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Introduction

The title, Approaching the End, is deliberately ambiguous in order to reflect the different but interrelated subjects I address in this book. Any reference to the “end” in a book on theology usually indicates that the eschatological character of the Christian faith will be a central consideration. I hope Approaching the End meets that expectation. To the best of my ability I try to show the significance of eschatology for understanding how Christians are to negotiate the world. By doing so I hope to make clear why I have maintained that the church does not have a social ethic but is a social ethic.1

Accordingly this is also a book about the church and, in particular, the end of the church. In The State of the University: Academic Knowledges and the Knowledge of God I suggested there are two questions you cannot ask about the contemporary university.2 Those questions are, “What is it for?” and “Who does it serve?” You cannot ask those questions because many of us who count ourselves among those who represent the university know we do not know how to answer those questions or we do not like the answers we know we should give. The same questions need to be asked about the church. But they have not been asked for reasons I suspect are very similar to why they are not asked about universities.

It may be, however, that these questions are not asked about the church because many assume that the church is in a survival mode. The end that the church is approaching, or at least some churches may be approaching, is quite literally death. So the end to which the church is moving is not a purposive end that gives order to the practices that make the church the church. Rather, the end some churches face, particularly churches for which the Reformation is their legitimating narrative, is demise.3 We may have already seen the end of many churches that bear the name Christian while failing to recognize that we have done so because those churches still seem to be in business. But the business they are in may have only a very accidental relation with Christianity.

There are, of course, many different kinds of churches. Not all churches seem to be experiencing the same fate as mainstream Protestantism. It is my judgment, however, a judgment I defend in “Church Matters: On Faith and Politics,” that churches that may currently seem to be flourishing — and that includes churches in the Roman Catholic tradition as well as Protestant evangelicals — are fated to endure the same end as churches in the Protestant mainstream. The church is in a buyer’s market that makes any attempt to form a disciplined congregational life very difficult.

There is another end that may be approaching that has implications for the church — that is, we may be nearing the end of Christendom. Of course “Christendom” is the name used to describe quite diverse forms of societal organization, but what seems to be occurring is that the general societal approval and support the church has enjoyed particularly in America is coming to an end. Of course one of the costs Christians have paid for the social and political status they have enjoyed is not to take their Christian identity so seriously that they might destabilize the social order by, for example, challenging the presumption that war is a necessity if democracies are to survive. Thus I am long on record as thinking the loss of Christendom to be a “good thing.”4

One of the reasons I think the waning days of Christendom to be a good thing has everything to do with the recovery of the eschatological character of the gospel. When Christians begin to think we are at home in the world our sense that we live “between the times” is not only muted but close to being unintelligible. The recovery of the eschatological vision is crucial for how the church understands her relation to the world.

My oft-­made claim, a claim that many find offensive, that the first task of the church is not to make the world just but to make the world the world, is rightly understood only in light of these eschatological convictions. Dualities such as faith and reason, grace and nature, creation and redemption are properly to be understood in the light of the church/world alternative. The church/world alternative, moreover, must be under constant reconfiguration because what it means to be church must always be open to the work of the Holy Spirit. Rightly understood, however, the presumption that the church exists so that the world might recognize itself as world is in fact good news.5

From this perspective the loss of the social and political status of the church may have made it possible for Yoder’s account of the “politics of Jesus” to at least be understood and perhaps even be thought to have the ring of truth.6 As long as the church has to act in a “politically responsible” manner she will find it hard to take her own existence as a political reality seriously. Given the eschatological presumptions that shape this book, however, the church does not so much have a political mission as her very existence is a political mission; it provides an alternative to the politics of the world. Such a view may seem counterintuitive, but I think it nonetheless true. In most matters we discover what makes us who we are or should be when we have nothing to lose.

It would serve little purpose for me to say in this introduction what I have said throughout the chapters of this book. But I hope I have said enough to alert and prepare the reader for the eschatological position developed in quite diverse ways throughout this book.7 The chapters in Part One address directly my understanding of the eschatological character of the Christian faith. There is much more that needs to be said about eschatology than I say in these essays, but I hope what I have said is at least the beginning of such conversations. Rightly understood, every loci of the Christian faith has an eschatological dimension, making impossible any isolated account of eschatology. So the “more” that needs to be said about eschatology is the “more” that gestures toward the necessary unfinished character of Christian theology.

