a life of crime, t s ""pay hardball."iz
Although Chomsky sets Niebuf-ir" political views in the worst possible light, he does at kast point out the way that realisms can become justification for perpetuating dominant ideologies. The rhetorical character of clainrts to knowledge of reality can be seen in anatping certain uses of "real," "realistic,'"*realty,'band their cognates. Often these words make little or no difference in the content of selltences. .A person might say "The reason for X is Y," or '"The real reason fnr X is V.'" In each version of the sentmce, the person ctaims Y as the reason for X. h the second sentelzce, however, "real" "serves to intensify the claim, not unlike an exclamation point, It also indicates that the speaker assumes that other reasons might be given that should be disregarded. In other words, the rhetorical fu~lctionof "real" in this selltence is as a claim to a privileged point of view. Certahly, that is not the d y way that htjuage of "reality" "functions, but it is clearly one of its more frequent uses ineveryday m d in theoretical discourses, hcludhg Christim Realist discourses, fn a nutshell, Nicbuhr" redistic point of view expects that peo-
ple are likely to do bad things to one another, and that the behavior of colledjves wilf be even worse. Although Chsistians might ideally want to seek nonviolent solutions to problems, they ought really to be preparcd to use the violence legitimated by the state to limit the ever-present canflict among social groups. n o u g h Niebuhrk rrealism seems to commit him to some kirrd oi historicism, in fact his account of realism is essentially &istorical and abstract. In, t?lf ti,mes and places the incvitalnle rejection of human finitude distorts social relations and leads to conflict. The proper response to this universal conflict is to balance, as best one can, one power again" another. Although Niebuhr recites numerous historical cases in defense of his argument, they build anything but a historicist argument, Instead, he looks to historic.& study not to ~ v e the d superficial differences between cases and eras, but to find "some similarities under the differences,'""" From Chomsky" ppoix of view, '%e too consistently interpmts history not cm the basis of the factual or documentary record, but in t e r m of professed ideals.'"l" 'This Aistsrical reductionism characterizes his method of uncovering the perennial prhciplcs of social relations, Thus, running through Mebuhr's mmany exan-tples is the same set of princir>les repeated over m d over agaiin: Finite human bejings greedily seek to obtain more than their needs dictate, a proclivity that is madc infinitely worse in collecthes; therefore, the best one can bope for is to stmture groups, swieties, and inter~zationalrelations in such a way that individuals and groupscan be kept under relative control; religion illuminates this conditio1-t and provides some inspiration to do better, even though the lull realization of its idc& are impossible in history John Mjlbank argues that Niebuhr" account of our mord situaticzn bears uncanny resemblance to Stoicism. Carefully exegetiz~gNiebuhr's discussion of t-he early church"^ engagement with Stoic etlhi.cs, Mi1bank concludes that Nigbuhr fomd some of its key tenets to be essentiai. "The basic focus of Stoic ethics is on the encountu between an absolute spiritual ideal and a 'chaotic' hit-e wobld which it-does its best to regulate,"""" Like Ni&ubrI the Stoics saw little chance of brirrging this ideal into the external world of chaos, Mxhich is inevitably conflickal. We are sure that Mibank i s right to draw a parallel between Niebrlhrian realism and stoicism, but bebre we explore how that might affect our understanding of Niebuhr's accamt of Christianity, we need to sugge" how completely Niebuhr stands in the American grain. Niebuhrk Americanism Niebuhr" realism and his correhtke understanding of the pIace of religion in liberal slrcieties we think can be illumined by comparing his views with those of two of Che key interpreters of ljberalism fos the
American repLlblic, 'T"homasJeffersm and James Madism, Like Jefferson, Niebuhr believed that religious beliefs are properly located in the individud conscience. Our conscience, and in pastkular our consciousness of sin, is a signal of transcendence. Religion accdingly is ""intt.riorUto the political, whcreas politics cor~spondsto a dualism of interior motivation and external social behavior." With Jefferson, not dissimilar views led to his argun-tent for an absolute distinction between religjon m d politics: Believing with YI)U that religion is a matter which lies solely beween man and his Gcd, that he owes account to none other far his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of gc>vernmentreach actions only and not opiniong 1 cc~nternplatewith savereign rever-ence that act of the tzrble American pclopte which declared that their legislature should "'make no law respecting an atablishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation beween Church and State,17
This f m o u s Jefftrsonian doctrine came to be a crucial, albeit controversial, canon of constitutional interpretation, especially in the twentieth centukiy;'" Of course, Niebuhr" whole life was committed to convincing Christims of their social responsibilitypso it may seeln strmge to suggest that he was an ally of Jefferson. He certajnly could. be critical oi the kind of "optimistic liberaiismf%e thought Jeffersm reprcsented.lgVet in spite of his critique of Jcfferson, his own realism could not help but undtrwrjte the sequesterillg oi Christian conviction from the public arena. As a resdt, even Niebrahr's Cl-tristim convictions became motivation for political involvement. Because of his strong emphasis on sin, Niebuhr is usually seen as having a greater affhity to James Madison thm Jefferson. Madisods argument for the necessity of balallcillg confljcting interest groups against one another in order to prevent majoritJi tyranny and preserve the peace sounds like a classic Niebuhrim theme. Madison was, moreover, an mapologetic advocate of a strong cerntrai govermernt, believing that the popular election of the government was a necessary check against the tyranny of any smdl grollp or single person who might amass power. However, a unified majority ntight. ultimately create an even rnore oppressive tyramy than any monarch or group of aristocrats had ever enforced. hlfadison's theoretical Rsponse was to suggest that a large republic could create the conditions for multiplying kctions to the point that no single iaction could claim a majoriw of the voters, Multiple factions, combined with strong central g w e ent, could help to foster the sort of balmcc of pocver hvitbjn the rcpzlblic that is necessary to deal with a diversity of egoistic interests, all of which again sounds like Rcinfiiold Ni&uhr 's social and political phiosophy*
In "Federalist 10" and "Feederdist 51,'Wadison argued for structurinl; government to promote the baldncing of hterested facrions with reference to factions of all types, including religion. Madism may have been sowwhat less optimistic than fefferson about tmth prevaifing in a swiHe believecf that dmocratic societies codd ety \here free inquiry rt?ig~~s* rely on the existence of only the base misrimtlm of virtu low self-rule through law and the vote. However, he was not confident that truth and virtue could survive factional cmSfict if one faction were to hold a majority."TLike Niehuhr, he expected ixrterest rather than morality to be the strctnger motivating force in social life. Niehuhr may be even more pe5sintisti.c lhan Madjson in hjs acceptance of the necessity of social conflkt, especially between groups, He doubts that even minimal virtue can be expected of social cdlectives. Such virtue inevitably serves self-int.esf_?stand c o m s into conflict." Like Madison, Niebuhs believes that only a strong central.gave ent can keep the conflict mder cmtrol. Niebuhr cites The Federalist Pnpccrs in support o f this belief.'?''The kinship of his thought with Jeffersnn and bladisnn &us helps explajn the appeal of Niehuhs" 'kealisrm"' to an American audience well versed in the split between the realms of religion and politics, the ontology of conflict, and the control of such conflict throrlgh the balance-ofpower models of liberal political arrmgements, Like 'Jefferson and Madison, Niebuhr more readily talks about "religion" "an the church. Even whe11 he uses the term "church,'%he does not always refer to the Christian church."' He seems to consider religion a mow inclusive category than church, insofar as the former names ideals that can lead human beings to aspire to moral* and justice. In contrast, church is just one more collectivity that is thoroughly sell-interested. I'hough the c h m h can at times exercise a prophetic role toward society, mast of Niebuhr's discussions of the church returned to criticisms of its potential and actual corruption-which is to say, i t s tendency to serve self-fnterest and the interests of dominant classes.24(He was especially critical of Roman Catholcism, \zrhich he saw as inhmmtly oppressive of hdividual freedom,25) Niehuhr" attitude toward the church re&cts his pessimism about grottps. He s:imply did not believe in the possibiw of the exercise of authority that was not destructjve of indkiduals, To be sure, prophetic pronouncements and actions wew possible, but propheticism, for hirn, was the result of an hdividual courage that aded agairrst rather than on. behalf of communities. Prupketicism, it turns out, confirms the individualistic bias of liberal politics. Like Madison, Niebuhr assumes that peaple enter civil society for mutual bmefit, reserving certain rights to protect their hdividud hterests. Liberty of cmscience was one such reserved right, for the consent of a
mqority to establish religion wodd run roul;hshod over the minority.2h Vct the mere rational acknclwledgment of the existence of the rights would not offer protection. Nor could refigion itself be counted on to suppo" the kind of virtues that would restrain the passions of a majority. In fact, religious fervor might well incite peaple to even greater oppression than individuals w d d impose.'7 Some structural means of protecting rights must therefore be enacted, and the puzzfe for Madison was to identify the mems to keep the state netttral in religion.. Unce again, the large republic supplied the answer for Madlson. An extensive mough republic would embrace a large variety of sects, none of which. could either claim a miljority or easily organize themselves if they werc a majoriv They would compete for the loyal9 of the citizens and would not easily unite in any common intermt with their competitors.""Here, Nietsuhr" dimkution of the church's authority and role in the lives of believers, or in society, fits neatly into his liberal notions of structures of power as the means to social justice. The church, like all other groups, must be tamed by stm"eu"g social cmflict in such a way that it can inflict the least harm.. The only contribution of religion is in presenting useful "illusions" of a just society that may by some slim chance guide leaders of society in the direction of ~rrorejust decisions.29
Niebuhrk Tkeological.Justification,of the Irrelevance of Ghristianiq Niebuhr's realism was shaped b~v;but also shaped, his theology, The cross of Jesus exemplifies the impossibility of tove and forgiveness being poliecally embodjed, The "'law of love stands on the edge of history not in history,. . . it represents an ultimate and not an immediate possibility.W'" The religion of Jesus is prophetic retigiw in which the moral ideai of Icsve and
uicariow suffering, elaboratd by the second Isaiah, achieves such a purity that the yossibifiQ of its realization in history becomes remote. H i s Kngdorn af G t d is always a possibility in history, became its heights af pure lcwe aw orpnically related to the experiace of love of all human life, but it is also an impossibility in history and always beyond wery historical achievement.""
Thus, for Nieb&r, the ethic of Jesus is the norm. but also Ifundamentaily irrelevant as a social policy. "The only adeyuate m r m is the historic incarnation of a perfect lovc cvhich actuaily transcends history, and can appear init d y to be crucif cd.""' Love can unly remain suffering love in history, even though it is the law of history, because history stands in contradiction to it." The cross illuminates transeendel~trealities, but it camot be effective in the struggle for justice, That is why the cross can only be a symbol of truth intrinsic to the h
Accord% to Niebuhr, the attempt to make the ethic of Jesus politicdly relevant drove the Cf'lwh to apocalypticism,As the Christiansf hope for immediate establishment of the khgdom faded, they had to reconceive how to live as Christialzs. "'They mereIy present Christian ethics afresh with the problem oE compromise, Chc problem of creating and maintaining tentative harmonies of life in the world in terns of the possibilities of the humm situatim, wbite yet at the same time preserving the indictment upon all h u ~ n mlife of the impossible possibility, the law of I ~ v e . " ~ Such a position Nietbuhr understands to be iherently unstable, threatening to become a priestly rdigion that does little more than provide trmscendent justification for finite social st.ructures. Niebuhr thinks that Apostle Paul is cjearly wrong to suggest that government t h a t e n s only vice and not virtue. Mthough Paul may have been justified in making this argu""nt in his own hiGorical context where it appears that s m e Christians may have been flaunting the goventfs authority unfortunate@ this teaching came to be applied innnj.nately to governme~~ts k later centuries. Niebuhr advises that "biblical observations upon life are ma a living relationship to living history." The "dassical view that: gcrv t was primarily the hstmment of ~ n m % ssoial nature'kbscures t that political life is a contest of power." Paul's "'mdialectical' appreciation of gave mans 13 has had a fatem infiuence in CInristian thought, particularly in the Ref~rmation."~~ Niebuhr criticized Karl Barth as the inheritor of this Reformation tradition, suggesthg that Barthfs extreme doctrine of the 'kltirnate religious fact oE the sinfuhess of all m e ~ ~ ~ k n d e r m i the n e dability to nnake relative moral judgments or to recognize relative moral achievements in history. This criticism sounds very much like the criticisms leveled against Nebuhx himself; nmely, that he elimhates the possibility of moral judgment because of his own extreme doctrhe of the ubiquity of sin in human relations, Yet Niebuhr well recog"ized this problem, attributw it to the ""Augustinian-1,uthermtheolcrgkd heritage [which] has had greater difficulty in achieving a measure of political smity and justice than the mow Pelagian, more self-righteous and refigiously less pmfound AngloSaxon world."36 Niebuhr 's own solution to the problem of religious endorsement of political structures was to stress that the Bible has two paradoxical principles of politics. First, because God ordains government, its authori_t.y"reflects the Divine Majesty." S a n d , rulers are "particdarly subject to divine judgment and wrath" "cause of their propensity to oppress fie poor and to defy God's authority 'The first principle suppllrts order as a hedge against anarchy, and the second h l p s to clarify that governmental power is not equal to divine pow(?~; though it often has pretensions to ab-
soluteness." The task is at once to maintain both principtes without fallkg into the twin temptations of conservatism or radicalism. This attempt to hold two polar positions in tension is characteristic of Niebuhr 's thought. Tt is important both to recognize the higher possibilities of justice in every historical situation, and to h o w that the twin perils af tyranny and anarchy can nwer be completely overcame in any political achievement, These perils are expressions af the sinful elements af conflict and dominion, standing in contradiction to the ideal of brotherhood on every Xevef of communal organization.%
John Courtney Murray called Niebuhr" position ""ambiguist," suggesting that followers of Niebuhr had a tendency to find so much ambiguity and complexity in any moral situation that constructive deliberation becomes i m m o b i l i ~ e d Niebuhr was seldom immobilized, but .~~ Murray" ddescripticm commends itself by Niebuhr" own admission that "modern history has given us a vivid itl.ustration of the fact Chat the history of communj.ties accentuates, rather than mitigates, the moral ambiguitks of our existence, particularly the arnbiguitks of our common life.""""" Zndeed, earlier hthe same book, fdiebuhr had organized types of government according to gradations of ambig~it;v.~ He did so thinking he was standing in the Reformation tradition that teaches us that it is necessary to make moral judgments between '"~cia.1systems" rather than concernh~gspecific questions of obedience to particular laws. &y so doing Neb& provides a theological justification for why theologicd c l a h s camot m d should not be made to do the work of politics. But it is not clear what Niebuhrfs alt-ative mi@t be. Jesus has atmaciy been rczndered irrelevant m d Niebhr distrusts the casuistical use of natural lakz~?~ FIis only Lalternative is, in the name of balance-of-power politics, to recommend that Christians be ""realistic." No doubt Miebuhr would claim that he has brou$ht the prczphetic element of refigion to Che fo~front,but the sharp division between the realms of refigion and,politics vltrinsic to ~alism served to free liberal political imtitutions to follow their own interests, qualified only by the hope that they will recognize the ambiguity hwhat they do.
The
""Beyond"Miebuhr
A dark cloud often seems to hang over the world found in Reinhold Niebuhr's svrrtiings. In a world of nathn-states, he asserts that it is nation-states that are most susceptible to the taptations of unbridled .~ setf-interest and rcssultkg i n j u s t i ~ eHovvever, to Mebuhr the natbn-
state is sfmply a hrgcr, mort? resourceful exemplification of alT human cofiectjvities. Niebulhf's ahistorical accomt of potitics bames the vinlence of nnndern nation-states on the tirneless nature of sorrial groups. En contrast, J o h Milbank argues: Tt is not enough to relate the especially dangerous selfishness of modern natim-states simply to the ikerent nature of groups. It is clear that it has to d o rather with the contingent, historical, grc>wthof absolute sovereignty Likewise the selfishness of corporations a n d trade unions is to be relatetd to the market economy In otder societies where there was an organic hierarchy of interlocking grc~upings,""grr~upselfishnes" simply coutd not have made the same kind of sense,"
The s m e kind of historicism is exemplified by h t h o n y Cidciens in his book TEze Nation-State and Viole~zci..As part o( his project to examine theories of the development of modern society, Giddens argues that what we face today is different: I do, however, want to claim that, originating in the West but becoming rnore and more global in their impact, there has occurred a series of changes extrac~rdinary in magnitude when compared with any other phases of human history. What separates those living in the modern world From all previous types of society, and all previous epochs of history, is rnore profound than the continuities which connect them to the longer spans of the past. This does not mean that we cannot draw upon the study of pre-existing types of society tct try better tcr understand the nature of the world in which we now live. But it does imply that the contrasts which can be made will often prove rnore illuminating than the continuities that may be discerned.""
Giddens states that one of the most criharacteristic features of the modern nation-state is its higZlly centralized cmtrol of society through the monopoly of vklence. Milbank's and Giddens"~historicizilng perspecthe mdermines the myth of the liberal society, which Niebuhr turned into the ""lru.th"' about the humm condition. Such ""truths"' succeed in merely namalizing a social setting of co1zflict Chat then becoms the rationale for slructurtls of lib.era1 social control and those who benefit f r m such arrangements. Rather than regdathg society into a perpetual state of equilibrium in which individuals find eqraality and freedom, modern nation-states have devefaped as ever-irtcreasing power centers sustained by inltustrialiaed militarization. Political theories like Niebuhr's help to justify this cmtrifugal expansion of liberat power slructustls by perpetuating the ahistorical ontology of conflict assumed by LiberaI politics. The final irony of Niebuhr's litberaljsm is his clairn that the mtology of groups prt-sents an insupera-
ble barrier to efiical perfecticmism, which in turn becomes fie justification for liberal optintisrn in the name of the free k d i ~ i d u a t - ~ ~ Politics fur liberal thought, as for Niebuhr, is expressed through the manipulation of technologies of power estabiiskd in constitutional structures. By pul-ling aside Ihe questions of rnoral goodness for the sake of objective technique, libera1 politics engenders an unwarranted optimism. Furthermore, if Christians are rendered politically impotent in the n m e of the "peaceff;lecmpl_iShedthrough the mechanism of the balance of power, then Christians md. non-Christims alike are robbed of a common politics." I~ronically,Niebuhr, the realist, who everpne agrt_.es""took sin seriously," actualfy pmvidcs the bases to underwrite w:hat is increasingly seen as an unjustified liberal optimism. Niebuhr, like many theorists of liberal politics, was not historicist. (-h-r the contrary he p d a i r n e d an esse~ntializedview of the human condition and a paraltet reification of the state that shut out m y role h the world for the church, He, like the Stoics before him, left us without hope. Notes An earlier version of this chapter, entitled "The Irony cjf American Christianity: Reinhold, Niebuhr on Church and State," written with Michael Broadway; appeared in Insigllts: A jara?-rzal oftlrc Fac~ilfy~OfR~isfi~t Semilzay 108 (Fall 4992): 33-46, 2 . Robin Lovin, Reialzald Niebulzr n ~ Cd h r i s t k ~Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2995), p. 240, This essay was originally written and published in 4992. As a result, we did not have the benefit cjf tovin's able analysis and defense of Niebuhr's realism, We have no reason to disagree wit11 Lovin" sattempt to make Njrebuhr not only ;a political realist but also a moral realist, that is, someone who defends the claim that " m r a l truth exists independent of our ideas and theories about it" @. 68). Indeed, we are convinced that Lovin is right to go~sition Niebuhr in the gragmaticist tradition in spite of Niebuhr" criticism of jtlthn Bewey. Of course, as Lovin well knows, it is a complex question whether the pragmaticists tzrer-e "moral realists." From our perspective it is increasingly clear that Bewey and Niebuhr held more in common than their disagreements might suggest. See, for example, Daniel Rice, Reinhold Riiebufzrand John L)c;zuq:An Amcn"calz Odyssey (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993). Of course, that is not necessarily good news for defenders of NiAuhr, such as Lovin, For as Bewey observed in a letter quc~tedby Rice, ""Ihave the impression that both he (Niebuhr) and Kierkegaad have both cl-rmplietely lost faith in traditional statements of Christianity, havm't got any modern substitute, and so are making up, off the bat, something which supplies to them the gist- of Christianity-w11at they apprc>ve of in modern thougl'lt-as tzrhen two newspapers are joined, the new organ always says, Tetaining the best features of bath'" "6-87). Bewey is wrong about Kierkegaard but certainty his characterization of Niebul-ir rings true in spite of Niebuhr" sttempt to rescue Christianity as "true myth" about transccmdence. What Niebuhr
failed to see about ""ianscendence" is that it is but another reductive category that makes Godrs choice of Israel unintelligible. 2. towin, Reizzltold Nicbfiltr and C!zrz'sll;snRealism, p. 241. 3, In responding to jeff Stout" doubt that religious claims have any pc~sitive contribution to make to public discourse, tovin says that "the point is not contribution but part.l;cipationM(ibid., g. 55). Tn other words, the task is to get Christians to participate in "politics" on prior established gmrmds. Fram our perspective such a view sells politics short, believing as we do that the world can respond to the distinctive character of Christian witness. 4. Reinkold Niebuhr, Clrrisfierrz Re~lismand Political Problcms (New York: Charles kribner's Song 195J), pp. 19%128. 5, Bemis McCann provides the most insightful account of Ni&uhr's realism as a fc~rmof spiritua tity See his 61zrz'stian Re~lisntand Liberwf&n Tlzeology (Mxyknoll, N.U,: Orbis Books, 19131). 6. Reinhold Niduhr, Moral M n nnd bnrrroral Society (New tlork: Charles Scribner 'S Sms, 1932), p. 263, passim. 7. Ibid., p. 81, 8. Reinhold Ni&uhr, Tke Nafrlre alzd Destirzy ofMan (New tlork: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949). We realize that catling Niebuhr's account: "ppt;l)rcl.lolc>gicaX"may appear prejudicial, but it is extremely difficult to locate the kind of discourse Nirrbuhr employs in Tht N ~ t u r eand Destiny ofIbl17n.We do not say this as a criticism, for no doubt Niebuhr" ggeesis and persuasive power are due to his extraordinary power of generalization. 9. John Milbank, Nt~cllrnrRealism and Cfzrisfi~~z Reality: The Pulrericy of Niebuhrianisnz (London: Jubilee Group Publications, 19861, p. 5. A t~msionof Milbank" essay on Niebuhr appears in his Tlze W(1l.d Made SCmnge: Tliec;tlogyILangztage, Cultzdrc (Qxfclrd: Basil Blackwell, 4997), pp. 233-254. 10. Niebuhr; 'Ti"le Structure of Nations nnd Enzpires, rpt, ed. (Fairfield, N.J.: Augustus M. Kelley 19?7), pp. 30-31. 14. Naam Chomsky "Reinhold Niebuhr,"%ra~ldStreet 6 (1982):204-206, 12. Ibid., 211-212, 13. Nihuhr, Tlze StrzreCurc c$ M~tz'onsand Empires, p. 5; for other examples of pel-ennial truths? see pp. 215,227. 14, Chomsky "Reinhold Niebuhr;'" p. 205; however, one would not want to en.dorse Chamsky" implication that history can be read without preconceptions. 15. Milbank, N~iclearRealisnt, g. 6. 16. Niebuhr, Moral MGRa d Immoral Society, p. 257, 17. Thornas Jefkrson, Letter to Messrs. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraiim Robbinq and Stephen S. Nelson, A Committee of the Danbury Baptist Assodation, in the State of Connecticut, Jan. 4, 4882, Tlze Writings of Tjzomas ]efiers.sorj, Memorial Edition, vol. 16 (Washington, DC.: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Associatian, 1904), pp, 281 -282. 18. Illitzois ex rel, McGolllrm v. Board of:Edzlcalioior?,333 U.S. 203 (1g48), excerpted in John E Witson and Donaid L. Drakeman, eds., Clztrrcl~ntzd State itz American HisColy, 2nd ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 19871, p. 207. 19. Niebuhr, An Interprefntiorz of Ghrisfiazz Ethics, rpt. ed. (New York: Seabury 4960), pp. 103-104.
20. Madison, "Federalist 54," The Papers of lurnes Madison, ed. William T, Hutchinson, William M.E. Rachal, et al., vol. 10 (Charlc>ttesviXle:University of Virginia Press, 1977), pp. 476ff. 21. Niebuhr, M o r ~ Man l n ~ Id~ ~ ~ m oSociety, ral pp- xx, 107, It is by no means clear from whence NiebuFtr thought people of virtue would come, He simply presupposes that enou$ widespread agreement obtains concerning what it means to be ""moral" "at: one could continue to assume that .\rirtuewould just be "there." 22. Niebuhr, The Structzlre ofMatimzs nlzd Enzpires, p- 149. 23. Ni&uhr, Moral Man nlzd Immoral Society, g. 82. 24. Niebuhr, "The Christian Chul-ch in a Secular Age," in Tlze Esserttial Reirzlultd N-iebzalir;ed-.Robert McAfee Brcown (New Haven: Yale li-niversiv Press, 19861, pp. 83,87. 25, Ni&uhr, The N~tzlren ~ Detiny d cfMat.2, vol. 2, H~nznnDetiny (New York: Charles &rikmer" s m g 1946), pp. 138-148; also "T11e Christian Church in a Secular Age," h Essential Niebuhrf p. 88. 26. Madiscon, "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments," Tht 113npel.s cfJallnzesMadison, vol. 8 (39731,pp. 299-300. 27. Madison, Letter to Thomas jefferx~n,Oct. 24,1787, The Pnpers cffiames Mndison, vol. 10 (19771, p. 243. 28. Madison, "Vices of the PoEitical System of the United States,'' The Papers of lames Madiisorz, vol. 9 (19751, p. 357. 29, Niebuhr, ILloral Mn~zn ~ llrzmoral d S ~ c i e f pp. y ~ 81,277, 30. Niebuhr, R142 Nature and Desfi~zyoflbla~~, vol. 1, Humnt~Nature, p. 298, p. 19, 31. Ni&uhr, l~zte~~retafian, 32. Ni&uhr, Human Nature, p. 147. 33. Ni&ul-rr, H~nznnDestiny, p. 49. 34. Ni&uhr, Intelyreintion, g. 37. 35. Niebuhr, Human Destiny, pp. 270-271, n. 2. 36. Bid., p. 220. 37'. Ibid., p, 269. 38. Ibid., p. 284. 39, John Courtney Murray, We klotd T!tese Truths: Cattrolic Repcctions opt tlre Afrrerican Pro-position ( N e w York: Sheed and Ward, 1%Q), p. 282. 40. Niebuhr, 77~eSfruckltre oJNaCliOns and Etrzpires, p. 298. 41. Ibid., pp. 25ff. 42. lEJovinrightly cbsewes that Ni&uhr failed to see how much his account of Christian realism depends on natural law and, in particular, the convidion that "right action is action that conforms to human nature" (Reitzlzold Niabzaltv and Clzristin~zRmlism, pp. 15-46), 43. Niebuhr, Huvzaz Nature, pp. 209-219, 44, Milbank, Nz~cIearRealisnz, p. 12. 45, Anthany Giddens, The Nafiolz-State nud Violeuee, vol. 2 of A Conte~rzpcrmry Cn'Cique ojFlistoricn1Materialism (Eerkeley: University of Catifc3mia Press, 198";7),p. 33. 46. Milbank, Nziclear Renlisnt, g. 12. 47. Robin Lovin, in I-tis befense of Niebuhr" realism as "the~ilagianin the service of ethics," puts the dilemma this way: ""E cone aims to speak about prcobitems
and choices that affect everyone in society, the analysis must be made in terms that are widely accepted and understood, and it may be difficult to say anything at all about Cod. But if one tries to exes-cise the thecjlogian's vocation to speak a distinctive word about Cod, those of other faiths or no faith n w dismiss it as a private meditatim, an esoteric religious idea that has no relevance for their lives ntiebzilzr and Christkn Realknz, p. 34). Lovin argues that "in and choices'" (Xei~zfiold the endP3urnancmflict and aspirations must be understcitC)c)tj,for Niebuhr, in reXatian to God who sets Xirnits on confiict and affirms human unity. Far "the idea that God is love i s a symboX for an ultimate unity of lives and interests in which all proximate cmElicts are resolved" (p, 36). Of course, we think ervwything has already gone wrong whenever it i s assumed that ""God is love is an idea" ort even worse, that Cod is a ""smbol,""
God as Participant: Time and H i s t o y in the Work of James Gustafson
Time and Histoy: Statement of the Problem
M m y have cmmmted that lames Gustafson" EEtlzics from a Tazeoeenlrie Perspective seems out of character with his past work. Hy that they usually mean that- they are surprised that Gustafson seems so determhed to place himself in a critical position vis-8-vis some of the central claims of the Christim faith. For example, it seems odd for someone who has written so se~~sitively about the various ways Chrisil-imshave understood the ~lation between Christ and the moral life to write a book hwhich Christ plays such a srtbordhate role. For some, the concem to unlierstand the relation between the "earlier" and ""later" GCT;u&on no doubt derives from a reaction against the God that Gustafson so unrelentingly portrays in Efhicsfrom a T!zeoeelztrk Perspective. Such a Cod simply seems to lack the kind of compassion that many Christians assume is at the heart of the Christian faith, Calling attention to Gustafsonts earlier w r k , thewfore, seems to be a way of reminding Gustafson that at one time he seemed to be more "orthodox." I am troubled by this strategy, however, as E am not convinced that there is any disconthuity between an "earlier'hand ""later""Gustafsm-at least not hterms of his doctrhe of Gad, Moreover, I am a bit bothered by this kind of reaction because it fails to take seriously Gustafson" theolsgieal propod, For such a readirzg seems to suggest that h Efhicsfrollz a T!zeclctrzf.ric Persvectiztc?Gustafson has merely laid out his personai statement of faith, whicfi is perfectly appropriate. But it seems a bit facile to believe that the argurnent must end there, since when dealing with such matters you either take it or leave it- Tre;at-ingCuslafson's proposal in that vein, h other words, is to fail to take sericlusly the strong argument that Gustafson attempts to make. Flrr be is saying, not simply, ""t'his is my
credo,'"ut "This is what we ali ought to think about God given the available evidence." In this essay, thel-efore, 1want to engage Gustafson at a different level in thc hope that we can better understand the met.hodologiral presuppcr sitios~sthat underhe EEhicsPolrz a Theocenfric Peuspectiue. aitther than concentratc directly on his doctrine of God, :l propose to look at an issue that runs through Gustafson's work from the beginning to the presentnmely, hokv time and history are understood to determi,ne the methodologi-aJ presuppositions by which a theologian works, It is in relation to this problem, moreover, that :l think *ere may be some difference between the "earlier" and ""lter" Gustafso~~. Of course, even if that were the case, it by no m a n s undermines Gustdson" later position; in fact, it may help us better understand Gustafscm's current views and their implications for how all oE us work as theologians. As usual, Gustafson, the master teacher of our craft, has stated the issue more clearb than I can, In Pmtesfaltt and RO~EUFZ Catholic Ethics (1978:61) he describes the basic questions that Roman Catholic and Protestmt writers share: What philosophical fc~undationsare necessary and sufficient to provide conditions under which theological ethics can do justice both to the historicat particubrities of the Christian tradition and to the common humanity and rationality that religious persons share with all members of our species? What .totmdationti are necessary and sufficimt to provide conditions under which theological ethics can do justice both to the persistent ternpc~ralccmtinuities of human experience (nature) and the historical changes in it (histov)? What foundations are necessary and sufficient to provide conditions under which thecjlogical ethics can do justice both to the dimemions of human freedom and individual personal existence on the one hand and the limitations of freedom and co-humanity m the other?
'T"hesequestions obviously dt, not refer to the same "problem,'" but they are dosely interrelated. For example, those who etnphasize human freedom will often downptay the significance of '"nature" as a source of n o m s for morality. 'That is why Gustafsm, while approving oE contemporary Catholic thinkers who attempt to develop a more open m r a l thcology, rightly reminds them that to introduce a historical dinrensim to human ertistence alters, if not discards, the tradi.tic,nal preoccupation with ontological accounts of human nature (1,978:47). In short, Gustaf son rigJntfy reminds us that when it comes to history we cannot have our cake and eat it too. Once the temporal character of existence is accrpkd, there is no easy rclhrn to a universal theology or an ethic &at: is bared as nature. Yet that is exactly it sems, what Gustafson has tried to do in Ctlricsfiom a Thracentn'c Perspective. H e has tried to do so not just h terms of his
"ethics,'3ut in his attempt to be a theotogian who is only scrcondarily a Christian theologian. Of course, he is quite right that &eoloa is the most basic activiw m d that ""Christian" is only one possible qualifier. Plato, after all, certainly did thedogy*But the quesf;ionthat especially interests me is cvhefier the attempt to be a theologian qua l.heo(ogian is not in some tension with Gustafsods own insistence, from the beginning to the end of his work, that we are fundalllentally timehl beings. That is the question I will pursue in this essay by providing a sketch of how Gustafsor~has developed the themes of time and history throughout his work. The questicms surrounding how time and history are understood fnr theological method are important not o d y in understanding the thought of Gustafsm; they are centra.1 for all modern thenfogy merefore, I ass u e that the approach I bave taken in this essay reatly requires no justification. I cannot prrztemd, hokvever, to have taken this tack si,mply because I think it can provide an interesting slant on Gustafsods work. I also have personal reasons for pursuh~gthis subject. For by investigathg this set of issues I want to try to understand how the way I work as a theologim can be so influenced by Gustafson and. yet why at the same time I feel I must dissent from the positim that he develogs in Ethics Jl;orrr a Theocelzfric Perspeclive, not so much in terms of his doctrine of God, though certainly there are also disagreements involved there, but from the very methodological assumptions Chat shape his later work.
Gustafson on Time and History.
In Treas~~lre in Earthelz Vessels (1961) Gustafson was htent, in contrast to more strictiy theological treatments of the church, to emphasize that the church is a natufal community Using insights from socid ricience, he argued that the church can fulfil1 its theological mission only through the same natural functions that sustain every social grctuping. Zn short, the book was an attack on all "docetic'kcccoumts of the c h m h , which ignore or deny that the church suwives by using the s a m process that all institutions use to survive. As important as this perspective was fur Gustafson, that theme was, in fact, subordinate to a larger concern. For as he says in the preface, the emphasis on the '"natural'" character of the church is an atternpt to show that the historical and sclcial relativity af the Church is part af its essential charactex: This is so in a doubte sense. This relativity is of the essence af its nature as an historical community, and it is essential to the achievement of its puryuse in the world. "fhe Church is earthen-of the stuff of natural and historical life. The Cllurch is a vessel, it is useful, T1w cmtrad with man and culture is made through the social and historical media of the Church-its natural functions, political forms, etc. (1961:X)
nerefore, the emphasis on the ""naturai" "character of the church was but m expression of Gustafso~~" more profou~~d cmviction of the historical character of human existence, This is clear from the appendix to the book, in which Gustafson cmtrasts the positimwf Kant, Kierkegad, Augustine, Bergson, Royce, Uilhey, and Mead. Custafsods discussion clearly sides with the ""Augustinian stream," bbecause these thinkers properly emphasize "that being in time is an import'mt aspect of being a sdf" (1961:26). He lhus dissents from the Kantjan a t t e q t to sustixin an account of man that transcends natural or rational tjme. There is no way to secure a sense of self or atmnunity- by attempting to transcend time. Ralher, we must draw on Ihe resources of memory in ordcr to sustain the conthuity and univ of self and community; Of course memory involves the need to minterpret the past, which always involves a relativizkg process. 'This is as true for the church" semembering of Jesus as it is for any other cultural symbol that provides a community with a sense of cmtinuity with its past. Yet cmtinulv in the Church as an historical curnrnunlv is grounded in the continuity of a center of meaning that differentiates the Church from other Nstorical societies, e.g., the French natian, the Freemasons, or Western culture, Social continuity and identity in the Chul-ch depend upon the cmtinued significance of this centeu; Jesus Christ, with his manifold meanings, for contempc~rary-persoJns and churches. Continulv exists not only for the preservation of an ancient truth. The lived experience of the past that was impc~rtantenough to be remembered and expressed has cuntempc~rarysignificance as well. The present memory of Jesus Christ is not the admiration of an antique; it is a re-living in the present of his meanlngfutness. Jesus Christ emtinues to provide a eenter for personal integrity and social consensus. The Christian" 'kontemporaneity with Christ" occurs throughout the history of the Church. It is possible because Christ has cmtinued to be a powerful center of integration of experience thmugh history. The one who was the Church's center of life through centun"escontinues to prc>videthe center of life in the present, (1961:81-82)
Of course, the way fesus is remembered is affected by th personal and culturaf context in Mthich the process of undttrstandi~~g unfolds. 'l'hat such is the case is not only unavoidable but also necessary i f Jes~tsChrist is to be personally meanhgful to a particuIar people. Such a process, however, does not entail a ccrmplcttc relativization: "mere is a fairly cmsistemt expression of the meming of Ihe Church's knowledge of God in the Bible, the creeds, the sacraments, and other %objectificatiorrsS'These insure in a broad way that it: is Jesus Christ who is understood and remembered" "(1961:M-85). mus, beginning with irreasznves in Eavthclz k s e l s , Gustafson seems to be committed to working in a historicist perspective, Pmtestalrrt mzd Rrtmar? Catholic Ethics characterizes such a perspective as the cmviction that
the structure of the human mind does nat correspc~ndto the structure of reality or more garticuXarly to a moral, order of the universe which results in human history taking on new significance, For now all knowledge is seen to be historically ""stuated'" and thus relative to the history within and from which anything is known. Therefore the enterprise c ~ Christian f ethics had to reckon with the implications of this for any claims which writers made about-the validity of its basic standpoint, or the moral principles and values it proclaimed, Histmical accounts of past human experience disclosed alterations in rnorat teachings, in the ordering of moral and human values, even within the Christian tradition. This pased a prc~blem:either change was due to a distortion or error and I7jstory had to be overcome, or it was an unavoidable aspect of morality and had to be justified theologically and ethically. Thus under a general term, "historicism," 1 refer to the Protestant responses in ethics that implicitly or explicitly accept history (in cmtrast tcr immutable nature) as the necessary starting point for ethics. (19T8:65-46)1
Custafssn notes in Protestanf and Roman Caflzcllic EZlzics that at least three different kinds of Christian ethics arc compatible with historicist assumptions: (1)the kind that stresses the particularity of Christian convictions to the extent that it rejects the need to show the applicability of Christian ethics to alf persons; (2) the kind that uses thc phrase "God acting in history" to encourage us to try to discern God's actions; and (3) the kind that embraces relativism andlor relationalisrn (197Sr66-riff). Althou* Gustafson in this book does not explicilly identify with any of these, elsewhere he explicj2ty disassociates himself from (1.) and. (2). One can only conclude, fieefore, that his historical persp~tiveis some version of (3). Gustdson" stress on the importance of the church for Christian ethical reflec-tion is consistent with his historical commitments. Thus, the essays (1970)cont.inue to be shaped by in T!ze Chz4n:lr as Moral Dr.cisio~-Mah~r Gustafson" conviction that ethics is not some theless method of reflection m timeless tntth or prkciples, but the c c m c ~ kprocess of a particular group of people committed to testing their convictions in terms ol their currcnt historical situation, hdeed, the importance of a historicist perspective now h~volvesa normative point as Gustafson develops his account of a "Christian elhics of cmltufal respansjbility.'T~orthe basitc insight of such an ethic requims the "acceptance of the relativities of a social order and technology precisely ap; relezfive" (1970:31).I'hus, Christians "in the church are pasticutarly called to interpret their existetnce h community as the location in b e md.space of their responsibiijty to God for hurnan society and for other perscms. To participate in a cultural ethos, in a rnorat tradition, is to have responsjhiility for that etl-ios and traditid" (1970:71).' A historical: perspective, therefore, seems to sustain the "prt-mise upon which all might agree," that the "churches by tradition
and vocatim bear a responsibility for the morality of the society cJf M;hich they are a partf"(1970:83). Gustafson" emphasis m the importance of the church for Christian ethics in The Church as Moral Decision-Maker is continued in Christian Ethics 1135d the Comlrrlmify (1971). His emphasis on the centrality of the community fnr ethical reflection allows hirn. to avoid the difficulties he believes are connected with the s t ~ son s God acting in history as the center of Christian ethics. For Gustafson, stressing God's action in history ironically tends to underwrite an historical account of ethics. For on the basis of the theokgicai claim, poli-tical judgments art? made without going through concrete ei-hical and scrcial analysis (1971:128). In contrast, Gustafson emphasizes the necessity of attending to a concrete conmunity's beliefs about Cod, cm the basis of which it may be possiblc to make s o m suggestions about how we ought to live and act. Yet it is also with Chrislilzn Ethics and the Gornmmify that we begin to see Gustafson qualiiy, at kast in terms of methodology *at appearttd to be a thoroughgoing historicist perspective. 1 do not mean to suggest that there are no klnts at such a qualification in his previous work, for even in Treasures r ' ~Eaufhri.~Vessels he noted that the temporat cont(inuiZ!/ of human communities raised qztestiorns about their naturc f1961:4). But he did not expXoit that suggestion in any sustained, systematic fashion that might yualify the stress m the importance of history- However, in his essay "The Moral Condition Necessary for Human Communit~r,"in CChukt k n Ethics and the Communify,we see him offerkg an account of the 'batural virtues" of faith, hope, and love that seem to be prior to any historical construal (1971:154163). To be sure, we may only h o w such "virtues"' through concrete historical, communities, but that does not make their existence and significance for all human communities any less hvariant. 1 am not sure how we should understand Gustadson" views about time and history at this point in his work. Certainly the overriding irnpression is that he remains committed to a I-tisloricalpoint of view. That he does so is at least partly due to his impatience with abstract theologicai or pbilosophicaf claims that have no empirical gmundhg.' n u s , in Christ and the Mornl Lqe (1968) he claims that questions of ethics, Christian or any other, can be established on the basis of both general human experience and reflection an literature in the field. It [his method] assumes that ono can properly evaluate writings in theological ethics from other criteria than those established in and by revelation. When a c ~ n s t r ~ c t pmposaX ke is made in the last chapter, the key terms wed are not drawn from revelation, or even theological literature. This is done out of the cmvictian that any significance of the work of Christ for the maral life takes place through such aspects of selfhood as disposition, intention, and
judgment that are common to all men. Thus same of the paints used in the critical analysis in the end become normative in my attempts to make constructive Christian ett-rical pmpc~sals,(1968:9-10)
Moreover, Gustafso~~ is true to his word, as we find, in the last chapter of Christ and the Mrrml L@, that basic stances (such as the conviction of the goodness of life) are "confirmed'kd ""symbolized" by Jesus Christ. The historic f i g w ol Jesus and/or historic community committed to maintahing his memory no longer seems necessary to h o w or sustain such stances. The essays in TEzeobg and Christian Ethics (1974) col~tinueto be marked by this ambivalence-a strong claim for the centrality of doing ethics from a historical poklt of view but with a hint of unease about being too thoroughgoi.ng in accepthg the implications of such a perspedive. Thus, in his essay "The Relevance of Historiral Understanding," he notes that the histcrrical perspective we have inherited from Troeltsch cmthues to the imporbe of relevance in Christian eirhics in at least three ways '"(l) tance of knowing the historical context h which religious ethical ideas were formulated in order properly to understand thrm;(2) the fmportance of, and didficulties in, using historical analogies informulating constructive ethical positions; and (3) the freedom to be historically situated and aware of the press of historical circumstances on me's own ethical judg~aents""(1974:17&179). The first way canthues to be unprsblematic for Gustafson, but he raises s m e critical questions about the others. He is particularly critical of those wko attempt to move f m abstract theologies of history to politics without going through a stage of more careful ethical reflection (19';"4:189).While supporting the use of analogies for helping us interpret history, Gustafson is now insistent that such a procedure elltails that man has a nature as well as a history; that there are ""universals in human experience, which, while not denying the uniqueness and precise mepeatability of events, nonetheless are a grottnd for conthuitiesf"(1974:189). Put: even m r e directly, Custafson asserts that the use of historical analogies '"do assum continuities of experience Mthich presupo" that man has a nature as well as a histor)i. One cannot dispose of such contkuities by appealkg to the authority of seriptare as the source of the proper understanding of reality. O t k r evidences and arguments than scriptural mes are required to settle issues as cornplex as this" (1974:289-190). Gustdson makes a similar point in reference to the freedom to be historically situated. Such freedom, he notes, is the warrmt for the ccontinuing commentary on political and social events that is characteristic of Christian social journalism. The risks hvolved in. this kind of work are ever prment, however, as the very dekrmination of a historical situation
to he addressed is often shortsighted. More important, such i history is extre~selydangerous if there are no continuiti persons, and experimce (2974:153), Thus, the= must be serious study of ethical traditions exactly to avoid becoming lost in the variety of our histories. We thus have the assertion that m m has a nature as well as a history, but apart from hints here and there, Gustafsm has not spelled out what he takes t-hat nature to be. That brings us to EtFzicsf-Yom a T!zencentrio Perspectiw (1981 and. 19841, as it is there that we can expect to discover Gustafson's m a t e views about time and history; or perhaps mom accurately p& &ere we will see exhibited by the structure of his argument how he regards the significance of a historicd polnt of view for theological m d ethical reflec-tion. Refore turning to Efhicsfiorrt. u T!zruilcez~tric Persptx:iliue, howver, the= is one last point that can help illumine Gustafsm" continuing commitment to a historicist perspective-namelb his understandinf: of the role of the et-hieist*As so often is Che case, one can almost miss the significance of a Gustafson essay because it seems so sh-aightforward; but in fact it displays substantive presuppositions that are crucial to uneierstanding his position. Thjs is particularly true of his article "The meologian as Prophet, Priest, or Participant'"(1.974:i"3-94).4For there Gustafsun gives the most sustained account of his self-understanding as a theologian. Moreover, it is an accolmt- that draws heavily on hit; understandkg of the necessary historical character of the theologian" work. He notes that the attikde of the prophet is likely to be a combi~~ation of sonow m d indigmtion. C)bscrving thc injustices of the world, the prophet lashes out against the current state of affairs. The God appealed to is the Cod of wrath and judtgment, a position that cormsponds roughly to a "Christ against culture'+paradigm.. History is the story of sin and corruption in which God's Kingdom can only he a future hope, The church for the prophet can be an idmd fn the sea of cormpticm or a vang u d of God's army of righteousnessThe theologian as priest may have the indignation of the prclphet, but his irrdipation is directed against those who threaten the establishrd order. He stands as preserver of tradition, e~nphasizizlgGod as crcator and mler of an ordered life. Closer to a "Christ of culture" posjtion, priestpreservers look on history as alreatly bearing the fruits cJf the mdemptive purposes of God. History is the story of God's rule and power. The f i g dom is in the historical pmcmses, and the role of the church is to be the conserver of rczligious and cultural traditions. The thealogim as participant stmds between the types of prophet and preserver. The participant '5s wedded neither to the cond existing state of affairs, nor to the vvholehearted support of them. He is
however not a passive spectator of events and instituf;ions,judging some to be worthy of endorsement and others to be worthy of reurictntathn and reform.. Rather, he is actjvely involved in the shapin.g of events and in the development anci ~orcteringof institutionsf"(1"34:84). Such a theologim is not s h p l y the sage gelzeralist with great moral sensitivity;but has specialized knowledge and disciphe, developed, thruugh trainin.g, which can be passed on to future practitioners, The thedogian or participant "brings to bear the insight and, wisdom of the Christian c o m u nity" long hjstorical reflection about the chief ends of man" (B%:&). 'T'ho* the pwticipant speaks from a perspective that is theologically informed, he does not amounce it as truth. His attitude is a cambination of dispassion and objectivity that helps him think clearly about the world in which he is active. He is hopem but without illusions. He is more skeptical than eiCher the prophet or the pre?serverregarding our abi.lity to know God." sill. Tndeed, God is neither the wrathful judge nor the establisher of an immutabte order; but for the participant, God can ''best be spoken of as the active preselzce in the events to which men respo~zdand which in turn they seek to direct," "&&on finds such a view of God exempfified in the work of Karl R h e r and Daniel Day Williams. For Che participant, "Christ seeks neither the defensc? nor the aboIition of the historical orders; rather, he seeks their renewal and redirection, their cmversitm toward their proper end and proper qualities"' (1974:88), It is "Christ t-he transformer of cult.urer2hat gujdes the participant's vision, History for the participant "is sot the outcome of fated, hexurahly dekrminative p c e s e d a t arc imperstrnal and ahsolutcfy beyond the powers of m m to aMect. Rather, there are interstices between institut.jons and evmts, between persons, which provide the occasions for the meaningful exercises of human and other powers to give cltiredion to the world'"(1974:90). The participant denies that the Kingdom can be id,en,t& fied with any historical order, but that does not mem that revo2ution is always necessary. Rather, the "kingdom is the orientation point that gives both the disposition of hope and the vision of human f d f i h e n t " ' (1374:90) by which the participant hazards opinions about the socialethical correlates of h a t may be the mmt appropriate sociat order. The participant therefore seeks to direct social change by making as clear as possible the prarposes that social change can lulf ll. The social and behavioral sciences are obviously of great fmportmce h r the accornp l i s h e n t of that task. The role of the church is to be in\rolved in social change, as Christians must seek to bring their spiritual resources to bear through their involvement in economic and.political life, "The function of the theologian in this community is to be the '"ader of the moral dscourse that is required if Christians are to be more ef.fective actors" (1974:9$). Gustafsm candidiy notes that his depiction of the participant type is not only a descriptive possibility, but ajso an ideal he hvould
/'wish to endorse as fitting for the theotogian in our time for theological, historical, and ethical reasons" @(1974:84). Moreover, it is clearly Gustafsm" own understanding of his role as an ethicist and theologian. What makes this essay particdarly impclrtant, then, is not what it may reveal personally about G~lstafsanbut rathcr the way in which Gustafsm's view of history determhes bow he understands his role as ethicist and theologim. ~g &out the historic clltaracter of all That is true because the s t r o ~ claims human communities and agents can now be seen to underwrite the view that there are limits to historical change. merefore, the strclng position taken in Treasr.rw ill Enrlhe1.r Vessefs concerning the historic& chiiracter of all knowledge no longer determines Gustafson" bbasic methodologysuch a strong position is the necessity of workfng from within a particunormative ethics in the lar tradition-but: rather it: hfluences Gustafso~~" sense that one must always accept the parameters of me%historical situation. Of course, there is no reason why one necessarily has to choose bee shold both, but as we tween these, and na doubt G ~ ~ s t a f scmo ~ ~ t h u to shdl see in Elhicsfic~ma Thcvcenfric Pevspecfi?x, the latter emphasis clearly becomes the more promirrent. Time and Histoy in ECJ2E'csfrofna neoee-nfricPempecfi-ive
Gustafson begins Ethics from a Tffeocet~frie12evspecfivewi& the now familiar theme of the finiteness and limited nature of the human enterprise. "We may not be sure that there is an ultimately stll~ereipand purposive power governing all thhgs, but we can be sure that we are creatures, and that we are not God" (1981:9). This general claim is expmssed in several different ways throughout the two volumes of Ethics from n Theocenfric 12erspecfz've.In relation to theological methodology it means that we must admit that truth is historically variant. But this acknowledgment of the r~-"lati\(e naturl, of theo1of;ical claims does not mean there art. no tests Of adequacy for doctrines (1981:144). Rather, it means that such tests can only be developed within the ongoing history of particularistic c m m u nities that develop c m m s of gwater and lesser rationality. This emphasis also has a negative side, as Gustafson is particularly critical of those philosophical positions that assume that they overcome historical particularity horn a tJReocentric perspective one does not presume that we are capable of developing an ideal moral theory, or formtxIating an ethical theory disregarding the implications of our embodiment as moral agents, our bearing of a particular culture, our location and involvement in sc:,ciety and our interdependence in the ordering of the natural world. Such efforts to dwetop ideal moral theories assume a go~sttlreof spectator that I believe is not finally
possible or justifiable, though one appreciates their intellectual brilliance and learns From thern. Indeed, as sociolctgirits of knowledge and some philosophers, theologians, and intelfectual historians have painted out, such efforts are themselves part of a culturaX tradition; they have their own intellectual history. (19&:146)
Gustafson is particularly critical of Kant and his followers for the ahistarical character of their work (1984:139). His cmstant theme is that visians, ways of life, and intellectual activities take place in particular historical and commrmal cmtexts. They grow out of aspects of cultural histories and societies, and can be sustained only in communities that have their distinctive symbols, languages, and rites. This is true not onfy of religious views and activities, but it is necessarily true of thern. Communities are bound to?getherby common interest, commcjn loyalties, common standards, and common languages. If a community of autonomous raticlnal moral agents, that fictive denomination into which many contemporary morat philosophers seek to cmvert us all, were actualized, it too vvouId share these characteristics, (1981:317-318)
Gustafsm's point, however, is not simply "mefiodological,'" because to admit the historical character of our existence means that we must also accept the fact that we are ""fated." Although history, as distinguished from nature, involves those events that are the result of the choices and powers of human agents, it is nonetheless true that history "fates us.'' Thus, the range of choice of religious symbols for comtruing the tzrorld is limited initially by events beyond individual control. In this sense one is "fated'" to be a Protestant Christian, or whatever one's religious identity early in life is. "X"o say this, however, is not to imply that the Deity so governed all the events that led to my being what I am with a garlicular intention in mind far me. Nor does it mean that I must ""rsign" myself to this ""fate." To give consent to the diredion in which accidents of birth and history have turned one is to be persuaded of the adequacy of that diredion, if not its eternal validity. What is true for the individual is true far the religiom community as well. In some complex tzrays it cclnsents to its history and its tradition. But the processes of selection from the traditian, of judgng aspects of it in light of contemporary knowledge and experience, of reordering, revising, and rejecting' ga on. IF a community can c o n ~ nto t its tradition, it can dissent from it; it can select aspects to which it dissents. The test for tbe community or far individuals are many: lived experiences of many sclrts, cohel-ence or incoherence with other ways of construing the world, and the like. (1983:233)
We are fated m d yet we are not; we do have the possibility the grace, not to be determined by the conditions of our fatedness (19131:248). W are caught in the tmsion between the historical particular and its rela-
tions, m d its ~lativiticlsand the universal. "'There is no possibility of human emancipation from the particularity of a perspect".efb (1981:301). Vet at times Gustafson seems to suggest, in spite of his criticism of the philosophers, &at it would be good if we c ~ d be d so emancipated. 'I'hus he writes: To strive for the universal is not only intellectually valiant but also a necessary motivation in theological work, It is necessary far apologetic purpoxs; the intelligibility of the particular can be made clear and to some extent more persuasive by demonstrating that its insights and truths refer to the experiences of many if not all persc>nsand that its justificatic>n~ can be made clear in non-esoteric language. It is also necessary for purposes of internal criticism or a historical tradition. Blindness can be indicated; places where assumptions that w e l made ~ in a tradition about such things as tile ordering of the natural world, the motivations of human behavior, and the reliability of hiskoricat accuracy of critical texts have been made clear. The shifting withh a tradition occurs in part by =posing it to lights which come frorn relevant knowledge, and to ideas frorn other movements of thought. Undue parochialism becomes clear. Where historic particularity is adduced as support for ideas which are no longer l~iabteor are marginal to the importance of what the tradition stands for, it can be eliminated. (1"381:151)
It seems, moreover, that this is exactly what Gustafson mderstands his task to be in Efhicsfroln n TheocenZric &rspcctive, He is striving for t-he universal, while xknocvledging he is not free from fiistory or the pecdiarities of a particularistic tradition. k t the crucial question is bow Gustafson understands the force of that acknovvledgment. For it now appears he seeks ta groulzd theology in a mamer that makes its particularistic starting point secondary. I am aware that such a claim may appear doubtful, given Gustafson's stress cm the necessity of working L\rithin a tradition; but he still seems to hanker &er a position that wjll be cornpelling to anyone. Thus, he says that the first task of theological ethics is to establish convictirons about God and God's relationti to the worfd. 7'0 make a case for how some things really and ultimatefy are is the first task of theological ethics. What the theologian writes about ethics m w t reasmably fc~lXo>wfrc>mthese convictions. 'Tb be sure, it is impossible to have a philosophical theology, or a metaphysics, or a cosmology, based on "reason atone" 'mm which Ec>Xlowethics based on reason alone. In some respects (with qualifications made in volume 1)my work is more in accord with that intention than it is with a view that takes biblical ""rvelatian" as the exclusive basis for theolagical ethics. (1984:%)
Now it may be ob~ededthat what G ~ ~ s t a f smeans m by ""reason ajo~ze" is certahly not what Kant mant, and that he is certahly not appealing to that ""community of autonomous rational moral agents" that ssorne
philosophers mistakenly assume exists. Yet it must be asked, in what community is Custafson slanding, given his own concern to "strive for the universalH"?n the surface it seems he has answered that with admirable clarity-nmely he stands within the Christim tradition md, in particular, the Reformd versjon of that traditiorl. As such it seems he is completely consistent with his insistence on a particularistic starting point. Vet his candid admission that he will dwelop only selected aspects of the Reformed traditi,on means that the question must stand: What community or tradition informs Gustafsan" criteria of selection? I am certain@not suggesting that Gustafsm cannot dissent from various aspects of the Christian and/or Refomted tradition. h y subst.antive trdition requires arguments about what is and is not prominent for rightly uderstandiz~gthe tradition. So I have no disagreement with Custaf;onfs suggestion that a recognitio~~ of the historic character of our lives does not requim consent to every aspect of the tradition in which we find ourselves. But the v e s t i m =mains whether the way GustafSon goes about selecting the elements of the Christian-Reformed traditim does not betray a lhgering desire, if not presumption, that s m e ahistoricai stmdpoint is valid or at least must be attempted. h this respect, it is i-nteresthgto note that Gustafson sometimes speaks of ""hman experience" as if all people share common ""snsas"'that are not: historically determhed. He thus claims that "human experience is prior to reflection" ((1981:1.I5).That seems innocent enough. Rut does "prior to reflection" mean prior to, or unmediated by, historical existence? :If all our experimce in fact is histcrrically determined, then any clean distinction betwee11 ""experience"and "reflc.etion"" seems hard to maintain. h the same way, Gustafson" insightful development of the "aspects of pfety'"-dependence, gratitude, obligation, remorse, purpose-in which religion is grounded s e e m to be m attempt to find a place '"outside" history by whieh be can justify his selectivity vis-8-vis t-he Reformed tradition, Gustafson certak~lyhas no wish to write ""Religion Wthin the Limits of Reasan Alonef" but has he in fact written an account of ""Religion Mthin the Limits of Senses of Piety" that may well have t-he same outcome? X am aware that 1 may be trying to force an alternative that he has always tried. to deny. But X think be finallJi cannot avoid such a choice, given t-he methodologicai presuppositions with which he works in Etlzics f;unr u T/feclcenfrioPerspective. C)f course, he can respond that the "'aspects of piety" a s s m a tradition and community; but if that is the case, then it is not clear h o s e history they repsent. At least as Gustafson develops his accounts o( these sellses they seern to be true for anyonel not just that: group of people who have been touched by or adhere to the Jewish or Christian trdition. Gustafsm, of coufse, continues to emphasize inboth
volumes of Efhics from n Theoce~hicPerspecfive the importance of the church. Thus in volume 1he says: The sustaining af a theclbgical interpretatim af man must take place in the context of a religious community, with its first-order religious language;?,its liturgies and symbols, and its prc)cedures for transmitting a heritage, To be sure;?,the distinctirfe aspects of the views developed in this book are not completely at home in any particular Christian denomination, liturgy, or commrmity. Yet they are grounded in sclme aspects af the rick and varied heritage of the Bible and of the Christian church and tradition. There are themes in the tzrorship and religious life af the Christian tradition that d o evoke and sustain the views I have espoused. In emphasizing some of them I am not merely attaching an idic-jsyncraticview onto a tradition; I am indicating various aspects of the tradition that evoke and sustain my views, (1981:328)
h like manner he mahtains in volume 2 that the common Life of the Christian ccjmmunity must cmtinue to be formed in great measure by the biblical literature. The varieties of the biblical literature bear meanings af human life before God as they have come out of cammunitieskonscientious participation in nature, history, society, and culture, felt and. seen as uXtimateXy under the go>vernanceof God. The Gospels powerfully podray Jesus as one who incarnates in his teachings, his manneY; and his actions theocentric piety and fidelity. History and teachings powerfully form human life, (1984:292)
Tfiese are certainly claims that we wnuld expect from the author ol Treaszrre in Enrfhetz Vessels, but it is by no m e m clear that they now have
fie same force. For Custafsan is not maiz~tainiz~g that the church or its worship is necessary in order to h o k v w:hat it means to live life mder Ihe governance of God; instead, the ch.urch s e e m merely to confirm experience that can be known im other, quite different ways, In effect, I am suggesting that- Gustalson seems to presune something Iike wh(?t George Lindbeck has recently called the ""experiential-expressivcs" theory of mligim. Such a wiew ""interpretsdoctrines as noninfarmative and nondiscursive syxnbols ol inner k e h g s , attitudes, or existential orientations. This approaclrt highlights the rclsembtances of reIigjons to aesthetic enterprises and is particularfy c q e n i a l to the iibaaf thealogies inEXuenced by the Continental developments that began With ScS7jeiermacherff (1989:ICi).I certa.inly do not want to suggest that Gustafson's posi.tion is isomorphic with such a theory, but I think there are some strikirtg structural similarities- If, moreover, I ant right, then it does seem. that Gustafsnn has decisively qualified his origind emphasis on the unavoidability of a historical starting point for Christirtn theology
It is to be noted, however, that in the more normative aspects of his work Gustafsnn continues to emphasize the mavoidability of a fiistorical perspective. Man is not the proprietor of the creation, with rights of ownership that authorize us to do with all things what we chcx~sein the light of our interests. Man is not the all-pawerfitl emperclr of the tzrorld, with the capacities to determine in detail the course of events and state of affairs. Man is part of a whole, indeed part of various "wholes"9that can be designated. The past brings us to where we are in time and space, providing both limitations and opportunities for new achievements. (1984145)
In short, we are pasticipants, and it is the theologian-ethicist's task not to prescribe and proscribe the cmduct of others, but to enable them to make informed choices. Agents who have respc~nsibifityfor padicular spheres of interdependence and action m w t be accountable for the choices that they make. Their mles, technical competence, experience, and character also enter into the decisions. The function of the ethician is to broaden and d e q e n the capacities of others to make morally respc~nsiblechoices. (19&$1:315)
Such a perspective does not mean that d l attempts to determine the "ordering of nature," as Ayuifias did, are impossible. Xn fact, Gustafson seems to agree wif-;hAquhas that there is a substmtial ""lrm of the human which gives us howledge of the essence of the hursran" @(1984:55). To be s m , that '*essencemmust now be put in terms of development in human evolution, but ""insofar as the 'eessence3indicates that there are particular potentiditks m d valtles to h u m n life, and thus that hurman beings have an accountability for the orciering of life and a distinctive value withh it, there is no quarrel" "(1984:55). .A theocmtric ethic must thereiore try '20 discern patterns of relationships which require compliance in order to preserve possibilities for the future developments not only of human beings but OS- the natural world" "984:1.12). Hence, marriage and the famjly, for example, are tjrflurtded in biological functions, and tl-tough these are not sufficient for tbe development of a normative account of marriage, they must be taken into consideration for any normative theory f 1984:1159), Vet what such a perspecthe does seem to entail is the claim that no radical sense of social change-no prophetic perspective-should be the starti,ng point of ethics. Of course, change is not excluded. Thus, if increased ~ s p e cfor t individmlity and autonomy are to be met, then social arrangements, or conditions of the family will also have to be changed. Yet what must be acknowledged is that
Cod orders the Life of the world through the patterns and processes of interdependence in which human persons, institutions, communities, and the species participate. These patterns and processes are a basis, foundation, or ground for human ends and values and for moral principls. They are fundamentally necessary conditions which have to be met for other values and ends to be fulfilled. They are not a sufficient basis of ethics; specific ends and moral prindples are not simply deduced from them. But they are a necessary basis for ethics; the oughtness of ends and principles is grounded in, or based upon, their isness. (19@:298)
I'hus, "the existhg and developing order of life rewires moral choices that are necessarily related to particular contexts"-part of which, of course, is the nation-state (19%:300),5 Tl~erncan be no question that Gustafson's historic point of view remains decisive for his understmding of Che role of ethics and the ethirist He is a wise incremntalist who h a w s that there is little ehance to begin history anew, but that there is great good to be done if we are willing to work patiently wit.hi,n the historical contexts in whieh we find ourselves. The search for ideal moraZ.theories and correlative societies no doubt will not abate, but finally our task is constantly to try to understand better those "whdes" in h i & we have graciously been gben parts to play." Final Thoughts on Time and History. E have tried. to provide an internal c r i t i ~ of e Gustafson" understanding
of time and history. E have suggested that aithough he has never abandoned the claims about inherent timefulmess of the self begun in 'Tireasarrk. i ~ zEarthen Vessels, be has nevertheless qualified that emphasis by attempting to ground his thedogy in a general account of h ence. That he has done so, however, does not in itself imply a criticism, since one might well argue that he has rightly seen that any appropriate account of God finally =quires the yuafificaticm of a thoroughgoing historicist perspedive. In this respect, perhaps, Gustafson is only fofiowing H. aichard Niebuhr 's claim that revelation cannot mean history we must say to ourselves in the church, if it also means God. What we see from the historical point of view and what we believe in as we occupy that standpoint must be tw-c:, different things. For surely what is seen in histl-rry is not a universal, absolute, independent source and goal of existence, not impartial justice nor infinite mercy, but particularity finitenes, opinions that pass, caprice, arbitrariness, accident, brutality, wrong on the throne and right on the scaffold, f i e claims of the wangelistrj of historical revelation seem wholly inconsistent with their faith. (1960:54)'
m a t Gustafson seems to reject, however, is H. Rchard Niebuhr" consequent confassknalism that seems to bracket claims of truth. His analysis of "Aigious sensiklilities" is his attempt to make a core for religious belief that is not confessionally specific m d thus can provide critical perspective on the confessional traditions* Put in different terms, it seems that Gustafson" convictions about the kind of God that sustains our existence forces him to work from the miversa1 ta the particular, whereas earlier he seemed, with H. Richard Niebuhr, to work in the opposite di~ction.Une may wonder, of course, what difference it makes w11eCher one goes the one way or the other. But Gustafson is sure it does make a difference, for as he writes: The central issue is that Christianity has always claimed its historical particularity-the biblical events and their record-to have universal significance and import. Certainly a substantive enterprise in theology from the biblical times Ec>ward has been to overcome and sustain that particularity at one and the same time, to stand with and for that historical particularity while insisting that its significance is universal. (19&1:68)
Yet note that is not the way Gustafson works in Ethics frollz a Theoce~iric f2erspc&tmcl.He seeks instend to build a universal case far which the particular is only the illustration-the same tendency that H. Richard Ni&uLrr 's later wlrrk oflen seemed to prtrsuypose. G ~ ~ s t a f sdoes m not seek to show how the particular has universal significance, as he seeks '30 overcome" "at particularity. That he does so is partly due to his reading of our current cdtural situation as "the thealogical problem present in the New %starnem.t. itself, nantdy, hocv a historically particular person and set of events can have the universal meaning claimed for them, has gotten more complex through the centuries in which the provindalism of Western cttlture has been eroded by more and detlper knowledge of other cultures" ((1981:64).Vetf suspect the more ba" sic =ason he feels it necessary tie "owexcomef%such particularity is that it .fails to do justice to the kind ol theocemtricism he is willing to defend. Particularity underwrites an ""anthropomorphic"'standpoint because it cannot help but make history crutlial for any account not d y of our knowledge of God but aho of ou,r relaticrn to God's presence. But if that is the case, then it must be asked why Gustafson continues to irrsist so strongly on the necessity of a histcrrical starting point. For no longe"s Eh& point a t-heological claim concernjng the place of Israel m d Jesus for our relation to God, Rather, it is now a gmeral anthropological claim that at least in principle seems to qualify any radical account of our hisloricity The wry attempt to mount a philosopt.rical case about our historical nature seems to presuppose that there is some standpoint that is not subject to history By the very way he works in Ethicsfiorn a Tbzeoc~~.rtric krspr?ctz'm,Gwtafsm seems to assulne that such a stmdpoint exjsts,
There is n e i t k r space nor would it be appropriate at this point to mount any external criticism of Gustafson's understanding of time and history. However, in closixlg it seems clear to me that I =main stuck with the problem of history in a way different from Gustafson because I mmain stuck with the claim that through Jesus' resumction Cod decis-ivdy changed our history. merclfore, X believe we must continue to beg4n with the ""particular," with the historical, not because &re is no other place to begin, but because that is h e r e God begins. So, as Gustafson argued, the questjon of t i m and history is finaly a question about our understanding cJf God-or perhaps m m accurately it is fh~altya qucstion of how we u~~derstand God's presence in our lives. One h a l point. I h d it is interesting that Gustafson" and my own emphasis on the sipificance of history tend to go im exactly the ogpor;ite directims. In terms of met-hodology he tries to develop a more universal standpoht, wheseas I stress the necessity of beghnhg with the particularistic claims about Israel and Jesus of Nazareth, the Jews and the church. Normatively he develops m ethic that accepts the limitations of our cultural and social situation, whereas X try to conceive of alternatives to our sikatim. The church, for Gustafson, athough still impcrrtmt, does not determiae the methodological presuppositions fmrn wh,ich hc works; the church 'for me determines the context and the nature of ethics. f am not sure what to make of (rhese differences, but I am at least sure that they remhd us that there is more than one way to be historical^"
Notes An earlier version of this chapter; entitled "Time and History in Tbeolctgical Ethics: The Work of James Gustafson,'" appeared in foumnl LZfXe1igio1.1~ EtJ~ics,13,1 (spring 1985): 3-21. Copyright O 1985 Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc.; all rights resei-ved. Reprinted by perrnissim T am indebted to Dr. Creg Tones and Dr. Harmon Smith for their criticism of this chapter. I. Custafson often tends to conflate the issues of (I) the historical particularity inherent in theological reflection and (2) the relativiq and change characteristic of moral norms and judgments. The h-c:, are o~bviottslyinterrelated, though it is possible to agree with (2) without necessarily accepting ( 1 ) . 2. As we shalt see, Gustafson's rather inno>centuse of '"participate" as a notion governing Christian behavior in the world becomes a full-scale theory in his later work. f must confws 1 had nut: noticed before reading for this essay how significant is the notion of ""partieipaticm" for understanding Custafson's general perspeclive. 3, fn many ways Custafson can be understood as trying to have the results of begiming with ontological accounts of existence without doing ontology. He dislikes ontolc>gyfor the same reason he dislikes Barth-it lacks empiricai hold. 30
80
Time and Histo~yir-zjnmw Gzksdnfson
he must ti-y to find the "continuities" within history that will somehc)~allow him to transcend history 4. Gustafson is sc) careful and so fair in I-tis prsentation of others' positions and statements of the problem that it is often hard to argue with him, in his work prior to Ef-/ticsfroma mcrocet2trie Perspective it was sometimes difficult to discern Gustafson's own position, as he was so intent to describe and analyze the position of others. Yet what can be overlooked is the very grcxess of analysis Gustafson employs-such as the typological approach-may in fact reflect his constructive go~sition.Therefc>re,if one wishes to join argument with him, gerI-tapsone needs to challenge or reconceptualize the tzray the issues are put. For example, it may be a mistake to ask what is the relation beh-een Christ and the moral life, as that assumes a coherent account of ""ie maral life" is available, Of course, that is not to question most of the analysb Gwtafson provides in Christ and tlzc Mc~ralLife, but it is to note that the analysis may be better than the xheme. The same, 1 think, is the case in the delineation of prophet, priest, and participant for a description of the theologian's roles. 5, Givm the perspective Gustafson develops in volume 2 of EtlzicsJrol~ta Theocentric I;"etspecfz'uefT think it would be extremely interesting for him to expose his views about war. For I do not see how he can avoid seeing war as perhaps tragic, but nonetheless one of the morally necessary institutions of our Xiives. T suspect moreover, that if he turned his attention tc;, war, tzre might better understand how his ethics may be in continuity and discontinuity with Niebuhrian "realism." 6. It is interesting that Gustafson assumes that a recognition of our historicity means we must work within the given posslibilrties of our cultural and sodetal contexts. Why could one not just as easily conclude that a historical perspective means we can create new possibilities by being a different kind of communi.t-gP and /or people? '7. How Gustafson" sunerstanding of time and history continues and differs from that of Pi. Kchard Niebufir" szrould, 1 suspect, make a complex and interesting story. Certainly Tke~sure7i z Enrfhen Vessels seems to be more compatible with The Menrling ~fReztclatiotz, tzrhereas sc~meof Gustafson" later views draw on Xndical Menothekm in Western C84lt~4re. 8. This strikes me as a questionable claim, as T suspect the claim for ""particularity" was w e n more difficult in a society where the "universal" was at the service of the statei.e., Rome. It may be, hcjwever, that the reason we have so much difficulty arZiculatirmg the universal appeal of the Gospel is due to our allowing it to be determined by the particulari3 of Western culture.
