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

by Stanley Hauerwas

Overview

This major work by one of the world's top theologians offers a provocative and closely argued perspective on natural theology. Stanley Hauerwas shows 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. This critically acclaimed book, winner of a Christianity Today Book Award, is now in paper. It includes a new afterword that sets the book in contemporary context and responds to critics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781441244796
Publisher:	Baker Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/15/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	879 KB

About the Author

Stanley Hauerwas (PhD, Yale University) is professor emeritus of divinity and law at Duke Divinity School. He is the author of over forty books, including Cross-Shattered Christ, A Cross-Shattered Church, War and the American Difference, and Matthew in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible.
Stanley Hauerwas (PhD, Yale University) professor emeritus of divinity and law at Duke Divinity School. He is the author of over forty books, including Cross-Shattered Christ, A Cross-Shattered Church, War and the American Difference, and Matthew in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible.

Table of Contents

Contents
1. God and the Gifford Lectures
2. The Faith of William James
3. God and William James
4. The Liberalism of Reinhold Niebuhr
5. Reinhold Niebuhr's Natural Theology
6. The Witness That Was Karl Barth
7. The Witness of the Church Dogmatics
8. The Necessity of Witness
Afterword
Index

Editorial Reviews

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 Cahners Business Information.

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