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Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest
In Theological Territories, David Bentley Hart, one of America's most eminent contemporary writers on religion, reflects on the state of theology "at the borders" of other fields of discourse--metaphysics, philosophy of mind, science, the arts, ethics, and biblical hermeneutics in particular. The book advances many of Hart's larger theological projects, developing and deepening numerous dimensions of his previous work. Theological Territories constitutes something of a manifesto regarding the manner in which theology should engage other fields of concern and scholarship.
The essays are divided into five sections on the nature of theology, the relations between theology and science, the connections between gospel and culture, literary representations of and engagements with transcendence, and the New Testament. Hart responds to influential books, theologians, philosophers, and poets, including Rowan Williams, Jean-Luc Marion, Tom�s Hal�k, Sergei Bulgakov, Jennifer Newsome Martin, and David Jones, among others. The twenty-six chapters are drawn from live addresses delivered in various settings. Most of the material has never been printed before, and those parts that have appear here in expanded form. Throughout, these essays show how Hart's mind works with the academic veneer of more formal pieces stripped away. The book will appeal to both academic and non-academic readers interested in the place of theology in the modern world.
The essays are divided into five sections on the nature of theology, the relations between theology and science, the connections between gospel and culture, literary representations of and engagements with transcendence, and the New Testament. Hart responds to influential books, theologians, philosophers, and poets, including Rowan Williams, Jean-Luc Marion, Tom�s Hal�k, Sergei Bulgakov, Jennifer Newsome Martin, and David Jones, among others. The twenty-six chapters are drawn from live addresses delivered in various settings. Most of the material has never been printed before, and those parts that have appear here in expanded form. Throughout, these essays show how Hart's mind works with the academic veneer of more formal pieces stripped away. The book will appeal to both academic and non-academic readers interested in the place of theology in the modern world.
420 pages, Paperback
Published April 15, 2020
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About the author
David Bentley Hart
44 books698 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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August 20, 2020
Hart, David Bentley. Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020.
This collection of essays reveals David Bentley Hart at his extreme best and extreme worst. In other words, it’s like everything else he has written.
Early Notes
Description of phenomenology: it always evokes a prior metaphysical deduction “because it always already assumes a metaphysical premise: that there is a real correlation between the givenness of the phenomena and the intentionality of the perceiver” (28).
Barthian theology sees God as a “Wholly Other,” thus reducing him to an aliud who is now posed “over against” creation. And if God is always “Wholly Other,” then he is always posed against the Other, which means creation is eternal. This is why Barthianism has always been caught in a dialectic of creation either being eternal or fallen.
Nicene metaphysics: abandoned the Middle Platonic hierarchy. In this case Logos is no longer a lesser manifestation of a God who is beyond all manifestation. “It is in fact the eternal reality of God’s manifestation of his own essence to himself” (37). The essence is a movement of infinite disclosure. He doesn’t relate to creation through a hierarchy of hypostases, but he is the “infinite act within and beyond every finite act.”
Bulgakov, Metaphysics, and Christology
This is where Hart’s reputation as a classical theist is on full display. If Hart’s view of capital punishment is him at his worst. This is him at his best. Of interest to Reformed readers is Hart’s interaction with Barthian scholar Bruce McCormack. While we have a proper distaste for Barth, McCormack is probably the sharpest Reformed thinker on Christology. The fact that McCormack is wrestling with Bulgakov and has appeared on Hart’s radar is something of note.
Sergius Bulgakov was a Russian theologian who was exiled by the Communists. He was easily the most profound thinker of the 20th century regarding God, creation, Christology, etc. Bulgakov realized that arbitrariness in “our understanding of the relation between divine transcendence and creation’s contingency” threatens both (58). This hinges on actuality and passivity. God is an infinite God of pure act. He cannot be determined by unrealized potentiality.
Hart summarizes the divine moments quite eloquently: “that infinite donation and surrender, that infinite receiving that is also the eternal constitution of the giver, that infinite outpouring in the other that is also the eternal being of God” (59).
Hart wants to avoid any conception of God as having a “gnomic” or deliberative will. If God has to deliberate, then creation constitutes for him a real relation, and therefore “a pathos that modifies his nature.”
God is pure actuality. He is “the source of every act of being” (61). “God does not require the indeterminacy of the possible in order to be free because he is not some particular determination of being, some finite reduction of potency to act.”