as Q Hzrntn;rz ComGustafson, james M. 3961. Treaszlre ir-z EarElzen Vossels: Tlze Cl~~rrcjt murjity. New York: Harper and Bmthers. . 1968, Clzrist land the Moral Lye. New b r k : Harper and Row. . 1970. The C!zzcrch as Moral Dccisicjc7rz-Mnkr. Philadelpkia: Pilgrim Press. . 1971. ClzrisfianEtlzics and tlze Community. Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press. . 1974. Tlteology and Cl~~*l'sti~rsn Eflzics. Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press.
Time and Histoy ir-zjnmw Gzksdnfson
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1975, Calil Ethim BC CFzristia~?Chicago: University of Chicago Press. -- . 1978. Proteslarz l and Ronfnn C~tltolicEttlks: Prospecls for Rag?pro.ochemenl. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . 1981. Etlzics fralrz n Tlzeocentric P e ~ p e c f i v eVol. , l, 'jfltettlngy and Etlzics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . 1984. Etlzics fronz n Tlzcocenfric P e ~ p e c f i v eVol. , 2, Etlrics and 'jfltettlqy. Chicago: Universiv of Chicago Press. Lindbeck, George, 19%. The Nnfzrre I?( Docfri~~e: Religion and TheoZoa in n bsfliberd Age. PhlXadelphla: Westminster Press. Niebulnr, H. Richard, 1960, T ~ ZMea~linfj E of Reztclatiotz. New York: Macmillan.
Can Aristotle Be a Liberal? Martha Nussbaum on Luck
IN
THIS ESSAY 1 PROPOSE to explore the social and political implications of Nussbaum% interpretation and defense of Aristotle's ethics, In order to do that, I am going to bring her account of I?iristmtle%sethics into cmversation with that of Masdair M a c h t y ~I. think it will i l l m k e the social and.political issues to ask what standy0in.t NusSbaum and Machtyre occupy that malies them think it important to mclaim Aristotle's account of the moral tife. If you are so inclined, you may describe my task as a hermeneutical exercise..However, since hermmeutics has increasingly come to encompass every jnteUectual activity$I am unsure how :helpful that- description may be. :I do think, as MacIntyre and also peshaps N u s s b a u think, that issues of interpretation c ot be separated from swiai and political questions. I am not gohg to attempt ta assess the righhess or wronglless of Nusc;baum%and MacIn@retsinterpretations of Aristotle, Just as Amos denied beillg a prophet m a son of a pmphet, I am neither a scholar nor a son of a scholar. I think I h o w ellough not ta enter the ring agaiinst two heavyweights like Macfnvrc and Nussbaum on how to interpret Aristotle. I will not try to determine which of their accounts of the relation between Plato m d Aristotle is mast nearly corred. I am interested in h o w ing how one could even determhe that question, as it is not clear to me that the debate can be settled on solely "scholarly" "grounds-since :l am unclear as to kvhat ""solely scholarly grounds""look like." My concern is rather to ask where Machtyre and Nussbaum understand themselves to be standing to be able to rightly understand ,histotle. I recently asked a student on a doctoral examhation how the recovery of Aristotle's understandhg of p c t i c a l rclason has contributed to the "antifoundationalistffturn in recent epistemology and ethical theory2I asked him to iljustrate his mswer by discussing the w r k of Lovibond, Stout, and Machtyre. Being a very bright student, he argued that the question was wrongly put. The question should be, "What has happened
in our social and poiitical situation that makes Aristotle's account of practical.reason so compelling?'"at is what I am asEng Nussbaurn and Maclntyre, what is it about their understanding of our contemporay moral (and political) culture that makes their very differcmt accounts of retrieving Aristotle so hteresting and significant?' Of course, one might say that all that has happened is that through hard scholarly work we have sirnply come to understand hristotle mow accurately.mere is some truth to this, as anyone can testify who :has read the essays in Aristotle's Ethics, edited by A d l i e Rorty" or, to mention just one further work, John Cooper's Retnstln utzd I-zlznzwtz Good E't? Arisfvtle." Shplistic accounts and criticisms of Aristotle are na longer possible. No one is going to spend time, for example, tr)iing to show that Aristotle's ethics present a too raticmalistic account of human behavicrr because of his s t ~ s in s Book X of Fhe Ethics on contemplation as the highest form oE human activity However, scholarship does not occur in a vacuum. S u ~ l it y is no accident that a renewed appreciation of Aristotle's willingness to begh ethical reflection with what we find, or as Nussbam puts it, with the p/$ai-. zmena, happens after we have been schoded by WiGtgenstein'?i work. Fos as lames Edvvards has relninded us in EChics Wifliotrlt Phitosclp!ly: Witfgen"t"ilz nt-rd t k Moral Life, Wittgenstein" tthinking, % ' I both its periods, is [an] attempt to incarnate a vision of the healthy human life; the transmission of a moral vision-the attempt to reveal its character and to make it potent."'" Wttgenstein" work cannot he divorced from his attempt to respond to his culture" loss of moral ccmfidence. In a similar .fashion, I suspect we are turnil~gback to Aristotle because we are able, given our social and political context, to read him with fresh eyes. In particdar, I hope to show that Nussbaum believes that Aristotle provi,cles an accou~~t of morality peculiarly suited for our times. It is, of course, by no means clear what is meant by "our timesm-witness debates about whether we live in a modem or postmodem situation. X want r e to characteras far as I can to avoid these qztestions, as 1 am.u n s ~ ~how ize the sides m d even less sure what counts for evidence lfor either side,' By ""our itimes," "erefore, all T mean to do is ask whether Nussbaum believes we are able to understmd and appropriak Aristotle's account of the virtuous moral lire witfiout being in profound tension with the current social and pcritical forms of Life we call liberal democracies. 1 put the matter h this way as 1 suspect Nussbaum%retrieval of Aristotle at least partly involves m attempt to sustah an ethos sdicicnt to unclewrite the instihtion we associate with the "liberal project," that is, an allegedfy Iimited state in service to a social economic order based on exchange relations, 3% use the phrase "the litberal project,"' of courx, is to put the question in MacI~~tyre~s terms, but that has the wirtue cJf remind-
ing us that the swial-political question cannot be divorced from the epistemological one: Can libera,ljsm survive the achowledgment- that it is a tradition when its epistemological commitments are based on the denial of tradition? To put the issue in this way' at the outset, may be deeply unfair to Nussbaum, since Nussbaum should not be forced to accept MacIntyrets account of the tradition-hound character of rationaIityr However, this way of stating the xnat-ter does provide a framekvork to explore the question of the social and political presuppositions that sustain Nussbaumts project. For :MacXntyre makes no pretense of beillg able to reclaim Aristotle as part of the modern project. Me p i n t s out that there is [for Aristotle] an important analogy beween how a capacity for right judgment in respect of the good life far human beings as such is d w e l o p d within the cmtext prc~videdby the palis and haw capacitia for mare particular species of right judgment are developed in the context of all those more particular forms af adivity within which standards af excelfence are recognized. Justas an apprenticeship in scufpture or architfrlcture is required in order to recopize what excellent perfclrmance in these arts comists in, SO a capacity for identifying and ordering of all these other sets of p o d s requires training who)se point emerges only in the course of the training. (M, 110)
For Maclintyre, the rational justification of the life of virtue withh the community of the polis is avaitable only to those vvho already parZicipate in that life. So t%lc Nicomuchean Ethics is directed d y at those who make up the mature citizens of the polis, If that is the case, however, then how does it stand with those of us who must read Aristotle from such. a distmce? MaeIntyre argues: At the very least we are required in the first instance to identify ourselves innagnatively with the standpoint of the citizm of a well-ordered polis. A who necessarily has had a political and modern would-be critic of Arl'sf~tfe~ cultural education very diffewnt from that presupposed in his readers by Aristotle#wilt be unable to understand, let-alone criticize, Aristotle" theses unless he or she discards fc~rthe mament at least the standpoint af madernity. (M, 2 11)*
Obviously Machtyre, in his presentation of Rristotle's ethics, is standing, or at least thinks he is standing, otltside modernjty It is by no mems clear that Nussbaum thinlcs such a standpoint necessary or dtsirhlle for rightly rt?a$.ir~g Aristotle. She notes that the tragic poem is available equally to all readers as they consult about the good life. Tt is furthermore a carefully crafted working-through of a human skory, designed to bring certain themes and questions to each reader" attention. It can therefore advance the conversation a m n g readers that is necessary to the cam-
pletion of the Aristotelian project, whose aims are ultimately defined in terms of a "we," of people who wish to live together and. share a cmception of value, A tragic poem will be sufficiently distant from each reader's experience not to bring to the fare bias and divisive self-interest; and yet (if we do the hard historical work required tcr bring out the extent tcr tzrhich we do and d o not share the yerplaities of the Greeks) it can count as a shared extenslim of all readers%experience. (H, 14-15)Ei"
Nussbaum seems to s ~ ~ g g ethat s t our moral existence is inextric&ly tirneful and, thus, fragile, alt-huugh she mavltains that we can have such knowledge in a timeless manner. Of course, such insight into our condition is wo11 only through ""hard historical work," but such work is not an end in itself. Nussbaum is clear: Her intctrrogations of Aristotfefstexts are done against the background of a particular understandifig cJf our c d tural situation. She cmfesses: I shall simply assert here my belief that Nietzsche was correct in thinking that a culture grappling with the widespread loss of Judaeo-Christian religious faith, could gain insight into its awn persisting intuition about value by turning to the Creeks, When we do not try to see them through the lens of Christian beliefs we can not only see them more truly; we can atso see how true they are to m-that is, to a continuum historical tradition of haman ethical experience that has not been either displaced or irreversibly altered by the supremacy of Christian (and Kantian) teaching, The prctblems of human life with which this book deals have not altered very much over the ccmturies; and if we do not feel required to depict the Creek responses to them as primitive by contrast to something else, we can see how well the Creeks articulate intrtitic~nsand respclnses that human beings have always had to these problems. We will see the element of continuity best, howeveu; if we are careful to point out the respects in which history has altered the face of the problem, (H, 15)
I am surc Nussbaum is right that Christians, in order to make use of Aristotle, are required to recmflgurc. his work in ways he would find extraordinary if not offensive. k t X m eqraally sure that the way Christian theology ""dstortsf"ristot1e is quite different from the way those influenced by Kant do so-though there have bem Christian Kantians M;ht, read, or largely faiSed to read, Aristol-le through Kantian eyes. E-fokvcver, just to the extcnt that Nussbaum assumes that Christianity and.Kantianism share a common misreading of Aristotl.e, she betrays continuinf: philosophical and cult.ural presupposjtions that have more in commnn with Kant, or at least with the E~llightenment,than her overall project would suggest. mese are complex matters, and I do not wmt to deny that Kant provides philosophical expressions for sone tendencies in Christian theology paticularly Protestant theology that have a common distorting ef-
fect for reading Aristotle,.For example, Nussbaum suggests that Kantians believe that ""eere is one domain of value, the domain of moral value, that is altogether irnmune to the assaults of luck" (N,4). Some aristian thedogians in their concern to protect the universality and unavoidability of God%grace have seen Kmt's account of morality as a resource exactly in the manner Nussbaurn suggests. Grace simply becomes a word denoting the unavoidability of our relation to God that =mains sure, irrespective of the quaXjty of our lives. C)f coutse, this is an issue any Chistian theology m s t confront. Chsistians at mce affirm God as the source and sustainer of all life and mahtain the necessity of the transformation of o w lhes if W are ri$btly to hvorShip God. Christians can therefore never lose hold of the affirmation that God will choose those whom God will choose in a manner that c ot help but be offensive to people with Kmtim se~~silbilities, far who necessity of a people, Israel, or a person, Jesus, for salvation can only appear absurd. Nussbaum is wrong to identify Christianity- and Kant in this way, and her own interpretation of Aristotle still betrayfiantim influences. The ghost of Kant is hard to shake for any of u vesr Nussbaum*Our mtiKantianism o f en conthues to p ~ s u p p o s etbe strucbre of Kantfs position. I susped this is clue to the commitment to underwrite the project of political liberalism based on the Kantian presumption that we share, or we at least have the potenfiat to shartt, a c o m o n humanity. Without such presumptions we fear W carmot sustain the institutiond arrangements necessary to securcl reasonable stability among people who do not believe they have a commm destiny or who believe they l-raveno destiny. Nusslnaum rcjects the KanIian presuntption that our common humanity can be grounded in rationality yua rationality Such a project is far too grand or presumptuous for the more modest project of Aristotle, who Nussbaum rightly thhks never wanted us to be more thm or less than human. Yet in The Fmgillfy of Goodtzess, Nuss;haum confesses that she is attempting to clteal with problems that have not alkred very much over the celzturies (RI,15).We turn to the Greeks because of their h~tuitionand articulation of these very problems, which human beings have always had. Tl~usshe writes: T begin this book from a po~sitionthat I believe to be common: the position of ono who finds the prcshterns of Pindar" ode anything but peculiar and who has the greatest difficulty understanding how they might ever cease to be problems. That I am an agent, but alsc~a plant; that much that I did not make goes tc3ward making me whatever T shalt be praised or blamed .Ear being; that I must constantly choose amang competing and apparently incommensurable goods and that circumstances may force me to a position in which X cannot help being false to samething or doing sc~mewrong; that an event that simply happens to me may, without my consent, alter my life; that it is
equally problematic to entrust m e 3 ggncd to friends, lovers, or country and to try to have a gocd life without them-all these I take to be not just the material of tragedy, but everyday facts of lived practical reason, (5)
But it surely seems odd to call such matters "facts." "at such facts are said to exist at Lal only seems intelligible this side of Kant-in short, it seems intelligible only ff one still has a cornmiment to something like what MacIntyre c d s the "liberal tradition" and its corresportding epistemological alternatives, I hope it is clear that the queseon I am trying to pose concerning Nussbaunt" methodological presuppositions betrays a pmfaund admiratio~t ior her work. The suggestion that she is a "liberal" is not an attmpt to put a lahd on her. Liberalism is, of course, a far too protean phenomenon to allow for such labeling. Certainly it is not sufficient to iltdicate hcr disagreement with Macfntysct to make her part of the "blight may have no g ~ a t e stake r in the liberal prcrject than MarZnqre, hut she certainly scems to have a more hopetul view of ottr social alter~~atives. My suspicion is that Nussbaum is trying to help us discover a chastened and more profoundly compkx acccrullt of the moral life necessary to sustain those institutions that have been created by our liberal ancestors but that can no longer be sustai.ned by our mcestors"philosophical presumptions. She is trying to ""save our appearances" through a recapturing of the fragility of mexistence so that we will be rescued from the excesses of cynicism and utopianism-the grcat project of the Stoics. Yet this surely seems an odd interpretatim for anycme defending Aristotle against Kmt, particularly if that defe~weis about the recovery of the significance of the passions, FIowever, by contrastkg the broad outlhes of Nussbaum's and MacIntyrr.tfsinterpretation of Aristotle, I hope to show that I have some grounds for the suspicion that Nusshaurn has made Aristotle a liberal, In drawing a cmtrast between h'ladntyre and Nussbaurn it is hnportmt that we not overlook their co~tsiderableagreements"Indeed, it is critical to the case :I want to make that they agree in broad outline about Aristotle's ethics. Each wmts to rescue Aristotle fmm Kantian interpretation. In particular, thek common interest in recovering Aristotle" richer account of our existence challenges those who try to enforce the Kantian distinction between moral and nonmoral issues. ally then can we appreciate the tragic chiiracter intrinsic to the life of excellence. As Nussbaum observes, the Kmtian, like Creon, tries to make ""a deliberative world into which tragedy canmt enter. Insoluble c d l i c t s canmt arise, because e s functio~tsof there is o~tlya shgle supreme good and all other v a l ~ ~are that good" (N,58). h their effort to make the world safe for moraliq, both the Creons and the Kants impoverish our existence.
Accord% to Machtyre and Nussbaum, Aristotle rightly saw the necessary interdependence of happiness, virtue, and fritndship and the correlative complexity of our moral existence. We cannot h o w what should make us happy until we have been formed by the virtues that make it possible for us to be people capable of frienctship. Fricrtdship is intrinsic to the moral life, for without it we cansrot bave the self-knowledge necessary to make our habits our own. Such a life is, of course, the life of passion, for cmtrary to modern xcounts of morallity, we must not only do the good, we must feel the right passion and pkasure h doing so, So Machtyre and Nussbaum have m equal stake ir-r defendiz~gAristotle's account of practical wisdom. Practicd wisdom is not a facdty that can be dkorced from our desires or from, our formation by the virtues. That is why it is a mistake to reduce Aristotle" account of practical reason to the practical syrlogism. Although practical reason embodjes "some syllogistic reasoning, it is not and could not be exclusively syllogist" (M, 135). Proajresic: unites the agent" ddesircr for fie object and his or her true good in such a mmner that reasoning camot be abstracted from the one doing the reasoning. Practical wisdom is a matter of perceptim that comes from being well t r a k d , fn a society that can sustain such t r h i n g . Machtyre capturcs the cmplexity of this accotlnt of practical w i s h in his arresting image of the hockey player who "in the closi~~g seconds of a crucial game has an opportunity to paw to ananother member of his m her tearn better placed to score a needed goal": Necessarily, we may say, if he or she has perceived and judged the situation accurately, he or she rnust immediately pass. What is the force of this "necessarily'" and this ""mwtM""rtexhibits the connection between t-he good of that person and hockey player and member of that particular tearn and the action of passing' a connwtion such that were such a player not to pass, he or she rnust either have falsely denied that passing was for their good qua hockey player or have been guilty of incomistency or have acted as one not caring for his or her good qua hc~ckeyplayer and member of that gadicular tearn, That is to say, w e recagnize the necessity and the immediacy of rational action by someone idabiting a s t r u c t u ~ drole in a context in which the goods of mme systematic form of practice are unambiguously ordered. And in so doing we apply to one part of our social life a conception which Aristotle applies to rational sociaX life as such. It is thus onXy within those systematic forms of activity within which goods are unambiguously ordered and within which individuals occupy and move beween well-defined roles that the standards of rational action directed toward the good and the best can be embodied-.Tc>be a rational individual i s to participate in such a form of sarial life and to cmEc>rm,sa far as is passible, to those standards. It is because and insofar as the polis is an arena of systematic activity of just this kind that the polis is the I c ~ u of s rationality. And it was because Aristotle judged that no form of state but the polis could integrate the different systematic activities of human beings into an overall form of activiv in wf11'cI"I
the achievement of each kind of gocd was given its due that he alsa judged that only a polis could prc)vide that locus. (M, 140-141)
Nussbaum, I think, is m the whole in sreement with MacIntyrefs irnage of how practical reason works inAristotle. There is no point outside human exgerimce that we can begin our moral reflection-we must begin in the ~IZUinor~etza if we are to begin at all. 'T"hereis no refutation of the skeptic if we accept the skeptic's grounds. We can o~zlybegh with our experience even i f our practical w i s d m leads us to see our convictions in a new light or transform them. But as Nusshaunl insists, that does not mean Aristotelim practical wisdom is a type "of rootless situatianal perception that rejects all guicSance horn mgoing commitments and values. I'he p e r m of practical wisdom is a person of good character, that is to say, a person who has internalized Chraugh early trahing certain elhical values and a certain conception of the good human life as the more or less hamonious pursuit of these" (M,306). Accordhg to Nussbaum, for Aristotle, to have "nous, or hsight, cmcerning first principles is to c m e to see the fundmental role that the princ:iptes we have been using all att,ng @ay in the structure of a scimce": What is needed is not to grasp the first principle-lye grasp them and use them already inside our experience. We move from the confused man of the appearances to a perspicuous ordering, from the grasp that goes with use to the ability to give accounts. There is no reasm to posit two philosophical methods here, one dealing with appearances, one resting on the a-priori; dialectic and first philosophy have as Aristotle insists in Metaphysics TV, 2 exactly the same subject mattez: The appearances, then, can go aXI the way down. (N',251)
Nussbaum explicitly rejects the need for m Archirnedian point where we might begin ethical reflection. "If objectivity is to be attaincd it must be by patient explicitness about the possible sources of bias in the inquiry'" (A;, 17). In this rczspect, it is important we understand that Nussb a r n wants the very reading of her book to be a moral exercise. She is engaged in a profoundly moral project to assermble reminders capabfe of directing our attmtion to poetry that can enrich our lives. Like Aristotle, she hopes fhw to initiate a didogue through kvhich WC c m come to agreement, which will be as close as we c m get as humans to the trutha truth, as she puts it, that is anthropocmtric but not relati\tistic (M 44). She notes: Aristotle and Socrates believe that the best articulation of each individuays internal system of belief will also be an account shared by atl individuals who are capable of seriously pursuing the search far truth, This is sa because they believe that the outstanding obstacles to communal. agreement
are deficiencies in judgment and refiedim; if we are each led singly through the best procedures of practical choice, we will turn out to agree on the mc>st impc~rtantmatters, in ethics as in science. 2 believe that this position is substantially correct, (M,11)
Here I thhk we come to the nub of the matter between Nussbaum and Maclntyre. 'I:he prohlem is not the circularity that seems inl-rerent to moral developments. Nussbaurn very heipfully says: An element of circularity is probably bound to be present in any compXex moral theory But In the end our feeling about the circle, as to whether it is small and pernicious, or large and interesting, will depend upon our sense of whether Aristotle has indeed done welt what his method dictates: to work through the complexities of our beliefs concerning choice, correctfy describing the conflicts and contradictions they prewnt, and to prcjduce the ordering that tzrill save what we most dwply cmsider tzrorth saving, (N, 312)
The problem is, "Who is the "we" who turns uut to agree on the most important matters?" To be m,it is not the abstract '"we" or "I" of Kant, but it is still hard to h o w what social place this "we" occupies and what, if any, difference that social.place makes for whether Pindar (or Aristotle) ought to be read in the first place and if so, how they are to be read.'" I think it w u l d be unfair to s~~ggest that this '"we" is the readership of the New York Times, which MacInty1.e widtedly described as the '"parish magazine of affluent and self-cmgratutatq liberal enlightenmentr"(M, 51, but it still seems to be a fairly small group who live lives untouched by the ecmomic deprivation of advanced capitalist societies, There is too much wisdom in Nussbaum" book to justify such a characterization, but we m s t relnind oursejves that we (that is, peope capable of rczadi,ng, or who want to read, The Fragill'fy of Goodtzess) are members of m intellectual elite, who justify our elite position by our ability to appreciate such wisdom, :Nussbaum is aware that Aristotle" account of th moral life is in deep tension with the presramption of democratic society She mtes that Aristotle's distinction between the citizen and the free alien only makes moral sense when we see it against the well-functioning palts in which each citizen had a real share in shaping a puhlic conception of the goods, where no m e was alienated except by cgtoiee and h e r e civic friendshjp was not attenuated by numbers or distance. Agahst such a background, modem democracies cannot help but appear as smieties of free aiiens in which the successSul distributi,ng of the social condition of sel&respectis missing. Nussbaum suggesh that our alienation from active governing makes us more like Aristotle, who was not a citizen of Afiens, ehm like those whose situation he praisese12
Nussbaum rightly suggests that given the lack of training for most in our society; we c ot rely on the majoriv to give us moral (m political) pidance, Rather, we must ""rly on the intuition of people who have somehow earned the right to be regarded as competent practical judges-who have displayed the requisite strength of character, htellect, and imagination and have done mough of the practical work of cmsidering and workhg through alternative moral conceptions to find themselves in a good position to mke sn~tndjudgments."" Rut it must be asked, "How are we to locate these people?'"^ it not the case that "w' e" assume "wem-that is, people capable of reading Tlzc Fragility of Goodlzla+are such people? Mo~over,if: we are the "we," is not our ability to randerstand why the life of virtue must create its own vulnerability due to our presrtmption that we have the wonomic secwity to protect us from outrageous luck? Nussbaum is well aware that them is a kind of self-fulfillingprophecy to her (artd Aristotle's) accomt of the moral life. She notes that Aquhas, appeal to the phronz'mos was circular, tried to solve the s e ~ ~ s Aristotle's hg problem by appeal to Dvine Law, We have denied ourselves this solution, according ta Nussbaum, but that does not mean we are wit;hout resnurces: "If we redly m k e ourselves tihink throt~ghand feel in s o m detail what the alternatives are like and what a life based on them can be lfor us, we can hope to emerge with at least a better understanding of why autonomy is important to us and j ~ ~haw s t importmt it is. lit is not clear that moral argument can accomplish more than this."14 But what saves Nussbaum from believing, as Nietzsche believed, that such autonomy must result in a knowledge of its own arbitrariness? MacTnQre notes that '"he Enlightenment believed and believes that we have to overccmle partiality and one-sgedness from the beginniw, even if begjnning is something that we have to do over and over agaixl, the pre-Enlightenment traditims believe that it is only at the estd that they will be overccrme.'" But ever since Nietzsche, both these types of view have been confronted by the claim that partialiy and one-sidedness can never be overcome: ""As t b u g h there would be a world left over once w e subtracted the perspecti~ a f , ~ 9 h eare r e no facts as such, but only interpretations, and all interpretation is from a point of view. Thus, apparently rival intei-pretatiom are not in fact in conflict, for neither is able to vindicate a claim that this-is-how-it-&, but only that this-is-how-it-appears-from-this-point-of-view' and this latter is not at all inconsistent with matters appearing very differently from some other point of view. What has disappeared from view is any conception of truth which woufd be capable of genaating this kind of incomistency. And Nietzsche well understood this: "Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusictns, warn-nut metaphors now impcltent to stir the sense, coins
which have Last their faces and are considewd now as metal rather than currency" But Nietzsche's Anglo-Saxon heirs have from a variety of motives wanted to retain the idiom af truth while still rejecting what Nietzsche had rejected of its substance, So they have attempted to revise the notian of truth by making it equivalent-more or less#that is-to tzrarranted assertibility. The true is no more or less than what we are p ~ p a r e dto commit ourselves to at the present juncture; the contrast between timeless truth and what merely we take to be here and now rationally justified has been obliterated, But both more and less radical post-Nietzscheans r some of them at least-have taken one further step t s separate themselves from both the Enlightenment and the pre-Enlightenment traditions. For they have contended that we clught to regard different bc~diesof thwry much as we regard works of art and that we ought to understand historical movements from the acceptance af one particular type af philosclphiral, and perhaps also even some scientific theory to its replacement by another much in the same way as we understand changes from, say the barc>queto the classical.''
What is not clear to me is where Nussbaum is situated in this resped. She is clearly not a prc-Enlightenment thinker; nor does she want to identify with those forms of post-Enlightenmer.It thought that make everything a matter of interprtltation (i,nterprebtion is but another form of free construction &mu@ which I create myself). Nos does it seem she wants to identify with MacZntyrefs tradition-fofmed account of rationality*fnstead, what we seeln to get is the claim that by readhg Aristotle we can recapture the essential human insights about the fhiteness and fragiliq of our lives that are simply fiere.. If I am right about this, then it =ems that Nusshaum is not far I-rom the view that she is giving us the Aristotle of ""objective scholarship" whose objecti:uit)i is ensured because all with appropriate smsitivitics must have the same insight ff they rightly read Pindar, heschylus, Sophocles as now seen though Aristotle. In this respect, I think it is intercstirtg to see how Nussbaum and MacI n t v sikate Aristotle in ~laticmtc:,fie Greek drmatists. On the s~rface their accounts appear very similar, stresskg how the Greek plays explored the necessary conflicts of social obligation and. the virtues, Yet Maclntyre" account, particularly in Whose Itrsticel WIticlt RutimalifyY locates the dramatists as but part of the political. struggle of Athens to resolve the question of who should, rule (M, 38). The tmsion between excellence and effecti\reness, the question of whether justice is only that M;hich is in the inkrest of Che skong, thcse are fundamentally political qwestians, The "wnse of tragedy" we find in the Greek dramatists and Arisot be separated from the moral tensions inherent h1 Greek social and political life. I am well. aware that this tells Nussbaum nothing she does not already h o w , knows far better than I do,and, perbaps, even hlfacIntyre knows.
But the issue is not what she h o w s , but how she h o w s it and to what purpose. To rclcover a se~zseof the fragility of a ~ t excellence, r of how luck determines our moral: possibilities abstracted from the social m d pditicai context that makes that knowledge make sense, means that a sense of our "fragility" becomes but another "insight" for a cdtural elite. Nussbaum is not Rickad Rorty recommendjng that we enjoy the fact we live in a society where we can be light-mimded aesthetes.IhShe is far too serious-minded for that-. Yet her attempt to recover a sense of the unavoidability of the contirrgent far a life of excellence as a free-standing truth can be seen as very profound advice for tired liZ;leralswho no longer believe in the Ex.llightenment project but who b o w that they are condemned to live it out. m a t is, they are devoid of any profound. cmvictiltns other than that all cmictions are linally arbitrary. Is luck, fn such a emtext, anothcr n m e for discovering that- we can accept the fact that we are arnung the powerful and that is all right as long as we work to make the same oppclrtunity- waitable to others? Machtyre returns to Aristotle because as a Christian he cannot read Aquhas without h h . MacIntyre owes us an account as to why he stands in hgudtinian Christian tradition, a d he must spell out the social and political factors that m k e such a stance possible. At least Maefntyre gives us the basis for chafienging hin? to provide such accounts. N u s ~ baurn's accorant seems to pmvent such questims from being raised. I sirnply do not .~vantto be capable of achowledging luck, I m not even sure f think it a good idea to talk about the fragility of our lives as if it were a general condition. The cross cJf Jesus is not a symboi of the .fragility oE a virtuotls Ue, but the result of the expected conflict of God's messiah with the powers. Because of that cross Christians are taught that they are not suZlject to forbne in a manner that makes them impotent. Rather, through the resucrection of Jesus of Nazareth they have been given the charge to rage against fortun+pasticularly when it takes the form of fnjustice that we art?constmtly tmpted to c& ""fate." 1am awart. such claims are stark, but 1need to make them in order to make clear that my deepest worry about Nussbaum" saccount is whether there is any ba" sis fctr such rage.17
An earlier versian of this chapter appeared in Sozl~dilfgsAB Interd.I-lz'scipEz'~za?y foz-lr~lal71,4(winter 1988): 683499. Reprinted by permission. I am indebted to f2rafessor Ken Surin, Dr. Stwe tong, BP:13hil Kenneson, and Dr. Kathy Rudy k3r their critical response to this chapter. Dr. Rzxdy, in particular; pressed me on issues that forced me to read Aristotle with a more critical eye.
I. Machtyl-e, 1 think, rightly s e e Aristotle in more ccjntinuity with Plato than Nussbaum does. But he does so because he interprets the dramatist, Plato, and Aristotle as struggling with moral-political tensions of Greek sclciety. Nusr;;baum sees more discontinuity became her account is concerned with how the dramatist, Plato, and Aristotle deal with universal human problems that just happen to be articulated by the Greeks. Therefore, attempts to settle the question of the relation beh-een Plato and Aristotle depmd on the framework in which the interpretatian of their work is situated, "Tat is why criticisms of Nussbaum, like that of "1". FT. Xwin (Jozltmnlof Pkz'losqlzy 85 UuXy 19881: 37&383), are so unsatisfactor)lfas he assumes such matters can be gttled simply because he thinks he h o w s Plato's text better than Nussbaum. 2-1have put quates arormd "antiformdationaI"" to indicate my unease with the widespread assumption that epistemologically our only two options are faundationalism or antifc>undatictnaIism..Though my sympathies lie with the antifclundationalist, if I: have to choose, 1 am bothered by the assumption that the foundationalist-that is, those people t~aguelyassociated with the Cartesian prcjjecthave the right to set the terms of the debate. Thus I: have tried to argue for a kind of realism that assumes that that which is known requires a corresponding transfc~rmationby an ongoing communily of people. See, for example, my CIzrisliar.2 Exisfence Today: Essays an CI.zu~h,World ~7ndliiztirq hz-bZefweelz (Durham: Labyrinth Press, 4 988). 3. For a substantial and important treatment of the recovery of practical reason in modern philosophy, see Jr~sephDunne" book: Back to thc Rough Grulind: "PFzmnesis and "TecI~ne"in mod er^ PItilasoplzy alzd Aristotle (Notre D a m : University of Ncttre Dame Press, 1993). 4, Amklie Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle$ Ethics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). 5, John Coopel; Reason alzd H u m n ~Good in Aristotle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975). 6. lames Edwarbs, Eflzics With021t Plzitosoplry: Wl'f fgcrtstein. and thc Mural L@ (Tampa: University of South Florida, 19851, p. 4. 7. I am impressed, hclwever, by Anthony Ciddens's account of the discontinuity in the change from the absolutist to the modern nation-state in his 'Tke NafbnS i ~ fnlzd e Violence (Berkeley: Universiv of California Press, 1987). 8. Alasdair Macfntyre, W/zosefastice? WIziclt Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Ncttre Dame Press, 1988). NlacTntyre" agreement concerning rationality and tradition cannot be abstracted from the executictn of the display ctf tradition in his book-i.e., you cannot appreciate his account of or significance of an ""epiistemolc>gicatcrisis" separate from his analysis of Aquinas's attempt tcr understand Aristotle through Augwtine, Henceforth references to MacXntyre will appear in parentheses in the text preceded by M. 9. "Discards the standpoint of modernity" does not mean, however, that the interpreter can o>ccupya perspective of ""anyone." Rather, it means that interpreters must acknowldge that their interpretations work within an ongoing tradition of interpretation. 1 must admit l am unclear exactly what Macfntyre's pc~sitlonis on the place, sipificance, and interpretation of the "classic." E1sewhel-e he notes that "
the p r e n t a t i m of "Virgil-as-he-and-his-poems were" was assumed central to the humanistic task. Tt is thus assumed within the humanistic tradition that in moments of crisis the tradition can be renewed by returning to these texts. Yet Maclntyre then notes that it is no longer possible to decide which texts should be cornidered as classics or the relation we should expect students to make between such texts and the rest of their own lives. "'he Humanities and the Confiiets of and with Tradition" (Unpublished Paper, 1986), pp. 17-18. X think what MacEntyre is suggesting here is that those in the humanistic tradition who believe Virgif can speak fo)r himself must themselves be part of the argument, even though they do not recognize "speak for fiimself""is a tradition. I do not think, however, that he believes that there is, thereby a better reading we can give of V i ~ ithan l Dante's. 10. Martha Nusr;;baum, 'Tlz~Fragility of Goodness (Cadridge: Cambridge University 13ress, 1986), p. 15. All further referaces will be in parentheses in the text preceded by N. 11. Madntyre, WIzose fastice? Whiclz Rlafionnlr'ty?( p , 169), raises the question of how such a '"-em works in reference to those who defend truth primarily in terms of ""warranted assertibility," That is to say, the view that any understanding of any reality in refation to which truth or falsity is to be understood must be integral to our web of cclncepts and beliefs. Such a view assumes skepticism is unintelligible, since it presuppcJses that our scheme of cmcepts can be known to be false, The prc~blemwith. such a view of truth, and the corresponding defeat of skepticism, is the assumption that there is only one overall unanimity of inquiry. Wkat happens, Maclntyw a s k , "if there appears a second commrmity whose traditian and procedure of enquiry are structured in terms different, largely incomgatible and largefy incomrnensurabie concepts and beliefs, defining warranted assertibifity and truth in terms internal to its scheme of concepts and beliefs""! Though X find MacIntyre" account persuasive, T did not learn to ask the question cmcerning the identity of the "we" from hiim but from John P-ic~uvardUoder. I f one is convinced that one can never use violence, the counter usually is to ask, " h u twhat are we to do if. . . ??"Wnescion learns that the moral shame and presumptians behhd that "we" become the crucial issue. 12. Martha Nussbaum, ""Same, Separatcmess, and Political Unity: Aristotle's Criticism of 131ato," 'in Rorty, Essays on Aristotle$ Etliics, p- 420. 13. %id., pp. 42S424 14, bid,, p. 424. 15. Maclntyre?'"The Humanities," pp.22-23, 16.1 am thinking in particular of Rorty" 'The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy" in inhilosapllical PtlpersflVol ume I : Objeciz'zrify,Relnlr'zlism, and Pullz fCambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 475-196. 17. Nussbaum" paper, "Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach," in M?;;lwesfStudies in Philesoplry, p. 43; EflzicnI T!zeury: Cl~aracGert k ~ dVirtue (Ncrtre Dame: University of Notre Dame 13ress, 1988), pp. 32-53, had not been published when X originally wrote this essay. X refer the reader to it because it makes explicit Nussbaumk view that there are in fact "grounding experiences'" that provide a sufficient basis for assuming that there are family retatedness and owerlag between societies and moral traditions, Without denying that, we are speaking of
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Flight from Foundationalism, or Things Aren't As Bad As They Seem with Phi1 Kennessn
IN
HIS BOOK Fli@t fvom Authority Jeffrey Stout established himself as a phifosophicaliy soyhisticated. inte~rcterof contemporary moral and theological discourse.Xatcr, h Ethics Apcr Babel, he builds on that rcrputation by defily c o d k i n g social, ethical, and epistemological concerns to develop m kportant and provocative alternative to both standad Kmtian accounts of mcrrd discourse anli more contemporary accounts such as fiat of Alasdai,r Mactntyre. As its title suggests, Stout's project ir; set up by the dilemmas (or perceived dilemmas) created by moral diversity. He d.escri"oes his proposed solution as one of sclf-cmscicrus moral hriettlage-a term he borrows from Ciaude L~vi-Strauss\zrithout accepting &c latter's disthction beween the savage m h d and the rest of us. Nrz'culagenames the necessity of makint; do with whatever is at hand. Of course, what is at hand bears no necessary relatio~~ to the current project or m y particular project, ""bt is the contingent resuft of all the occasions these have been to renew or enrich the stock to maintain it with the remains of previous construct.ons or destrwction~'"74~quothzg Levi-Strauss). mough such hr3co[age could, be about faming,cooking, or most mythhg, Sbut Usint;s it peculiarly ~ l e v a nto t the work cJf ethics. Atl great creative ethical thinkers (e.g., Aquinas) begin by t a h g stock of problem and using all available resources to solve them. Their w o k became ""systems" only retrospcctivclp Stout's definition of bricolage seems modest enough, but in fact his book aims at notbing less than overcoming one of the major irnpnsses within contemporary moral and social theory. Stout uses his considerable anaiytical skills to show how a proper understanding of morai ratimality can avoid, being impaled on the horns of either foundationdim or relatkism, while likewise escaping the social alternatives of nihilism or communitarianism.
