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Alan Jacobs reviews Stanley Hauerwas\u2019s Against the Grain of the Universe <\/i> in the current issue of Books & Culture <\/i> , and Hauerwas talks about Barth\u2019s insight that natural theology can never be \u201cfirst\u201d theology: \u201cBarth discovered early in his career that the great error of 19th-century Protestant theology was its decision to think that human \u2018religious experience\u2019 was an appropriate first principle of Christian theology. Indeed, some of the strongest opponents of Christianity ?Enotably Feuerbach and Nietzsche ?Erealized that a theologian who began with \u2018religious experience\u2019 had already given up the game; Barth learned from them not to make that mistake, and to insist instead on the priority of God\u2019s revelation, no matter how dissonantly it might ring in the secular ear.\u201d He goes on to suggest that the late Barth realized that his famous \u201cNein\u201d to Brunner was inadequate, and came through a study of Aquinas to embrace a more analogical vision. Natural theology becomes possible, not as first theology, but only insofar it is nestled within the larger embrace of Christian theology. Hauerwas summarizes Barth by saying that \u201cThe Christian . . . cannot address the non-Christian on the basis of a general or human responsibilty interpreted as the responsibility to conscience or to supposed or real orders and forces of the cosmos. Rather, every person is to be addressed as one who exists and stands in the light of Jesus Christ.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alan Jacobs reviews Stanley Hauerwas\u2019s Against the Grain of the Universe in the current issue of Books & Culture , and Hauerwas talks about Barth\u2019s insight that natural theology can never be \u201cfirst\u201d theology: \u201cBarth discovered early in his career that the great error of 19th-century Protestant theology was its decision to think that human […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology"],"yoast_head":"\n