[PT 13.1 (2012) 93-109] doi:10.1558/poth.vl3il.

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Political Theology (print) ISSN 1462-317X Political Theology (online) ISSN 1473-1719

T o TRAVEL IN O N E PLACE: OPENINGS FOR A N E W ASCETICISM IN THE THEOLOGY OF STANLEY HAUERWAS

Patrik Hagman'
Abo Akademi University Biskopsgatan 16,20500 Abo Finland phagman@abo.fi

ABSTRACT

The article argues that there is an ascetic character implicit in Stanley Hauerwas's thinking and that a more explicit engagement with the Christian ascetical tradition could clarify some lines of thought in it, in particular the relationship between moral formation and witness. The way Hauerwas treats e.g. the virtues and practices that are used to pursue them, the role of spiritual authority and the difference between Church and world show clear similarities to the thought of early Christian ascetics, such as Evagrios of Pontos, Isaac of Nineveh and John Cassian. By shovvnng how Hauerwas by addressing some key theological, ethical and political developments in modern theology opens up the possibility to overcome modern misunderstandings of asceticisms, the author argues for the relevance of asceticism as a political concept in today's world. Keywords: asceticism; Hauerwas; moral formation; virtues.

In this article I will argue three things: one, that the Christian ethics of Stanley Hauerwas can be described as ascetical, that is, it stands in a certain relation with the Christian ascetic tradition; two, that a more explicit interaction with this tradition, particularly in its earlier forms, could help clarify some aspects of his project; finally, I will try to show that Hauerwas's way of doing theology overcomes a number of issues in modern thinking that together have made asceticism incomprehensible.^
1. Patrik Hagman is a post-doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Theology, Abo Akademi University. 2. The most widespread of these are probably the idea that asceticism is built on a strict body-soul dualism, an idea that is today widely discredited among scholars of
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My purpose is to show the validity of asceticism as a political concept in today's world. Tbere are few explicit mentions of asceticism in Hauerwas's writings, but some of tbem are fairly significant. The most striking one is in the concluding pages o The Peaceable Kingdom, where Hauerwas writes:
By not trying to do everything, but to do one thing that applies to ourselves and alters our lives, we are led further into God's peaceable kingdom. For that "one thing" is just enough to remove us from the familiar world of violence so that our imagination might be freed to find yet one other thing we might do. For example, by being a member of a church we might fmd that we are tied to other churches in other lands in a more profound manner than we are tied to our nation. "Travel" becomes possible or required, since we now realize that we are not tied to place but to a people who are always on the move. It may be objected that the saints and the models of ascetic practice often did not ever travel and they seemed none the worse for it. But that is just the point, because ascetic disciplines are the means to travel in one place. For example, learning the discipline to wait, to be at rest with ourselves, to take the time to be a friend and to be loved, are all ascetic practices that are meant to free us from the normalcy of the world. Through them we are slowly recalled from the world of violence that we might envisage how interesting a people of peace might be.^

This quotation is intriguing for many reasons, but bere I want to indicate tbat tbe way Hauerwas describes ascetic disciplines could be considered central to his overall theological vision: ascetic discipline are those practices that enable us to move from tbe "world" into God's kingdom, from tbe world of violence to becoming a people of peace. Tbis suggests tbat whatever asceticism is, it is not, on Hauerwas's view, something periphery to the Christian tradition. Similarly, in his more recent commentary on tbe Gospel of Mattbew, Hauerwas writes: "True ascetics often deny that they are ascetics because tbey do not tbink tbat tbeir suffering to be tbat significant. Rather, tbey discover that their suffering is the source of freedom."" In both tbese cases a lot of importance seems to be attacbed to the concept of asceticism, but tbe actual content of tbe concept remains rather elusive. It is tbus of interest to furtber try to explicate tbe role of asceticism in Hauerwas's tbinking.
asceticism, but still culturally prevalent. Such dualism, more strongly associated vinth early modernity than late antiquity, is discussed by Hauerwas, but it is not an area where he has made significant original contributions. 3. Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 150. 4. Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2006), 80.

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Asceticism is notoriously difficult to define.' I have elsewhere argued that typical of early Christian asceticism is that it consists of acts that are at the same time transformative, communicative and bodily, that is, the ascetics try to transform their personalities so that they communicate an image of the Kingdom of God. They use the body both in the communicative and transformative aspects of this work.* What I am suggesting is that Hauerwas seems to have an interpretation of the ascetic tradition that he so far has not explicitly presented.^ What I am attempting here is then a sort of reconstruction of the ascetical elements in Hauerwas's theology. Ascetical Theology Not all types of Christian theology make asceticism possible, and an important reason for the decline of asceticism in the western world can be located in changes in theology. Most types of "modern" theology do not serve this purpose for a variety of reasons. Especially in his doctoral
thesis Character and the Christian Life: A Study in Theological Ethics (1975)

