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.