Freedom and Universalism
You would expect me to argue against Hart that universalism is wrong. That’s not my argument, though. I’ll grant him the point for the time being. I won’t even say, “Yeah, but what about Hitler?” I’ll make it worse: will Hart and his disciples concede that Donald Trump will be in heaven? I’ll take my leave then.
We should look at his comments on freedom, though. He’s not entirely wrong and despite his sheer hatred of Calvinism, he sounds very Augustinian at times. Hart’s argument is that someone cannot freely and rationally choose the evil. A purely libertarian act cannot be one of sheer chance or mechanical impulse (this is also Jonathan Edwards’ argument). A truly free will, by contrast, is oriented towards the good.
Let’s not dismiss this argument too quickly. While he hates Calvinism, Hart is not giving the same arguments that your typical free-willer does. Quite the opposite, actually.
Science and Mind
This section is also quite good. Even if I am a physical system, I am an intentional physical system, which is problematic for hard naturalists since intentionality is not a physical process. Even worse, assuming evolution to be true, it cannot be reduced to pure physicality. Evolution is unintentionally (pun, maybe) hierarchical, with more complex systems superimposing on less complex ones. In short, I have reasons for being here and those reasons aren’t physical processes (131).
Science as science cannot tell us anything about science. It engages in what Heidegger calls “ge-stell,” or framing: reducing the world to a collection of objects. There is no ontological participation between the objects.
Intentionality: the mind knows by being actively disposed toward what lies outside of itself (169).
On Capital Punishment
This is Hart at his worst. His essay is full of invective. He comes across sneering. This is doubly unfortunate since he actually scores some points on Greek vocabulary. His main argument is that the Christian is forbidden from retributive justice per the Sermon on the Mount. That’s just the plain meaning of the passage, says Hart. He does not allow similar hermeneutical charity to those who would go to the “plain meaning” of Romans 13. I just want to focus on a few points:
1) I will grant to him that machairos doesn’t mean “sword of capital punishment,” but more like a police symbol. Okay, that might be true. The rest of the passage, though, does not admit Hart’s desire for “rehabilitative justice.” This “state as police” is to be a “terror to evildoers.” It cannot do that and rehabilitate them at the same time.
2) I can’t find the exact passage, but somewhere Hart says that Jesus never imagined the death penalty being used. I can only plead Matthew 13.
3) Hart’s petty childishness comes out when Feser quotes Hart’s more Anabaptist view of state punishment: “Again and again, the New Testament demands of Christians that they exercise limitless forgiveness, no matter how grievous the wrong” (Hart, quoted by Feser). Feser then gives the rhetorical counter: “We also have to refrain from punishing rapists, bank robbers, embezzlers, etc….The jails should be emptied” (quoted on p. 208). Feser has correctly cited Hart’s beliefs. How does Hart respond: “Twaddle...balderdash...I don’t need to explain a d*mned thing” (Hart 209).
Does this sound like an adult in control of his rational faculties?
Academic Freedom
Academic freedom should be more than just the negative freedom to say what I want. It should be the freedom to orient the will towards the Good and True. There is an intrinsic good to which the mind strives.
Beauty and Being
Whatever else Thomas Aquinas meant by beauty, he was correct that Beauty is pleasing just simply by being seen. A beautiful object must be complete and not lacking, its parts must be in proportion to each other, and it must be radiant (247).
Hart wants to go beyond this, and borrowing from Heidegger, he suggests a distinction between beauty and the event of beauty. Heidegger assimilates the event of beauty to the event of truth (249). “This is one of those rare moments in Heidegger when the light momentarily breaks through the clouds and he not only asks the right question but comes close to giving the right answer.” We understand beauty in the same way that we understand how the distinction between being and beings is made manifest. Beauty is the excess of Being as being gives itself to us, like in a Bach concerto. It is “a nimbus of utter gratuity” (250). This is also the language of “gift.” Beauty “shines out” as the sign and gift of that which transcends discrete beings.
This is similar to a Nicene ontology. As the other persons of the Trinity are coequal with the Father, there is no interval or gap that requires the Logos to be a lesser manifestation of the Father (252). “God’s eternal identity is convertible, without any reduction of degree, with his own manifestation of himself to himself.” As a result, creation becomes a free gift instead of a diminished manifestation.
