In the beginning was the Word…

I enjoyed a Durham Bulls baseball game last night with a few friends, and as often happens with Divinity students, the conversation turned to theology, in particular, Stanley Hauerwas’s view of communal ethics.  Since I’m only a causal reader of Hauerwas, I am in serious danger of misinterpreting him, but I thought our discussion was interesting enough to present here.  As an theologian deeply influenced by the Anabaptist tradition, Hauerwas eschews violence to accomplish any means, by either the state or the church.  He interprets this to include attempts at evangelism where the church is not faithfully living out its ethical call of discipleship.  Given that the church rarely lives this call fully, the ministry of evangelism should be suspended, or confined to the believers who gather weekly around the Table to hear the Word proclaimed.  There would be no room, therefore, for proclaiming the gospel in the world if faithful embodiment of the gospel is not attended closely with the proclamation.  One could make a cogent argument that much of the activity that passes for evangelism in recent years is so far detached from visible embodiment that the whole evangelistic project should be abandoned.  But the idea that the church somehow can’t communicate the gospel at all apart from its own faithfulness denies the possibility that God can move in the proclamation of the Word, no matter how faithful the church happens to be at the time.  In fact, as Karl Barth would teach us, the church’s faithful living of the gospel is the direct and exclusive result of the activity of the Word.  As important as it may be for the church to be a compelling witness to the gospel, the power of the Word does not depend upon us.  And we can thank God for that.

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Posted by Mike Weaver on June 23, 2011

http://mikeweaver.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/in-the-beginning-was-the-word/