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26 Oct 08

The Hauerwasian Mafia « Tony Jones

Tony talks about the Hauerwas mafia and the Constantinian dilemma of being a police chaplin.

tonyj.net/...the-hauerwasian-mafia - Preview

hauerwas pragmatism

the Christian faith is a self-enclosed system of language and practice—one that cannot necessarily be understood by those who stand outside of the system. Aristotle was the granddaddy of this thinking when he said that those who live inside of one polis (city-state) cannot pass judgment on the laws and morals of those inside another polis. That’s because the moral system in a polis has developed around a certain set of virtues that is intrinsic to that polis.
MacIntyre’s solution is a return to a virtue-bound society, one in which we come to consensus on the virtues that bind us and then work out a group of practices that facilitate those virtues
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- Yoder continued in this pacifist tradition and argued that the church itself is a political stance in society. The church’s problems, he argued, are a result of “Constantianism,” a reference to the Roman emperor who made Christianity the de facto religion of the Empire in 313. A church in bed with government, according to Yoder, is a church that’s lost its nerve and forgotten who it’s supposed to be
- Don Stanley saw this and marshaled the forces of Don Yoder and Don MacIntyre to develop a new way forward for the liberal tradition. Instead of watering down their distinctives to the point of meaninglessness, the church should close ranks and develop an internal coherency that would serve as an example to the world.
- I think it’s these very experiences that have led me to appreciate philosophical pragmatism more than the neo-Artistotelianism of the HM (although pragmatism is also rooted in the thought of Aristotle). The pragmatists argue that there can be no uniform rule that dictates actions in all endeavors. Instead, we must become as wise as possible and then make the best decisions that we can.
- don’t have any grand strategy to protect my Christian particularity. I know who I am.