As is often the case in the books I put together, the ordering of the chapters is arbitrary. That is a little strong. Better put, there is no clear logical development from one chapter to the next. All the essays are, I think, interrelated in interesting ways, making it possible for readers to begin anywhere. What is only a suggestion in one essay will be developed more fully in another. I have always thought what I have to say, which admittedly many find “hard to take,” might be given a second thought if the reader is trusted to make connections I may well miss myself. I hope that trust is evident in this book.

I could, for example, have begun the book with the essays in Part Two. I chose to begin with the more theological essays not only because they more directly engage Scripture but also because they make explicit the fundamental concepts that shape the book. In particular the first chapter, “The End Is in the Beginning: Creation and Apocalyptic,” can be understood as my attempt to engage the fundamental “methodological” issues at the heart of all the subsequent chapters. In that chapter, for example, I consider the status of natural law for Christian practical reason.8

I am, of course, hesitant to describe that essay as “methodological” because I am quite suspicious of “method.” I hope I have never had a “method” if by method it is meant that one must begin with a theory to determine what can be said. I have always assumed it best to “dive in at the deep end” so that one must sink or swim. But the essays in Part One do deal with fundamental questions concerning the apocalyptic character of Christian eschatological convictions. The third chapter, “Witness,” is important not only because in it Pinches and I explore the witness of the New Testament but also because we draw on recent work concerning the significance of martyrdom for understanding the eschatological politics of the church.

The chapters that make up Part Two deal directly with the political reality of the church. Some readers may find it odd that several of these essays deal not only with the church’s relation with the world but also with issues surrounding the divided character of the church and the imperative of Christian unity. Again I make no claim to have dealt adequately with the ecumenical challenge before us as Christians, but I am sure that the divided character of the church makes Christians far too ready to go to war. That is why the chapter “War and Peace” hopefully serves as an appropriate “summing up” of the first two sections of this book.

There is one theme running through the first two sections to which I feel I need to call attention. I have become convinced that if we are to understand our politics, and in particular the politics of war, we must attend to sacrifice as a crucial practice determining our lives. I have obviously been influenced in this respect by René Girard and Paul Kahn, but even before I had read them Yoder had alerted me to sacrifice as a crucial category. I began exploration of the significance of sacrifice in War and the American Difference, but I think my response in “The End of Sacrifice: An Apocalyptic Politics” to Peter Leithart’s defense of Constantine for prohibiting “pagan” sacrifices helps make the connection between sacrifice and politics clearer.9

There is yet another “end” that some may associate with the title of this book, namely, they may well think, given my retirement, that “the end” that is approaching is my own. Some might even be led to think the title suggests that I might intend for this book to be my “swan song.” Am I trying in Approaching the End to have the last word? That is certainly not how I understand what I am about in this book. Rather than trying to have the last word, I am trying in Approaching the End to write in a different voice.

I do not want to be misunderstood. Those familiar with my work will find arguments and positions in Approaching the End that I have used or taken in the past. But I also hope the reader will find some surprises in this book. At least I know there are some surprises for me in this book. For example, I was surprised, though I suspect I should not have been, to see how important it is for me to continue to draw on Barth’s work if I am to say what I think needs to be said. Of course Yoder also remains a necessary resource, but my reliance on Yoder has been constant in a way my reliance on Barth has not been.

I have written much, but I have tried to avoid saying the same thing time after time. It is not always a bad idea to say the same thing again if saying the same thing requires us to say what we had not anticipated we needed to say given what we had said in the past. What I have tried to do by what I write is show how I am forced to have thoughts I did not know I had until I tried to think through the implications of what I have thought. So I am sure readers of my past work will find familiar themes in Approaching the End, but I think they may also be surprised by the tone if not the substance of some of the essays in this book.

