Ecumenism

The Miracle
of Friendship
Stanley Hauerwas, Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University in Durham, NC, is one of the major living American theologians. His post-liberal conception is one of those most discussed

edited by E. B.

In your view, what are the fundamental factors of this dissolution?
When we speak of this problem, of the crisis of modernity, it is important always to remember that it is a problem we have created ourselves. We bear the consequences of a laceration that began with the Reformation. Though it is incorrect to identify the historical period preceding the Reformation as the moment of ideal realization of Christianity, which perhaps has never existed, it is evident that we are suffering from the break in unity. The fact that for a long time Christians were able to think they were following Christ and at the same time killing each other cannot fail to have had devastating effects. The most terrible effect of this situation of contemporary religious consciousness is the privatization of the faith, that is to say, the loss of the idea that what one believes is true. The separation between faith and truth is the primary factor of the dissolution of the Church. The outcome of this separation is the individualism typical of post-enlightenment liberalism, which is essentially a loss of memory, a denial of history and of belonging to a people as a decisive element for the definition of the “I.”

In what sense can one speak of a reduction of Christianity?
Seeing what Protestantism has become today, especially in America, I cannot but think that God is killing Protestantism! In other words, we can certainly speak of a reduction of Christianity that can be summarized with the expression “gnosticization of Christianity.” This implies first of all the complete loss of the meaning of faith as mediation, something that reaches us through witnesses and lives concretely in the communion of the Church. Gnosticizing Christianity means reducing it to a knowledge that can do without a change of life, that is, an encounter with Christ in the Church. It is a loss of the true meaning of election as God’s way of acting in history. In this situation, the Church has lost confidence in its language, it has retreated, it is no longer able to name and know human reality in all its dimensions, from science to politics.

You have indicated as an important task for the Church that of repossessing reality and Christian friendship as a concrete possibility for this repossession.
Friendship is, first of all, a correspondence in judgment, not in abstract. Judgment is a form of life that is wisdom as regards details. It is a miracle that we, coming from so different contexts, are able to associate like this, a miracle that is possible only because we are in some way rooted in the Church’s own life. How is it possible for a Texan like me to have this correspondence of judgment with the Archbishop of Granada? It’s impossible! Friendship is a unity that becomes miraculously present in life and expresses itself as a common judgment, and this is the work of the Holy Spirit.