Learning to Speak Christian. Stanley Hauerwas

      

       Learning to Speak Christian

       Also by Stanley Hauerwas and published by SCM Press

      Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir

      The Peaceable Kingdom

      With the Grain of the Universe

      Wilderness Wanderings

      SCM Theological Commentary Matthew

       © Stanley Hauerwas 2011

      This edition published in 2011 by SCM Press

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      Published in the United States in 2011 as Working with Words: On Learning to Speak Christian by Cascade Books, An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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      The Author has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this Work

      British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      978-0-334-04409-3

      Kindle edition: 978-0-334-04451-2

      Printed and bound in Great Britain by

      CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire

       To the Church of the Holy Family

       and the Rector Search Committee:

       Joe Bongiov, Carl Fox, Adam Grobin, Bob Houghtlin, Verlene Kuoni, Cathy Leslie, Anne Liptzin, Martha Mundy, John Paul, J. R. Rigby, Susan Sunnarborg, Lisa Worster (Chair), and Sheryl Forbis (Clerk)

      Contents

       Preface

       Acknowledgments

       I. Learning Christian: To See and to Speak

       1 Look at It and Live: A Sermon

       2 Seeing Darkness, Hearing Silence: Augustine’s Account of Evil

       3 Disciplined Seeing: Forms of Christianity and Forms of Life with BRIAN GOLDSTONE

       4 God and Goodness: A Theological Exploration

       5 Naming God: A Sermon

       6 Speaking Christian: A Commencement Address

       7 Why “The Way Words Run” Matters: Reflections on Becoming a “Major Biblical Scholar”

       II. The Language of Love: From Death to Life

       8 Why Did Jesus Have to Die? An Attempt to Cross the Barrier of Age

       9 More, or, A Taxonomy of Greed

       10 Love: A Sermon

       11 Love’s Work—Discerning the Body: A Sermon

       12 Body Matters: A Sermon

       13 Finite Care in a World of Infinite Need: A Sermon

       14 Sent: The Church Is Mission

       III. Habits of Speech Exemplified: Some Teachers

       15 “Long Live the Weeds and the Wilderness Yet”: Reflections on A Secular Age with ROMAND COLES

       16 H. Richard Niebuhr

       17 The Virtues of Alasdair MacIntyre

       18 The Virtues of the Summa Theologiae with SHERYL OVERMYER

       19 “A Recall to Christian Life”: What Is Social about the Catholic Social Teachings with JANA BENNETT

       20 Methodist Theological Ethics with D. STEPHEN LONG

       21 Friendship and Freedom: Reflections on Bonhoeffer’s “The Friend”

       Appendix: Learning to See Red Wheelbarrows: On Vision and Relativism

       Bibliography

       Index

       Preface

      In Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir I suggested—or is confessed the better description?—that I write because writing is the only way I know how to think.¹ That is not quite true. I am able to write, or I find I feel I have to write, because I read. Reading is also one of the ways I learn how to think. I am often asked how I have written so much. The only explanation, and it is not clear to me that it is an explanation, is that my writing is determined by my reading. Which means that I hope others will write about what I have written about