Sanctify Them in the Truth

Hauerwas argues that the truth of the gospel cannot be discovered apart from its embodiment in specific communities of faith. The Christian life, he argues, is not about being in possession of "the truth," defined as a set of timeless and universal principles of belief and action. Rather, it is about learning and living the life of truthfulness toward God and one another.

Stanley Hauerwas reminds us that for Christians there is no such thing as truth that is not embodied truth. The Christian life is not about being in possession of "the truth" defined as a set of timeless and universal principles of belief and action. Rather, it is about learning and living the life of truthfulness toward God and one another. In other words, sanctification and truth -- which stood together so naturally in Jesus' prayer in John 17 -- have come unglued in the modern world. Drawing on a wide variety of sources and insights, including his own background in the Wesleyan tradition, Hauerwas sketches a blueprint of how the contemporary church must rejoin the two if it is to remain faithful to its calling.

Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics in the Divinity School at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. He has written a voluminous number of articles from 1969 to the present, authored and edited several books, and has been the subject of other theologians' writing and interest for many years. He is a board member of the Society of Christian Ethics, Associate Editor of a number of Christian journals and periodicals, and frequent lecturer at campuses across the country.