The Virtuous Circle and the Narrowing Walls: Reflections on Boundary Conditions for Living as Church
Posted on 13 July 2010
Living as the church requires the formation of hard disciplines, the development of character traits (especially humility and patience, which is only humility stretched temporally), the learning of dispositions and what might be called holy ‘people skills’, as well as the being persuaded to certain convictions, and the assumption of certain habits of thought and practice. Of course, the only way to develop these disciplines is — by living as the church. No other community can provide the necessary conditions, period.
The tension doesn’t relax: only those churches peopled by at least a few already possessing these disciplines can possibly function as a disciple-forming community. So we come up against a circularity. But this should not frighten us, or even leave us confused. For that very circularity reveals our final dependence on a Third, on a force beyond and outside of us, to make our life together possible — and we do not lack for a name for this Third. This is the sum of the matter: because of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, we find ourselves caught in a virtuous circle. 1
What does this ‘virtuous circularity’ mean for us? It means we can trust God to make Christian community possible by bringing some people into the kind of maturity that allows them to live with us patiently and humbly, and so make it possible for us to learn Christ together. These people, rarely if ever the ones we would recognize as crucial to the community, are the foundation of the local church; without them, we simply cannot be constructed into a ‘habitation of God through the Spirit’. Not to put too fine a point on it, but their presence is the evidence of the Spirit’s work on our behalf. They are the ‘signs’ that contradict all our unbelief. They are the walls that narrow our lives so that we cannot escape confrontation with grace (cf. Num 22.24-26). We cannot see God without them framing our vision.
- Hauerwas notices this same circularity in Aristotle’s ethics, and in Aquinas’. E.g., see his essay ‘Character, Narrative, and Growth in the Christian Life’ in The Hauerwas Reader, esp. pp 240 ff. He does not, however, make just the connection that I’m making here, although what he says is not entirely out of line with my thought. ↩
2 responses to The Virtuous Circle and the Narrowing Walls: Reflections on Boundary Conditions for Living as Church
alleluia
Echoing Adhunt.