ABSTRACT
Milbank's intellectual effort to countering secular reason helps theology to recover the sense that Christianity is not a theory, but first and foremost an aesthetic praxis. As a virtue ethicist in the tradition of Alasdair MacIntyre, Hauerwas strongly emphasizes the importance of traditioned practices, of character formation, and of a community in which such virtues can be acquired. The Gifford Lectures are a series of lectures by a variety of speakers held annually at various universities across Scotland, and are meant to promote the study of ‘natural theology’. Hauerwas begins With the Grain of the Universe with a discussion of Lord Gifford's view on natural theology. Hauerwas found that the thought of William James was built on the ‘Emersonian’ presumption that orthodox Christianity and the new liberal social order were incompatible. The immediate occasion for Hauerwas to engage in a turn to the church is what he calls the domestication of Christianity by the liberal order.
