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The Light of Tabor: Toward a Monistic Christology
In The Light of Tabor, award-winning theologian David Bentley Hart proposes an approach to the nature of Christ that is profoundly radical yet deeply classical.
For centuries, Christian theology has rested on a paradox. Beginning with the Council of Chalcedon in the fifth century, the major Christian traditions have held that Jesus Christ combines two distinct he is fully God and, somehow, fully human. Yet this tenet rests on irresolvable metaphysical contradictions. David Bentley Hart delves deeply into the seemingly irresoluble tensions, providing the first theological attempt to show how the logic of the earliest churches’ angelomorphic Christology is continuous with later Chalcedonian orthodoxy. Hart draws on theologians from every epoch of Christian thought, from Origen to Sergei Bulgakov, while making free use of concepts from other spiritual traditions, such as Vedanta.
The Light of Tabor proposes an approach to Christology that is thoroughly monistic, both as regards Being and as regards nature. Hart demonstrates that the only coherent reading of the figure of Christ is one that fully embraces the essential unity of all things divine and natural through him, proposing an approach to Christology that affirms classical doctrine without retaining the dualistic presuppositions that have haunted theology since the age of the great councils.
For centuries, Christian theology has rested on a paradox. Beginning with the Council of Chalcedon in the fifth century, the major Christian traditions have held that Jesus Christ combines two distinct he is fully God and, somehow, fully human. Yet this tenet rests on irresolvable metaphysical contradictions. David Bentley Hart delves deeply into the seemingly irresoluble tensions, providing the first theological attempt to show how the logic of the earliest churches’ angelomorphic Christology is continuous with later Chalcedonian orthodoxy. Hart draws on theologians from every epoch of Christian thought, from Origen to Sergei Bulgakov, while making free use of concepts from other spiritual traditions, such as Vedanta.
The Light of Tabor proposes an approach to Christology that is thoroughly monistic, both as regards Being and as regards nature. Hart demonstrates that the only coherent reading of the figure of Christ is one that fully embraces the essential unity of all things divine and natural through him, proposing an approach to Christology that affirms classical doctrine without retaining the dualistic presuppositions that have haunted theology since the age of the great councils.
150 pages, Hardcover
Published September 1, 2025
27 people are currently reading
1472 people want to read
About the author
David Bentley Hart
47 books705 followersDavid Bentley Hart, an Eastern Orthodox scholar of religion and a philosopher, writer, and cultural commentator, is a fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. He lives in South Bend, IN.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 24, 2025
Thought-provoking. Hart aims to move beyond the impasse which the traditional grammar of “two natures” has created. He argues that the distinction between human nature and divine nature is not that between two immiscible realities whose difference is “overcome” in the Incarnation. Instead, the Incarnation shows an underlying unity between the divine and human. In the man Christ Jesus the full divinity of the Logos is perfectly transparent.
September 6, 2025
Wonderful, Illuminating, Succinct, Beautiful.
January 5, 2026
Naturally, I expected a certain level of provocation and profundity from Hart's newest work, and I was not disappointed. The subject matter is daunting and seemingly resistant to resolution, but he develops several themes that I believe genuinely further the conversation. The first concerns divine hierarchies and the nature of flesh and spirit. The basic idea is that ancient cosmologies lacked the kind of distinction between the transcendent God and ourselves that contemporary thinking draws. An abundance of intervening beings occupied an expansive hierarchy, the top of which some lower christologies placed Jesus. Though Hart certainly wouldn't endorse the latter suggestion, he uses the framework to press against the traditional juxtaposition of human and divine, citing Acts 17 as a supporting text, "For we too are his race."
Hart's most successful argument is advanced in favor of this greater concord between human and divine in Christ. If the incarnation truly were a reconciliation of two entirely discordant natures (divine and human), then the higher principle must not be God, but rather the unity that binds him to that external human principle. Either this or Christ is a chimera. Hart, instead, claims that humanity is not an external or discordant principle, "God is the actuality of every nature, the one Nature of all natures, of which human nature exists entirely and solely as a mode" (48).
The following section, which is surely his boldest, further attempts to develop an understanding of the trinity and the concept of person. Bulgakov's work is the main inspiration here, though Maximus and Gregory of Nyssa make obligatory appearances. It's certainly too dense to fully explicate in this review, but I quite like Bulgakov's suggestion that ontological architecture is best expressed by a predicate, "I am x." It may overcome the Kantian fascination with the ding an sich and yet maintain the hidden depths of the subject. I find myself wondering if the trinitarian theology founded thereon is too "clean," but it's enticing nonetheless.
Hart's most successful argument is advanced in favor of this greater concord between human and divine in Christ. If the incarnation truly were a reconciliation of two entirely discordant natures (divine and human), then the higher principle must not be God, but rather the unity that binds him to that external human principle. Either this or Christ is a chimera. Hart, instead, claims that humanity is not an external or discordant principle, "God is the actuality of every nature, the one Nature of all natures, of which human nature exists entirely and solely as a mode" (48).
