top 10 hauerwas books -- unleashing the scripture

Hauerwas' Unleashing the Scripture was released in 1995, my first year at Duke.  It made its appearance in my life like Barth's Romerbrief appeared to European theologians:  Like a bomb on my theological playground.  I had already read quite a bit of Hauerwas' work, and went to Duke partly because Stan was there (though, to be honest, it was really Fred Herzog who got me there).  The book begins with an alarming sentence:  "No task is more important than the Church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America".  Stan proceeds to lay out how the Church has lost its Scripture to an over-reliance upon either the historical-critical method or literal approaches.  These methods assert -- as did nearly all my education to that point -- that if you just had the proper training and the "common sense" that goes with it, you could understand and find meaning in the biblical text.

In contrast, Hauerwas insists that without the spiritual and moral training that takes place in discipleship to Jesus in the Church, you simply cannot understand the Bible.  What's more, it's only as the Church is gathered at the common Table in the Eucharist that the Church can maintain the teaching office that makes this discipleship and its understanding possible.  The goal of that teaching office isn't to ferret out meaning from a text, but to shape people to live faithfully as citizens of the Kingdom of God amidst all the kingdoms of this earth.

So, to me, while most folks thought this book was about Scripture, I realized what Stan was really saying was quite a bit about Church -- and then only tangentially about the Church's book. 

Far from being self-sufficient, the Bible isn't open to private needs through private readings.  Instead, "God certainly uses Scripture to call the Church to faithfulness, but such a call always comes in the form of some in the Church reminding others in the Church how to live as Christians such that no 'text' can be substituted for the people of God". 

The book also contains 12 of Hauerwas' "sermonic exhibits" that flesh out how the discourse of the Church (preaching) is the main way the Church exhibits its teaching office. 

This is a daring and challenging -- even hopeful -- book that demonstrates how Fundamentalists and Liberals are really flip sides of the same coin.  And how the Church only has a faithful way forward by listening together to God, and not to some other ideological position.  Especially when it comes to Scripture.