The Confessions of Stanley: Accounting for a Human Life Lived before God

This discussion of Stanley Hauerwas’Hannah's Child examines the implications of the book for the disciplines of historical and doctrinal theology. Locating the success of theological biography and autobiography in its description of God in relation to lived human existence, the article considers certain points of contact between Hannah's Child and St Augustine's Confessions. Building from this description of the task of theological autobiography, the article makes three points for historical and doctrinal theology arising from Hannah's Child: first that historical theology is primarily a theological discipline; second that it is significant and important, nevertheless, for historical theology to retain its historical accidence; third that doctrine involves teaching and learning the Christian faith and is thereby of ethical significance.