The following section, which is surely his boldest, further attempts to develop an understanding of the trinity and the concept of person. Bulgakov's work is the main inspiration here, though Maximus and Gregory of Nyssa make obligatory appearances. It's certainly too dense to fully explicate in this review, but I quite like Bulgakov's suggestion that ontological architecture is best expressed by a predicate, "I am x." It may overcome the Kantian fascination with the ding an sich and yet maintain the hidden depths of the subject. I find myself wondering if the trinitarian theology founded thereon is too "clean," but it's enticing nonetheless.
October 31, 2025
If this truly does turn out to be DBH’s last theological work, as he claims - though I’m skeptical, given how often his appendix hedges with lines like ‘but that’s all that can be said about the matter for now' - it’s a worthy chef-d'œuvre (to reach for some highbrow vocabulary befitting a DBH fan).
October 25, 2025
A shining capstone on a magnificent career
September 7, 2025
a simply wonderful & lucid treatment — and astonishing yet inevitable resolution — of the complexities of post-nicene christology. color me super grateful!
November 15, 2025
David is correct, as usual. If you have not read much of his work and have a tolerance for big words then this is best introduction to his thought that I can think of.
Everything that he says in this book is basically right, to the point that I am not sure why he even wrote it. The whole book in tone and content feels so tautological that I don't know why this wasn't just a Substack post on Leaves in the Wind . Following David from Experience of God to Tradition and Apocalypse to You Are Gods (well... I haven't read it yet actually, but I've listened to Henry Wallis' Forms podcast on it enough times to get the idea), I could've exactly guessed the argument of this book.
The argument is very simple and easy to follow:
1. Creation ex nihilo does not mean humanity was created from nothing, but that humanity's essence is derived from nothing else but the very Being of God
2. Since God is impassable, the Incarnation of Christ reveals that no change occured in God when He took on flesh
3. This is because humanity in its very essence is already divine: there is no ontological gap between divine and human nature
4. Therefore, the fundamental principle of all people is the Logos, but due to our illusory condition of being flesh and blood creatures we don't recognize this
5. Therefore, the fundamental orientation of all humans is deification from birth by virtue of being created ex nihilo
6. Therefore, the uniqueness of Christ is not that He is some mythological heavenly psychology having descended to earth, but that He was a fully deified human from the get go whose psychology was already completely transparently shining the Logos through
Which makes me ask the question: what are we doing here. I actually don't see why David feels so compelled to remain bound to the Christian picture (even though he is such a weeb for Hinduism in the worst way: if Vedāntic Christianity is merely an occasional pointing to parallel concepts between the traditions it is little more than a high schooler who enjoys too much anime randomly using sugoi), retain Trinitarian language (which honestly, I am beyond confused why he needs to talk of a trihypostatic Person with his Christology), argue that he is properly exegeting Scripture (in apologetic and harmonizing tones while pretending he is in taking into account higher criticism), and say that he is remaining faithful to the ecumenical pronouncements of Nicaea and Chalcedon (while being dismissive of Chalcedon). Instead of reading the Bible and living in conformity to the Christian tradition, why don't we just read Spinoza's Ethics (of whom I am surprised David does not quote seeing how he is obviously ripping off Spinoza's language of everything in the created world being an localized instantiation of the infinite modes of God) and whichever mystical writer is our favourite. Because quite literally, David's anthropology of the Divine who we are when we penetrate our illusory condition and who we will become (in a true, uncreated sense as our logos becomes the Logos) is nothing more than ego death and mystical annihilation in the Divine as described in any and every mystic.
In the end of the day, I think that if you have taken a handful of introductory philosophy courses, read some patristics, picked up any mystical thinker (especially outside your religious tradition), and thought somewhat about impassibility then this is a really boring book. If you haven't done that and remain somewhat tied to a dogmatic evangelicalism then you will come away thinking that David is the most heretical person you have ever read. Unfortunately.
In the end of the day, this book receives 2 stars because I did not feel the same joy or exciting indecency that his other works have given me. I think he may have just phoned this one in.
Everything that he says in this book is basically right, to the point that I am not sure why he even wrote it. The whole book in tone and content feels so tautological that I don't know why this wasn't just a Substack post on Leaves in the Wind . Following David from Experience of God to Tradition and Apocalypse to You Are Gods (well... I haven't read it yet actually, but I've listened to Henry Wallis' Forms podcast on it enough times to get the idea), I could've exactly guessed the argument of this book.
