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With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology Hardcover – October 1, 2001

by Stanley Hauerwas (Author)

4.3 10 ratings

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"America's Best Theologian"
"Hauerwas is contemporary theology's foremost intellectual provocateur."--Time

Stanley Hauerwas is a no-nonsense, confessional Christian theologian whose scholarship, sometimes disputed yet always demanding a response, has earned him a prominent reputation on the theological horizon. Brazos Press is proud to present With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology, Hauerwas's distinguished Gifford lectures at the University of St. Andrews (2001).

These lectures explore how natural theology, divorced from a confessional doctrine of God, inevitably distorts our understanding of God's character and the world in which we live. Hauerwas criticizes those who use natural theology to defend theism as the philosophical prerequisite to confessional claims. Instead, after Karl Barth, he argues that natural theology should witness to "the non-Godforsakeness of the world, even under the conditions of sin."

Stanley Hauerwas has good news for the church: theology can still tell us something significant about the way things are. In fact, the church is more than a social institution, and the cross of Christ, never peripheral, is central to knowing God. Whatever our native moral intelligence, the truth that is God is not available apart from moral transformation. Ultimately--and despite the scars left by modernity--theology must translate into a life transformed by confession and the witness of the church.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Those invited to give the Gifford Lectures in natural theology, offered annually at Saint Andrew's University, Scotland, generally avoid presenting anything denominationally based. In the 2001 lectures, transcribed here with copious footnotes, Hauerwas (theological ethics, Duke Univ.; Resident Aliens) consciously disregarded that practice. He instead treats the Christian, Trinitarian God by considering the philosophies of four previous Gifford lecturers: William James, Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, and Alasdair MacIntyre. Hauerwas views the theologies of James and Niebuhr as lacking the full doctrine of God and considers Barth's theology to be a better representative of what theology should be, i.e., the recognition that God can only fully be known as he reveals himself through Jesus. Hauerwas's more traditional Christian view will certainly not be accepted by everyone, but it is a well-reasoned argument. Recommended for seminary and larger public libraries. Augustine J. Curley, Newark Abbey, NJ
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

More praise for With the Grain of the Universe, the Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews (2001):

"An unexpectred threesome-William James, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Karl Barth-make for a surprising story and an original book. In Hauerwas's fresh interpretation of American intellectual history, Niebuhr the neo-orthodox theologian appears not as the Christian alternative to James's pragmatism,but as a thin religious version of the same, packaged in the vocabulary of Christian theology. Against this backdrop, Hauerwas draws on Karl Barth to set forth a 'theology without reservation' that takes modernity seriously but meets it not on modernity's terms but on the church's terms . . . This is a book we have long awaited: Hauerwas's account of what went wrong and what went right with theology in the twentieth century."
-Robert Louis Wilken, author of The Christians As the Romans Saw Them and The Land Called Holy

"In its animated conversations with William James, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Karl Barth, and its constructive proposals, this book makes for fine reading and ought to stir up some new and serious debate about what the church's confession has to say about natural reality."
-John Webster, Oxford University

"Hauerwas offers a highly informed account of his claim that Karl Barth understood what . . . William James and Reinhold Niebuhr did not: that natural theology is intelligible only as part of the whole doctrine of God revealed in Christ. Whether or not one agrees with Hauerwas-I do not-this book will rightly set the agenda for future discussion about the sources and authorities by which 'natural theology' may proceed."
-Harlan Beckley, Washington and Lee University

Stanley Hauerwas is Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University. He is a prolific author, with previous books including Resident Aliens, A Community of Character, The Peaceable Kingdom, and A Better Hope. Hauerwas has made signal contributions to three of the most influential developments in theology over the last thirty years: postliberalism, narrative theology, and virtue ethics. Vigorous and far-ranging in argument, he is perhaps the most quoted and debated theologian of our day.

From the Back Cover

"In this stunning book, the great Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas offers the comprehensive theological argument we have long requested. Of course, if we were worthier students, we would have known this could not come in the form of a conceptual system. Like Barth, whom he makes the hero of this book, Hauerwas teaches that Christian theological argument begins not with our own rational constructs, but by bearing witness to God's life among us. The argument proceeds not by speculating on what God's life might mean, but by narrating how it is in fact imitated by sanctified lives here in this created world. The argument ends not by framing doctrines, but by warning us of the error, violence, suffering, and death that remain in this world-and it calls us, in imitation of God's life, to help heal this world and to work for its final redemption. For those whose habit it is to call this world 'nature,' Hauerwas's theological argument may be dubbed 'natural theology,' and the consequence will be a radical change in what we take natural theology to be. Natural theology will be the story of God's life as it is lived, visibly, in this world; as its meaning is disclosed to the community of those who inquire after it, and as its truth is displayed through its visible effects in transforming this world into the one it would be and will be."
-Peter Ochs, University of Virginia

About the Author

Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University. His previous books include Resident Aliens; A Community of Character; The Peaceable Kingdom; and the recent Brazos title, A Better Hope.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

John Milbank has observed that 'the pathos of modern theology is its false humility.' Theologians, particularly theologians who are paid by universities, too often do theology in a manner that will not offend the peace established by the secular order. Given the requirements of that order, theology cannot help but become one more opinion, one more option, to enliven the dulled imaginations of those who suffer from knowing so much that they no longer know what they know. I hope Milbank's warning about false humility explains why I cannot help but appear impolite, since I must maintain that the God who moves the sun and the stars is the same God who was incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. Given the politics of modernity, the humility required for those who worship the God revealed in the cross and resurrection of Christ cannot help but appear as arrogance.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1587430169
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Brazos Press; First Edition (October 1, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781587430169
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1587430169
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,329,180 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,509 in Psychology & Religion
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- #52,289 in Christian Theology (Books)

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Stanley Hauerwas

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Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law at the Divinity School at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He has written a voluminous number of articles, authored and edited many books, and has been the subject of other theologians' writing and interest. He has been a board member of the Society of Christian Ethics, Associate Editor of a number of Christian journals and periodicals, and a frequent lecturer at campuses across the country.