In the preface to volume IV/2 of the Church Dogmatics, Barth observes that some of his former friends and fellows wonder if in his attempt to better understand more sympathetically Roman Catholics, Pietists, and “Evangelical groups” he had gone too far in what he had ascribed to man. Had he not become “an old lion who has finally learned to eat straw”? Barth answers by observing that “perspicuous readers” will notice that his more sympathetic attitude toward those with whom he has disagreed with in the past signals no qualification of the basic view he has adopted since his break with Liberalism. He continues to maintain that Jesus alone is the basis and power of any exaltation of our humanity. Barth observes, however, that he is a continual learner, making every aspect of the Church Dogmatics exhibit a quiet but persistent movement that testifies to his content with the broad lines of the Christian tradition.10

I am, of course, no Karl Barth, but I call attention to Barth’s observations because they express exactly how I think about my own work. I am well aware that I am identified as one whose theological voice tends to overwhelm an appropriate acknowledgment of what it means to be human. The centrality of Christ in my work leaves some with the impression that I have no place for reflection on what it means to be human. Yet I should like to think that the Christological center of my work has been an attempt to help us see what it would mean for us to be what we were created to be — that is, no more or no less than human. If I have been a critic of “humanism” I have been so because I find so much that passes as “humanism” to be impoverished.

The first essay in Part Three, “Bearing Reality,” is my attempt to show how and why the Christological center of my work as well as my focus on the church do not mean that I lack the intellectual resources to address the difficulties of being human. Some may interpret that chapter as an indication that I have in fact “learned to eat straw.” Such a reading I believe, as Barth believed about his work, to be a profound mistake. Rather, I should hope that, like Barth, I am a “continual learner” ready to have “movement” in my work by discovering conversation partners I did not know I had.

In particular, “Bearing Reality” draws on J. M. Coetzee’s great novel Elizabeth Costello, and the philosophical reflections on the novel by Cora Diamond, Stephen Mulhall, and Stanley Cavell. I have engaged that novel and their reflections on that novel, not because I am trying to show my critics that I am not as theologically reactionary as they assume I must be, but because Coetzee and these philosophers rightly see that the challenge is how to be human in a world of cruelty.

“Bearing Reality” was written to be the presidential address to the Society of Christian Ethics in 2012.11 I mention the context I had for writing this lecture because it may help explain my use of Yoder’s great presidential address to the Society of Christian Ethics, “To Serve Our God and to Rule the World.” In truth, I wanted to use the opportunity given me at the Society to hopefully make many of my colleagues in the Society of Christian Ethics think twice about how they had learned to think about how I think. I make no apologies for the strong theological voice I think necessary if Christian ethics is to be done well, but I hope “Bearing Reality” makes clear that a strong theological voice does not make reality any less difficult.

Moreover, I hope “Bearing Reality,” as well as the other essays in this book, suggests (contrary to some characterizations of my work) that I do not think that for the church to be the church it must be “pure.” I am quite well aware that too often the desire and the attempt to make the church “pure” — no matter how well ­intentioned — can be quite coercive. There is no way to make the church safe from the world. When the church seeks that kind of place in the world, too often the result is an inverted Christendom. I have little use for purity, but I do pray for a more faithful church. A more faithful church, moreover, would, I suspect, make being a Christian more difficult but also more interesting.

And that is how I hope the reader will find the essays in Part Three, that is, interesting explorations in what it means to be human. They also revisit subjects I have addressed in the past. I am particularly grateful for being given the opportunity to reconsider and expand on what I once thought. Although I am a continual learner, I am also at the age when death becomes a more present reality. It turns out, therefore, that eschatology can and does have quite immediate implications.

We are bodily creatures whose bodies make life rich and vital, but embodiment also means we are destined to endure pain, illness, and death. That medicine is the subject of several of these essays is therefore not surprising, given the role medicine has for the care of the body. Medicine is but one way we express our care of one another by our willingness to be with those who are suffering and dying. We dare not forget, moreover, that we must be present to ourselves even as we are forced by our bodily nature to acknowledge that we too are destined to die.

If we are to be human, we are in the business of learning to die. That, in short, is what this book is about. That is what Christianity is about. It is my hope, therefore, that those who are not Christian might find some of the reflections in this book “useful.” For it is my deepest conviction that Christianity is training in how to be human. What Christians have to say should therefore be interesting to those who do not share our faith. But it is equally true that we Christians will have much to learn from those who are not so identified.

