Hauerwas is an interesting and disconcerting companion to walk with through a text. He has his own approach, and clearly loves the liberty the remit of this commentary series gives him to indulge in theologically disciplined eisegesis. His treatment of Jesus’ temptations is informed by Augustine and Dostoevsky, two penetrating commentators on the subtle, persuasive, sweetly reasonable psychology of evil. Here’s his authority for not troubling to ‘go behind the text’. When the devil quotes scripture at Jesus, Hauerwas comments:
Jesus teaches us how to read scripture by refusing to go behind the text to discover what God must have "really meant". When you are in a struggle with the devil it is unwise to look for "the meaning" of the text. (page 53-4)
I must confess to being in considerable sympathy with Hauerwas’ determination to read the Gospel, and in reading the story, enter into it as the drama of Christian discipleship, made real for each disciple and each community, in the encounter with the living Lord. So Hauerwas is able to approach the temptation of Jesus, without reducing the latent menace of the story to a generic pietism in which any half struggling believer finds some clues for spiritual warfare. When Jesus is shown the kingdoms, and invited to bow down in order to possess them, Hauerwas is at his acid best, and sees clearly the political consequences, the cosmic stakes, of Jesus’ responses: "Give the devil his due. He understands, as is seldom acknowledged particularly in our day, that politics is about worship and sacrifice. Jesus refuses to worship the devil and thus becomes the alternative to the world’s politics based on sacrifice to false gods".
All Hauerwas’ reading of Bonhoeffer especially over the past several years,and his interaction with and indebtedness to Yoder, are evident here. So are his own well known strictures on any individual piety that ignores the political edge of ethics and the ethical core of worthwhile politics. And likewise those who have been reading him recognise the justice yearning message he hears loud and clear in the Gospel. These and other strands of Hauerwas’ theology mean he does not come innocently to the text, nor does he want to; he has, and will not surrender, his presuppositions rooted in a Christological hermeneutic of the Gospel, and of the reading of each gospel as the story of the Kingdom of God revealed and realised in Jesus. That this might take him beyond safe exegetical territory probably won’t bother him. So long as Hauerwas is convinced he is following after Christ, seeking the truth of His life and teaching, His death and His living, he clearly doesn’t mind the exegetical risk. Next hauerwas post will be a long quote, without comment from me – it is, I think, spiritual reading of the highest order.
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