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Richard J Coleman

Will it be James, Niebuhr, or Barth?

Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2002

The publication of Stanley Hauerwas' Gifford lectures (2000-2001) is an account of what went wrong with theology in the nineteenth century and how to set it back on the right course. The author exemplifies the former with an examination of William James and Reinhold Neibuhr and presents them as "disguised forms of humanism." The right course for our particular circumstance is a recovery of Karl Barth's christological natural theology.
I have little quarrel with Hauerwas' picture of James but I am troubled by his treatment of Niebuhr. The difficulty begins with the author's opening statement about Niebuhr: "Sin! Not just sin, but original sin, is taken to be what distinguishes Niebuhr from Protestant liberalism." In a way that is unthinkable for James, Niebuhr has a theology and it is driven by the reality of sin. In spite of some broad similarities between James and Niebuhr, their pragmatism for example, Niebuhr lived an authentic form of Christian witness. One does not even have to go beyond what the author writes about Niebuhr to see that Niebuhr's theology is thoroughly "against the grain" in a way that James' spiritualism is fashionable.
It is peculiar, to say the least, that Barth is presented as an example of natural theology because of his adamant "no" to any form of natural theology. In order to make his argument, Hauerwas has to redefine what is meant by natural theology. It has nothing to do with the natural world and everything to do with Barth's "ability to tell us the way the world is." Immediately, some will be dissatisfied with the Barthian divorce between natural science and theology. It is unfortunate that Hauerwas flows with the grain and turns Christian faith further inward without regard to a Christian witness over against the dominant and reductive scientific description of the way the universe is.
The vitality and relevance of "With the Grain of the Universe" is the question about whether it should be James, Niebuhr, or Barth who inform our theology. I do not like the forced choice between Niebuhr's inclusive form of witnessing (social justice, building coalitions, changing laws, siding with the poor) and Barth's witness to the crucified and risen Lord. If Christian theology is going to embrace natural theology, then let it be as Hauerwas says, a confident and unapologetic proclamation of the way things, but as a witness broad enough to include the created order as well as the human soul. As usual, Stanley Hauerwas has provided a theological framework for a lively and meaningful conversation.

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ELDV

Meandering but enlightening

Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2013

Hauerwas' 2001 Gifford Lecture regarding MacIntyre, James, Niebuhr, Barth, Yoder, and Pope John Paul II, natural theology, and witness.

If I followed the line of argument correctly, Hauerwas spends his Gifford Lecture demonstrating the ultimate failure of Gifford's conception of natural theology to make a case for God according to rationalist assumptions, despite his best intentions, and does so by exploring the work of James, Niebuhr, and Barth: James, while not specifically Christian, can only make a rational case for religion through religious psychology; Niebuhr tries to make the case for liberal Christianity, attempting to find Christian terms to describe religious phenomenology so as to make the rational case, yet ultimately does so at the expense of historic Christianity, and finally Barth, whom Hauerwas champions as leading the way forward since he remains firmly attached to historic Christian ways of thinking, rejects natural theology as conceived of by Gifford, James, and Niebuhr, and instead provides a way forward to understand how the world, Christian, and church testify to God in Christ in a more accurate kind of "natural" theology, one in which God's being is taken seriously as all there really is and that all flows from Him. In this telling, Barth attempts to find a way to proclaim God in Christ to a post-Christian rationalist world, and sees the need for witness and testimony through the life of the church. Hauerwas concludes by identifying Yoder and Pope John II as examples of this type of embodied witness, leading to Dorothy Day as a premier example of what Yoder and JPII were aiming at. This particular edition also includes an afterword written a decade later by Hauerwas in which he talks about the reception of the Gifford Lecture and the first edition of the book, identifies some weaknesses, engages with some of the criticism, yet ultimately reinforces his confidence in what he originally wrote.

I personally am not nearly sufficiently read in any of these authors to judge how well Hauerwas has characterized them and found it challenging to keep both the line of argument in mind as well as trying to keep straight both what Hauerwas was primarily attempting to say as well as the line of thought in the notes, made that much more difficult on a Kindle galley edition. This is one of the rare books in which reading the concluding chapter first would help clarify the argument for the reader so that s/he could then go through the rest and understand why Hauerwas is telling the story he is telling.

In theological terms I felt Hauerwas did well in critiquing the way natural theology has been done; it melds nicely with other readings I have done of postmodernist critiques of rationalism and apologetics. I especially appreciated his insistence on witness, both in terms of oral proclamation as well as embodied living of life in God in Christ, especially as manifest in the church. His critique about the way we think we must "prove" our religious beliefs needs to be heard: we are under no obligation to provide a rationalist scientific (or even pseudo-scientific) "proof" for God's existence or our faith; instead, the faith is most attractive when it goes well beyond a series of propositions to be agreed upon and is lived and leads to transformation in the individual and the collective church. Faith is to be a matter of life, not a matter of ideas; modern rationalistic thought paradigms have always proven insufficient to explain or argue life choices and always will be. It is not enough, then, to attempt to inculcate a set or propositions and think that will be effective; instead, Christianity must always be rooted in its trust in the Person of Christ, His relationship to His Father, and His Lordship, and the living out of that faith in the life of the individual and communally in the church, and it is that kind of faith that can sustain and nourish no matter the antisupernatural secularist onslaught or the trials of life.

Recommended for those interested in any of the above authors/theologians/philosophers or Christian theology/philosophy in general.

**galley received as part of early review program

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