Theological work in the service of the church

Echoes of the Word: Theological Ethics as Rhetorical Practice Harry Huebner. Pandora Press, 2005. 264 pages.

Echoes of the Word is a collection of essays and sermons, all commissioned at one time or another by various agencies (including the inaugural conference of Christian Peacemaker Teams), in which Harry Huebner reflects on some issue of concern to the Christian church. Huebner, long-time professor of theology, ethics, and philosophy at CMBC and now Canadian Mennonite University (and, I need to mention, a personal friend) offers it “in the faith that the Word can still be heard,” with the attendant challenge for readers to receive the Word “in a manner that uncovers its truthful voice.”

Reviewing a collection of essays and sermons (spanning 1986 to 2005) can be difficult, given the disparate occasions and topics. But I want to point out first that by writing in this way Huebner is trying to do something fairly specific. That is, the form of the book (essays and sermons) is in fact essentially related to its content.

Huebner intends to do theology for the people of God and so, essays written for specific occasions and sermons preached to actual congregations serve as displays of someone working at questions that are important for “regular” churchgoers. Further, it seems to me, by putting essays and sermons in the same “text,” Huebner resists false dualisms between the church and the Christian academy.

Huebner claims that the theologian’s role is to help the church move from the way it happens to be to what it would be if it were to fully embody its true nature as the body of Christ. This is an important claim, since it suggests the church can call on its theologians – not to make pronouncements, denigrate less educated churchgoers, or dictate policy, but to invite the church to faithfulness as it encounters new challenges. It suggests the theologian writes and acts from inside the body of Christ as one part of that body.

It is within such a framework, where the theologian works as part of the church, that Huebner searches for “echoes of the Word.” In his first two sections, Huebner addresses issues regarding our understanding of the Word and the church. The next four attempt to unpack our understanding of the Christian virtues of patience, hope, peace, and wisdom.

He addresses these issues in various ways: through engagement with thinkers such as Gordon Kaufman, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Howard Yoder, Michel Foucault, Karl Barth, and Stanley Hauerwas; through narrative accounts of experiences such as with an aged parent in the grip of dementia; or through close reading of the Bible.

One of the threads that runs through the book is a call to participate in the life of the church as a way of engaging the world. Such engagement is always already in motion, and does not find its genesis in some notion of pristine spirituality that serves as a thin veneer of pious superiority. Rather, it begins with repentance and acknowledgement of complicity in the very issues we seek to address.

I recommend this book, not because I agree with everything Huebner says, or because it’s groundbreaking in some conventional way, but because – in both form and content – it enters and extends ongoing conversations. Put another way, I recommend the book because it serves as a fine display of theology being done as it ought to be done, in the service of the church.

Paul Doerksen teaches at Mennonite Brethren Collegiate Institute, Winnipeg, and is a PhD candidate in Western Religious Thought at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont.