Stanley Hauerwas

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Stanley Hauerwas 2015

Stanley M. Hauerwas (born July 24, 1940 in Dallas , Texas ) is a United Methodist theologian , pacifist and author who worked at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend in Indiana from 1970 to 1983 and as a professor for taught theological ethics at Duke University at Durham , North Carolina . In 2001, TIME magazine named him “America's Best Theologian”; for which he remarked that "the best" is not a theological category. He was a strong voice after 9-11 against the war on terror .

Life

Hauerwas' ancestors came from Minnesota and Alabama and settled in Texas because it was less xenophobic than Alabama. He grew up in a working class family in Pleasant Grove, south of Dallas, Texas. He attended Pleasant Grove High School from 1954 to 1956 and WW Samuell High School from 1956 to 1958 . Since his father and his five brothers were bricklayers, he helped with the construction at an early age and later also did bricklaying work. His family attended Pleasant Mount Methodist Church , where he was also baptized and confirmed.

Hauerwas was the first of the family to attend college , Southwestern University in Georgetown , which was affiliated with the United Methodist Church. It was an alien world to him, but he was strongly encouraged by John Score, his philosophy teacher. In 1962 he received his bachelor's degree. Then he studied at the Yale Divinity School of Yale University on. He did an internship in Sunday School and youth work with Dick Smeltzer in the Hamden Plains Methodist Church . In order to earn money, he sometimes worked in a metal pipe factory during the summer semester break. With the ethicist James Gustafson he got to know and appreciate the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and Ludwig Wittgenstein . He completed his master’s degree and received a PhD in Christian ethics in 1968.

After graduating from Yale in 1968, Hauerwas first taught at the Lutheran Augustana College in Rock Island , Illinois , before moving to the Catholic University of Notre Dame in South Bend , Indiana in 1970 . In 1983 he took over the Gilbert T. Rowe Professorship and became Professor of Theological Ethics at the Divinity School of Duke University . He retired in 2013. In 2014 he was appointed to the chair of theological ethics at the University of Aberdeen .

Hauerwas has a profound knowledge of the works of the philosophers and theologians Aristotle , Thomas Aquinas , Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth , Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Howard Yoder , Alasdair MacIntyre , Michel Foucault and William James .

Honors

The grain of the universe

Hauerwas was amazed that he was invited to speak at the Lectures 2001 because he actually had little sympathy for natural theology . The founder Lord Adam Gifford wanted to promote the scientific nature of Natural Theology, but he did not make any thematic restrictions. So Hauerwas used this opportunity to explore the possibilities of natural theology in connection with teaching and ethics. His basic thesis was that the truth of Christianity could not be proven, but believed and attested. The most convincing variant is the testimony of a life lived in accordance with the gospel. If these teachings can be lived, then they can also be true. Hauerwas also discussed William James, Reinhold Niebuhr and Karl Barth, who had previously been the subject of Gifford Lectures. James, who wanted to understand the diversity of religious experience from the perspective of psychology, and Niebuhr, whose nature and purpose of man would contradict orthodox Christian doctrine, are only slightly apart for Hauerwas and have little meaningfulness for Christian doctrine.

Karl Barth would stand in radical contrast to this. He refused to accept that there were good intellectual reasons to base the truth of the gospel on premises. The truth would come as a revelation from outside, as such it could never be proven and proven, but had to be believed. Barth himself, John Howard Yoder and Pope John Paul II were cited by Hauerwas as examples and witnesses of the vitality and truth of the gospel. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, everything in the universe would be redefined and given a cosmic character, the grain of the universe.

Ethical positions

Hauerwas is a staunch Christian pacifist and advocate of non-violence . He opposes just war theory and nationalism , especially American patriotism , which he believes has no place in the Church. He considers the Constantinian turnaround to be an undesirable development in church history; the church should not connect with the state or the world, but should instead form a counterculture of forgiveness and reconciliation, friendliness towards others and defenselessness. Because between 1960 and 1980 the USA and Western Europe also entered a post-Christian era that changed the churches and the relationship between church and state. In these postmodern times it was again important to ask the right questions and to hear and do the answers provided by Christ together.