On another note, while I generally don’t approve of Hart’s translation idiosyncrasies, I think he is quite close to the original context when it comes to the spirit realm. In any case, he is far more accurate than those who think in the traditional manner of “angels vs. demons.” There is a “realm of powers pervading this cosmos and mediating between it and the exalted, supercelestial realm of the truly divine, to theion. The secondary, more proximate divine orders of daimones--genii, longaevi, aerial sprites, the ethereal and spiritual forces pervading nature, the rulers of the planetary spheres, the angelic or daemonic governors of nations….composed a whole unseen hierarchy” (365-366). We, on the other hand, are so numb to it we just call everything “angel” or “demon,” when usually they are neither.
I also like “vale of Abraham” (367). Hart runs into problems elsewhere on exactly where the “rich man” is, if not in torment. Still, he marshals a number of classical sources that translate kolpos as vale or valley. His comparison with the Greek of 1 Enoch 22 is very interesting. It is a series of four koiloi separated from each other.
Other notes:
Soul--life principle (374).
Spirit--able to exist outside the body. Hart rejects a pure incorporeality, if only because soul and spirit are irreducibly local. They aren’t physical, but we need to avoid later Cartesian readings. It can be spatially extended without having physical magnitude.
Conclusion
This book gives you a “taste” of almost everything Hart has written, both good and bad, very good and very, very bad. Whenever Hart comes against a Christian tradition he doesn’t like, he dispenses with argument and just starts making fun of them. Ironically, this is a caricature of the very fundamentalists he so disdains.
There are some legitimately funny moments. In critiquing an author for engaging in psychoanalysis, Hart writes, “Dilworth gratuitously [interjects] the observation that, in regard to this or that aspect of Jones’s life, ‘A Freudian might say…’ That is a sentence that need never be completed” (300).
This collection of essays reveals David Bentley Hart at his extreme best and extreme worst. In other words, it’s like everything else he has written.
Early Notes
Description of phenomenology: it always evokes a prior metaphysical deduction “because it always already assumes a metaphysical premise: that there is a real correlation between the givenness of the phenomena and the intentionality of the perceiver” (28).
Barthian theology sees God as a “Wholly Other,” thus reducing him to an aliud who is now posed “over against” creation. And if God is always “Wholly Other,” then he is always posed against the Other, which means creation is eternal. This is why Barthianism has always been caught in a dialectic of creation either being eternal or fallen.
Nicene metaphysics: abandoned the Middle Platonic hierarchy. In this case Logos is no longer a lesser manifestation of a God who is beyond all manifestation. “It is in fact the eternal reality of God’s manifestation of his own essence to himself” (37). The essence is a movement of infinite disclosure. He doesn’t relate to creation through a hierarchy of hypostases, but he is the “infinite act within and beyond every finite act.”
Bulgakov, Metaphysics, and Christology
This is where Hart’s reputation as a classical theist is on full display. If Hart’s view of capital punishment is him at his worst. This is him at his best. Of interest to Reformed readers is Hart’s interaction with Barthian scholar Bruce McCormack. While we have a proper distaste for Barth, McCormack is probably the sharpest Reformed thinker on Christology. The fact that McCormack is wrestling with Bulgakov and has appeared on Hart’s radar is something of note.
Sergius Bulgakov was a Russian theologian who was exiled by the Communists. He was easily the most profound thinker of the 20th century regarding God, creation, Christology, etc. Bulgakov realized that arbitrariness in “our understanding of the relation between divine transcendence and creation’s contingency” threatens both (58). This hinges on actuality and passivity. God is an infinite God of pure act. He cannot be determined by unrealized potentiality.
Hart summarizes the divine moments quite eloquently: “that infinite donation and surrender, that infinite receiving that is also the eternal constitution of the giver, that infinite outpouring in the other that is also the eternal being of God” (59).
Hart wants to avoid any conception of God as having a “gnomic” or deliberative will. If God has to deliberate, then creation constitutes for him a real relation, and therefore “a pathos that modifies his nature.”
God is pure actuality. He is “the source of every act of being” (61). “God does not require the indeterminacy of the possible in order to be free because he is not some particular determination of being, some finite reduction of potency to act.”
