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Since the 19th century, much ink has been spilt attempting to "justify" theology as a legitimate discipline in the "modern university." Gone are the glory days of 13th-century Paris, theologians have conceded, but surely a chastened theology deserves a place at the table with other academic fields. A quiet dignity for the erstwhile queen of the sciences might consist precisely in her voluntary dimunition and willingness to "play by the rules" of the university at large. Or so some have argued.
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The Barthian revolution in theology excoriated this line of reasoning, even as it happily burned many bridges to the 13th century. Barth thought that theologians ought to quit fretting about their institutional share and attend to the actual tasks of theology, which he regarded as inseperable from the mission of the church. Paradoxically, the practice of theology in service to the church, not its success at academic legitimation, gave theology a voice in the university, if no absolute right of residency. But theology should never settle for being a normal member of the academic community; it functioned as a "signal of distress," a flashing siren this side of modernity proclaiming the crisis of mortal existence and the indefectible love of God.
Few contemporary theologians have taken Barth's advice to heart quite like Duke Divinity School's Stanley Hauerwas. Those who rue the Barthian-Hauerwasian line in modern theology might be tempted, after picking up this book and then quickly setting it aside, to quip with Marx that history tends to repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. But this would be to forfeit the probing insights, and pleasures, of hearing a first-order theological provocateur as he turns his sights on one of the most influential institutions in modern society: the university.
Like many of Hauerwas' works, this is a collection of writings and addresses prepared for disparate audiences. It is a "book" because Hauerwas says it is; but enough chapters hang together to provide an overall sense of coherence—and the chapters that dangle make for lively reading. The idea for this volume originated in his Gifford lectures, published as With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology, where Hauerwas began to examine what his appropriation of Barth's account of "natural theology" entailed for the types of knowledge found in the modern university and the relationship of Christian theology to them.
Critics have long charged that Hauerwas' theological accents and modus operandi encourage a "sectarian" withdrawal from the world, not an engagement—especially not a serious and sustained cognitive engagement—with it. Hauerwas picks up the gauntlet: "The burden of the argument of this book, indeed, of everything I have written, is to challenge that presumption by suggesting that theology is a knowledge that should rightly be represented in the curriculums of a secular or a church-sponsored university." Or, in a more Barthian vein: "[T]heology should never be done to pass muster in the university. Theology must be done to glorify God … . It has always been my conviction that when theology is so done, those in the university will take notice because what we have to say is so interesting."
If Hauerwas argues that theology deserves representation in the university, he can't be accused of flattering the institution he seeks to engage. Indeed, his criticisms of the extant university seem to overpower his constructive efforts to state why theology deserves a hearing. But one might construe this as the point: theology deserves a hearing because if its practitioners do what they should, they are able to raise the difficult questions and level the stinging criticisms that members of other disciplines—and proliferating subdisciplines—have neither the ability nor will to do.
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