Stanley Hauerwas: from The Peacable Kingdom

1.) We are unable to stand outside our histories in midair, as it were; we are destined to discover ourselves only within God’s history, for God is our beginning and our end (29).

2.) Christian ethics is specifically formed by a very definite story with determinative content (29).

3.) We do not come to see merely by looking, but must develop disciplined skills through initiation into that community that attempts to live faithful to the story of God (29-30).

4.) The Christian story trains us to see that in most of our life we act as if this is not God’s world and therein lies our fundamental sin.

5.) Sin is not some universal tendency of humankind to be inhuman or immoral, though sin may involve inhumanity and immorality. We are not sinful because we participate in some general human condition, but because we deceive ourselves about the nature of reality and so would crucify the very one who calls us to God’s kingdom (31).

Hauerwas defines what sin is and how sin is prevalent in mankind. In addition he refutes other notions about sin such as Niebuhr’s position of classically defining sin, which ultimately contradicts itself. It is a contradiction because it is classically regarded as an essential part of human nature, while at the same time an inherited evil which is inevitable ( Sanctify Them in Truth 64). He states sin to be a matter of unbelief, a turning away from the transcendent, by failing to acknowledge our own dependency. Thus the notion we try and be the master of our own destiny. The refusal to acknowledge this dependency and to live in communion with the transcendent, leads the self to a desire finite goods (66). If it is necessary to acknowledge this dependency, humility becomes a virtue required by Christians. The humility exemplified by the cross of Christ (67).

“His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which to put to death their hostility…” (70). What does this say about our duty to non-Christians? Our “obligation to be witnesses means we cannot safeguard ourselves from new challenges”. What challenges does this present in our interaction with non-Christian religions?

Taking into consideration our last class discussion, would Hauerwas claim that Christianity is the only way to locate ourselves and put us on the path to perfection? Would he say that the habits and practices within Christianity is the most effective way to find happiness?

Hauerwas: Learning to Speak Christian

1) Learning the language of any craft is to learn to tell the stories constitutive of the trade.

2) Teaching the “language of prayer” is a physical act akin to carving stone.

3) The language and the action are inseparable and are how we acquire the skills of the craft.

4) The craft of theology is handed down by the masters, and our education in the craft will reflect the tradition of said masters.

5) Our education is not stagnant; we must, in time, become masters ourselves and teach new generations.

Christianity is an education in the language of the craft. How do we learn to “speak” Christian?

We all know that Hauerwas is a big fan of stories. Stories give us an identity. The Story of Christianity, much like the story of stone carving, names “as well as constitutes the virtues” necessary to practice a craft (112). The Story of Christianity is needed to tell us not only the history of the religion, but also to teach us how to be Christian.

We learn to be Christian in many ways. Christianity, like stone carving, “gains its purpose and intelligibility from other stories and traditions” (115). Our Christian education depends on stories. However, our Christian education must form “people in the habits of speech that make possible the virtues constitutive of the Christian tradition” (114).

However, education poses a problem in its presentation. As Hauerwas notes, education is very often presented as information; we can be spoon-fed dogma and we take it on face value. This type of education “By its very nature, is not meant to do any work and is thereby open to ideological distortions” (114). Christianity, like stone carving, takes effort on the part of the practitioner.

Often, Christians run the risk of trying “to substitute something called ‘education’ for what only tradition can do.” (116). Our education in the Christian language must not subvert the traditions of the faith—that is, we cannot just create our own unique religion. As Hauerwas says, “No matter how much effort we may as Christians put into education, the education that results, if it is not shaped by the practices of the church, may reflect a quite different understanding of the world than determined by the Gospel.” (117-8)

We also learn stories from the masters of the craft. In stone carving, there is a very clear hierarchy: master teaches apprentice the skills and traditions of the craft. “Education,” says Hauerwas, “happens through imitating a master. Yet the key to learning from a master is learning when it is appropriate to depart from what one has learned from the master” (115). Each apprentice must gain a foundation and then hone his or her own particular abilities. Traditions change, and as such so must the people within those traditions.

This does not mean we should change the practices of the faith entirely. As Hauerwas states, “instead of trying to describe the faith in new concepts, we should instead try to teach the language and practices of the faith.” Our goal, as Christians, is to become masters of the craft and pass it on to other generations through our actions and stories.