In defending what hr calls a "modest pragmatism" (2651, Stouf;sets out to demonstrate that once one sees the philosophical issues clearlyrthe dlout war agahst relativism and nihilism turns out to be little more than tilting at windmils. Relativism, for example, can be made less terrifying by being divided into several distinguishable senws. The first step in unmaskkg '"ulgar relativism" is to distringuish it from philosophically defensible and nonthreatening forms af relativism such as ""environmental of djstmce." Such relal.ivity," ""relativity of expressihilityffand "~e1ati\ri,Q distinctions provide a welcome degree of precision that has too lung been absent from many discussions of ~lativism;those who desire to join the contemporary retreat from foundationalism would be wise to employ and further refine them in their own attacks agahst their foundationalist detractors. Stout also mounts a similar, though more extended, argwilnent against nihilism. He begins by assumjng that ""the facts of moral diversity arc at least a leading cause, if not the leaeiing cause, of nihilistic or skeptical compulsions i,n ethicsf' ((15). Given this assumption, the rest of the book serves a rather modest purpose: to demonstrate that neither nihilism nor skepticism need necessarily f o l l w from the facts of moral diwersity, a recogniti,nn Ihat in turn suggests that persnlls need not abandorl the notions of moral truth and justified moral belief (14). He later returns to the notion of tmth, arguing for a constructivereahsn-t illformed by a sophisticated understmding of the nature of moral langmge. Oa the one hand, such an understanding recognizes that persons are '"iven" a moral language in wbich they express true moral propo&tiltns, and bence in some sellse they "'discover" moral truth 011 the other hand, such a position RCognizes, fnllowing Rjcharci Iiorty, that where there are no sentences, there are no truths, and hence because languages are a human creation, humans can be said in some sense to create truth (771, Stout also helpfully discusses the issue of epistemie justification, rightly noting that foundatirmalism fails to recopize ttiittgenstein"~observation that persorls do not have to be able to justify a proposition to be justified in believing it, Whatever they might say in support of such a pmposition would be less certaill than the proposition itself (35). Furthermore, SStut takes pajns to shokv Chat moraf diversity and moral disagree ment are sometimes a function of epistemic context, not the relatjvity of moral truth in a strong smse. This is seen most clearly in Stout's continual refrlrense to the propctsjtion "slavery is evil" as the paradigmatic jnstance of a moral truth, Since Stout admits that a good deal of ambigrrity surrounds the ncrtiltn of slavery and since he desires to limit his use of the term "propositid" to interyreted sentences, be dfers a definition of slavery: ""the coescive selling, and mexising complete power over other hupractice cJf h,-
man beings against their will'"(21). Given such a definition, Stout believes it becomes intelligjhle to assert that the proposition "slavery is evil" is true and has always been true, regardless of what people in the past have beiievd, regardless of cvhether they were justified in such beliefs, and regardless of hvhether they were worthy of blame for such belief s, Such a move is critical, for by distinguishing ~ e s t i o mof truth from those of justificatios~,Stout believes that he can explain away many of the disagreements that shake modern confidence in speakirtg of moral truth. I'hus, when Stout takes up the appmnt conflict between the c o n t a p e rary viecvs of W.S. citizens and those of third-century Athenians on the issue of slavery, he shows that it becomes possible to affirm that the proposition '"lavery is evi.l"%as always been true even when the third-century Atheszians didn't believe it was true. So what looked like a case of moral disagreement that called FRto question the very notion of moral truth turns out, according to Stout, to be primarily about epistemic and moral justification, with the concept of m a l truth left untouched, We can now begin to appreciate the sophistication of Stout" ppositim: Here is a moral philosopher who rightly eschews both radical rdativism and f o u n d a t i d i s m without abandoning talk about truth. But Stout's position is even more compIex, for he goes to great lengths to defhe it in relatim to that of MacEnprcr as developed h After liirfz~e.XikeMachtyre, Stout hsists that no simple opposition exists between tradition and critical reason, that the complexi"riesand contingencies of traditions are essential to et.hical thou$t (73). Furthermw, Stout seems to agree with MacIntyre concenning the traditio11-dependent nature of ralionality-Stout goes as far as to assert that "ratioslality of any kind involves the acquisition of particular skills and virtuesf"(53). Unfortunately, Stout does not develop this point in any cletajl, but it has strong surface affinities with the thesis of Machtyre" later work.' fn fact, much of the later part of Efhics After Bnbel is an attempt to salvage what Stout thinks is best from Mac1n"cqrrefsearlier prctjr.ct+pecificall.y the account of moral practices. But what Stout has no desjre to salvage, and where be explicitly parts compa"y with Maclntyre, is the latter's hsistence that the present moral climate is at best hideous and at worst hopeless, Although Stout agrees that '"complete absence of agreement m the good would render rational moral discourse impossible" (211), he denies that society has reachrd this point. He hsists that pllrvcyors of such doom and gloom sixnply fail, to appreciate the widespread m r a l agreements that societies as a whole do share and, even more important, that they must share, if they are to have meaningful moral disagrclernemts. 'This Elavidsonian argwetnt functions as the lixrchpin of Stout" refutation of MacTntyrc3, for it airns to &mmstrate the degree to which :Maclntyre has exall;ger"ted our moral p~ciica-
rnent by focusing m our disagreements and supp~ssingthe significance of our agreerna~ts,particularly as they arc elnbodied in moral platitudes (210-219).%lthough Stout agrees that society lacks any overriding conception of the good, he insists that its "datively limited" agreement on real and sig~~ificant" "(212). the good is "no~~etheless The presence of such limited agreement, according to Stout, should not be viewed as the nadir of a predictable downward spiral touched off by the pticies of liberalism; rather, such agreement is the necessary condition for the passibility of peaceful coexistence h pluralistic societies. Stout not only rehses to apologize for this lirnited agreement, he actually insists that it is part of the genius of liherall institutions t-hat they ennhody suck a, provisional '"self-limiting consensus"' on the good: Certain features of C ) U socieffr ~ can be seen as justified by a self-limiting consensus on the good-an agreement consisting partly in the realization that it w ~ u f dbe a bad thing, that it would make life worse far US all, to press too hard or too far for agreement on all details in a given vision of the good. We can define our shared conceptiron of the good as the set of all platitudinous judgments employing such terms as goad, better than, and, the like. We can define a platitude, echoing Bavid Lewis, as a judgment that only the philosophers (and the morally incompetent or utterly vicious) among u s vvouid think of denying. The set of ail such platituda would include far tocl many to mention. (222-213)
Stout insists r e p e a t e q on the centraliw of such a self-limiting conception of the good. For him, one of the great strengths of pluralism is that it does not force agreelnent ""to far down," since such a policy inevitiEbly leads either to vacuous '"verbal" agreement or to violence. This refrain about forciq agreement echoes thmughout Stout's book in his assertion that any account of the rale played by iiberal institutions in Western ethical thought canstot be divorced from the history of t-heological ideas and ~ l i g i o u conflicts s that have oltm made the institutions necessary to sustain pluralism not only possibc, but also desirable. Hence, the disilluent evoked by the failure of religious people to msolve their conflicts without rc-rsorting to violence was largely responsibk for the elnergellce of a secularized for^^ of moral discourse, a fact that Stout p in After C ~ ~ U G U C . ~ rig2ntly notes MacInty1.e fails to itarim account is not l h i t e d to its But the inadequacy of the co . f a h = to recogl~izct-hc part it played in its own demise; in addjtion, it suffers from what Stout refers to as ""trmhal wistfuhess," what he regards as its inlzerently utopian character. 'lihus, although Stout achov\rledges that comrnunitarian critics rightly point to many of the shortcornings of liberal sorriety, '"they very ramly give us any clear sense of what to do about our rrtisgivings aside from yearning pensively for conditims
we are either mwilling or mable to bring about" (229). But Stout is likey with standard defenses of liberal sodety that fall wise u ~ ~ h a p pboth prey to the probfems of aU founda6onal accomts, and with the more sophisticated nonstandard (nonfoundational) defenses of likralism, such as those by Rorty ofieilaender. The problem with Korty is that although he rightly points to liberal arrangements as the best currently available, he too often responds to the ccrmmunitarians91egitirnate criticisms of such arrangements with an air of smugness. The problem with Meilaerlder is his too pessimistic view of the potential of the political, a view that fails to see that a puhlic life in which citizens find some part of their identity directed to the common good is possible. M a t Stout s e a s is a path between what he sees as liberalism" privatization of life m d cornmunitarianism" ttendency toward totalitarianism, a path that wcrdd provide a way to '"escribe o~trsi.tuati.on in such a way that "tiberall" and 'comul-ritarian" no longer seem like mear7ingf"ul options" ((236). Stout bases his own clrnstmctjve proposal on a dialectical movement the imporbetween retrieval and critique that not only ack~~owtedges tance of platitudes and other moral agreements as a basis of societ)."~provisional and sdf-lirnfting consensus about the goad, but atso cognizes the need to reincorporate ccrtah aspects of particdar moral traditions as a critique of contemporary moral discourse, Stout's most provocative example of moral bricrtlage is his attempt to =claim the language of virbe while holding on to traditional liberal concepts (such as rigbrcs language). Specificaf.Ly$Stout attempts to sahage Maclntyre's account of practices, fncusing on the latter's distinction between intern& and external goods, in order to develop a "stereoscopic social csiticism'"l.hat "brings social practices and institutions, internal and external goods, into focus at the same time'" (279). 'I'he impetus behind such a move is plain: Stout rightty recognizes the need both to acbowledge the necessary role of institutions in embodying and s u s t a i n e particular practices, and to concede that such institutions, because they traffic s s heavily in external goads, paradoxically jeopaddize t-he intel~rityof those wry practices. Thus, for example, society w e d s a way of seeing that the institutions in this corntry that sustaitl the prartice of medical care (such as medical associatiom, commercial hospital chains, the capitalist market and government age12cies) also trade heavily in goods external to those practices (such as wealth, paw=, and status), a situation that too easily lends itself to the supplanting of goods internd to such prilicliccs (274). The outcome of Stout"s experiment in moral hrieolage is that he secures a pwedkrly cfescriptive set of concepts and vocabulary in which to inscribe the m d te~~sions and conflicts that afflict contempomry m a l discourse and practice, f3y so doing, StoUt helphi137 pmvides plumlist society with some of the =sources necessary to criticize and transform itseff
from within (288). But in the end, some readers may f i ~ ~ themselves d wondering if morall hukolage is anything more than a fancy name for being able to have your cake and eat it too (and a lot of cake at that). The suspicion that Stout wmts more cake tban he is entitled to stems more from what Stout fajls to discuss than from what he explicitly states. For example, whereas many will rightly applaud Stout" desim to reclajm the language of virtue, one may legithatefy question whether he has offered an accou~ztrich enough to make such lmguage htelligible..Followh g Maclntyre, Stout" discussion of the virtues moves through three stages: first, a stage focusing on the concept of goods intcmal to a prartice; second, a stage that concerns the "goad of a whole human Iife"; and third, a stage that takes up the question of "an ongoing tradition"' (266). Maclntyre does not understand these three stages in simgle linear fashion, as if stages two and three merely emi& and supplement a self-stmding notion of virtue m d e possible by t h investigation of social practices. Rather, as MacZntyrc. went to great lerlgths to explain in the postscrigt to the sccond edition of A);"er Wrtzrrc, ""no human quality is to be accounted a virtue unless it satisfies the conditions specified at each of the three stages.""toout appreciates the i~nportanceof this point, but because agreement is unlikely to be secured at the latter two stages, he argues that the notion of practice is mough to generate the moral briccrlage necessary to sustain life in a pluralistic society: 'Thus, he s p a & no less than twenty pages discussing social practices (267-286), but cmmits only three paragraphs to the second aspect, and a single paragraph to the third (287-288). Such jmbalancc could be excused if: Stout either hnd clearly demonstrated why he is justified in separating what Machtyre insists cannot be divided or had &awn wby a discussion of the final two aspects is unnecessary. As it stands, Stout does neitha, althou& the rhetoric of the pertinent passages suggests that he belicves be has done the latter. Thus, with ~ s p e cto t the importance of an mgcrfng traditim, Stout merely acknovvledgedlhat he thinks "plwalisti~society has already aelnieved sufficient conthuity over time to be regarded as a tradition (288). It remahs mclear by what means m with respect to h a t Stout is measuring such cmtinuity. But more important, Stod skillfully dodges the question of the content of this pluralistlic tradition; he does not even offer a satisfying Xcount of the nation of pluralism. &e might ttnderstmd what it would mean to say that Judaism is a pluralist tradition, but one has little, if any, idea what it means to say ""America" i s such a tradition. Stout overlooks what a more careful anaiysis might divulge: What he refers to as the pluraljstic tradilion functions, or aspires to functio~z,as a metatradjtion that tends to level the distinctions among other identifiable traditions and make their cclertistence a good in itself.
By functioning at the level of a metatradition, the pluralistic tradition inevitably loses its historical character, a loss that in turn insulates it from criticism. Stout might have constructed a history of pfuraZistic tradition, a task t-hat Maclrttyre, interestingly enough, has begm in Whose fzrstice? VVliich Rafionuli;tya?'Such a project would. have m&it possiblc to i n ~ i r e what ends the liberat, or pluralistic, tradition was intended to serve, and whether it continues to serve the same or different ends. mclntyre, for example, insjsts that throu$h the corlrse of history, "liberalism, which bcgan as an appeal to aleged principles of shared rationality agahst what was felt to be the tyranny of tra$.ition, has itself been trmsformed into a are partly defined by the intermhability of tradition whose co~~thuities the debate over such principles," an interminability that has itself become for many a kind of virtue.*If Stout believes such an historical reccmstruction is skewed, then he is obl.iged to offer a more convi,ncing one. But Stout is unlikely to take up such a project, fnr it wwld entail tracing the roots af liberal ""virtues" to historical accounts of "the good," accounts that r m a i n unintelfigible apart from their embodiment in the practices of concrete traditions, Curiously, in this book Stout shuns the detailed work of historical ~constnaction,a task he did so well fn 1"'lz'gl.rt fiorrr Azcfharify, choosing instead to drive most of hir; arp;ument with hypothetical exasnples about such t b g s as "Stout worship" (501.) or about imaginary disagreements between people.; such as the Old World Corlemes and the Modernists (ri2). This may seern to be a small point, but it quickly cuts to the core of the dcbate between Stout and Macfatyre. fn W o s e fiistice? Wlzielz Rutimalily? Machtyre engages in the painstakingly slow process of historical, reconstruclion in order to demonstrate his claim that no such thing as rationality-as-such or justice-as-such exists, but that all such notions art? liepmdent on a narrative tradition for their contelzt and intelligibility. From Maclntyre" point of view Stout" m m l bvicuIaCgeremahs completely unintelligible as long as the latter refuses to attend to those narrathe traditions, background beliefs, and views of the good &at give the moral positions within such a bricolage their standkg. Thus whereas Stout accuses Maclntyre of proceeding much too fast h assuming that society's sihtatio~tis hopeless, a strong case can be made that it is Stout who has moved too hastily, since he has not taken the time to display the history that gives these frragrnents within the buicoIaCqetheir inkltigibility. I f Stod were to take up such a historical investigat-im of l.iberalism and pturalim, it would likclly reveal that the liberal, or plrtralistjc, tradition in this camtry is highty parasitic on other historical traditions and narratives for its justifications. It purportedly functions as a mtatradition, but it cannot give a satisfactory account of why certain elements of those other narrative traditions are to be revered m d others to be discarded.
This is one reason why Stout distinglaishes between truth and justification; he wants to be able to separate liberal society's moral truths from their justifications, justifications that am bound up with m c b that Stout wmts to leave hehind. A prime example of such unacknowledged @ndering of moral truth is found in Stout's discussion of MaCfntyre's sec-. ond aspect, the good of a whole human life: Take, first of all, the gwd of a whole human life, We are unlikely to secure perfect agreement on this topic in our lifetimes. Still, as X argued earlier, we needn't profess belief in the God of Moses and Calvin to be persuaded that our loves ought to be ordered toward genuine goods, each in proper proportion. From our various points of view, we can in fact recognize many genuine goods as such, including goods internal to such social practices as medical care and democratic setf-government. We can also see that a life dedicated entirely to the pursuit of external goc~dsdegenerates into narcissism and idolatry often ending in meaninglessness and d e s p a i ~Finally, we can grasp that certain internal goc~dsand the practices in which they are pursued deserve protection fram the tyramy of external goods. Scl we have reason to suppclse that a gncd human life is not likely to flourish under conditions where t k tyranny of external goods goes uncheckedreason, in other words, to prcjtect such social practices as medical care, baseball, Family life, and democratic government from being wewhe;?lmedand corrupted. (287)
Despite Stout's continual use of ""we" and "our" (a practice that he follows throughout the book), it is more than a little difficdt to discern whom he envisions as his audience. Who is this "we" that can so clearly seer that a life dedicated to the pursuit of externaX goods "degenerates into narcissism and idcrlaty, often ending in meaninglessness anci liespair"? ?d what unacknowledged resources enable these m m e d persons to make such a recognition? And finally$is Stout justified in emplying such language as 'karcissism," '""idolatry," """meaninglessness,I"and "despair"' without offering a tradition-based account of how such tradition-rich language is to be understood, or without owning up to the theological/anthropological implications of such usage? In fairmss to Stoul, he does provide an extended discussion of abominations-for example, camibalism, bestialiw-which he characterizes as behavjor that threatens to d i m p t the natural-social order (lfiO). nerefore, sexual intercourse with beasts threatens our ""sacial idet7itii-y" ((152)in the same way that canstibalism makes problemtic our status as '"human beixlgs." But given Stout's own epistemological commitments, how could one ever h o w what it means to be a human being as such, md even more, what one" ""socialidentity" might or should be? h this regarci we h d particularly puzzling Stout's account of sodomy as relative to masculine and
feminine roles (which certainly may be relevant) rather than to a community's u~~derstandhg of the appropriate co~~text for sexual activity Curiously, Stout even makes appeals to "mora1iW as such" (U,192), though he never reveals what practices could ever justify such language. At times Stout seems to want to be more than pluralism's master bvicul~ur. Closely related to Stout" unwillingness to acknowledge that moral discoufse risks unfntdigibility as long as it remains separated from a tradition-bwed narrative context is his fail;ure to appredate fully huw moral descriptions are similarly gcrnerated. For examfie, when Stout uses the ibalism" "Z.) ""pointless , cruelty""&), and "torturing of innocents""(245), he seems to imply that such usage is transpnrent. Thus he can make the seemingly innocent remark that ""new types of pointless cruelty would, of course, be greeted with abhorrence by everybody who (a) qudifies as a competent moral judge and (b) does not suffer frm false empirical and rnetaphysjcal assumptions" ((421,Such an ubservatim, Stout believes, supports his case against those who exaggerate the degree of moral diversity and disagreement withi,n society. Un the contrary, such an observation actually goes a long way toward illustrating the very problem to which Maclntyre and otht-rrs hawe poin.t.ed. For although it is true that i,n the tlni,tt..d States a broad agreement might be =ached on the proposition "aIt morally competent judges abhor pointless cruelty," ssuch apparent agreement hides disagreement &out the proper application of the &scription "poi.ntless cruel,ty""But even this is not quite right, for limiting the level. of disagreement to one of applicatim, as this last statemmt seems to imply and as Stout =ems to suggest vvi,th his example of ""trturjng innocents" (326, h.31, again tends to exaggerate the level of agreement. As Stout acknowledges in his better Wittgensteinian moments, there is no such thing as "meaning'" or "understanding""apart from onc's grasping how certain words fmction in a language and learning to use them oneself. If this is the case, then it is odd that he i p o ~ such s a picturt- of understdndk~gwhen he considers the meaning of phrascs like ""poktlesscruelty.'' Thus, thc sipificancc of f ' ~ s ~u ~"o s e dagreement over pointless cruelty itself begins to evaporate when one takes accmnt of the fact that people Mthom Stout would cmsider reasonable d i s a g ~ eover what kinds of t h g s shouid count as hstances of such cruelty. Some people believe that abortion counts as pointless cruelty, others believe the same about capital punfshmmt, of&ers about the IkiilIhg of animals far food, as well as experjment-atim on animals, m d still others about bullfighting and boxing, Stout would undoubtedly mirrimize such disagreement by saying that these are just the hard cases, that society )ack the conceptual tools or the epistemic context that would make the efimination of such disagreements possible. In other words, Stout insists that society does enjoy sig-
nificant agreemat about hnpcrrtant moral matters (such as the truth of atohorring pointless cruelt_y)even if it disagrees on the minor details of particular applications and irtterpretations, Perhaps he is right. Ptzrhaps s o w ~ a d e r wilt s be convinced that this picture is an accufate portrayal of society's predicantenc. But it might be more honest: to admit Chat these disagreements are red and that they can be traced to disagreements about Mdhat our lives are to be about and h w the goods that characterize such lives are to be o r d a d . Such a rclcoglrition would in turn lilcely force persons to acknowledge that such disagretlments about the good cannot be scrparated either from one's view of fie good of a MthoLe h .from an ongoing narrative that gives such a view inteltigibility. As for Stout" ttreasured moral &U&, "slavery is evil," were it historically possible, Stout could prdabiy have acquired agreement on this proposition fgivm his definitbn) from ninetetmth-century southern plantation owners as well as t h i d - c e n t q Athenians. Yet the first group would not consider their pmdice to be slavery, since their workers were not human beings hut possessions, and the secolld group wouM ljkely not view their practice as coercive and reprehensible, but generous and. beneficent, It seems that we are left with a rather empty notion of agreement. h the end, then, Stout papers over what in Wittgensteinim perspedive should be considered digerent undcrstandings of phrases such as yuintless crueltyf9her&y reduciq many suppcrsedy sMbstantive agrements to merely verbal ones. So alt%loughStout rightly praises plwalism for not pushing agreement too filr d w n , since doing so ofien leads to violence or to merely verbat agreement, he remains hlind to the flip side: By not pushing agreement far elnough down into practices, views of the good, and ongoing narratives, pluralistic societies themseIves rest m uneasy and shaflow verbal agreemmts. Stout's purpose in focusing the debate on our limit-rd hut sjgnificant agreements is that it allows him the opportunity to offer an apology for pluralism. 11% the end, Stout" apology rkses more questions than it satisfactorily answers. For example, he never clearly mticzdates who is responsible for doing the work of moral hricolage and what resources they .rely m to do this task. 'That this work is parceled out in some way is suggested by Stout's relimce throughout on. the metaphors of "spheres" and "division of la.bor." But such metaphors hide the fact that few people view themselves as participating m such a moral assembly line, doing only part of the moral task that needs to be done and dependent on s o m m else (the moral philosophers undoubtedly) to put it all, together; rather, most see themselves as struggling with the whole moral prgect at of the fact that compartmentdizat.ion or specialization once, cog~~izant merely increases rather than decreases the tensions within the Etuicolage. Similarly, Stout has given us little reason to hope that pluralism has the resources to stop or even slow the corruption of practices that he readily
achowiedges is occurrhg. Given a pluralistic system whose purpose has been transfnrmed from one of extarding &bates and protecting minority debakrs to one oi glorifying the debate itself, even suggesting at times tkat debate is by nahxre interminable, Stauf;has not convincingly d e m s t r a t e d why we should expect people to see the corruption of practices as being s h p l y that+orruption. Fur&ermore, Stout has not: clearly articulated MIhy anyone should be on certain platitudes, since he has not so impressed wilh agreeme~~t shown how or even if such platitudes figure into our disag~ementsover more-intractable matters. At times one sexlses itfiat Stout" advice on these matters is simply to wait, to wait for the conceptud or epistemic tools to h d one" way out of such irngasses, while resting cmfortably on the assrtrance provided by moral platitudes. But surely such advice will ring hollow to those who find themselves in the midst of agonizirtg moral situations. One of the roots of Stout" problem is his heavy reliance on Davidson, and although a full explication of that would require an entire article, one point may be noted. Stout's reliance on Davidsonian arguments does little m r e than push the question one step further back-to the w s t i o n of *at counts as memingful agreemat and disagreement. Aithough Davidson may be helpful in showing that there can be no meanjngfuI disagreement that is at the same time complete disagreement, it remains unclear why such a r s o p i t i o n should stmd as a vindication of Stout's entire project.' Mter all, MaeIntyre would probably admit that on some matters-such as the nature of justice-he might not be able to have a meaningful disagreement with Stout, a possibility that Stout seems to exclude a priori. Then there is the question oi how one might have a meaningful theological disagreement with Stout. Those familiar with Fligir tfrum A~ifhorify know that Stout is one of the most syqathetic and musical hkrpreters of theology$even though he does not clainn a '"theocentrlic visim." His work has been parzicularfy helpfut in freeing religious ethicists from reductionism in their accomts of convictions.. In Ethics @er B a k l , Stout's &mess to m d sensitivity for the work of theology is further evidenced by his sympathetic. analysis of the thought of lames Gustafsm, Indeed, Stout seems to be the kind of philosophes of rcligion who makes it possible for theologians to enjoy beirtg thealqians. Stout denies that there arc knockdown arguments that should coxnpel theoiogians to stop doing a l accounts for his hlrit-hering attack on Kai, N'ielsen. theology-a d e ~ ~ ithat If every peson functions from. within a tradition or an intersection of traditions, then it seems implausible that those traditicms that ir~cludebefief in God could be shown. to be u~~htelligible tout cozrrt. Stout affirms that belief hGod may be morally significant in some traditions; indeed, he suggests that we might understand the logical relationships between refiginn and morality nnly after we study specifjr tra-
ditions of religious ethical discourse (121). But then he goes on to make two czrrious remasks: first, that "the best account- of ethical wongness cannot be determined in isolation from other matters-including what indepmdent grounds we may have for belireving or etisbefieving im a loving God'"; and second, that "the best accottnt of:ethical wronglless will be part: of the best accomt of everything, on the wholer"122). It seems that Stout" lmguagr;, which normaily &splays considerable phftosophical precision and sophisticdion, has here g m on hofiday. He divulges neither what resources one relies upon when juggling weighty matters to arrive at "the best account of everything,'" nor what such "independent gsounds""look like (or \zrhat exactly they are "indepet.~clent"of). Stout does note that none of the "aspects of piety" Gustafson thinks so important for sustaining the tkocentric vision-wonder, awe, gratitude, a sellse of the power that bears down upon us-give hjm any rcason to associate such piety with belief in God. That does not mean there are no grolands fur d i t a n t atheism, but rather that atheism, like tl-teism, has siI27ply lost its point Stout" account of th modern religious situation is descriptkely powerful---see in particular his map of contemporay thecrlogicat options 0%). Moreaver, these is even reason to take Stout's word that though :his secular piety is analoguus to Gustafsds, Stout bas no reason to construe such piety theocenh-icalIy and, given Gustafson" own account, monotheistically, Rather, Sbtlt: wodd have his rcadcrs simply accept that they are i4nite, histmirally situated beings (IQ), soberly accepting their place in the vast and u n h o w n universe. Stout: is not trying to exefllde or deny the importance for some peape of religious beliefs, He simply thinks no good reason can be given in "our'" kind of world for holding such beliftfs. 'That seems fair enout;h. Yet to leave the mat;ler there is too easy both for us and for Stout. In this respect, it is no accident that Stollt makes Gustdson his mavl theological co~tversationpartner, fi,r the latter has a k a * p a d down Christian canvict:io~~s to the essentials he thinks consistent with the world as he knows it, More interesting would be a full-scale engagement between Stout and posllions that are less apdogetic. Surely John Howard Yoder's mare Christalsgically determined ethic is not to be excluded from discussion simply because he provides no "independent" "ground for beliving in Go& Equaily challenging, we believe, would bt, the work of Nicholas I:.,ash,wnrk l-hat argues that a trinitarian accou~ltis unavoidable if persons arc rightly to w o r s b God as Christians, Mrt. are not suggesting that Stout woufd be at a disadvantage in encounters with these theokgians; rather, such encounters might help us better understmd what it is about: the current situation that makes Stout thhk Christian convictions about God are irrefevant and maybe even unintelligiible.
1Ei11ally social and economic issues are far more central to the contemporary moral predicament than Stout's analysis suggests. It may be no accident that Stout makes Maclntyre a primary conversation partner, for both tend to focus on fie history of ideas and thinkers in isolation from socioeconomic casrsideratio~~s* Whereas Maclntyre" s o r e historical m d sociological approach (every ethic presupposes a sociology) has some res o m e s with which to engage people like Bryan S. h e r , h t h o n y Giddens, m d Michel Faucault, we are unsure haw Stout would do SO.Vet to bring Stout fully into conversation with these critics would require that we take up a position outside of that space jointly inhabited by Stout and Maclntyre. l-he resdting external critique would, of course, loulc very different from. the more internal critiyue we have offered.. Vet such an external critique may he the mom promising avenue, since it is in encounters wi& such social critics that we suspect lie our most decisive theological cballlmges.
An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Saundirzgs: An Tnferdisciplhn~ylournal72,4 (winter 2 989): 675-4591. Reprinted by permission, We are indebted to Mr. Paul tewis and I""rc>fessorsL. Gregory Jona, Thomas tangfc~rd,and Kenneth Surin for commenting an an earlier draft of this chapter. 2. Jeffxy Stout, Tke Fligfitfrom Authority: Relkion, Mrn~EiCy,and trlte Qz-lestforAzrConorny (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982). 2, Alasdair C, Machtyre! Aftcr Virtzre (Notre Dame: University of Ncjtre Dame Press, 1982; 2nd ed., 1984). 3. See, fc~rexample, Alasdair C, Machtyre, Wltose justice? WIziclz Rai"io:orznlify? (Natre Dame: University of Ncttre Dame Press, 2988). This book, of course, did not appear in time for Stout to engage it directly in Etftics After Babct. 4. Stout, of course, is depending on Bonald Bavidson" classic article, "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," in Pmceeclings and Addmses c$ Chc Atrlerican P!~iEosoplzimlAssociatlton 47 (November 1974): 5-20. 5. The oft-made claim that the Enlightenment was a response to the religious wars is challenged by Bill Cavanaugh in "A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House: The Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State," Modem TIzeology 11,4 (Qctober 4995): 397-420. Cavanaugh argues that the wars of retigirtn Bid not necessitate the birth. of the modern state; rather they were the birth pangs of that state. 6. Maclntyre, Affer Virtue, p. 275; original emphasis, Thus, it seems more than a little misleading for Stout to refer to MacXntyre's final two stages as merely ""qualifications" of his initial definition of virtue which focuses on the noticyn of pp. 26%269), goods internal to practices (see Stout, Flightfiom Azrtl~ority~ '7. See particularly the chapter entitled "Liberalism Transformed into a Tradipp. 326348. tion," WIzusc jusf ice? Wfticjzht Z'ot~ality?
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7
Not All Peace Is Peace: Christinns Cannot Make Peace with Tristram Engelhardt 'S Peace
Who Wote the Second Edition of The Fozandatio~zsof Bioetkzics? 1 begin with a confession, Like most c e s s i o n s it is difficult to make. fireover, it invohs others, m d in particular Tris Engelhardt?whom :Iam 1 am hesitmt to cause him embarrassme~~t, but X honored to caU a frie~~d. simply can no lcmgcr live with the deception. Tris Escgehadi: is not the author of the second e d i ~ o nof The Fonndatirrrzs of Bioethiirs. 1 am the second editio~l'ssau&or. 1admit, it was a clever idea for me to write the seco~~d edition, and on the whoic, :Iam pieased. with the execution, But 1now see that tJle tmth should prevail. I am, of course, hdc.bted to Tris fnr his cooperation, and I hope X have not damaged his well-desemed reputation. You may weII ask, "How did you ever c o r n up with such an outrageous idea?"' Actually it is all Roloert Paul Walff's fault It was he, you will1 recall, who wrote a devastating revi,ew of Allan Bloont"s The Closing of the Ameuicas-2 M i ~ din which he suggested that Bloom" book was actually written by Saul Bellow.' According to Wolff?Bellow wrote an entire coruscatingty funny novel in the form of a pettish, bc:,okish, grumpy reactionary complaint against i-he last two decades. The "author" of this tirade, one of &Xlc)w% most fully realized literary creations, is a mid-fiftyish p r o f e s ~ rat the University of Chicago, to tzrhom Bellow gives the evocaGve name, ""B~oom."&~XOW appears in the book only as the author of an eightpage "Foreword,"~intzrtzich he introdlac- us to his principal and only character. The Clnsilzg of the Atnerica~Mind is published under the name ""Alan Bloom," and, as part of the fun, is even copyrighted in ""Iwm'ss name.
WLff prclcwds to show that BeUokv has hwitten this novel to make fun of the Straussians and, in particular, Strauss" strange theory of cmceall-
ment.
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W ~ e Inread tbr first editicm of Engelf-zardt"sFazndatio~zs,m t only did I think his account of wfiat a secdar biwlhjcs emtds was right but I also was ilz~pressedthat others found his position persuasive. Yet the real irony is that Mthenever I say what Engeharcft says, I am dismissed as an unrelltntive Christian theologian. For example, whern I say that there is no reason on secular gmunds to prohibit suicide or even to call it suicide, I am accused of being ""against the world.'TWhen I have suggested that attentpts to gromd secular ethics in "reasan'3have not been successful, 1 am accused. of fideism. When :I argue that liberal poli"rca1 arrangements cannot pmwide an account of legitimacy, I am described as a "~eetarian.~' In &art, whenever I say \N.hat EngeLhardt says, X am classified as an indiscriminate basher of liberalism and the E&tlightenment, ~ I not write a new edition of the So I got this great idea. W I should Fowrtlatirms, confest;ing my Christian faith, but trying to show constructively what a secular world can or ought to say about ethics, in particular, bioefiics? I would not have to create a fic-tionalcharacter, as Wolff alleges Bellow had to, because we all knocv that Engelhardt. is all too real. I only hope that I did not misuse Engelhardt? scbaritable spirit by assuming he would appmwe of my use of his name, but I saw no other way I could ever expcet to get a hearing*Without such a strategy I fear I hvctuld always be accused of wanting to make matters worse than they are in order to make Christians and the church look better than they arc.. So, assuming Engelhardt's persona, I rewrote the F ~ u I z & ~ ~ o ~ z s . Accordingly, I argued that all attempts to justify a content-full secular ethic could not help but fail because any such content unavoidably begs the question of the standard by \zrhich the conternt is selected (41).21confess :I took particular pkasure in showhg how Kant smuggled moral content into his attempt to ground ethics in reason alone, but it was even more h n exposing Kant's absurd v i e w about masturbation (llf5-1.08). J could even claim, with s m e hope of being heard, that "we live in a century in which mow people have been slaughtered in the cause of secular visions of just.ice, human dignity, ideological recti.t.de, historical progress, md. purity than have ever been killed in religious wars" (15). It was m absolute joy to write the chapters dealing with issues like f-abcrrtian, deai-h, informed ca~nsent,refusal of treatment, and the distribution of health care, all the while assumixlg the permisske character of secular bioethics. Marcrower, 1 was able to show on purt-ly secular grounds that there was little reason to prohibit what mmy contkue to assume are reprehensible actions and results, That meant that 1could end each chapter with a paragraph like this: The difficufty is that in the ruins of a coXIapsing Judec~Christianmoral vision it is difficult for individuals to assemble coherent moral intuitions regarding h c one ~ should approach life and death dedsions. Once moral sen-
timents are disarticulated from the content-full moral and metaphysical framework in which they had once been embedded, they no longer can provide reliable guidance. On the one hand, in general secular terms itwill appear as if there is nothing morally imprcsper in assisting suicide or supporting voluntary euthanasia. On the other hand, since this life will appear to be all there is, it can take on an absolute significance, Previous moral concerns regarding murder and in favor of the respect of human life may be transferred to a particular content-full moral assertion regarding the importance of saving lives at all costs. FTc>wever,even in secular terms, individuals may have values that outweigh their ecjncerns to presei-ve their own lives. In the absence of a coherent, content-moral vision, there will be at best conhsion within which the only general secular guidance will be that derivable from the consent of those involved. (344)
By hdicating some of the anomalies produced by the consistent working out of a secular ethic, I was not trying to make people "Christiadkos even to make them a p p c i a t e Christian practices. Rather, all I wanted to do was remind those Christians who continue to be so enthusiastic about seculal. arrangements that we may be losing our sod. 7i, suggest that a secular ethic offers no coherent reason for having children, for hstance, is not to j d g e Chose who r e p ~ s e n such t m ethic. eln the contrary, it is to m i n d Christians why it is so importmt for us to mainta-in the church's distirnctiveness and integrity, that is to say, communi9ies in whjch such practices are not lost (277). fndeed, "Engelthardt'ss""second edition gave me no small hope that my oft-made suggestion would not be so easily ignowd; namely, that Christians must begin to thjllk again &out what a Christian practice of medicine might look like." could say more about the various strategies 1 employed in writirtg the second edition, but I am sure enough has been said to convince you that h fact I am the author. Why You Cannot ffChoose"fa toe a Christian
Now that I have compIctely convinced you that I am the author of the second edition of the F R U I Z ~ ~ ~ ~IOmust T Z S , o m up; I have been putting you on. I did not write the second edition. EngeBardt must be given credit for that feat and accept the praise, but also the critirism, that he so richly deserves. I reatize that you may be a bit put out at me for so skillfully cow ificing you that I cvrote the second editjon, but I did so only because serious philosophical and theologiral, issues were and are at stake, By suggesting to you that 1could have written the second editim, I was haphg to show why s o m people (and perhaps most of all, Ex~gelhardt!) may think that Engelhardt" and my views are similar, Nothirtg could be fur*er from the truth, but why that is so difficult to make ctear is a primary motive behind this dissixnulation. Therefore, having cowificed you
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that I could have written the second edition, I must now indicate to you why 1could not have done so. I begin with what 1 take to be the deepest diffrtrence between usnamely our understand% of Cl-rristianity.Our diffewnce is m t simply that Eng&ardt is Orthodox, whescas X represent the more ancient: tradition of Methodism. Rather, our difference is quite simply this: 1think that being Cl~ristianis mom like being Texan than Eqelharclt does. Let me explain by voting a paragragh from the preface to the sccond edition, which I think is destined tn become one of the most famous in contemporary philosophical literabre.. If ane tzrants more than secular reason can disclose-and one should want m o r e t h e n one should join a religion and be careful to choose the right one, Canonical moral cmtent will not be found outside af a particular moral narrative, a view from somewhere. Here the reader desemes to know that I: indeed experience and acknowledge the immense cleft beween what secular philosophical reasoning can provide and what X1 know in the fullness of my ow-n narrative to be true. I indeed affirm the canonisat, cmcrete moral narrative, but really it cannat be given by reastln, onty by grace. I am, after all, a bom-again 'Texan Orthodox Catholic, a convert by choice and conviction, though grace and repentance for sins imumerable (including a first edition upon which much improvement was needed). My moral perspective does not lack cmtent. I am af the firm conviction that, save for Cod%mercyt those who willfully engage in much that a peaceablits, fully secubr state wiff permit (e.g., euthanasia and direct abortion on demand) stand in danger of hell's eternal fires. As a Texan, I: puzzle whether these are kindled with mesquitc3, live oak, or trash cedar, but this is a quet;t.it>nto be answered on the Last Day by the Almighty. Though 1 achowledge that there is no secular moral authority that can be justified in general secular terms to fox"oid the sale of heroin, the availability of direct abo&im, the marketing of for profit euthanatizatiun services, or the provisic>nof commercial surrogacy, i firmly hold none of these to be good. These are great moral evils. But their evil cannot be grasped in purely secular terms. To be pro choice in general secular terms is to understand God" tragic relationship to Eden. To be free is to be free to choose very wrongly, (xi)
1hesitate to assert the superiority of theology to philosophy;but X must begin by noting that there are some things theologians know that philosophers cannot know. Any theologian wdcl know that God stokes the fires of h d with trash cedar. God would never usc? the beauty of a live oak tree or the determination of the mesqtlite to fire hell. Moreover, there is tbr further guesticm of the place of fire in hell, since :Iprefer to believe thn.t. Dante is right to think that ice, not fire, ensures the absohte loneliness that makes hell-a loneliness that, I might add, bears an mcanny resemblance to Engelhardt" society of strangers. Rut these are not l d expected to h o w matters he s h o ~ ~be
The problem resides quite simply in Engelhardt's language. Listen again-"one should join a religion and be careful to chlluse the right one." The issue invotves the presumptions, peculiar to a liberal culture, that shape the language of "choice." Of course, from a secdar point of view one may describe someone's becomhg a Christian or a Unificationist as a matter of choice, but that is not how those becoming Christian arc taught to understand what is or has happened to them. To be baptized in Christ's death and resurrection is kc, be made part of a people, part of God" l&, rendering the Ianguage of choice facile. Notice, by contrast, that Engelhardt did not use the language of "choice" to characterize what it mems for him to be a Texan. He bows that such language is surely a distortion of the great and good relaliw that c m e s from fhding one's life constituted by such a land and peopte. Along with me, Engelhardt never h e w a time when he did not h a w how to ""talk right," Of course, being born amid the riches of being Texan does not mean that c ~ n ecan take such a gift for granted. We must karn the &ills necessary to make what we are ows, but such skills are only intelligible because we know that being Texan first comes as gift, not as choice. I am aware that I may be making far too much of Engelhasdt's lanp a g e of choice. He does say that "only by grace" is he a '%born-again Texan Orthodox Catholic*" Yet the issue does not turn finally on the choice of words, though what words we use is all importme but rather on the narratives and the material conditions that such narratives pres u e . h@ worry about Ex~gelhardt"ssecond edition is that the narrative that shapes the position of the sccond edition is insuffidmtly determined by his Christian convictions, It is that way because his account of Christianity remains far too ""voluntary." As a rt;sult, Christians arc. robbed of the resources we need to resist the subtle temptations of E~~gelhardt's "peaceable societym-a society, I believe, that is designed to renber the Christian worship of Gocl puerile. Engehardt, good Christian that he is, certainly does not desire that result, He explicitly claims that the libertarian character of a defensible general secular morality is not antagonistic to the moralities of concrete moral communities whose peaceable commitments may be far from libertarian (e.g., the communism of monasteries). The arguments in The Ft7zdndations of Bioefhz'csare not opposed to such sentiments witl3in part-iculax; peaceablef moral communities. Strictly, with respect to such sentiments, the arguments are neutral. (X)
In the next sectio~~ I will explore whether Engehardt" '""paceable society," "built as it is on the ruins of the Enli@tenlment project, is really so benign, but first I need to kvelop what I find problematic. &out his understanding of Chistianity m d its rclation to t-he kind of society fie depicts.
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Tristmm Engclhnrdl's Peace
Wlen I was asked to contribute a blurb for the first edition of the F~""uu~2dafions, I kvrote the follocving: "'As a Christian theologian, I welcome Ellgcrhardt's profound accomt of what a secular ethic in medicine should entail, It will s h w Christians why good pagans have seen the church as a threat to the peace of polytheistic and secdar societies, while those who take a "secular point of view%ili iind its full implications explored in the bcrclkr.'"%ctually that is not vvhat :l first sent to the publisher. My first blurb read: "If you w m t to b o w why the pagans rightly thought they should kill the Christians, read this book." The publihers thought that was a little too direct. I think the point is still valid, however. Nor have the changes in the second edltion made me cbange rrry mind, Pagans understood (as Engelhardt well understands) that t-tle great problem with Christians is that W have no use for tolermce. We are not going to validate a public polytheism even if it buys us a ""paiace"(which, w h transhted, is just another way of s a y i ~ew"~' g are not being physicaily killed at the moment'"). The God we worship as Christians wmts it all. "IZender urlto Cod the things that are God" sand unto Caesar the things that arc Caesar"'9s not what Caesar wants to hear. Caesar also wants it all-particularly, when Caesar has became ""dmocratic.'" For example, hgelhardt says that the position put forth in the Folandatirtzfs requires fie "privatization""of all particularistic convictions (viii). Accol.dingly, Che moral life must be lvcd in two dimemsions: (I)that of a secular ethic that strives to be contentless and thus is able to span numerous morat communities and (2) the particular moral community within which one can achjeve a cant.ent-full undcrstandjng of the good life (B). Luthcrans have long had a theology to underwrite such a division, but neither Engelhardt nor I am persuaded by fie Lutheran distinction between orders of crcation and redemption, between law and GospelGiven the results of this century, martlover, most Christians find such a distinction questionahie at best, sfnce we n w know the horror against which it proved pocverless to resist. The issue, then, is not the misuse of such a distinction, but the distortion of Christian convictions implicit in it. For when Christians allow their fai& to be privatized, we soon discover that we can no l o ~ ~ gmaiiner tain the disciplines necessary to sustah the chusch as a disciplined polity capable of calfing into qucstion "the public.'Wf coufse, Exlg"3hardt can respond that is not his problem, since such a result is not entailed by his religious convictions. :I think, however, that be casrnot avoid the issue so easily, as can be seen from fie language of '"choice" I hihigighted above, The gseat chiillerzge before C:hristians in Englhardt's world, and I believe it is h Ifact the world h which we exist, is how our lives as Christians can be as involuntarily constituted as being Texan. To be Christian
means that we must be embedded in practices so materially constitutive of our communities that we are not tempted to describe our lives in the language offered by the world, that is, th language of choice. Only then will Christians be able to challenge an alt too tolerant world that celebrates many gods as alternatives to the One God who alone is wort-hy of worship. Note that my concern is not to try to rc.constituf;e Christendom c ~ adr vcxa.t.eChristim ""rle" in late Enlightenment smieties like the orle callcd America. Rather, the issue is service to our non-Christian brother and sister. If, for ertample, we believe abortim is sin that il7jures not onty child and mother but. our ver)i ability to be parents, them WC must find ways to help one another, Christian and non-Christim alike, not to be suyect to the terror of that alternative. What alternatives to abortion might look Eke wilf differ from context to context, but Christians surely cannnt promise those committed to a peaceable sociew that our alternative will appear '"eaceahte" "cause such views are atlegedy only our private opi~~ion. Thus, we owe it to ollr non-Christian sister and b m t h r to try to help them live lives that are as l&-giving as that which God has made possiMe for us to h e . Excluding vident alternatives from the common life of a society is not a bad thing, I certainly wish for the Pentagon not to exist. I work for it not to exist. Of corarse, that work must a h a y s be a wibess that we hope others wjll find c o m p e h g , but I certainly do not assume that such wihess might not take publicly defensible forms that make, for example, military funding mom difficuft. From my perspective you cannot put enough bureaucratic cmtrols on military spendi.ng to ellsu,re that "we the peoylc" are not ripped off. 'Tb be sure, Engelhardt may respond that the kind of peaceable society he &inks necessary is orle that will allow just the kind oE witncss I want Christians to make*I doubt that, But to show whq., I will need to look mow closely at E~~tgelhardt's "peaace."'Before I do so, however, I want at least to mention one issue that 1 suspect: lies at the bottom of some of my deepest dis-ease with Engefhardt, EngeXhardt assumes that witness is what you need when your position cannot be "rationalty" " f e d d . X, in contrast assume that w i ~ e s is s one of the most determhative forms of rationality. At several points Engelhardt observes that Roman Cathalieism made the mistake of trying to provide rational grounds far being Catholic, Me suggests that prior to the &formation the Christjan West envisaged a single authoritative point of view availabte, not only thmugh gmce, but also through rational argument (68).Accordhg to Engaardt, this vision led Western Christianity, and in particular Catl-tolicism, to undernine its w n roofs by trying to estabtish by reason what only faith c m show (94).'
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I am not unsppathetic with Exlget.hardtfsargument at this point. I have argued in a somewhat similar fashion that attempts to base Christian morality on some kinds of natural law theory c m lead to violence," Yet I think bgelhardt owes us a Mler accoullt of reason than he has supplied if we are to undesstmd his position as well as knowing hvhat mi$t be wrong with it, 7i,suggest that it is a mistake to base faith on reason depends on what you mean by reasm. Certafnly Aquilnas did not think knowi,ng God as Trinity was of the same slatus as knowing God exists, but neither did he thhk that belief in the Trinity lacked rational warrant. Aquinas assrtmed that theology was faith seeking understmdi~~g, but faith did not name the necessity of an irmtional starting point. Faith, rather, is that which is established by the most trustworthy witnesses. h Bioefhics and Secular Hultnanism Engehardt contends that a ""rtianal perspective is that which can be defended on the basis of gencrd principles. If one rejects a rational perspeckbe for the resolution of contrwersies, one can still appeai to force, pm"yr, imducements, and seduction. Rut one will not be ahte to explain why m y of these alternatke approaches is correct without gi:ving rclasons on its behalf."': Christlians believe we can give ""rasons on behalf""of that which we believe, reasons that should not only be persuasive, but understood as true. To be sure, such "reason givhg" i s a complex actkity requiritlg the transfomation of our lives through location in the Cbzistian traditicm, However, as &laclntyre has helped us see, any accou~~t of rationality camot be oc-herwise," I am aware that Engelhardt may well disagree with MacIntyre at this point, but at least I think it is clear that Engelhardt owes us a more devefoped account of rationality.
I am a pacifist, so it is hard for me to be against peace, Nonetheless, it is important to remember fiat not atl peace is peace and, in pmticutar, not all peace is the peace of Christ, I axn not at at convinced that the peaceable society EngeThardt. desires exists, can exist, or, if it dld exist, wodd be peaceable. What I fear is that what Engelhardt gives us is not peace, but order. He obscrves that " L E I I ~ ~a~generill conversiun to the Faith or to a particular ideology, or to a generally irnposed orthodoxy, one will need to search for common grounds to bind rational peaceable individuals and to direct health care decisionsf"(35).W~~e of the goals of ethics is to find a way to avoid the use of force for resolving moral controversies or, when that is not possibte, to determine when and how to Iimit the use of force (67). Engelhardt wiseZy refers to the lundamental principle necessary for such a preect no longer as the '"priciple of autonomy" hut rather as fie
"principle cJf permissionf"(xi). 'This change rig:htly indicates that the "peaceable societyfTnglhardt desires can only "be derived from the concurrence of individuals. Because the only morally authorized social struch;lres under such circumstances are those established with the permission of the individuals involved, the majority that binds moral strangers has by default an unavoidable libertarian character. However, this is not out of any value attributed to freedom or i~~dividual choice. The plausible scope of societal m o d authority is :limited because of plausible limits of the consent to be governed by others" (x). I admire what I c m only describe as Engehardt's monkish intellecbal austeritypan austerity that governs the development: of the contours of his peaceable society. 1 have my doubts whether he can in fact show that the principle of permission constih;ltes the ""creff of the morality of mutual respect (117), if for no other reason than that such an account seems too close to Kant lfor someone who has disavowed the Mantim deduction. That is not, however, my main wlrrry about: Engelhardtfs understancting of the peaceable society. Rather, my cerntral concern is Engelhardt's presumption that ""peace" is in fact institutionalized, through democracy. :l contest Engeihardtfs clairn that the princ:iple of permissim provides only an ""empty process" b r gerneriztjng the moral authority to sustajn a minimum ethic of praise and blame (109). Engehardt claims that liberal democracies are morally neutral by default, They cannot acquire the authorization to establish a particular moral vision, religion, or idwfogy. After all, given the failure of reastln to discover the rational, canonical, content-full moral vision, establishing a morality or idwfc)gy. as a gc>vernment%concrete morality or maral vision has nc, mare secular m r a l plausibility or authority than would the establishment of a particular religion. Limited democracies are therefore moraly committed to not being committed to a particular vision of the good; they are committed rather to being the social structure through which, and with the prcjtecticdn of which, individuals and cummunlties can pursue their own and divel-gent visions of the gmd, (120)
All I ask of Engeihardt is to name just one such ""social stmcbre" that actualfy exempli,fieshis "neutral public square.'WWhe~nit comes to government, naturc abhors a vacuum, md. if the secular s F a r e is alleged to be empty you can be sure that that claim is itself an ideology for a quite particular set of hterests. Engehardt may mean for his peaceable society to be a thought experiment, a utopian creation to enrich our imaginations. :l would certajnly not w m t to disparage the importance of utopian schemcs, h t t I do not think that is what Engehardt is about. He seems to believe that the liberal democracies cJf the West approximate, and thus partly and imper-
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fectly acbalize, his libertarian ideal. If they do, hwever, they are anyEngelthing but benign. More importmt, even as a thought experime~~t, hardt's "peace" "maim far too coercjve, Engelhardt has read Foucault but has chosen to ignore Foucault" sderstandislg of power. 'The supervisory strategies necessary to s ~ ~ s t a i n Engelhardt." ""peace"are simply coercion relabelcd '"freedom." ":For example, peogle whom we call tribal ot help but find the necessity of art of Engelhardt's peaceable being an indjvidual (in order to arrangements) a hrrn of violence. klerance, which E~tgelhardtidentifies as the primary carclinal virtue of the morality of mutual ~sppect,c help but kill (419)-People are, to be sure, quite literally killed in the name of tolerance, but it is equally the case that tolerance kills the soul. It is to Engelhdt"s crtzdit &at he understands that his peaceable society must produce character types whose primary virtue is their moral vacuiity."Tuppiesbecome the prophetic vanguard of the ""cmjng wmldwide secularitrJvin public. policy" because they see themsetves as bound to no parochial, history-bound tradition, belonghg as they do to no one or no place. That Engelharbt-at least the Engelhadt who supports a peaceable society of the kind described in &e second edition-should find such people desira:ble &add not be surprising. They are, after t?l,exactly the kind of people he needs to supply the bureaucracies that c m t d the lives of hose who continue to persist in more determinative ways of fife. 1 camot help but think Engelhardt's world, like other liberal accounts of social cooperation, can d y be kagined because he prclsumes continufng Christian habits and instibtions. For example, I do not see how he can accomt for why some people believe that they ought to c m for other people sim.p)y because those otlners happen to hl.l ill. Why should those who cmstihtte Engefhardt" ppeaceahle society, who, morcrover, embody the virtues of that society, think it important to set aside some peaple to do n&hing with their lives except to be present to and care for the sick? He says that his social world can mly supply "a generat ahstract understandislg of what it means to be a physicim or nurse" "(2534). Any more deferminathe conception must come from wiihin a particular c m m u nity of physicians and nurses. Yet why wodd the latter (i.e., a particular community of phTysicians and nurses) understand themselves to be in the same practice as the former (i.e., those who constitute E~~gelhardt's peaceable society)? Indeed, given his own analysis of the variability of and SO fortrh c m mean, there is no reason what "ilf,'"'health,'"'d"diease," to assume that they would even he acting in the same world of illness or health." Engehardt suggests that physicims are "often cast into a role analogous to those of bureaucrats in a Large-scale nation. They must come to terms with the moral commitments and views of i~tdividualsfrom various moral communities MIhile preseming the moral fabric of a peaceable,
secular, pluraiistic society. It is fnr this reason that Hegef identified civil servants as the universal class (in contrast to this, Marx assigned the role of the unkersal class to the workers), Civil servmts are committed to the tjemral maiization of freedctm in the nation according to Ilegel. Letter carriers must deliver mail to all on their routes and not discrissinate against some on the grounds of their political comdtments. To ensure this takes place, one may need bumaucratic rules that clearly establish in general what will be done, for whom, and mder klrhat circlumstances* Physicims and other health care professionals are often in the position of civil servants in that they must make clear to patients what will be done for them, to them, and us~derwbat circurnst..ancefl(29s294). Accordbgly, patients and physicians who meet one another as strangess will, need to know what safeguarcts are present to protect the patient as welr as what services the pkysician is eomitted to providi,ng. EngeUlardtfsyuppies may well become such civil servants, but I see no reason Mxhy Christians would imitate them in their own "civil s e r ~ i c e . ~ Even more issportant, 1 do not think Christians as patients could or should. trust their lives to such civil servants. Indeed, what seems misshg from Engethardt's account of the kind of medicine envisioned in his peaceable society is how to accotmt for trust. His whole project seems to be an attempt to substitute exchange for trust, all the while presumhg the continued existence of the habits of trust. I see no reason to believe that such habits of trust would persist in these drcunstances. II o t k r words, I see no grounds for believing that the kind of tmst that has traditionally made medicine what it is would canthue in a world based more on exchange than on gift, The language of exchange, moreover, ixrtduces the most pmfound vid m c e that I think is p~supposedin Engeihardt" ppeaceable society Engelhardt is way ahead of the g m e insclfas as he knows that et%lics,and in particular bioethicq c ot be separated from politics. (Or perhaps more accurately put, bioethics is a potitics.) But missitlg from his accomt of the peace&le society, missjng fmm his accou~~t of democracy, is economics. Such an omission, moreover, is not ocent if you believe, as 1 do, that nothing is more violmt than the capitalist market." But it is exactly such a market that Engethardt seems to presuppse as centrat to :his peaceable society I am,of course, aware that such a market dominates ail our lives in the modern West. m a t is fmportmt for those of us who are Christians in s w h economies, hokvever, is not to call good the fact that we cursenlly Ifeel we have no alternative to that market, O.K., If You. Are So Smadt What Alternative Do You Have?