Freedom and Universalism
You would expect me to argue against Hart that universalism is wrong. That’s not my argument, though. I’ll grant him the point for the time being. I won’t even say, “Yeah, but what about Hitler?” I’ll make it worse: will Hart and his disciples concede that Donald Trump will be in heaven? I’ll take my leave then.
We should look at his comments on freedom, though. He’s not entirely wrong and despite his sheer hatred of Calvinism, he sounds very Augustinian at times. Hart’s argument is that someone cannot freely and rationally choose the evil. A purely libertarian act cannot be one of sheer chance or mechanical impulse (this is also Jonathan Edwards’ argument). A truly free will, by contrast, is oriented towards the good.
Let’s not dismiss this argument too quickly. While he hates Calvinism, Hart is not giving the same arguments that your typical free-willer does. Quite the opposite, actually.
Science and Mind
This section is also quite good. Even if I am a physical system, I am an intentional physical system, which is problematic for hard naturalists since intentionality is not a physical process. Even worse, assuming evolution to be true, it cannot be reduced to pure physicality. Evolution is unintentionally (pun, maybe) hierarchical, with more complex systems superimposing on less complex ones. In short, I have reasons for being here and those reasons aren’t physical processes (131).
Science as science cannot tell us anything about science. It engages in what Heidegger calls “ge-stell,” or framing: reducing the world to a collection of objects. There is no ontological participation between the objects.
Intentionality: the mind knows by being actively disposed toward what lies outside of itself (169).
On Capital Punishment
This is Hart at his worst. His essay is full of invective. He comes across sneering. This is doubly unfortunate since he actually scores some points on Greek vocabulary. His main argument is that the Christian is forbidden from retributive justice per the Sermon on the Mount. That’s just the plain meaning of the passage, says Hart. He does not allow similar hermeneutical charity to those who would go to the “plain meaning” of Romans 13. I just want to focus on a few points:
1) I will grant to him that machairos doesn’t mean “sword of capital punishment,” but more like a police symbol. Okay, that might be true. The rest of the passage, though, does not admit Hart’s desire for “rehabilitative justice.” This “state as police” is to be a “terror to evildoers.” It cannot do that and rehabilitate them at the same time.
2) I can’t find the exact passage, but somewhere Hart says that Jesus never imagined the death penalty being used. I can only plead Matthew 13.
3) Hart’s petty childishness comes out when Feser quotes Hart’s more Anabaptist view of state punishment: “Again and again, the New Testament demands of Christians that they exercise limitless forgiveness, no matter how grievous the wrong” (Hart, quoted by Feser). Feser then gives the rhetorical counter: “We also have to refrain from punishing rapists, bank robbers, embezzlers, etc….The jails should be emptied” (quoted on p. 208). Feser has correctly cited Hart’s beliefs. How does Hart respond: “Twaddle...balderdash...I don’t need to explain a d*mned thing” (Hart 209).
Does this sound like an adult in control of his rational faculties?
Academic Freedom
Academic freedom should be more than just the negative freedom to say what I want. It should be the freedom to orient the will towards the Good and True. There is an intrinsic good to which the mind strives.
Beauty and Being
Whatever else Thomas Aquinas meant by beauty, he was correct that Beauty is pleasing just simply by being seen. A beautiful object must be complete and not lacking, its parts must be in proportion to each other, and it must be radiant (247).
Hart wants to go beyond this, and borrowing from Heidegger, he suggests a distinction between beauty and the event of beauty. Heidegger assimilates the event of beauty to the event of truth (249). “This is one of those rare moments in Heidegger when the light momentarily breaks through the clouds and he not only asks the right question but comes close to giving the right answer.” We understand beauty in the same way that we understand how the distinction between being and beings is made manifest. Beauty is the excess of Being as being gives itself to us, like in a Bach concerto. It is “a nimbus of utter gratuity” (250). This is also the language of “gift.” Beauty “shines out” as the sign and gift of that which transcends discrete beings.
This is similar to a Nicene ontology. As the other persons of the Trinity are coequal with the Father, there is no interval or gap that requires the Logos to be a lesser manifestation of the Father (252). “God’s eternal identity is convertible, without any reduction of degree, with his own manifestation of himself to himself.” As a result, creation becomes a free gift instead of a diminished manifestation.
