This past year I’ve had the great privilege of working with Stanley Hauerwas on his forthcoming book Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections (Cascade Books). I served as something of a curator and editor of Hauerwas’s essays, addresses, and sermons, as well as contributing a couple of essays and sermons of my own to the volume. The essays, I believe, feature some of best writing, so I am delighted that they have found a home in such a rich volume alongside of Hauerwas’s enduringly relevant and provocative investigations and sermons. In addition to the gracious invitation to participate in the project, Stanley has generously granted me permission to share some of my favourite quotes from the book in the days leading up to its publication. Over the course of the next few weeks, I will draw attention to some of the turns-of-phrase, sentences and short passages that, for one reason or another, captured my imagination. Continue reading A New Series on “Minding the Web”
Tag Archives: Hauerwas
The Virtue of Baseball
The most recent book from Stanley Hauerwas, The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson, consists of letters that the theologian annually sent to his godson, Laurie Wells, over a fifteen year period marking the anniversary of Wells’s baptism. Each of the letters addresses a virtue that is important for the Christian life. As a result, the book can be read as an engaging entry point into and accessible distillation of Hauerwas’s forty plus years of prodigious scholarship and writing. The book, which seems ideally situated to become a classic, also contains an eloquent introduction by one of Hauerwas’s most insightful interpreters, who also happens to be the father of the recipient of the letters, the pastor-theologian Sam Wells. One of my favourite passages involves a discussion of the training in patience that is baseball. Continue reading The Virtue of Baseball
Forthcoming Issue of Didaskalia
The forthcoming issue of the Canadian theological journal Didaskalia, published by Providence Theological Seminary, includes both a gracious review of my book For the Life of the World: Jesus Christ and the Church in the Theologies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Stanley Hauerwas by Christopher Holmes and an essay of my own entitled, “A Matter of MIssion: Bonhoeffer, the Bible, and Ecclesial Formation.” Continue reading Forthcoming Issue of Didaskalia
Review of “For the Life of the World”
Daniel W. Rempel has published a review of my book For the Life of the World: Jesus Christ and the Church in the Theologies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the Conrad Grebel Review. Towards the end of the review, he writes:
“For the Life of the World will benefit multiple readerships. For theologians, critical engagement with the work of Bonhoeffer and Hauerwas will provide a greater understanding of both theologians’ greater projects, with a reminder that theology should be rooted in the person and work of Jesus Christ for the benefit of his body, the church. Continue reading Review of “For the Life of the World”
With Friends Like These . . .
Earlier this year, Bloomsbury T&T Clark published a collection of conversations between the renowned theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas and Brian Brock, who teaches at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Brock, who is himself quite an accomplished theological ethicist and is clearly conversant in Hauerwas’s writings, proves to be a worthy interlocutor for Hauerwas. The book is entitled Beginnings: Interrogating Hauerwas. Continue reading With Friends Like These . . .
A Modest Proposal
I came across this quote this morning from Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536). Erasmus, who is sometimes described as “the prince of the humanists,” was a reforming voice within the church in the 16th century, although he never formally broke from Rome. His critical edition of the Greek New Testament was highly influential for Reformers across the continent. Unfortunately, the Magisterial Reformers in appealing to the secular authorities for assistance in reforming the church in some ways contributed to the further entrenchment of the competing national loyalties Erasmus is attempting to combat in this quotation: Continue reading A Modest Proposal