I ~ a l i z that e the kind of criticism I have made of Engelhardt's account of the peaceable society must appear unfair. It seems unfair because with
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the best will in the world Ex~gehardtis striving to help us find an alternative to what he kars is the colning violetnce. If you do not Iilce his altemathe, it seems that you must be expected to provide an alternative of yczur own. Yet I do not have an alttlmative to offer to Engelhardt's peace..At least I do not have an ajternathe to ofter af the thetlretioal Iewl of Engdhardt's proposal. Our task, as Christians, is not to offer such theoretical alternatives, but rather to be an alternative, Christians provided such m alternative when they thought it a good thing to construct houses of hospitality for people who would have otherwise;, died alone. Christians provided such alternatives \zrhen they did not kill their clhi1drer.n who were born deformed. Christians prwided such altcmati:vcs when as patients they exemplified the virtue of patience by not a s h ~ physicians g to do m m than the physicians could or shodd. Without such lundannent-alpractices, practices that those who are not Christian can imitate, theoretical constructions of peaceable societies of the sort: developed by Engehardt can too easily give Christians the misleading impression that we know more thm we do and, even worse, the presumption that we can do more than we can, I fear that we Christians must be content to live out our lives in the world as we find it and as we make it. It: is a world, I fear, that descriptively msemblcs EngelhardVs peaceable sociew. Our task as Christians is not to make such a world more terrible than it has a tendency to be, but to survive in m d for such a world-not because survival is itself a virtue, but because we have been called by God. for whom our survival is a witness and a s i p of God%grace. That is finally why as much as I would have found it m attractive possibiljty, I could not have written the second edition of The F02;kndafions of Bioefh&* Notes 2. VVoXff" review appeared in the NGZURepzkblic 296 (May 25,1987), p. 38. 2, AIL refewnces tcr the s c o n d editiom of The Fnurjdatio~zsI7f-Bli7ethics (New York: Oxford University 13ress, 1996) will appear in parentheses in the text. 3. That is, of r=c)unie,one of the purposes of my Stfiering Presence (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986). 4. Engelhadt rightly observes that the failure of the modern moral phllosophlcal project ""rturns us tcr the polytheism and skepticism of ancient times with a remembrance of the philosophical monotheism and Faith that fashioned the West" (11).Secular people too often assume that once Christianity is rendered irrelevant, the world will be free of the gads. "I"e truth is exactly the reverse, as we see in our own time how the defeat of Christianity occasions, not the death, but the rebirth, of the gads, The problem with the secular, in other words, is that it has such a difficutt time remaining secular. 5, Engelhardt footnotes Michaet Buckiey's At the Origins of Modern A tlteism in support of this point. 1 am not sure that Buckley's argument is the same as Engel-
hardt". It was not Aquinas that prc~ducedthe ratimalism that in turn gave us mc>dernatheism, but Jater Schc~Xasticdevelopments. E v e ~ t h i n gdepends on what you take reason to be. 6. StanXey Hauewas, Tke Pe~ecyableKilzgdolrt (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 119881, pp. 50-"7. 7, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Bt'aethics and Secular Huvirnnism: Tke Searclzfor n Colrtnton Morality (Philadelphia: Trinity Press Tnternational, 1991), p. 36. 8. Macfntyre has developed tl~isaccount most fully in WIzose Justice? WIzE'cJtRlaCionnlily? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988) and Tliree Rz'z~nI Versiorzs il?fMornE Enqziiry: E~zcyclopedl'n,Gerleazrtugy, alzd Tradit-iorz (Ncjtre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990). Crudat to understanding Macintyre" pposition is his claim in Whose Justice? Whi& htr'Llnnlily? that the ""cncept c ~ tradition f constituted and tradition-constitutirVorational enquiry cannot be elucidated apart from its exemplifications" (p, 10). Too oMen criticisms of Macfntyre try tcr separate his account of ratianality from the story he tells, but the whole force of his po~sitionis to deny such a disso>ciatic>ncan be made. "Tradition" "does not name a new epistemofogicaX option to that of the encyclopedist and the geneal%ist, but rather is an attempt to show why yc)u cannot begin with epistemcdo1~)gyin deveXoping an account of rationality. In ather words, Macfntyre is developing philosophically the theological claim of what faith. seeking understanding lomks like. 9, Who is this ""one" that takes up this prc~ject?Is it a Christian? One of the troubling aspects of Engelhardt" position is its historical abstractness, 10. Engelhardt, Bioeflzirjsalzd Seclalnr Htrma~zism,pp. 35-40. 2 1. Engelhardt observes that ""a traditional Roman Catholic community is likely to have understandings of health, disease, disorder, deviance, and disability quite different from those of ;a community of secularized cosmopolitans. Their different constructions of medical reality can then be embedded in alternative health care systems, which carry with them quite different understandings of what should count a s a disease to be treated and of what treatment expenses shc~uldbe sustained by the commrmity" "27). What Engelhardt needs tcr justify is why, given his account, he t h i n k he can still speak of "medical reality" and ""health care systems" as if they are simply ""iere,"" 22, See, for example, Alasdair Macfntyre, ILlnrxz'sm and Christianity, 2nd ed. (London: G>uckwort.ih,1%5), especial1y the new introduction. Macf ntyre c~bserves that in premodern societies markets were auxiliary to production, but in "the markets of modern capitalism prices are often impo~sedby factors external to a particular market: those, for example, whose livelihood has been made subject to international market forces by their becoming excXuslively prc>ducersfor some product for tzrhich there tzras, but is no iongel; international demand, will find themselves compelled to accept imposed Xow prices or even the bankruptcy of their economy Market relationships in cmtemparary capitalism are for the most part relations imposed both on tabor and on small prcwtucers, rather than in any sense freely chosen" ((xii).
8
How Christinn Ethics Became Medical Ethics: The Case of Paul Ramsey
A Case
Tom Beauchamp and James Childress have just finished prepasing the fourth edition of their enormously successful Psil-rciples of Biornediml Ei.c"~ics(1994). It cxcurred to me that someone;? ought to attend to the various redactions of that book, as we might learn much, not only about their own chmges of mind, but about the history of recent medical ethics. So f asked Beauchamp and C h i l h s s if 1 rnight look at their files to see \zrhat shaped and reshaped their revisions, Being old, friends they graciously accepted my offer. In the prclcess I discovered a docment that I think is quite important. It is a case that they cmsidercld for inclusion in the famous appendix to their book, which is simply called "Cases.'Wy they chose not to include that case or, put pejoratively, why t h y may have suppressed the case, :l expect to be a matter of discussion for many years, 1 suspect they were considering the case as a way to spark a considerat.ion of the principle of justice and they m y have decided the case was too axnbigtlous;yet 1think their refusal to use the case involves deeper questions than simply editorial relevance. Here is the case that bore the number 666. An elderly, but obviously quite active man burst into a psychiatrist's oft . seemed quite normal fice late one afternoon. without an a p p a h t ~ ~ e nHe in appearance, though his ample siddurns made him appear a bit oddhe lookd like an acadexnic left over f m the nineteenth cenh;lry. He said he had to talk with someme, since he suspected that his colleagues no longer listmed to or could. understand his arguments. He confessed he had little faith in psychiatry but since psychiatrists were paid to listen he
thought he might as well try one. This particular psychiatrist recalled that beforc, the advent of psychotropics she actlaally used to talk to patients, so she decidcd to go along, Besides, she had nothing better to do, ediately clear vvbat was bothering the patient. fndeed, it did not seem to occur to the pat-ient that he had becolne a patient. The psychiatrist in fact was a bit concerned whether the patient was stable, since there were some odd speech patterns accompanied by equaliy repetitive physical mavernents. For example, the patient kept saying "You. k-towf+hi.le pushing his finger into the psychiatrist" chest. There w a atm the clrnstmt "Efrumps,'" which the patient made as he massaged his left chest with his right hand. He did a31 &is while keepi,ng his ever-p~sentpipe going at fullblast. After some time, the psychiatrist began to suspect that slze had a case of serious parmoia on her hands. It seems the patient: complained that no matter how hard he tried, few h e w how to read rightly his many books. In effect, he said he was suffering h r n the dread disease of c h n i c misinterpretagon. For kstance, no m&ter hokv often he emphasized that he wrote as a Christian ethicist, people kept trying to turn him into one of the originators of the field sf medical ethics. He confessed that he had no brief agai,nst those who wanted to be medical ethicists, but his game was much larger-namely, ensuring the moral survival sf Christian civilization. After all, that civilization is the result. of the Christian commilment embodied in such concepts as covenant-fidelitb izesed, and agape. Such concepts often appear in the language of justice, duty, and fairness, but in fact they are theological concepts through and through. For example, some had insisted on i n t e v ~ t i n ghim. in a Kantim manner, in particular an undisciplined thinker at: Duke, simply because his book was called The Patient as 12erson. By ""perso~~,'%swever,he certainly did not man any Kantian account of person, since that kind of individualism is exactly what he was trying to comter. Moreover, he did not himself titk the book. It was the people at Vale that did that. It must have been a liberal plot. W ~ aist more, he clahed, most could not mderstand the relation between. his views on war and the work he was doing in medical ethicsThey thought his support of limited war to be inconsistent with his opposition to ahortim, How could they fail to see that at the heart of both was his commitment to the i,nvi,olabilit.yof the indjvidual? It is the ncighbor who comes in the furm of incSjvidual hurman beings, after all, that must be at the center of the Christian moral pro~ect. The psychjatrist, after listening to these complaints, began to w o ~ ~ d e r what kind of diagnosis was appropriate. Was this really a case of chronic misinterpretation? The psychiatrist, of course, distrusted self-diagrrosis,
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The Case of Paul Rantsq
but there did seem to be a pattern emerging that mfght s u ~ p o rsuch t an account. kranoia codd not be excluded. In the absence of any strong evidence one way or the other; and feeling that the patient desperately needed calming, the psychiatrist, who had done a unit of CPF: (Christian Pastoral Education) and disco~reredshe had sadistic tendencies and that she ought to enjoy such desires, suggested &at in the next week the paand come back for a regutient read all of Karl Bar&'s Church Dog~~atict; lar a p p o h t ~ ~ e. n t Beauchamp m d Childress ask provocatively at the end of the case, " M y is this case hteresting?"
Christian Ethics and Medical Ethics While I cannot pretmd to explain why I think this case interesting, I do wmt to try to situate limseyfs wnrk in medical ethics, not only within his overall project but dso in the histoq of Christian ethics in this corntry. Yet my orject is not to provide a better understanding of Ramseyrbut rather to understand a hit better how Ramsey f ts into the l q e r story of how and why Christian ethicists have become so fascinated wilth medical ethics. 1 am currently working on a book that attempts to tell the story of Christian ethics as an academic djsciplhe in America. The book asks the drmatic question, "HoM,did a tradition that began with a book called Clzl.isliunizi~zgthe Social 0rder"Rauschenbusch 1191,2] end cvith a book called Can Eth-ics Be Christian?" (Gustafson 1975).Gustafson describes his own sense of unease with the latter book, nothg that he worked on the book for years "with the nagging sense that mast persms who answer in an unambiguous affimative wodd not be interested in my supporting argument, that a few fellow professionat persons might be interested enough to look at it, and that for thosc who believe Che a n s w r is negative the question itself is not sufficiently important to bother aboutff t most cJf us concerned with Christim (Gustafsm 1978:392). I s u s p ~that eirhics m d its relation to medical ethics are haunted by such an uneaE"Who really cares?" Of course, Christian ethicjsts rushed into medical ethics for many =asons, not the least of kvhich was (and is) money and power. 1 sometimes point out to my studcnts that people now go to Europ to see the great cathretrals, wondering to thrnnselves as they view these magnificctnt structures, "*What kind of people would build such thiags? Mter alf, you mi$t well be dead hefore the foundatican even was complete." Sumday I thirtk people may well come to see major medical cmters, like the one we have at Duke, and ask Eke same sort of qztestiorn: "Wh& kind of peo-
ple woulLi braild such things?" If these hture '"ouristl;" are astute, they will hink those who cmstructed s~lchrncdical complexes certainly must have been afraid of death S o medical ethicists, being the good priests they are, went to where the power is in lilnerd societies-medical schools. Kings and princes once surrounded, themselves with priests for legitimation. Likewise, politicians today surround themscrlwes with social scientists to give those they rule the impression that they really know wfiat is going on and can plan accordingly.' Physicians, in an increasingly secular society surround themelves with medical ethicists. God no longer exists, the sacred universe of values has replaced God, and, allegedly, etlhicists think &out values and decisions that hvotve values. Such an anaiysis may sound cynical, but I do m t mean fnr it to be so interpreted. I simply assume such a developntcnt was hevitable, given the character of our world. Nor do 1: mean to denigrate the good work of medical ethicists, many of whom often take a quite critical stance toward the practices of those they save. Yet the very terms of their analysis (autonomy, nomaleficence, justice, and so on) are primarily legitimating categories for a rnedicine shaped by a liberal culture. For example, it is by no means clear to me that informed consent necessarily should play the part attributed to it in most fiteraturcl in medical etfrtics.XGiven the Cbristian assumption that we are called to be oE service to one another, I see no reason why some rnight not be drafted to be of help to others, for e x m pte, to share blood without their consent, tndeed, as I will showI Ramsey made such a suggestion. That m e y and power have atkacted Christian thinkers to medidne, however, is not the story :I want to tell, Rather, I want to direct attention to what might be called the internal story of Christim ethics in order to understmd how a tradition that began by trying to Christianize the social order now works very hard to show that being Christian does not uneiuty bias h w we do meciicat ethics. Christian ethicists at one time waxlted to rule, but now we seek to show we can be of help to the doctor. How did this happen? I take my cue in this mgard from Custafsods wcmderful article, "meo l o a Confronts Technotoa and the Life kicnces" (Gustafson 1978). Me begin.$ by noting how clear it is to those who reaid The Haslitzgs Center Rep", Thmlogicaf Stadia, and many other journals, that persons with theofogical training are writing a great deal about technology and the life sciences. . . . Whether theiufogy is thereby in interaction with these areas, however, is less clear. For some writers the theological authorization for the ethical principles and procedures they use is explicit; this is clearly the caw for the mast prolific and polemical of the Protestants, Paul Rarnsey. For others, writing as "ethicists," the retation of their moral discourse to any specific theological principles, or even tcr a definable religious
The Case of Paul Rantsq autlc~okis opaque. Indeed, in response to a quei-y from a friend (who is a distinguished philosopher) about how the term ""ethicist" has come about, 1 responded in a pejorative tvay ""An ethicist is a fc3rrrrer theologian, tvt-rc>does not have the professional credentials of a moral philtompher." "86)
Gustafsm continues by observing that much of the writing in the k l d of medical ethics is now done by people who desire. to be known as "re1igious ethicists," if only to show they are distinguishatole h m . philosophers. Yet it is by no means clear to what the adjective "religious" "refers. It surely does not refer to anything as specific as Jewish m even Protestant or Catholic; for if it did, the writers would use the proper desig~~aticm. Gustafson c a m e n d s Ramsey for his 1974 declaration, ""falways write as the ethicist I am, namely a Christim ethicist, a d not as some hypothetical common dcnomin&or" (Gustafson 1978). I, too, thirtk Ramsey is to be cornmended 'for his candos, 1: am not convinced, however, that his execution matched his cmdor*For exmple, I always kidded him that all Ihe theoloa in -The fsatimt us Person was contained. inthe pdace. He did not find, that remark humorous. He refused to let the morc theological parts of Ethies at the Edges of Lgc be edited out explicitly to rebut the criticism that The Patic~zfas 13crs.o~was insufieiently theological? Yet the issue it;not slmply a matter of qzscalztiky, but rather the kind of tl~eolagythat Ramsey =presented. Despite his cmservat.iwe~ p u t a tion b d h intheofoa and poiitjcs, 1wi)l try to show that Ramsey ~ntaincd, t of ironically like :Reinfiol,d.Niebuhr, a tkologian in the g ~ a tradition Protestant tiberafism.' Moreover, as a =presentative of that tradition, he had insufficient resources to show how Christian practice xnight make a diffcsence for understmdi.ng, let alone forming, the practice of mdicine. Ramsey in mmy ways was the hst gwat representathe of the Pratestant social gospel. He could not, of course, calf for a christimizling clf the social order in the way Waiter Rauschenbusch did, Reinhold Niebuhr had forever blocked that alternative. hdeed, Rarnsey did not have to call for a christianjzing, since he assumd that he was a l ~ n d ypart of a scxjety that was well christimized. Whereas Raiuschenbusch could speak of saved and unsaved institutions, idcrntifying the former with politiciil dmocracy and suggesting that the economic order still needed saving, Ramsey living in a different era and with a different outlook, would no htnger speak of instihttions being saved. Although Ramscry did not echo Rauschenbusch" call, he certahly shared with his predecessor the convictlion that Christianity bad formed something caEed Western civilization, which continued to bear the marks of the Gospel. It was no accident, given that presumption, that medicine became a crucial, practice that allowed Rmsey to develop that perspective. The church may no longer have social power, but at least we still have medicine.
One way to thir~kabout these matters is to mflect cm what one conceives the subject of eirhics to be. The social gospelers wmted ethics to e1zcompass all life: econmics, politics, and family, For Reinhold Niebuhr the attention of the Christian ethicist was focused less on economics (now that would be left to economists) than on politics m d international politics in particu%ar,fndetld, :Rmsey%attempt to dixipline some of the utititarim pmsumptions of Niettuhr" realism can be read in deep continuity with Micbul-cr's .fascinationwiCh the world of international pditics. But the problem with the focus on politics, international politics especially, is that it is just too messy. Medical ethics, in cmtrast, offers an opportunity for t-he kind of proble~xsthat codd be casuistically divlayed, thereby giving the sense that we just m y know what we are doislg when we do ethics. Moreover, medical ethics (or better, the practice of medicine) exemplifies far Ramsey the rnorat commitments that lie at the heart of Western civilization and that mimate, or at least shoulid animate, our politiics and ecmomics.
Rarnseyfs Undlerstanding of' the Place of Christian EChi,cs I m aware that these are large themcs that quire further nuance, but let me try to suggest, by catling attention to how his medical ethics fits within his werafl project, how this readjng of Ramsey makes sense. Ramsey's basic theological position was set out in Basic Christian Elhlc:s (Ramsey 1950, 1993).Me seldom returned to such theological questions, since he assumed that what he said in this early work was right and needed no rethirrhg. However, he did write a quite candid essay about basic methodological issues entitled "Tradition and Reflection. h Christian Life"' (Ramsey 1982). In tbis article he confesses the following puz: aleme~zt 13uzzlement is too weak a word. Disorientation is a better word, since I: thrash about not kncjwing what t c ~say t c ~the present situation in the churches, For some time now the demise of the "Constantinian era" has been frizimplzanltby yrc>ctairned.We no longer live in "C6hristendornfl";his fact is said to be abundantly clear. But why any Christian tzrould cite this fact with joy T do not know. Still that is not the heart of my puzzlement, My quandary is in attempting to understand how those who triumphantly proclaim the end of the Christian age can then still have the audacity to address pmnouncements and counsel tcr governments. That was appropriate with the Constantinian era, not beyond if we are beyond. "fhose who stiff address counsel to governments must believe eitlter that a remnant of the Christian age remains an which they count when tt?stit"yingbehre Congress or that in so doing they do so as only one among many other voices in a sodetfr that for the foreseeable future is irredeemably secular, (1982:46-56)"
The Case of Paul Rantsq
I confess that I love this quote, not only because it is so quintessentially Ramsey in terms of its style, but also because it is so candid regardkg his Constantianism. There is, moreover, a wonderful footnote to the last sentence in Mxhich Ramsey identifies hhself as one who still believes fiat s n m t h g rcrnains of the Christian age, a rcmnant that makcs it possible for him to give cwnsel to government. It is in this sense that 1 continue to try to do "public ethics." In this endeavor 1 have recently been put on notice that I rnay be wrong by a distinguished philosopher [MacIntyre], who wrote: ""Bt any biblical position, whether Jewish or Christian, is going to be at odds, sic) it seems, with the dominant secular standpoints of our culture; alliances b e w e n the thec~togiansand the secular thinker are going tcr be limited to specific points or easily fractured by disagreemnts elsewhere. The modern secular world rnay provide fewer allies than Rarnsey believes." . . . At the same time 1 cmtinue to try to do ""church ethics'" in hope that the day may come when the dominant secular viewpc~intson morality will be extended from the church of Jesus Christ. QRamsey 1982:47)
Ramsey becarne incrmsingly convinced, at least if we are to believe s w e of his ~ 1 n a r kh s S p e ~ kU p f i r Jnsf Wgr and Pnc@sm, that the church might be forced to assume a sect-like stance (Rannsey 1988).Yet be thought such a position was a matter of necessity rather fian anything that Christians shot~1dwmt. For example, in a letter Ramsey responded to my suggestion that his casuistry p r e s u e s that the notion af the inviollabsity of each life exists in our civilization because our civilization is Christian: There are, of course, stretches in what we may dignify by calf ing my "special ethics" where the Christian word to be heard is not resounding in every paragraph. Call this Christian casuist^" if you will-but not for the reason r for my endeavor to do pubf jc ethics is padiatl y true, you state. X ~ ugrc>unds as an appeal to past Christian influences perhaps not yet altc~getherXctst. Doubtless I may hope against hope that some among the ""hearers" may strengthen their adherence to the best of past culture; or maybe search among their premises and. find that they have no breastpjate of rigl-rteousness with which to gird the irreplaceabilily and unmeldability of every human soul. But 1, the authol-,have not left Christian premises behind when I go on to do special ethics. You may disqree with the way I go:, about doing special ethics theotogicalXy; there where yi~usay that my "&amatic and sigwhich no adquate theological nificant assertions" are only "assedions" warrant is supplied..I think everyone of them is adequatefy warranted, and directly by the ""giftedness" of life. 1 judge that simple warrant to be enough. Yctu may want me at this point to pause and retell the whole Christian story But then we disagree more in style than in substance, for 1 never left that behind-.. . . My foundational work is not [the humanist"] nor are [the humanist"~] mine. But I do believe that while Christianity ought always to be will-
ing to be a sect whenever necessary there is always at work a culture-hrming impulse as welt. When, therefore, 1 say I am disinter-ested in finding aut whether the King is clothed, naked ar wears a simple jcxk strap, I mean tcr say that Christian special ethics would stilt come to the ccjncltlsions I do. (Ramey 4990:318--3't9)7
lndced it kvas in medicine that Ramsey fomd insC.i.tutio1zalizedthe kind
of mural presuppositions and practices that should be characteristic ol: Westem civilization. "f'hough he feared that we were in dmger of having "a medical professio~zkvithout a moral philosophy in a society \zrithout one either" ((1970); it is nonetheless medicine, at lsast Ramsey" reading of medicine, that carries the Christian crrmitment to care for the neighbor as ensouled body Tfierefore, the commitment of the physician to care for the patient preceding all other moral. m d social considerations provided Ramsey with a practice he sorely needed to sustain Christian ethics as a disripline in service to the world. This move, of course, involved two questionable presuppositions: (1) that Christians do or should attrZbute to the neighbor the significance Ramsey claim to find in the Gospel and (2) that medicine is or shodd be shaped by h m s e y k understanding of covenant fidelity. :I will explore both these questions, for by doing so f think we will discover some of the reasons that Christian ethics has became medical ethics. Moreover, by looking into these matters, :Ialso hope to substantjate my claim that Ramsey remained embedded in the habits of mind characteristic of liberal Protestmtism as well as political Iiberalis~~.,
It is well h o r n that Rauschenbusch thought Jesus was but the continuation of prophetic insight, since the prophets stood for a justice that- was independent of cultic practice and religious dogma. What is important is not: the religious beliefs but: the ethical upshot. Ramsey was obviously c0nsiderabl.y more sophisticated theologically than Rauschenbuscb, as well as more personally theologically or.thodo& but his understandhg of the significance of ccrvenant fidelity is structurlllty quite similar to Rawsehenbus&'s understanding of the relali.on of theology and ethics. For example, Ramsey in a manner not d i k e Raiuschenbusch, thought the source of Christian love to be Jesus' pwachillg of the ki~~gdorn ol God. But this presented a probtem for Ramsey at least when he was working on Basic Christian Ethics. Under the influence of Schweitzer, Ramsey assumed that the role of the kingdom in Jesusf teaching could not be separated from Jesus' eeschatological expectations. "This kas to be said m d said forthrightly: few contemporary Christians accept the kind of kingdom-expectaticm Jesus considered (Jf central importance, and
The Case of Paul Rantsq
right they do not" (1"333:536).YBut if the role cJf the kingdom is central as a source for Christian love, and the kingdom is inseparably linked to an eschatoXogy we can no longer accept, how can we continue to argue for the role of the kingdom as a source of Christian love? Ramsey adcliressed the question by rejecting the avenue taken by Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel, an avmue that aIigned with the inevitabiiity of progress. 11% vintage Ramseyan polemicai prose, he writes, "Of course, it may be contended that apocatypticism is a better myth than the idea of progress prevalent since the ejghteenth century, and New Testment eschatology at least permits a man to recognize a catastrophe when he sees orle rather than dying in hjs procrustem bed of development with his illusion onf7(1993:3S),k'et that further compticates his problern, for he had agwecl with Rauschenbusch, in '"A neology of $0cial Ac.lion," that ""we arc corrtlct, most especially, in no longer thhking as Jesus thoutght about the immediate end. of the 'this present agehand the coming of the kingdom of Cod. &e of the main foundatims m d incentives for social action among us is the need for social. control and s o m sort of restraint of evil to take the place left vacant by our rejection of Jesusf 'eschatological' expectdim" @amsc;.y 1946:4). How codd R m sey reject the eschatology and still m a h t a h Jesus' emphasis an. the Eng&m% ppresence? He resolves this dilemma by clairning that the essence of Jesus' teaching about the kingdom, tbat isf "disinterested love for the neighbo~,"was independent of its origin in Jesus apocalyptickm and stood on its own. In a paSsage that sollnds as if it came from Bultmam's fesrrs Christ and Mytholrlyy (19581, Ramsey s a p the following: The origin and history of Christian love may be interesting and important in its own right, but to suppcJsethat factors determining the origins of this ccmception have anything to do with its value, or affed its truth to any degree one way ""nother, is an instance of the "'genetic .Ea1Iacyn m prevalent in past-evolutionary thought. Indeed, precisely fram the utter removal af all other considerations, Jesusf ethic gained an absolute validity transcding limitation to this ar that place ar time or civilization. Preciwly because all neighbors were apacalyptically removed from view except this single chance individual who might be hostile or friendly betoved chiXd or totaf strangeu;Christian love gained unqualified lack of concern for either preferential interests or preferential duties, becoming an attitude unconditionally required of men in spite af hostility; in spite also af friendliness, on the neighbar" part. (Ritrnsey 19;70:41--32)
In short, Ramsey demythologizes apocalyptic and discovers disinferested love, which, though not exactly Kant, is at least in Kant's ballpark. 1need not tell you this became the center of his work for the rest of his life. We art. dways living in the end time vvhm we face the needs of the
neighbar. The u n w i l h p e s s to subordinate the care of the neighbor to any other ends, even the ends of Che survivd of the human species, is the moral equivalent to living apmalyptically Ramsey later recants his dismissal of Jesus" eschatologyybut he never re&&& the structural presuppositions that come f r m his original account of neighbor love as hsolute disinterestedness. For example, irr Nine Modern Momlists, in the midst of his discussion of Edm,und Cahn m d the ethics of the lifeboat, which in many ways was the basis for his later thinking on m d i d ethics, he seconds Cahn" ~judgment that the crisis in the lifeboat was apocalyptic in ct-rararter.The lifeboat crisis, tike Jesushpocalyptic message, made null and void all earthly possessions, farnily ties, and distinctions of every conceivable kind*Accordinglyyit embodies the ethics of the Gospel that transcends the generic duty of s e l f - p r e s e r i o I;Jove-tsansformednatural taw thus reytlires that all should wait and die together rather than &at some lives be saved (Rmsey 1962).10 Ramsey notes that this w s the burden of Jesus' teaching that calls for an exodus from the naturd order of existence to that made possible by the immediate presence of Cod. His ethics is not understandable apart from the presence of God's kingdom. It was not, as Schweitzer supposed, the imminent comr'tzg of the kingdom which prc>ducedJesus3eachings as an '"interim ethic." It W-asrather the presence of the kingdom which prcjduced his unlimited estimate of what one man c>wesanother in prompt and radical service; and at the same time it was His living in the presence of God which rendered negligible the fixed reiationsl~ipsamong men in this present age. His messag-f?does not stand or fall with his cmception about the quick end af the tzrorld. 1t would be better to reverse this proposition and say that this expectation about the future sprang rather from Jesus' cmviction about God and from Jesus' existence in His presence. Jesus and the prol>hets were so overwhelmed by their sense of the sovereign majesty and utter faithfulness of Gcd, the legal systems and the customary ar natural moralities af this tzrorld were already liquidated before their eyes. Natural self-preservatio>nwas suspended, as also were the rules about Sabbath observance, if they stoad in the tzray of manifesting the concrete response of serving the slightest need of the neighbor, (Rarnsey 19(;2:248)
Ramsey adds a footnote tc:, this passage in h i c h he suggests that this paragraph sipificantly changes the emphasis, but not the "sz.lbst..anceoE my interpretation of the relation between eschatology and ethics inJesus" teachings in Basic Chri";tiai"lEthics, Chapter 3" ((1962). I think tbat is certainly right, as we see that now Jesus' eschatology is i n t e r p ~ k das requiring us to act rightly though the heavens faXL Ramsey assumed that this was love-transformd justice that went beyond naturat law and was
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now instmtiated in the laws and practices of Western society. Indeed, I cannot help but think that Ramsey's fascination with the law which, often resulted in painstaking and pah-inducing discussion of minutiae of the law, war; the working out of his conviction that the Gospel had trans, it necessary for the Christian ethidst to forxncd the jus ~ n f i u mmaking look to the Xaw for the outworking of the Christian commitment to neighbar love. mough Ramsey's account of neighbor love seelned to imply the protection of life as a necessary condition for our civilization, he never mderwrote a survivalist ethic. Illdeed, in his discussion of abortion in War and the ChrJsfinnCo-rsscicrsce, he argtres that a fetus in conflict-of-life caws should. rightly be thuugkt capable of sacrifice. The fetus is not only a man, with a right to life, but samething of a Christian man who would not wiitingiy exercise this right to the detriment of another, at Ieast not when this abstract right is of no advantage to him. Indeed, we should assume that if a fetus is capable of bearing rights he is also capable of exercising them in a charitable manner; and at the least this means that his own right to life shautd not be held on to in vain, to the detrirnernt of that of another: (Rarnxy 1961:382-183)
It is an ixrte~stingquestion why Rmsey did not extend this h e of rcasoning to questio~~s concerning experkentation on incompetents. Rut why should this understanding of the ethics of the Gospel be called Pmtestant liberalism? Quite simply, because it allowed Ramsey to think that the nicer issws of theology, such as trjnifarian m d ecclesiological issues, were largely tmgentid to ethics. C)nce neighbor love had been discovered, the ethicist could get on with the casuistry necessary for the working out of this commimmt in Mrestern civilization without any further attention to Trinity or ecclesiology or Christolow. As Ramsey puts it in Basic Chuistilzn Ethics, the problem is how Jesus%thic of nclighbor love can be trmsposed to a nonapocalyptic setting: What possible bearing can an ethic which specifies to the EuXl what a man should do in relation to a single neighbor, an ethic which rweals with no qualification at all what the reign of '"riighteousness" means in regard t c ~ man, what bearing can this possibly have upon moral action in a world where Cltcrc is nlmys more Chn one ylpigllbor and indeed a whole cluster of claims and responsibilities to be cmsidered? (Ramsey 4993:42)
I am not accusisrg Ramsey of the kind of reduction so characteristic of much of Protestant: liberal theology, for example, that Christ means love of the nei&bor. Rather, his positio17 accepts, in a sophisticated way to be sure, the presumption that the Gospel has a moral upshot. The Christian essence can therefore be known without the frills. That essence, more-
over, has a kind of transhistorical valieiity because it is but an expssicln of the character of human existence. Given this account oi the "Christian thhg," it should not be surgrishg that Ramsey would discover in medicine exactly the Christian commitment to the care of the neighbor. Nor is it surprising that the theoloa necessary for the work to be done in medical ethics could be stated In the preface to The Patie~zfus Pemcm. All that is r e q u i ~ dis to assert that medicine manifests one of the covenants into which we are bornelWedical care, in efkct, is a love-transfonxed institutjon that is part of the Christian jus gentium. The major task for medical elhics is to rr.conci2e the welfare of the hdividual with the welfare of mankind when both must be served (Rarnsey 1970:xiv). Ramsey, of course, thought this commitmeM was under attack by atomistic individualism. Such an individualism erodes every bond of life with life, in particular the bonds into which we enter (spousal) and those into which we are born (filial). Moreover, the Cartesian dualism, that is, the strong disti.nction between body and soul so characteristic of modernity crcates the assumption that the quali"cy of life can be separate from our bodily existence. Our iz~dividualismand Cartesianism combine to underwrite Che Raconjan prctjed, "that: is, the pervasive notion that, for every problem produced by technology used h r the relief of the hurman c d i t i o n , the^ will be an as-yet-etistant technical solution'" (Ramsey 1978), It is not surprising, therefore, that Rarnticly shaped The htielzt: as Persvrz around the problem of experimentation on children. Medical ethics is but raises the bathe workkg out of the ""ethicsof cor\se~~t.'Txperimentation sic issues of fidelity between m m and mm. Consent expresses or establishes this relationship, and the requirement of cmsent sustains it. Fideljq is the bond beween consenting rnan and consenting rnan in these procedures. The principle of an informed consent is the y men together in medical practice and investicardinal mfzono f l o y ~ l fjoining gatim. In this requirement, faithfulness a m n g men-tl~e faitMulness that is normatbe for all the covenants or moral bands of life with life-gains specification for the primary relations peculiar to medical practice. (Ramsey 2 970:s)
It is not necessary for the story :I am try% to tell to trace the ways in which Ramsey worked out this principle in mdters of implied or proxy consent, What I hope is clear, however, is how Rarnsey quite persuasivetp constructed medicine and medical ethics in terms of his understmdh~gof the difference Christ has maclie. The imnp is that: it is unclear whether one needs Jesus-prcacbing oi the kingdom for such an ethic. Yet, like a doctor, who is more likely to find the diseases she has been trained to find,
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Rmsey made the primary moral issue in medical ethics the issue for one of the which his ethics was designed. He thereby made medifundamntal caniers of his understanding of Christian civilization. Ramsey" account of the ethos of medicine in Tlte lJntie~zfas Berso~zis so persuasive that it is easy to miss what he fails to treat. For exaxnple, there is no discussion of the aims of mediche, what health or illness means or how either i s determined, or the meaning and place of pain and suffering. Nor does he broach such issues as Ihe economic and poMical p=sumptions that do or shodd sustah mediche. That he did not deal with such matters can be a carping criticism, since no one c m deal with every aspect of a reality as complex as modcrn mecfjcine. Rut: the issue is not just that Ramsey did not deal with such issues, but that he could not, given his account of whaf: our ethics shodd be. I do not mean to suggest that such considerations are absent entirely from Xiamsey" ppresentatim of medical ethics. For example, his concern to free medicine from the secular understanding of death as unmitigated disaster is m indication that he sensed such issues mattered (1970:269). Yet deciding how to djstribute medical, resources in a society determjned by such a view of death is, according to R m s e y wirtzlally impossible. Indeed, he confesses he does not b o w hokv to answer questions concerning the determination oi priorities within mdical procedures or between me&cal procedures and other social priorities (1970:269). He cal:ls for mare thought to be givezz to the setthg of lnedical and soeial priorities, but observes that the expectation that this can be achieved is Bnally totalitarian, or else can only have a leveling or reduetionist effect on the practice of medicine and on the whole human enterprise. We may perfiaps know when priorities are decidedly out of joint; but no one knows exactly what are the joints, Civilization is simply not an arrangement of human activities in a set hierarchical order. A society is largely an unfocused meshing of human pursuits. (1970:275)
This view of society is, of course, the view created by the grcat liberal thewists, who assunled that no teleologicai acccrunt, either of the universe or of society, was intelligible. Freedom is alf th& is left in such a wmld, but it is a freedom governed by no purpose. Correlatively, consent is al) we have to protect us from one another's arbitrary desires. The efiics of such social: orders can be utilitarian or deontological, but both only &force and lcg2imate the more deterninatke social gresuppositions. No doubt in some of his moods Ramsey ~ s i s t e dthese presupposi:love gave hiPll insufficient resomes to tions, but his acclolmt of ~~eighbor name or challenge this world. 1 find it hard to see how it c d d be otherwise, given 1Camsey"s Constanthim commitments..Medicine, at least his account of medicke, co~z-
firmed his presumption that agape was in fact fnstantiated in Western culturc, In effect, medicine bceame Ramscfs church, as the contmitnent of doctors to patients remained more faithfuf to the ethic of Jesus than did the commitment of Christians, who were constantly tempted to utopian dreams fueled by utilitarian presu~nptions. Thus, Ramsey" account of mdicine is essentially conservative, Like most liberals, he did not seek to call into ~ e s t i o nthe ends of medicine. Ends, other than the care oE the pdient, were simply not in the purvkw of ethics. Mczdicine, like the state, particularly the democratic state, was simp?v assumed to be the embodiment of love-tranhrmed nah;lral law. In like mannet; rnedjejne was constituted by the deontological commitment he thought was at the heart of the Gospel as well as our civilization, I am aware that Ramsey's position is more complex than the description "deontolngical""can comprehend, but I find it hard to see how Ramsey takes us beyond what Mibank has identified as deontologicalli:beralism (Miibank 1989). That such is the case s h o d not be swrisint;, gken the tradition of Christian ethics in which Rmsey slood. Clhristian ethics was destined to become medical ethics. After ail, mediche was and is our last pubfic.
Medical Ethics After Ranrsey M e r e has all this gotten us? Nat very far, I am afraid. However, I hope it helps us understand why Rmsey, in spite of his strung declarations to be working as a Christim ethickt, prltpared the way for the dewelopments that Custalson lamnt-S-that is, the subordination of theological ethics to medlcal ethics. If the social, gospel prepared the wa)i for the Christian social e&icist to become a social scientist with a liifference, in many ways the more orthodox Ramsey prepared the hvay for the Christian ethicist to become a medical etJnlcist with a difference, The difference was the vague thedogicd presun-tptions that do no serious intellectual work other than explaining, perhaps, the rnotivations of the ethicist. As a result, Christian ethicists contjnue to leave the world as they f a d it. Why they might conceive of their task differently is a story for another day.
This essay was originally prepared for presentation at the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of the institute of Religion in Houston, 'Texas. An earlier t~eniion of this chapter appeared in Clzri-istin~t Bioefhics (March 1995). Reprinted by permission. 2 . Chrisfia~izirzy: fke Social Order was WaXter Rauschenbwch%second book. The first was Clzristi~rsnify and the Social Crisis (1907). The title of the second book sug-
The Case of k u l Rantsq gests the extraordinary presumption that the sclcial order could actually be jf"Christianlzed."" 2, Alasdair MacIntyrefs account of the role of the expert in Affcr Wrtuc rightly argues that ""pedictability"' becomes the legitimating category far rule in modern sacial orders. The distinction between "5act"hnd ""valuef'is not epistemologically required but rather is produced by the necessity to create social scientists that can ensure outcomes. The only difficulty as MacTntyre argues, is that fortune cannot be eliminated from human af-fairs(Macfntyrr?2 9%:9%108), 3. T do not mean to suggest that informed consent is unirnpc~rtant,but T think the account of autonomy that is used tcr shape accounts of infc~rmedconsent distorts its use in medicine. For my attempt to prc>videa quite dif"k2rent account of informed consent based on friendship, see my Sufteritzg Presctzce: Thcologz'cat Re.flecfbns an Medicine, flze Mentally IjLtndZcapped land trlze Ckzirch (1986). 4. h the preface to Ethics at the Edges of Lye Ramey emphasizes: ""fo not hesitate to write as a Christian ethicist. No more did X hesitate in my first major book on medical ethics to invoke ultimate appeal to scripture or theology and to warrants such as righteousness, faithfulness, canons of loyalty the a w e m m sanctity of human life, humankind in the image of God, ht~lygrc>und,hesed (steadfast cc~~renant love), agape (or "charity"), as these standards are understmd in the religiom of our culturc;3,Judaism and Chris~anjty""amsey 1978:xiii). He continues, "iggo too far in apolcjgy. Such a reader will nat find most of the fdlowing analysis to be parochially Xilnited to a religious outlook. This is true far two reasom. In the first place, the Judeo-Christian tradition decisively influenced the origin and shape of medical ethics down to our own times. Unless an author absurdly proposes an entirely new ethics, he is bound to use ethical principles derhed from our past religious culture. In short, mdical ethics nearly to date is a concrete case of Christian 'casuistryfthat is, it cc>nsistsof the outlooks of the predominant Western religions brought dc~wplto cases and used to de-termiple their mst~lutictrt.. . . Whether medical ethics needs religicjus foundation, and whether it wilt be misshapen without it, awaits demonstration+~r, more likely the test of time. I do not mde&ake to argue the point, The humanist no more than I should want our opposite positiom tested at such fateful cc~sts.I do say however, that the notion that an individual human life is absofutely mique, inviolable, irreplaceable, nonhtt7lrchangeabXe, not substitutable, and not meldable with other lives is a notion that- exists in our civiliza-t-ionbecause it is Christian; and that idea is so fmdamental in the edifice of Western law and morals that it cannot be remo>vedwithout bringing the whote house down. in the secr~ndplace, whether our moral outltmkf;are inspired by a humnistic vision of life or by a religious perspective, there may be a convergence be&-een these points of departure on the plane of special moral problems" (xiv). 5, Protestant liberal theology comes in many shapes and sizes. By suggesting that Ramsey remained a Protestant liberal, I am primarily locating his co>nversation partners, i.e., the Niebuhrs. Ramsey" theological views were in many ways quite "conservative," but the structure of his t>wnwork assumed the results of Protestant liberalism. He, of course, read and appreciated Badh, but apart fmm employing the Barthian distinction between the external and internal cotrenant in C1zristz"ntz Etjrim and tl-ze Sit-IIZ( h m s e y 4964), Kamsey never struggled with the methodotogical implications of Barth" work.
6. Ramsey returned to these cmsiderations in Spmk Upfor lust War or P"ac@sm, where he even suggested that "the hour cometh, and now is, when the practices accepted within Methodist hospitals may require the removal of the name Wethodist' from them-if we are, with our physicians and health-care prufessionals, resolved to be the church of Jesus Christ" "amsey 1988:445). 7, My account of Rarnsey" position owes much to D. Stephen Long's work, A revised and expanded version of his dissertation has just been published under d The Etl'ziet; I?( Pazal 15ntnsey. i arn inthe title Tragedy! Tradr'fiou,n ~ Pansformisnz: debted to Dr. Long for his criticism of this essay (Long 1993). 8. In a later essay "The Natuw of Medical Ethics," he put the matter even more strongiy: "In an age, however, when ancient landmarks have been remwed, and we are tying to do the unthinkable, namely, build a civilization with an agreed civil tradition and upon the absence of ;a moral conxnsus, everyone needs to be an ethicist: to the extent of his capacity fc~rreflection and his desire to be and to know that he is a as on able person" (Ramsey 2973:15). 9. Basic Clzristi~nEtizics was originally published in 1950. This new edition contains a foreword by Skepl~enLong and me. 10. In many wayflit-zeModem Moralists is Rarnsey's best book. See, far example, Scott Davis, "'Et Qutd Vis Fac': Paul Kamsey and Augustinian Ethics," for a wonderful account of the significance of this book (Davit; 1991). 14. In his fine article on Ramsey, "P~aulKamsey" Task: Some Methodological Clarifications and Questions," Paul Camenisch notes that Ramsey is not clear about the origin, authority, and the content of the covenants under which we live. He suggests that Rarnsy vacillates beween the view that the covenants originate at the will of the agents and the notion that the covenants operate outside the agent" wMi and are obligatory in themselves. 1 think Ramsey never thought this ambiguity needed resolution, since he tl~ougfitthe crucial issue was the creation of a livable sclciaf order that respeded the individual (Camenisch 19'74).
Ref lercrnces Beauchamp, T., and Childress, J. lli394. Pri~zciptcusof Biomediml EZhics, New York: Oxfol-cl University 13ress, Buftmann, R. 1958. Jeszts Christ and Myflzofogy.New York: Charles %riibnerfs%>ns. Carnenisch, P. 1974, ""Paul Warnsy" Task: %me MethodoXot~icalClarification and and Society: Essays in the Etkics @Paul, ed. Rarnsey J. JohnQuestions." h I[n~oz?e son and D, Smith, 67-%, Missoula, Mont.: % b l a r s Press. Davis, S. 1991. "'"E Quod Vis Fac': Paul Ramxy and Augustinian Ethics." "rnal of Religkus Ethics 49,2 (Fall). Gustafson, J, 1975. Can Ethics Be Christiatz? Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . 49%. "Theology Confronts Technology and the Life Sciences." Commo~tWCQE 105 (June 16):38&392, Hauerwas, S. 1986. Sllflering Presence: Tlzeofogical ReFeclions on Mcdici~ze,the Mentally Handicapped, and trlte CIIZZI~GJZ. Motre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. tong, D, Stephen, 4993, Tragedy, Traditiurz alzd Transformism: The EZhics of Paul Rnms q . Boulder, Colo.: Weshriew Press.
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MaeIntyre, A, 1984. After Virtue, Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. Milbank, 1, 4989. ""Between Purgation and Illumination: A Critique of the Theology of Right." h CClist, EClzics and Pagedy: Essays i ~ zHolzor of Donald MneKi~lnun, ed. Kenneth Surin, 161-196. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ramsy, P. 2 946. ""A Theory af Social Action." "cr'nl Acl-io~23,2 (October), . 1961. War nnd llle Clzristian Csnsck~zce:Hozu Shall Moderr2 War Be Condrjcfed Jztstly? Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. . 1962. Nirze Mudern Muralists. EngXewoad Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Half. 1978, Tke iocalicrzt ~s Pwsorz. New Haven: Yale University Press. . 1973. "The Nature of Medical Etl~jcs."h The Tegclling cf Medicnl Efltics, ed. R, Veatch, W. Cayline, C. Mc~rgan,Hastings-on-Hudsont N.U.: Hastings Institute Pubtications. 1978. Efhics at the Edges o?f-Lqe.New Haven: Yale University Press. . 1982. "Tradition and Reflection in Christian Life" Perkins fozlrnal r?f Tfzeology 25,2 (Winter-Spring). . 1988. Speak Upfor Jzlst- War and I;3ac$sm. University Park: 13emsylvania State Universily Press. . 1990, Letter to Hauerwas. In D. Steven Long, "Whittling Off the Rough Edges: Paul Rarnsey" Use of"Just War Norms as TI7eor~1;"".D.. Dissertation, Duke University, Durham, N.C. . 1993, [l9501, Basic Christian Efi'zics. LouisviXXe, My.: Wstminster ifohn Knox Press. Rauscichenbusch, VV; 2 "307,Clzristknity a d the Social Crisis. New tlork: Macmillan, . 1912. Gl~ristianizingtlze Social Ordel: New Ycfrk: Macmillan.
PART TWO
"Re-Turszing": Gainilzg an Orientation, Gatherilzg Resources
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H o w t o G o ~ n en Yotr Know You Are Goiuqp t o Be Misulzderstood, or How Paul E;Tolmer Ruined My Life, or Making Sense of Paul Holmer
No essAY
SHOULD HAVE THREE TITLES, particularly a paper as short as this one, but I could not resist. Each title suggests the importance oi Paul Holmer for my own work, so I decided to use all of them. Moreover, the titles are htercomected. Paul Halmer h e w how to 90 011 even when no one understood the hportance, in Wttgensteh, of knowing how to go on, I did not set out to imitate the misunderstandings Holmer generated, but in m n y ways it has wobked 01.11that way exaetly because of what he has taught me. What he has taught me is that you do not need a themy to know how to go on, a d indeed, tl-te chances are that if you have a theory; you probably will nt?P b o w how to go on. 1x1short, he has taugfnt me how to make sense of being a Christian in a manner that has f o ~ v e ruined r my life. Accordingly, I want to use this opportunity to suggest why Paul Hol~neras a teacher and a writer has been SO important lfor me and lfor mmy others as well. tlcrlmer may well find it surprising, if not disturbing, to discover that he has had such an jnfluence on me. After all, Holmer knew me d y as a diwhit-y school student. He did not serve on my doctoral committee, In my flrst year at Yale Divinity School, I took his course m Eerkegaard and, subsevemtly, his two-sernester course called "Fhilosoyhical mealogJS" In the latter, if Z remember correctly we read Wi.ttgenstei.P7"sRlz~eand Bmzurz Nooks and Philosqhiiiul Inuestigatim in the first and second semesters respectively. Despite the n m e of the conrse, t do not remenber that we did any ""philosophical theology." I became a shdent of Holmer through these courses even though at the time I did not h o w that t was bccomhg one. Of cowse, it is not clear that be ever wanted to cultivate a following or surround bimself with shtdents, especially ones like me. Indeed, I hawe no idea how one could
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Makizzg Sense of ?@uZ Hobrzer
go about becoming one of Holmer% sbdents, since he made it impossithat the student ble for m y studel~tto think he chaxnpioned a "positio~~" mi&t either accept or reject. Instead, what one leamed from H h e r was a kind of attention that comes from knowing when to be quiet or, alternatively, h~owlngwhen no&ing more can be said. That Holmer espouses no position is, I suspect, the reason that some may think he lacks influence. Even though he radicaIIy altered my life, I do not think the= is a footnote anywhere in my work that reads "as we have learned horn Paul Holmer." That is nut so peculiar as it may at first appear. After all, foohoting H o h e r would be just as odd as foohnoting Wittges~steiato the effect that the latter aliegedly has a "theory about meaning as use." At the very least, 1owe P a d Holrner much for his saving me from the presumption that Wttgenstein had any theory about meaning, or anything else for that matter, In this regard, Holmer has been wonderfully successful, like Wittgenstein, in avoidirzg a following. Testirnany to that fact is that we hawe not as yet seen, frlr example, a paper in the Bzclletin of the Arznzral Meeting of the Anzcvicalz Academy of Religill~~ called ""Paul Hoher: A Postmodemist Prior to Postmodernism." Not only was I not a sbdent of Paul Holmelr, I seem to remember that our relationship did not start off all that well. I had come to divhity school, not to study for the ministry but to investigate whether Christianity could be made to conform to the challenges of modernity. I wmted to h o w if one could be both intellectually clever m d a Christian. Tn short, 1 was a "smart-ass." Accordingly, 1 thought my task was to determine how ~ l i g i o u claims s could be made tme by finding a better theory. Such theories, I assumed, would be supplied by philosophy. I was a perfect exemplification of the kind of person FioXrner describes in Theol-. o n n~zdthe Scient$c Stzrdy
[email protected], namely, one who conhses an interest in being a Christian with an interest about Christian things (TSSII, 16).' 1recall that we had the fnllowing exchange numerous times. FIOL~MER: ""There's
a distinction to be drawn; learning about the things of the faith is not the same as learning to be faithful. Butl if that seems too patent, it might be said that theology is the kamhtg of faith, not the learnjng ahorrt faith. Thus ltle distjnction is drawn with the help of two prepositions, of and ahuzlt," (TSSR, 32) MUERWAS: But where. do 1find this lmguage "of"? FIQLMER: YOU read the Bible. HAUERWAS: But some people tell me to read this part of the Bible and other pea* tell me to read that part of the Bible. FIOLMER: Wefl, you need to read a larger context. HAUERWAS: But some people tell me that this is the larger context, and other people tell me that that is the larger context. W ~ a do t I do thesz?
M ~ k i n gSense I?J:k z t l Holmer. MOLMEII:
145
Yt)u need to ask y o u pastor.
Some people tell me 1 &odd ask this pastor and olfner people tell me l shoulld ask that pastor. How do I know which pastor to ask? FIQLMER: Stmley; are you sure you are praying e ~ ~ o u g h ? d by the way, what is it that you're afraid of? FrArrERtziAS:
Slowly but surely l begm to understand why prayer might make a difierence. In the class on Kierkegaard, I had dimly caught KicrIcegaard" hsistence that it is not so much a question of what Christians believe as haw they believe, As Holmer puts it in %tlc,lon and the Scietrt@c Stady of Religion, "'It is a m o t question not only "iohat.people believe but also how they believe; for theological believing is largely a matter of how not whatf"(TSSX, 89). But I confess I thought this emphasis on the "howf' mi@t entail being religious and at that time that was the last thing l desired! Yet Holmer was also slowly crihanghg my idea of what it meant to be religious. He did so by iorcing us to read Wttgenstein.' 1 was learning that to become "religious is, in part, a matter of learning a new languagef' f T,$Sf(, 163). 0:course, to learn that is only to be placed at the beginning; for we must be de-schooled from the presumption, fostered by much. of modem theology, that there is some&ing wrong with first-order reiigious speech. 'That meals that we must get over the pres~~lnption that if our religious language is not working, we must find s o m way to translate it into another hnguage. I began to untferstand that ff you needed to translate religious language, something had gme wrong-not with the hguage but with the speaker. FXollner once again captures this well: When Christianti speak of Jesus as the truth, of the Christian life as the true lifef of the Bible as Godrs truth, they surely do not intend to say that becorning a Christian is a matter of learning true sentmces. . . . Truth in the religious sense is not a quality of sentences at all. Religion and Christianity very clearly seek to make men true subjeds. Religious truth is not emncttative-it is denotative, indicating always that that- quality which men can aspire to, for tbjective truths about that quality are nat that quality. There can be no substitute for being the truth, no matter what the quantity of the truth we rna y possess." C)f course, Molmer's statemem.t.does not man t-hat questions of trulh do not matter; instead, it is a reminder that people, not sentences, make truthful clahns. Our claims, mortrover, are shaped by the way we have learned to speak, m d our speecrih is constituted by concepts that are capacitiese4What it means to be a self is therefore more like the naming of a set of skills than it is a ""M/hat,'"which should not be surprising once we reme~nberthat the self is not SO much a name as a relation.
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Makizzg Sense of ?@uZ Hobrzer
Big wlrrds like "God," """sin,"m d ""salvation" are likewise best thcrught of as capacities, that is, achievements. That means, as Holmer says in Making CI~uistiunSense, ""IMost of us have hardly any concept of God at all."WH this began to make me understdnd why Holmer kept i~~quiring whether I was praying enough. hdeed, it m d e m wonder whether X actually ought to go to church for, as he =minds us, "the use of religious language r e q u i ~ spatkipation in the rdigious life and this involves exposure to the commmity of beiijevers" (TSSR, W9). I suspect that he mi&t now think the word "exposuref'far too weak. :Piiever&eless,if he is right that fi~eologicalwork is unintelligible when divorced from the practices of the church, what are the implications for how and where theology is done? Some might think Holmer has used powerfral philosophicd &:herapies to underwrite a kind of confessionalism.,'That is another way of saying that he has become a fideistic, sedarian tribalist, But that surely does not follow. Holmer is not in any way committed to the view that Christians can belime just a n y t h i ~ ~they g wmt. Indeed, he would not h o w what such a description of Christian practices would m e n , since to be a Christim requires trahing in a very definite set of '"heficfs." brthermcrre, part cJf the problem is the very hnguage of belief itself; too often belkfs sound like "things""toward which X can assume an attitude. That is why, fetllowing McCl.endm, I resorted to the lmguage of convictim as a reminder that any belief that matters is never something d i f f e ~ nf t rom who X am," Yet the presumption persists that Holmer is one of the sources of what is frequently called Y ' Vae l fideism.'"uch a position, it is alkged, attempts to insdate Christian convictions from philosophiral m d scientiiic chatlenge, Not only that, but the Christim convictions so protected are of the most conservative brand. That nothing Holmer has said would entail such characterizations orlly seems to jnvi,te, from those intent on espoush g the virtues of "theory," the idea that he must be trying to protect Christian practice from external challenge. That such accusations persist raises the queslion of how one is to go on i,n the face of sttch persistent mismderstandbg. One oE the ways I think Holmer has tried to go m is by helping us forget certain ki.nds of questions-yuestiorw like 'Wow can we determine the meaning of God lmguage?" Tobe sure, such questions are assumed funeiamental if theology is to be a =spectable acadernfc subject matter. k t he refuses to prjvilege such questions, particularly in the abstract, because to try to answer such questions abstractly can d y distort the character of theology. h contrast, I irhink Holmer has tried to remind us that thealow is the attempt to display the k n d of lives necessary if we are to speak well oi God. But how can that be taught as a subject? Indeed, if you think of the-
M ~ k i n gSense I?J:k z t l Holmer.
