How I think Hauerwas thinks about theology

Abstract

This paper highlights two aspects of Stanley Hauerwas's thought: philosophical ethics, which consists of second-order methodological claims; and moral theology, which consists of first-order, local, unsystematic moral descriptions. I show how the philosophical ethics relates to the moral theology by proposing a set of rules that constitute a ‘grammar’ of Hauerwas's thought. These rules are asymmetrical in that later rules presuppose earlier rules but earlier rules do not presuppose later rules. Each rule corresponds to texts that Hauerwas recommends and relies upon. The first rule prioritizes MacIntyre's concept of non-foundational ‘practical wisdom’. The second rule, which draws on Aristotle, Wittgenstein, Anscombe and Kovesi to stress the impossibility of separating agent from act, influences the third rule that ethics is moral description. The fourth rule uses ‘postliberal’ theologians and draws on the liturgy alongside Barth and Yoder, in order to redescribe the shape of Christian life in liberal modernity.