Hauerwas is addressing modern protestant theology, focusing on precisely one such reason. In the preface to the second edition of that book (1994), Hauerwas discusses what would be the metaphors that guide the two different conceptions of Christian life he was describing in the book, and he settles on the suggestion by Gilbert Meilaender that "two of the most basic metaphors determining how the Christian life is to be understood are those of journey and dialogue.* The latter basically sees the Christian life as going nowhere."** Such a theology, one where Christian life is "going nowhere,"
5. Patrik Hagman, The Asceticism of Isaac ofNineveh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 6. I develop this working model of asceticism in Patrik Hagman, "Asceticism and Empire: Asceticism as Body-Politics in Isaac of Nineveh and Hardt & Negri," Studia Theologica 65.1 (2011): 39-53. For a more thorough discussion, see Hagman, Tlie Asceticism. 1. There is one article that has the promising title Ethics and Ascetical Theology from 1979, but this in fact is a response to a paper by a Dr. Jones (Alan Jones?). It deals mostly with things not explicitly related to asceticism and gives few hints to what Hauerwas thinks regarding asceticism. 8. Still, Meilaender's choice of the term dialogue could be considered unfortunate, since it seems to imply a very limited sense of what dialogue is abouti.e. is a dialogue really a dialogue unless it "goes somewhere"? In the book, Hauerwas talks of a "command" type of theology, and this might actually fit better: a theology where God's command and God's grace are essentially punctual or timeless events. 9. Stanley Hauerwas, Character and the Christian Life: A Study in Tlieological Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), xxvi.
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is one that makes asceticism incomprehensible, makes it look like trying to achieve salvation through "works." However, when Christian life is thought of as a journey, "a process is implied through which people are gradually and graciously transformed by the very pilgrimage to which they have been called."'" For asceticism to make sense one needs to have a theology with a clear "journey" character, that is, one needs to understand Christian life as made up of one or several processes that stretch out over time. A theology that lacks this emphasis would see ascetic acts as (mostly failed or misguided) attempts at moral perfection, or more concretely, as a form of work-righteousness. In this early work, Hauerwas argues precisely that a focus on the formation of character is not a form of work-righteousness. Thus Hauerwas encounters the classic anti-pelagian argument against asceticism: that it is a denial of the priority of God's grace.
I am aware that my claim for the priority of the journey metaphor for the display of the Christian life can only reinforce the suspicion of some that I have abandoned the central Christian contention of the priority of God's grace. I know of no way in principle to calm such fears... What I hope is now clear, however, is that I refuse to think the only or the best way to depict the priority of God's grace in terms of the dialogue metaphor. This has certainly been the dominant move among Protestants, but exactly because it has been so, we have had difficulty articulating our sense of the reality of and growth in the Christian life.

While this answer probably is deeply unsatisfying for some, for our purposes it is clear that this aspect of Hauerwas's theological project aligns itself perfectly with the theological concerns that would need to be met if asceticism should be a sensible mode of Christian life. What Hauerwas is here addressing is one of the aspects of the Protestant (especially Lutheran) tradition that makes asceticism incomprehensible, that is, the weakness of the concern for an ongoing transformation in the life of the believer. Conversely, the possible objection against the kind of ethical position Hauerwas wants to articulate, that it is a denial of the priority of grace, is the same that has been raised against asceticism, from the socalled semi-pelagian controversy up to the present day.

10. Ibid., xxvii. 11. Ibid., xxxi. Further on in the study Hauerwas writes: "Man's moral nature construed by the language of command always tends to be in discontinuity with the grace of the next command. Therefore nature has no positive relation to God's free giving of himself Creation is only negatively related to redemption. Moral experience when formed by the image of growth, however, is assumed to be in essential continuity with God's grace." Ibid., 5.
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Without an image of tbe buman being tbat takes into account the possibility of transformation that is gradual, little of the ascetics' teaching makes mucb sense. Take tbis well-known example from John Cassian's Conferences where Abba Moses says: "It is impossible for the mind not to be approacbed by tbougbts, but it is in the power of every earnest man either to admit them or to reject them."'^ If one employs a "dialogue" or "command"-type of understanding Christian life, teaching such as this amounts to little more tban an affirmation of our responsibility wben we fail to withstand morally questionable tbougbts. Tbis is wbat Hauerwas maintains is tbe ultimate failure of the type of ethics he exemplifies with Bultmann; it is "stuck in a moment."'^ However, Abba Moses is using a "cbaracter" or "journey" ethics:
But it is, I say, to a great extent in our power to improve the character of our thoughts and to let either holy and spiritual thoughts or earthly ones grow up in our hearts. For for this purpose frequent reading and continual meditation on the Scriptures is [sic] employed that from thence an opportunity for spiritual recollection may be given to us, therefore the frequent singing of Psalms is used, that thence constant feelings of compunction may be provided, and earnest vigils and fasts and prayers, that the mind may be brought low and not mind earthly things, but contemplate things celestial, for if these things are dropped and carelessness creeps on us, the mind being hardened with the foulness of sin is sure to incline in a carnal direction and fall away.'''

