From the Introduction, where Hauerwas seems to be answering directly my previous complaint with the approach he takes in Performing the Faith (which, by the way, is certainly not a bad nor an uninteresting book. It simply didn’t live up to my expectation going in that this would be a thorough reflection on Bonhoeffer — I actually got the book at Borders’ when I was there to find the Bonoefer DVD).

Of course I believe that theology involves a systematic display and analysis of Christian convictions and their relation to one another. Moreover, I think the theologian must try to show through the analysis of such relations in what sense Christian convictions can claim to be true. While I do not claim to have “pulled it all together” in this book, I try to make more explicit than I have in the past the conceptual foundation underlying the suggestions I have made about how theology, and in particular Christian ethics, should be done.

For those acquainted with my past work, I suspect the most surprising development in this book will be the emphasis I place on nonviolence. Many have viewed my pacifism with a good deal of suspicion, seeing it as just one of my peculiarities. Such an interpretation is not unjust, since I have not written in a manner that exposes its centrality. I hope this book will help make clear why it is so methodologically crucial as I try to show why a position of nonviolence entails, for example, a different understanding of the significance of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection than that offered in other forms of Christian ethics. Indeed, nonviolence is not just one implication among others that can be drawn from our Christian beliefs; it is at the very heart of our understanding of God.