On another note, while I generally don’t approve of Hart’s translation idiosyncrasies, I think he is quite close to the original context when it comes to the spirit realm. In any case, he is far more accurate than those who think in the traditional manner of “angels vs. demons.” There is a “realm of powers pervading this cosmos and mediating between it and the exalted, supercelestial realm of the truly divine, to theion. The secondary, more proximate divine orders of daimones--genii, longaevi, aerial sprites, the ethereal and spiritual forces pervading nature, the rulers of the planetary spheres, the angelic or daemonic governors of nations….composed a whole unseen hierarchy” (365-366). We, on the other hand, are so numb to it we just call everything “angel” or “demon,” when usually they are neither.
I also like “vale of Abraham” (367). Hart runs into problems elsewhere on exactly where the “rich man” is, if not in torment. Still, he marshals a number of classical sources that translate kolpos as vale or valley. His comparison with the Greek of 1 Enoch 22 is very interesting. It is a series of four koiloi separated from each other.
Other notes:
Soul--life principle (374).
Spirit--able to exist outside the body. Hart rejects a pure incorporeality, if only because soul and spirit are irreducibly local. They aren’t physical, but we need to avoid later Cartesian readings. It can be spatially extended without having physical magnitude.
Conclusion
This book gives you a “taste” of almost everything Hart has written, both good and bad, very good and very, very bad. Whenever Hart comes against a Christian tradition he doesn’t like, he dispenses with argument and just starts making fun of them. Ironically, this is a caricature of the very fundamentalists he so disdains.
There are some legitimately funny moments. In critiquing an author for engaging in psychoanalysis, Hart writes, “Dilworth gratuitously [interjects] the observation that, in regard to this or that aspect of Jones’s life, ‘A Freudian might say…’ That is a sentence that need never be completed” (300).
August 24, 2020
David Bentley Hart has been one of my favorite theologians over the past few years: from The Experience of God to The Beauty of the Infinite to The Doors of the Sea and That All Shall Be Saved, I’ve had my mind shaped and challenged by Hart. Those four books, as well as his books on Christian history (Atheist Delusions and The Story of Christianity) are all brilliant. His books of essays and lectures, as all books of essays and lectures are, have always been uneven. Some lectures resonate, some do not. That said, his book The Hidden and the Manifest, may have hit me more deeply than any other.
All that to say, this set of essays was a mixed bag for me. At no point does he reach the heights of some of his previous works. But is that just because I’m familiar with his work by now and have read his ideas before?
The first section, on theology, is often fantastic. That said, as these are essays and lectures Hart is responding to the work of others. Having not read those works, something is lost in the translation. Its not too big a deal, as Hart’s ideas shine through. One highlight here is in “The Gospel According to Melpomene” Hart illustrates how too much Christian theology comes across sounding like the sort of Ancient Greek tragedy where the scales must be balanced and all made equal as God’s wrath is poured out upon the son to balance love and justice. In response, Hart argues the Gospel overturns the entire model as the resurrection is God’s rejection of the need for blood sacrifice. My favorite essay in this section is “The Devil’s March: Creatio ex Nihilo, the Problem of Evil and a Few Dostoyevskian Mediations”. Here he tackles Ivan Karamazov’s argument against God that is not, as has been said, a total move to atheism but instead the rejection of a God who would build the universe on even one suffering soul. Hart argues Ivan cannot be responded to by some “free will” defense (“hell is locked from the inside”) and that much Christian theology fails to answer Ivan. The answer Hart provides is essentially God is a God of outpouring love, not one who employs violence as a means to an end, and that through this love all will be brought to know God. Again, familiarity with Hart shows that, to him, universal reconciliation is the only theology that not only vindicates God but does not make God a monster.
The second section is he discusses science. Reading Hart excoriate the likes of Daniel Dennett and others never really gets old. This is where Hart is at his best, pointing out the deep flaws in a naturalistic picture of the world: the rejection of metaphysics is irrational and impossible and there are plenty of problems science cannot solve such as the existence of mind.
Then in the third section he writes on the gospel and culture. Here Hart is at his most snarky as he strongly argues against Christian support for the death penalty. One thing Hart has consistently revealed is Christians in the West (and the East too, I suppose) have submitted to a version of Christianity that would be mostly unrecognizable to Jesus and the apostles. Added to his criticisms of the bastardized faith of American Christianity is a picture of what the faith actually is all about. The best essay here is “The Story of the Nameless: The Use and Abuse of History for Theology” as he argues for a distinct Christian view of history that tells the story not primarily of kings and those in power but of the weak and nameless. This story flows from the story of Jesus overturning all power.
