With the Grain of the Universe by Stanley Hauerwas
**Overview of "With the Grain of the Universe" by Stanley Hauerwas**
"With the Grain of the Universe" is a collection of lectures presented by theologian Stanley Hauerwas during the Gifford Lectures in 2001. The Gifford Lectures, established to promote the study of natural theology, aim to explore the knowledge of God from a perspective that emphasizes reason and science. However, Hauerwas challenges this approach, arguing that natural theology ultimately diminishes the significance of God and fails to address deeper theological truths. He critiques figures like William James and Reinhold Niebuhr for their reliance on contemporary scientific thought, suggesting that this undermines the prophetic voice of theology.
Central to Hauerwas's argument is the idea that Christian ethics should not be separated from theological understanding. He posits that true understanding of God must come from a communal experience of faith, rather than intellectual abstraction. The author insists that modern Christianity must resist conforming to worldly standards and instead embrace a lived theology that aligns with Christian principles, particularly in the political sphere. Hauerwas’s work ultimately advocates for a theology that prioritizes spiritual engagement over intellectual reasoning, inviting readers to reflect on their faith in a world that often prioritizes empirical knowledge over transcendent understanding.
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With the Grain of the Universe by Stanley Hauerwas
First published: Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos Press, 2001
Genre(s): Nonfiction
Subgenre(s): Critical analysis; essays; theology
Core issue(s): Doubt; ethics; faith
Overview
With the Grain of the Universe contains the Gifford Lectures presented by Stanley Hauerwas in 2001. The aim of the Gifford Lectures, established by the will of Adam Lord Gifford, is to “promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term—in other words, the knowledge of God.” The term “natural theology” in the context of the lectures means theology supported by science and not dependent on the miraculous.
Hauerwas begins by pointing to the contradictory circumstances of his being chosen as the presenter of the Gifford Lectures, given that he intends to speak against natural theology and the endeavor to apply scientific logic and reasoning to theology. Hauerwas uses the writings of William James, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Karl Barth (also presenters of Gifford Lectures) to support his arguments against natural theology. He points to what he calls the “meanness,” or insignificance, of the scientific method and the circumstances that it examines and states that the type of God who can be “proved” via the methods of science is “not worthy of worship” and that the theologian must trust in a God that exists beyond such methodology.
Hauerwas positions philosopher James and theologian Niebuhr as reflections of each other, saying that they draw on the same basic framework. In addressing Niebuhr, he criticizes natural theology for paying too much attention to what the world is willing to hear. In doing so, he argues, natural theologians lose their ability to challenge that world with what it does not want to hear. Hauerwas asserts that Niebuhr’s views were developed to be consistent with those of William James, the author of The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902).
Neibuhr claimed that the historical Jesus and his teachings were meaningless to contemporary society except as symbols that remind us of our distance from God. However, in the process of borrowing from contemporary science, a process that fails for both political and theological reasons, Hauerwas says, Niebuhr lost the ability to speak prophetically to the world and influenced a generation of theologians to follow in his footsteps. The ability to speak in a way that is directed by the Divine Spirit depends not on an intellectual understanding of the historical Jesus and his teachings but on a deeper acknowledgment and surrender to the historical that in turns leads to a deeper connection with God.
Christian ethics is a result of modernity: Before the Enlightenment, philosophers did not distinguish between the ethical and theological issues implicit in daily Christian living. With the Enlightenment, humanity tried to find a basis for action that was independent of theological knowledge. Theology became a kind of metaphysics, and sections of it could be dismissed or embraced, depending on the makeup of one’s metaphysical beliefs.
To correct this “humanistic reduction of theology,” Hauerwas turns to Protestant theologian Karl Barth, who believed that natural theology is a worldly enterprise that is too influenced by a desire to fit in with the world and its anti-Christian assumptions, and argued, as Hauerwas does in With the Grain of the Universe, that liberal theologians have abandoned the primary duties of theology in their desire to reconcile it with current scientific philosophies. Like Barth, Hauerwas says that because natural theology has led the field astray, it is best avoided entirely. He points to Barth’s attempts to overturn the epistemological prejudices of modernity and says that the question “Who is God?” must be answered before we ask “How do we know about God?” We cannot explore our beliefs unless we begin by building and acknowledging them; otherwise they are never formed and the endeavor becomes an abortive one.
In the course of With the Grain of the Universe, Hauerwas looks not just at the writings and ideas of the theologians and scientists he addresses, but their lives as well. To understand Barth, he says, one must know something of his struggle against the Third Reich as well as other efforts that Barth felt subordinated Christianity in the interest of the status quo. In this way, the Christians of today need to do more than experience their theology in a mental arena. They need to live out its principles in daily existence, and nowhere more so than the area of politics. Christians cannot approach politics ethically without being willing to guide their existence in the political and historical world according to Christian tenets.
In the end, Hauerwas claims that because of the nature of Western culture, it is necessary for Christians to disown the world and its standards, including the standards of reasoning that natural theology has tried to employ, as they live their lives. In making this movement toward a belief system, he draws from theologian John Howard Yoder and Pope John Paul II as well.
Christian Themes
One of Hauerwas’s central themes in With the Grain of the Universe is the responsibility of Christians to renounce the standards of the world when examining their own philosophy. The truth of modern theology is not proved by natural reason but lies in the church’s witness in the world. The relationship between divine and human is created by the revealed nature of God rather than by human intellectual thought.
A major goal in Hauerwas’s work is to provide an account of modern theology that provides guidance but does not rest on modernist assumptions. It should reframe the discourse so that scientific processes are left to science, rather than theology.
Hauerwas feels that a central crisis facing modern Christians is how to accommodate the fact that they live in a world that has different demands than the ones facing the original audience of the Bible and to resist the urge to give into the “forces of modernity” that favor actual sensory, measurable results over transcendent knowledge. This effort is not simply an intellectual effort but one that also must be lived out in the course of one’s political existence.
Before we can turn to examining how we know to believe in God, Hauerwas asserts, we must be able to assert that we believe in him. Natural theology subverts the actual purpose of theology and turns it to measuring belief rather than actually believing. The responsibility of the church in the modern world is not to justify itself with endeavors like natural theology, but rather to provide moral and spiritual guidance for its congregation in a movement that allows them to acknowledge a connection with God that is centered in the heart rather than the mind.
Sources for Further Study
Hauerwas, Stanley. Disrupting Time: Sermons, Prayers, and Sundries. New York: Cascade Books, 2004. This collection of short pieces explores Hauerwas’s basic themes, including how to live one’s life in a Christian manner.
Hauerwas, Stanley. The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics. South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984. Early work by Hauerwas that prefigures a number of the themes he explores in With the Grain of the Universe.
Hauerwas, Stanley, Michael G. Cartwright, and John Berkman. The Hauerwas Reader. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001. Presents a sampling and overview of Hauerwas’s writings, exploring a range of social issues over a broad span of time.
Katangole, Emmanuel. Beyond Universal Reason: The Relation Between Religion and Ethics in the Work of Stanley Hauerwas. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000. Latangole examines Hauerwas’s views on ethics and Christianity and provides a background that helps readers understand Hauerwas’s views.
Thomson, John B. The Ecclesiology of Stanley Hauerwas: A Christian Theology of Liberation. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2003. Addresses Hauerwas’s thoughts and ideas, particularly on the character of Christians.