[Series Index]
With the previous post, we completed our review of the first two parts of John Stackhouse's Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World. Part I (Chapter 1) reviewed Richard Niebuhr's five-part typology from Christ and Culture. Part II (Chapters 2-4) offered resources for thinking about Christian realism by reviewing three twentieth-century theologians: C. S. Lewis, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We turn to the final section, Part III (Chapters 5-8), "Making the Best of It."
In some ways, the book's first two parts could function as one book and the third part as another. Stackhouse declares at the beginning of Part III that he will not present us with some "corrected" version of Reinhold Niebuhr's Christian realism … or directly engage these resources in developing a new version. Then why include the first two parts if he will not directly engage them?
I have chosen this less direct course partly because, while I do intend in what follows to conclude what I can as directly as I can, I fear coming to those conclusions to easily. My hope is that this exercise in tracing out the convictions of my eminent predecessors at even this relatively brief length will help us understand better the true character of their affirmations and help us avoid triggering our reflexes to overlook, repress, or misrepresent – even to ourselves, even without consciously intending to do so – any complex, odd, or even initially repellent thing they might say that we need to hear. I also frankly admire their ways of raising certain questions, setting out certain categories, and offering certain answers, so it is a pleasure to analyze these rich resources before I attempt to address some of the basic themes they bring into view. (161)
Stackhouse also employs Albert Einstein's dictum that we should simply go as far as possible – and not farther. We must put things in categories, but oversimplification is a real danger in ethics. I appreciated this paragraph.
Marx earlier warned us of the phenomenon of ideology, which is rationalization writ large on a societal scale. Those in power evolve an explanation of how they got to be in charge and how it is therefore proper for everyone else to respect the order of things and to play their respective parts with compliance and even diligence. The divine right of kings, the universally beneficial "rising tide" of capitalism, nationalist myths, and communist utopias all have been formulated as persuasive accounts of the inherent goodness of the status quo. Again, perhaps those in power have believed it themselves. (162)
So what are Stackhouse's views? We will begin that next week with a look at Chapter 5, "Method in Ethics."
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