The argument is very simple and easy to follow:
1. Creation ex nihilo does not mean humanity was created from nothing, but that humanity's essence is derived from nothing else but the very Being of God
2. Since God is impassable, the Incarnation of Christ reveals that no change occured in God when He took on flesh
3. This is because humanity in its very essence is already divine: there is no ontological gap between divine and human nature
4. Therefore, the fundamental principle of all people is the Logos, but due to our illusory condition of being flesh and blood creatures we don't recognize this
5. Therefore, the fundamental orientation of all humans is deification from birth by virtue of being created ex nihilo
6. Therefore, the uniqueness of Christ is not that He is some mythological heavenly psychology having descended to earth, but that He was a fully deified human from the get go whose psychology was already completely transparently shining the Logos through
Which makes me ask the question: what are we doing here. I actually don't see why David feels so compelled to remain bound to the Christian picture (even though he is such a weeb for Hinduism in the worst way: if Vedāntic Christianity is merely an occasional pointing to parallel concepts between the traditions it is little more than a high schooler who enjoys too much anime randomly using sugoi), retain Trinitarian language (which honestly, I am beyond confused why he needs to talk of a trihypostatic Person with his Christology), argue that he is properly exegeting Scripture (in apologetic and harmonizing tones while pretending he is in taking into account higher criticism), and say that he is remaining faithful to the ecumenical pronouncements of Nicaea and Chalcedon (while being dismissive of Chalcedon). Instead of reading the Bible and living in conformity to the Christian tradition, why don't we just read Spinoza's Ethics (of whom I am surprised David does not quote seeing how he is obviously ripping off Spinoza's language of everything in the created world being an localized instantiation of the infinite modes of God) and whichever mystical writer is our favourite. Because quite literally, David's anthropology of the Divine who we are when we penetrate our illusory condition and who we will become (in a true, uncreated sense as our logos becomes the Logos) is nothing more than ego death and mystical annihilation in the Divine as described in any and every mystic.
In the end of the day, I think that if you have taken a handful of introductory philosophy courses, read some patristics, picked up any mystical thinker (especially outside your religious tradition), and thought somewhat about impassibility then this is a really boring book. If you haven't done that and remain somewhat tied to a dogmatic evangelicalism then you will come away thinking that David is the most heretical person you have ever read. Unfortunately.
In the end of the day, this book receives 2 stars because I did not feel the same joy or exciting indecency that his other works have given me. I think he may have just phoned this one in.
February 4, 2026
Longer review forthcoming; still processing.
I didn't find Hart’s argument particularly controversial, though I suspect that is because I carry no prior dogmatic commitment to substance dualism or "two-tiered" Thomism. While I recite the Creed every Sunday, I haven’t been taught that I must affirm a split self or a bifurcated universe. To Hart, what we describe as "supernatural" is really the fullness of nature. He takes as a premise the asymmetrical relationship of the Incarnation: that Christ's divinity contributes all to Jesus of Nazareth's humanity, while Jesus' humanity contributes nothing to the divine essence. Hart laments how the Nicene and Chalcedonian formulas often inadvertently reinforce binaries (nature vs. supernature, body vs. soul, elect vs. damned, etc) even if those formulas were originally intended to bridge those gaps.
The controversial pivot for a Western Christian is the claim that human nature is only fully realized in union with divinity, not apart from it. The Eastern Fathers taught this, that God became man so that man might become God (theosis), and Jesus himself quotes the Psalms to this effect: "Ye are gods." This challenges the common notion of the human as a mortal body inhabited by an eternal soul; instead, Hart posits that the spiritual is more "substantial" than the physical body we currently inhabit.
The appendices are essential here, specifically the discussion of "flesh" (sarx). Hart "re-weirds" Paul, dismantling the minimalist, sanitized notions of his thought often found in modern Western scholarship and piety. He recovers what Paul likely assumed: a maximalist cosmos filled with powers, principalities, angels, demons, and a substantiality of Spirit. In this light, "flesh" is a temporary, corruptible state, and the "psychical" animal body must be transformed into a more substantial, eternal, spiritual body. Hart successfully integrates the "odd" parts of Paul’s writing that others tend to bracket.
While the argument is compelling, I found the book a difficult climb. Hart assumes a level of philosophical and theological competency, including familiarity with Sergei Bulgakov, Rowan Williams, and Origen, that I simply do not have. My only advantage was a prior familiarity with Hart’s heady, rhetorical style. The appendices, however, were more accessible and shed much-needed light on the lectures, making a strong case for a second reading.
I didn't find Hart’s argument particularly controversial, though I suspect that is because I carry no prior dogmatic commitment to substance dualism or "two-tiered" Thomism. While I recite the Creed every Sunday, I haven’t been taught that I must affirm a split self or a bifurcated universe. To Hart, what we describe as "supernatural" is really the fullness of nature. He takes as a premise the asymmetrical relationship of the Incarnation: that Christ's divinity contributes all to Jesus of Nazareth's humanity, while Jesus' humanity contributes nothing to the divine essence. Hart laments how the Nicene and Chalcedonian formulas often inadvertently reinforce binaries (nature vs. supernature, body vs. soul, elect vs. damned, etc) even if those formulas were originally intended to bridge those gaps.