Learning to speak Christian is learning to exercise the virtues of the craft. It is, in Hauerwas’ words, “to be habituated” (120). As we learn the language and form Christian habits--from the existing examples of the traditions and that of the masters—we hone our Christian skill. We learn how to live Christian lives and how to shape the traditions to our context. Essentially, learning to speak Christian is learning how each of us can best glorify God.

Why is it so important that we learn from the masters of a craft and then make the craft our own? Is this how we assure the Story’s continuity or can this self-reflection corrupt the Story?

Hauerwas The Church as God's New Languag

According to Hauerwas...
1. Pentacost is a main point in the narrative of God. It all goes back to Babel when people did not attribute thier power and gifts to God and lost a common language. Pentacost and the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus reUNITE human beings so they have through the holy spirit and Jesus they have a community with a simlilar "language." ->Church

2.The Church's main purpose is to humbly give WITNESS to the story of Jesus. I use the word witness because the church tells of the presence of Christ and is the indirect presence of Christ in the World.

3.The Church is God's creation/agent for the unity of humanity. It through the help of the holy spirit creates community that help recognize the others as "other" and still accept them as a part of the narrative of Christ.

4. The narrative of Christ is only as good as the where, how and who that tell the story.

Hauerwas states the necessity of Church to tell the story of Christ so can there be a possibility that the church stops producing saints? Would Hauerwas say itis possible?

I think that sadly it is possible. Though the church has a lot on its side to keep it from falling. The reason humanity fell the first time at Babel was because it did not give God the recognition he needed. In Babel humankind went to a level where they realized that through cooperation they can acheive anything but did not realize the can do this because of the power of God and the gifts that he gave them. So he made them realize that they are his creatures and that we need to be humble in our everday lives especially in our relationship with him.

Though the church now also has the example of Jesus on thier side from becoming to big headed. "For how can we be prideful when the very God we worship is most fully manifest on a cross." As the church since our mission is to retell that story of Christ in our lives and through our actions then we are constantly reminded to keep with the mission of Christ and to become such awesome lovers that we are willing to give our lives for others. Also in our aspect of church we have church leaders who live and act in a way to preach and tell stories of there own lives so we not only have examples and exemplars from the past but we have current preachers and friends constantly working and liveing the narrative of Jesus.

Finally on the Church's side for not falling is the grace given by God through the Holy Spirit to manifest the word into peoples hearts. The Holy Spirit is the presence of God in this world to keep renewing his people to the story. The Holy Spirit in the historical and everlasting event of Pentacost creates a way for the people of God to unify themselves in Church because now they all have one langauge in the History of Jesus Christ.

So yes it is possible for the church to become an empty vessel that has no heart and changes no one but it would have to completely go against God, his story, his Son, and his Spirit to do so.


What about those people who are not Christian how do they fit into this plan?
And if pentacost and the church can be the alternative to war... does that mean that these non christians are not apart of that peace promise and if some are not apart of the peace plan can peace really be attainable?

Hauerwas on Story and Theology

1. As human beings we enjoy stories, especially if they relate to us in some way. When they relate to us, they are defined as a "good" story because we recognize ourselves in them. The Bible is the best story written because it is "God's way of always being with human beings as they are, as the concrete, temporal beings who have a beginning and an end--who are, in other words, stories themselves" (72).

2. The word "story" can often be misused in that a story need not be factual to be truthful. This can be an attack on the existence of Jesus, because we do not demand any historical fact to back up the written story, but rather the story itself defines who Jesus is and who the church says He is.

3. A story is not merely a series of events that unfold, "but rather the interaction of events and the people that make them" (76). Stories are interchangable in that two or more stories may be told to make the same point.

4. Story is not always necessary, but when trying to make a point there is no other way to do so.

How do we use stories to speak of God? How do we know which ones are "true" according to Hauerwas?

Because a story is defined by our own being and that in a good story we see ourselves, we use stories to better understand God. We must understand ourselves in order to understand God. Knowing oneself cannot exist without knowing God and vice versa. "[T]o ask how I am to know which story best helps me know myself or God is in fact two interdependent questions, not in the sense that one is logically necesary for the answer to the other, but rather each is morally necessary to the other if we are to have a story that provides us with the skills to form our lives truthfully" (81).

A true story is more than a statement of fact. "[A] true story is one that helps me to uncover the true path that is also the path for me through the unknown and foreign" (80). True stories "must enable us to know what our engagements have committed us to" (80). As in the previous Hauerwas reading, we must realize that community creates some part of who we are. Therefore, community defines who we are as Christians and what we will write about. Being a part of a community is one of these engagements in which we are committed and we must understand our role in the community in order to understand the engagement itself and stories about our community give us guidance.

Hauerwas says to understand which stories about God are true we must go directly to Scripture. Christians, by definition, "produce truthful lives" (80), which means that the stories they have told about themselves and their place in the world and events they have been a part of are truthful and tell some part of who God is. Hauerwas also states that theology is biography (81) in that they are about something or someone, both self and God. If the stories are about ourselves, who are truthful beings, then it is truthful about God as well. If we know a story to be true of God, then coincidentally it is also true of ourselves. In fact, there are stories that are necessary to understand God, which, in turn are necessary to know ourselves. Neither the stories of ourselves or of God came first or are more important than the other.

Is the story of the Bible as good when told by someone else than by reading it yourself? Do we have to read it to understand it or can it be taught? Do we get the same results and understand the same thing when we read it or when the same idea is told to us?

What are the stories that are necessary to know ourselves and therefore God?

Stanley Hauerwas: A Community of Character

1. Tradition, which is formed through mediation on scripture, creates a shared history of a community that leads to forming a community’s identity; therefore scripture is dependent on community to continually find value in the scripture.

2. Currently theories of biblical ethics takes appropriate scriptures and uses it to fit what “our intuitive assumptions about what an ‘ethic’ should look like,” (57) this separates the “ethical lesson” from the narrative that makes the ethic understandable.

3. Scripture receives moral authority through the church using the wisdom of the past, through reflection and interpretation on the scriptures (which creates tradition), to further lead the community of the church in the present.

4. Scripture as narrative is essential because all is understood through stories with a beginning and progression; therefore the stories of scripture are the stories of God, which lead to a better understanding of the character of God.

On page 57 Hauerwas states, “ The very idea that the Bible is revealed (or inspired) is a claim that creates more trouble than it is worth? Does this mean that Hauerwas does not see the scriptures as Divinely inspired? Does that lead us Christians and Jews with scriptures that are purely manmade?

Hauerwas argues that the notion that scripture contains a revealed morality that can be used by individuals in the present day “flounders” (58). This is because some scriptures at the present time are seen as morally perverse and are typically dismissed. This way of singling out what is seen as morally important and what is seen as something that can be dismissed leads to subjectivity and ultimately we gain a morality from scripture that is solely dependent upon what is appealing to the ethicist. Another flaw in believing that scripture creates a standard of orthodoxy is the fact that there are contradictions through out scripture that were specifically left in. How can we find one set of biblical ethics when there are contradictions within the scripture? Once again if we choose to pick between these contradicting ethics we are being subjective.

This leaves us with the notion that scripture is purely manmade and that there can be no ethics pulled from scripture. This notion has potential to be damaging because we loose the validity of scripture . Hauerwas saves the importance of scripture through the theories of tradition and narrative. Tradition is essential to the Christian community. Our community is founded off of the shared history that is written in scripture (58). Reflection and belief in this documented past is what creates our community. This is essential to know because it is where scripture receives its authority. Through the Christian community’s reflection and every continuing interpretation on the past events dictated by scripture, the Christian community is validating the importance of scripture in its formation and continuation of its community. The community is using the stories and lessons of the scriptures to help in framing an understanding of our current world.

The notion of stories is also essential for discovering the moral significance of scripture. “The moral use of scripture, therefore, lies precisely in its power to help us remember the stories of God for the continual guidance of our community and individual lives” (66). We as humans learn and understand best through stories. We understand and relate to other through sharing stories. It is the direct notion of human understanding that we begin to value the importance of scripture. Scripture is narrative that renders the character of God. It is through the stories of scripture that we best understand the character of God. Therefore scripture is the stories of God. It is through this statement that we gain the significance of scripture back. Scripture is written by humans, however, it is the written history of a community, and how they came to understand the character of God. These stories are then seen as authority because our Christian community reflects on these stories and forms our traditions and understanding around them.

