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Stanley Hauerwas
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Dr. Stanley Hauerwas is Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at the Divinity School of Duke University. He spoke at the January Series on Wednesday, January 15 on the topic, "Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Lying - Reflections on America." Dr. Hauerwas was described as “contemporary theology’s foremost intellectual provocateur,” and has been named America’s Best Theologian by Time Magazine. Chimes Editor in Chief Christian Bell interviewed Dr. Hauerwas on the day of his address at the January Series.
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What do you think the Church’s position on the potential of a US war against Iraq should be?
Against it. Even on just war grounds, I can’t imagine that Christians could support the war against Iraq. Just war is committed to allegedly only responding to a clear case of aggression. How you read the very attempt of Iraq, even if it’s true that they were developing weapons that are extremely threatening, doesn’t any way suggest that that’s a direct aggression that you should respond to. It is only, as a matter of fact, that if you take as a fact that America as an empire power should do everything necessary to maintain its status as an empire power, but then it’s not clear that just war could ever produce an empire. I think it’s extremely dumb. I think that generally it’s that there’s very little opposition to the Bush administration’s decision—it looks like his decision—to attack Iraq. I think it has everything to do with the war on terrorism. The war on terrorism is not a war. You can’t have a war on terrorism as a just war, so I think the whole thing is, for Christians, extraordinarily doubtful.
What do you think about the motivation of the Religious Right?
I don’t know. I don’t know people who are the Religious Right personally. I think insofar as they’re supporting Bush, it indicates a deep confusion between what it means to be a Christian and what it means to be an American, that it’s not a characteristic of the Religious Right but also a characteristic of the religious left. I mean, the religious left loved Bill Clinton! I wonder if Bill Clinton were still in office, he would be doing what George Bush is doing, it’s quite possible that the religious right would be against it and the religious left would be for it.
That’s an interesting point. And again, on pacifism, C. S. Lewis, a theologian I admire quite a bit, was explicitly against pacifism. What do you think about his arguments?
I don’t remember them. Generally, I think the strongest argument against pacifism is it’s immoral. Namely, we abandon the innocent who should be protected. Just war is committed to believing that you cannot commit an evil that a good may come. You cannot bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s better for more people to die on the beaches of Japan than to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That’s murder. So we are people, those committed to just war and non-violence equally, who often have to watch the innocent die for our convictions.
Are there ways in which you think Christianity’s sexual ethics need to be reworked, and if so, how would you propose that change, or what would you propose to change?
I don’t think our sexual ethics need to be reworked; I think we need to live them. Every time that kind of question is asked, people are thinking about the gay issue. And I say, you know, we don’t need to have a position about gays. Christians have got everything we need: we’re against promiscuity. What more needs to be said? I do think that it’s important for Christians, gay Christians and non-gay Christians, to try to think hard about how gay people can avoid the sexual wilderness that threatens all of us today. And so, I am one of those who would love to find a way to think about committed gay relationships that are not marriage but also not inconsequential for the up-building of the Church in holiness. I don’t pretend I know how to do that.
What about John Calvin do you like and dislike, and what imbalances do you think a college that attempts to be Calvinist would suffer as a result of that emphasis?
Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve read straight through the Institutes, so I can’t pretend to be up on Calvin. But, Calvin has always been influential in my work because he was a sanctificationist. People often times don’t notice that in the Institutes Calvin treats sanctification prior to justification. And in that sense, I think Calvin offers a real alternative to Lutheranism, which over-determines the notion of justification by faith by grace as the center of the gospel, which oddly enough took – and it shouldn’t have done it – emphasis away from the Incarnation and why it is that Jesus’ whole life is part and parcel, and crucial, for our understanding of what it means to be a Christian, and so I think Calvin is terrific on how he thought about those kinds of things. I think Calvinism in places like Calvin can too quickly become an end in itself and forget that it’s not about being Calvinist; it’s about being a Christian in a manner that we identify with the Church across time, and that Christianity did not begin in the Reformation. And I know there are people at Calvin who remember that all the time and who are committed to connecting Calvinism to the great catholic tradition. But I think that’s absolutely crucial.
What do you think of some of the writers that have come out of here – Nick Wolterstorff, Al Plantinga, people like that – that have come from this tradition? How do you think they’ve done on that?
Well, they’re both friends. And so, of course I admire them. I’m more acquainted with Nick’s work than I am with Al’s. I admire the honesty of Nick’s work; I find it unafraid, and I think that’s a great thing.
How do you propose to divorce Christianity from capitalism, since you seem to see them both as enemies?
I don’t have the slightest idea. If you want to know what it feels to be captured by power, it means exactly that you cannot imagine any alternative. And it’s not that I think capitalism is worse than some other forms of economic relations; it is that it is an omnivorous beast and does, and controls, not just the market but everything about our lives, and turning all relationships into exchange relationships. It’s just very hard to know how to resist, so I don’t have an alternative. I do care a lot about trying to figure out to help us resist, and that comes in finding parts of our lives that we refuse to let become capitalized. But boy, it’s hard. Boy, it’s hard. I mean, capitalism…there’s no question capitalism works. It produces wealth to be distributed. What it produces it’s not clear you need, but it does produce wealth. The problem with capitalism is it makes us wealthy, and being wealthy is not a very good thing for Christians to be, if we believe the Gospels. And yet we need people with resources to make Calvin Colleges possible, and then you have to pray for their souls. You have to pray for my soul; I’m a full professor at a major research university—I make a lot of money. I don’t know what to make of it.
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