This paper highlights two aspects of Stanley Hauerwas's thought: philosophical ethics, which consists of second-order methodological claims; and moral theology, which consists of first-order, local, unsystematic moral descriptions. I show how the philosophical ethics relates to the moral theology by proposing a set of rules that constitute a ‘grammar’ of Hauerwas's thought. These rules are asymmetrical in that later rules presuppose earlier rules but earlier rules do not presuppose later rules. Each rule corresponds to texts that Hauerwas recommends and relies upon. The first rule prioritizes MacIntyre's concept of non-foundational ‘practical wisdom’. The second rule, which draws on Aristotle, Wittgenstein, Anscombe and Kovesi to stress the impossibility of separating agent from act, influences the third rule that ethics is moral description. The fourth rule uses ‘postliberal’ theologians and draws on the liturgy alongside Barth and Yoder, in order to redescribe the shape of Christian life in liberal modernity.

This essay questions the theological position developed by Stanley Hauerwas over three decades. It first traces the origins of his thought, and argues that the alliance of radical Reformation ecclesiology with postmodern philosophy leads to an intensely idealistic ecclesiology. Hauerwas's exaltation of particular communal practices is ultimately unreal, as he fails to locate these practices in a particular institution. Due to the unreality of his ecclesiology his attack on Christendom and Constantinianism lacks substance. In the end he undermines his own position by identifying the truth of Christianity with the concrete practices of a distinctive community that he cannot identify.