Abstract
Before beginning the constructive work of Part II, I need to explain why Hauerwas and Cavanaugh will not be my interlocutors in the chapters to come. While they serve well as tools of critique, the limitations and problems of their political theology become apparent when they develop their alternative models of how church and state should be interrelated. The critique presented in this chapter of the problematic aspects of their thought in this chapter will therefore serve the constructive work of Part II by identifying the mistakes of ecclesial ethics that my framework of church-state relations will need to avoid, in addition to the problems already identified in Vatican II’s teachings.
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Notes
- 1.
Building on Weber’s writings on church and sect types, Troeltsch developed his own typology of different kinds of Christianity in The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches. Troeltsch added a third type, mysticism, though it ‘is generally ignored’ (Cavanaugh 2016, p. 154) by those who appeal to his typology. For Troeltsch’s definition of a sect, cf. Troeltsch 1931, p. 993.
- 2.
Gustafson’s argument may have seemed more plausible in 1985 because, perhaps due to Hauerwas’ ‘training in the Niebuhrian tradition’ (Rasmusson 1995, p. 235) at Yale, ‘Hauerwas in his early work himself used the church-sect typology, and could describe his own sympathies as with the sectarian type, without considering it as a pejorative designation’ (ibid). E.g. (Hauerwas 1974, p. 214). He soon stopped using the term to describe his own position and instead repeatedly denied that he is a sectarian (e.g. Hauerwas 1988, pp. 1–18; Hauerwas 1992, p. 7).
- 3.
Cavanaugh acknowledges his debt to Milbank for the language of complex and simple space (Cavanaugh 2011, p. 19; Milbank 1997, pp. 268–292). Another key text for Cavanaugh and Hauerwas on this subject is the sociologist Robert Nisbet’s Quest for Community, republished later as Community and Power in 1962, who argues that the ‘real conflict in modern political history has not been, as is so often stated, between State and individual, but between State and social group’ (Nisbet 1953, p. 109; cf. Cavanaugh 2016, p. 244; Hauerwas 1999, p. 122).
- 4.
Scriptural passages are taken from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), English Standard Version (ESV), and Revised Standard Version (RSV).
- 5.
In an interview Hauerwas has also noted that his concerns for ecclesial distinctiveness arose from his reaction against the education he received in an establishmentarian tradition at Yale (Hauerwas and Huebner 1999, pp. 393–394).
- 6.
The ‘close interrelation in the Christian liturgy between speaking and doing’ (Bouyer 1956, p. 29) means, as Bouyer audaciously writes, that Christian liturgy is ‘fundamentally a liturgy of the Word’ (ibid). Cf. O’Donovan’s similar description of sacraments as ‘performance shaped by the interpreting word, word embodied in performance’ (O’Donovan 1996, p. 173).
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Ciftci, M.Y. (2024). A Critique of Hauerwas and Cavanaugh. In: Vatican II on Church-State Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56706-3_6
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