147
dogy as assembling a series of reminders about our speech, then it is not at all clear what it would man for such a discipline to be "t;ystematk.'" What work is Ieft fur the theologim to do, for example, if the concept of God is learned &rough the telling of the stories of the Old and New Testaments (TSSR, 45)? I have long wondered if my answer to the question, What work is Ieft fnr the theologian? is differcsnt from H o l m ' s . CM course, such a vestion may be misshapen, but I ask it as a way to press him to tell me more about the relation between the "what" n a n d the "how." HOlmer is right: The ""what" can never be abstracted from the ""how." But the relation is surely complex. For instance, I take it to be one of thc most momentous decisions by Christians about the "what" toclude the Old Testament as Christian Scripture. "That is not simpZy a "resdt" we can assume. We must certainly regard it as gift, but a gift that must be constantly reclaimed if the church is to live faithfully. The Christian attitude toward and persecution of the J e w thmugh history is an indication that we have not hithfully renegotiated that "what.'" am not suggesting that Holmer lacks resources to consider this kind of question, but X remain unclear about what the sort of work that some Christim communities call ""dctrhe" &does or should Wsjng the phrase ""some Christian communi.ties" is, of course, to put the questitm (or questions) in another way. Holmer o&en seems to presume that there is agreement m o n g Christians concernjng the "what." He is right to do so because :Ithink a phrase like '"the Christian tradition" does name the ongoing consensus we rightly call cathoic... Yet 1 am not sure Holmer shares that presumption-he is just so Protestmt. In short, I wish that I more ftllly understood the ways in which what X learned from him help me better negotiate doctrinal and ecclesitrlogical isues. C)f course, my kvay of trying to '%have" a position-&at is, a place to exptore such questions while at the same tirne being paid for such expforations-was to become an ""ethicist." 1 still remember being confronted by Holmer on his learning that I was plaming to do a Ph.D. in Christim Etfics at Yale. He made it very clear to me that there was no such subject and that to thti extent that I was successfuZ in pursuifig such a subject, I was goi.ng to waste my life. What was I to do, since I had decidcd to go in that direction because of what I had learned from him and, X should also add, from 'Julian Hartt? I had decided to become an ethicist, ugly as the word is, because FIolmer had convinced me that Kierkegaarb had rediscovered "the pragmatic siS;-nificancc;of the person of Jesus Christ" (TSSR, 203). 1 tboul;ht that ""doing ethics'bas a way to explicate the practical significance of learning to talk well as a Christian, X assumed, moreover, that ethks was a way to explore the truthful character of Christian speech, or better, how
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Christim speech rc.quirt?s us to develop the skittti tc:,be tnathful. At the very least, ethics seemed to name the investigation of how we were to live. In order to pursue this task, I was foxed to provide a diffewnt account of "ethics" than that supplied by the prevailirzg Kantian (and liberal) paradigms. I had the good luck to be at Uale, where the influence of H. R:icharci Niebrthr p"""sisted.* I m s not particubrly taken with Niebuhr's "radicrai monotheism," "pressed as X was by Rarth, but f did l e m from Nieb&r (and Gustafson) that history and the commmities that constituted memory matter morally. So focused, I discovered the significance of Aristotle's account of virtue, bbelieving as X did Chat the virtues named those habits (qualit.ies) necessary for us to be agmts of memory. It was htng after I left W e that I even becarne aware that H o b e r had begcln to teach a course on the virtues. I should like to think that is an exampk of "great minds thinking alike," but I suspect the discovery of the importance of the v i r b s for understanding and living morally was the result of followjng hinls in Cliittgenstein and hjs followers, such as Anscornbe. I confess I had no idea that these motif-virtw, narrati:vc, memory, vision, and description-would force me to be so . . . well-Christ& I have, accordingly, a l w y s felt something of a fraud. I certainly do not think of myself as much of a Christian, but then the very way I have been taught to think means that it is not all that important how I (or anyone else) Chinlc or feel about who I am, More imporlant ir; that we make our lives available and answerable to those whose lives are more faithful than our thoughts. Such words sound like brery bad advice to many. mestians multiply; such as, How do you know you are in the right comuni'c)i?VVe are not in just one community I am told, but our lives are constituted by multiple communities and narratives. Does that not need to be acknowledged? Moreover, how arc we to test the truth of the many narratkes that claim us? m e n all is said and done, one c m be asked, Are you not a ""enfessionalist.." who si.mply prefers Chistianity? Though my questioners and critics will not believe it, 1 have assiduously and conscientiousty tried to respond to such interrogations. Rcry responses are, X fear, seldom satisfyying becalase f find that often I camot respond. in a manner that legitimates the presuppositions behind their questions. For example, I wrote '*ATale of Two Stories: On Being a Christian and a Texan" as a kind of response to the observation that we are never constituted by just me story.-ere I tried concretely to show how two (at least) narratives could come illto conflict for the Christian and how such a c d i c t could be adjudicated and, more important, lived. k t as far as I know#this essay stiled no questions, since my "answer" did not show how such cmflicts codd, ill principle, be solved d. m a t c m I say? I simply knocv of no way in which that can be done ""in principle."
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Nor do I know how one h o w s /'in principle" that one is in the right community. VVhat I am sure about is that it is not by some "choice." Far any siwificant participation in a community like the church, "choice" is a far too rnisleaditlg description. Again, I tried to address ques.ticms about communities in essays like ""01 Taking Religion Seriously:Z"he Chatlenge of Jmestown."""Once more, I must report a cornplete lack of success. X realize this hck is partly my fault, as most do not think questions of tmth arc rightfttlXy considered in cliscussions concerning Jonestown or even suicide, But that is where I thixlk questions regarding the nature of communities, truth, and why it makes ail the diffewnce haw and what God we worship are unavoidably interrelated. It is my contention, in other words, that a tradition without the description "muicicle" (or worse, without the prohibition of suicide) can be neither truthfut nor good. C)f course, a commmnity with such a description may be perverse in other ways or use the description perversely, but such judwents can be made only within prac"cices of sufficknt narrative thickness and complexity of which suicide is one. n o s e are some of the ways I have tried. to work, ""t do ethics," as a cover for t;heological reflec-tion, Yet I have to achowledge that Holmer was right, I have not been able to get away with it! h spite of my best efforts, certain ""preCticta.blembut misleading questions continue to be asked, such as What is the relationship betwet-m fieology and ethics? No matter how many times you suggest to those who raise such queries that the very presumption that there must be a reIatimc;hip between being religious and being moral reproduces a mistake, the question returns. I would like to blame Holmer for at least some of my woes. He is partly responsible for the fact that I have had to endure this contilruing misunderstanding-but then it is not redly his fault that I tried, by becoming an et-hieist, to make an end run aromd the establishmetnt and got caught! If H d m r is partidly rcsponsibIc for my continued frustrations, it is becaux he has b o r n plenty cJf his own, After ail,he has had to live with his ocvn f o r m of"being nnisundcrstood, so wfiy should I expect to do any better? FXolrner has a way of saying sim.ple things simply, so that we miss their sipificance. Take, for example, his sugge"iion, yuoted above, that mast of us have hardly any concept-of God. Such a claim cannot help but appear mystifying to tFrose schooled on apologetic strategies desiped to make "religionf% anavoidable aspect of the human condition. However, rightly understanding that claim requires, according to Holmer, a sense of participation in a community that transforms ollr lives, lives that would be anhteiligihle if the God we wors:hip were not to exist. Yet most people want trhejr God (or gods) to be avail.able with mediatinn. Une mi@t expect that Holmer would therefore take a quite critical perspective on most foms of Pmtestmt liberal theolog~i.Yet he has charithle things to say, for ins.t.ancc, about Rudolf Bult-m . He notes that in one
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seems to be saying that the hntguage of the BiHe is not which is surely a good thing to say But when Bultmann goes m to remark that biblicd language is mythological, I-lolmer observes that that is not d y not a good thing to say but it is an umecessary thing to say. 'Tt is not really necessary nor illurnhatkg to say this" "SSR, 191). Think about that: Such claims are not ""necessarymwhich is another way of sayiz~gthey are simply not ""ilfuminating.'" What a wo~~derfully exact way to put. the ma.t.ter! In order to understand biblical, language, we do not need to cmgage in speculation about what is ""myth." We do not need to try to figure out M.lhet.ha Jesusbesurrection is a historical or sernhistorical claim, m d SO on. It is not as if we are tsyin.g to avoid appropriate questions: Rather, H o h e r reminds us that ncrthing is more misleading than to try to answer a misshapen question. That, I take it, is part of the reason it: is so hard to make sense of him. He wants to force us to do the hard work that makes it possible to put simple things simply. 1 cannot pretend that I have learned that lesson well. I am still possessed by more theories than are good for me. Yet :I &odd like to think that the lessms I learned from Holmer about siznplicity hawe, over the years, become habits. The significance of habits is, to be sure, moth= lesson 1have learned from h h . This is a lesson, 1might add, that has everything to do with why prayer and theology cannot be separated. Such a lesson may malte it hard for anyone who would seek to make theology just anoth.er subject in th curriculum of the modern university. Although there are many who have yet to l e m this hard lesson and who thus persist im so misconstruing theology, that is no great: loss. For FIolmer" lessons make behg a theologian a. happy task. Whatever 'kenterf9theremay be to my work, it has in some small way something to do with his rernhder, ecrihohg Guardhi: namely; that fai& is extraordinarily cmplex. By saying that faith is not merely this ar that, Guardini has succeeded in cmvincing his readers that it is both this and that and much more besides. To remit the beliefs by retaining the maralityt as did Matthew Arnold and so many others who wanted to be up to date, appears to be a bit of fatuousness an the part of the learned. Tb admit the beliefs and tcr talk af the ways of God while living the pedestrian ways of men is the faithlessness of the faithful. Faith is, even for modern men, a new kind of integriQ. Becauw it is integrity it is afsa rare, Faith is no more out of date than is integrity. Cuardini" diatribe against the world as well as the church is to the effect: that this integrity is na fanger properly discerned to be what it is. Because men are replete with the diversiv of pcjwers and drives there is a continuing case for: the ordering af men. Cuardini is bold enaugh to assert that the new Life in Christ is a kind of whafcsness and unity which is not of men but of God. ('TSSR, 112)
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Just as I l o l m r has taught us to see how crazy we \l\r'~Uld be to live in the world without the virtues," so some of ZES shaped by him have tried to show how we would be crazy not t s live our lives as Christians. The little success we have haci in that endeavor w e s everything to P a d Halmer, who conthues to remhd us that nothhg is more destructive for Christian wihess than the pedestrian ways many of us who wouXd be Christian live and think. Notes I. Paul Holmer, Tbcott7gy and ftw Scietzt$f;;eSfzrdy of Religiorz (Mimeapolis: 7: 5. Denison, 2961). Page references to this work will appear in the text preceded by TSSX, 2. i make no pretense to being a Wittgensteinian scholar, but I cannot (nor would I even want to) disown the influence Wittgenstein has had on my tzrork, I find, howeveu; that I: am often at odds with those who claim to be using Wittgen.stein in thw1~)gyHe is often used to support what 1 can describe only as a kind of "Enpistic idealism of constructivism," 'which I find to be diametrically opposed to his spirit. Xn this respect, 1 find Cora Diamond" account of Wittgenstein in The Rwtt'stic Spirit: Mrilfgenstein, Phl'losopliy, arzd the Mind (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995) much closer to my way of reading Wittgenstein. Raymond Gaib nc>testhat one of Wittgenstein"s central fesmns is to warn us "against a false wnse of depth and against a false sense of appearances." Good and Ez~il:An Absolute C o r ~ c ~ t i ~ n (London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 169. 3. 13aut Holmer, ""Christianityand the Truth,'" Lzdttlller~~ Qzicdrterly 9, 1 (February 1957):40. 4. Rchard Rollefsan, "Thinking with hierkegaard and Wittgenstein: The PhiloDiss., Graduate Theologicajl Union, sophical Theology of Paul 1,.Holmer" (P(PI-\.l>. 4994), p. 138. 5. PauX Holmer, Making Glwisfi~nSense (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984), p. 118. 6.1 am referring to James William McClendon and James M. Smith, Convicliorzs: De&si~?gReligious Relativism, rev. ed, (blley Frrrge, Pa,: Trinity Press International, 3 994). '7. David Keck wonderi-ully exhibits my attitude toward doctrine, He notes W O reasons h r revering doctrine: ""First, as a historian, I: am astounded by its endurance thrcrugh the centuries, Many impressive thoughts have not sur~iived, and many that have, have Icjst all power tcday. %cmd, and more personally I am thankful for doctrine because 1 believe that only through the fa'aithfuitransmission of the church's traditional teaching is it possible for me to have hope for my mother; for my father, her primary caregiver; and for the rest of the world wKch suffers from sunrise to sunset. Hence, as I use the term, orthodoxy is not only about doctrine or guiding principles; it also denotes a kind of existence to be desired in itself. Orthodoxy is a longing to align one" s3wn life and memories with the life and memories of the church." Forgetting Whme We Are: Alzheitner's DU-ismse and Ithe Love c$ God (Nashvit le: Abingdon, 19961, g. 82.
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8, H. K,Niebuhr died the year before 1 arrived at Yale to begin what was then called a B.D. 9. That essay is the first chapter af my Ctzriskialz Exiske~zceToday: Essays opt C/zzirdt, World, and Living i1.2Betz~peelz(Durham: Labyrinth Press, 2988>,pp. 25-46. CIzriiskiiz~zElxisken~Today is now published by Baker Books. 2 0. That essay appears in my A g n i ~ ~the s t Natia~zs:W Qntzd ~ Surz7ivnl in a Liberal Society (Notre Dame: University of Ncttre Dame Press, 1992), pp. 91-1 017. Ag~ksC the Nations was first published by Wimton Press in 1985. I am indebted to Rev. Dr. Samuel Wells E c ) ~ reminding me what I was trying to dct in that essay- See his "How the Church Performs the Jesus Story: Irnprclvising an the Theological Ethics of Stantey Hauerwas" (P(PE.I.P).Thesis, University of Durham, England, 4995), pp. 78-81. 2 1. Holmer, Maki~zgChl.z'st ia:nn Sense, p. 72.
PART THREE
"Journeying On": Life on the Road, or the Long Journey Homeward
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10 Muvdochian Muddles:
Can We Get Thvoagh Them If God Does Not Exist?
On Stealing f ram Murdoch "I can only choose within the world I can seef in the moral smse of "see' which implies that clear visioll is a result of moral intal;inatim and moral effort" (S, 37).Wow I love that sentence from Iris MurdocWs TJze Savere i g ~ t yof Good. Actually, that is to put the matter in a misleading fashion. Not only do X love that sentence, X have made a career out of &at sentez~ce. Tndetzd, I sometimes wonder if I have ever said anything of importance fiat was not stolen from Dame Iris. That I have stolen much from Murdoch is wit;hout questioll, but the question I wish to hvestigate in this essay is whether f have, as a Christian theologian, been wise inhavjng done so. The issue can be nicely put by reading Vemm Bourke's review of my book V i s h and Mrtue: Essays irr CIrrisfliln Ethical ReFecfio~z."e review is but a paragraph long and I cite the whole so you c m get its full Ravor: The articles gathered here have been published before in varic~ustheological journals. Mauemas studied at Southwestern University and is now director of graduate studies in theology at Notre Dame. His point of view seems to be non-dmominationalXy Christian: when he speaks of "the church,'" he means ail of Christendom. Ranging ower a broad field, the essays pay some attention to the general character of truly Christian ethics but show most interest in specific prsbterns such as abortion, euthanasia, treatment of the retarded, and pacifism. On these issues I-iauerwas displays wide reading QchieRy in liberal Protestant and left-wing Cathafic moralists) and an open mind. Indeed his mind is sc~ open that his cwn views are rawly apparent. On aboritim, for instance, he criticizes Callahan, Ramsey, and Grisez, says the c=s>nceptus may be viewed as human, but then concludes that other accounts are possible. There is a latent anti-intellectualism running throughczut, Haue~wasis not convinced that human understanding can solve the difficult moral problems. The ""trision'hentioned in the title and at various
points owes a good deal to Iris Murdoch's estheticism. Hc>wa n avowed atheist, like Miss MzxrdocFt, can contribute to Chris"cian ethics is an enigma."
I confess that when I read this rt.wievv; now almost t w n t y years ago, I thought this guy had to be crazy. Of course a Christian theologian can use an atheisp-particularly one as subtle as Miss Murdoch. Bourke had apparently nwer read Murdoch and therefore had no apprt-ciation for her htriguhg account of the ontological argume~~t. Moreover, Aquhas used Aristotle in his work, which prwides good precedence for theolstjianskusing in their own work thinkers who were. not Christian theists. 1thought that the differencesbetween Murdoch m d me had little to do with her atheism. :Instead., my disagrcemnts with her, if in fact they existed, had much more to do with her Platonism versus my Aristotelian propensities. I confess I was not anxious then or Later to explore that: difference, but 1suspected it also had something to do with her attraction to and my disike of mysticism. (2uik simply, I thought the difference between us could be stated as follows: Whereas Dame Iris contends that "we develop language in the context of looking"' (S, 33), J was convinced (anci I thought I had learned this from Wittgenstein) that we can only see what we have been trahed to see through learnhg to say" k t even in that mspect E was not sure how different our views we=, since she emphasized that truthful seeing, that is, seeing that is able to combhe "just modes of judgment m d the ability to comect: with an hcreased perception of detail," c m e s to those formed by the virtue of honesty (S, 96). No douht, as Murdoch so ably depicts in many of her novels, such honest seeing often must be forced on us, s~lnkas we arc inour .fantasies. Nonetheless, a travljng in any skll has the potential to transform our imagination so that we can see more truthfully. .'fb be sure, Murdoch's virtues never seem as ""hbitual" as we Aristotelians think they need to be, but that seems like a mislor matter." Yet now, after twenty years of steaiing from Dame Iris, I am not as cmvineed as I once was that Kourke's '"enigma" deserves little, if any, scrutiny. m e n 1first read Miss Murcioch, 1was so impressed that her enemfes were also my enerrties that I may hawe failed tc:,appreciate the fact that having common enemies does not necessarily make one friends. For example, in Tkr Ss;iterelift.ltynf Good she quite rightly observes that Htlme and Kant, each in his oMin way abhor history (26). I to& that to be an ope~nillgfor Christian theological discourse. Now I a n not so s ~ ~that re I was right. As 1 will try to show, because we Christians are truly convinced of our creatureli~~ess, we are more ""histolncal" thm Dame Iris believes is wise.: 'The redemption that Chistians believe God b offered is not a '"mystical" pssjbilit)., but one that is made possible only because of and through the Jews.
I realized, upon ~ a c h j n gthe next to last page of Metaphysics as u Grkidrr to M m l s , that 1 kvolllid have to jnterrogak my adherence to Dame Iris's work. M a t bothered me was not her suggestion that "'we need a theology which can continue without God'" (M, 511).Such a claim comes as no surprise for those familiar with her kvork. Rather, what bothered me there, but also earlier in the book, was her positive appreciation of Paul Tillich" work, Her friend Tillich is my s w m enemy-thus the impebs to investigate the "enigma," I wish to be dear about how X am approaching this task. My primary purpose is not to critic-ize Murdoch. My intention, rather, is to explore Murdoch's accomt of why she believes that- we can no longer believe in the Christian God. I do so in order to test the extent to which her rich hsights can be appropriated by those of us who work as Cbristim theotrr gians. I hope this will be a particularfy useful exercise, as X am normally willing, under severe distress, to expose m)l own metaphysical and ontohtgical ctaims." begin, then, by afi'irming Mufdoch" claim that '"eta(M,197). fndeed, showing how her physjcal systems have conseq~~e~zces" metaphysics and ethics arc hterrelated isl I believe, a helpful way of mderlining the difkerence the Chfistian account of creation ex nihilo makes for the Clnristim moral life In order not to keep you in suispense, I will state my argument bafd.1~. Murdoch" account of the moral life c ot be appmpriated uncriticalZy by Christian theologians for the simpl son that lncr understanding of the "muddles" that constitute our lives is correlative to a metaphysics that we as Christians c ot accept. Christians believe that our lives are at once more captured by sin and yet sustained by a hope that, give11 MurdocWs account of the world, cannot help but appear false.Woreover, Cl-rristianunderstanding of sin and hope is c o r d a t h e to an account of creation that- sustahs a teleological vision of the world and our place hit."' Accordingly, Christims ask more of ourselves and our world than, I &hk, Murdoch can believe is warranted. The problem with this comparative procedure, of course, is that there is no news in it. Miss Murdoch has always been admira:bly candid concerning her impatience with (and hence has little use for) religious myths-h particular, those associated with Christianity. She has always been, with some qualilication, on the side of those intcnt on demytholagizing Christian discaurse. So it will not came as any great surprise to discover that Murdocl.1does not believe Chat the Jews are God's promised people or that Chl-Ist" resurrcctinn inaugurates the end time, Yet X hope to show that Christiam are not simply left with ""soyou believe tbis and I believe that." Instead, we are left with the very character of our lives, which, :l would argue, gives us a basis for thinking that Christians might be c r e a m s with p q o s e s that we ourselves did not c ~ a t e .
Murdoch on Christianity and God Miss MusdocWs reflections on Christianity are htricate and, 1believe, interrelated in m intricate mamer. I, therefore, need to display her views about Christianiq inthe hope of making sure that I am not misrepresetnting her. Miss Murdoch simply begins with the ubservation that in our age the influence of h a t might be called orthodox Christianity is waning rapidry (S, 75). Shc offers us no extended accooulnt of why this m y be, but cdls our attention to Don Cupitt's observation that humankind is just now ewrging from its "mythological chilcihood.'" According& religion has to come to terms with autosnomy (M, 452).'j Her account, in this respect, is not unlike that of Charies %!.for in Sources of the Self1?m a t Taylar helps us see is that most people simply do not decide to stop believing in God as Trinity or in creation ex nlhiicl. Rather, they gradually or suddenly realize that the ""sources" that once made such beliefs intelligilnle are m longer in place. One may still "believe" such thjngs, but they simply do not matter any more. That is another way of saying that the practices that made such matters an integral part of life art?no l o ~ ~ gexistent. er Indeed, exactly because these practices have atrophied or have vanished altogether, some insist that holding such belie& as beliefs, particularjy if they are held sincerely or enthusiastically, is so important. 1 .crhink this kind of atheism is what Dame Iris is s ~ ~ g g e s t kwhen g she asks rhetorically ""Uo not a large number of those who go to church alreudy think in a new nm-literal way witbout bothering about thedogy and metaphysics?'"fM, 45W59). 'The mswer is obviously "Yes," But the iar more interesting question is "Why?" Unfortunately Murdoch does not provide thick accoms of how thjs came about, although she does offer the following observation: The Cartesian era is coming to an end. Wittgenstein said that he was ending it. In moral philosophy it may appear that the Kantian era is coming to an end. Theology not only reflects these problems but is forced to struggle with them in ways which bring it cXoser to philosophy now than it has been for some time, This is so in spite of, and partly in reaction to, the fact that in a materialistic technolc>gicalsodet;u;theology might be expected to be increasingly isofated from general trends of thought, (M, 3&39)
The story of how theological claims are made to bear the burden of proof in light of certain social and intdectual dcvdopmmts is obviously complex, but I think the broad outlines of Murdoch's position art? clear. What is especially interesting is that the very devefopmetnts that have made traditional Christian theologiral claims unintelligible are afso imrplicated im the legitimation of precisely those accounts of the moral life
Murdoch finds so disastrous. That is, the peculiar combination of behaviorist, existetntialist, m d utilitarian accomnts of the moral life Murdach so trenchantly criticizes in The S~"itereigntyof Good ( S , 4-15) is produced by the same forces that have made Christianity unintelligible to itself. merefore, Murdoch's case against Christianity is not that fewer and kwer people in the modern W s t still believe or, perhaps more accurate@ put, that even if they wanted to be Christian, they wodd have no idea what that would mean. Her positiosn is considerably stronger, She wants in fact to replace Christianity because she believes she has a better alternative. Murdoch thhks that her alternative is frit.ndly to Christianiv She even describes herself as a "neo-Christim or Buddhist Christian or Christian Ifellow traveller" who believes that Christianity can cmtinue without a personat God or a risen Christ, without beliefs in supernatural places and happenings, such as heaven and life after death, but retaining the mystical figure of Chist occupying a place analogous to that of Buddha: a Christ who can ecjnsole and save, but whc) is to be found as a living farce within each human soul and not in same supernatural elsewhere. Such a continuity would preserve and renew the Christian tradition as it has always hitherto, somehaw or other, been p ~ s e r v e dand renewed. It has atways changed itself into something that can be generally believed," ( M , 419)
I have, of conrse, beet1 spetnding a good part of my life tryjng to make Christianity hard to be ""gnerally bdieved,'" Therefore, when D a m Iris offers to help Christians redescribe their convictions in a "naturalisticf' .fashion, I an? less thnn cmvinced. For exafngle, she noks that "the idca of another" sufferring as redemptive is certainly intelligible, Christians may tend ta camect it with Christ and see lesser humm eflorts as an irnttatio Christi, but redemption can exist without God" (M, 131). I tnave no doubt that such a redemption does exist, but :l also think that redemptlion so understood has little to do with the ~ d e m p t i o nf o n d fn Christ" cross and resurrection. To be s w , such a count-erassertion requires spelling out, but at this point 1 only wish to suggest that Murdoch" attempt to "save" Christianity invokes a substitution of one religion for anotber. M a t is worrisome about Dame Iris, in other words, is not that she is an atheist, but that she is too religious. For Murdoch, religion is about "the change of being attendant upcm our deepest m d highest: concern with mora,lity" (M,183)"She suggests, for instance, that we cannot live without the exercise of prayer. "But, someone may say, what can we do now that there is no God? This does not affect what is mystical. The loss oE prayer, trhrough the loss of belief in God, is a great loss. However, a genernl answer is a practice of medilation: a withdrawal, through sorne disciplined quiekess, into the great cham-
ber cJf the soul. Just sitting quiet will help. Teach it to childrenf"M, 73). Or perhaps better, learn it from children, who have the extraordhary capacity to see this single blade of grass or this rock in all of its particularity. Such is the attitude of prayezM Prayer is m attention to God that is a form of love. "God was (or is) a sittglc. p"fect tmnscerdent nos-rqresentable at-rd nrcclssnriiy ml object af attmtion"' (S, 55). It is the task of moral philosophy to retain such a central cmcept, that is, the goad, withod that concept's offwing us false consolation of a premature uniq. For the great enemy of the moral llfe is "personal htasy: the tissue of self-aggrmdizing and ccmsoZing wishes and dreams which prevents one from seeing what is there outside one" (S, 59). n a t is why art is so cmciaL For by experiencing the transcendence of the beautiful, we are called out of our fmtasies (S, 60). Art can be the occasion for training us to see this or that rock, or &is or that person, k e from the fantasies of w\rhu they should be for '*usefr Our muddlcrs are the ~ s u lof t our self-absorption. Those that people Iris Murdoch's novels albvays seem to love the wrong person or get caught in nets of illusion, That they (and we along with them) are so caught reflects our condition, a condition rig:htty described by E'reud (though Murdoch says she is no Freudian) and equivalezzt to the doctrhe of original sin. The psyche is but ""an egocentric system of quasi-mchanical energy largely deterrnfned by its own ilndividual his to^, whose natural attachments are sexual, annbiguous, m d hard for the st~bjectto understand or control, Tntmspection reveals only the deep tissue of ambivalent motive, and fantasy is a s t r q e r force than reason. Wectivity and u~zselfishessare not natural to humm beingsf"$, 51). It does no good, as most of modern moral. pfilosophy presunnes, to try to will our way out of our ilusicms, for such "williflgf' simply mires us deeper in fantasies of freedom, What is needed is a violent joltkg. Such a joltixlg can come from a near drownjng in a sea cave or from th presence of an avatar whose mysterioumess cannot be etiplained. The trick, of course, i s to accept kvith~utexplanatio~zthe gift of dislocation provided by the avatar, Tb be able so to live is to begin to live virtuously. 'This all too brief summary of Iris Murdoch"s understanding of morality helpdlocate her greatest objection to Christianity. The problem with Christianity is not the mythological character of its belief, but its tendency like other totaking metaphysical theories, to destroy the cmtingent. By "equating reality with integration in system, and degrees clf reatity with degrees of integration, and by implying that 'uultirnatelykr 'reallyf there is only one system," one loses tbe cmtingent character of the particular, \zrhich is also the source as welI as the necessity of mysti-. cism (M, 196). The purification of virtue, chararteristic of the mystic, derives from the mystic's refusal to be consoled. m a t must be acknodedged, in other
words, is that morality has no point. Kant rightly insisted on the purpcr siveness of"art \N.ithout-pmpose, finality without end. The "true saint" "believes in ""God" but not as a super-person who satisfies all our ordinary desires "hthe end." (There is no end, there is no reward,) This has also to do with tirne, hc~wwe live it. It is a religious po~sitionwhere the concept of God is in place, indeed, in a fundamental seme, defined. A proper understanding of contingency apprehends chance and its horrors, not as fate, but as an aspect of death, of the frailty and unreality of the ego and the emptiness of worldly desires. So, our evil part is condemed "nut to suffering but to death." (l expressed this once in an aphorism: the false god punishes, the true god stays.) (M, lO6-lO7)
The problem with much art m d rdigittut; q t h is that they have the efkct, and it- is an intended effect, of concealjng the fact of death and the absolute contingency of existence, which is a correlative of death (M, 339). Even tragedy can cmsole, but only if, wbie drawing on death, it breaks the ego and thus destmys the illllsory whde of the unified self (M, 104). "Almost mything that consoles us is a fake" (S, 59), including the presumption that we are consoled by the h o d e d g e that anything that consoles us is a fake. Murboch is admirably clear that her morality is a metaphysics, though she might prefer to say that metaphysics is a guide to her morality. Just as the mystics have understood that Cod c m o t -be pictured, that in thc end everything, including God, must be given up, so too the good canstot be depicted. She employs the language ot: the ontdogical argument to argue that God (fie Goad) cannot simply be one thing among others, but exists of necessity (M, 470). Hence, the ontological argument becmes the metaphysical expssion of the pointless character of morality. Such a "proof" cannot he a proof exactly, but- o d y a "clear assertion of faithh"' mnnade on the basis of a certain kind of experience. Such m experience is the authority of the Good [which] seems to us something necessary because the realism (abiXiv to perceive reality) required for goodness is a kind of inteiIectual ability to perceive what is true, tzrhich is automatically at the same tirne a suppression of self. 7"ke neassify cf the goad is then an aspect of !he kind of necessity it~votv'din any fechlziqucfor exlribitingfict. In thus treatirtg realism, whether of artist or af agent, as a moral achievement, there is of course a further assumption to be made in the fields of morals: that true vision occasions right: conduct. This could be uttered simply as an enlightening tautology: but 1 think it can in fact be supported by appeals to experience. The more the separateness and differentness of other people is realized, and the fact seen that another man has needs and wishes as demanding as one's s)wn, the harder it becames to treat il person as a thlng. That it is realism tzrhich makes great art great remains too as a kind of p r c ~ ~(S, f . 66)
Our experience of thr Good is derived, not from high or general ways of understmding, but from the experience presetnt in its most minute relations and within our perceptions of the rninutest things (stones, spoons, leaves, scraps of W i s h , tiny gestws, and so on) a d the capacity they create for b e i q decjper, more benevolent, more just (M, 474). The mylh that best ext-ribits the ontoiogy of our experience of the Good is that oi the Demiurge. fn cclntrast to accclrmts of creation ex nihilo, the Demiurge creates the cosmos wjth h v e toward the .forms. In mating, the Der~iurge makes use of necessity to which we must submit, as well as understand and use, ff we are to be both good and happy This creatio~nmyth, the myth of the Derniurge, represents in the most elegant way the redemption of a11 particular things which are, a l t b u g h made of cc2ntingent stufff touched and handled by the divine. The contingent can become spiritually sipificant, even beautilui, as in art, as in Sirnone Weil" idea of the beauty of the world as an image of obedience. Plato's myths are the redemption of art. This is an aspect of the return to the Cave, where illusions are not only rejected but understood-.(M, 47'7)
The Derniurge is the paradigraatic artist making beauty out of necessity. The Demiurge teaches us that we must finally learn to love our death, or better, see our death as necessary for us tcr love. h the light of this crcatio~nmyth, we can see better why the ontological argument binds together MurdocKs metaphysics and ethics. The argument displays the necessary nmxistenee of God. No existing thing could be what we have meant by God. Any existing God w ~ u f dbe less than God. An existent God would be an idol or a demon. (This is near to Kant's thinking.) God does not and cannot exist and is constanCly experienced and pictured. That is, it is real as an Idea, and is also incarnate in knowledge and work and lowe. This is the true idea of incarnation, and is not something obscure. We experipnce both the reality of perfection and its distance away, m d this leads us to place our idea of it outside the world of existent being as something af a diffewnt unique and special sort. (M, 508)
Creation ex Nihila, Sin, and Hope
That Murcioch ril;htly describes her account of moratity as entailing the myth of the Dexniurge should give pause to Chistians who have been influenced by her work, not the least myself. hdeed, 1wonder whetl-ter we Christiafis should w e n refrain from ~ a d i n gher nt,vefs, since they so powerfully form our imaghation, urging us to see our lives in her terms. She is, after all, quite right. Art has "helped us to believe, not only in Christ and the Trinity, but in the Good Samaritm, the Prodigal Son, innu-
merable s a i ~ ~and t s a whole cast of famous and well-loved scenes and persons" (NI, 82). Whether it is good for the Chistian innagination to have that art renarrated in a mamer that may make the Christian understanding of c ~ a t i o n unintelligibfe for us is therefore no mert? idle issue.I5 , X wed at least to atBefore such questions can be e x p l o ~ dhowver, tempt to suggest why Christians rightly embrace the dsctrine of mation ex nihilo and what difference it makes for understmding our ontological m d moral commitisents. It will be apparent that in trying to make this case, I remain h Murdoch" debt, For without Murdoch" ddefense of the ontological argument, I suspect. I would have never understood the signilicance of Aquinns's srcecli,on of that argument. Aguinas" comment on the ontological argument is quite interesting. He begins by nothg that not everyone who hears the word ""God'" understands it: to si.gni@ that than whieh nothing greater can be thought. Yet even if evevone so understood the word., "it does not follw that he mderstmds that what the word signifies exists actually but only that it exists h the intellect. Nor c m it be argued that it actually exists, u ~ ~ l eits sbe admitted that there actually exists somethjng that than which nothing greater can be t-hought. And tbis is what is not adimitted by those who hold that God does not existfq6(P,la. 2.1. ad. l).He then goes on to observe that whereas it is self-evident that truth in general exists,the existence of a First Truth is not self-evident to us. Aquhas" objection to the ontological argument is not that existence camot be a predicate (Kant), but rather that the intellect c priori kmokvledge of Go& nature. Any Being whose essmce is existmce cannot be h o w through the idea of such a being, but rather Chrough arguments from its effects. If God's existence is to be ""proved,"' therefore, it must be through an examination of God's effects. I have no intention to explore how Aquinas" '"five way"' should be hterpreted in the light of this presumption." More interesting for the case 1 am trying to m k e is why Aquinas m s t take this stance, givm his understanding of the gratuity of God's creation. Zn this regad, I arm following David Burrell's contention that Aquhas's "proofs" are ri;htly understood against the "ockgrcrund of the lioctrh~eof cseation ex nihilo. Burrell ~ u e f i h acreation t ex nihilo for Ayuinas ( m d Maimonides) is not in. itself derived from a reading of Genesis, but rafier the notion of absolute beginning was a sign of the difference beween believers in scripture and neoplatonist advcxates of eternal emanation, rather than itself marking that difference. Creation ex nilzilo underscored the fact that the very existence of such a dependent universe did not belong to the nature of divinity but represented a free initiative on God's part, for if the universe were without beginning, it would be more natural to think of it as the necessary concomitant of its ~reator.~"
Creation ex nihilo is the correlate of the 'Jewish and Ghristim view that the existence of all that is, is the result of a free decision of God. Exactly what was at stake was the issue of the necessity with which the miverse "emanated from the One," m d the consequent necessity characteristic of the miverse itsel,l. "It is Che freedom of divi,nity to act, in creating m d in revealing, which constitutes the nub of the notion of creatm whirh both Maimonides and Aquinas consider to be the deliverance of the scriptures. And if that kedorn means primarily Chat the act of creating is a spontaneous and gracious one, then the God who so creates is fulfil1in.g no natural need and has nothjng tcr g"in therebywY In the same article, Aquinas argues that the world oMers no grounds for demmstratir\g that it was once new. "For the principle for d e m n strating an ol?ject is its definition. Now the specific nature of each and every object abstracts from the hcsc and nokv, which is why univrrsals are described as being everywhere and Lalways Yristotle). Hence it cannot be dewnstrated that man, or heaven, or a stone did not a h a y s exist'"(ST, 1.46.2). Nor can creation be dezsonstrated through efficient causation. The will of God can only be in.vestigated, through those things God must will of necessity, but what God wills about creatures is not among these, That- the world began to exist is therefore an object of faith and not of demnstratim or science. The article concludes appropriately with the following warnirtg: ''And it is useful to cmsider this, lest anyone shot~1dbring forward reasons that are nat cogent, so as to give occasion to ranbelievers to laugh, thinGng that on such reasons we believe thiPlgs that are of fai%hef' R e h a r d HQtter nicely sulss up Christim thhking on creation, and I think Aquhas" as well, by suggestkg that ""ex nihilo" I-tas to be understood as a graceful, contingent and finite gift of God who was not in need of the world, 'There is no lack or insufficiency in Cod that needs the creating of the world to overcome it. Creation is the averRow of God's abundant love as reflected in the inner life of the triune God. ""E nihilo" is a strictly thec)logicat predication of God. 1t secuws Cud's transcendence over against the ~ i o r ~ d , " ~
From the perspective of creation ex nihilo, Murdoch" account of necessiw and conkgency is reversed. The task, therefore, is not to see the particular as necessary, but to see the contingent as just thatwontingent-or more accurately, in Christi,an farrguage, as created. For the whole point is that the world, and our existence in the world, does not have to exist, but it a d we do. The task is not to see tbr purposelessness in the sheer existence of the conthgent, but rather to see the co~~tingent as ""gift" whose purpose is to praise the creator," Such a task does not mean that tbe otherness of the cmtingent is obliterated by its place in a
larger purpose, but that its contingency can be en~oyedbecause God so enjoq"&od"s creation.'" That alI God has created praises God, as mator does not obliterate the otherness of other c r e a t e s , but rather helps us see our own "otl~mess~' in God's other creatures" The ""others" are other to us inasmuch as we are other to them. Respect of and care for all of God" creatures is the primary means af doxolagieal acknowledgment of God the Greatc~rin creation. The very plurality of cultures, traditions, languages, and species is to be tzrelcsmed as the wealth af created otherness. Creation "m xzil?ifor' undercuts uniform secularity, in which comumer subjects and objects are exploited and from which Cad is utter1y absent.?'
In contrast to Murdoch's account of the absolute pointlessness of existence, Christians believe that God means for all creation to worship God. Such a '"urpose,'%owever, does not mean that all fiat we do is guaranteed to "come out a)right." ""Purpose," understood doxologicdly, can only be displayed by a narrative that is subject to constant retelling, given the cmtingent character of our existmce. We do not h o \ n ~what will happen next, but more importme we do not even know how we will need to retell '"what happened.," &nce the past, no less than th:! future, must =main open to renarration. lrhe "'puvoxf' that sustains tbr Christian is eschatological because we believe that creation names not j ~ ~as t beginnkg but God" cmtinuing providential care of creation, Creation fnr us is not only "in the beginnfng" but continuing, ongoing. We are, no d o h t , possessed and blinded by the "fat relentless ego" so wonderfull; depicted by Murdnch. That we are so afflicted, moreover, rc-.sulbin a d d l e s from which we cannot, by a sheer act of will, free ourselves. The problem wi& Murdoch's muddles is not simply that we lack the =sources to be free of them if God does not exist, but that the full reality of such muddles remains marticulated in a world without Gad. For the Christian, "sin'hames the t r a h h g we must undergo to discover that our lives arc possessed by powers, by narmtkes, whose purpose it is to hide from us the fact that we are creatures of a gracious God. Such "knowledgef"oes not come "naturally;" but rather from being made part of a cmmuni@ with practices that offer the transformation m d reordering of our lives and ~lationships.Prayer is certainIy one of those practices, but Christians begin their prayers with "Our Fa.trher,'k practice that goes m to instruct us to seek forgiveness and reconcifiation with God and our neighbor. Only through such a reconciliation do we believe we can fully acknowledge our conlingelney and particularity. Christian salvation, then, is not ""myslical," h t comes through the ordinary. Murdoch rightly calls attention to the w i s h of "ordinary petr
ple," who know that prayer c m induce a better quaiity of consciousness and provide an etnergy for good ac.lion otherwise unavailable (S, 83). But "ordinary people" called Christian also know that they must learn to pray toget-her in c-unities that will teach them to pray rightly. Prayer, after all, is not a self-authenticating "spi,ritual exercise,'%but a practice that becomes intelligi_bleonly as we learn to achowledge our existence at; forgiven c r e a t u ~ sMudochfs . world is finalZy too htnely for those of us called Christim, those of us who believe that we were created to be iricnds with God and.,consequently with one another and even ourselves. No doubt the Christian story, like any significant story?can be used and is often used to after false consolation. But as Murdoch demo~nstrates, often in her novels, our bedge agaixrst false consolation, against ot be found in oursefties. We cmnot will our way out of our fantasies, Ckzr only escape m s t come to us externally. Chistians believe that God supglks such "externality" by m&ng available to us friendships and practices correctty embodied in a community called church. A people who know their salvation and have been secured thruugh Jesuskross and resurrection are, accordhgly myujrtsd to live by resisthg the false consolations of this world. Where Does This Leave Us?
All I have done is cmtrast what I take to be the metaphysical and moral implications of the Christian account of creation with Murdoch" understanding of the purposelessness of our existence.. 1 wish X knew better how to engage her in argument. There are surely metaphysical issues that wouXd be worth pursuing-such as why necessity is not a characteristic of God or why goodness is a predicate of God and can only be displayed by analogy." Yet how that is or shoufd be done has been made difficult by Murdoch because she rightly refuses to separate metaphysics and morality. So it is finalfy not a vestion of how to characterize "what is" but how "what is" reflects, and also determhes, what we are or should be, That she insists on such a close intercomection between metaphysics and morality is at least part of the reason why Iris Mudoch is such a challenge to those of us who understand ourselves to be Christians. There are, moreover, as 1 indicated at the beginning, issues in what might be called rnord psychology that wodd be useful to explore, The "inner" character of our lives is much more dependent on the habituation made possible by a community-" practices than M d o c h s e e m to a c k n d e d g e . This can now be seen, not simply as a point of moral psychology, but as an observation about the way in whieh our embeddedness as historic behgs =flecks a much stronger sense of our crclatureli-
ness-at least as suggested by the Christian understandhg. Miss Murdoch m d Christians alike believe that we must be trained to see. But I suspect the kind of training that distinguihes the two will be quite different. However, I thhk that the deepest difficulv CChrtims have in b o w ing what an argument with Murdoch might look like is that we simply lack the imaginative power. Our g ~ a t e s difficulty t as Christ.ians is we have lost the "sources," the practices, that are necessmy to swtain our conviction that God. is the origination and end of our existence. Mudnch surely offers, particularly through her navels, a R-irnagh~hgof our existence that powerflrlly refl.cl?cts""the way we live now."Even morc3 than her philosophy, her n o ~ e i spresent a temptation to Christians because inasmuch as we allow ourselves tcr be trained through them, we lose our ability to imgjne any other hvorld. Any response to Miss Murdoch, and it is a response that we rightly owe to her wisdom about such matters, will come from other artists-for example, Walker Percy or Flannery UComar-hvho have Che irnagination to create a world of hope. Yet such artists, as MurdocZ1 has taught us, depmd on quite ordinary people \Nhc:,have learned to live wefl against the odds" If Christims are to survive (or deserve to survive) h a world that has no capacity to acknowledge our created status, they wi11 do so only because our communities are stitl capable of producing m d lc~3athg those among us whose lives are "liviflg prayers."
An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Maria Antonaccio and WijlXiarn Schweiker, eds., Iris Murdndz and the Search f i r H z r m n ~Goodness, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2 996. Copyright O 1996 by the University of Chicago. AI1 rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Z am indebted to Bc lames Fodor, Dr. Reinhard Butter, and Mr. %oft Saye far their good criticism of the initial draft of this essay 1. iris Murdoch, Tke Sozlewignty of Good (New York: Rc>ut-ledgeand Kegan Paul, 49"i70). All page numbers will appear in parenthesesf preceded by an "S." h i l l use the same system for Dame Murdoch" Melnplzysics as n Gtdide ko M o r ~ l s(New York: Penguin Press, 49931, indicating this book by "M.'" 2, Visr'au nud Virtue was origjnalfy publiskd in 2974 by Fides Press of Notre Dame, Indiana, The University of Notre Dame Press edition was published in 1981. The book contains my essay "The Significance of Visiran: Toward an Esthetic Ethic," in which 1 discuss Murdoch% work. 1,awrence Blurn has more recently shown the continuing power of MurdocWs account of morality in Moral PercqCion and Pnrficzilnrity (Cambridge: Cambridge dkniverslq Press, 1994). 3, Bourke's review appeared in Reztkmtfor Religious 34,2 (1975): 328.
4. ""Atheism," of cclurse, is as ambiguous a teim as "theism,"" am simply accepting Murdcr3icxlhfsself-dexriptiw, but I thereby do not mean to imply that her ""atheism" is the same as Ari~totle"~ Nlclre impartant, I am not sure that it is appropriate to describe Aristotle as an atheist, thou& he took a critical attitude towad aspects of Greek theobgy. MurdocWs atheism is obvie)usly more interesting for the Christian, since she believes she is denying the God Christiam worship. I am not sure, hcwever, that she in fact is denying the God we Christians b o w as Trinity since she seems to think that GQCF'S existence and t-ramendence (what she identifies as supernaturalism) are more basic to Christians than God being Trinity. That she dcxs W is, 1fear, the rault of distortic~rtsin Christian practice and thoui;;ht. 5. Murdc>ch%?Views on the relation between thought and language are most developed in her early article, "Thinking and Language," Pruceeditrgs of the Aristotelian Sociek, Supplementary Volume, 25 (1951): 25-34, I: believe she has continued to support the views set forth there that, in effect, argue that language and thaught are not coextensive. Although 1 am sympathetic with her critique of the crude behaviorism that was the target of her argument, 1 do not think the views about language and thought presented there are nearly compXt3x enough. I associate her views about-language with her ""mysticism" hsofar as the former may be necessary to sustain her account of the ineffability af certain types af experience. 6. One of the troubling features of MurdochPsappeal to the virtues is the lack of a moral psychology in tzrhich they might be melted, As a result, tzre have little idea haw she might justify her way of treating the virtues. That is to say, she does not tell the reader how the virtues are individuated or him they are interrelated. Che suspects she may, like 131ato, assume the unity, if not the "oneness," "of the virtues, Accordingly, we have little sense from her work hew the virtues are acquired through habit. '7. The issue can be put more strongly inasmuch as Murdoch at times seems to suggest that we are ""saved" just to the extent we are free of history-a "solutionff that she equally displays, particularly in her novels, as impossible. 1 canno>twork out here, ar probably anywhere, the relation between the Christian understanding of creatbn and history, but it at least involves the claim that @ven our created status, we should nst be surprised that we only know ourselves as creatures through a narratirve. For an attempt of mine to develop these suggestians, see The Peacmble Kinghm: A Primer. izz Clwiss.fil;lnEtlrics (Nc~treDame: tmiversity of Notre Dame Press, 19831, pp. 24-34, 8. My reticence about metaphysics is a correlate of my attempt to resist reductimistic accounts af theoiagical claims sc>common in mtdern tl~eoIogy,Obviously Christian conviction entails metaphysical claims-such as ail that is, is finite-but one does not first get ane"s metaphysics straight and then go t~ theafogy, Rathex; metaphysical claims are best exhibited as embedded in, not as the "background'kf, our behavictrs. This applies nat only in Christian thecllogy but also in any endeavor, 9. The extent to which the characters in Murdoch's novels make sense only insofar as they are sustained by hope would make a fascinating study On the matters of hope she seems philc>sophicalfycloser to Stojcism than Christianity; yet imaginatively living as we do at the end of fading Christian practicesf hope is hard to give up, even for Murdoch.
10. These issues are not unrelated to the issues raised above about habituation, since sin is not a "nniural" ategory Sin, rathel; is an achiwement. Ysju must be trained to be a sinner, which means that you must have your life embedded in a narrative through which those sins can be named. 1 develop these suggestions in Afjrcr Clzris:sfend~?~n? (Nahvitle: Abingdon Press, 11991), pp. 93-411, I I, X find it surprising that Murdoch should mdemrite Cupitt" account of autonomy, since she i s so critical of Kant elsewhere in her work. q Identity (Cambridge: 12. Chries Taylor, Sourms I?ftl~eSeF The M ~ k i $Moderr? Harvard University Press, 1989). 13. Even though Murdoch suggests elsewhere that that tzrhich emsoles cannot be true3, she also recs>gnjzesthe need for consolation. What remains unclear on her account, however, is how one might negotiate these contrary positions. I sometimes suspect that she, like some other Platonists, assumes that some m w t bear the philosophical burden of refusing to be cmsaled in order that mast pectple can be contented with stories that are less than true, 14. Children often play crucial roles in Murdstch" novels, inss>faras they exhibit an "innocent seeing," which she equates with the mystical. Children do not need to unlearn the connections we adults impo~seon the world, the "necessities" that domesticate the cmtingent. To be able to see the sheer givemess of this rock or tree in its givenness is to be on the way to being gcmd. Murdc>ct?seems to think that such gc~odnessis lost through our grc3wing up. We lose our ability to see the contingent because of our desire to control the world. 15. Censorship of art and literature sIzr3uld not be assaciated, as it often is in liberal cultures, with denying to some the right to see or read certain works of art, The serious issue, rather, is lzow these paintings or works of art are to be read in relation to other works. 16. I am using the edition of the Sznmtm Theol~~gica translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Prt~vime.Pagination of the Sum~rfatzrill appear in the text. 1117. For an extraordinary account of Aquinas" sunerstanding of our knowledge of Cod, see Eugene Kagers, Tlzomas Aqur'nas t k ~ dKnrl Btrrfh: Sncrd Doctrine and the Natural Kttowledge of God (Notre Dame: University of Natre Dame Press, 4995). 18. David Burrell, C.S.C., Frwcl'om and Cwation ifi 7"tzli.ze Traditions (Natre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 19931, pp. 7-43.. 19. Ibid., p. 9. 20, Reinhad Hijrtter, "Creation ex Nihilo: Promise of the Gift," Czirrents ir-z Tkeott7gy and Missii~tz19,2 (1W2): 92. 21. The language of gift requires considerable theological analysis that T cannot pmvide here, For an example of the kind of display that 1 thlnk is required, see John Milbank" *'Cana Gift Be Given? Prolegomena to a Future ?TMnitarianMetaphysic," Mudcrtz T!jco.otc~gy41, 4 Uanuary 4995):419-461, For a quite diffel-ent account, see Jacques Berrida, The Gift of Death, trans. David Mills (Chicago: tmiversity of Chicago Press, 1995). 22.1 find puzzling the current enthusiasm for contingency among contemporary philosophers, such as Richard Rarty in his Conlingenq, Trony and Solidlilrity (Cadridge: Cambridge University Press, 11989). Rorty suggests that ""our lanas much a result of thousands guage and our culture are as much a ccmtingencl~~;
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Reading James McClendon Takes Practice: Lessons in the Craft of meology
Learning to Read with McCflendon No rezlding or writing is innment. As readers we often share so many hahits with the authors we read that we tend to forget that reading is a sd-making acti~ity.~ But we must attend carefully tn the work of good writers, for as we read their wmk, they often require us to form new habits, m d irr the process, we find that they have changed our lives. I believe James McClendon ta be such a writer. Yet he is deceptively so. By cdling hirn deceptivef X do not mean that he htentimally tries to deceive us. I mean, rather, that o v a the past thirty years or so he has become such a master of his craft that wc c m easily miss the peculiarity of what he has done. McCfendm has brought voices as disparate as Alasdair Machtyre, Jonathm Edwards, Erasmus of Rotterdam, a ~ Dorothy d Day into his theological conversation concerning the baptist tradition and podmodemism, a conversation formative of his vision, of the church. McClendonfs Doctrip-te: Systelmtic Thectb?fi2 thr long-awaited compmion to his Ethics: Sysfcnzatii: nmlomt3conlinues those fm-ranging conversations in ways that pmduce, in spite of their originality, m elegant synthesis of baptist faith tkat goes down smoothiy But ""origfnahty" is not something McClmdon WishCs tO claim as a t-heulngian, since he writes to illuminate co~z~~ictions without which theology itself wodd be impossible. As be notes: P-ic~wever;not too much originality should be claimed for the present work. Its stance reflects a wider conceptual shift from a strictly modern understanding in which all knowledge is suppased to rest upon sc~meuniversatty available foundations, i-o an understanding some have bbefed postmodern, in which cXalrns to kncjwlectge are less tareatt~takingor absolute, but are more integrally tied to the actual tasks at hand, (Doctri~e, 455)
But to do theology that is tied to ""actual tasks at hand," that is, to practices, is nt:, easy matter, sillcc there are nt:, readily available paradigms to guide the way.Tet McClendon, like a skilled dancer whose movement is so beautiful that we forget the strength and training that such skill psupposes, has aafted a theology that appears dmost effortkss in its presentation. Because oi the dexterity and finesse of his craft, we can miss the h a d theological work that has g m into his imaginative reconstruction of what we used to call "systematic tht.alog,l.'Wat t shall do is to try to assemble a set of =minders that, I hope, will expose some of that effort so that we might become better readers of McClendanrstheological proposal, The purpose, of course, is not for us to became better readers of McClendm, since McClendds theological project is itself an exercise in helping us become better ~ a d e r of s the Gospel. Good writers therefore try to force those of us who read them to atternd to what: we wad, for in so doing they demand of us the formation of new habits, which thereby changes our lives. h other words, McClendorn wmts us to read with and perhaps even at tirnes against him, not simply to read him. The practice of Christian doctrine r t . q u i ~ sthe exercise of our selves in living and t h i n h g as Christians. For our thinking can be no idte speedation; it is intrinsic to our hh g as memhers of the church whose purpose is nuthing less than the worship of God. theologian, therefox, is not trying to provilie a "meanifigf"for theological concepts that no longer seem to do any work. Rather, doctrineteachirrg-itself is a practice intrinsic to the worship of the church, and vice versa. Thus, McClendon candidly ack~nowledgesthat he must claim his theology to be an exemplification of the praclice called teaching, which is integrd to the church's very being. 'flnematerial cmtcnt and the form of presentation of the content cannnt. be separated. McCLendon therefore seeks, not to provide us with more information, but rather to help us live more faithfully as Christians through learning to mad with him. As he puts it: 7'0 put the point Xinguistically, the surface grammar of doctrinal theology may take various shapes: first-person cctnfession~~ historical descriptions of church teaching, axioms or theses derived from an organizing principle, biblical exegesis, rhetorical ukaxs. Yet its deep structure is that of a grammar of persuasion seeking assent: It says, '""his is what your present convictions appear (on such and such evidence) to be: this is what (for such and such reasons) they appear tcr mean. Would it be better, then (for corniderations here presented) to t:ransfc>rmthese present: convict-ionsflzzts?" h such a servant's question, such a "thus3'balf tl~ec~logy's first-person cmfessiomt all its axioms and principles, a11 its arguments find their reason far being. (Doct r i t ? 477)" ~
The first response of most readers, trained as we are m the disciplirrary habits of the Enlightenment, is to Ehink, "He means that it is all just rhetoric." To that, I hope, McClendon will reply, ""Of course, but why use the 'justf?" Teaching is practice that cannot help but seek to change lives. The teaching goal of the church is to ""indoctrinate.'Xiit?cordiaglq:McClendon does not wmt us ""just" to understand him, He-or at least the church he serves-wants our souls by shay>ingthem throu* the persuasive practices of doctr-inai rcflectior~and articulation. By suggesting that 1 want to assenzble a set of reminders for reading McClm&n, I do not mean I take as my task to '"explain"' McClcndon's Ductrirze. f i a t would make me like the critics who thhk that they can. say better the poet" poem through their criticism than the poet's poem can, They may well be a& to tell us why the poem is bad or good, but that does not mean that their criticism can replace the poem.. I do not seek to replace McCkndm" ""poem." If anything, 1seek to help us see why the language and f n m of his hctrz'ne is integral to the practice of soul formation through readhg. In doing so, I hope that I can preserve something of the wildness of McClendon's psentation. For, as I will try to show bebw, one of the things l like so much &out his teaching concerning Che church's teaching is how systematic he is in being unsystematic. Accordingly, he is able to teach without domesticating that MIhich he teaches. If you believe, for instance, that the cosmos is under the rule of God, then our world (that is, the worXd of pmdktability and order we thjnk necessary for everyday life) must be pictured differently,. Hans Hut, a sixteenth-centwy anabaptist missionary who MS martyred beaus@of his eschatological preach,ing, McClendon claims as a '"paradigm case of the baptist vision ('thm is nowf)applied ha time of crisisf"(Doctrin~", 951, precisely because Hut mderstoad how wild the world under God's rule is. It is hard to remember that you are living in the end tirnes when you are buying groceries for another week's d So McClendon must persuade us, if we are to become good readers, to give up our need to controi the world, We must in.stead believe that trutJRfuhess, not war and violence, is the way the world a c y u i ~ as history befitting its ordering to God's kingdom, "Thus," as he puts it, "in the last, best sense of the word %history,%as and its violence turn out to be anti-historicalf"D)ocfrine, 99). That is theologicaf description with a vengeance. Mo~over,if McClendor~is right about. sttch a =description, we cannot help but fear becoming good readers of him, For seen through his description, the world of war appears even more dangerous for those who would be &uthful worshipers of God. On a more mundane level, I think it important to note that McClendon also writes to diswient his readers' expectations about the "discipline'bf
thedogy. Those that wollld seek to make their mark in theology usually seek to supersede other prolninent players in the field. To be sure, McClendon betrays an intimate knwledge of such players-the Schl@iermachers, the Baths, the Pannenbergs-but he does not make much of that. Rather, he identifies his community of reference with such figures as Rauschenbusch, MuElins, Canner, and. Harkness. Keeping this kind of company is not the way to establish yourself in the theological mainstream, mwh less find respectability in the academy h this respect, it is interesting to reflect on McC'Iendds project in relation to Van Harvey"t;analysis in ""I?-reIntellecbal Nfarginali.ty of American Theology."Warvey notes "chat the marghalkat-ior~of tl?eol,ogy is often attributed to the hostility of the scientific ethos of the modern miversity. Wereas no doubt such developments have contributed to a loss of status for t-heology, Havey argues that the rnom proxiJn&e and determinalive cause has more to do with develnpments in,ternal to theolog): itself. In particular, he suggests that i t was the specialization of thedogy in e . ( m d khleiermathe German cmtext that led ta theology's d e ~ ~ i sKmt cher), for example, argued that the facultks of mdicine, law, and theotogy werl, justified within the university, not because they were sciences, but because of their service to the state, Harvey pokts out that this solution, buwever, contained a fateful ambiguity that only became fully apparent vvhm the fourfold curricuium-scripture, church history, dogmatics, and practical disciptines-was transferred to the American scene. "The s a m arg~lmentthat served to justify theology in the German university in the nineteenth century c m n w be used to justify the exclusion of theology from the American university and the establishment of separate dlvinity schools under the aegis of denomination and chrarches.""'n an attempt to save theology as a university discipline, the methods of theological study became more and more specialized in order ta meet the d m a n d s of being a science; thus each method has its professional societies, journals, and the like." But as Harvey paints out, Protestmt liberal theology's strrateq of beconning a ""metaphysics for believers,"' or a phenomenology of the collective ccmsciour;ness of a determirrative ~ l i g i o u scommmiq, made it increasingly difficdt to locate the "experti,set' that distil~gujsbedthe theologim and tkology. '*&e might still justify New Rstament studies or church history because both art. historical scknces, but what could be the justification for the clarification and systenafizat-ionof the utterances of the Christian self-conscinusness except the purpose of trainkg leaders of the Christian churches?'f9 The irony of this situation, according ta Harvey, is that insafar as theolo g was and is irtstitutionalized primarily as a subject matter fnr the professionalized ciergy, it is seen as having no devance to the hity. Prates-
tant thrologians may argue that their theology is for the laity, but in fact they conceive of theology in technical and academic terms often determined by other disciplines. The result is that their theology is intelligjhle primarily to other academics. Consequently, the great majority of divinity students, unless they are headed fft~ran advanced degree in theology find such academic theology tcr be at best an irrelevance and at worst an impediment to their careers, because the reward system of the church system in no way encourages their mastery cjf it. Members of the clergy rarely frmction as educators or theologians in their congregations; hence, whatever theology was learned is regarded, after 8ve or SO years, much like the calculus one learned in college. Theologians, in contrast, accept the view that the impartant problems in theolctgy are technical issues that can be handled only by academics trained to deal with the discourse of other academics, such as those in philosopfayaH'
Theologians, irmically, become nonpractioners who are paid to train ministerial practitioners by educating them in matters seen as peripheral to the practice. Against this background one can appreciate McClendon's eextraordinary attempt to res2-rape the dcrnographlcs of the readers oi theology, Flc defies the specialization of contemporq theolngy p ~ c i s e l yinsofar as he ref~xsesto leave scripture or church history to the scholars. Even mom, fie assumes that theology cannot be separated from practice (hthe same ot forget that his Docfl.ine follows h m his Efhics). Christian practkes, and Fhe specifjc practice of the church in its teacihing, are at the heart of this work, and therefore McClendm must challenge the reading habits of many of us who have learned "'systematic theology"' exactly as a way to free theology fmm practice. What is nut to be forgottest, however, is that th challenge that McClend m is malcing to theology as a system, as wetl as to theolow as a specidof the seminary curriculum, is more than just an ""academic" matizatio~~ ter-though it is fascinatixlg to explore the implications of McClendds Doctrine for the =structuring of semhary curricula m d practices. WIlat McCIendon is chalfenging more fundamentally i s the presumptim that theology can be true to the teaching of the church and at the same time be of service to the stilte..So, in making us readers of a theology that exists o111y to be of service to the teaching office of the church, McClendon is asking us to become part of the narrative that places us "outside"' the system of powers that has in the past legitimated systematic theology as well as the structllre of ou,s seminary curricula. What is more, he fmes us to consider why this strategy is not just another "position" for our consideratim. Indeed, I am tcmpted to suggest that on the fly leaf of the
book &odd be written: Wanzil.rg to R u s e SchooM in Acadefnic 7ReolocqjI T!zr's Book, Tahn SerJozrslyf Could Re. Da~lfium"c"toVozdr Cnreer. On Beginning men. There Is No Place to Begin
Nowhere is McClendm" challenge to the rezlder more apparent than in how he begins. 1have already noted that he begins doing &eology not in his 13oi:trirze but in his Ethics. But eve11 trhat can he deceiving, as that hook is also stabtitled Systcnzntic Theology (volume 1). At the very least we h o w something odd is going on when we see a book called Ethics with according to Mcso mueh space given to the reszlrrection. Res~~rectiol~, Clendon, requires that our lives be based on miracle, That is not good news for most people trained in ""ethics,"' a field that assumes that moral behavior depends on excluding the unexpected. The way McClendon develops his ethics m a n s the book c a m t stand at; a prolegomena for his Dactri~ze.Nor does the first chapter of the Doctrine, even though it is titled '"at Is Doctrine?" act as a prolegomma. McClendon simply does not seem to have learned. the lesson that most of us learned in graduate school, n m e l y that modern theology s h o d primarib deal with f2o~uto do theology (i,e., "method"")in case one ever gets around to doing any Thus, much of modern theology consists morc in theotogians tr~ritingbooks on other theologians than in fieologians doing my thealow. There is, of course, a way that McClendon might be read as trying to provide a p m k p m e n a insofar as he resorts, again in Dttcfri~ze,to the "strand"banalysis of the Ethics. I confess I have always been a bit suspicious of the usefulness of this analogy @orrowed from fnlittgenstein), which says that several strands wound together produce the rope of Christian life; no one strand is the c m or esscnce, for they only become rope when intertwined. h particular, 1have thought it unwise to begin, at; McClmdon does in the Ethics, with the boeiily strand. For in spite of McClendon's strcss on the interdependat natlarc3 of the strands, the bodily strand can give the impression that there is a '"bottom," a basis, that can pmvieie a common starting point. Now that the Doctrine is written, however, there can be no possibility of such a ~ a d i n gwhich is hut a reminder that not only must the Doctvine , be read in the light of the Ethic.;, but the Efhics must now also be read in the lig-ht of Che Doctrine. Mccl'lemdo~~ makes clear in part I, "The RuXe of God," that one can only hegh with the end. As he says in his wonderful ~ n d e r i n gof Rcrark 13, "Mark could tn;tthfully render afresh the picture received from Jesus, for its forcre finalfy dcpended not on near and more distant perspectives or upon the needed conceptual foreshortenings, but upon the ultimate tmth it related. Every version of the story was &aped by its endhg" "ocfrine, 94).'"