A lot more could be said. Again: if you’ve read Hart these ideas are familiar. As I read, I yearn for Hart to write a book of theology that goes deeper into these ideas (though, in some of his previous books, he already has).
Like any book of essays, it is sometimes uneven. I skipped section four altogether as Hart offers some literary criticisms of authors I’ve never heard of nor care about. Then in the final section he discusses the New Testament, mostly issues that arose in his translation.
Overall, not the best book to start on Hart if you are unfamiliar. Not the best book of essays (I’ll take Hidden and Manifest or A Splendid Wickedness). But still fantastic.
All that to say, this set of essays was a mixed bag for me. At no point does he reach the heights of some of his previous works. But is that just because I’m familiar with his work by now and have read his ideas before?
The first section, on theology, is often fantastic. That said, as these are essays and lectures Hart is responding to the work of others. Having not read those works, something is lost in the translation. Its not too big a deal, as Hart’s ideas shine through. One highlight here is in “The Gospel According to Melpomene” Hart illustrates how too much Christian theology comes across sounding like the sort of Ancient Greek tragedy where the scales must be balanced and all made equal as God’s wrath is poured out upon the son to balance love and justice. In response, Hart argues the Gospel overturns the entire model as the resurrection is God’s rejection of the need for blood sacrifice. My favorite essay in this section is “The Devil’s March: Creatio ex Nihilo, the Problem of Evil and a Few Dostoyevskian Mediations”. Here he tackles Ivan Karamazov’s argument against God that is not, as has been said, a total move to atheism but instead the rejection of a God who would build the universe on even one suffering soul. Hart argues Ivan cannot be responded to by some “free will” defense (“hell is locked from the inside”) and that much Christian theology fails to answer Ivan. The answer Hart provides is essentially God is a God of outpouring love, not one who employs violence as a means to an end, and that through this love all will be brought to know God. Again, familiarity with Hart shows that, to him, universal reconciliation is the only theology that not only vindicates God but does not make God a monster.
The second section is he discusses science. Reading Hart excoriate the likes of Daniel Dennett and others never really gets old. This is where Hart is at his best, pointing out the deep flaws in a naturalistic picture of the world: the rejection of metaphysics is irrational and impossible and there are plenty of problems science cannot solve such as the existence of mind.
Then in the third section he writes on the gospel and culture. Here Hart is at his most snarky as he strongly argues against Christian support for the death penalty. One thing Hart has consistently revealed is Christians in the West (and the East too, I suppose) have submitted to a version of Christianity that would be mostly unrecognizable to Jesus and the apostles. Added to his criticisms of the bastardized faith of American Christianity is a picture of what the faith actually is all about. The best essay here is “The Story of the Nameless: The Use and Abuse of History for Theology” as he argues for a distinct Christian view of history that tells the story not primarily of kings and those in power but of the weak and nameless. This story flows from the story of Jesus overturning all power.
A lot more could be said. Again: if you’ve read Hart these ideas are familiar. As I read, I yearn for Hart to write a book of theology that goes deeper into these ideas (though, in some of his previous books, he already has).
Like any book of essays, it is sometimes uneven. I skipped section four altogether as Hart offers some literary criticisms of authors I’ve never heard of nor care about. Then in the final section he discusses the New Testament, mostly issues that arose in his translation.
Overall, not the best book to start on Hart if you are unfamiliar. Not the best book of essays (I’ll take Hidden and Manifest or A Splendid Wickedness). But still fantastic.
October 30, 2022
A magnificent, challenging, convicting, humorously cranky and vocabulary-expanding series of essays. DBH covers a wide swath of topics, from book reviews on Capital Punishment; to reflections on Dostoevsky's devastating approach to the problem of evil; to the question of consciousness versus a mechanistic universe; to the present and future of Orthodoxy in America; to a long section dealing with Hart's translation choices for his New Testament. Hart does not suffer fools gladly, and is at his snarky best when taking on and taking down logical, theological, scientific and linguistic absurdities. His portrayal of the Gospel is at once terrifying in its strangeness to modern ears, and liberating in its fierce and unyielding affirmation in the ultimate salvation from the flesh, the world and the devil(s) wrought in and by Jesus. My favourite essay is probably called "A Prayer for the Poor," in which Hart examines the Lord's Prayer as a prayer that only makes sense on the lips and from the heart of the poor and oppressed.
