Stanley Hauerwas Quotes & Sayings (Page 11)

“It turns out that the God whose word will stand forever does not exist to insure our fantasies that we will not have to die as individuals or as a species. Such a God, moreover, does not invite us to presume we can comprehend God's creation.”

“Just as an athlete with natural gifts may fail to develop the fundamental skills necessary to play their sport after their talent fades, so people naturally disposed to faith may fail to develop the skills necessary to sustain them for a lifetime.”

“Let us wait in patience for the Christ-child whose own life depended on the lives of Mary and Joseph. The Word of God was made flesh. He came so that we might experience the fullness of time.”

“Liberal Christianity, of course, has enemies, but they are everyone's enemies - sexism, racism, homophobia. But liberal versions of Christianity, which can be both theologically and politically conservative, assume that what it means to be Christian qua Christian is to have no enemies peculiar to being Christian.”

“Many who become theologians in our time think their task is to try to determine how much of what has passed for Christianity they still need to believe and yet still be able to think of themselves as Christians.”

“My mother had heard the story of Hannah and Samuel, so she prayed that if God would give her a son, she would give that son to God. That was a perfectly appropriate thing for her to do, but as I observe, she did not have to tell me she had made such a promise. In particular, she did not have to tell me when I was six.”

“One of the challenges Christians confront is how the politics we helped create has made it difficult to sustain the material practices constitutive of an ecclesial culture to produce Christians.”

“Protestantism became identified with the republican presumption in liberty as an end in itself. This presumption was then reinforced by an unassailable belief in the common sense of the individual.”

“Reading is an exercise for learning how to write and vice versa. I have read myself into being a Christian, but I have also written myself into being a Christian.”

“'The Chronicles of Narnia' are war-determined stories. I do not think Lewis could have written well or truthfully if he had tried to avoid the reality of war.”