Did God reveal himself to the writers of scripture and that was how they were able to write on the Character of God or are the scriptures the written understanding of God?

MacIntyre & Moral Agency

1. MacIntyre identifies to main modes of moral judgment: 1) assertive and absolute judgment and 2) tentativeness to give any definite answer or identify universal principles underlying any judgment given. Because of their common inability to self-criticize, dialogue about any shared presuppositions is impossible. The result is thoughtlessness, a lack of self-knowledge.
   
2. We need a knowledge of the principles that direct our moral decisions - knowledge that is practical in nature - in order to have true moral agency.
   
3. Aristotle asks four sets of questions that focus on how moral agency can be instilled. The first deals with how we might distinguish between our desire to be satisfied and desire for objects for the sake of the object. The second questions how we can learn to act for the best in every present situation. The third examines how practice is to be unified with the agent's life. The fourth set questions what types of social relationships can foster and facilitate the achievement of goods.
   
4. The end result is that we need rigorous moral training, likened to training of tuna fishermen, that fosters reflection, teamwork, and individual striving. This training is necessary, though it may not be sufficient.
5. To gain moral agency, we must first engage in practices that instill reflection, teamwork, and individual striving rather than focusing on theories we could adopt. We can't simply be told what to think and how to act: we must experience what it means to make moral decisions.

MacIntyre first proposes that what we need for moral agency is thoughtfulness - "an unwilling[ness] to allow thought to rest content with unscrutinized metaphors or unidentified presuppositions" (3). How are we to attain this thoughtfulness?

MacIntyre argues that this manner of knowledge must be practical rather than theoretical (3). In order to be thoughtful, we must be able "to discriminate among the various objects of attention presented to us by our desires" - to be able to discern which objects we desire for their ability to satisfy a need rather than because of some external force. In essence, we must be aware of the nature of the objects and the source of our desires. MacIntyre elucidates this with the example of the influence of advertising, by which we can be unconsciously swayed to choose some product over another (3).

Our goal, then, is to become aware of these unknown influences over our desires. MacIntyre argues that, in order to gain this awareness, we must discuss and question our desires and about the practices in which we engage. He borrows “an agenda for practical reflection” (4) from Aristotle in the form of four sets of questions, through which we can realize the origins and goals of our desires.

First, we must examine whether the goods we wish to obtain are objects of desire for desire’s sake or because they are good for humans to obtain in general and for us to obtain in particular. Secondly, we need to consider how we might come to act in the best manner when faced with a situation that must be addressed without thinking. Thirdly, we must consider the necessity for unity within the moral agent’s life. Lastly, we should reflect on “the types of social relationship in and through which the goods of such practice are achieved” (4).

However, these questions cannot be our starting point for thoughtfulness. Before we can reflect, we must first deem it to be the most desirous action, which is not the popular choice in today’s world (as MacIntyre explains when he talks of the assertive and the uncertain modes of moral judgment, p. 1).

Gladly, MacIntyre does not rest complacent with this manner of reflection. This may explain how we can reflect on our desires once we wish to examine them, but not how we may come to desire that. Hence, MacIntyre proposes that we need a manner of training program – such as tuna fishermen experience – to instill three major qualities: teamwork, individual striving, and reflection.

Tuna fishermen have to have confidence in their own abilities, but also be aware of their limitations. They must be able to trust those around them in order to survive, both people in their immediate presence and the Coast Guard. The strenuous schedule, intense need for cooperation, and high level of danger make reflection necessary, as MacIntyre argues (7). Without this reflection, the fishermen would not be self-aware of their capabilities and limitations, hence putting the rest of the crew at risk.

So, to extend the analogy, our moral training needs to require teamwork, individual striving, and reflection. The training must be rigorous and structured so that we become aware of salient influences, but also so that we become engaged in the task of purging ourselves of negative influences.

So, then, can everyone be trained morally? If so, of what should the training consist—how would it require teamwork, individual striving, and reflection? If not, who gets to be trained, and how do we deal with those who are excluded?

