The Peaceable Kingdom

...All of us, he argues, have terribly undercut the force of the Gospel narrative of Jesus's ministry, death, and resurrection in shap- ing a nonviolent community of faith that bears witness to the peaceable kingdom...

...Jurgen Moltmann's attempt to link Chris- tological statement to the Holocaust would be one example of the latter...

...Too many attempts at religious so- cial ethics wind up being nothing more than social science statements with a halo...

...Parts of the volume offer a capsule summary of themes such as "character" that have been developed more fully in his previous writings...

...As he in- sists, social ethics is not merely some- thing the church formulates and preaches...

...The opening chapters confront some basic trends in social ethics which in Hauerwas's judgment rob Christian faith of its most important societal contribu- tion...

...Only such witness, not abstract moral principles, can make an impact on con- temporary society...

...Among these thieving trends are the search for universal ethical foundations and Christianity's mistaken acceptance of itself as one "religion" among others...

...It must endeavor to relate this narrative to the experience of other faiths and humanistic traditions in addressing common societal prob-lems...

...And it must relate the Gospel to expanded human self-awareness as well as adjust the articulation of the Jesus myth to new historical experiences...

...John T. Pawlikowshi "Christology" rather than the narrative of Jesus's life and death...

...The sacraments are crucial for him, especially baptism and the eucharist...

...He himself acknowledges that no previous writings by him have so clearly exposed the methodologically crucial centrality of nonviolence as The Peaceable King- dora: "Nonviolence is not just one impli- cation among others that can be drawn from our Christian beliefs...

...For Hauer- was the deepest meaning of the Jesus myth can only be appropriated within an ecclesial community...

...Here is another area where I am prepared to walk a long way with Hauerwas, but then sharply break company...

...it is something the church lives when its ethos is truly permeated by non- violence...

...In The Peaceable Kingdom Hauerwas gives us another engaging and challeng- ing work which cannot be ignored even if one disagrees with some of his central premises...

...Another unfortunate tendency is the emphasis on THE PEACEABLE KINDON A PRIMER IN CHRISTIAN ETHICS Stanley Hauerwas Notre Dame, $17.95, $7.95 paper, 179 pp...

...For in some ways this is more a volume on the theological foundations and methodol- ogy of social ethics than a detailed ethical analysis of issues in the war/peace de- bate as the title iiself, The Peaceable Kingdom, might suggest...

...It is at the very heart of our understanding of God...

...Elizabeth Schiissler Fiorenza's In Mem- ory of Her would in part represent the former type of engagement...

...Nor does it take adequate account of the internal consciousness revolution represented by Freud and Jung...

...this frequently limits Christian faith to "an interpreta- tion of humanity's need for meaning or some other provocative anthropological claim...

...I too have criticized O'Conneli for overreliance on the natural law tradition and I agree with John Cole- man that the church needs greater utiliza- tion of biblical imagery in constructing and articulating its moral positions in so- ciety...

...Hauerwas strongly rejects any individualistic concept of sal- vation...

...In so doing he really fails to come to grips with the practical norms the peaceful community requires if it is to be involved at all in the decision-making processes of our society nationally and internationally...

...In this volume he specifically criticizes Timothy O'Connell, Richard McCormick, and Josef Fuchs...

...Any at- tempt to express the "human meaning" of the Christ-event, he asserts, must be clearly related to the specific narratives of Jesus's life, death, and resurrection...

...I have some sympathy for the di-rections in which Hauerwas is pushing...

...The above discussion ties in directly to another cru- cial point in the volume: the centrality of ecclesiology in social ethics...

...Both tend to reduce religious convictions to a secondary role in morality...

...Books: ETHICS, JESUS, & NONVIOLENCE p ROFESSOR HAUERWAS subtitles his latest volume "A Primer in Christian Ethics," and tightly so...

...13 July 1984:407...

...Hauerwas's presentation of the Jesus myth remains too static and seemingly not subject at all to historical experience and the growth of historical conscious- ness...

...With this I strongly concur...

...Elsewhere, Hauerwas has faulted me for weakening the power of the Jesus myth (in my book Christ in Light of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue) in just these ways...

...It is the clear application of these themes to the peace question, as well as a concise, first-time exposition of his ecclesial stance and the influences upon it, that make this volume unique...

...But only in some ways because Hauerwas believes that peace, more precisely the Christian community witnessing to the peaceful kingdom, represents the heart of the church's ethical responsibility...

...Though Hauerwas does not totally downgrade ethics as a formal discipline, it has at best a secon- dary role: "Christian ethics, as a critical and reflective discipline cannot restore what only a community can hold to-gether...

...But the church cannot stop here in its proclama- tion of the Christ-event...

...It is my contention that Christianity must relate its biblical and theological tradi- tion much more explicitly to the formula- tion of its basic ethical posture towards critical social issues...

...He terms them not merely "re- ligious things," but the "essential rituals of our politics...

...In this he clearly distances him- self from many forms of evangelical Protestantism that relate the telling of the story primarily to the realm of personal salvation...

...But Hauerwas overstates the critique...