Towards Understanding of the Practice of Proclamation: The Core Element of Russian Baptist Worship, Timofey Cheprasov, 2015

by being brought into this community through which you discover your story. And your story is that you have been created to praise and glorify God — all moral life derives from that truth. Therefore, there is a distinct difference between you and those who have not been made part of God’s story.’ (Stanley Hauerwas, “Christianity: It’s an Adventure,” in John Berkman and Michael Cartwright, eds., The Hauerwas Reader (Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2001), p 524). Hauerwas extensively develops the ideas of interconnectedness and necessity of Christian narrative for the formation of Christian convictions in virtues in A Community of Character, pp 89-101. “ Murphy, “Using MacIntyre’s Method...,” p 43. “3 Macintyre, After Virtue, p 222. “’ Kallenberg, “The Master Argument of Macintyre’s After Virtue,” p 25. See also Alasdair Macintyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 1* edition (Notre Dame, Ill., University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), Chapter 18. 174 being read anew in every generation, traditions always penetrate time, being extended through several generations.” To sum up the previous argument, it can be said that MaclIntyre’s perspective on virtues, practices, narrative and tradition may serve as a helpful tool for understanding how identity is passed on. In his article, Kallenberg presented a useful © Christianity can be way of relating virtue, practice, tradition and narrative.’ identified as a tradition that has its authoritative text — the Bible. Tradition requires a community to live out the practices that constitute the tradition. Participation in practices results in virtues, [which] are to be understood as those dispositions, which will not only sustain practices and enable us to achieve the goods internal to practices, but which will also sustain us in the relevant kind of quest for the good, by enabling us to overcome the harms, dangers, temptations and distractions which we encounter, and which will furnish us with increasing self- knowledge and increasing knowledge of the good.”” 7.2 Christ and power Before continuing to develop the notion of practices, it might be necessary to introduce another concept, that of power. Every time questions of identity or character formation are addressed, the issue of power must not be neglected. Thus, in the next step | would like to turn to the concept of the powers and authorities as presented in works of Yoder and Walter Wink.*® *° Kallenberg, “The Master Argument of Macintyre’s After Virtue,” pp 24-25. “© Ibid., p 29. “7 Macintyre, After Virtue, p 219. “8 For further development of the concept of Powers and Principalities, see Marva Dawn, “The Biblical Concept of the ‘Principalities and Powers’: John Yoder points to Jacques Ellul,” in Stanley Hauerwas, Chris K. Huebner, Harry J, Huebner, and Mark Thiessen Nation, eds., The Wisdom of the Cross: Essays in Honor of John Howard Yoder (Grand Rapids, Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub