With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology [Hardcover]

Stanley Hauerwas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2001

"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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Brazos Press (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1587430169
• ISBN-13: 978-1587430169
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #908,932 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Will it be James, Niebuhr, or Barth?, March 7, 2002

By 

Richard J. Coleman (Pembroke, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology (Hardcover)

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The sense of theology, June 9, 2009

By 

B. F. Mooney "biologist" (Mooresville, NC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology (Hardcover)

Almost anything written by Stanley Hauerwas is worth reading - even if only to disagree with him. He is always demanding of his reader (or audience), as he is of himself, confronting them, challenging them, to look deeply and truthfully into their own hearts and minds. It is typical of him to cast aside tradition in doing the esteemed Gifford lectures, and instead do what he feels is right. He is courageous in taking on the thinking of these three men, and speaking his mind openly, without even at glance toward political correctness. He engenders respect, if not agreement.

The review "What nonsense is theology" is particularly poor, and should be dismissed out-of-hand. It is not a review of this book at all, but merely a diatribe about the reviewer's own pet peeves. It does NOT address the book.

1 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars what nonsense is theology!, October 11, 2005

By 

N. Ravitch (Savannah, GA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology (Hardcover)

The entire enterprise of theology -- attempting to explain a God whom even religion notes is beyond understanding -- is by definition ridiculous and nonsense! What to say here? Simply this. The argument of Barth and Hauerwas against natural theology is simply a way of making irrational religion impervious to rational critique. If you start by saying that Christianity is not based on nature, then what is it based on? Barth/Hauerwas would say revelation. But revelation is simply the delusion of old Jews and Greeks, who had no more notion of what God was or might be than the man in the moon. Thus revelation is baloney and so is Hauerwas and even Barth, for all Barth's intellectual distinction. It is time to call a spade a spade: theology is nonsense.