MacIntyre on Morality, Virtue, and The End in After Virtue

1. Moral arguments today are seemingly irresoluble because we do not have an established way of deciding between premises that are too disparate to be weighed against one another, we presume impersonal criteria when presenting arguments, and our conception of morality is fragmented and decontextualized.
2. Virtues are necessary in order to acquire the internal goods of a particular practice, or to succeed in that practice.
3. Virtues can thus be witnessed in (and developed through) practices, which are never isolated but themselves have histories and are passed on to us through traditions of communities.
4. People, too, have narrative histories, and it is only within the context of a unitary narrative that a person’s actions can be intelligible and a person’s life be both intelligible and unified.
5. We need to understand life as a narrated ‘quest’, which presupposes that there is a telos toward which we are working, and it is only on the grounds of one’s success or failure to both understand and reach this telos that we can judge a life to be good or otherwise.

What then is needed in order for us to regain a coherent moral scheme, one that we can comprehend?

MacIntyre seems to present virtue as the key to rehabilitating a fragmented conception of morality. He claims that “A practice involves…the achievement of goods” (283) and that practices could not “flourish in societies in which the virtues were not valued” (285). Thus, we need virtues in order to achieve goods. But, he says, this does not necessarily mean that “whatever flows from a virtue is right” (288). So virtues alone cannot make for a good human life. Then what can make for a good life?

MacIntyre argues that we need “a conception of moral law” in addition to virtues if we are to have a good life (288). So, he says, it is clear that “the scope” of virtues “extends beyond the practices” within which we initially cultivate them, meaning that they exist in some broader context (288). This broader context for him is the whole of human life.

A person’s life draws its unity from a unitary story, or narrative. An important thing to remember about narratives is that our narratives are, in a sense, shared with others. MacIntyre explains, “I am part of their story, they are part of mine. The narrative of any one life is part of an interlocking set of narratives” (292). Thus a person’s life is a single whole, and so MacIntyre argues that “[s]omeone who genuinely possesses a virtue can be expected to manifest it in very different types of situations”. Accordingly, virtues, which enable us to achieve [internal] goods, are not confined to just one thing that we do but are manifest regularly throughout our life story.

Even so, if virtues alone cannot make for a ‘good life’, then we still need something to help guide us toward what is good for us. Here MacIntyre argues that we must simply search for a conception of “the final telos”, or of what is the good for humankind (292). This, he says, is the ‘quest’ of life. If we can eventually come to understand “the good”—the final, ultimate goal for humankind—then we will be able “to order other goods” accordingly and remain focused on the good (292). Because our lives ‘embody’ unitary narratives, we can look to our individual narratives and ask who we are, why we do things, and what is good truly good for us. Since our narratives are, in a sense, shared then we can also ask about the identity of others, why others do things, and what is truly good for all humankind (291-2). For MacIntyre, looking into our life stories and asking questions about ourselves and what is good is part of what it means to live a good life. “The good life for man is the life spent in seeking for the good life for man”. “[T]he virtues necessary for the seeking are those which will enable us to understand what more and what else the good life for man is” (293). MacIntyre says it’s also a necessary part of the good life not only to “sustain the form of the individual life in which that individual may seek out his or her good as the good of his or her whole life, but also [to] sustain[ ] those traditions which provide both practices and individual lives with their necessary historical context” (295-6). Thus he says it’s also a virtue to “hav[e] an adequate sense of the traditions to which one belongs or which confront one” (296).

Is MacIntyre right that we must have a telos around which to structure our lives? Is searching for it enough to really make for a good life, or do we have to know what the good is before we set out looking for it? Can we know what the good is before we look for it? Why or why not? How can we know that we’ve found the good?

Quandary Ethics

1. Looking at ethics as specific moral dilemmas and how to decide what to do is a new idea that Aristotle and other early philosophers did not practice. How to resolve moral problems should not be the main focus when developing our individual characters and how to live.
2. Instead of focusing on moral problems, we should focus on maintaining a “healthy moral life.”
3. Quandary ethics looks at situations where the right answer would be the answer that is right for everyone. Ethics should look at the individual and what principles the person has set for his or herself. What is right for everyone might not be right for me.
4. Conscientiousness is only one feature of moral character. Pincoffs thinks that quandary ethics only concerns itself with conscientiousness, but he argues that other qualities should make up a person’s moral character.
5. Even though we teach children and others to develop certain virtues and values, they are their own person and inevitably will develop their own character. Everyone will end up with their own moral life that differs from others, no matter what.

Since most people think of ethics in terms of quandary ethics, what is so bad about it?
Pincoffs begins his article by showing us that the idea of ethics as moral decision-making is a new idea. His biggest fear is that ethics will be thought of only as how to make difficult decisions. He says that if we think of ethics this way, then the great ethicists’ theories will be distorted by our quandary ethics lenses (166). These ethicists were concerned with “moral enlightenment, education, and the good for man” (166) instead of decision-making. Pincoffs points out that Aristotle concerned himself with studying qualities of characters to be followed or avoided (166).
Pincoffs wants to show that thinking about moral problems is not worthless, but should not be given too much emphasis. What is left out of quandary ethics is the idea that we were raised in a certain way and holds certain values. Pincoffs says, “The ‘we’ in question is not a mere place holder; rather, it refers to those of us who were well brought up, who have had some experience of life, who know something of the way in which the social order operates, who have some control over the direction of our lives…” (167). Pincoffs is afraid that quandary ethics may deal too much with a fixation on the negative perplexity that moral dilemmas offer. He states, “A well-founded ethics would encourage the development of moral sensitivity but would discourage the entertainment of moral quandaries that arise out of moral ineptness or pathological fixation,” (167). This is where Pincoffs brings in his analogy as a moral philosopher prescribing a way for a healthy moral life instead of curing moral illnesses.
Pincoffs then anticipates an argument in favor of quandary ethics that people might conceive our times as more problematic than other periods in history, and therefore it is necessary to think of ethics in the form of moral problems. However, Pincoffs proves this theory to be wrong for two reasons. The first is that we can see that there have been previous moments in history were this is just not true. Character ethics existed in times where there were just as much moral problems. The second reason he gives is that even if this were true, there would be no good reason why rules and decisions that came out of quandary ethics would be any more effective and transcend change when the qualities of character ethics do not (168).
Then Pincoffs goes on to attack why quandary ethics is wrong when we think about it as what is the correct thing to do for anyone in a given situation. He does this by bringing up the question of who the “we” are in this problem that is at hand. When using quandary ethics we look at what would be the correct thing to do after reviewing the rules and exceptions we have laid out for ourselves through our deliberations. He says, “What is supposedly relevant is the agreements I have made; what is supposedly not relevant is any personal wants or desires or characteristics that I may have,” (170). He then compares quandary ethics to traffic court, where hurrying to get home or wanting to go to the concert is irrelevant to the court or the decision made by quandary ethics.
Instead, Pincoffs suggests this idea that personal considerations should be relevant in moral situations that are not relevant in legal cases. He illustrates this by showing that to him, the school-board meeting may be a big deal if segregation is a big part of his life and people associate him with the school-board decision. This is an example where what might be right for him is not necessarily right for everyone else. He then describes this idea of commands versus orders, and how even if we think of ethics in this way, we still let our own character enter in the back door by interpreting situations in our own discretion. He says, “They [orders] do not tell us exactly what to do so much as they indicate what we should struggle toward in our own way. But since we are already moral beings with characters formed, the way in which I will abide by an order/rule is not the same as the way in which you will,” (173).
Pincoffs then goes onto explain why character ethics has to be formed based on every individuals’ own experience and moral values. He says that when a person does something out of a sense of moral obligation, he does so because he holds himself to this moral, not others. And if he is to have his own moral character, then he must only hold himself to his own moral obligations, not others (174).
And Pincoffs wants to point out that while acting out of moral obligations that arise out of moral decision-making may be considered socially responsible, he does not want to underemphasize other qualities that he feels are just as important as conscientiousness. He notes that while developing certain virtues may be an individualistic process (we will all come up with different ideals and emphasize certain things over others), we still have some qualities that are socially essential. But he is quick to point out that he wants expand this list past rule responsibility (177). He states that “We may encourage children and ourselves in the development of certain virtues, but the form that each person’s character assumes will inevitably be the result of his own selective cultivation and his own conception of what is and is not worthy of himself. It is, once we move beyond the minimal needs of society, his problem, peculiar to him, his training, and his ideals,” (178).
Given all that Pincoffs has said, what if there is a person who is brought up under bad instruction or has been taught vices instead of virtue? What happens to that person? Are they just on their own to make “bad” moral decisions?