September 15, 2023
It could be a 3, but it's too brilliant at many points to be sullied with a 3. David Bentley Hart has expanded my thinking more than any other author over late 2022 and 2023, and this volume proved no different. I read it straight through (because I have a desk job that permits such trials), but I definitely think this should be a book to snack on.
Many of the essays answered thinkers I haven't read, but I still enjoyed hearing Hart's side of the phone call.
Some of these essays serve as material for Roland in Moonlight; I thought of them as Proto-Roland, and I appreciated them much more here. 1) Because Hart gets to the point faster and clearer, 2) the novel structure didn't really serve the ideas most of the time (IMO).
Like "Atheist Delusions," it's the kind of book I hope to return to once I've read a few hundred more books just to see how I've progressed (how much I can contribute to the conversations). A measuring-stick kind of book.
Many of the essays answered thinkers I haven't read, but I still enjoyed hearing Hart's side of the phone call.
Some of these essays serve as material for Roland in Moonlight; I thought of them as Proto-Roland, and I appreciated them much more here. 1) Because Hart gets to the point faster and clearer, 2) the novel structure didn't really serve the ideas most of the time (IMO).
Like "Atheist Delusions," it's the kind of book I hope to return to once I've read a few hundred more books just to see how I've progressed (how much I can contribute to the conversations). A measuring-stick kind of book.
October 21, 2023
These essays were delivered as public lectures. Here Hart divides them into five territories: theology, theology and science, theology and culture, literature on transcendence, and New Testament.
Here is quick sampling:
Sergei Bulgakev--Why is there anything? Bec God is God.
St. Paul--Christianity is an empire within an empire, a radically different understanding of society and property, especially before it became a religion as differentiated from a model of how how to live.
Bernard Lonergan-- the desire to know is a movement toward being as a whole.
Dostoyevsky-- clarifies the problem of evil without coming to a resolution of it.
My favorite essay of all is titled, "A Sense of Style: Beauty and the Christian Moral Life: in which Hart describes Jesus' elan in the story of the woman taken in adultery. "Christ's every gesture in the tale is calibrated with his richly attractive qualities: calm reserve, authority, ironic detachment, but also tenderness, moral generosity, graciousness, but then also alacrity of wit, even a kind of sober levity ('Let him who is without sin cast the first stone...') All of it has about it the character of the effortless beau geste, a nonchalant display of the special privilege belonging to those blessed few who can insouciantly, confidently violate any given convention simply because they know how to do it with accomplished artistry, aplomb, panache, finesse...". This is Hart at his best.
Another fav of mine was "A Prayer for the Poor"--his take on the 'Our Father' prayer.
I skipped the essays in which I had no recognition of the works he was engaging, but all in all, I enjoyed the collection.
Here is quick sampling:
Sergei Bulgakev--Why is there anything? Bec God is God.
St. Paul--Christianity is an empire within an empire, a radically different understanding of society and property, especially before it became a religion as differentiated from a model of how how to live.
Bernard Lonergan-- the desire to know is a movement toward being as a whole.
Dostoyevsky-- clarifies the problem of evil without coming to a resolution of it.
My favorite essay of all is titled, "A Sense of Style: Beauty and the Christian Moral Life: in which Hart describes Jesus' elan in the story of the woman taken in adultery. "Christ's every gesture in the tale is calibrated with his richly attractive qualities: calm reserve, authority, ironic detachment, but also tenderness, moral generosity, graciousness, but then also alacrity of wit, even a kind of sober levity ('Let him who is without sin cast the first stone...') All of it has about it the character of the effortless beau geste, a nonchalant display of the special privilege belonging to those blessed few who can insouciantly, confidently violate any given convention simply because they know how to do it with accomplished artistry, aplomb, panache, finesse...". This is Hart at his best.
Another fav of mine was "A Prayer for the Poor"--his take on the 'Our Father' prayer.
I skipped the essays in which I had no recognition of the works he was engaging, but all in all, I enjoyed the collection.