As soon as one takes into account the possibility to "improve tbe cbaracter of our tbougbts" it is possible to give advice about practices tbat enable sucb improvements. Wbat Hauerwas shows in this early work is that a theology that focuses exclusively on "command" or "dialogue," and thus on the typical protestant reduction of Christian faith to justification will end up denying the actual possibility of Christian life as life. To give decision the significance such an ethic demands means one risks giving up any continuity in tbe self: the agent is reduced to an atomistic individual acting in tbe moment without social or historical context. Hauerwas claims tbat a new theological appreciation of the concept of cbaracter makes it possible to overcome tbis problem, altbougb it seems that with some bindsigbt be seems to feel that tbe game is lost already wben one accepts as decisive tbe dichotomy ofjustification and sanctification.'^
12. John Cassian, Conferences I, 17. 13. Ibid., 164. 14. John Cassian, Conferences I, 17. 15. In the introduction to the second edition, Hauerwas writes: "For I am no longer convinced that justification and sanctification provide the best means to spell out the
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This development in Hauerwas's theology is on the one hand a move from a protestant language (if not position) to a more catholic description of Christian life. However, I would claim that it in fact is also an ascetic description. By arguing for a theology of Christian life as development, or as transformation, Hauerwas has taken one important step towards a new appreciation for Christian asceticism. Ascetical Ethics The same way that certain types of theology make asceticism incomprehensible, mainstream modern ethics, in both its utilitarian and deontological forms, has great difficulty making sense out of asceticism. In fact one can easily express modern (mis) understandings of asceticism in the type of language associated with these traditions. A deontological thinker might view asceticism as erring about what is our duty, by understanding ascetic rules and regulations as an interpretation of divine law. Surely God has not commanded us to inflict punishment on ourselves? Similarly, a utilitarian might question if the ascetic practices truly lead to happiness, that is, if they "work." A new understanding of asceticism thus has to move beyond these traditions, and this is exactly what Hauerwas has tried to do."" His work has coincided with the rise of "virtue ethics" and to a degree he has probably helped spark this turn in ethical refiection, although he has always tried to keep a certain distance from this academic trend.'^ What interests us here, however, is if and how Hauerwas's notion of virtues enables a better understanding of the moral teaching of the ascetic tradition, which in all its forms is very much concerned with how one acquires virtues. It is easy to detect the ascetic "tone" in Hauerwas's talk of virtues:

theological significance of the emphasis on character for the moral life... If I had attended to the metaphor ofjourney, I suspect I would have been able to display the nature of Christian life in more concrete and biblical terms than those ofjustification and sanctification." Ibid., xxviii. Hauerwas revisits these themes (together with Pinches) in Stanley Hauerwas and Charles Robert Pinches, Christians among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with

Ancient and Modern Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 11328, explicitly working out the relationship between virtues and justification. 16. His most through critique of modern mainstream ethics is found in Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics. Hauerwas finds support from Maclntyre, whose work (particularly Alasdair C. Maclntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3rd edn [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007], 286) in this area closely mirrors his own. 17. Hauerwas and Pinches, Christians among the Virtues, ix, 55-69, 149-51.
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To be a person of virtue, therefore, involves acquiring the linguistic, emotional, and rational skills that give us the strength to make our decisions and our life our own. The individual virtues are specific skills required to live faithful to a tradition's understanding of the moral project in which its adherents participate. Like any skills, the virtues must be learned and coordinated in an individual's life, as a master craftsman has learned to blend the many skills necessary for the exercise of any complex craft. Moreover, such skills require constant practice as they are never simply a matter of routine or technique.'*

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There is a decidedly ascetic emphasis on "constant practice" seen here, on the individual learning from the community's memory. Hauerwas describes tbe skills tbat mark a person of virtue: tbey are said to be linguistic, emotional, and rational. Tbis could be compared witb tbe language of tbe Egyptian desert fatbers and wbat tbey called "the battle with the thoughts." To exemplify this type of thinking, a few examples from the teachings of Evagrios of Pontos will suffice. Evagrios' teaching is, according to A. M. Casiday, "a three-part programme of spiritual development whereby one progresses from etbical and ascetical practices, to a renewed understanding of tbe universe and its meanings, and thence to the vision of God."'** Ascetic life, for Evagrios, consists in an ongoing battle witb different tboughts or demons and a large part of bis teacbing is made up of suggestions about how one is to counter the attacks of gluttony, fornication, avarice and other thoughts (Evagrios' texts contain the first occurrence of what later becomes tbe seven deadly sins).^ The goal of most of the "demons" is to make the monk give up the ascetic life, or put in Hauerwasian terms, to give up the Christian narrative as a basis of life and return to tbe narrative of tbe City. Tbus Evagrios tells of tbe tbougbt of gluttony:
[It] suggests to the monk the rapid demise of his asceticism. It describes for him his stomach, his liver and spleen, dropsy and lengthy illness, the scarcity of necessities and the absence of doctors. Frequently it brings him to recall certain of the brethren who have fallen prey to these sufferings. Sometimes it even persuades those who have suffered such maladies to visit those who are practicing abstinence and to tell them of their misfortunes and how they came about as a result of their asceticism.

18. Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 115. 19. Augustine Casiday, Evagrius Ponticus [Selections] (New York: Routledge, 2006), 36. 20. See Kevin Corrigan, Evagrius and Gregory: Mind, Soul and Body in 4th Century (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 73-101. 21. Evagrios of Pontos, Praktikos 1. Evagrius of Pontos and Robert E. Sinkewicz, Evagrius of Pontiis: The Greek Ascetic Corpus [Selections] (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 98.
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Thus gluttony is for Evagrios not so much the temptation to eat a lot as the temptation to doubt in the belief that God provides for those that serve him, an essential aspect of the ascetic view of life. Similarly, the thought of avarice "suggests a lengthy old age, inability to perform manual labour, famines that will come along, diseases that will arise, the bitter realities of poverty, and the shame there is in accepting goods from others to meet one's needs."^^ These examples show how the ascetic struggle is about conflicting notions of "common sense": according to the rationality of the world it is important to live in a certain way to have material comfort and safety, whereas the monk lives according to another vision of what a meaningful life is. In a way that is very similar to Hauerwas, Evagrios envisions the ascetic struggle to acquire the virtues as an attempt to live faithfully -within a particular tradition, and Evagrios' teaching can be described as an attempt to systematize how a particular tradition envisions the handing do-wn of such "skills" to the next generation. Hauerwas, like the ascetic tradition, places an extraordinary emphasis on the importance of having a master to imitate as the foundation of moral development.^^ He gives us several stories, sometimes true, sometimes fictional, of how this can play out in particular cases.^** In one instance Hauerwas calls this "caring for the tombstones of the saints." "It is from them, as we see what the story ofJesus has done to their own stories that we begin to understand what that story requires and means. For the truth of the story we find in the gospels is finally known only through the kind of lives it produces."^^ The master, or the Abba of the desert, embodies the moral experience of the community and its tradition, and the disciple learns how to make this tradition one's own by emulating the master. This means that the kind of moral development Hauerwas sees as intrinsic to Christian life requires training:

22. Evagrios, Praktikos 9. 23. For example, he can write: "For the Christian, morality is not chosen and then confirmed by the example of others; instead, we learn what the moral life entails by imitating another. This is intrinsic to the nature of Christian convictions, for the Christian life requires a transformation of the self that can be accomplished only through direction from a master." Hauerwas,/4 Community of Character, 131 (emphasis mine). See also Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom?: How the Church is to Behave if Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation

are Bad Ideas (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1991), 93-111. 24. For some particularly fine examples, see Stanley Hauerwas, Christian Existence
Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2001),

74-85,115-21. 25. Ibid., 40.

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Every account of moral development must necessarily have educational implications. We must be given some exercises appropriate to the kinds of moral growth desired... The Christian life requires the development of certain kinds of habits, but those very habits require us to face ambiguities and conflicts through which our virtues are refined.^*

