Stanley M. Hauerwas

Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics, Duke Divinity School

With the Grain of the Universe

In his series of lectures, Hauerwas considers Gifford Lecturers William James, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Karl Barth to help inform his argument that ‘natural theology divorced from a full doctrine of God cannot but help distort the character of God and, accordingly, of the world in which we find ourselves’. Drawing on John Howard Yoder’s efforts ‘to reclaim the truthfulness of Christian convictions’, Hauerwas subverts, rather than reformulates Lord Gifford’s understanding of nature, claiming it is ‘anything but natural’. 

Biography

Stanley Martin Hauerwas was born on 24 July 1940 in Dallas, Texas. Named ‘America’s Best Theologian’ by Time, his cross-disciplinary work covers systematic theology, philosophical theology and ethics, political theory, and the philosophy of social science and medical ethics. Assistant Professor at Augustana College in 1968, he joined the University of Notre Dame in 1970, becoming Professor in 1979. Moving to Duke Divinity School in 1984, he was appointed Professor of Divinity and Law in 1988 and Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics in 1994, retiring in 2019. 

Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he was awarded the Pellegrino Medal in 2008. His book, Reforming Christian Social Ethics (1981), summarised the key presuppositions of his alternative views on the topic at the time. Other important works include A Community of Character (1981), The Peaceable Kingdom (1983), Resident Aliens (1989), God, Medicine, and Suffering (1994), The Hauerwas Reader (2001), Matthew (2006), Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir (2010), Approaching the End (2013), The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson (2014), and The Work of Theology (2015).

Published/Archival Resources