That McClendon has no place to begin comports well with the apocalyptic character of his theology. For as Wittgenstein observes in Cullwe and V ~ l u c"the , truly apocalyptic view of the world. is that things do nut repeat themscrlwes."" CChristidn theology therefore cannot have a starting point, exactly becarnse such a starting point wndd try to ensure a stability to the world, to subject history to a cause-and-effect pattern that the ~surreceionhas f o ~ v e~r n l i e r e dproblematic. McClencton says in Chapter 7 of Doctrine, "The Identity of God,"-hat for strictly ""pedagogical reasons" he reverses the order of the three strands in his display of the God of the Gospel. Yet I wonder ff he cltoes not have a deeper reason. 'The very way he resists my starting point for presenting the tczachings of the church is meant to exhibi-t that all existence is determhed by the eschatobgy commensurate with Christ's resurrection. If our God is a pioneer, a trailblazer, as MeClendun rightly claims, then I think our theolog must equalJy take the rids of not "repeating" itself by trying to ensurr a place to begin. Tlze attempt to m k e Cheology attah quasi-scientific "'objectivityf'even in science attahing ohjectivitlJ is more an irnage than an actual. activity-by providing it with a firm foundation (inte~~ded or not) could not help bztt produce a domest-icded theology. Such theolngy is but the mirror irnagc of empire, inasmuch as it seeks to put everything in its place, to secure afi the lwse ends, in the inter& of order and sectrrity By providing a rational basis fnr theology, by Cindi,ng the essential core to determine the meaning of all tlnedogical discourse, theology could pretend to be for anyone. Architectonic theology is but the mirror image of Christimity as a system that "explahs thhgs." It is a theology for people who belreve that faith in God is meant to put us firmly in contml of our exisknce. It is a theojogy that attempts to take the s~trpriseout of the resurrection. Accordingly, architectonic theology tmds to a rclductionistlic disglap of the various loci of 6hris.L;iandoctrine, trying to show that insofar as the varithey all ""mean" the same thing.. McClendon ous doctrines are ratio~~al, attmpts no such exercise in "meaning,"' on the assumption that if the htci are not dcrfng any work witbin the practices of the church, no amount of intellectual work can rescue them., Nicholas Lash makes a suggestion at the beginning of Believing Thxr Ways in One God: A Rcadiszg offhe ApostlesTzed that I think illurnines McClendon's practice. Lash begins his book with the aMirmation "Amen.'" He knows very well that this is a bit unusual since "Amen" conventionally comes at the end of an act of worship. Nonetheless, we may begin with [Amen] because what it comes after is everything that went before. Theologians spend much time arguing where they should begir-1.This is a largely futile exercise because, i f one thing i s cer-
tain in this life, it is that none of us begins at the beginning. We find ourselves sclmewhere, discover something of what went before, crf hew things went in order to bring about the way they are. Crowing up is largely a matter of learning to take bearings, A more fruitful question than "Where should w e begin?" would almost always be "Where, then, do w e stand?""
McClendon achowledges his stmce hthat community of constitutive narrative practices called 'kchurch." Rather than begiming some place, then, he must simply ask, " M ~ amust t the church teach if it is really to be the church?'We therefore seeks no miniml set of "teachhgsf"that can be rationally justifi.ed. He asks i_nstead what we need in order to be about the tasks of the churtlh. We should therebre not be surprised. when this "baptist" theologian identifies as closest to his own approach those Catholic theologians who see the authority of the magsterium deriving fideliu~n(Doctrine, 25-26). from its consultation with the cot~se~szts h this respect, McClendo~n"theology is not unlike a cmversation that was reportcd to me betvveen friends, one of whom was contemplating becomktg a Catholic, 'f'he pcrtmtial convert suggeskd that he was s h p l y , his kiend rczplied moving from an outhouse to Ihe main ~ o ~ s (toz whi,ch that the mtaphor was all wrong. Rather, he should remember that in God's hhouse there. are mmy rooms, albeit some are better furnished thm others. McClendon accordingly tries to provide us with as richly fmrnished a m m as possible by hdpjng us see that as Christians we need no place to begin*&r task, then, is not to h d the perfect place to begin but to lose nothing that can help us live faithful to "the way.'" The intention of McClendon" Doefrine, therefore, is not to end a conversatim, but to begin one. Since the task of doctrinal theology is to explore wfiat the church must teach if it is to be the church, McClencton must always be open to frezsh challenges. For example, he provides no extensive account of the mle of WIary as the first-born oE the new creation. Our worship of Jesus m y well be deficient if M a q is not made past:of that worship. That is to say, as Protestants, our worship may be deficient just to the extent €hat we do not h o w hOw to pray to Mary. For Mary's exclusion from Protestant worship m d thedow is, I suspect, not unrelated to the Protestant tendency to try to discover a "core" of the Gospel that modern people will find ""beiievable.'YVirgin births are thus rendered either expetndable or symbo:(ic. As a result, Christian theolow loses necessary connections with Israel, inasmuch as Mary is the inescapable reminder that Jesus was born a few. ~ It is to McClendon's great credit that his "method" means that S L E C an objection cannot be excluded inprinciple. Such "teaclrting" may be as crucial to the divlay of C11ristian doctrine as the Christian doctrine of God. For once o~neno longer t?ssum,es the existence of one m d only one starting point, then the luxuriant character of C3hristian theology can be all
htwed to flourish. It is no longer a question of "How littfe do we have to it is that the crihurch has bebelieve to be church?" but "HOWwo~~derful lieved all this!" On Seeing the Oddness of the Obvious: The Stmchnre of McCXendonf~D~l)oeitl.ine Just as it is easy to miss the significance of not b e g b h g with a beginning, it is also easy for a reader to miss the significance ol the way MCClenelon stmctures the tf~ilchit'lgsof the church.'%e difficulty of course, is dekrmiaing the order of the various teachiags of the church when one does not have a beginning. That McCtendon begins his xlarratke with the "Rule of God" is issurely not unrelated to his sense of the disestablishent of the church h liberill social orders, Put sjmply, it is not accidental that we rediscover God's rule precisely at a time that Christians are discovering that we no h g e r rule. Because it has for so long seemed right to begh with the rule of God h a theology shaped by Christian teaching, we can easily miss the oddness of this move. Teaching is a form of ruli-ng, since through teaching we art. "ruled" to be faithful subjects of the C)ne alme ~lrhohas the authority to rule. Thus, McCJendm's part 1 &ghtl.ydepicts how the One that rules from a CI^C)NS makes us to be creatures capable of living according to such a surprising rule. McClendon notes, ""Every Christian doctrine s e e m to mquire every 0th- for its clear prt?sentaticm'~tl)uctuine,123). That s w l y is the case, and that it is such is at once the glory and the frustration of theology. For on the one hand, the theologian cannot help but be hamted by the sense that everythillg must be said at cmce, md on the other, the tE.teologian also recognizes that the ver)i structure of our language prevents ous doing so. For as McGlendon reminds us tirne and t h e again, the shape oi Christian convictions is &at of a narrative. It is not just a ""sory"3ut a story &out the storied Character of our exjstence as c ~ a t u r e s05 a gracious crcatos. That e v e q doctrine reguires all others is t h e ~ f o r only e a reminder that the theologian's task is to help the church teach tl-te stcrry in an orderly fashion through prayer and worship. Like any good star)., the story of God is complex. The temptation of the thedcrgian is to reduce or "manage'~hatcclmplexity by suggesting what i t "'realiy means," Meclendon refuses to simplify however, for even though he begins with the end, he never fails to remjnd us that the story is not done. "This is that" is a constant reminder that the telling of the tale is ongohg. It continues even now exactly because through Christ we have been made part of the endel"e "narrative character" of our existence &refore requires that McClendon structure the teaching of the church eschatdogicalfy,
Thus Hans Hut, not Hegel, is the paradigm of the virtue correlative to the vision of Christ's overwhelmhg triumph. Tfiat virtue, of cowse, is patience. McClenctm lifts up the example of Hut as one "whose vision of Christ's overwhehing triumph in the last day was second to none, but who when he instructed his converts gave them the task, not of c o n p r ing the world with the world's weapons, but of obeying the commandments and practic% love cme to amther while they awaited God's own timef"Ductri~ze, 97). Such patience is not merely what we must do until we are saved. It is our salvatican. Accordingly, McCIendon" amount disorders our world more. determinativety than Pannenberl; (or probabty would find comfortable. Molt~~am ) That McClendods Dilcbli~~e is structured eschato1ogicall.y wiXl certainly prowoke many who assume that tJReology must begin at the beginning-that is, hvith God and creation. Yet bZcClendon does not treat the identiq of God until chayter 7. Are you not supposed to begin theology with the doctrine of the Trinity? McClendon does not do so, not because he has doubts about the Trinity as an expression necessary to Christian worship, but because Gob must be dir;played as part of the practice ol: church teaching. McClendon puts the matter clearly when he notes that his task was to show the Christian g a d news as good news about God, This did not mean that pagans were offered sorne for some more) "retigious experiences," or that beni&ted ancients who Lacked a morality tzrere offered one, c o u ~ e s yof the Christians. Of course, when the Gospel appears, experience changes. Of course morality changes-yet the news is peater, mare radical, than "experience" or "morality" can indicate, VV;ls it then a new pllltiloso~~lty of Cod? More than that, as we shalf see, The God Christiam know is the Gocl of Jesus Christ, that is, the God known to them as they know the risen Christ and share the fellowship called church. Neither Christ nor Spirit is confined to the pages of the New Testament, So we =arched there and beyond for the impact of Jesus Christ, and the entailed impact of Godfs Holy Spirit-a wider search, and one hardly begun here. The results to this paint will disappoint some. Spheres of action for Jesus' God have been indicated, and names for Cod named, same familiar, sc~mestrange, Vet "Cod" has not been defined here, or God's essence described, apart fmm the Israel-Jesus-church story itself. (Doctritzc, 293-2342
tlere we see McClendon exposillg his pedagogical intmt in shaping our readkg of the Gospels and correlatively slnapislg who we are to be as church. H e does not let us begin with God, for such a God cannot be other than m abstrac.tion-even as Trinity. hstead, he forces us to focus on learnil~gthe story through becoming servants to the rule of God h u n d in Christ, Accordjngly, he even treats sin and salvation prior to treating the identity of Christ.
I mention this point because 1 have to acknowledge that it makes me nervous. I wnrry that such an order can underwrite an anthropological account of sin and salvaticm that subsequently determines the manirng of Christ (rather &an an account of salvation learned from Christ). McCletndsn is acutely aware that this is a problem. He sharply criticizes Reinhold Niebuhr for providing an account of sin that fails to see that we only come to a clear akvwness of sin after we are saved from it (Doefrz'fze,124). Raising this issue, however, helps us see the power of McClendon" eexecution of the structure of the church" teaching. For be does not assume that he is displaying theological language as if that language were a primitive metaphysics separate from the practices of the cmcwte people called church and whose very lives tell us the nature of the world. McClendsn can treat salvation and sin prior to Christology precisely because t h r e is in fact no "priorily" other than the story-formed, practices of the church. By doing so he =minds us that questions of Christ" identity (e.g., speculation concerning the ""twonatures'" am in service to the church" faithful practice. En effect, the stmcturc of his theology is to force us to =member that theology is not an end im itself. neology is not, in other words, a speedative endeavor. That McGlendsn first treats the atonement (chapter 5) before developing his Christology (chapter 6) is also a m w e of g ~ asignifcame. t I take that to be m aitetrxpt to recontextuali;r;e these traditional theological topics and loci by placing them h a narrative mode appropriate to the fundmental clairn, "this is that." Accordingly, he resists ail accounts of "theories" of the atonement that de-eschatologize the cross. McClendon forces us, in effect, to become better readers of the Gospel so that we might see in our reading that we are ourselves aiready characters irt the story. For there is no place that we can position ourselves outside of the story of Christ withaut distorting how God%rule rules. I have only touched the surfaee of the extraordinarily subtle way in which McClendon has structured his Docfritze. Anyone familiar with the habits of m d e m theology cannot help but marvel at the imaginative way that McClendcrn has displayed the network cJf "rules and rwanings" cmstitutive of Christian practices. It: is as if one has etntered a new world, and it will take us some t h e before we wili learn all the skills necessary fnr the journey to which McClendcm has beckoned us. There i s one m v e he nnakes, however, to which I want to call particular attention. That is partly because 1 think it e x t ~ m e l yimportant and partly because 1cannot resist doing so im a contr~xtthat prides itself on its &formed b a c k g r o u t h a t is, Professor McClendon's residency, Fuller Theological Seminary. :l refer, of course, to McClendods account of creation as an eschatological doctrine. In contrast to those who assulne that
creation is a presupposition of the ~demptionthat c m e s in Christ, McClelrrdon rightly suggests: The ultimate end of cwation and redemption alike is the fulfillment of God's great kingdom rule- "This rule, when it shall be achieved, will mean God's glory fully shared, impaded to all, incorporating all. Then creation (the doctrine of divine origination and conservation) and salvation (the Xiberatian of a people suited to that coming giory) and last things (the doctrine of the consummaticm itself) are partner doctrines in the exposition of the all-embracing ruXe of God-.In a figure, creation and salvation are not parent and child; neither has birthed the other. Ratl~erthey are sisters, mutually interacting and supporting each other along with a third sibling, eschatol%y. And a11 this is in fulfillment of the rule of God, which (at least in the structure of this book) is the mother doctrine that includes them all. (Doctrine, 147-148)
Although. it would be a mistake to attempt to locate the center, or "essence," of McCIendon's Doctrhe, I think no move is more fmportant for the averall structure of his work than this. For it means that he camat pretend to have knowledge of the g o d ends of God's creation abstracted frcrm the story embodied in cmss and ~surrection.It obviously putfiim at adds with a11 those who want to use the "d~ctrixrreof creationff to ground common knowledge and. practice between chusch and world. Such a move may seem m m intelligible in a ""pstmodern" world, but I susped that McClemdon would rather think that God has led us to rediscover the ""place" that makes creation good news. McClendods position in this respect is, I think, quite near to that of Nicholas Lash, who in reflecting on Mark's account of Jesus in Gethsemme, says: T would not be wandering tcx) Ear from Mark's text i f I suggested that what occurs on Calvary in the death of Christ is that wKch happened "in the beginning" and at the Exc>dus:God's Ward makes a world, a home far us with him. The spring festival, rather than mid-winter, once marked New Year's Day- On 25 March, according to the fifth-century calendar known as the martyralclgy of jerorne, ""Our Lord jesus Christ was crucified, and conceived, and the world was made." On this day God brings all things alive, ex n&ilo. Out of nothing, by his word, he makes a world, a home. Out of the vir@nfs womb, Christ is conceived. Out of that world-threatening death on Galvary life is newborn from an empty tomb. Christ" terror is God%Word's human vulnerability. But, it is just this vulnerability, this surrender, absolute relationship, which draws out of darkness finished t ifeI forgiveness of sin.'"
1should like to think McClendon's ( m d Lash's) account of creatio~rrthe end of all attennpts to distinguish beheen orders of ccreatim and orders of reeiemption, I have to confess, however, I am not hopeful in this R-
spect; not because I think their ~ s p e c t i v etheolngicaf displays deficient, but because of the powerful practices that underwrite many modern accounts of the doctl-ine of creation. So we find oursetves again remmbering McCltmdonfsoverridk~gpresumption tbat doctrine itself is a practice that must be ordcred, as all the practices of the churcSl m,to the wihess thruugh worship to Go&s good rule. I have not tried to compare and contrast in detail i?ncClmdcm"s understandjng of the structrrrc of doctrine with other thedogical alternatives, but it does strike me that the most instructive such comparison may well be with Karl Barth. The unsystematic character ol McClendon's presentation is, I think, quite similar to BartWs actual practice. Tfirough repetition, Barth forces his readers to attend to the story of God. :I suspect that Barth h e w petition was a way to train Cbristim readers. Cornparing in this respect MeClendon" practice of forcing a slow reading with Barth"s practice of repetition could. be q&e illumixtatirrg.
Deceiviq Modesty: Can a Baptist Be a Catholic? &e of the engagillg aspects of McClendon" work is its openness to the breadth of Christian tradition. Nevertheless, he not only tells us, hboth the Ethics and the Docfrirze, that he writes as a Baptist, but that this ""baptist" "entity makes a difference for what he writes. Do we have to become Baptist to be good readers of McClendon? I have a colleague who refuses to use McClendm" Ethics on grounds that we ought not to subject people preparing for the Methodist mhistry tcr Baptist theology*Alt h u g h I have pointed out to hirn that a Baptist theology that makes Dorothy Day the heroine is at least a little odd, he is not persuaded that it makes that much difference. Can McClendon have it both ways? C m he be a Baptist yet mhe, as he obviously does, the resources of the Christian tradition for the constmctive development of his t%ledogy?For example, in developing his Christology, McClendm notes: When the identity narratives we call Gospels tzrer-e first circulated, the task of interpreting them gave rise to further questiom, and these to still others, until the first great post-New Testament theofctgical debate, the ancient Christalogical controversy, had taken shape. It continued for centuries, and gave lasting (some said permanent) shape to Christian thought. For baptist Christiang to be sure, these controversies and conciliar decisions of the second, third, fourth, fifth and later centuries do not have the authority that they exercise in creedal communities such as the Catholic and Orthodox. Yet all of us are the heirs of these discussians and must take them into account in aur thinking, albeit with an attmtive eye totyard those counted lasers as well as toward the winners (for truth is not always, or even mually, allied
with the kind of power that wins Beree ecclesiastical and political wars), ( D n e f r i n238-2313? ~~ emphasis added)
what grounds does McClendcm make ""at1of us" heirs of this history? I raise this probem partly because it is also a problern for the way I do theology. I describe myself as a "High Church Memonite," by wwhich I mean I am a Methodist. But then I range across the Christian tradition, plundering it in ways trhat seem to suggest I ant responsible to no one concrete tradition, :l am sure one of the reasons I so operate is that by being edtrcated at Vale X acquired the prttsumptim that the best theology is also the most encompassing. This stmce can. give the impression that in trying to stand everywhere, 1 (and perhaps McClendon) can end up staneiing nowhere, Because it appears that we get to pick and choose amid the variety of the Christian tradition, we may in fact s:imply reproduce the liberal self. neology, e m a theology as radically ecclesial as oursf therefore becomes but an exempf ififation of consumer preference. For exampie, in considerjng the continuity betwen past, present, and Ifuture, McClendon obsemres that the Catholic answer i~~volves a theory of hierarchical succession hierarchically mai~~tair~ed, whereas a Protestant ansbver depelnds on each belietser's having an in'cvard and spiritual relationship to Christ, He suggests that the Baptist vision has no need, to disavow either af these modes of relating Christ to the church, siztce both seem to require something like the other, Yet McCkndon s~tggests that neither of them can do the work demanded, because "if it is true that the True Church is successor to the apostks, it is evally true that ail those it calls heretical and false are successors as well, while (to consider the idea of spiritual authenticity as the ruie) this individual way of thinking dissolves the very objectivity it proposes to establishf"Docfrz'fze,46). Me proceeds to observe that the Baptist vision aflows or, more strong@ put, W a n d s a variety of Bible readings depmding on time and phce. Yet the thesis of this volume is that the unity that arises by use of the vision is nevertheless sufficient to define an authentic style of communal Christian life, so that participants in such a community can know what tlne church must teach to be the church. . . . This is not a sectarian way, dwlsring all &hers wrong in order to be alone right. It is rather an ecumenical way, confessing the fufullnessof its style of Christian existence and offering it- to alX in the hope that in the cmversatic~nthat emues it will be adopted by all, That it has not yet been so adopted is tragically t r u e t r a g i c in the persecution, suffering and exclusion that, as itlnrtyrs Mirror and other writings testifyf have stalked the baptist way throughout its history: That it may nonethetess be adc->ptedby all is only to affirm in another way Plans Frei's rules listed above: the Gospel centers in Christ; the Gospel is for 2111; the Gospel opens into a world of freedom. fL>c7eCrir-z~ 46)
I fervently hope that McClendon is right about this. Yet I can hear the question coming, as it often comes to Memonite theologian John Howard Yoder (and to me), "Where is this baptist cburch?" It surely is not: among those who bear the name Baptist! Indeed, in many ways it looks more like the Roman Catholic church than any of our other contemporary options. :I see no rcason in principk that McClendon would otrject to such a possibility 7'he importance of this problem is that such matters c m o t be idle speculation for McC_'lendnn.His church must exist, given his understanding of what the church must teach to be the church, I have but one suggestio~~ in this respect, I think McClendonfsf-abilityto range over diverse traditions is not a '"iek and choose" method. It is, rather, a r a m a t i o n of the Christian past that is neither Catholic nor Protestant. For McClendon (and Yoder), the issue is not shaped by Reformation polemics, but rather by the faithfulness of Christians to manifest God's ruale thmugh faiZhful practices, Put different15 the crucial issue is not the magisteriai oMice of"Rom, but the Constanthian accommodati.on of the church to the powers and their dernonir practices. My hunch is that the reason some of us have a fresh appreciaticm for past theological practices, even whesz those practices were in service to a Catholic and Protestant Constantinian strategg",is that we believe those practices now offer new resources for narning and ~ s i s t i n gthe powers. A people who have learncd to accept the authority of Scriptm or bishops are at feast on the way to learning the practice of forgiveness and recmciiiation, as well as nonwiolence, as part of their life in Christ. In short, I suspect that McCIesndon believes, or at least hopes, that God has now brought Christims to a point whese we can mly survive h the world by using our past differences as a s o m e of our unity. So his Doctrine hwefully envisages a chlrrch that can produce readers of this ext.raordinary project. Like him I believe that they exist.
I am indebted to Kelly Johmon for rewriting this chaptec She not only made it more intelligible but also made the argument more precise. 2 . Greg Jones puts this wonderfully in his rwmt review of George Hunsingerfs HOZUko Read a r k BnrElz: The Shape cf His V~mlogy,in Modern nzeofogy 9, 2 (April 4493): 228-230. Jrlnes notes that we usually acquire skills through apprenticing ourselves to a master: Without such masters we resort to manuals; far example, we use manuals for fixing kitchen sinks! learning to play golf, and so on. We are a bit surprised if we need a manual to help us read a book, but Jones argues we shcjrald not be sui-prised, since anyone may be able tc) read, but few know how to read well. I: am suggesting that all theology is primarily an attempt to help us ""read" wetl, but since, as McClendon emphasizes, worship i s the preeminent
Christian practice, then our ""rading" cannot be limited to texts. 1 am, in effect, writing a "how- to" essay on a "how to" kbook. 2. James Wm. McClendon, Doctrine: Sysfemnkic TJlec~logy,vol. 2 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2994), hereafter hetrz'ne. 3. James Wm. McClendon, EZftics: Systematic Tlzeolugy, vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon 13ress, 1986)' hereafter Ethics, 4. By ""practice" McCXendon means "a complex series of human actions involving definite practitioners who by these means and in accordance with these rules together seek the understoo>dend" "oscfri~ze, p. 8). It was tempting to focus my presentation on the impadance of McClendom's account of practices, their relation to convictions, and the telmtoglcal ordering of practices. I susped that when practices become demonic, they d o so because they are not appropriately ordered. Whether McClendon has provided a sufficient account of the teleological order of the practices, and haw that order should order the presentation of doctrines, I think will be a faxinating question far the future. Moreover, whether Mcrather surprising non-trarditionClendon should be ready to endorse RRacfnt-]rrre% determined character of practice is also an issue far future discussian. See, for example, Phi1 Kenneson" criticism of Mac1ntyrefsaccount in "The Reappearance of the Visible Church: An Analysis of the Prclduction and Reproduction of Christian Tdentiq" (Pfl)h.D.Diss., Graduate %hoot of Duke University 1991), pp. 275f. 5, The language of surface and depth can be misleading. McClendon is not suggesting that ""depth" is the "meaning" or substance that the ""surface" does not already embody, 6. Van Hamey, " R e TntelleduaX Marginality of American Theology," in Relig1;0n and Twenlkth-Cenluy Americalt hztellectltal L@, ed-.Michael J. 1,acey (Cambridge: Woodraw Wilson International Center far Scholars and Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp, 172-1 92. 7. Ibid., p. 185, 8. Hans Frei's account of the implicat.ic>nsof the fc~undingof the University of Berlin for theology generally suppc~rtsHarvey's accc~unt.See Frei, Type ofModer~z ThtoEogy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). FrfLvi wonderfully shows why the kind of typology of theology he provides is the result of the way ""kowledge'" is produced by such institutions. 9, Hamey, "T11e Intellectual Marginality'' p 1190. 2 0. Ibid., p. 191. 11 Tb say this without implying that the "end" means closure is not easily accomplished. That the end is resurrectic~n,as McCIendon helps us see, forces the church to be ever surprised by miracle. 12. Wittgenstein, Culture and Valzke, ed. C. H, von Might, trans. P. Winch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 56e. h Aposl/esf IS. Nichalas Lash, Believing Three Wizys itz One God: A Reading of E Crmd (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 19931, p. 2. 14. McCXendon" work is filled with startling insights, many of which, except for the Xirnitationti of time and space, I would like to explore. Z am particularly taken with chapter 10, where he makes mission centrat to the display of doctrine. I would especially like to dwell on his suggestion that the truth of e x f m ecclesiam -.
nzllbz snlzls is that the very meaning of salvation turns upon the shared Life Christians take up when they came to Christ (Doctrine, p. 423). 15. McClendon's svvt?eproject is shaped by the avowal of "&is is that," which he says is a "trope of mystical identity binding the story now to the story then, and the story then and now tcr God% hture yef tcr come" (Doct-n"ne!45). 1 have found in my experience of teachhg the Etlzr'cs, howwer, that this idea is one of the most difficuXt aspects of McClendon" position for cmtemporary seminarians. 1 am not sure why that is the case. 16. Lash, IZeliecrhg Tfgrt.6 Ways in One Cod, pp. 117-1 18.
12 Creation, Contingency, and Tvuthficl Nonviolence:
A Milbankian Reflection
and the secular in Theology and Sock2 Tlzeo~yis SO drmatic as to cause one to overlook the constructive theological proposals in the book." am not suggesting that the polemical thrust of TheaZoCqrand Social The09 is separable from Milbmk's theological dairns, but there is a te~nptatimamong commentators, at least initially, to concentrate on the former because in that book almost no one is free from having his or her ox gored. In this essaSi, however, I want to c d attention to the quite extraordinary m n n e r in which Nilbank interrelates reflection on the Trhity, creation, contingency, truth, and nonviolence. In particular, I want tc:,show why Milbank's argument ior the unavoidability of narrative as the form of truth reflects his understandil.rg of creation as the ongohg nonviolent work of the God we know as Ili.in.ity. I am interested in drawing out Milhank's understand@ of these matters because his reffectims help me to respond to a challenge by Robert fenson about aspects of my own work. Jenson, as usual, goes to the heart of the matter by challenging not only me but also anyone who, like Mitbank, accepts the critique of ""foundational" accounts of knowledge. M q think that our willingness to assume the contingency of our own convictions means that we must atrandcm all attempts to claim Christian beliefs as true. Accordingly m we not colnnitted to the belief that any claim to truth is but a mask for power and is resolvable only on the basis of violence? fensods qwstion was provoked by the suggestion I m d e in After Christmdom? that the Christian alternative to hegemonic and.violent narratives that daminate liberal education, such as "Columbus discovered h e r i c a , " is simply that of witmess."n a letter appended to the book, Diavid. Toole, then a graduate student in theology, notes that the very notion sf witness can be violent if that wihess asserts for the slther a tmth M I L B A N K f s P O L E M I C AGAINST L I B E R A L I S M
that the other does not alwady possess, I achowledge 'Tbole's point, observing that thjs is but "a relnlnder that the w y of nonvdence is never easy and that our language can embody . . . violence in ways we hardly [ ~ o w.I6 ]
Jmson"s question follows: Can Hauerwas's thinking finaly sustain its own central claim, that the church is t k world" sallration? The church cannot save the world in any of the ways the liberal church tries, and Hauerwas rightly rubs our nose in this plain fact. But lfowthen is the church the world's salvation? The student has a point: every claim to speak truth does indeed exercise something that might plausibly be called ""vir>fence,"if we so chaose to use the language, If Haue~war; accepts this usage of ""violencep"he must abandon also witnas as what the church can do for the world, It seems, indeed, he must end with a doctrine that the c h u ~ saves h the worXd simply by silently existing. Now even such a dnctrine may be sustainable, but only by a lat of maw speculative systematic theology than Hauerwas seems witling to countenance.'
But if the Christian wihess is one of silence, then what does that do to Christ's commission to the church to make disciples of alT nations? Surely such a commission requires witness to Native Americans as much as to liberal societies, Moreovel; such a witness surely must entail some account of conversion from one narrative, one community, to anothers4 Of course, I can "say" that Chsistians ought to witness and try to convert ""Native Americans," but saying that seems more assertim than arg w e n t . I can respond to Jensm, ""l all depends on what you mean by 'violence.""Yioknce,'>as well as ""nonvioiencer," are context-dependent notiom that rt;quirt-, display in order to make sense. So I camot anwer Jenson's qqllcslion in the abstract, sjnce that wndd only reinforce the ahistorical accounts of Christian practices and. convictions 1 am trying to c ~ u n t e rYet . ~ :I think such a Rsponse wodd leave Jensan rightly dissatisfied, since it could not hclp but appear, like my atternpt to stand neither with the "multisulturalists" nos with the ""Eurocentrists," as but another "dodge.'" An adequate respolnse to Jensan therefore requires the display of material, theological claims X believe Milbank has begun in Tko%ocw and Srrcilal T h e c t ~Mitbank . provides the &eological =sources necessary for appeal to truth without those appeals embodyiag, or at lea& underwritingr the false universalism of secular epistemologies. FIe does so by helphg us see the intrinsic connection between the Christim conviction that the God of Jesus Christ creates nonvioletntly and the necessity of those who worhip that God to learn to live nonviolentiy in a world of violerne. In effect, Milbank has taken up the task of explicating the metaphysics of a
190
A Milbankian Reflection
n m i o k n t creation in fie hcrpes of providhg a ccnanter mtdogy to fie pervnsive nnetapl.lysics of violence elnbedded in Cttristian and nonChristian discourse, Milbank contrasts the Christian conviction fiat creation is essentially nonvhlent to thn.t. of the Greeks and IiberaXisrn (cvhichMilbanfc s~lggests may have begm with the Greek distinction between refigion and politirs [a291),both of MIbich a s s w e agonistic accounts oE existence. For Christians, violence is &ways a "secondary willcd intrusion," which is knokvn. only because of a profounder peace. Such a peace is not driven to hegemonic or totaliziw accounts of existace, s i ~ ~God's creaticm is the once going actualization of a sllciality of harmonious difference disgtayed i,n the Binity That is why Christian lagie is nut deconstructable by mcy8e1-n secular reason; rather, it is Christianity which exposes the nonnecessity of suypasing, like Nietzscheans, that differencq nontotalination and indeterminacy of meaning necessnrily imply ahitrariness and violence. To suppose that they do is merely to subscribe to a particular encoding of reality. Christianity by contrast, is the eading af tranxendental difference as peace. ( 5 4 )
Accordingly; Nietzsche was correct to single out Christimity for attack. He rightly saw that Christimiw was the only viable alternative to his agonistic world. 'That does not mean that fieology can "rationally" refute, B la Machtyrc," the mto:logy of difference at the heart of Nietzschem postmodernism, but thotogy can help narrate why, given the crcation of ""the secular," Niet2;schefsaccolmt of our "world," izts~faras it is the world created bp "liberalismif%was inevitable. Althougb Mi2bmk"s account of this thinker or that thinlcer may be open to challenge, it is my conviction that he is right in his ctaim that fie very creation of the "secular" is impljcated in an ontology ol violence. Thus, liberal political and social theory is unable to irnagiste m y societJv. able to control violence except through counter\iiolence. Liberatism's "universalism," i,n this respect, is but the mirror image of Christian presuppositions-indeed, as Millaank tells the story, liberal.ism is only possible as a coranternarmtitde to that of the church. 117 Tfwology artd StlCiRll Tjzeo l y Milbank attempts to display a counterontology to liberalism in the hope that by so dojng he will force the ""scular'9o acknowledge its own contingency. Many m y thjnk that such a "disp1ay" is insufficient, for how can Milbmk defeat lj_berafismby usisrg its own tool~i.2~ M e n MgiXbank says that he f i n a y c m only out-narrate liberalism, he is not givirrg up on a truthful witness. Rather, kc is reminding zls why it is that the very God to which Christians witness requires nasrative disylay*That is why he artjue"hat narrative is
a mow basic category than either explanation or understanding: unlike either of these it does not assume punctiliar facts or discrete meanings. Neither is it concerned wit1"~universallaws, nor universal truths of the spirit. Yet it is not arbitrary in the sense that one can repeat a text in just any fashion, although one can indeed do so in any number of fashic~ns,. . . If reading texts means that we renarrate them or repeat them, and if, as we have seen, textuality is the condition of at1 culture, then narration-of events, structures, institutions, tendencies as well as of lives-is the final mode of comprehension of human society. (267)
Mibank argues that because narrative is more basic than explanation, there can be no genuine sociologicd comprehension of the i n h e n t l y "inexplicable" character of Jesus of Nazareth (136)."esusf =conception of Israel through his life certainly entails a sociology but it c strued sociologically-that is, Jesus cannot be accounted for by assernblhg "explanations," In this respect, the= is a continuie between Jesus" refusal to seize power a d the early church"s refusal to over&row existing structures. Xf the ekurch tried to overthocv the exjsti.ng struchares, it would have s k p l y become a pardel structure, a parallel 'kcause," Instead, the church attempted to create alternative, ""Tcal'baras of peace, charity?and justice. That ollr existence is c ~ a t e dmeans that insofar as ""sience" i s possible, it can only be a '"cimce of the particular." Accordingly history remains theologfs great alty. For it is ~ T i t t history a~ that defies the unkersal by reminding us that lived history enacts the different. Positivist and dialecticai traditions, with their corresponding forms of social science deprftject, tried to defeat the "particularislic rived frnm the EdighSenme~~t obscurantism" of Judaism and Ghristianit-y in the n m e of the universal. But this challenge is at an end, for it has seen that it was itself made in terms of metaphysics, and of a "religion." h the ""new era" of postmodernism the human has become subordinate to the infinitely many discourses which claim to constitute humanity, and universality can no longer pose as the identical, but can only be garaduxicafly invoked as the different. (260)
W ~ adrives t Milhank" display of the ontological relationship between ~ d ontology of postnonviolence and narra.t.ive is not the e p i s t e d o m modernism*Rather it is Jesus Christ, & r o u e whom we k m of God as Trinity, who is the fundamental ontological clairn that must shape atl other claims. Hence, though Milbank is in general agreernel~twith Blandel, he nonefieless criticizes him for developing a general ontology. In contrast, "me ought to say that cmfy because one first experiences the 'shape' of incarnation, of atonement, is one led to formulate the abstract notion of t h i s occurrence; and only then does one construe reality in terms of the need for the perfedhg offering of lovef"(217).Milbank is re-
192
A Milbankian Reflection
minding us that though theology certainly makes mtaphysicral claims, such cfaims m s t remain di,sciplined by the prior theologicd commitments. That our existence is contingent is surely a mtaphysical claim correlative of our created status. Yet any metay>hysicalspeculation that such claims invite can never become an end in itself but must serve to remivld us that fha2ly our salvation comes from the Jews-thus the unavoidahiliv of narrative and, corrcslatively, analum for any knowledge worth having. These themes in Milbank" work are focused through his account of the Trinity. According to Milbank, Trinity dmotes that God is the God in which nothing can be u11rea1ized and yet in which no achaalization, even an infinite me, can exhaust God" power. Infinite realized act and infinite unrealized power mysteriously coincide in God, and it rnust be this that supports the circular "life," that is more than stasis, of the Rinity, Vet ""pwm-act" plays out through, and is constituted by, the Trinitarian relations: it is not that the Father is power and the %.mact, for this would depersonalize their relation and make it nut a real surface relation at all (this is why the Father-Son refation is not jrisl a signified-signjfier one, implying an "absence" of the Fathel; but also an ""adjacent," figurative rebtian), (423)
Accordingb the Trinity in the most concrete fashion possible witnesses to the non~riolenceof God's creation. Creation is not a finished product but rather God's continuously generated ex nililo in time. Creatures thus do not assist God in creation but participate in God's cmtinuing creation as Trinityqn this respect, one of the most interesting ways to think of The~Io~yy and Sncinl TTtze~ryis to interpret it as an extended reflection on the work of the Holy Spirit. The matehality of the Spirit" wmk is the reason Mibank can make the astounding claim Chat theology rnust be its own social science, It must be so exactb because Christian convictions are necessary for us to locate the final causes shaping our history as God's ongoing work 91:creation. Milbank is not suggesting that a Christian socioIogy can be deduced from the Christian cltoctrine of the Trinity in anci of itself-because there is no doctrine of the Trinity in and of itself, A djslinguishable Christian social theory is possible only because there are Christian practices. Put in terms of Christiar.1dogmatics, Milbank's position asslrrnes tkat Christian theological reflection "begins,'%insofar as Christian reflection has a beginning, with ecclesiology. For the Church stands in a narrative relationship t c ~Jesus anci the Gospels, within a story that subsumes both. Tl~ismust be the case, because no Itistoricnt story is ever over and done with. Furthermore, the New Testament itself does not preach any denial of historicity, or any disappearance of our
own personalities into the manistic truth of Christ..Quite to the cmtrary, Jesus's mission is seen as inseparable Erc>mhis preaching of the kingdom, and inauguration of a new sart of community, the Church. Salvation is available h r us after Christ because we can be incorporated in the community which he fc~unded,and the response of this community tcr Christ is made passible by the response of the divine Spirit to the divine Son, frorn whom it receives the love that flows between the Son and the Father. The association of the Church with the response of the Spirit which arises after the Son, and yet idulty divine, shows that the new community belongs from the beginning within the new narrative manifestation of God. Hence the metanarrative is not just a story of Jesus, it is the continuing story of the Church, already realized in a finally exemplary way by Christ, yet still to be realized universally, in harmony with Christ and yet difl~re~ztly~ by all generations of Christians. (387)
MiIbacrk" position canstot help but challenge th nanatiws of the cmlightenment, since it is &:he church that ulthnately interprets and locates alt other histories. As he says: if ane takes one's salvation from the Church, if one identifies one" self as a member of the body of Christ, then inevitably one offers the mast "ultimate'" explanation of socio-hit;torical processes in terms of the embracing or refusal of the specifically Christian vidues. Not to embrace such a metanarratirve, or to ascribe to it a merefy partial interpret?.lr.v;e pc)wer, would undo the logic of the incarnation. For tzrhy tzrould tzre claim to recopize the divine lugm in a particular life;.,uniess we had the sense that everything else was to be located Iwrt., despite the fact that this life is but one mare life, itself situated along the historical cankinuum? Thus if the enlightenment makes this sort of thing impc~ssible,it atsa rules out salvation to the Church as traditimally understood. (246)
MiIbacrk, in one of his striking asides, which 1t%iinknicely suggests the power of his theology obsc?rves that to be part of the church is to have "the mord luck to belong to the society which overcomes moral luck" (231),"T~orto belong to the church means one has become part of those "practices of p"rfectionmthat make us capable of becoming friends with one another, ourselves, and God. The "music af creation" i s thus co~~stituted and continued hthe church. The music that the church has learned to sing *rough becoming friends of God and one another is a music for all God's ccrcation. If: the c h m h is about "oubnarmthg," it can do so only to the extent that it can '"out-sing" "the w ~ r l d . ' ~ nerefore, Mlbmk c ot &er us a theory of tmth that is more determinative than the Christian wlbess ta Trinity through song..For if we had such a the or^^, then we shollld worshlp that thory rather than praise the Trinity. What good arc. definitions of truth when such definitions can distract frorn that which constitutes us as truthful witnesses to God's
very life? The very contingent character of a tn;tthful wihess c denied if we are to witness truthfully to the truth that- W are c a gracious crcator. That is what :I think Milbank mems when he claims that tmth for Christianity is not cormspondence but rather yarticipatim of the beautifttl in the beauty of God (427). I do not know if Miibank =presents the kind of ""secufatke syskmatic theology'" that Jenson suggests E need, but I think the rttlationships Milbank develops between theolol;y and social theory help me rcspond to Jenson" questions. Given Milbmk, it should be clear why I am not as deferential to the narratives of the Enlightenment as I am to ttnose cJf the Native Americans..Put quite simply, Che narrathes of the Nathe hmericans do not represent the subtle co-option of the Christjan narratives in the way tbat tbose of the Enligktenment do, born as the latter are from Christianity" own life. Indeed, E think it imperative that Christims crihallenge the narrathes of liberalism exactly because they fail to acknowledge their own violence. Of course, the confrontation between theology and "the secttlar" cannot be other than conflictual, as hegennonie narratives, when confronted by their hegemony, always attempt to clajm that "peace" is being threatmed. Moreover, Christims seek no less to wihess to and thus convert Native Americans than Enlighte ent liberals. I do not thkk, however, that conversion means the same k,r each. Indeed, if crmversion is the resopition of mcmbershjp in a more determinat-ive community than the one i,n which I first found. myself, then the conversion for most liberals is gohg to be more dramatic than fctr most Native Americans. For the liberal presumptinn Chat they belollg to no community, no narrati.ve, othcr thm Ihe cmmunity they themselves have chosen masks the deepest violence of modernity. Christims should try to convert Native Americms, but since 1 am not living among Nalive Americans, I have little idea what that mems. E do h o w I however, that it should have at least meant that the Christians who .first c d r o n t e d Natke h e r i c a n s should have refrai,ned kom killing them. As part of that peaceable wihess, they would have also had to ask the Sicrux not to kill the Pawnee if they were to live as Christians. Native Americans might have found that quite a crihallenge, even a violent crihallenge, to their very identity. But :Ihave no way of knowing that in principle. Et &pads, indeed, on what the concrete narratives and prartices art. that Chistians confront-. What I do, of course, chdlenge is the assumption that conversion has primarily to do with an individual's self-undcrstaneting rather than his or her being put in the context of a different community with a djfferent set of practices, To be suse, a Navaho might become Christian and still remah a Christian Navaho, We w d d simply have to wait and see what the full hnplications of that would be across genemtions, T am, a h r all, stifl a Texan even Chough I am a Chistian.
One aspect oE the problem we c d r o n t as part of the Christim wibess to Native Ameriems is how that witness can be made in the face of the extraordina~violence perpetrated on Native Americans in the name of Christianity. Jenson chides me for siding with the fashionable "multicultura:l""t.t.aek upon "Eurocentrisn." I ccrtahly have no wish to be "fashionable," but 1 am willing to take that risk in order to challenge the accornmodal;ion af the church to those narratives that underwrite murder in the name of ""progress.""" By challelzging the story Enlightenment historbgraphy tells about the triunnph of Columbus, 'f am tryjng to help Christians discover how our narrative practices have been capturrd by a sociology that subsumes Christ and the church within a narrative in which "Western civilization"' becomes the primary actor. The more challenging theological issue is haw Christians, MIhite and Native Ameriem Christims alike, are to witrness to Native Ameriems in the face of the violence perpetrated on them in the name of Christian ""civilizatian." h11.rthat context I think the wibess af the church might well take the form of silcnce through presence. Learning to Eve with those you have wronged may not be a had place to beg4n if the salvation we believe has been made prc.sc;tnt by Christ is as materialIy palpable as body m d blood. Milbacrk notes that Augustine denied the existence of true virtue and justice in a pagan society because tl-te pagans faied to worship the true God. Augustine argued that the form taken by true worship of the true God is the offering of mutual forgiveness in the community, and at one point he associates absence of the practice of forgiveness ("true sacrifice"" with the absence of moncltheism, In addition, thought of God the Father seems for Augustine to have been quite inseparable from the thought CIE heaven, our Motheq or the eternal community of all unfatlen and redeemed creatures enjoying visions of the infinite Trinity Thus, when he says that the pagans fail to "refer" "al earthly t-lszssto the peace of the one true God, he adjoins to this a failure of referral to the peace of the heavenly communitr)..Without jf"nrutua1fc~rgiveness"and social peace, says Augustine, "no one will be able to see Cob.'The pagam tzrere for Augustine unjust, because they did not give priority to peace and forgiveness. (409)
Missing in Milhank, however, is the concrete display of such forgiveness and recmciliation that makes God's peace present. What: we need are stories, witnesses, like the one Ruhs Bowman tells regarding the rel.atianship af the Brethren, Germm "Dmkards," to the Il-tdians in Morrison's Cove, Pemsylvmia, during the French and Indian Wars." h order to tell this story Bowman has to draw on U. J. Jones's quite unsympathetic account of .the Brethren contained in the latter's History of the Early Srttfkrrt.elzf (4the Jzrlzilrtn Vnlley. Bowman notes that. Jones was quite critical
of the Brethm both for rehr;ing to take up arms and for refuriing to pay money to support those willing to take up arms, not snty during the French and :lndis-\nWar but also in the Revolutiona"~War. h the tone oi "they got what they deserved," Jones describes the bebavior of the "Du~~kards" durkg an hdian raid inthe midst of the Revdutionary War: On their first expedition they would have few scalps to grace their belts, had the Dunkards taken the advice of more sagacious people, and fled, too; this, however, they would not do. They would fctllw but half of CrornwelX's advice; they were wilting to gut their "trust in God," but they would not "keep they did not use at all. their pawder clryarfIn short, it was a comp~~ldmd The savages swept down through the Cove with all the ferocity with which a pack of wolves would descend from the mountain upan a flock af sheep, Some few of the Dunkards, who evidently had a latent spark of love af life, hid themselves away; but by far the most of them stocd by and witnessed the butchery of wives and children, merely saying, 'Gottes wille sei getan." How- many Dunkard scalps they carried to Detroit canno>tnow- be, and prcshably never has been clearly ascertained-not less than thirty, according to the best authority In addition to this they loaded themsefves with plmber, stole a number of horses, and under cover of night the triumphant warriors marched bravely away1$
Bowmm notes that Jones ended his account with a brief aside, the significance of which Jones completely missed, It seems that during the massacre the Brethren ~pezltedso often "Gottes wille sei getan" that the Indians ~ t a i n e da vivid recollection of them. Durhg the war, some of the Indians wl.m had mssacscd Ihe Brethrern w r e later captured. Inierclstingly enough, t h y we= anxious to discover whether the "Gotswiltahns'" still lived im the Cove. They thought 'Gotswiltahns" must have been the n m e of that quite strange tribe." I think, finally, that such an example is what MiXbanks book is all about. Without such examples Christimity makes no sense and there is no wit-ness. It is whe11 we lose the practices necessary to remember these peopte that the contjngent witness that we must always make as Chrisot help but be violent. I suspect, when d 1 is said and done, that the Brethren sl: Marrison's Cove do not need Milbank. But I am sure that need the Bmthren of Milbank, and the rest of us that would, do theoiog~~, Morrison" Cove. They are God's witness that as God" ccratures we can live nonvioler~tlyin a world of violence.
Phi1 Kennesc~n,David Matzkc, and John Berkrnan made extremely helpful criticisms af an earlier draft of this chapter: I am in their debt..