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The place for such education is the Church, or as Hauerwas puts it, "the church is a form of education that is religious."^^ The Church as school is another important theme where Hauerwas is in agreement with the early Church and thus re-creates the conditions where Christian asceticism initially functioned.^" The loss of the notion of asceticism as a type of moral education, which can be observed for instance in Luther, is one of the key factors in the loss of appreciation for asceticism.^' When ascetic techniques stop being about acquiring moral virtues, and start being about gathering "works" for merit, the ascetic grammar has broken down. So, what kind of exercises does Hauerwas envision? There is little teaching on, for example, fasting, vigils and other traditional "ascetic" techniques.^" However, there are some practices Hauerwas recommends that fill a very similar role. One exercise that Hauerwas su^ests is reading novels.
Thus, the very reading of the novel is moral training. By forcing our eyes from one word to the next, one sentence to the next, one paragraph to the next, we are stretched through a narrative world that gives us the skills to make something of our own lives. To make something of our lives requires 26. ]rl3uerw2iS,ACommunity of Character, 150. 27. Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today, 101. 28. Early monasticism is increasingly being seen to be in continuity with late antiquity pagan education. See e.g. Adam H. Becker, Fear of Cod and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and Christian Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 298; Samuel Rubenson, "From School to Patriarchate: Aspects on the Christianisation of Alexandria," in Alexandria: A Cultural and Religious Melting Pot, ed. Georg Hinge and Jens A. Kraslinikoff (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2009), 144-57; Hagman, The Asceticism, 106-109. 29. Here it is interesting to compare Calvin and Luther. Calvin, while very critical of the monasticism of his day, was aware of the educational context of early monasticism. See Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion [Institutio Christianae religionis], trans. Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), IV, XIII, 10. This cannot be said of Luther, who believed that though the early monasteries arose from schools they occurred as a deviation from any educational motives. Luther writes: "those who had taken on the education of the young began to grow lazy and to look after their own interests, and when the young people had grown more rebellious, they invented the snares of vows. By means of vows they bound the conscience of youth so that each held himself in check by the dread of sin, and those responsible for them secured peace and quiet for themselves." Martin Luther, Luther's Works, vol. 44 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 313. 30. There is a brief refiection of fasting in Hauerwas, Matthew, 80-81.
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Reading novels does perhaps not strike us as a typical ascetic technique, but in fact it is well attested to, at least if we substitute tbe modern genre of novels for tbe more traditional bagiograpbies. The distinction between such often ecclesially sanctioned literature and modern novels obviously should not be blurred,-'^ but again Hauerwas's idea of reading stories as part of a moral formation is standard ascetic teacbing. For example, Isaac of Nineveh writes: "Witbout reading tbe intellect bas no means of drawing near to God: it draws tbe mind up and sets it at every moment in tbe direction of God; it baptizes it from this corporeal world witb its insigbts and causes it to be above tbe body continually."-'^ The kind of reading Isaac talks about is not only tbe Bible but especially the stories about the fathers who in a sense form a community for a hermit like Isaac.-''' Another example of an exercise that Hauerwas often returns to is caring for the mentally handicapped. In contact with sucb people the specific form of Christian education becomes clear.^^ In the l'Arche-communities of Jean Vanier, Hauerwas has found the concrete embodiment of tbe vision of Christian life he tries to articulate. The "assistants" who live together witb mentally disabled people in tbe l'Arche communities obviously do

31. Stanley Hauerwas, Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements with the Secutar (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 55-6. See also Stanley Hauerwas, Sanctify them in the Truth: Hotiness Exemplified (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998), 137-41, for another example of the use of fiction for moral formation. 32. In fact, Hauerwas's love of novels has been rather severely criticized by none other than John Howard Yoder, who in an unpublished text wrote "One reason Hauerwas does not do text-based Bible study is that he is overawed by the notion of community-dependency and underawed by the objective reality of salvation history. Also underawed by the study of real (unsaved) history. He would rather read novels." Quoted in Craig A. Carter, The Politics of the Cross: The Theotogy and Social Ethics offohn Howard Yoder (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2001), 69. The quote is puzzling (not the least the surprising opposition between salvation history and "real" history), but it seems to reflect a stricter view on what kinds of reading are suitable. This of course mirrors the debate on the matter in the ascetic teaching on what kinds of books should be allowed for monks. 33. Isaac of Nineveh, The Second Part, XXI, 15. For more on Isaac's attitudes towards reading see Hagman, The Asceticism, 159-62. 34. Richard Valantasis, The Making of the Self: Ancient and Modem Asceticism (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008), 40. On Isaac, see Hagman, The Asceticism. 35. Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today, 109. See also Hauerwas, Dispatches from the Front, 164-86.
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not think that they are there to develop as personsat least not primarily. Still, it is clear that for Hauerwas this is the purest form he knows of the way Christian virtue is acquired. He quotes Jean Vanier:
Things have to go at a pace which can welcome their least expression; because they have no verbal skills, they have no way of enforcing their views by raising their voice. So the assistants have to be more attentive to the many non-verbal communications, and this adds greatly to their ability to welcome the whole person. They become increasingly people of welcome and compassion. The slower rhythm and even the presence of the handicapped people makes me slow down, svvntch off my efficiency motor, rest and recognize the presence of God.''*