In his theological remarks he refers to the positions of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth and John Howard Yoder and distinguishes himself from the existential approaches of Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich and the cultural Protestantism of Reinhold Niebuhr and H. Richard Niebuhr . He sharply criticized the conservative evangelical clergyman Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority movement because, like cultural Protestantism , they expect help from democracy, the nation-state and the rule of law, which only God can give and effect in a community.

Therefore, Hauerwas also speaks out against abortion and the death penalty . But it cannot be divided into the categories liberal and conservative, which it does not find expedient, especially for the Christian churches. Protestantism is also coming to an end because the Catholic Church has reacted adequately to shortcomings and a separation no longer makes sense.

Private

Hauerwas was married to his childhood sweetheart Anne Harley from 1962 to 1987. They had a son together. His wife had had bipolar disorder since 1974 and was manic-depressive, which increasingly affected and disrupted their marriage and eventually led to divorce. In 1989 he married the theologian Paula Gilbert, who also exemplified a more intimate and intense relationship with God. In this way he was able to develop further and exercise his talent for teaching. He wrote about this very personally and extensively in 2010 in his autobiography Hannah's Child - A Theologian's Memoir , which was published by Eerdmans in Grand Rapids.

Works

German

  • Blessed are the peaceful. A draft of Christian ethics. Neukirchener, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1995, ISBN 3-7887-1555-3 (translation: Guy Marcel Clicqué series: Evangelium und Ethik, Vol. 4)
  • With William H. Willimon: Christians are foreign citizens. How we become what we are again: Adventurers of the discipleship in a post-Christian society. Fontis, Basel 2016, ISBN 978-3-03848-075-4

English (selection)

  • The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics , University of Notre Dame Press, South Bend 1983 & 1991, ISBN 978-0-268-01554-1 .
  • Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society , University of Notre Dame Press, South Bend 1985 and 1992, ISBN 978-0-26800-638-9 .
  • Suffering Presence. Theological Reflections on Medicine, the Mentally Handicapped and the Church , University of Notre Dame Press, South Bend 1986 and T. & T. Clark, 1988, ISBN 978-0-56729-142-4
  • Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between , 1988, ISBN 1-58743-022-3 .
  • with William H. Willimon: Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony , 1989 (with William H. Willimon), ISBN 0-687-36159-1 (several new editions, for example Riggins, Punta Gorda Florida 2014).
  • A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic , University of Notre Dame Press, South Bend 1991.
  • After Christendom: How the Church Is to Behave If Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas , Abingdon Press, 1991, ISBN 0-687-00929-4 .
  • with William H. Willimon: Preaching to Strangers: Evangelism in Today's World , Westminster John Knox Press, 1993, ISBN 978-0-664-25105-5 .
  • Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America , 1993, ISBN 0-687-31678-2 .
  • Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements With the Secular , Duke University Press, Durham 1994 & 1995, ISBN 0-8223-1475-4 .
  • God, Medicine and Suffering , Eerdmans, Grand Rapids 1994, ISBN 978-0-802-80896-7 .
  • In Good Company: Church as Polis , University of Notre Dame Press, South Bend 1997.
  • Why Narrative? : Readings in Narrative Theology , Wipf & Stock, Eugene 1997.
  • Prayers Plainly Spoken , InterVarsity Press, 1999.
  • with William H. Willimon: The Truth About God: The Ten Commandments in Christian Life , Abingdon Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-687-08202-5 .
  • The Hauerwas Reader , ed. by John Berkman / Michael Cartwright, Duke University Press, Durham, NC 2001, ISBN 0-8223-2691-4 .
  • With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology: Being Gifford Lectures Delivered at the University of St. Andrews in 2001, Baker Book House 2001, ISBN 978-1-5874-3016-9 .
  • with Frank Lentricchia and Rowan Williams : Dissent from the Homeland: Essays After September 11: Essays on September 11 , Duke University Press, Durham 2003, ISBN 978-0-82236-540-2
  • Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence , Wipf & Stock, Eugene 2004, ISBN 1-58743-076-2 .
  • The Cross-shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words , Darton, Longman & Todd 2005
  • The State of the University: Academic Knowledges and the Knowledge of God (Illuminations - Theory & Religion): Academic Knowledge and the Knowledge of God , Wiley-Blackwell 2007.
  • A Cross-Shattered Church: Reclaiming the Theological Heart of Preaching , Brazos 2009.
  • Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between , Wipf & Stock, 2010, ISBN 978-1-60899-710-7
  • Sunday Asylum: Being the Church in Occupied Territory , The House, Studio 2010.
  • Hannah's Child - A Theologian's Memoir , Eerdmans, Grand Rapids / Cambridge 2010 and 2012, ISBN 978-0-8028-6739-1 .
  • Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth-Century Theology and Philosophy. Radical Traditions , SCM Press, 2011.
  • Working with Words: On Learning to Speak Christian Wipf & Stock, 2011