1. I am not particularly happy with the very idea that you need to talk about something called “social ethics.” The ethical presumptions that would tempt anyone to distinguish between social ethics and whatever is thought to constitute ethics that is not social must be mistaken. I have the same reaction to the phrase “social justice.” Justice by its very nature is social just as any ethic by its nature is social. I use “social ethics” only because of its widespread use.

2. Stanley Hauerwas, The State of the University: Academic Knowledges and the Knowledge of God (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).

3. For a set of reflections concerning this possibility see Postliberal Theology and the Church Catholic: Conversations with George Lindbeck, David Burrell, and Stanley Hauerwas, ed. John Wright (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012).

4. It is hard to believe Resident Aliens (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989), the book Will Willimon and I wrote announcing this reality, will soon be twenty-­five years old.

5. This way of putting the matter obviously owes much to John Howard Yoder’s The Christian Witness to the State (Newton, KS: Faith and Life, 1970). The Kingdom of God is the central image that expresses the New Testament eschatological vision, but it is crucial to recognize, as Yoder does, that time is at the heart of that vision. Thus Yoder’s suggestion that from a New Testament perspective we live in two times (aeons) simultaneously. The difference between the ages is not temporal — that is, one does not follow after the other, but rather they represent two different directions. The old age is characterized by sin. The coming aeon, made present by Christ through the Holy Spirit, is redemptive. It is therefore possible, Yoder maintains, to rationally believe as the New Testament believes that “Christ has triumphed and is reigning (which is true for the church through the Holy Spirit, and for the world by anticipation) and that the powers are still rampant” (p. 9). For Yoder’s extended reflections on eschatology see his chapter, “Christ the King: Last Things,” in Preface to Theology: Christology and Theological Method, ed. with an introduction by Stanley Hauerwas and Alex Sider (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2002), pp. 240-80. In Preface to Theology Yoder makes explicit what is implied in The Christian Witness to the State, that is, that “the preaching of the gospel is why time does not stop. This then is the meaning and content of his [Jesus’] kingship. Kingship is the ruling over history so that this can happen” (p. 249).

6. John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995).

7. For a short but quite useful overview of what is meant by eschatology see Thomas Finger’s article “Eschatology and Ethics,” in the Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics, ed. Joel Green (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), pp. 276-79. Finger suggests that through my work I have expanded many of Yoder’s points about eschatology by emphasizing that Christian ethics is taught and practiced in the church. Finger says this means I think ethics is developed and transmitted by traditions and narratives rather than by rational arguments. I hope Finger is wrong about that because I think tradition and narrative constitute the possibility of making rational arguments.

8. I have also recently discussed the nature of practical reason in the “Afterword” to the new edition of With the Grain of the Universe soon to be published by Brazos Press. In particular I discuss Eugene Garver’s very important book, For the Sake of Argument: Practical Reasoning, Character, and the Ethics of Belief (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

9. For my reflections on war as sacrifice see Stanley Hauerwas, War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), pp. 53-70. For an excellent book of essays on Leithart’s Defending Constantine (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2010) see Constantine Revisited, ed. Jon Roth (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, forthcoming).

10. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958), pp. vii-­xiii. In one of his last interviews before he died Barth confessed, “I am not ultimately at home in theology, in the political world, or even in the church. These are all preparatory matters. They are serious but preparatory. We have to learn to stand in them, to do so fully, and I want to do this quite cheerfully, but we have also to learn to look beyond them.” He then observed in answer to a question about grace: “Grace itself is only a provisional word. The last word that I have to say as a theologian or politician is not a concept like grace but a name: Jesus Christ. He is the grace and he is the ultimate one beyond world and church and even theology. . . . In him is grace. In him is the spur to work, warfare, and fellowship. In him is all that I have attempted in my life in weakness and folly.” Final Testimonies (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), pp. 29-30.

11. In my memoir, Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), I report that as far as I know I am the only person to be defeated for the presidency of the Society of Christian Ethics — twice. But I was elected on the third go-around. So much for making a virtue out of not winning.