For the Joy Set Before Us: Augustine and Self-Denying Love (review)

This book offers a fresh interpretation of Augustine's thought from a Mennonite perspective. The author's openness of mind enables him to acknowledge consciously the difficulties that Augustine poses for his own tradition at the same time as it permits him to undertake a retrieval of key elements of Augustine's ethical thought in order to transcend what Schlabach views as the fragmentation of contemporary ethical debate. As indicators of that fragmentation, Schlabach cites the one-sided nature of Nygren's thought and such contemporary ethical movements as feminism. He argues that on the one hand, Nygren errs in reducing Christian service to self-sacrifice while on the other hand, feminists err by emphasizing the importance of self-love to the exclusion of self-sacrifice.

According to Schlabach, neither model captures the full dimension of what Christian service requires. In an effort to provide a balanced account of Christian ethics, he turns to classical Christian theology and explores the manner in which Augustine reconciles self-love and self-denial in his works. Schlabach's reconstruction of Augustine's position on this subject displays both a mastery of relevant texts and a sensitivity to Augustine's frame of mind. Against Nygren, he contends that Augustine's commitment to continent love, broadly defined, pro-vides a basis for integrating proper self-love into an evangelical tradition that calls for self-denying love in imitation of Christ's redemptive sacrifice on the cross. Against the feminists, he argues that Augustine's affirmation of the need to imitate Christ's self-denying love requires proper self-denial if Christian service is to be at all meaningful. Augustine's teleogical ethics of Christian service, there-fore, provides an alternative to a deontological ethics, such as Nygren's, that presupposes the incompatibility between self-sacrifice and self-affirmation and to an ethics of victims promoted by feminists who overlook the need for Christian self-denial.

The author's retrieval of Augustine's solution to the problem, however, comes at a price. When measured against the yardstick of the Mennonite pacifist tradition and the teleological conception of Christian ethics that Schlabach finds in Augustine's works, Augustine's theory of authentic Christian service collides with the practical application of that theory. For Schlabach, Augustine's incon-tinence as Bishop of Hippo surfaces in two ways: by allowing for the possibility of state sponsored violence as a means of self-defense in time of war and by condoning the coercive measures of the Roman state against the Donatists.

Against the background of this critique of Augustine's personal limitations, Schlabach attempts to apply Augustine's theory of authentic Christian service to contemporary ethical problems in the light of his Mennonite roots. In so doing, he uses the examples of a burnt-out social worker and a battered woman to demonstrate how the coincidence of the Augustinian and Mennonite traditions provides a balanced resolution to ethical problems, a resolution which is based upon a continent, non-violent approach to life.

As cognizant as the author is of the obstacles that emerge in seeking solutions to problems that converge in the area of feminism, ecclesiology, and ethics, his application of theory to praxis is somewhat limp because it fails to plumb the complexity of the subtle but dominating power of sexism, particularly within different communal settings. It is not at all clear to what extent the women's movement has advanced beyond the point of prophetic response to unjust expectations of self-sacrifice and to the need for women, either singly or collectively, to defend themselves against gratuitous violence. This need is particularly strong in the absence of communal Christian witness to a constructive ethics of proper self-denial. Schlabach himself hesitates to condemn self-defense in certain situations, and he is well aware of...