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brandon Rappuhn: Stanley Hauerwas: Time Magazine's Choice for America's Best Theologian, August 28, 2012
  2. ^ Raymond A. Schroth: On the margins with America's best theologian , National Catholic Reporter, Kansas City, Aug. 11, 2010
  3. ^ Stanley Hauerwas & The Editors: In a Time of War; An Exchange , 2002 (German: In wartime, a change )
  4. ↑ Stanley Hauerwas: Hannah's Child - A Theologian's Memoir. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids / Cambridge 2010 and 2012, ISBN 978-0-8028-6739-1
  5. ↑ http://www.dallasnews.com/news/news/2010/08/30/20100829-Ex-Dallasite-Stanley-Hauerwas-lays-theological-9974 Sam Hodges: Ex-Dallasite Stanley Hauerwas lays theological brick, one word at a time, in memoir Hannah's Child, dallasnews.com, August 30, 2010
  6. ^ Gifford Lectures website
  7. ↑ Stanley Hauerwas: Christians are foreign citizens. How we become what we are again: Adventurers of the discipleship in a post-Christian society. Fontis, Basel 2016, ISBN 978-3-03848-075-4 , pages 35–40
  8. ↑ Stanley Hauerwas: Christians are foreign citizens. How we become what we are again: Adventurers of the discipleship in a post-Christian society. Fontis, Basel 2016, ISBN 978-3-03848-075-4 , pages 45–52
  9. ↑ Stanley Hauerwas: Christians are foreign citizens. How we become what we are again: Adventurers of the discipleship in a post-Christian society. Fontis, Basel 2016, ISBN 978-3-03848-075-4 , pages 71-74
  10. ↑ Stanley Hauerwas: Christians are foreign citizens. How we become what we are again: Adventurers of the discipleship in a post-Christian society. Fontis, Basel 2016, ISBN 978-3-03848-075-4 , pages 40-46
  11. ↑ Stanley Hauerwas: Christians are foreign citizens. How we become what we are again: Adventurers of the discipleship in a post-Christian society. Fontis, Basel 2016, ISBN 978-3-03848-075-4 , pages 54–67
  12. ↑ Stanley Hauerwas: Christians are foreign citizens. How we become what we are again: Adventurers of the discipleship in a post-Christian society. Fontis, Basel 2016, ISBN 978-3-03848-075-4 , pages 55–123
  13. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from April 16, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ^ Andy Rowell: The Gospel Makes the Everyday Possible. 70-year old Duke theologian Stanley Hauerwas explains his new memoir, addresses his critics, and explains why he says, We're all congregationalists now. Christianitytoday, September 9, 2010
  15. ↑ Jonathan Merritt: Stanley Hauerwas reflects on end times, end of his life. 7th July 2014
  16. ^ Stanley Hauerwas: Hannah's Child - A Theologian's Memoir , Eerdmans, Grand Rapids / Cambridge 2010 and 2012, ISBN 978-0-8028-6739-1 , pages 17-46 and 123-149
personal data
SURNAME Hauerwas, Stanley
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hauerwas, Stanley M.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Methodist theologian, pacifist and author
DATE OF BIRTH July 24, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Dallas , Texas , USA