The character of virtue

     

Four years ago, two of my favorite Christian writers, Samuel Wells and Stanley Hauerwas, collaborated on a book titled Living Out Loud (Paternoster, 2014).

      Hauerwas is Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law at Duke University (North Carolina), and Wells is vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London (and a columnist for The Christian Century magazine).

      Together they argued that faithful Christian discipleship is more to do with developing good habits than following rules.

      They suggested that forming good habits requires participation in communities that transform us, and those around us, into the kind of people who can live God's way in God's world.

      To my delight, Hauerwas and Wells have now produced a new book, The Character of Virtue, Letters to a Godson (Eerdmans, 2018). This time, Hauerwas appears to have done most of the work, with Wells contributing a 28-page introduction which, in several ways, is almost as rewarding.

      The godson is Wells’s son Laurence (“Laurie”) who was born in June, 2002. Since the families lived 4,000 miles apart, Wells suggested that Hauerwas exercise his god-parental ministry by writing Laurie a letter to mark his baptism (which Wells could not attend) and by writing him a letter on the anniversary each subsequent year.

      It was agreed that each year Hauerwas would focus on a particular virtue that seemed suitable for Laurie’s stage in life, until Laurie was old enough to read the letters for himself. With some hopping across the Atlantic, there were times when the two of them were able to discuss the virtues face to face.

      Wells suggests that godparents are those who seek regular interchange with their godchild about how they may walk in God’s ways, and about how, as they walk, they find God walking beside them.
      Accepting that there are four cardinal and three theological virtues—prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, faith, hope, and love—Hauerwas expands his reflection, chapter by chapter (letter by letter) to fifteen virtues.

      They include kindness—“because I believe kindness to be the very character of God”; friendship—“for what is friendship but the discovery that I don’t want to tell my story, can’t tell my story, without your story”; humility—“which rides on the back of practices that are so captivating that we don’t notice what we’ve become through the engagements we’ve undertaken”; and, character—“to have character is to be a person of constancy, someone who can be trusted.”

      Hauerwas explains that he is concerned to discuss virtues he hopes Laurie will discover he cannot live without, though he suggests that his task is not so much to recommend as to help Laurie name virtues he already possesses.

      I hasten to add that you don’t need to be a godparent or a godchild to enjoy and absorb the book’s wisdom on life and the process of maturing. It spans centuries of religious thinking, and even touches on the reflections of novelists such as Jane Austen and Iris Murdoch, G.K. Chesterton, and newspaper columnist David Brooks.

      Hauerwas is especially strong in his encouragement of young Laurie’s grasp of hope. He writes: “The hopes you develop will provide you with still more energy to sustain new hopes. … 

      “In fact, hope is the name of the virtue that presumes life to be a journey, a wonderful journey, through which we learn to ask much of ourselves and one another.

      “To be on such a journey will require  all the other virtues—in particular, patience and courage.”

      I don’t have a godfather. But on my journey I would have welcomed the support and inspiration of a Stanley Hauerwas—meeting as often as possible within easy reach of St. Martins-in-the-Fields!