When I was in seminary I began a thesis that I never finished. It was going to be on the nature of the socio-linguistic boundary(ies) between the Church and the World specifically within the theology of Stanley Hauerwas. The central question of the thesis was how it was that we communicate the gospel with people outside of our tradition. Put simply, the thesis was on a Haurwasian understanding of evangelism. The problem goes like this: If communication of Christian truth claims requires participation the socio-linguistic tradition of the church (which, among other things, would include significant epistemic assumptions about the reality of God, sin, and redemption) — and if the gospel is something radically different from the ways of the world (meaning, it would seem like foolishness to those who do not share the aforementioned assumptions) — then how can it be communicated? Here is the issue put in Hauerwas’ own words:
Rather than disavowing politics, the pacifist must be the most political of animals exactly because politics understood as the process of discovering the goods we have in common is the only alternative to violence (Against the Nations, p. 7).
It is true that I do not think there is in principle any way to ensure that the Gospel can be made intelligible to someone who is not a Christian, but that does not mean that there is nothing we have to say to each other (Wilderness Wanderings, p. 6).
So my question was simply this: How? If we must work together with those outside of our narrative tradition to find the goods we have in common, and if there is no way in principle to intelligibly communicate the truth of the gospel with such a person, and if we further presuppose that the gospel is integral to our conception of the good, then how do we do find these goods we have in common? If Hauerwas is right, how can we work to build a better world with people who are not Christians?
In the end, and for several good reasons, I abandoned the thesis, but I am again visiting the question due to my reading of Eugene McCarraher. In a couple of different places (here and here) McCarraher argues that “we shouldn’t be chary about joining hands with the disembedded of other traditions.” While I appreciate and want to be enthusiastic about what McCarraher is calling us to here, my Hauerwasian tendencies trigger misgivings about jumping on board. In Resident Aliens Hauerwas (and Will Willimon) assert that,
Big words like “peace” and “justice,” slogans the church adopts under the presumption that, even if people do not know what “Jesus Christ is Lord” means, they will know what peace and justice means, are words awaiting content. The church really does not know what these words mean apart from the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.
So the question is, if when taking McCarraher’s cue we begin to join hands with those of other traditions who also want to build a world not made in the image of mammon, how do “we” provide content to our use of words like labor, economy, and justice? (more…)
