“Who you are, moreover, makes all the difference. The courageous know fears the coward can never know. Of course, cowards may be overwhelmed with fear, but they do not know the fears of the courageous, because the fears of the courageous are fears honed by being courageous. Continue reading The Fears of the Courageous (Series on “Minding the Web”)
Life Under the Law When We Are a Law Unto Ourselves (Series on “Minding the Web”)
“We do not think we live in a time when moral conventions (which is just another word for the Law) determine our lives, but we do. We may not quite be in a Jane Austen world, but we are close. Jane Austen lived in a world of clear social conventions in which everyone knew what was the right thing to do or say, particularly when you were at dinner. Her novels are relentless investigations of whether people who always seem to do the right thing, in fact, have a true heart. Continue reading Life Under the Law When We Are a Law Unto Ourselves (Series on “Minding the Web”)
Announcing the Publication of “Minding the Web”
It is with great pleasure that I am able to announce the publication of Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections by Stanley Hauerwas with Robert J. Dean by Cascade Books. The book is currently available for purchase through Wipf and Stock and in the days ahead will be available through many of your favorite book-sellers. Continue reading Announcing the Publication of “Minding the Web”
Sin, What it Is and What It’s Not (Series on “Minding the Web”)
“The good news is we do not get to be our own judge. We do not get to determine what our sins may be. The devil, the great tempter, would have us believe that we should want to be like that false god, who we assume to be self-sufficient, self-affirming, self-desiring, the supreme being, self-centered and rotating about himself. The problem, of course, is that he is not the God who has come to us in Jesus Christ. That God—the God that has come to us in Christ—is sufficient to Himself, but that sufficiency is the love that has constituted the life of the Trinity from all eternity. Our sin, quite simply, is our refusal to be loved by such a God.”1 Continue reading Sin, What it Is and What It’s Not (Series on “Minding the Web”)
- Stanley Hauerwas, “Repentance: A Lenten Meditation,” in Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections, edited by Robert J. Dean (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2018), 213.
On (Not) Knowing our Sins (Series on “Minding the Web”)
“That we may have the haunting thought we are only playing at being a sinner, I suspect, involves the more general worry that, in the world in which we now find ourselves, we are not at all sure if we know what it means to be a Christian. I suspect we are not even sure we know what being a Christian looks like. Surely, to be a Christian means more than being a nice person that believes stuff about God. There is, after all, the Sermon on the Mount. But then that is one of the problems: we cannot imagine living out the demands of the Sermon. But because we cannot imagine living the type of lives the Sermon seems to envisage, we cannot help but fear that we are only playing at being Christian. Continue reading On (Not) Knowing our Sins (Series on “Minding the Web”)
Responding to “A Plea for Pointless Preaching” – A Guest Post by Lissa Wray Beal
On Thursday, November 1, a surprisingly large and energetic group of pastors, professors, seminary students, and college students gathered at Providence to hear and engage in conversation surrounding my paper, “A Plea for Pointless Preaching.” The paper was an abbreviated version of an essay that I wrote for Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections. In the essay, I suggest that the work of “two Stanleys” – the evangelical mega-church pastor Andy Stanley and the theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas – present two contrasting homiletical paths open to preachers today. Since that volume will soon be appearing in print, I will not be reproducing the essay here. However, my colleague Lissa Wray Beal, who served as the respondent to the paper, has graciously allowed me to publish her insightful engagement with the essay here on the blog. Continue reading Responding to “A Plea for Pointless Preaching” – A Guest Post by Lissa Wray Beal