The care for the mentally handicapped is thus an example of an ascetic practice that is transformativeit improves the "ability to welcome." It is also communicative; as Hauerwas writes, L'Arche gives a weight to the Gospel without which words would be empty.^' And the bodily nature of such caring should be obvious, but this bodily aspect is clearly the precondition for the transformative and communicative aspects. Of course, these examples are very different from the practices commonly associated with asceticismone could even make the argument that this is a kind of anti-asceticism, so far removed from the egocentric practices often associated with ascetics. Yet, I feel this is a false image of what Christian asceticism is about. Hauerwas's ethics, with its emphasis on virtues, training and practices, in many ways mirrors that of the Early Christian ascetics. By criticizing these aspects of "modern" ethics, Hauerwas again challenges some of the core presuppositions in modernity that made asceticism incomprehensible. Ascetical Politics However, I would contend that the single most important factor in Hauerwas's theology for making asceticism understandable again is the way his theology emphasizes the difference between Church and world. More than anything else it was such a contrast that gave early Christian asceticism its moral force, and the first step towards weakening this force was taken already with the conversion of Constantine the Great.^** For Hau36. Quoted in Hauerwas, Sanctify them in the Truth, 154. 37. Ibid., 155. 38. See Rowan A. Greer, Broken Lights and Mended Lives: Theology and Common Life in the Early Church (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986), 154-61; Hagman, The Asceticism, 27-40; Hagman, "Liturgi och asketism som motstlndsyttringar i den tidiga kyrkan," in Flumen Saxosum Sonaiu: Stiidia in Honorem Gunnar af Hltstrm, ed. Marjo Ahlqvist, Anni Maria Laato and Mikael Lindfelt, 2 7 ^ 0 (Abo: Abo Akademis frlag,
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erwas tbis in particular takes tbe form of criticism of the liberal society and the Church's accommodation to it.^' This emphasis on the Cburch as a contrast model"" has led to endless accusations against Hauerwas that he is a sectarian who wants to withdraw from society."' Again, this has also been a mainstay of tbe criticism against asceticism tbrougbout bistory. Hauerwas responds in a way tbat is equally pertinent for bis position as for anyone practicing Cbristian asceticism:
This does not involve a rejection of the world, or a withdrawal from the world; rather it is a reminder that the church must serve the world on her own terms. We must be faithful in our own way, even if the world understands such faithfulness as disloyalty. But the first task of the church is not to supply theories of governmental legitimacy or even to suggest strategies for social betterment. The first task of the church is to exhibit in our common life the kind of community possible when trust, and not fear, rules our lives."^

To view tbe Cburcb tbe way Hauerwas does creates a position similar to tbat of tbe early Christians, although the differences between tbe persecuted early Cburcb and tbe perbaps domesticated post-Constantinian Church clearly should not be underestimated. My point is that the liberal
2010). Greer is a friend of Hauerwas's, and perhaps a scholar that has influenced Hauerwas's understanding of asceticism. 39. The earliest example of a worked-out critique by Hauerwas is in Hauerwas, A Community of Character, 72-86, and he has since returned to the theme many times (e.g. Stanley Hauerwas, Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992], 208; Stanley Hauerwas, Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth-Century Theology and Philosophy [Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997], 242, esp. 229-32). In fact, Nathan R. Kerr sees this to be a decisive flaw in his theology Nathan R. Kerr, Christ, History, and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008), 93. 40. Hauerwas, A Community of Character, 84-85. 41. Most famously stated in James Gustafson, "The Sectarian Temptation: Reflections of Theology, the Church, and the University," Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society 40 (1985): 83-94, to which Hauerwas responds in detail in Hiuervjus, Against the Nations, 1-19. It is important to be clear here, since if Hauerwas was teaching a withdrawal tactic for the Church, this would effectively undermine my thesis that Hauerwas makes a new asceticism possible. This is what he says: "I maintain that Christians must withhold their support from 'civic republicanism' only when that form (as well as any other form) of government and society resorts to violence in order to maintain internal order and external security. At that point and that point alone Christians must withhold their involvement with the state. Such an admission, however, hardly commits me to a sectarian stance, unless one assumes, as some do, that every function of the state depends on its penchant for violence. Indeed, I believe it to be the responsibility of Christians to work to make their societies less prone to resort to violence." Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today, 15. 42. Hauerwas, A Community of Character, 85.
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society plays a similar role to that of the Roman empire for the early Christian ascetics, and thus makes it possible to again understand the work of the early ascetics as motivated by a will to articulate the distance between the world and the Church. But is there not an inherent risk in positioning the Church against the world the way Hauerwas does, namely that the "sharp contrast'"*^ turns violent? The question was raised by Hauerwas himself in his 1991 book After Christendom. In a letter by David Toole that Hauerwas appended to the book, Toole writes
\Y]ou [Hauerwas] say, "Yet is there not already a violence in the conviction that one possess the truth oneself, whereas this is not the case for others, and that one must furthermore impose the truth on others?" You then say "We recoil at this suggestion. If it is true, we are simply silenced." Later on you say, "How can we be witnesses, how can we be educators, how can we communicate the Gospel without explicitly or implicitly underwriting patterns of domination and violence antithetical to the Kingdom brought by Christ?"'*''

Hauerwas acknowledges that exclusive truth claims in some sense are inherently violent, but he counteracts this by stressing the centrality of peaceableness to the Church's witnessing.''^ For Hauerwas the Church is not just any "contrast community," but the essence ofthat difference is that the Church, unlike the -world, is peaceable. Hauerwas's primary "other" is liberal society, and in this relationship Hauerwas's idea that the Church should simply witness to its truth is a way to at least make this type of violence explicit. It is a great deal more problematic if one, instead of the liberal state, positions for example the Native American communities as the "other" for the Church, which is the point Toole wants to make. Toole suggests that "perhaps Christians should learn to shut up,"'** an idea that Robert Jenson picks up in his review ofAfter Christendom.
The student [Toole] has a point: every claim to speak the truth does indeed exercise something that might plausibly be called "violence," if we so choose to use the language. If Hauerwas accepts this usage of "violence," he must abandon also witness as what the church can do for the world. It seems, indeed, he must end with a doctrine that the church saves the world simply

43. Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today, 103. 44. Hauerwas, After Christendom?, 157-58. The citations Toole brings together occur at ibid., 139-40, 152. 45. "To learn that story means we must desire nothing less than accomplishment of God's rule, the Kingdom, over all nations and peoples. That rule is nothing less than the establishment of peace between ourselves and God, from which we learn how to be peaceful in ourselves and with one another." Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today, 104. 46. Quoted in Hiuerw3s, After Christendom?, 159.
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Political Theology by silently existing. Now, even such a doctrine may be sustainable, but only by a lot of more speculative systematic theology than Hauerwas seems willing to countenance."^

Hauerwas responds to Jenson's suggestion by referring to John Milbank's then recent book Theology and Social Theory, wbicb be feels belps us see tbat tbe "narratives of Enligbtenment" are far more problematic than those of Native Americans, since the latter "do not represent tbe subtle co-option of the Christian narratives in the way that those of the Enligbtenment do.""* Tbis means that the confrontation between theology and secular culture "cannot be otber tban conflictual, as begemonic narratives, wben confronted by tbeir begemony, always attempt to claim tbat 'peace' is being tbreatened.""^ But the problem remainsbow are we to understand Hauerwas's position, if any attempt at "speaking" witb trutb claims, especially against a violent begemony, will be violent? Is silence tbe only alternative? It seems to me tbat tbe reason we find silence unsatisfactory is tbat we associate it with passivity. But the same way that Hauerwas eschews the idea that pacifism is passive it seems that connecting silence witb passivity too is very mucb a chapter out of the Enligbtenment story. For the early Christian ascetics, however, silence is anything but passive. It is often conceived as botb tbe pinnacle of buman developmentsilent prayer or contemplationbut also an important practice to reacb that goal. For the ascetics of the desert silence is a way to clarify the difference between the ascetic life and life in the world. Space does not really permit a discussion on bow silence expressed tbis distance in Late Antiquity, so instead I will offer a more recent example. Sarah Coakley tells of ber experience leading a group of male prisoners in silent prayer. Once a week sbe would spend an bour with the inmates, giving them short lectures about prayer in the Christian tradition, for example reading to them from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Then they would sit in silent prayer. For many of the participants, the hours of silent prayer quickly became sometbing more tban simply a way to get away from tbe boring routine of prison life.
Occasionally, as if by miracle, the straining and sweating and shifting of a hard shared silence would transmute into a few minutes of acute and focused stillness. After one such "miracle" a prison social worker (not a Christian) who was with us that day asked: "Why is this so wonderful, and so different, when we do it together?" An older African-American prisoner, Terry, replied, "I've only just become a Christian; but doesn't it say somewhere

47. Robert Jenson, quoted in Hauerwas, Wilderness Wanderings, 189. 48. Ibid., 194. 49. Ibid., 194.
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in the New Testament that when two or three are gathered together Jesus promises to be with us?" I learned that day that such scriptural texts can gain powerful new valency in the prison context. On another occasion a bright and articulate LatinoAfrican-American prisoner named Troy gave the practice a try for a whole session but at the end complained, "I must be doing something wrong: all I'm getting is mental jumble." To my delight, some other men immediately jumped in and replied, "No, that's absolutely right; just keep going." At the end Troy came up to me and said, "I get it. This is to make me patient; this is the opposite of drugs." He didn't have the language of asceticism, but he had instinctively grasped its essential workings on the apparatus of desire.

