Seasoned Speech: Rhetoric in the Life of the Church

by James Edward Beitler

When Christian engagement with the questions raised by postmodernity was still in its heyday, most Christian scholars did not reject the fruits of postmodernity wholesale, and rightly so: though the postmodern critique of metanarratives and universal truth claims necessitated thoughtful replies from disciples of Jesus Christ, postmodernity productively exposed Christianity’s problematic entanglements with modernity. “We have learned from the postmoderns that knowledge is not disembodied,” writes theologian Kevin J. Vanhoozer. “On this point, postmodernity and incarnational Christian faith are agreed.”36 Building upon this consensus, Vanhoozer offers a suggestion about how Christians might witness to the good news of Jesus Christ in a postmodern context. “What is needed,” he asserts, “is a translation of the Gospel that goes beyond conveying propositions—a translation that would concretize the Gospel in individual and communal shapes of living.”37 Along similar lines, theologian Stanley Hauerwas argues that to witness effectively, Christians must not only tell others about the truth but also show the communal embodiment of that truth. He writes, “The needed incentive not just to entertain but to live Christian convictions requires the display of a habitable world exemplified in the life of the Christian community.”38 What these theologians call for, to reframe Vanhoozer’s and Hauerwas’s claims in terms of the etymology of ēthos, is for Christians to build, inhabit, and invi...