Book Review: Approaching the End: Eschatological Reflections on Church, Politics, and Life:

Approaching the End: Eschatological Reflections on Church, Politics, and Life. By Stanley Hauerwas. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2013. xvii + 251 pp. $24.00 (paper).Reflecting on Barth's doctrine of creation, Stanley Hauerwas suggests "we know there was a beginning because we have seen the end" (p. 12). Something similar might be said of this book, situated toward the end of Hauerwas's near half-century in academe. Yet, this collection is anything but a "swan song" (p. xiv), let alone an attempt to close the canon, ossify old arguments, or clinch unresolved debates. On the contrary, the indefatigable Hauerwas here seems bent on keeping the colloquy ever open and unsettled. Those unfamiliar with the Hauerwasian oeuvre will encounter a denouement that piques interest in precursoiy conversations, while those who have pored over every keystroke will be reacquainted with the quintessential Hauerwas that keeps them coming back for more.The book's thirteen interweaving essays explore the end inaugurated and realized in Christ. John Howard Yoder and Karl Barth are consistently (perhaps now predictably) the remedy for much that ills. Barth's eschatological (hence christological) rendering of creation offers a corrective to Jean Porter's natural law ethic (chap. 1, "The End is in the Beginning"). Yoders politics of "the Lamb's lordship" (p. 25) complements (completes?) J. Louis Martyn and Douglas Harink on the church qua apocalypse (chap. 2, "The End of Sacrifice"), setting up a subsequent reflection on sacrifice and the state (chap. 7, "War and Peace"). Barth's assertion that "God is God" helps us to see why the "and" in "faith and politics" is a theological misstep, though faith in the "humanity of God" means "no account of the church is possible which does not require material expression that is rightly understood as politics" (p. 85, chap. 4, "Church Matters"). Barth's rumination on health, a "will to live" in response to God's command, offers what an Aristotle problematized by Jonathan Lear cannot (pp. 211-212).Longtime engagements with Aquinas are renewed in chapters on God's self-revelation (chap. 3, "Witness," written with Charles Pinches) and the "bodily character of virtues" (chap. 9, "Habit Matters"). Rounding out the book are reflections on faithfulness amidst hubristic Baconian projects, especially the technological imperative of medicine as "secular salvation" (p. 180). Hauerwas revisits Suffering Presence, asserting the "storied body" (p. 177) over and against what Jeffrey Bishop has termed the "anticipatory corpse" (chap. 10, "Suffering Presence"). With Joel Shuman, Hauerwas belies bioethical musings on cloning by looking at Paul on baptism (chap. 11, "Cloning the Human Body"). Jean Vanier and Sam Wells commend "being with" (p. 234) as Eleonore Stump reminds us why non-propositional knowledge matters (chap. 13, "Disability"). These are familiar themes for any acquainted with Hauerwas. Yet what we find here is less repetition, more recapitulation-at once a summing up and a carrying forward.The lifelong Methodist is notably keen on Anglicanism in this volume. After a chapter on "The End of Protestantism" (chap. 5), Hauerwas looks to Anglicanism as an epitome of Yoder's ecumenical vision and an "ecclesial expression" of Alasdair MacIntyres "tradition-constituted rationality" (p. 114, chap. 6, "Which Church? What Unity?"). Trading heavily on Bruce Kaye's construal of Anglican ecclesiology (marked by "Gallicanism," "Catholicity without Leviathan," and a "unity of love"), Hauerwas holds up Anglican catholicity as a way of being together amidst "the challenge of Christian unity" (p. …