I. John Milbank, Tkeology arzd Socifil TJlec~ry:Beyorjd Seczklfir Reasopt (Oxford: Basil Blackwelt 1990).Page references to Milbank appear in the text and no>tes. 2. Robert Jenson, "Review of Stanley Hauerwas's Affcr ClzristertdomlNFirst Tlzings 25 (August/September 19%). 3, Ibid. 4. Questions like these about After Cllrisfendovrt?have been raised by my COXleague Ceorge Marsden, i am grateful tcr him for the serious ccjnsideration he gives my work. 5, John Berkman puts the matter this tzray: "IS Christian tzritness necessarily violent? 1 wonder if tl-rat is like asking is sex necessarily t~iotent?or is sports necep sarily violent? or is the masterlapprentice relatiomhip necessarily violent? or is Jesus9elationshjp with the disciples necessarily violent? If there cannot be peaceable varieties of tzrihessing, sexual relationships, ice hockey (yes! ice hockey!), vttcationat training and discipleship, then I do not know what it would mean to call any of these activities violent. Violence depends on there being a cmtrast. NCIM~, wf-rereasa concept like 'a peaceable axe murder' is an oxymorc>n,certainly "peaceable witness' is not. it seems to me that the core uses of "iolence' cannot but rather only extended senses of %vioIence,henses cornrefer to 'witne~sjng,~ monly employed in scjme of the deconstructive literature. Perhaps tzre need to ask, Who* violence? Which geaceableness?"The comments were made in a letter to me, John Berkrnan is a former graduate student of mine who now teaches at Catholic University. 6. Mitbank" relationship tcr Macintyre is obvic>uslycomplex, In many ways, Tlzeology and Social ~ E L " Occtufd I ~ n ~have t been written i f Mactntyre did not exist. ~ tcr the publication of MacIntyre's Milbank wrote T!jco.ologyt k ~ dSochl T h c o prior Tlzrce Riv~1Versions cfMomI 11zquity. It is my guess, hc>wever,that Maclntyrefs"realism" in that work would only reinforce tzrhat Milbank takes to be his disagreement with RXacfnt-]rrre.RXiXbank senxs that his disagreements with Macfntyre finally come dawn to this: He apprc~achessacial theory as a theologian, whereas Mactntyre apprc>achesit as a ghilctsopher. The key point at issue here is the role that must be accorded to Christianity and to Christian theology. For Machtyl-e, it is true, Christianity has come to matter more and mctre, but Mifbank argues that it remains the case that Macfntyre ""opposes to philosaphy and practice of difference not, primarily, Christian thctught and practice, but the antique understanding af virtue, tzrith the accompaniments of Socratic bialedics, and the general link of reason to tradition. Of course, for MacXlntyre, one must subscribe to sctme p w ficzilnr tradition, sc~meparticular code of virtue and here he identifies himself as m Augustinian Christian. But, all the same, the nrgztmenis put fo~wardagainst niI-tilism and a philosophy of difference are made in the name of virtue, dialectics and the nolit?:ltnof tradition in general" "2"7. 7. There is a very serious problem about the character of MilbanKs whc~leproject as he attempts to supply a counternarrative to that of liberalism. Does he reproduce exactly the violence of liberalism by trying to write such a grmd narrative of how we have gotten in our peculiar straits today? In that sense his prctject is not unlike Mactntyre's project in WI~oseItlsiicc? Wlziclr Xnliotzafily.7 Obvic>usly,in my own work I have tried to chip away at liberalism one piece at a time, Milbank, however; may be right that you can only counter a totalizing narrative with an-
198
A Milbankian Reflect ion
other narrative that is equally totalizing, but I fear that in the process the Gospel cannot help but appear as just another ""system" or "thec>ryfr 8. Though MilbanKs Christology remains underdeveloped, 1 hope 1 am correct to think that when he does turn his attention to these matters, he will be sympathetic to the portrayal of Jesus by John Hc3w;zrd Uoder. 9, It is crucial to note that Milbank's account of participation is quite different than that of Gustafson. Milbank is making an antolcfgical claim correlative to his trinitarian account of creation. Accordingly, participation is not, as it is h r Gustafson, a seff"validating cfairn about our status as humans. 10. Milbank's reflectiron on the notion of luck obviously draws deeply on the work of Bernard Willjams and Martha Ntts&aum. 1 think he does so profoundly since our violence is often the attempt to render certain and necessary cc~ntingent moral commitments that we have made and fctr which others have paid the price-i,e., our attempt tcr rid our life cjf luck is the source of our greatest violence. The word Christians use to describe haw our lives are constituted by such luck is grace. Vet grace does not remove, as the Greeks tried to remove through theory, the contingency of our existence. I have thought that it would make a fascinating comparisc>nin this resped to juxtapose Iris Murdoch" reflections on cmtingency with those of Milbank. For an attempt to develop these themes, see Chariie Pinches and Hauewas, Cj~risti~l;tns Antong Ctzo Virtzdes: Tlteologicaf Gonversatio~s zuitFt Ancielzt a~zdMudcnz Ethics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997). 11. 11: is surely one of the most interesting moves, in a book of interesting moves, that Milbank sees the importance of Augustine" De Musicn for the explication, not only of creation, but also of the doctrine of the Trinity. He notes the way Augustine sees in De Musica that all the elements of creation are not "things'" but are inherently interconnected ""qualities," which combine and recombine in an endless variety that reflects God's glory (pp. 424-425). 12.1 confess. When 1 was working on the last chapter of After C1.aristendotn?1 was worried about the use of ""Columbus discovers America" as the central example in that chapter. Yet 1 became convinced, in spite of appearing "trendyt'' that there is nc, better example that challenges current educational practices. 13. Ruf-us D, Bowman, Charcl2 of fJ~eBretJ~re~z nud W Q ~3708-1942 , (Elgin, Ill.: Brethren Publishing House, 49441, pp. 74-75, 1 am indebted to the Rever-end Jeff Bach for calling my attention to Bowman" narrative. 14. Ibid. 15. bid., pp. 75-76,
13 Remaining in Bnbylon: 02iver OFDonovanFs Defense of Christendom, with James Fodor
On How Not to Read OfDonorran
OIiver O'Donovan" The Desirtr Laf the Nations is a bold, courageous, and comp"lli~~g account of the challmges facing Christianity fn a time when the church is on. the brink of exthction in modern Western cztlttztres..(""Etinction," when appfied to the church, is another way of say4ng, " b e e totaily assimilated into,'" or "engulfed by," mmlrdern Western cultures.) In a sense, O'Ucrnovan's reel.arnation of a Christendom paradigm, for reimaginirrg our present predicament is a salutary (one might even say prophetic) gesme. It is salutay p r e c i ~ l yto the extent that it is so unexpected, M e r all, who would Chinlc of defendjrrg, at s~tcha time as thisl the idea of Christmdom-that is, the notion that state legieimacy requires the legal privileging of Christianity? Xt almost borders cm t-he absurd. fn m era when theologims are trying to outdo one mother at being novel, imovative, creative-motivated largely by a fear of being out-of-date a d thus irrelevmt-it is rare indeed to find someone so committed to reof the faith. But UDo~~ovan's project is mimating the mcient traditio~~s no rnerc exercise in nostalgia, let alone the machinations of a political r e actionary; There is a subtlety and depth to O'Dsnovan's argument that can be lost on the casual reader, especially the reader who mistakenly assumes that whatever 0Dt)onovanis about can be safely subsumed under current po:[itical categories and paradjg~as,'That is clearly not the case. O'Donovan =fuses the framework set by modern politicd theory, particularly the false dualisms that such tl-teory fosters. His objective rather is "to push back the horizon of commonpface politics and open it up to the acthity oi God," ALthougtn he is willing to admit that '"ear.thlyevents of liberation, rule a d co unity-foundation provide us with partial indica-
tions of what God is doing in human history,""if "we are to grasp the full meaning of political, evezzts as they pass before our eyes,'""we must look to the borizon of God" redemptive purposes" ((2)'' The political theology in which O'Uanovan is inte~sted,then, is one that is distinctively explicitly, Chrislian and God-centered. In this essay we will present what we take to be the ccntraX arguments ol The Deszim of the Itiations, raise some questions about the hermeneutical architectonic that governs QfDonovan"sreading of krjpture, and, finatly, suggest where we think we may differ. We use the phrase '"may differ" becaux the reader will disccwer that there are. more ~ i n g on s Mthit;h we agree with QWorrovan than on which we disagree. h particular, we admire his refusal to retreat to the "trmscendental" h an effort to secure a place fnr "religion'" in modernity*His is a historical theology that rightly begins with the fundannent-al theological fact that out of all the peoples of God's good. creation Israel is God" promised people. If that is not true, then the resurrection of Jesus Christ camot be what Christims have assumed it to be, namely; Gad's sschatological act to relzew all creation. We differ with C)"Donovm to the extent that he thinks resurrection and ascension make it possible fctr Christians tc:,be more than God's wandering people. Since much of our essay will involve criticism, or at least questions, about C)"Donovan%reading of Scripkre, we need to make clear our admiration far his "use" of Scripture. Beclause he refuses the sequestering of the theological into the transcendental oifered by modern political arrangements, his political theology is mreservedty scripturaf in its cmtent and orientation. Scripture provides the narrative for the church to read rightly the world in which we live. In all, of this we agree and d y wish we were as at home in Scripas is OfDonovan.Ineieed, in spite of their differences, O'Donovan and John Howard Mder are allies in this last respect, since unlike most contemporary theologans they think Scripbre matters. Zndeed, we suspect that those who understand Vulder's work are best p ~ p a r e dto apprecide C)'Uonovanfsdifferent readings of Scripture. ot discuss the question of "ecular' government, the yuestion .from which Western political theolngy has too d e n been content to start, unless we approach it historiclally, from a Christdogy that has been displayed in narrathe form as the Gaspelf' is the h a h a r k sentmce of 7Re Desire. of the Naticnrs (133). .Accordi,ngly,C)'Uonovan contends that after the ascension, nations could not not respond to Christ, h the Exile Israel learned that it must always exist under dual authority, that is, after its captivity h Babylonia Israel understood that its history is hescapably a history of two political entities that must coexist h t h e and space, Jesus "dest,bilizesU this duatism by making possibte mercifuI judgment-or
better, claiming for secular authority merciful judgment (147, m@). Such judg~aentis possible jtzst to the extent that states are e~~abled to recog~~iae that they cannot be the church, the recognition of which is cmtingent upon the latter 's distinctive presence. T'he history of this politics, a theological politics, is but a witrness to the gratuitous character of our existence, Ec-erything we have to say about oufseives, our histow the miverse, is distorted if what we profess cltoes not reflect the truth that God has created ex nlfiilo. The great herczsy oE modernity is the assumption that human pl.esenre in the world is suffion out of chaos and emptiness order and beauty "Faith in creation means accepting the world downstream of the Arbitrary Original, justified to us in being, goodness, and order. Voluntarism, on the other hmd, situates the agent at the source; it offers a mysticai access to the mammt of origination and leads the spirit to the rapture of pure terror before tkc arbitrarhess of its own cbolce" "74). The history and poXitics that reflect such voluntaritless are, for OfDoncrvan,a counterhistory to the politics of God. Accordingly, OWonovan i s rightly critical of the tendency in mcent theology to cmvert the meaning of Ckrist" ttrirrrnph ertclusively into a dodrhe of history A redemptim that has merely the transformation of the tzrorld in view will not deal seriously with the fact that what God has done in Christ he has done for his creaticjn and for his ow-n sake as creator. Tt is not enough to understand the triumph of the Kngdom as improving or perfecting a world that was, as it stood, simply inadequate. The distinct ideas of a good creation on the one hand and a redeemed creation on the other are then coll a p ~ " d n t oan undifferentiated ongoing activity of God, in which the io>wc;r is raised to>the higher, a depressing conception of Manirhaean character, sometimes dignified with the name of ""continuow creation," thou* in fact it cmstitutes a denial of the decisiveness implied in the term "creation" and is really only concerned to assert continuousness. (143)
Such continuousness, which is often dressed in the high humanj.stic language of freedom and creativity turns out to he a way to encoufage us to accept our fate- Correlatively, our lives are robbed of joy. The church, in contrast, i s the communi.t)iof praise, of joy, pmcisely to the extent that it lives by pointing to the resurrection as the ~storationof God's good order in creation. Only creatures wha k ~ a wthat glory belongs to God alone can be glad. Indeed, their joy is possible because they do not need to do the work of Gad (181). The Gospel of the life, death, and reswrsectian of fesus, then, is the narrative that traces events back to their divine source and forward to their divim end. 'l'he Gospel cannot be a myth; it cannot be a symbol, even
though mythical a d syrnbolic aspects are clearly part of its narrative. Mow else can onc tell the story that jlrvoves at once the being; of God and earthly events? Yet in true myth the narratiosl is form but not substance, For "truth" is more profound than the narrative, insofar as it attvays Incar~~ation, therefore, ""inot overruns m d frustrates the narrative,"e true myth, because the point to be communicated was the coming of the an event which could, indeed, be cltated. The reason for takimg Ki~~gdom, the event back to its source outside this world's events is that Jesus wholly mediates the Khgdom in his personal being, md. that the Kingdom has its origin in God's eternal pufposeff(136). h cursory display of these central theological preswptions points up somth-ing of the complexi'ty, nuance, and intrkacy of Ommovan's political theolngy. Modem political theory, to be s m , offers us "partial imdications'kf our creaturely status, and t h e ~ l o r eany easy refusal of modernity would not only be immature but also unwarranted. Ornonovan, although he clearly recopizes the dangers a d tinnitations of modern political frameworks, concedes that no other model is available (228), In other words, O'Donovan's concem is with '"he Christian political tradition as we have fierited it" (262). That mems that he is committed ta explicating the way in which modernity is itself a chjtd of Christianity, atbeit m e that has forsaken the father 'S house and.followed the path of the prodigd (27fS). Although there certainIy must be a careful differentiation m d ""distancing" of Christimity from modernity (the two are clearly not equatable)t OfDonovan recognizes that there can be no simple shrugging off or disowning of m o d e r ~ t yeither. Just as O'Donovm cannot be situated within current political paradigm" nneitl-rer can be be easily "located" within tbe present spectrum of thenlogical reflections m politics. It is quite easy to see, for example, how reading might mistake OWmovan's refusal of liberation a s~~perficial theology (what Ine calls "the Southern school of political theology" [13]), combined with his endorsement of the Christendom idea (2261, for a call for the readivatian and rehstitnxtio~~ of m antiquated political theology. To be sure, Omonovm ~ g i s t e r great s excitemmt at havhg rediscovered "the Great Traciition of political thttology'" (via a close reacling cJf Mobbes's Levinfhiiin: xi, 23.1, a tradition that makes modern political, thought pale by comparison. But this should not lead one to the facile conctlasion that OfDonovan%enterprise aeiwclcates a simple retum to some prernodern, golden age, Although he variously describes his own pmject as one of ""rcwery" "l), "restoration" ((13), "retrievat"' (D), "reclamation'" (46), even one of "renewal""(14), it is no static duplication or prosaic repetition of the past that he is after. Rather, what- "r enviSiOns (0, m ""opening up of the horizon againff is a discerning '%@-orientationw (20), which will lead, he hopes, to a =petition with a cmtexhally appro-
priate differences diffamce arising from and ilnforrned by the Script u ~ sIn . the same way that the Gospel writers situate "the Palm Sunday narrative at the head of the Passim story," thereby preventing the reader from supposing that "David" s l e couid be, as it were, revived and recmstituted, but point us forward to its resumption in a climax of a quite different kind"" so too contemporary Clnristians must narrate God's ruie in Christ in such a way as not to endorse thoughtlessly the past manik?stations of Christendon?but to search for ever nekv and more appropriate displays, as called for by the church" ppresent circumsta.ncese3 Despite the care m d precision of his arguments, we fear that many pditicdly consc.rvative readcrtr; will miss the nuance and supplmess of O'Uonovan%thcolngical craft and, miscmshve his outline of a political theolog). as a blanket endorsement of the convt.ntional political agenda.
(m,
O"DonotranflsHermenfsutir Architectonic: First Question.
In a move reminiscent of Charles Taylar, O"Donovm sees himself as e1zgaged in a project of retrieval and "re-mermbering" (mating a reconfiguration by narrating again) the Zost sources of a political theology. Atthough he clearly wants to pass beyond mader~zity's""suspicion and totalised criticism" and offer instead "a posithe reconstmctim of politicai ~~ought,'" O'Donowan's obijective is to provide the reader not sirnp?w with a theology of polit-ia but a bona fide political thcology By restoring the ""lost theological horizon" "g), which has, for the most part, been "mcluded by the shadow of the modern periodf"4), OfDonovanenjoins an attentive listening to a more mcient politico-theological discourse as well as a more cmcompasskg reading of Scripture. Pertlaps thc. most attractive, refreshing fedure of OfDonovanfs hermcneutic is that it is confident and unapologetic, avowedly gzJided by the resources of Scripture and the Christian tradition. That is to say, UDonovan consciously endeavors to develop a politicat theolog that is not beholden to any "external" tlarra.t.ivebut Ihat ""takes seriously its okvn authorisation in the Gospel of Jesus Christ" (21). By discernkg and explicating the inner kgic of the d r m a of God%dawning :Kingdom, C)'Donovan attempts to &splay "the one pllbljc history kvhi& is the theatre of God" saving purposes and mankirtd's social undertakings" "(2). The reason why the shadow cast by "late-modem liberal culture" "(9) is so long m d so dark, accordhg to CJ)'CSanovan,is that the crztlture has vezztared to separate politics and theology. However, precisely because liberai culture has lost its fieotogical hmizon, modem political themy finds itself hopelessly entangled in self-inficted j,ncohcrence and unixltelligibaity4Regrettably, many c u r ~ ntheologically t informed expressions of politics do not fare much better because they too tacitly endorse the same
separatim of theolngy and politics. ?"hat is another way of saying that any political theology that attempts to exert its iutfluence on politics "through carefully guarded charnels of influence that preserve a cordon sanitaire" (2) cannot help hut fail. By contrast, vvhat Ommovan is after is a robust political thedogy rcplete with a full politicd and theological conceptuality and having as its preoccupation "the one history which h d s its goal in Christ, 'the desire of the natimsf""(2). 'I'he theologian's task, thereforcz, is one of articulating an understanding of the ullfoldifig d r m a of God" rule without either capitufatjng to modernily" separation of rcligion and politics (which thewby =legates religion to a spiritual or "private,'"ut cfeasfy nonpcttiticat, r e a h ) or apologjzing for its o m insights and agenda (which.there27y makes its practitioners and its message cowering and timid illstead of bold and hopeful), The renewed advocacy of political theology in aour own time has had as its cmcern to break out of the cordon sanitaire. When that advocacy has been at its clearest, it has insisted that theology is political simply by responding to the dynamics of its c>wngroper themes. Christ, salvation, the church, the Trinity: to speak about these has involved theologians in speaking af swiety, and has led them to formulate normative political ends. They have turned aut tcr h o w samething about the ends of polities, and perhaps about the means, too, without needing to be told. It is not a question of adapting ta alien requirements or subscribing to external agenda, but of letting theology be true to its task and freeing it from a forced and unnatural detachment. (3)
O'Donovanfs enterprise is therefore unreservedly theological. Nonetheless, he conceives of that task primarily in tkoretical (or at Icast formal) terms. That is to say, he is essentially interested in articulating the sfrzlcfztw m desicpz of a political theology. He ~ f e r various& s tc:,this formal display as an architectonic, "a unifying conceptwl &ructuref"(22), a hermeneutical framework. In short, ODonovm is in search of "the mifying hermeneutic principict" ((22, cf. 27), which will lay barc ""the authority structure'' (93, cf. 105) ol God's rule. Ommovm isolates three primary "teerms" ((36)(or "affirmations" "1453) that constitute the ""exegetical framework" of his political tkology. Rorrnwing trhree common Hebrew words, salvation, judgment, and possession, O'Donovan constructs an interpmtative matrix, which he will later devdop and extend through a rather elaborate declension, quatifying and relating these terms to variaus (six) "theorems" and (four) "mmeats," The result is a rather complex formal configuration, What remains puzzling is where tbr exegetical framework kawes off and the ther whether in fact they can be so e a d y djstinguishcd. First, we need to consider O'Uonovm% sexegeticaI framework. As C)'Donovan puts it, "X~wh'sauthority as king is established by the accomplishntent of victorious deliverance, by the prc-?semceof judicial dis-
crirnination anci by the continuity of a cmunity-possession. To these three primary terms I add a fourth, which idcntifies the human respctnse and aclutswledgment of Yhwh's reign: praise, Around t k s e points of ~ f e r e n c eother leading terms whirh concctm the law, the land and the city p u p them~"le"S((36).Appnrently these derivative notions arc ascertained by conjoining, in differing combinations, the thsee primary terms. "Vhdication" "mdd), for example, results when the notions of victory and judgment come together. I:.,ikewise,"lawr' results hlrhen judgment and possession meet; and '"city" ((Nount Zim) is produced thmugh the combination of possession and victory. Moreover, the question ol God's presence may also be modulated by this tripartite structure. 'That is, through conquest God" ppresence is '2immediate"";through judgment it is "mediatedm";nd fhally through the law it mmifests itself as a ""conceded immediacy"" (50). All of chat gives the ixnpression that QrDonovan%exegetjcaI matrix is too neat and symmetrical, and perhaps a bit too clever. (One wonders, for example, what becomes of covenant, a theme clearly central ta O'Danovanfs politicat theology; inasmuch as "the unique covenant of \ihwh and Israel can be seen as a point of disclosurt. from which the nature of all political authority c m e s into view""145; emphasis addeq). What, then, is t:he cognihitre status of ODmovads exegetical framework? Althou@ these three primary terms (and their several permutations and combinations) are no more than "primary paints of reference" and,according to O'Rmovan, onXy "play an organizhg role in the exposition of political theokgy" ((36), and altfiough such concepts or exegetical devices cannot themselves claim "to be diredly authorised by" the scriptural. text, but only serve ""t comprehend the text and iauminate it by allowing one aspect to shed light upm another,'WC)'Donovan n m t h e less beljcves that they do something m r e , They provide not only "an important clue for the development of the affimation of God" k@&hip in the New Testament'"but dso ""a framework fnr exploring the major quesh ather tians about authority posed by the Western tradition" "(45). words, despite OQonovan's disclaimer that his exegeticd framework has little more thm heuristic value, he nonetheless wmts to ""stretch" beyond the insights thercby gained m d use them to make strong theoretical claims, This is both a curious and a puzling move. What is the difference between exegesis and theory, and what is entailed by extending (or extrapolathg) from one to the ather? At certain times WDono-van cmtends that his formal interpretative structure is "a purely exegetical schema" that ""has no theoretical hnction" "(133; cf. also 145,45). At other times he appears to conflate the two, speaking of them togthes hlrit:hout apparent differentiation: ""the exegetical and theoretical.outline" "(46). Given the subtlety, sophistication, and care of O"onovan% theological project, our concern over the differentiation between exegetical articda-
tiltn of certain key concepts and their theoretical ela2loratricm may sound rather pedantic. Hawever, because UDorrovan seems preoccupied with such stmctural cmsideratims in sketching his politic& theology (and there may hdeed be s o m merit in displaying thc. formal features of Gad's rule), then on his own terms he owes the reader a clearer explmation of how his move horn exegesis to theoretjcal description is warranted and whether in the end any sipificmt difference obtaiz~sbetween these two practices. m a t is another hvay of asking for further elaboration on the relation between the value of his Iformal outline and the material specifications of the narrative h c u l a t e d in his close reac(int;s of the biblical text. It is rather tell,ing, we think, that many of the wonderful insights and olraservations on selected scriptural passages that O'Donovan proffers art?perfectly intdigihle kvithout recourse to his tripartik exegetof the four "moments" and icalltheoretical framework or his invocatio~~ the six "theorems.""st is nut clear, in other words, in what way(s) his hermeneutical theory actually guides his readings of and commentary m bi.blical texts. Nor is it readjly apparent tnow his exegesis informs his theoretical clahs, that is to say his hermeneutic architectonic. OWonovm% very use of "architectonic" is also revealing, It hnmediately suggests that what he is interested in recounting is a master narrative, a grand story on the scale of hgustine" City ofCod,% this regad, his work is not unlike that of John Milbank, Both are very much concerned with ruling and God's rde. Wbercas O'Bonovan wants to rule morally, Miibank wants to rule intellectually*In s o m ways we are in deep sympathy with such aspirations. Even though the desires embodied chord, we are in both C)"ll)onovanfsm d Milbank's work strike a reso~~mi: nonetheless besitant to endorse ei.Lher project without qualification. Sb be sure, both represent great posibilities; but they also constitute great temptations. Being all too cognizant of the sinful proclivities of the human imagination and of the seeming ineraclicable burnan pride that reserves for political life its most vinaient manikstations, we find our hope in the prospects of human rule under God to be more t e r n p e ~ dby t-he eschatolqical "'not yet" than enrouragcd by the eschatological '6al~eady.f' We realize that our ""worries" about OWonovm" (and Milbmkfs) architectonic ambitions may suggest to some exterzt our own "anabaptistf' predispositions. Yet we thixlk our differences are a good deal mare complex. For wample, C)'Uonovm is right in asserting that "the Christendom idea," &at is, the idea that secular authority is to be fashioned to serve the advancement of the Gospel, '"has to be located correctly as m aspect of the church's understanding of nrlssirm. The church is not at liberty to withdraw from mission; nor may it undertake its mission without cmfident hope in success. It was the missionary imperative that compelled the c h m h to take the c m e r s i m of the empirc;,seriously and to seize the
opport-unities it offe~cl.I'hese w a e not merely opportunities fnr "power.' They were opportunities for preaebing the Gospel, baptising believers, curbing the vioience and cruelty to empire and, perhaps most important of all, forgiving their former persc7.cutorsr' (232). Athough we will express some dis-ease with this claim, or at: least: will want to h o w more about how ODonovan think the state should render service to the church by faciliati~~g its mission, we have no reason to dissent from such an. account of Christendom, CI)f course, Christendom was part of the church" rightful missionary enterprise (223).O'Dmovan faithfully notes that Christendom should not be celebrated as a stor)i of coercion, though it was certainly that, but rather should be seen as the way in which the power of God humbled the haughty ones of the earth by hamessing them to the purpose of peacc We, like O'Uonovan, are. catholic Christims who believe that even h the church" unfaithfuhess, it is still the church, So the viotence that was accepted as part of Chsistendam does not mean that we must think that God abandoned the church when it became established. W agpredate th Aetorical, force oi ODonovm" qquestinn: "Does the au&ority of the Gospel word confer no smid skuctwe on the co which bears it?" (208). This we take to be m mti-Gnasl-ic or mti-docetic ecclesioiogy with which we are in profound agreement, The Gospel will and mlast be enculhxrated. hdeed, there was mver a time when &e Gospel was not: emculturated; hence, the questhn is not whe&er it will be embodied but whether or not such an embodjment is faithful to the Gospel (225). Ornonovan is no less hsistent than Yoder (or we are) that the church serves the world whm it takes seriously its own life as service to the world. The church has to instmct the state if the state is to be humble, Atong the way the chwch has learned various strategies to accomplish such ends, but these wayg these political doctrines, can also become a substitute for proclaiming Christ, We think 0'Donova.n is exactly right to suggest tthat when the Christian understandhg of salvation history was mp)aced by an open-endcd concept of historicd development in the interest of underwriting liberal regimes, Christians not only lost any smse of what a Christian secular government might look like, but even more they mdermined the inteiligihiIity of the doctrine of the Trinity. The latter was left "high m d dry on the austere sands of the Qzlicztnq~~e vuff without its necessary pc;lint of reference in the Pascal triumph"" (246),Accordingly, UDonovan criticizes Jacques Maritain" proposals lfor a ""dmocratic secular faith," which substitute a ""dlmocratic creed fnr the Gospef." me church may have to make the best of whatever political contexts it finds itself kvithjn, but. "'snaking the hest' means making the eva.ngelicaI content of the doctrir\e clear, not veiling it in embarrassment" "(22.
In these many ways we find ourselves in sympathy and c m o r d with OWonovan. Yet agreeing with O"Donovan%eecclesial presuppositims does not =quire our endorsement of, let alone our concurrence with, his "architectonic" ambitions. W will say more about &is later in this essay. Suffice it to say now that when all is said and done we believe UDonovan thillks he h o w s more about how the story c m e s out than we t b k can be justified-thus our m s e of the necessary eschatohgical rttscrrvation, "1101 yet."' Put calloquidy, we believe that krjpture is best read as an aid for the church to ""muddle through" mther than an architectonic fnr d e . C)rrr diffe~nceswith CSfDonovan in this ~ s p e care t simple but seeks correlation with Israel, we believe profowld. Whereas C)"Do~~ovm we lack for analogies, Put differently, O'Dmovm reads back from the loss of Christendom to the Scriptures to justify the need h r the latter. We think he should read forward from Scripture, helpkg us see the loss of Christendom as God" positive disciplining of the church in order that we might better understmd haw our habitation in Babylon should proceed. In short, we think that God has placed Christians in a position where we might learn from the Jews at the very least one thing: namely, that God's people live and survive bp their wits, not by being recopized or accorded official status by those who would claim to rule. Such a view, moreover, shakes the very politics of reading the Scriptures, to which we now turn.
Reading Scripture PaliticaZZy: More Questions Our reservations about O"Donovanfsreadkg of Scripture encampass the formal character as well as the material content of his argument, Although the two are not easily separated, we wit1 consider thr formal questions first. The formality and abstractness of O"onuvm% hermeneutical project are marked by several infelicities and puzzfes, Atthough his language is cilr-c~~mspect and guarded, UDmovan occasionally lapses into objectivist language, especially ix.1 his polemical statements. Compare, for example, his baffling reference to ""the text itself""(31)4), and his fur&er remarks (in a passage \zrhere he contests John I-fokvard Yoder's reading of Matthew 1&:15-20)concerning what "the, text" does and does not "say" ((151-152). That OfDanovan is quite confident that he knows (indeed, that anyone k~ows!)what "the text says" i s all the more perplexing given his acknowledgment that what is currently under consideration is his own ~ a d i n gof the ikfatthean text over against that of Yoder. Apparentlk; by appealing to what ""ee text says," UDonovan believes that one is invoking an uitimate authority, a final arbiter. What is wrongheaded about such objectivist appeals-wtrngheaded, we assume, on OfDoncrvan"s
w n grounds-is that they locate final authoriq in something called "the assumption behind such appeds is that words on the text itself.'"e page are thought to "contain" meaning. In this regard, it is hard to know what to make of O"T)onovmfs claim that authority rests in "Paulfs words," not in the exegesis of Paul's words (152)-which seelns to imply that one can have access to the meaning of Pad%words without actually i n t e ~ r e t h gthem! n l t h g h these kinds of hermeneutical infelicities are uncharacteristic of OWmovan" otherwise careful. work (i.e., they are not a systemic featurt, of his hermeneutic architectonic),they do nonetheless convey, if not widespread alarm, then at least one or two disturbing reminders of the limitations of his formal outline, First of all, these deficiencies and lapses demonstrate (unintentionaDy)the fact that despite OfDa~~ovm's .failure to produce a consi,stent hernteneMical Cheory, he has neverttneless advanced important theological work and insight. Second (perhaps a more charitable view), these deficiencies illdieate that O'Donovan is better in his close readings of the bi:hiiical witness than in his polentical engagements, In fairness to O'Donovan, it must be conceded that he exacts great pains in plumkling Ihe depths and richess of the bib%icaltexts. Indeed, his fine exegetical work constitutes some of the most rewarding and insightful aspects of his political tSteology.We are not faulting him for hfs lack of narra.t.ive elaboration of the concepts he in\restiga,tes or even his point of departure (his themticaI cmccntration on concepts rather than an exposition of narrative contat). For as with any hermeneutical enterprise, what matters is not one's point of entry into the hermeneutical circle but one"$ manner of pmceeding. At this point O'Dmovan's hermeneutic methodology exlrtibits some confusion. Mthou$h C)'l>onovan is right to argue that modcrn Western politks has turned its back m its theological horizons (20), which largely accounts for its presmt incoherence and unfntefligibility, we are not ccmvinced that "a truthful desesigtjon of the political actf"(21)) can be accomplished on the basis of either a conceptual analysis or a formal display of the strucme of a political theology.Wthough we do appreciate the relative value of theory, we are more convinced of its ad hoc employmetnt than of the need, as asserted in ODonovan" work, for its systematic display before any important work in political theology can be done.. We have some of the same reservations about UDorrovan" related claim regarding the precedence of (and implicit separation betwerm) a political theology and a pcritical ethics. Although it may be adwisable for strategic reasons to elaborate a political thcolagy hefare one engages in a political. ethics, the two are inseparable and emerge concurrently. That is to say, they must be articdated together. AIthough Oarnovan apprtrci-
ates their indissociable character, he nonetheless betrays a someM.'hat cmttsed understmcfing of their mutwl relatedness-He notes in several ptaces (cf. xi, 249, 286) that T k Desire of the Natiorzs represents only the first part of an originally plamed two-part project-a political theology to which a political ethics demands to be "added" (xixi), Elsewhere OVmovan speaks of their relation not so much in terms of a sequential order (i.e., of a pditical ethics being "added" to a political theology) but in terms of the disthction between them as centered in a relative difference of emphasis or focus. "We wrote in chapter one of the 'political act,' the act which is autl.torised and carries authority MIhich can give moral form to a community by defining its commitment to the good in a representative performance. . . . The scope and possibililies of the political act wilt have to be explorcrd, should God grant it to be, in a seyuel to this work that will carry its focus from political thcory to politkal ethics" (249). X n other words, ""political ethics has to carry forwasd into detailed deliberation the principle estahiished by poli-tical theokgy: authorilty is reordered towards the task of judgment" "WG). Here the rcllatkn between a political theology and.a politicai ethics is not so much one of sequential order, or even relative focus, but one of hereased detail a d specification. Now of course all that needs to be said about politics and ethics camat be said. simultaneously, and we do not faullt OVonovan for failirrg to accomplih the irnpm&le. But we do seriously wonder what effect his decision to articulate a po:[itical tkology apast: from a political ethics says about the purported relation between the two. Does O'Donovan separate political theology from pditical ethics merely for strategic reasons, or is there something of a conceptual (or logical or methodological) precedence reflected in this chosen order of treatment? Whereas ODonovanfs w n various and not always compatible descriptions of the ~ l a t i o n bes tween these two parts of his project i-t-tdicatesomething less than clarity, our suspicions are further amused, since this disthction seems to legitimate his co~~centration on the f o m d aspects of his poI.itical theology* UDo~~ovan, moreover, seems to equate the delineation of the formal considerations of a political theology with the truth (or theological coherence) of the scriphtral wibess to God's rute. OfDonovanrightly remarks that whatever theologjcal co:herence there is to the history ol God's saving actions with Israel, it must "arise from withln the hiStory and is not imposed upon it from the exiskg norms of our own historicai period'" f29). Me elaborates the point more fully: The ancient writers thernsel.rret; used . . . to express truth about the relations of things in narrative . . . [in which and through which] . . . they discerned truths abc~utthe relation of things. . . . This interconnexion of history and truth the theologian must be prepared to explow with them, not simply renarrating Israel's history as the outcome of a purely historical enquiry, nor
simply re-wading the documents in an enterprise of literary exegesis, but finding the truth within the unfc~ldingpatterns of the history As the structures of Israel's experience pass by us in their historical sequence (tribe, monarchy, cultural-ethnic enclave, movement of world-renewal), the concepts deployed by Israel's writers in the interpretation of those structures (peace, judgment, possession, worship) allow us to find the sequence of happenings intelligible. And from those concepts we may derive an orientation of political principle through which the legacy of Israel regulates our own political ana tysls and deliberation. (29)
Wonowan is right about Christian thc.olcrgims nee$ing to devise their own political theology m d orientation with m eye to the legacy of Israel as disclosed in the scriptural tmditim. But it is not the concepts per se or the stmcwes and panems as such that are importmt, Rather it is the analogiof those co~~cepts, patterns, and stmct-uresto new sit-uat-iorzs, cal cxte~~sion situations fiat evince both ccmt.inuit)i and disconhuiq with the scriptural witness and the history of Judai~rrr.~" h d one c at make those andogiby attelzdbg to formal cansiderations alone: Elements of cal extensio~~s hrm, design, sequence, structure, and pattern remain unjntelligiblc in thernseks. T'hey only seem to display a ready intelligilnility exacely because those structural katurcs =main parasitic upon (albeit subconsciously) the particular narratives from which they have been abstracted. This tacit h o d e d g e of and peripheral attentim to the specific narrative co~~tent, though unacknowledgrd, l e ~ ~ intelligibility ds to the paMerns and structures we pwport to discern. The inattentim to those tacit considesaticrns makes O"Umovm"s theoretical remarks concerning the form of politicd thedogy at best abstmse and at worst vague m d diffuse. If OWmovan is committed to elaborating a formal, overarch;ing interpretative matrix, a hermeneutic architectonic that would theoreticthen ~ he must tell us morc3. How, for e x m grottnd his potitical t h e o l o ~ ple, does ""a unifying cmcqtual structure" ((22)differ from p u t also relate to) "the unifying hermeneu.tic principlef"(23)? Ostensibly hermeneutic principles and conceptual structures arc not one and the same; the iorrner may be said to constitute the "'grammar" and the latter supplies the ""vocabulary." But as to exactly hcrw these principlt.~and stntctures work together UDonovan says very little. What is the relation, mareover, between pr-indple and practice (cf. M)'?And what about O'Donovanfs "bermeneutic strategies'" (24)? How do they relate to his overriding hermeneutic architectonjc? h e they rnerely useful devices, hcucistie schema that can be dispensed with after they have yielded their exegetical insights, or are they much more integraf and indispmsabk (and thus theoretically necessary) to O'Uonovan's potitical theology? Just how "loose" i s isrDmovan"s system (cf. 45, 46)? :Is it provisional and opend r d or is it m m or less complete in its broad outline? All in all, our fear is that UDonovan, given his highly . f o r d account, is in danger, aX-
beit for different wasons, of h a v a the charge he leveled against the political theology of Karl Rarth recoil upon hi,mself; namely, that it is at most "a magnificent, but incomplete, beckoning movcmmt'"(286). If the formal display of O'Donovanfs hermeneutic architectonic is problematic, then so i s his choice of themes and relative cancentratio11 on certain scriptural, concepts. Whereas OUonovan assumes that an analysis and cltevelopmmt of an account of the ~ i of God p is the appropriate point of depart=, we remain open to the pomibility that there may be other images of God%care of and love for creation that might also be just as cmcial as "khgship" and "ruleff-such horticulbral images and descsQtions as gardel.ting and vine dsessjng, not to memtion the profoundly centrat pastmd image of shepherding (or that of the householder or the servants who tend the estate of the absentee landlord). Do these central scsQtural intages not also represent a certain polities? Mow are they to be integrated into a robust poiitical theology? 7b be sure, the Scriptures often speak of monartlhy and kingship with reference to God's superintendence of and provIdemtial guardianship over creation, and that is clearly a fundamental category in any political theology Nut even there kingship =quires a great deal of qualification, which is to say, thick narrative redescription from the vantage of a, peculiar tradition. For the reig11 of God among the people of Israel and in the person of Jesus is markedly unlli,kt the killgiy rule of mmarchies of the nations, displayed not: only in the nzanl.ter or mode of Chat rule but atso djstinguished in its peez~liarityand miyueness by its szcbject and rclafions. The anointed one (fesus) is, aftcr all, both servant and messiah, victirn and priest, sufferer and liberator, afflicted and physician. To be sure, the concept of divine h g s h i p is "at once fundmentai to fsrael" ppoliticd self-awaseness and to Jesus' proclamation of the fullness of time" PO)."However, we are not convinced that kingship alone can do full justice to the providential care of God for creation as mmifested in nature and in history, including our own political history. Ironically; CJ)'Donovanfsalmost exclusive concentration on kingship and rule for determining the m a n b g of "the political." "undermines the comprehensiveness suggested by his hermeneutic architectonic. Althougk he is right to critidze the southern school of theology for being satisfied with a rather small stock of scriptural concepts (16;cf. also 30-111, he is in danger of falling into the same trap himself. Liberation theoiogy's setectjve focus on a rather eclectic ensemble of key themes (e.g., Exodus, sizcllor, jubilee) is clearly not adequate to prodwe a full political conceptuality, let alone an adequate politic& theology Although C)'DonovanfsChistendom prctjed represents something of an advance ment over the one-sidedness and limited character of the southern school of theology, it too might be said to advocate its own selective reading of
the scripbra1 witness, given C)'Donovan% concentraticm on kingship to the exclusion of other scriptlard concepts and images, the latter of which may not immediately sprirzg to mind as '"potid' irt their bearing. Althoqh 0"Dctnovan recopizes that theology is a manifold wihess, he also achodedges that it must-hnvc "a unified object on wl.rich it concentrates its wihess." That means that the 'Gospel is oste Gospelf"21). It follows that '"heology needs more than scattered political images; it needs a full political, conceptuality. h d politics, for its part, needs a theological cmceptuality The two are concerned with the one history that fhds its goal in Christ, 'the desire of the nations'" (2). In short, a poli.tical theology wor& its salt: is one that completely asticulates "the one pllblic history which is the theatrct of Gu&s saving purposes and mmkindfs social undertakings" (2). Something m o than ~ sheer eclecticism or the exegesis of a fcw ckrishcd passages is required if a full political theology is to be outlisred, nmely; ""an architectonic hermmeutic," "one that would be able to hcate poli.tical reflection on such pivotal events as the Exodus and the Exile within. an understanding hlrhose center of gravity is firmly located in the Gospels (22). Again, although we are in agreement with the main tenor of these claims, W(" see m reason (as 0"Dcmcrvan does) to priwilege the concept of God's rule over creation and hjstory predomhantly in monarchical terms. In short, monarchs always desisrts architectonics, but we believe that what is crucial is the character of the &urchfs wihess to God's rule. 'That is to say, because the church assumes the role of a scrvant to the wmld, such architectonic ambitions must be kept at bay O'Donovan Among the Prupheb
I'he idea of keeping those amhitions at bay may seem strange, givm the rnle of the prophets in O'Donovan" ~ C C Q U ~ EFor ~ in spite of his concentratim on kingship and Gn&s rule in develrzping his political theology, it is the ~ " p h e t kvho s act as the key to his hermeneutic." "mmiah, in particular, reprclsemts for W o n o v a n the quintessential prophet. Perhaps the main reason why this exilic figure is so cmcial tn OW~onovan% ppoXical theotogy is that Jeremiah epitomizes the role of ""mediatcrrial~presentative'"%), one who both mediates God to the people and represents the peoptc to God. Insofar as Jeremiah accepts as his own the misery and despair of the people, experiencing in his body and s o d the full force of Gad's anger and judgmel~t,be becomes a type of Christ-"lilke a negative image of the role of tl-te king" (X). As O V m v a n remarks, " R e prophet has, ill effect, taken over the mediatcrrial role, a sign that the monarchy, which was to mediate Vhwh's rule to his people, has been set asi.dcr' ((77). That means that now '"he sole obedience of the people is to heed prophecyf"%).
Is it accidental that UUonovan should align so closely the work of the theologian wi& that of the prophet? ("Christian theology must assume the prophet" ttasli"'1321.) If so, then the theologian must, like Jeremiah, risk the painful isrliation and Iondiness that comes with proclaiming a seemhgly antithetical and self-contradictory message, nmely, one that advacates "a provocatively pro-Babylonian stance" while holding out "encouragement to exiles" (69; emphasis added). Wthout questio~lOWonovan de~~orrstrates this Jeremih-like ability to a remarkable degree in his own Chdstendom project, However, by underscoring the term "exiles," we w u l d like to remind hirn not only of the statas but also of the spr.c@r: location of h,is audience. Christians in Rabylon are in fact resident aliens, "refugees" "g), dlsphced persons, And hdeed part of h a t it means to live in Babylon is accepting the reality that in p x x n t circumstames perhnps "the only mediatos of yhwl-i's judgments to his peoplef' (69) is in fact the ~ g n a nsecular t powers. But this message will clearly be heard with differcmt ears depending cm whem exactly in modern Western cultures it is sounded. If heard in places like Britain or Europe (or even Canada and Australia), wherc Christianiq is mow or less pexeived by many as a curious but largely antiquated c d turaf.oddity a remnant of a distant era, in ~ L E contexts C ~ a hopeful reminder of God's ultimate conquest of ungodly powers is salutary. Perh a p h these situatims Christians need to be rcpassured that despite their c u f m t marghat status, t h i s coflective wealcness and feclings oZ: painful isolation, God3 rule wili prevail. But for Christians in America, who see themelves very much in cmtrol and whose stridmt "poIiticalWrrhrtoric and activism fwitlless the energies of the religious right, for example) prevents them from seejng themselves as "resident alliens," let alone from experiencing the painful isolation and loneliness of refugees, what is most helpfnl, indeed necessary, is a renninder that: they too, even in America, continue to live Inexile, To be sure, American Christians also need to hear the message that God rules, that Uhwh's fhd restoration of his covenant people is assured. But unless American Christians understand that the way God rules is not always or even predominantly through them or through the nati.on in wh,ieh t h y find themdves, then this w s s a g e will only further entrench the all too pIentifu.1 ideological distortions (civil religion) that are on paade in Amerim under the guise of the Cl~ristimfaith. Rremiah in Britah, in other words, will have a rather differelzt tone than Jere17niah inAmerica. O"Donovan, reminiscent of the pmphet kremiah, appeals to two sorts of Christian. C h the one hand, he elltreats those who remember (out of djverse motives and with varying degrees of accuracy) the ""god old days" of Christendom. He enjoins those who are tcmpted toward nmstal-
tjia to leave off the sell"inddgmce of such illusions and engage instead in the hard work of discernment and practical judgment regading what: are the church" s a t appropriate political strategies, On the other hand, OfDonovm unsettles the complacent cmfidence of those who are '"at ease" %I BRabylon, Christians who have become totdly assimilated into the dominant liberal culture. He effectively exposes the poverty and bankruptcy of such capitulatim, pesua"J~gthose Christims that a mere identification of the Gospel with the liheral project is to exchnnge the indispmsabte ChristologicaI birthright of the faith far a mess of '*political" porridge.I3 Christims, like the Jews of the Exile and the Diaspora, are in a situation where the temptation to capitulate to the ~ g n a nforces t of the day, to "fit in" and be "accepted'hnd liked by all, is virtuatly overwhelming. OfDonovan%"Christendom projectf"s intended to call us back to that sort of faithiuhess (replete with a peculiar thickness of Christian practice ol which we would like to see more h The Desire of the Nations) that renders impossi-ble a simple coextension of Christianity with the modern Western culture, For this WC are grateful and find. ourselves in his debt.I4 Our graititude extends even further when it comes to O"Donovanfsrecovery of the innportancc of Israel and Jlxdaisrn for the self-understmding of the church. Rut mce again, as indebted as WC are to ODmovan at this point, our appreciation must be qualified by several ~servations. 0"Donovanon Evil, Israe2, and the Holocaust
The irony of OfDonovan accordkg such a central place to Israel in the ongoing life of the church, and hence indeveloping his own polfiicat thed o g 5 is that he proceeds as if the Hohcaust did not happen, Although he is right, for example, to point out t-he ""unhappy cornbinatiodkf conflicting ideas present in Barth" sviews about the state (cf. 213-214), UDonovan is not fair to (certainly not appreciative enough of) the way in which Basth was stsugglkg to articulate theologically the nature of the state: in view of the rise of National Socialism and the wake of the Nazi experience. 0"Donovan criticizes Barth for the latter" ddescription of the Nazi state as ""paganf~touiFcol-tut. Although he claims to understand why Bar& may have made this equation, given the rather peculiar histoncat circumstances out of which Bdr* was writing, C)"Donovanimplicitly discounts Barth's gestms as a sig~ndto the church that we are livifig in a profoundly new era. Wthout trying to defend the internal difficulties of Barth's own PO&tion, we do think that there is something crucially correct about Barth's attempt, given the Nazi experience, to describe the state: in a ""new postChristmdom wayfr(2141."' Here, however, O'Uonovan is in danger of
failing to heed his own council, namely, to a&ance ""a histouy of creation order" that is also "a history of creatiolz order, a proclamation rooted hthe contingency of history and at the same t h e a vindication of rezlliq that affords us an authority for doing something without egualfy affordiz~gan authnrity for doing the opposite'' (19% In other w r d s , what we find odd about 0Donovan"s response to Barth's views of the state is not his identificatim of its inten-td dissonances and inconsistencies, but the way in which O'Uonovan proceeds as if: he liinrsclf-were not living in a postHolocaust world, a world radicalfy aItel-ed in light of the Nazi experience. Does OfDonclvan finally take Israel's history (the history of Judajsm) seriously enough, and to that extel~tdoes his understanding of the foundations of Christian morality and political theology still align its& too closdy to a "nah;lrai law" view? Nthough O'Donovan is clearly right in w a r n i ~ ~against g any f a d e equation of a political theofogy with a theory of progress (which is marked in The Desire q f the N a t i u ~ sb y its code word, ""providence"'), he .fails to do justice to the prohunctfy mnihil&ive and dis-creative character of the Holocaust. Although the Holocaust defies any final rational anaiysis or unlierstanding, the magnitude and chamter of the evil that was unleashed in that dark night m r k s an eruption of pri.mordia1 chaos that threatens the very structures of creation,lhThere is found no intimation of this in Wonovan. Although he may be right to indicate that a proper political t%teolagysuch as the one hc, follokving Augwtine, endeavors to display, despite its strong sense of historical development, nmtheless resists an vtimistic view of history and a sanguine belief in "social malleabitityf"dcrived horn. the revolutionary traditions of the Enlightmment, it is not clear that a Christian political theology can be satisfkd with the assertion that a Christian sense of history is "inhe~nttymbiguous.'"%fter allf ambigujty is the favorite hvord political liberals use to justify "a politics of the lesser evil." Ambiguity is not. sufficient to signal, let alone account for, the Hobcaust*m e wonders whether C)"Do~~ovm is indebted more to Augusthe (d the Ncoplatonists from which the latter drew in articulating his understanding of evil) than he is to the Hebrew prophets and especially the writers who stand in the biblical wisdom tradj,tion. "Guided by the prophets of Israel and the seer of the Apocal;)ipse,Augustine sees this design of God as one which is fulfilled by the t;rowth of Rome's overcveening Love of glory God's purpose is achieved by his allowing evil to w a great." In other words, according to Augustine, the growth of Rome "turns out to be a demonic history which expresses the divine purpose only as providence, follokving its okvn hidden conrse,'>yet being put to use in the attainment of higher ends. This by no means legitimates Romel let alone exonmates her of condemnation and judgment. Indeed, as
UDonovan zightly points out, Augusthe's problem "is not to conceive of progress w i t h the polj.tical R&, but to distance hintself horn it, to retain the perspective that God brings the pretensions of the proud to nautght. m a t appears to be civilisational progwss is, in fact, on the moral and spiritual level, self-defeating."lWut is this to say enough, especially in light of the Holocaust and in particdar in the Christian compliciey in that ghastly slaughter? The irony is that despite the care and circumspection with which OWonovan avoids the charge of advmcing a supersessionist theology under the guise of history, and in spite of his emphasis on the ongoing valid-rty of Israel for Ihe chmch,, he nonetheless is strallgely silent on s m e of the most recent events in the history of God" people and their implications for Judaisrn"s self-understand (and G ~ e r e f o Christianity's ~ p~liticai theology). May it be &at UDonovan is, after alil, more at home in the wmld Of Augustil"le than in the world of the late twentieth centuryI a world that liwes not d y with the ineradicable memmy of the Holocaust but also very much in its shadow? If Christians are to learn who we are by attending to Israel, we will do so just to the extent that we discover aajain, at; the Jews have done for cmturies, hDw to h e by our wits. iJearnhgto live by om's wits is a skill =wired by those who, as a people, have discovered how to survive without mli.ng, Mjit believe fiat however much Christendom may have at cerbin times and in certain places represented the &urchfs faithful and unfaiChfwl wihness, t-hat day is now behind us. Mlderness, not rule, is where we presentifr dwell as Christians. As W know from Jesuskwn temptations, wilderness means haming how to live ullder conditions of great testkg. It means l i m g a life that continually calls for the deployment of the "sumival, skills" 'of wibess and mission and prayer. For those who think they are in control, who are convinced that they are called to rule, these skills cannot help but atrophy* ODmovan's readings of %riptart. afford great aid in the development of such skLlls, but irm the a d we believe that he offers more than we should wmt, It is our conviction that God is again teachkg the church that, like the Jews, our first task is to learn to wait u p m the Lord and by so waiting to beccrme better and more faithhl readers of Scripture.
