Stanley M. Hauerwas
"Jesus: The Story of the Kingdom"

Hauerwas argues that Jesus does not have a social ethic but is a social ethic. The failure of mainline Catholic and Protestant social ethics to recognize Jesus as a social ethic is a correlative of their concern to formulate a social ethic for Christians to control or be in control of the world. But if the narrative form of Jesus’ life is properly acknowledged, argues Hauerwas, we see that Jesus offers an alternative for determining the nature of and dealing with the world. A narrative Christology helps make clear the kind of Messiah Jesus was as well as why discipleship is a necessary condition for recognizing him as the Messiah.

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