Theology Today - Vol 42, No. 1 - April 1985 - BOOK REVIEW - The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics & Christian Faith and Public Choices: The Social Ethics of Barth, Brunner, and Bonhoeffer

123 - The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics & Christian Faith and Public Choices: The Social Ethics of Barth, Brunner, and Bonhoeffer

The Peaceable Kingdom:
A Primer in Christian Ethics
By Stanley Hauerwas
Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1983. 179 pp. $17.95 ($7.95 paper).

Christian Faith and Public Choices:
The Social Ethics of Barth,
Brunner, and Bonhoeffer
By Robin W. Lovin
Philadelphia, Fortress, 1984. 183 pp. $10.95.

These two books take widely differing positions on the increasingly debated issue of how Christians should exercise responsibility in addressing public moral questions.

In this first comprehensive statement of his ethics, Hauerwas presents an argument, previously developed in articles, that faithfulness to the Christian story precludes full participation in public moral deliberations. Christian ethics is addressed to all persons because God intends the way of life inaugurated by Jesus for all of creation; but attempts to begin ethics with concepts of nature or the human that are not specifically Christian lead to minimalistic ethics and to violation of the distinctive Christian commitment to peaceableness. Consequently, the responsibility of the church is to witness to the peaceable kingdom, showing the world to be the violent place it is. There are points of contact where Christians can cooperate with the moral endeavors of others, but there is little common ground for moral deliberation.

As the subtitle indicates, Lovin's book, his first, is an analysis of the ethics of Barth, Brunner, and Bonhoeffer, but he undertakes this analysis because he believes these theologians succinctly frame for us two distinct options for exercising responsibility in public moral deliberations. According to Lovin, Barth bequeaths to us a theology of obedience to God's immediate command that, while preventing identification of God's will with values of the culture, disallows ethical generalizations which can convince those who do not hear the command. The theologies of Brunner and Bonhoeffer, by contrast, develop a conception of what is required and forbidden by nature so that those who do not share the theology can agree with Christians' reasons for a moral choice. Lovin prefers the "realism" of Brunner and Bonhoeffer because it allows God's will to be discerned in the "common experience of human reality."

Lovin presents his analysis in a readable and interesting story, chronicling how Barth, Brunner, and Bonhoeffer developed their theological ethics in response to the events and ideas of their time and to each

124 - The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics & Christian Faith and Public Choices: The Social Ethics of Barth, Brunner, and Bonhoeffer

other. The story begins with Barth's writings following World War I in which he developed an ethics of the Word of God as a judgment upon all systems of ethics, including Christian, that rob God of freedom by identifying God's command with a set of values. Lovin's story continues with Brunner's affirmation that humanity "perceives something of the will of God" through participation in the orders of creation and Barth's rejection-to Brunner's surprise-of this proposal as another attempt to base ethics on something other than God's revealed Word. These differences became more pronounced, according to Lovin, in the ways Brunner and Barth justified resistance to Hitler's Reich. Brunner moved closer to Catholic natural law in an effort to offer public means for discerning when a state no longer serves the good for which it was intended. Barth, whose position Lovin interprets in a thorough analysis of the Barmen Declaration, argued for resistance because the Nazi regime usurped the church's freedom to hear God's command, yet steadfastly refused to provide natural grounds for determining what would be a good state worthy of support. Bonhoeffer enters the story as he became dissatisfied with the Confessing Church's inability to take responsibility, beyond insisting on its own freedom, for the future of Germany. In this context, Bonhoeffer developed his defense of tyrannicide against Hitler as a "venture of responsibility" to "re-form" the "divine mandates" in Christ that establish natural limits which should guide moral choices in ordinary circumstances. Lovin aligns Bonhoeffer and Brunner in a Protestant "rediscovery of the natural" that allows Christian participation in public moral deliberations.

Lovin concludes that these theologians present Christians with an important choice. We can follow Barth (as he believes Hauerwas does) toward a Christian radicalism that preserves a sharp distinction between Christian faith and the values of culture by surrendering participation in public moral deliberations, or (as Lovin prefers) follow Brunner's and Bonhoeffer's Christian realism in proposing a form of natural law that non-Christians can acknowledge. Although Lovin does not construct his own position, his presentation of Brunner's and Bonhoeffer's ethics via a historical narrative and his differentiation of their positions from Kantian and traditional Roman Catholic ethics indicate that he believes the natural law is discovered through experience in history rather than in pure practical reason or the eternal law manifest in creation.

Hauerwas agrees that ethics begins with a historical narrative, but he does not believe there is a common human narrative from which natural requirements and limits of morality can be discerned. Different narratives shape our character and description of moral situations so that we are not free to attain a moral consensus, but must resign ourselves to living in a morally fragmented world. We are free, however, to consent to the story of Jesus which calls us to be a people of peaceableness in a violent and fragmented world. Peaceableness, a theme Hauerwas develops for the first time in this book, is more than eschewing violence. It requires the patience not to sanction a common conception of justice by

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coercion in an effort to move history in the "right" direction. This peaceableness is "realistic" because it is backed by the eschatological promise in Jesus' resurrection which frees Christians from having to control history since they have confidence that they can, as Jesus did, place their lives and history in God's hands. But peaceableness may not be directly effective in bringing peace or justice to a morally fragmented world.

Hauerwas' absolute commitment to peaceableness distinguishes his ethics from Barth's, in which God's command can be known for certain only in the moment of hearing God's Word, but I doubt he would reject Lovin's judgment that his ethics follows the Christian radicalism of Barth. He certainly agrees that Christians exercise social responsibility by maintaining the church's freedom from the values of any culture. Further, like Barth, Hauerwas does not accept an ultimate moral relativism. Christians are peaceable because they are confident that the story of Jesus is the truth which does not have to be established by coercion.

Those interested in Christian ethics will benefit by reading these two books together because they articulate well the theological and ethical arguments for contrasting positions on how Christians can best exercise responsibility in public moral discussions. Lovin and Hauerwas will likely be principals in future debate on this issue, which they agree will have to be settled on theological as well as on ethical grounds. There are theological questions each will have to answer as they carry on the debate. Will Lovin's theological construal of the natural requirements and limits of morality leave a Christian remainder to which many persons will not consent? If so, Christian ethics should remain somewhat distinctive and some disagreements on public moral choices will continue. Will Hauerwas sustain the radical eschatology that backs his ethics of peaceableness as he develops a fuller interpretation of God as Creator and Governor? If so, he will have difficulty affirming strong senses of dependence upon and gratitude for God's governance through the nature and institutions of the present world.

Harlan Beckley
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, Virginia