1. Page numbers in parentheses refer to OIiver O"Dt~no>van, Tke Desire of tlze Rinliorzs: Rediscaveri~~g l h R U L ~of~Political S T!~eoIogy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 2, The example DDanclvan has in mind here is the "Christ-hym" of P11ilippians 2:s-11, which, thmugh its doldble use of the ward ""frm" "QCist was in the form of God and accepted the form of a slave) expresses both aspects af Christ's mediational work: of God to mankind and of mankind to God (135). Although
UDonovan cmcedes that "it would be possible to regard the narrative form of this passage merely as a device to shcw up this significance of double representaticm," and thus as myth (""a narrative which had the purpose not of reporting happenings but of disclosing permanent realities"'), the truth conveyed by Phitippians 2:s-11 requires an appropriate "extemim" of the narrative structure in order to coordinate "in one time-space field the being of God on the one hand and the ear-tchlyevents which reflect his being on the other" "35-136). As 8"Donovan expbins: "7'21e reason for takhg the event back to its source outside this world's events is that Jesus wholly mdiates the Kingdom in his personal being, and that the Kingdom has its origin in God's eternal purpose, It fulfils all that Cold intended in Creation. It is necessary, then, to say not slimply that the Kingdom has appeared, but that it has been waiting to appear. And as with the Kingdom, sa with its mediator: Christ, too, has been in waiting" ((136).WUonovan argues, therefore, that the Gospel cannot be reduced either to history or to myth, Rather, it is ""a history of creation order," which is also "a history of ereatimz order" (3.9). The intricate w a y d n which time and narrative, histov and fict.ic>n,are interwoven constitute a main feature of the hermeneutical reflections of Paul Ricoeur, whose ongoing project prcjvides a fuller description of the fc~rmalcharacteristics of narrative clearly compatible with O'Donovan's analysis. See Jarnes FoQor, Cllvistiarz FJcrmeneutics: Paul Rtcoeur and the Rejgufing ofTfzcl.ology (Oxford: Ctarendon Press, 1%55), especially chap. 6, ""Narrative, Revelation, and the Naming of God," h r an account of Ricoeur's narratke analysis of the text of kripture, 3,O"~>onovan remarb, "To urge an ideal (which is best done remotely, at a distance fmm practical decisions) is not the same as to bring the ideal t-o bear upon practical decisions in concrete circumstances, Because the tegacy of Christian political doctrine has to be proved afresh at every turn in engagement with politicat decision, it can only become usehl in the cmtext of an exploratory par-tcnership between church and state in search of authentic political discipleship. Here, certainty, is the manna which when kept breeds worms" "(220). 4. B"Donovan begins his pc~liticaltheology by outlining two persistent suspicions that lie at the root of the m d e r n separatian of poli"ccs from theolom. The first concerns the fear that politics will cornapt morality or theology whereas the second espouses its vposite, namely, the fear that politics will be corrupted by theologians. Both have received philosophical legitimation. As O'Donovan explains, the second of these suspicions has largely contributed to a crisis of authority in modernity to the extent that it has undermined, the notion of final causality The result is the dominance in modernity of "an acephalous idea of stlciety" (16, 249). ""lthe seventeenth century philosophy came to lose cmfidence in the o~blfectivity of final causes. Political commrmitries, even when created from below, had been believed to be ordained by Providence to serve the end of earthly perfection; but now there arose a tradition of explaining societies entirely by reference to efficient causes, focussing these in a notional compact whereby each individual citizen was supposed t c ~have surrendered sovereignty over his own person in return for cedain protections. Individual agents had their ends; but objective structures only had their origins" (8). The cmsequence is that despite the insistence on ""te autr>nomous self-justitifyingcharacter of politics""(9), m ~ d e r n sodetiel; lack any uni$ing vision, being ruled instead by "the imperative of uni-
versal suspicion""1O). Politics, in other tzrards, has been replaced by ""social processm--another name far a nonteleological historical dialectic. Unfc~~unately because engaging in tl~iscritical function proves to be all-consuming, m d e r n polieics (not to mention modern theology) has succeeded only in depriving itself of any cctherent, cmceptual grounds of autl~ority.The irony is that while claiming a cer*taiin"autonomous self-justifying character" p),all forms of modern political life invariably fall victim to "the characteristic dilemma which besets the favourite causes of liberal idealism: haw to claim moral licence for themselves without licensing their opposites. Each mc>vementof sociaX criticism draw-s in its train a cormte~movement,and there is no ground in logic fc7r paying more or less respect to the one than to the other" "0). In shc)rt, teleology has been exchanged for sheer cmtingency-tzrhich is but another way of saying that ""a politics tl~at does not encompass the directic~inof society ceases to be a politics at all"' (10). The tragedy of modern politics (as tzrelf as modern palitical theology) is that it has rendered the notion of God" rule more or less unintelligible. Although incoherent and confused, these manifestations of politicat life are not entire1y without hope of redemption, according to O"Danovan. Although a genuimly theolc>gicalconcept of authority may indeed be quite remote fmm '%c>th poles of the authority-dialec2ie in the modern tradition: state sc~vereigntyon the one hand, popular sovereignty on the o>ther;"they "me best understood as residual fragments of an original theological whole, tzlhich owe their oppc~sititic~n and their arbitrariness to the loss of their common centre of attraction" (81). Moreoveu; this loss of telealogy (or eclipse of final causality) casts light on some of the most vile and offensive aberrations of politics in our own time. As WDanovan puts it, "the doctrine that we set up political authority, as a device to secure our own essentially private, local and unpolitical purposes, has left the Western democracies in a state of pervasive moral debilitation, which, from tirne to tirne, inevitably thmws up idolatrous and authoritarian reactions""(it.9). That is another way of saying that the impasse constructed by modern politics, on an avowedly antisacral basis, is itself motivated by a religious impuls, albeit a corrupted and idolatrow impulse, "For without the act of worship political autil~orityis unbelievable, sc~that binding palitical loyalties and obligations seem to be depriried of any point" (49). An apprwiation of the indisyensabfe importance of teleol~gyin accounting for ""the persistent cultural connexion between politics and re1igic)n" (49) is therefore imperative, Indeed, attending to the question of final causality allc>wsus "to understand why it is precisely at this point that political loyalties can go so badly tzrrong," For as B'Danavan remarks, ""a warship of divine rule which has FaiXed to recollect or understand the divine purpose can only be an idolatrous warship which sanctions an idolatrous politics" ($9). 5, WDonovan contends that his six ""leorems" (list fallows) are m a n t to give movement to his structure (81); they indicate samething of the directim tcr be taken (46). (l)""Political authority arises where power, the execution of right and the perpetuation of tradition are assured tc3gether in one coordinated agency" (46). (2) "That any regime should actually come to h d d authority, and should continue to hold it, is a work of divine providence in histor~r;nett a mere accomplishment of the human task of palitical science" (46). (3) "In acknowledging pfitical authority, society proves its political identity" (4-7). (4) "The authority of a human regime
mediates divine authcjrity in a mitary strudure, but is subject to the authcjrity of law- within the communiQf which bears independent wihess to the divine cornmand" (6.5).(5) ""-The apprctpriate unifying element in international order is law rather than government" "(7. (6) "The conxience of t h individual members of a community is a repc~sitoryof the moral understanding which shaped ib and may serve to perpetuate it in a crisis of collapsing morale or institution" "(80). These theorems, how eve^ are as much surnmatricjns succinct recapitulations of O"Dt1novan's concqtual analysis as they are comtructive indicators of directions to be taken. Moreovex; he s p e a k of one of these theorems as "a corollav necessary to complete the exegetical and theoretical outline" (46; emphasis added). This remark adds an additional element of abstruseness to VDonovan" sketch for a political theolc~gy,but it also raises questims regarding its systemticity and relative adequacy. it is not clear, for example? if O"Bonovan%outline is meant to be a provisional sketch, an open-ended, preliminary adumbration, or whether he envisictns the parameters delineated as more or less comprehensive, with only the details remaining to be fiiled in. For exampler with regard to the second theorem, we need to know how long a regime must hold power in order to be considered a work of divine providence. At first glance the thec>remseems cmcretef but terms such as ""LW" and ""gvernment" are really quite empty, initially; VDonovan provides an analysis of certain key cmcepts that, though not directly authorized by Scripture, nevertheless perform a certain heuristic function (i.e., play a cmtain organizing role). But then OBcmovan finds that this is not quite adequate; hence, he must ""stretch beymd" this exegetical framework in order to advance certain theoretical claims. Now it appears that in order far his outline to attain a measure of systematic fullness, it stands in need of several corollaries or "theorems," a1l of which are then inflected by four ""moments." All that is to say O'Dc>no>van%hermeneutic architectonic is more intimidating and abstruse than it is clarificatory and helpful. 6. On OXaonotran" indebtedness to and affinity with Augustine" pooXitlical theology, see his ""Augustine" City of Cod XIX and Western Political Thought," Dio~ysius 11 (December 2987): 89-110, In order to understand (something of) Q"Il)onovanfsprc~ject,one fias to be copizant of the central importance cjf Augustine in his political theofocf5y. Like Augustine, O'Donovan is keen to provide a master narrative-a "qnthesis" "(~ogetherwith a typology) of all earthly political societies that fall under the paradigm of Rome, (Babylon, of course, is seen as a type of Rome, just- as the antitypefc>llc>wingthe author of the Apocalypseconstititutes the fuller manikstat-ion of the type.) O'Dt)no>vansets out to construct-an outline of a general theory of sodety (i.e., a pcjlitical theolog) from the vantage point of a Christian theology of creation and history. What most captures O'Donovan about Augustine's political theology (contra modern accounts of politics) is the tzray in tzrhich, in Augustine" account, the p r o ~ w s i v etransformation of the social order is accomplished only through Israel and the church. (In ODonovan" reply to his respc~ndentsat the Duke conference on New Testament and Ethics, Spring 2 995, one of the first things that he remarked on was that none of his respondents had appreciated sufficiently in his pcjlitical theology the place he accorded ecclesiolog in the transformation of the social order. VDonovan, of course, is very careful to differentiate the transfc~rma-
tion of the earthly social order by the church from a progressive view of history.) O"f)onovan%goal, like Augustine", is not only to formulate a definition of potitical commrmity tcr which Christians can subscribe, but also tcr sketch an outline of a political theology that would elicit fram Christians a certain recopition and acknowledgment, thereby authenticating its validity; O"Donavan%prc~ject,then, is an attempt to articulatevia the idea of "ChristendomM-the qualitative changes that result& with the daw-ning of the Christian regime vis-2-vis the f17rmer pagan political regimes. '7. Although we wholeheartedly agree with QlDc)novants important emphasis on the eschatological/apocalyptic dimemions of political theology, and the importance of firmly rooting such a theology in a CI-iristolc>gywhose scope is as much cosmic as it is historical, we get the sense that O'Donovan" tension, though admirably balanced, nonetheless betrays a decided proclivity for the eschatological "already" over its "not yet." We, in contrast, are a bit mt3re tentative and inclined to stress the eschatofogical "not yet" (perhaps because chastened by past Christian abuws in pc~liticaltheoXc>gybut also wizened from the experience over long years of Chistian pilgrimage, of following Christ "on the way'"). O"Donovan appears all too cmfident and self-assured about "k>w the story wilt come out." Not only is he cmvinced of what the proper point of departure far a politicajl thmlogy should be (i.e., the reign of God), but also he has $<:,mefairly strong and settled ideas about how this reign wclrks itself out historically and hence how it ""arrives" and "will arrive.'Wt, in contrast, are more disposed-if indeed one's objective is to develop "a full political cmceptuality" ")-to affirm the importance of emphasizing many different points of departure (not excluding the reign of God, to be sure) as weff as severat possible points of arrival. We are not as confident as WUcmovan appears to be concerning how the story will came out. That it will come out in the resplendent glory of God's rule we have no doubt. But when and exactly how God's reign will fully manifat itself we are more agnostic-.To be sure, @Donovan also readily acknc>wlectges,following Augustine, that all our claims to witwss Cod" reign in so-called developments of history are in fact inherently ambiguous. O"~onavan, ""Augustine's City of God XXX and Western Pc>liticalThought" p. 105. 8. Nonethielc3fis, there appears to be a diminution in the extent and fullness of biblical exegesis as one moves from the preliminary drafts of O"Xaonovan%project (e.g., the Huf sean kctures) to their finat form in The Desire of the N ~ i i o ~ s . 9. Our fear is that despite O"Donovan%careful qualification of his hermeneutic architedonic (his language is guarded emcerning the relative merits of a formal outline of a political theolo>gyand the subsequent need to employ practical judgment in particular circumstances), his hermeneutic remains all too format and v a p e . One senses that his preoccupation with analyzing concepts-in pa&icular, "the political ad" (a tactic whose importance he credits to Paul RamseyJs work [20-2l])-rather than exKbiting the richness of the narrative may in fact be more determinative of his hermeneutic architectonic than the scriptural, narrative It purports to illumine, Alasdair Macfntyre's insights regarding the irreducible narrative intelligibility of human action are in order at this point. Narrative history not imlated, abstract ccjncepts (like "the political act") "burns out to be the basic and essential genre for the characterization of human actions." See Aladair Mac-
Intyl-e, Affer Virtzre: A Skzndy in Moral T!jeoiy, 2nd ed, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 208. Tn other words, because a narratively intefligible action is "a more fundamental concept than that of an action as such" (Afker Virtue, p. 2091, it is incumbent upon the expositor/analyst to set whatever concepts are under investigation firmly tzrithin the particular narrative in question. To his credit, OWonovm studiousXy resbts the temptatian to be carried away by abstractions. Compare, far example, the way in which he comes perilously close to the precipice when he moves from kingship to authmity to the ontological conditions of human freedom, action and the good ( X ) ,or the way in which he skates on the very edge of something called "the total tradition of humanity7' (73). Although tempted, ODonovan refuses to mo>vetoo far aw-ay from the particuiarity of his Christdogy and indulge instead in ccjnstructing same generalized anthrogology. 10, See, for example, George Lindbeek" use of analogy for suggating haw Israel's story should continue to shape the church" understanding of its own story Cenfenaty of Lux Mundi, in " m e C1-rurchtf'in ineepz'r-zgClle I""nz't!~: Essays Co Mark ed, Geoffxy Wainwright (Philadelphia: Fartress 13ress, 1988), pp, 179-208. Far another very suggestive account of how such analojgies might work, see James AIisan, hising Rbel: The Recozley of the Eschaliutogical Inzaginntiorz (New York: Crossroads, lf)96),pp. m-33. 14. In a remarkable trrmararmd, O"Dc>novanhas largely forsaken the spatial metaphors that dominated his Hufsean Lectures and has concentrated instead on temporal imagery in Tke Desiw of the Nations. That is not to say that spatial metaphors are completely absent in the latter, but they are noticeably sparse compared to the fa~rmerwork. FTc>wever,tempc~ralreferences have increased dramatically, in particular @Dc~novan%ppedant far the term "moment," He speaks of ""atavistic moments'' ""church moment'' (l!% ""the ! Constantinian ), mc>mentf' (197, 198), "moments of transitim" (158, 2121, ""moment of penetrating insight" (?Cl), ""moment of free choice" "(257, "moments of self-disclosure and self-discoveiy" (272), "moments of unmasking" (91, ""moment of t~bedience"(131, "moment of decision" @0,284), "moment of disclosure" HT), "moment of revelation" ((75, 124), ""moment of authorisatic~n"(IGI), "moment of cmfrontation""137), ""cisismoments'"(67,100,139), "fateful moment" "(227), ""innovative moments'"(20), and the list goes on and on. OWonovan is clearly right in recounting the Christian hope as analogous with that of the Psalmist. For both can claim that "now it is only a matter of time until the andent prc3mise is fulfilled"' (817).Perhaps it might be more accurate to say that "now it is c.in1-y a "matterof Iz"mil$g,"given the emphasis on kcziip'os ower ei'lmnos-the qualitative rather than the quantitative aspects of time as conveyed in the Gospel expression, ""the fullness of time," echoed in @Donovan%\various descriptions of "moment.'" 12. See especially chap. 2, "The Revelation of Gad's Kingship," where references to prophecy are just as prominent as those to kingship. Rule, of course, requires agents: prcjphets, priests, kings, magistrates, princes, and so forth. In other words, rule has to be expressed in apprqriate political forms, as the situatbn demands. The significance of the prc?phets is that they embodied God's rule at irnpc~rtantjunctures in the history of Cod%people, Jesus himself being the last and great prc3phet.
IS. DDc~novanis nc, friend of liberalism and in padicular the kind of liberalism fcrund in the United States, that is, one that advocates an institutionalized ""sparation" of chul-ch and state, He nonetheless thinks that the commitment to freedom, mercy, natural right, and openness to free speech by liberal regimes at least creates cmditic~nsin tzrihich the church may work, Yet at the same time this is no John Courtney Mumay-like deferral to the American system. WDanovan, in other words, reco>gnizesthat the four aspects of U.S. liberalism have prc>veddifficult to realize and certainly cannot be actualized unless the work Gregory began fourteen hundred years ago is resumed (270-.2'7"1).The judgments required for Xegitimacy, that is, the kind of rule Paul justified in Romans 43, is morally impc~ssible for societies that do not acknowledge God. What, then, is the natuw of the authority left to secular gc>vei-nmentsin the aftermath of Christ's triumph? WDonovan provides the reader with a "fresh" reading of Romans 13, a passage that, he concedes, is among the most famous and most disputed discussions of political authority in the New Testament (147). Inasmuch as Romans 13 is set within a context that advocates "the continued significance of Israel a s a soda1 entity in God's plans far final redemption," 'Donovan is right to underscore the impol-t.anceof this pericope for a reconceptualinatic>~~ of pc~liticafauthority in the Gospel era. As he words it, ""S Pml" famous paragraph about the authorities arises naturally from his claim for Israel. Christ's victory after 2111, is the same victory that was pmmised to Israel aver the nations, the victory of God-filled and humanised social order over bestial and Gad-denying empires, a victory won for Israef an behlf of mankind, As Israel is claimed for faith, then, so the authorities are claimed h r obedimce to Israel, chastened and reduced to the familiar fundions that were once assigned to Israel's judges" "47')). Afthough WDanovan is right to emphasize the continuity between Israel and the church with regard to the rule of God, he seriously undermines his ow-n groject by positing a strict analogy between Israel and the world (""secular authority") vis-h-vis the church" sedamatim of preexisting structures in the tife of Israef for the church's awn life, Far one thing, the churchls appmpriatic~nof Israel is at to be put on a level with the church's appropriatim of the world as W b n o v a n suggests: "Given that Christ has over-come the principalities and powers by his death and resurrection, what rights can they still claim"?T'he question is parallel to the que"tion he [Paul] has just asked and answered about Israel'' "(1417). This analogy (or ""parllel," to use O"Bonovan%language) fails to do justice to the undivided, organic ties (Paul" image of ""grafting" onto the root comes to mind here: See Kom. 41:17ff.) between Israel and the church, tzrhich cannot be said of the churcfi%relatic>nto the world-.It is quite wrong to say that "as Israel is claimed fc~r[Christian] faith . . . so the authorities are claimed for obedience to IsraelF' (147). For one thing, secular authorities are not *kediatorsmof the rule of Gad in the way Israel is. ^To be sure, secular authorities may be ""vehictes" or ""istruments," as was Cyrus in Israel's life, for cl-xampte.But this sort of language cannot be applied to Israel without a great deal of qualification. Morec3vex; the danger of O"Dcmwan wing the fangclage of "overcoming" with reference to the churchls prevailing ower the principalities and powers is that it suggests a similar "overcoming" of Israel by the church, thel-eby relegating Israel to "the old age" (147) and tacitly endorsing a supersessionist theology, something B'Donovan else-
where rightly disavows. In short, the comectians between church and Israel are more intimate and indivisible than they can ever be beween c h u ~ hand world. And although we think UDonovan certainly wishes to maintain a qualitative difference between functions that Israel and the world play vis-8-vis the church, he finds himself hard-prssed to allot a privileged role to Israel, given the Christendom model with which he works. 14. We are, however, by no means convinced that O'Donovan is right in his claim, on behalf of God's reign, that Christendom is trlte necessary political experience. Scular gojvernments do not need theories of legitimacy in order to rule. Such governments just exist. Our task as Christians is to survitie such governments (not to mention theories of ~7oliticallegitimacy). Ononovan t h i n k that the church has needs that it can allow secular authority to provide. But such an account Xeads one to assume that, in principle, a b e n i p relation of complementarity exists beween church and world. To presume that the secular authority has priority, even a temporal one, which the church respects or leaves intact far its own ends, begs the question of the Christendom mcjdef UDonovan apcJuses. 25. A similar criticism is lweled, albeit in a secondary sense, against tloder, whom ODonovan also sees as unfairly characterizing in Nazi colors not so much the state but mainstream Christian tradition, As @Donovan puts it, "Yc~der~s c>wnview of the mainstream seems to have been Fc~rmectin the post-Nazi era of the German speaking world" "(152). We think that UDonovan is also wmng in suggesting that Voder cares about or requires that the state protect individual liberty (22%224), roder% "anabaptist" forebears would not have understcyod our concept of the "individual." Moreover, Yoder has written eloquently about the importance of the care of the needy and grc>tectionof the innocent as roXes of the state, Vet OQonovan is on to something when he criticizes Yoder" '%oluntarism," which can too easily, particularty in mcjdernity undem-rite rationalistic accounts of the faith. 16. See Jcm D. 1E~vensoJn% faxinating study, Gre11tio17nlzd the 17ersisfence@Evil: The jewis:,ShDramn of Diz7-itze Omrzipofence (San Francisco: Harper and Row 4988). 17. There is also a sense in which the apocalyptic character of John's \vision in Revelation is, despite Q'Dc>novan%persistent reference to the work, not adequately modulated by the eschatological emphases of other biblical texts to which he appeals. We noted in the original ODonovan manuscripts (the Hulsean Lectures) how very sparse were his references to the Book of Hebrews, which clearly represents another way of reading the Old Testament. In his Hulsean Lectures O'Donovan discusxd the Book of Hebrews on foxtr separate occasic~ns,explicitly referring to ten specific passages, in Hebrews. In The Desire of flze Nations, the "finished" pmdmct, there are just as many scriptural references to Hebrews (ten) but one less separate occasion in which the book is treated, In both cases, the way of reading Israel's history as espoused by the author of the Book of Hebrews is severely underrepresented. 18. DDonovan, ""Augustine's City cf Cud XIX and Western I""o1itlcalThc>ught," p. 106.
Remembering M a r t i ~Luthev King Jr. Remembering
Remembering King
"The Ethics of Black Powerf"was the first article I had puhlished. It appeared in my college newspaper, T!ze Augrdstalla 0hserve-r; in 1,969. -The blond-lnaired and blue-eyed Swedes at Augustam College in Rock Xsland, Iltinois, were generaily supportive of "civil rights," as =presented by Martin Luther King Jr., but they were not sure that ''Blxk Power" was a good idea. 1 long aajo lost that article but 1 remember drawing on b e HsugWs analysis in R h & Pozuer a~zdW i f e Pmtestants to prwide a Nihulhrian ddense of ""Kack Jl"o~er,"?~ike most "good white people,'" have followed the continuislg struggle of African-Amdcans in this country, but the 1969 article remains the only time I directly addressed those issues. 1 am, after all, a white southerner from the lower-middle classes who grew up embedded in the practices of seg~gation.Segregation was so "narmat," Mid not even notice that there were no black people either in the schools X attended or where 1 went to church. I have no idea how deeply the habits of racism are written into my lik, but I h o w that they are not the kind of habits you simply ""outgrow" or "get over." "ave, therefom, refrained horn pdificating on ""race" because I feared that that is what it would be-pmtification. I have written about thc South, which obviously involves race, but X have not written about "the stmggle." Yet few chusches better embody what I think faithful churches should be thm the black church, Moreover, X hnvc nothing but admiration for Martin Luther King Jr. and the movement he led. Stilt, for me to "use" Martin Luther King Jr., and the church that made him possible, to a h n c e my urtderstanding of ""Christian eirhics" "sees wrong. That is not my story, though I pray that Gad will make that story my story, for X hope to enjoy the fellowship of the communion sf the saints."
Yet that is an exhatological hope, wbich, as much as m e desires it, cannot be forced, Christian unity, Christian peace, comes as a thief in the night, making us more than we could have ever wanted. The longing for such unity should not be confused with the reality of such unity for that realiv must be forged through c m o n mernory Th,c way Martin Luther King Jr. is remrnbered by African-Americans and, in partj.cular, in the Africm-American c h m h is and should be diffemnt from the way he is relnernbered bp "'Anterica~'~ fear that the celebration of Martin I:,,uthcr King" birthday as a ""national holiday" is the attempt to separate Khg from the church he served m d loved. I therefore adm,ire Christopher Reem's hdustry h discovering a reference to King in one of my essays,*When 1 first read his critique, I was sufprix"dhat he had found such a refewnce because, for the reasons given above, I have avoided appealing to King, I was even more surprised by Beem" argument that I should choose between my admiration for King a d my understmding of the ~ l a t i o nbetween the church and liberalism. That is a lot to hang, to use Beem's own words, on a ""smewhat i-ncidentalreference" "(12, Moreower, as Beem indicates, that reference was not: generated by me. Rev. Wilson Miscamble, C.S.C., used King (and Gandhi) as an example to challenge my alleged sectarianism, Miscamble suggested that, unlike Latin h e r i c a n base communities, which foster social and political Rsponsibility, "coxnmm~itiesof character'' "auerwas 1981)-which exist solely in the abstact-are ixrwardly focused and self-absorbed. As Beem notes, Miscamble then &served, ""Hauerwas is quite unlike Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. They advocated not only beifzg nonviolent, but also actively seeking justjce in the world through nonvioIent resistance. I-lauerwas founders in being. He gives us a corporate ethic of dispor;ition but is not hterested in the ethics of action" "iscamble 198275)-In the same paragraph in which his appeal to King and Gandhi is made, Miscamhte deweloped his critique by attacking my claim that it is not the first task of the church to malce the nation-state work. Me argued Chat Christians must act in the world as it is, not as we would like it to be; therefore, recognizing real politics means having to choose bet\.veen guns and butter. h response to Miscamble%criticism, I silnply Observed that 1 hund it odd that he shodd appeal to Gandhi and King in support of ""political realism.'"~ reference to Gand:hi and King was an attennpt to suggest, not that they would agEe with my position, but rather that wihin the context of Miscan-tble's argument they would more likely be my allies than his (Hauerwas 1987:91).1certahly did not assume that I should or could appeal to King to support my position in general.' Even more unlikely would have been a similar use of Gmdhi.
M~rEinLu t her. King Jr.
227
Yet I am in Beem's debt for raising the issues in the way he has. I ccmkss that I do not find his argwemt- logjcally compelling, but I libte the issues he has raised concerning King" (and my) relation to liberalism. Unfnrtunately I think his argument involves questionable rttatlings of Kilng and the civil righls movement, as well as a faifure to understand the continuing pmblem of racism inAmerica. Though it is less kportant, he has also gotten me wrong. I am, however, grateful to have tbis opportunity to develop my own thoughts on these matters. On King and Liberalism
I do not pretend to have a profomd. understanding of King" lllle or thought. I have read the standard biographies and his books, f i t I think I h o c v enough to b o w that Keeds portrait of King is, to put it h d l y , "thin." Bcem is so anxious to make King an advocate of the "ideals" "of the Declaration oE h~dependencethat we lose any smse that King was, from beginning to end, a Baptist mhister. My colleague Richard Lischer, in his book The Prcacher Ki~zg:N l a u t i ~Ltrther King, Jr,, arzd the Word t h t Moved Amricu, quotes King's response to those who criticized his invol.crement wi& opposition to the war in Ketnam: "Now those who say, 'You are a civil rights leader, What are you doing speakin.g out? You should stay in your field.' Wll, I wish you w 4 d go back and tell them for me that before I became a civil rights leader, X was a p ~ a c h e o rf Ihc Gospel" (Lischer 1'3c)5:324-315). One of King's close associates in the movement, Rev, VVyatt Tee %&er, has observcd that King's prorninemce codd I-ridc Chc importance of the black church fnr the civil, rigtnts campaign. The African-American Church received considerable recognition as the driving force for civil rights during the halcyon days of the movement. The high profile of Martin tut_her King, Jr. sometimes O~SCMECS. the institutional rcde of the Black Church that he persanifid as an ordained minister. Closer scrutiny of the Black C h u ~ h ' history s will reveal that all thrusts for liberation and wholeness have mo>ved on the singular impulse of religion. From the early days of slave reii@on to the p ~ s e n l and ; all intesvening way stations of freedom struggles, the African-American Church has been the critical dynamic that gave form and direction to our thirst for political and personal liberation. (Walker 1994:2)"
:No doubt King understood the stmgglc as liberation for both black and white. Yet King was clear from begim&~g tc:,end that his overriding made possible by the black church. Consider, concern was the lbiberatio~~ for example, the end of his famous speech at Hoit Street Baptist Church in 1955, the speech that in effect began the bus boycott:
And as w e stand and sit here this evening, and as we prepare ourselves for what lies ahead, let us go out- with a grim and bold determination that we are gaing to stick tcrgether. We are going to wclrk together. Right here in Montgomery when the history books are written in the future, somebody will have to say "There lived a race of people, black people, fleecy Lacks and black complexion, of people who had the moral courage to stand u p for their rights." And thereby they injeded a new meaning into the veins of history and of civilization. And we're goma do that. God grant that we will d o it befc3re it's too late. (King 1991:51)
In Prophesy Deliveralzce! An Afro-Americn~zRevolu t i o ~ a r yChristialzity, Cornel W s t locates King among those who laud the uniqwness of African-American culture and. personality' West describes King as a /'weak exceptionalist" "cause King assumed that African-hericans have acquired through their historical experience a peculiar capacity to love their enemies, to endure suffering patiently, and thereby to ""teach the White man how to love.'""fn King's broad overview Cod is utilizing Afro-Amerkans-this community of caritas (other-directed love)-to bring about 'the blessed c o m m u n i t y . 3 ~seemed confident that his nonviolent movement of predominantly Afro-Americans was part of a divine plm '"West 1"38:74-75).h King, as Beem documents, certainly appealed to liberal sentiments, but that is what they were, smtiments. I doubt that King had a well-developed view about ""liberalism." He did not need a "theory"" for his pwposes. Indeed, I suspect that any such theory would, have been more trouble than it was w r t h . Rather, he used anything that would help in the struggle-I have long thought that King, rather than momas Aqrainas or Alm Donagan, would be the best example of the ultimate bricokur described b y Jeffrey Stout (Stout 1988:7&75). King brilliantly m& do with "whatever [was] at hand,'>& in the process became Amerjca's greatest: public theologiane7Drawing on the best of Amerifan civil religion, he forged a moral vision that remains our best resource for any fuhre this country might have. :Nor wollld I argue fiat King shpiy ""used'9iberalism. 1have no doubt that he beliwed, as Beem v o t e s him, in tbr " " e ~ a and l irrestimable value of the humm personality." Yet; it is also the case, as Lischer documents, that toward. the end of his career, King not o d y became increasingly cynicai about such tiberal platitudes but also b e p to "slough'" cJff such sentiments: "By the end of his life, the one true church in \zrhich we are all brothers and sisters had. disappeased, its place taken by the redemptive mission of the bowed but awakened black church" "ischer 1995:15). Che simply cannot underestimate the effect on King of the Vietnam War-which he saw as an instance of Americds ongoing racism-and the Poor People's Campajgn.We increasingly distmsted liberalism and,
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a c c d i n g to Lischer, expressed outright disgust with American civil re&gion (L,iseher 1995:f 81-182). By 1968King was saying that racism is written into the heart of white America and into the documents to tvhich African-Americam furtively appealed far prc>tection.Ycfu can't trust your own counq, he tells his peoplef because it isn't yours. For a group in Montgcrmery in 4968 he makes the astonishing compariwn: ""and you know what, a nation that puts as many Japanese in a emcentration camp as they did in the forties . . . will put black people in a concentration camp. And I'm not interested in being in any concentration camp. I've been on the reservation too long now-." GfLischer 1995:27%21711)'
Beem may object that King" disillusionment with li_beralismtoward the end of his life does not undercut his case that King assumed a 'kcohesionf%between Christian and Americm values" Yet 1 am suggestkg that King" ""liberalism"was a h a y s subservient to his embeddedness in the black chul-ch and the memoT of his people that that church embodies. k g could confidently appeal to liberal semti,ments because he was a black Baptist prcacher who would. never be a liberal. On Liberalism and Memory
This b r h g m e to kern's understmding of my mderstanding of "liberalim." Keem notes &at I "define" liberalisi~as ""a pditical philosophy committed, to the proposition that a social order md, correspondin.g m d e of government can be formed on st.!(-i?zft.restand co~lsajf." I confess that when I read Beent"s quote, X &ought I had prnbably said that. I also thought. how insufficient it was as a ""definition" of filoeralkm. :Iwas particularly embarrassed to think I had offered it as a ""delinition" of liberalism, since I have strong phirosophical doubts about thc very idea of: '"defnjtion." But I thought I was probably still making such mistakes back in 1981. I was pleamtly surprised, however, to discover that the smtence that Reern quotes from A Cuwrmunify c!fCkmctr.r was not oMemd as a defimjtion, but came at the end of a paragraph that provides a fuller account oi liberalism, an account that I think important for uneierstanding King. There I note that America is oelteiz a s s ~ ~ m etod be a social order unlike others, sinre America aflegedly began from. "scratch." 1oobserve that such a p~sumptictnis a profound distortion of American history, but its power is hard to deny, Liberal practice and t-heory, I suggest, is successful exactly because it supplies us !Americans] with a myth that seems to make sense of our soda1 origins. For there is some truth to the fact that we originally existed as a people wifiout any shared history, but came with many different kinds of histories. Tn the abwnce of any shared history-
we seemed tcr lack anything in common that caulcl serve as a basis for societa1 cooperation. Fc>rtunateXyliberalism provided a philosophical account:of society designed to deal with exactly that problem: A people do not need a shared history; all they need is a system of rules that will constitute procedures for resolving disputes as they pursue their variclus intel-ests. (Hauerwas 1981:78)
The next sentence constitutes the ""definition" of liberalism that Beem quotes. I hope I am not behg unduXy defensive in insistin.g on the context of the smtence that Beem alleges is my "defh7itim" of iiberalism. I do so because it is important that my critique of liberaiism not: be reduced, as Beem reduces it, to moraIis.tic judgments about "mbghtened self-;interclst," ""'selfishess," or ""individualism.""5uch matters matter, but they have never becm at the heart of my theological critiqrxe of liberalism. Ratkr, my cmcem has always been what liberalism does to rememberirng as a political task, 1think there is no better exmple of the deficiencks of Iiloeral remembering &an what is happening to the melnory of Martin LJut-herf i g Jr. It is not for me to say for Afrbcm-Americms whether the celebration of a national holiday fctr King is good or bad, but such a celebration (also nicely exemplified in Beern" article) threatells to abstract King from King" memory of slavery and horn the black church. Liberal memory makes King the great hero of the liberal ideals af ""feedarn af the iz~dividual""and "equality,'%ut King did not represent "individuals.'" He did not seek individual freedom for African-Americasrs.King sougfnt freedom for African-hericans as a people to remember slavery a d the triumph over slavery offered by the black "fSt "Americaf' does not w m t to remember that slavery (and,even less, genocide) is part of our history. Rather, we want to assrtme that if everyone has ""civil rights," if everyone is free to be an "b~djvidual,"if everyone is moderately well off, then we can say to those who are still upset about past wrongs, "'h come on, what" a little slavery between friez~ds'?" 1 h o w of no one who has better illuminated these matters thm Stmley Fish. In his book 7"heuefsNo Szrch 'Ihi~zgas Free Speech and It's a Good Thi~zg,Br,, he gives the following account of liberalism. Fish notes that part of the successful strategy nl nel,conserva.t.ivesagahst: "political correctness"' is to piace their oppo"ilton in the position of havhg not only to ~spond to argrtments but also to dispute the very vocabulary in which the issues arc fsamed. Tlnat vocabulary is m d c up of hvctrds like "fairness," wwhich ensure that those who use such words occupy the rhetorical high ground. Fish mtes that such vocabufary is the speech of liberaiism, which xcordingly becomes the main target of the essays in his book. Fish characterizes Liberal thought as that which "begins in the acknowledgment that faction, difference, and point of view art. irreducible; but the
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litberat strategy is to devise (or attempt to devise) pmcedural mechanisms that are neutral with respect to point of view and therefore can serve to f r m e partisan debates in a nonpartisan manner" Fish 1994:16).According to Fish, tbat means that liberalism iwolwes an i n h e ~ n clmtradict tion-it denies any transcendent perspective of the kind associated with traditimlal Christianity (against whose dogmas liberalism defines itself), and yet it believes in the capacity of partial (in two senses) human inteliigence to overcolne alJ pmtialities. In "'Liberalism Doesdt Exist,'kan essay he wrote later, Fish argues that exactly because liberdism cannot acknowledge a transcendental perspective, it "does not have at its center an adjudicative mechmism that stands apart from any particular moral and political agenda"' (Fish 1994:137). Fish illumilles his attack cm liberalism Zly providing a reading of Kingfs "1 Have a Drearnf>peech. He observes that liberals read the speech as a dennonstration of the possibility of a nonrarist society ""tbave a d r e m that one day my four little chifdren will not be judged by the color of their kin,but by the content of their character" sounds )ike good liberal rhetoric celebrating the "individuali." Yet Fish argues that these words cannot be etivo~edfrom the historical occasion that produced them.I2 Though it was nearly a d ~ a d after e N m m v. Ntmrd of Edt~caticln,blacks were still being denied the vote and access to restaurants and hotels, and King was speaking to those who marched on Mraswton in suppor2: of the civil rights bill. By remhdjng us of the context of King's speech, Fish is not trying to dirninish the signi.ficance of King's speech or his sincdly. Rather, Fish is reminding us of the Ir,cuE nature of King's achievement and, equally, that what-ever King's intentinn or intentions may have been, they were also locally sincere, King was not saying, Fish maultains, that once Jim Crow laws are removed, the job will be dcme. As he notes, King later in the speech asks, "When will you be satisfied?' and mswers 'never,"& 'until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stre?amu"Fish 1994:99). These are not the sentiments of a m m who is calling for PY(ICC~ZLI'U~justice, far the reign ol fairness that is divorced from history. ?i, abstract King" sspeech from that history, to narrate King as cailing for freedom and equality in the abstract, is to put King on the si,& of those he was opposi.ng. Far, as Fish points out, to construe King's speech as a call for "fairness,""as an injunction aajainst any race ccmsciousness, is the tactic now used by those who oppose affirmative action programs." 'Those who cletach Khg's words from the histoq that produced them "erase the fact of that history from the slate, and they do so, paraci~ica1L.y~ in order to prevent that history from being truly and deepiy altc.red'"(Fsh t994:99)- That- is why Fish rightly argues hanother chapter, ""kbu can only fight discrimination with discrhination" (Fish 1994:70-m),
Beem asserts that while the fulfiflment of King's dream of fult integration and equality remains woefully distant, it appears to me unassailable that the entire American polity (and particularly the deep South) i s more just and reflects a greater measure of equality then was the case prior to, say, 4955. Ftrrthel; 1 believe it: is equally self-evident that this change is inescapably connected to King's effc)&swithin the civil rights mavement, (420)
I hope that is the case, though I am not the m e to make such judgments. WhH I am sure about, however, is that the very terms by which such "success'9s measused are part of the problem. Dyson observes that race relations hh e r i c a are mired h a bog of tortuous irony: "The passion and visicm of liberals-whose i n t a t it was to vanquish the obvious and vile manifestixt.ionsof racial, animosi.ty-have now been co-opted by cmservative intellectuals who conceal the abated but stifl malicious expresion of racism" ((Dyson 1993:1511-153). 'Those who would resist racism have, accordkg to Dysan, temporarily lost the battle of lmguagc. "Classicd l-i:beralism and neoliberdism continue to pubfish laundry lists of ancimt racial indignities made fresh by today's news. But these liberalisms are hutdened by a 1oyalt.y to a form of social, analysis that Obscures recognition of structural impediments to racial progress, a failure that only promises certain defeat of its goal of full fntegration of bl.ack into American society'7Dyson 1,993:151). The term. ""structural impedjments" somds very much like what Christians caif the "prhcipalities and powers." King, moreover, provided the language and practices that Christians have been given to face those powers, It is the language of sin and salvation embodied in, the practices of confession, conciliation, and nowiolence. Beem rightly notes that King believed that Christims should be soeially active. So do I. The crucial question is "how?" Khg, as far as I am concerned, is a model of such activism far Chrisitims, since he refused to hide his Christim convictions in the name of "pl~~rallisrn.'~e fought for his peoplefC"'rights,"he fought for freedom and equalit?i,but he never failed to =mind those for whom he fought, as well as those against whom he foul;ht, that the fi@t was finaXly &out sin and salvation. That is why King is not just the hero of t k American civil religion, he is a saint of the church.
I have tried very hard to forget that I once fiought I had to have a t h e o ~ of knokvledge to know what- I h o w . That is, I have learned that it is an epistemological mistake and, even more hpurtant, a theologicd mistake, to think a ''ground" must be secured to begin theological rdection.
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In a similar fashim, I do not think you can m should try to cltevelop a rational theory about rationality. k'nu can always learn something from such theories, but what you learn is not necessarily dependent on the theory Reern faults me for not providing an epistemdogy or theory of rationality that will allow us (I assume by ""us" he means ""we" "beral Americans) to "develop a s h w d suhstmtive conceptim of the good that trimscends [our] metaphysical, diMerences" ((127). To which I am tempted to say, "Oh my, X am so sorry." He cornmends King for having m episternology an account of rationality that can ground universai judgments '%"by wlrich alf h u ~ n mbeings, ~ g a r d i e s o s( their unique histories, can come to pesceive the will of God" Keem thhks this epistemology coheres with the assertion of the Deckation of Itldependence that truths are selfevident He even hoh-rotes Jctferson's view that "'truth is great and will prevail if left to herself,'' I do not know wbrther King had an epistemology or an accollnt of rationality of the sort Bee~nszlggests, but if he did, I do not think it did him much good. What King had, as West describes it, was m extraasdinar). ability to mobilize and organize a very particula form of southern resistance. King was able, according to West, to maintain a delicate balance between the emerging ""new"' black petite bourgeoisie, black working poor, and Hack undertllass to create a mass movement that was as unprecedented as it. was unstable. "In this sense, King was m organic intellectual of the first order-a highliy educated and hfosxned thin.ker with organic links to orciinary folk. Despite his petit bourgeois origins, his deep roots i,n the black church gave him d k d access to the Me-wrlds of the majority oi black southerners'"W"est 1993:2?2-273). In short, if you artr a black Baptist preacher in the Soutb, you probably do not need an epistemology; In fact, if you have one, it might actually get in the way, An epistemological theory is what white liberals need to Rassurr themselves that they are not ""biased'" when they support one of their h o r i t e causes. King no doubt continued to be influenced by \zrhat he had learned at Boston University, but he well. mdesstood that truth, if left to itself, will not p ~ v a i lHe . knew that because he knew that Jefferson owned slaves.. Mrhat King also knew was that America is a society at least partly constituted by some people Mthose forebears were once siaves and by other people whose forebears okvned slaves. Mc hekv that blaek people bore a history of discrimlnation in the n a m oi race. Fle knew that wh2e people did not think they were racist. He sought to mitigate the most obvious injustices of those histories*Rut he atso h e w that s w h mitigations were not sufficient. The issue fhally was not justice, but memory, The crucial question rc-rmains whether Americans can ever acknowledge what it
@m8).
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Marf izz Llr tller Kirzg Jr.
means to be a slave nation. That is what Martin Luther King fr. never forgot and what we who w o d d fol10w :him must remember.
An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Jozrrnlal c$ Religious Efttics, 23, 1 (spring 1995): 135-148. Reprinted by permission. Copyright O 1995Journal of Religious Ethics, lnc.; all rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. 1 am obviously indebted to my colleague Kchard Liseher for sharing his extraordinary knowledge and understanding of Ming with me. Less o>bviausis the debt 1 owe tcr Michael Cartwright of Allegheny College for his incisive advice about the issues raised by Ctwistopher Beern. Dr. Jarnes Fodor and Mr. k o t t Saye kindly read and critiqued this chaptec 2 . My resematian about writing about Ming is not that white people should not write about black people-.l am sure that our respective experiences have made us different, but 1 believe that some black people can write about whites with more insight than many white people. The issue is not whether we can understand one another's experience, but rather what one is trying to do in appropriating another's s t o v l am sure that no account of the white church in America can be told , 1 am not sure the reverse is the case. without attention to the black c h u ~ hbut The problem is therefore an ecclesial one, Part of my reservation concerning King is the rmcertainty about how his story can or should be told. How the story is told d q e n d s so much on the continuing struggle about race in America. I admire those who began the tefling of King" stov, but 1 suspect that his story like all g m d stories, will require many tellings, 2. Christopher Beem, ""American Liberalism and the Christian Church," "rnal of ReligioudEFfiics 23,1 (Spring 1995): 119-133. Page numbers in pawntheses refer to this article. 3. Beem suggests that King and I share a cornman commitment to the "ideal" of nonviolence because we assume that nonviolence is the "vuitessential response to the Gospel message of love'"(121). That may characterize King" views, but it certainly is not how X understand Christian nonviolmce. Of course, King's practice of nonviolence is mc)re important than t11e criticism l might have of his ra tionate for nonviolence, 4. See also Michael Dyson" aqument that King's debt t c ~the black church must be recognized if the mvement King represented is to have any future: "The recognition that King was part of a larger tradition disatlc>wsAmerica to exape its obligation to those King represented by relegating his thought to the fixed and static past. Instead, it forces America to critically engage and constantly marnine the dynamic contemporary expressions of the thought and practices emerging fram the traditian that birthed and buttressed King'" (Bysun 1993:240), 5. West identifies three distinct AfreAmerican histcjrical traditions in addition to the excqtl;onalisttype exemplified by King: The nssimz'lafia~~ist comiders Afm-Arnerican culture and personality to be patholc>gical;the maqirznlisf treats the AfroAmerican culture as ratridive and confining; the Irumnnki. accents the miversal human content of Afrc~Americancultural fc>rms,making no scxliological or onto-
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logical claim about Afro-American superiority or inferiority (West 4982:70-71). Beem, in contrast to West, would seem to put King in the last category 6. Dyson, tzrhile agreeing with West's assessment, hrther suggests that King's exceptionalism included belief that the moral heroism of black people would enable them to effect their destiny through the exercise of transformative moral agency. lie standards of moral excellence that King expected through disciplined participation in nonviolent demonstrations, which incXuded rites of selfexamination and purificatian, were of inestimable worth not only in fighting for denied social privileges and rights, but in the healthy enlargement of crucial narratives of self-esteem. King understood the ui&ues of kveryday fc~rmsof resistance,' and appealed to the "weapons of the weak'in opposing unjust social fc~rces""(Z)ysc>n 1993:234-235). 7, For a more critical understanding of Stout" account of the bl-r'mleurand, in particulal; King as bricokzrl; see Hauerwas 1994, 8. King observed that Americans applauded nonviolence as long as it served their setfiinterest, but when it came to the children in Vjetnam, Americans quickly discovered there is a limit to nontriolence, He wrote, "They wander into towns and see thousands of children homeless without clothes running in packs on the s t r ~ tLike s animals; they we the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers, We have destmyed their two most cherished institutic)n+the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. W have corrupted their women and children and Elled their men. What strange liberators we are!" (Lischer 1995:27&-277). In a 1968address King said, "The prc~bternis America has never Iived up to [-its ovcrn covenant] and the ultimate contradiction is that the men who wrote it c>wned slaves at the same time." Lischer r~bsewes,"In the late period of his life, he preached as if he had just stumbled upon the dirty secret of America" misery" (Lischer 1995:313). 9. James Cone has shown haw King%Loss of faith in America and Malcolm X's extraordinary transformation make them, in spite of their undeniable differences, ~ theology but alw necessary cmversation partners not only for the future C Iblack for the future of Afdcan-Americans in the United States (Cone 1991). Dyson, in an appreciative review of Cone, criticizes Cone for prescribing self-respect and self-esteem without "giving a sharp or substantial analysis of the social resources for such qualities and the political and econumjc reaso>nsthat prevent their flourishing in many urban black commrmities across the cormtry" (Dyson 4993:262). One might add that King" Christianity and Malcolm's Islam constitute a difference that can never be averloc~ked. 20. ""St?lfishess" seems to me to be a quite inadequate description of liberal ""vice." As I have often argued, the liberal commitment to charaderistic of utilitarian and deontolo&.icalmoral theory sponsored by liberalismf is quite ~jf-denying.Liberal (capitalist) economic practice and thec~rymay undercut such disinterestedness, but even in economics liberalism can be quite "egalitarian"-ver]v.c>ne has the same worth as determined by the ability to make mo>ney 11. For a wonderful exemplificatic~n of memory as moral art, see Gotored Peopje: A M e t ~ ~by r ,Henry Louis Gates Jr. Gates has the courage to elicit the world of =gml'"!
gation, thus r e c l a i ~ n gthose l i v a as part of the stary of "the people.""& book begins with a letter to his daughters explaining why he wrc~tethe balk: "I am not Everpegro. I am not naSive to the g i ~ ablack t metrt~polises:New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, say. Nor can 1 claim to be a kitizen of the world." am f m and of a time and plac+Piedmc>nt, West Virginia-& that%a world apart, a world of difference. So this is not a story of a race but a story of a village, a family and its friends. And of a sort of xgregated peace. What hurts me mo~stabout the glorious black awakenkg of the late sixties and early gventies is that we lost our senw of humor. Many of us thought that enlightened politics excluded it. ""Iyour lifetimes, I suspect, you will go from being African Americans, to people of color,'tt-obeing, once again, 'csfored geople."The linguistic trend toward condensation is strong,) I don" mind any of the names myself. But I have to confess that X like 'calored%est, maybe because when l hear the word, I hear it in my mother's voice, and in the sepia tones of my childhood. As artlessly and honestly as 1 can, I have tried to evoke the world of the fifties, a Negro world of the early sixties, and the advent of a black world of the later sixties, from the point of view of the boy 1 was. When you are old enou* to read what follows, 1 hope that it brings you even a small measure of understanding, at long last, of why we see the tzrorld with such different eyes . . . and why that is for me a source both of gladness and of regret. And I hope you'll understand why 1 continue to speak to colored peapfe I pass in the streets" (Gates IW4:xv-xvi), 1 am sure Gates would be the first to acknowledge that his loving remembrance of the world of segregation is possible, as his own account of King suggests, because of the courage of Martin tuther King Jr. 12. "Wistory," as Fish welt knows, is a tricky no>tion.His use of the term in this context begs for further analysis. I: do not think he means to reproduce the notion of ""t-lxstory" so prcjminent in histov departments, whose members believe they are telling us ""what really happened.'Tornel West affers same faxinating reflections on these matters in his Keepi~~g F ~ i l l Pl~ilo~opIzy ~: and Raw i ~ zAnzerica: 'What I find seductive and persuasive about Nietzsche is his deep historical consciousness, a conscioumess so deep that he must reject prevailing ideas of history in tlw name of genealogy. It seems to me that in t h a e pastmodern times, the principles of historical specificity and the materiality of structured social practices-the very fc3unding principles of Marx's sown discourser--now require us to be genealogical materialists. We must become more radically historical than is envisioned by the Marxist tradition" (West 1993:266). What one would like to see is such views actually displayed by a concrete narrative. I am sure, moreover, that such issues are crucial for how we think about hc~w"ethicsf' is to be done. 13. "Race," of course, is a fiction, but part of the pain of our history is that it now has an u n d e ~ a b i ereality. Haw to acknowttsctge that reality without reproducing the destructive practices ""raee" names is no easy m a t t e ~
Ref lercrnces Beem, Christopher, 1995. "American Liberalism and the Christian Church: Stanley Hauerwas vs. Martin Luther King Jr." "folkrnnl of irieEi;gio~sEtrltr'cs 23, 1 (Spring): 119-1 33.
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Cone, James H. 1991. Martin alzd h l c u l m and Rmcrica: R Dream or a Mz'gfzfmnrc?? Mar)rknuX1, N.V.: Orbis Bc>c~toks. Dysctn, Michael Eric. 1993. Reftccti~zgBlack: Af-rica~z-AmericaCult urnl Criticism. Minneapolis: Univtzrsity of Mimesota Press, C ~ as Free SpmFl and It's a Good Tbitzg, Too. Fish, Stanley. 19%. TlzercFsMO S Z ~T!jiag New York: Oxford University Press, Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 1994. Goloved People: A Memoir: New Ycfrk:Alfred A. Knopf. f-lauemas, Stanley. 19881. A Comnzunl'ty ~fClzamcter:Toward n Cc~zrsfructiveClzrz'stz'nn Social Etlzic. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. 1987. 'ViLI the Real Sctarian Stand Up?" nzeology Today 44:87-94. . 1994. "Tc3 Be or Not to Be a Briecoleur." Konir-zonin4,1:105-109. Hough, Jc~sephC. 1968. Blnck Pozoer a ~ Wzile d Prc1113sfn:ands:R Cfzrisfi~~z Respurzse fa the M e w Hegm Plu rnlknz. New York: Oxford University Press, King, Martin tuther, Jr. 1991. ""Seeeh at Hc4t Street Baptist Church.""l955]. In Tfze Eyes ou trlte Prize Civil RigI~iisReader: Doc~;rlirents,Sjjeec!~~?~, and Firsfl'za~dAccounts from C l l ~Black F~.ee;lomStrugglet 195&199Q, e~!.Clayborne Carson et al., 48-51. New York: Penguin Books. Lischer, Riechard. 1995. 7"ke Preacl3er Kirzg: Martizz Lullzev Kirzg, Jr., and the W1.d That Moved A mel-icn, New York: Oxfcjrd University Press. Miscamble, Wilson D., C.S.C. 1987. ""Sectarian Passivism?" Tlzec;tlugy T o h y 44:69-77. Stout, feffrey, 11988. Eiil~icsAfter Bnbel: The ta~gz~ag-es of Morals and Tlleir Discontents. Boston: Beacon Press. Walker, Wyatt Tee. 1994, "Walk T o g e h s Children, Bontcha' Get Weary." Religion alzd Vnlzaes izz Public Life 2,314. West, Cornel. 1982. Prophesy r)&?li.zlerancr.! A n Afro-Anzerican RezjoE~t-ionaryChristianity, Philadelphia: Westminster Press. . 1993. Kecpilczg Faith: Philos~plryalzd Race irz Amel-im. New York: Kautledge,
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Name Index
Aquinas, Thamasf 221(n24), 76,118#156, 163 Aristotle, 82-96,148,156,167(n4) Augustine, 12,65,195,198(n21), 206, 216-21 7,22O(n6), 221 (n17)
Kant Immanuel, 72-73,85-81;,97,112, 11%125,132,148,256, 158,261-163 Kenneson, Philip, 14,186(n3) Kierkegaard, Ssren, 2 43,245,147 King, Jr., Martin Luther, 1Q, 13,1225-237
Barth, Kart, 55,80(n3), 139(n5),148, 174,183,242,245-246 Bonhueffer, Dietrich, 32,46(n3) Broadwa)?r,Mikael, 44.48 Bultmann, Rudolph, xiii, 42,232, 149-1 50
Lash, Nichulas, 177,182 tind beck, Cesrge, "t",222(n40) Long, D. Stqhen, 20(n 23),140(nn 7-9) tiiwith, Karl, 32-43,45--47
Cobb, John, 6,36fn6), 25-31
Engelhardt, Jr., H. Ristram, 2 0, 111-1 23 Fish, Stanley 28-29,238-231 Fdor, James, 14,199 Frei, FTans, '11 84,386(nlS) Giddens, Anthony 5'7,94(n7),109 Cilbert, PauIa, xiv Gustafson, James, 7-9,19(nn 24-1 5),20 (n16), 62-81,107-108,12&128, 137,148,198(n9)
Macfntyre, Alasdair, 14,35(n3), 82-96, 97,99-12 0, 318,223(nn 8,12),230, 171,186(n4), 39Q,197(nn67), 221(n9) Mad ison, james, 52-54 McCfendun, lamesf 4446, 471-487 Milbank, John, 10,12,51,57,18%198, 206 Murdoch, Iris, 2 1,155-1 70,198(n10) Murray, John Courtney 56,223(n13) Niebuhr, FT. Richard, 77-78,8Q(n7), 148 Niebhr, Reinhold, 6-7; 11,16(n5), 17-1 8(n10), 32-61,128-1 29, I81 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 91, lli30,237(n12) Novak, David, 18(n11), 2 9Qn15) Nusr;;baum, Martha, 10,20(n19),82-96, 198(n20)
Holmer, Paul, 2 2,243-2 52 FTiittex; Reinhard, 164 Placher, VVilliam, 15(nl) Jefferso)~,Thornas, 52 lenson, Robed, 18%189,194-1% Jones, L. Gregary, 20 (n20), 185(nl)
Ramsey, Paul, 14,20-24(n23), 27, 124-140J221(n9)
Stackhouse, Max, II(i(n5) Stout Jeffrey,40,20(d1), 97-110
Uoder, J o h Haward, 14,20(n22), 24 (n2"i"),%(rill), 108,185,
Subject Index
America, 3,5,32,4H6Qnn 2,3), 48-61, 102,214,226230,232-233, 235(n1) Authority, 2,19(n15),53,55,68, 249(n4) Bible. See %ripture. Christendom, 43,12(3,131;--137.185, 19gY207-208,214,217,224 (n14) Christianity, xi, 2, 43,15 (d), 30,39 C h u ~ h1,3,5,8,30-31,47(n13) , ,48, 53,6447,69-78,75,77,79,128, 130,134, 14bY149,155,172-175, 178-1 79,181,183-1 84,189-1 91, 193,195,199,201,204,20&208, 213,215,217,218(n3), 223(n13), 225-227; 232-233,235(n4) Constantianism. See C1wistendom. Creation. 7-8,12,20(n46), 457-158, 162-1 66168(n7), 179-183f 1188, 192,194,198(n9),201,213,216 Election, 18(n1I) Exha tology, 32-34,41,46(nCi), 47(n14), 131-1 33,165, I T d17gt 180-182, 200,221(n7) Ethics, 2-3,11,66,6&-71,73,76-77, 82-96? 9 7 400,407-108,442,118, 121,12&137,147-149,155,157, 162,176,2Q9-210,225,237fn12) Foundationalism, iii, 94(n2), 97-99 Freedom, 10,27, 43,45,47(m 8,16), 68,136 Friendship, 88
God, xii, 2,5,7-8,12,1 4,16(nn 5, h), 17-18(n10), 27,29,44-42,64 (n477, 62-63'69-70,75, T-79,86,108, 117,133,146,149,156-159, 161-170,173, IT-178,180, 188-1 89,191-1 92,194-1 96, 199-206,240,242-244,247, 218Cn2) Habit, xii, 120-121,148,156,168 (m6, IQ),172-173 History, 7-10,12,16(n6), 26,28,3247, 51,6341,156, 168 (n7), 173,191, 193,200,203,207,210-211,213, 216-21 7,23 8(n2), 229,237(n12) Israel, 17(n6), 1725-79, 178,180,191,200, 205,208,240-212,245-247, 223(n23),224Cn17) Jesus Christ, 2,4,5,&-9,16(n5), 17(x76), 25'27-29,3@--31,33-34,3942, 44, 46(n6), 54,56,62,65,68-70,75,78, 79,93,115,131-135,145,157,159, 166,177-178,180-181,184, 18gY 191-1 93,195,198fn8), 200-204, 242-243,247,248(n2), 222(n12) Jews, xii-xiii, 5,17(n6), 19(n15),29, 46(n6), 79,447,456-157 192,208, 215,217, Judaism, xi, 18(nll),102,191,211, 215-217 Kingdom of God, 54,653-70,434-433, 135,1'1"3,182,2Q1-203,212, 248(n2), 222(n12)
Language, 2-3,445-447,450,456, 168(n5), 181 Liberalism, xiif 3,4,6, 7,%-13,15(rr2), 16(nG),20Qn19), 27,32,35,45, 48-61,83,87,90,96(n41), 100-101, 10%104,112,119,2 28.234, 139fn5), 149,155,174,17(3, 184, 188,190,194,197(n7), 203,22 5, 223(n13), 226,228-2%. 236In40) Mary 178 Memory, 42-43,65,148 Modernity, iii, 1-3,E-26, 35/37 57, 202-203,2 18-2 19fn4) Mcjrallity See Ethics. Narrative, 226,29,103,105-106,115, 148-149,165-l66,168(n"i"), 169fn1Q), 175,11713-1 79,185,188, 190-1 91,193-1 95,197-1 98(n"i"), 200,202-203,211,218(&) Nonviolence, 28-29,51,18&192,19(;, 197(n5), 226, 228,232,235(n3), 235-236Cn8) Pear=%11,28,58,115-122,190-3 91, 194-195,197(n5), 207,211,226 Politics, 2,6,4841,83-84,90,101,121, 199-207,209-243,245224,226 Practice(s), 3,7,25,29,101-102,106, 117,122,146, 150,158, 165,167,
172-173,18fl,183,185,186(n4,), 183,192,194-196,232 Providence, 46(n6), 465,216 Scripture, iii, 13, 49(n45), 613, 75, 144-145,147,150,184,200,203, 2Q6,20&213,217,220(n5) Sin, 4 M 4 , 5 2 Stoicism, 9,52,58,87 Story, See Narrative,
T h e ~ i l a g1,2,3,4,5,6,14,15(n4), ~ 26-27,353,41,64,69-71,73,75, 107,144-151,158,168(n8), 172-185,192,194,196,202-206 209-21 3,216,218---219(n4), Time, xi, xii, 6=6,77,79,8Q(n7), 85 Traditisn(s), iii, 3,6,26, 28,29, 66,63, "7-75,84,99,101-105,107, 123(n8), 149 Rinity, 9-10,46(n5), 2%30,118,434, 15&,168(n4),180'1 88,190-1 92, 198Cnn 9,11), 204,207 United States of America. See America. Violence, '7,11,12,48-49,51,57-58, 118,420-422,473,188-490, 194-1 96,19[7(n5), 198(n1Q),207 Virtue, 88,92,99, 402-103, 420, 448, 151,156,16O, 168(n6), 180,195 war, 2 73