The controversial pivot for a Western Christian is the claim that human nature is only fully realized in union with divinity, not apart from it. The Eastern Fathers taught this, that God became man so that man might become God (theosis), and Jesus himself quotes the Psalms to this effect: "Ye are gods." This challenges the common notion of the human as a mortal body inhabited by an eternal soul; instead, Hart posits that the spiritual is more "substantial" than the physical body we currently inhabit.
The appendices are essential here, specifically the discussion of "flesh" (sarx). Hart "re-weirds" Paul, dismantling the minimalist, sanitized notions of his thought often found in modern Western scholarship and piety. He recovers what Paul likely assumed: a maximalist cosmos filled with powers, principalities, angels, demons, and a substantiality of Spirit. In this light, "flesh" is a temporary, corruptible state, and the "psychical" animal body must be transformed into a more substantial, eternal, spiritual body. Hart successfully integrates the "odd" parts of Paul’s writing that others tend to bracket.
While the argument is compelling, I found the book a difficult climb. Hart assumes a level of philosophical and theological competency, including familiarity with Sergei Bulgakov, Rowan Williams, and Origen, that I simply do not have. My only advantage was a prior familiarity with Hart’s heady, rhetorical style. The appendices, however, were more accessible and shed much-needed light on the lectures, making a strong case for a second reading.
November 28, 2025
This is an excellent read, highly recommend it, and a book that I'd reference in the future. DBH lays out terminology that confuses the best of us, well, at least it does me. DBH's treatment of Bulgakov's trihypostatic Person and the rejection of the Confederacy of Persons in the Godhead that developed in 20th century theology is worth the money of the book. If you have read Experience of God then you already know where he's coming from and the importance of God's impassibility; without it we don't have any real meaning of God, rather a demiurge (RIP modern liberal theology). And if you read You Are Gods then you understand man as theandric and how the divine and human natures are compatible and the latter intended for the former, thus the natures are not some foreign import--essentially theosis--(RIP two-tier Thomism).
DBH provides a rational exposition of how God is impassible in the Incarnation, what we mean by God's oneness and yet trihypostatic. Within the framework of an analogia entis metaphysics, the Incarnation is rational.
This would be a great conversational piece for Oneness Pentecostals, I'd also recommend Fred Sanders' work here, and Rahner's rule (DBH is in harmony with Rahner on the taxonomy of the processions of the hypostases in immanence and economy). It seems to me that DBH covers a lot of their concerns, which is a reaction to incorrect tritheistic expressions of the Trinity.
DBH provides a rational exposition of how God is impassible in the Incarnation, what we mean by God's oneness and yet trihypostatic. Within the framework of an analogia entis metaphysics, the Incarnation is rational.
This would be a great conversational piece for Oneness Pentecostals, I'd also recommend Fred Sanders' work here, and Rahner's rule (DBH is in harmony with Rahner on the taxonomy of the processions of the hypostases in immanence and economy). It seems to me that DBH covers a lot of their concerns, which is a reaction to incorrect tritheistic expressions of the Trinity.
October 17, 2025
A good study, but this guy over does the big terminology words. I had to have a dictionary in my other hand througout the book. Is He writing to fellow high brow scholars only? I am fairly well read and intelligent, but it was a struggle at times. And He should have had the english translation for all the Greek terms He used too. So google came to my rescure on that score. Though I did start to pick up on the Greek words a little, lol. He is seeming to head towards a Monistic read of God and Christology and I think his book will cause a lot of further debate, by other Scholars. But it was difficult reading at times for the Educated Layman. I hate his politics too. Suffers from TDS.
October 21, 2025
A compelling and thought provoking book on the unity of Christ’s two natures.
Although I am not sold on all of his argumentation and still have a lot of unanswered questions, I believe this book helps push the Christological conversation forward. I hope other theologians actually engage with his thoughts here instead of dismissing him.
Although I am not sold on all of his argumentation and still have a lot of unanswered questions, I believe this book helps push the Christological conversation forward. I hope other theologians actually engage with his thoughts here instead of dismissing him.
July 16, 2025
Okay, firstly, so glad I got this from a giveaway because $22 for this on Kindle? And $28 as a hardcover? Nah, absolutely not; it ain’t worth it. It’s terribly structured, written so boring. And everything is all jumbled up together. It needs some massive editing before it’s officially released.
October 22, 2025
So good. Much shorter than I was expecting, but it doesn't lack substance at all. It's characteristic DBH, but in a condensed form. Very challenging stuff, but an amazing synthesis of classical metaphysics and more radical theology.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews