The Astounding Analogy for Hauerwas

Nicholas Healy, in Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction, offers — at the very heart of his entire proposal — an analogy that, when I first heard it I thought was absurd.

As Marx was to Hegel so Hauerwas is to Schleiermacher.

That’s right, Healy — and he is not being cheeky — sees the best analogue to Hauerwas in the architect of liberal theology, Schleiermacher, and Hauerwas is well-known for his utter rejection of the liberal project. So, why does Healy do this?

Ecclesiocentrism. Hauerwas’ ecclesiocentric method results in diminishing the classic categories of theology just as Schleiermacher’s ecclesiology — though very, very different from Hauerwas’ — did in his day.

Traditional theology, and no one can dispute this, is theocentric — Father, Son and Spirit. The church in traditional theology follows and flows from God. To make the church central is to de-throne theocentrism in theology.

In this, then, Healy sees much in Hauerwas that shares with Schleiermacher for whom the church was there to further culture’s progress. Schleiermacher is known for centering faith in “dependence upon God” but the individual’s experience of God like this required a church to interpret or give language to that experience. Hence, the ecclesial necessity in Schleiermacher for making sense of theology. The church then mediates Christ’s own self-consciousness to the people of the church. Healy sees two “turns” then in Schleiermacher: to the subject (experience of God) and to the church (as mediator of Christ’s self-consciousness). Theology then is an articulation of a church’s doctrine prevalent at that time.

Hauerwas rejects some important elements in Schleiermacher, most especially the subjective turn and the latter’s symbiotic relationship of church and state.

But, both rely on a social-philosophical theory; both focus on the church as contrastive at the particular level; both focus on Jesus (Schleiermacher on God-consciousness, Hauerwas on story of Jesus); both make the church an apologetic; and most esp both then revise the position of doctrine which is not connected to life in the church.

Both then created a kind of thinking that creates problems for traditional theocentric theology.

Healy then explores David Tracey’s three-fold schema: the logic of belief (theology), the logic of coming to believe (apologetics) and the logic of living our beliefs (ethics). Healy thinks Hauerwas’ focus on the second and third creates problems for the first. That is, his ecclesiocentrism controls the game.

Scripture, for instance, seems to be the church’s narrative or Book more than a voice that stands over against the church. Healy then goes very Catholic on Hauerwas by saying Hauerwas’ authority is, well, not the way Catholics gain authority — through ecclesial sanction and office. But he contends Hauerwas sets himself against the church (which creates tension for his ecclesiocentrism) without being an authorized voice for the church. That is, Healy thinks it is the authority of the “individual will” (64). He is not a theologian, not a preacher but could be a prophet, but he has taken this mantle on his own. [I find this section annoying and over the top.] He pushes against Hauerwas’ Matthew commentary for being too concerned with ethics and not enough with what Matthew says about God, which again I found Healy to be pressing too hard.