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These few examples show something of the potential of ascetic silence. Firstly we can see the communicative aspectthe silence would "speak" to the prison worker of something "different" and "wonderful" that the prisoner Terry interpreted as the presence ofJesus. Coakley also tells that the prisoners that would take part regularly started to carry their bodies differently, something other prisoners would pick up. We can also note the sense of community that this practice seems to have created. But the most striking thing is Troy's experience that in the silent prayer he discovers something that is the opposite of his normal way of coping with life. Apparently without anyone telling him so, he connects the practice of silent prayer with acquiring the virtue patience. We can easily see the transformative, communicative and bodily aspects of this ascetic practice. One could argue that the silence practiced by these prisoners, or silent prayer in general, is a completely different concept from the kind of "silent existing" Jenson perhaps ironically suggests might be a solution to Hauerwas's dilemma about non-violent difference. But I -would contend that silent prayer is much more than one ascetic practice; it is something of the logical conclusion of ascetic life itself What I am suggesting is that asceticism provides a way of witnessing silently and thus non-violently, since one is not primarily -witnessing through discourse, but using one's body, and that this is true if one is praying silently as well as if one is caring for the disabled. Rather than accepting the modern liberal division between public and private, and thus assuming that -witnessing needs to take place in the "public sphere," using the means accepted thererational discourse Hauerwas's theological vision suggests that what the Church does is already public, by virtue of being a community of people embodying a particular story. To deny that this means that the Church is practicing
50. Sarah Coakley, "Meditation as a Subversive Activity," The Christian Century 24 (June 2004): 18-21.
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"withdrawal" is to suggest that the Church does what it does "before the watching world" to use Yoder's phrase." This is not true only of practices such as Baptism and Eucharist, but especially of the kind of ascetic practices discussed above. This is significant, since Stanley Hauerwas's theology is an example of a practice oriented theology, and as such there is always the risk that the criterion for truth^^ becomes pragmatic. In Hauerwas's case it could be expressed thus: Christian convictions are true if they serve to develop a community in which believers learn to live lives that show the Christian virtues. "Witness" in Hauerwas's theology is a way out of this pragmatic concept of truth, since witnessing about a pragmatic truth would merely be promotion. Since for Hauerwas peaceableness is of central importance to the Christian faith, it is a real dilemma if witnessing cannot be done without some kind of violence^witnessing would negate the very truth witnessed to. In asceticism Hauerwas's notions of moral formation and witness are thus held together, as the public struggle of a community to live truthfully by learning virtues through transformative, communicative and bodily practices. It is therefore inherently non-violent, since only practices that refiect the Christian story can be used to witness about it. If the distinction between Church and world thus is understood as an ascetic distinction it is possible for the Church to be peaceable even in a violent world.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Becker, Adam H. Fear of Cod and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and Christian Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia. Divinations. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Calvin, Jean. Institutes ofthe Christian Religion [Institutio Christianae religionis], trans. Henry Beveridge. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989. Carter, Craig A. The Politics of the Cross: The Theology and Social Ethics of John Howard Yoder. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2001. Casiday, Augustine. Evagrius Ponticus [Selections]. New York: Routledge, 2006. http://dx. doi.org'10.4324/9780203356975 Coakley, Sarah. "Meditation as a Subversive Activity." TTie Christian Century 24 (June 2004): 18-21. Corrigan, Kevin. Evagrius and Cregory: Mind, Soul and Body in 4th Century. Ashgate Studies in Philosophy & Theology in Late Antiquity. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009. 51. John Howard Yoder, Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before the Watching World (Nashville, TN: Discipleship Resources, 1992), 88. 52. Miika Tolonen argues, rightly I think, that for Hauerwas truthfulness is more important than truth as a theoretical concept. Whereas the exact nature of "truth" is philosophically an open question, in most practical cases being truthful is not difficult on a theoretical level. See Miika Tolonen (forthcoming, Abo Akademi University Press).
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Evagrius of Pontos and Robert E. Sinkewicz. Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus. Oxford Early Christian Studies [Selections]. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Greer, Rowan A. Broken Lights and Mended Lives: Theology and Common Life in the Early Church. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986. Gustafson, James. "The Sectarian Temptation: Reflections of Theology, the Church, and the University." Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society 40 (1985): 83-94. Hagman, Patrik. The Asceticism of Isaac of Nineveh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199593194.001.0001 "Liturgi och asketism som motstlndsyttringar i den tidiga kyrkan." In Flumen Saxosum Sonans: Studia in Honorem Gunnar af Hllstrm, ed. Marjo Ahlqvist, hnn\ Maria Laato and Mikael Lindfelt, 27-40. Abo: Abo Akademis forlag, 2010. "Asceticism and Empire: Asceticism as Body-Politics in Isaac of Nineveh and Hardt & Negri." Studia Theologica 65.1 (2011): 39-53. http://dx.doi.Org/10.1080/0039338X.2 011.578366 Hauerwas, Stanley. A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic. 2nd edn. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981. The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983. After Christendom?: How the Church is to Behave if Freedom, fustice, and a Christian Nation are Bad Ideas. Nashville, T N : Abingdon Press, 1991. Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992. Character and the Christian Life: A Study in Theological Ethics. 2nd ed. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994 [1975]. Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements with the Secular. Durham, N C : Duke University Press, 1994. Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Tiventieth-Century Theology and Philosophy. Radical Traditions. Boulder, C O : Westview Press, 1997. Sanctify them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified. Nashville, T N : Abingdon Press, 1998. Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2001. Matthew. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2006. Hauerwas, Stanley, and Charles Robert Pinches. Christians among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and Modern Ethics. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997. Kerr, Nathan R. Christ, History, and Apocalyptic: TTie Politics of Christian Mission. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008. Maclntyre, Alasdair C. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3rd edn. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Rubenson, Samuel. "From School to Patriarchate: Aspects on the Christianisation of Alexandria." In Alexandria: A Cultural and Religious Melting Pot, ed. Georg Hinge and Jens A. Kraslinikoff, 144-57. /^arhus: Aarhus University Press, 2009. Valantasis, Richard. The Making of the Self: Ancient and Modern Asceticism. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008. Yoder, John Howard. Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before the Watching Wortd. Nashville, T N : Discipleship Resources, 1992.

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