January 8, 2025
The Devil's March: Creatio ex nihilo, the Problem of Evil, and a Few Dostoyevskian Meditations
"Within the bounds of our normal human experience of nature and history, no claim seems more evidently absurd than that creation is- in any but the most qualified, conditional, local, and inconstant sense- something good; and no piety seems more emptily saccharine than the one that exhorts us to regard our own existence as a blessing, or as grace, or as anything more than a sheer brute event (and a preponderantly rather horrid one at that). Yes, lilacs arc lovely, puppies delightful, sexual intercourse (ideally) ecstatic, and every pleasure of the flesh and mind an invitation to the delirious dance of life. But all the things about the world that enchant us, viewed in proper proportion to the whole, arc at best tiny flickers of light arnid a limitless darkness. The calculus of our existence is quite pitilessly exact in the end. Children die of monstrous diseases, in torment; nature is steeped in the blood of the weak, but then also of the strong; the logic of history is a gay romp through an endless abattoir, a succession of meaningless epochs delineated only by wars, conquests, enslavements, spoliations, mass murders, and all the empires ofthe merciless. The few happy savages among us whose lives pass in an unbroken flow of idyllic contentment and end in a final peaceful sleep arc so rare that their good fortune, posed against the majestic immensity of the rest of humanity's misery, looks like little more than one of fate's more morbid jests. Everything we love vanishes, and so do we; every attachment is merely the transient prelude to an enduring bereavement; every accidental happiness terminates in an essential sorrow. And, if the teachings of most religions are correct, even death offers most of us no respite from our misery, but only new dimensions and amplitudes and ages of suffering-ceaseless karmic cycles of transmigration, interminable torments in hell, and so on. The conatus essendi or tanha or whatever else it is that binds us to this world has plenty to feed upon, of course, as many good things are contained within the compass of the whole; but certainly the whole is nothing good. If, as Thomas and countless others say, nature instructs us that we owe God our utmost gratitude for the gift of being, then this is no obvious truth of reason, but a truth more mysterious than almost any other-rather on the order of learning that one is one's own father or that the essence of love is acertain shade of blue. Purely natural knowledge instructs us principally not only that we owe God nothing at all, but that really we should probably regard him with feelings situated somewhere along the continuum between resigned resentment and vehement hatred.
"And yet Christians must, of course, believe in the goodness of all being, with a certitude that even the most sanguine Platonist could not match, because they are committed to the doctrine that all things are created from nothingness by a God of infinite power, wisdom, and benevolence. And so certain affirmations - metaphysical, moral, and narrative- prove inevitable for any coherent Christian reflection on the problem of evil, not only to answer the question of evil's origin, but also to defend the innocence of God against the evidences of finite experience. One of these affirmations is that evil possesses no proper substance or nature of its own, that it exists only as a privatio boni, that though it is real-exorbitantly and ubiquitously real- it is so only in the way that cancer is real: as a corruption and perversion of something that in its own proper nature is essentially good. Thus we may say that, in a purely metaphysical sense, God is implicated neither as substance nor as direct cause in the existence or effects of evil. Another equally indispensable claim is that evil possesses a history, one composed entirely of contingencies and comprising both a first and a last moment. Thus we may say that evil, in all its cosmic scope, is still only an episode, with no share in God's eternity. Another is that the proximate cause of sin lies in the mysterious difference between rational creatures' natural
wills (which necessarily seek the one Good in which all things have their true beginning and end) and their deliberative wills (which, under the transcendental canopy of the Good, can nevertheless be diverted toward lesser goods and false ends). Thus we may say that evil is the creature of our choices, not of God's creative will. Yet another is that the moral apostasy of rational beings from the proper love of God is somehow the reason for the reign of death and suffering in the cosmos, that human beings-constituting what Maximus the Confessor called the priestly "methorios" (the boundary or frontier) between the physical and the spiritual realms-severed the bond between God's eternity and cosmic time when they fell. Thus we may say, as fantastic as it seems - and as fantastic as it truly is when reduced to fundamentalist literalism regarding the myth of Eden- that all suffering, sadness, and death, however deeply woven into the fabric of earthly existence, is the conscequence of the depravities of rational creatures, not of God's intentions. Not that we can locate the time, the place, or the conditions of that event. That ours is a fallen world is not a truth demonstrable to those who do not believe; Christians can see it only within the story of Christ, in the light cast back from his saving action in history upon the whole of time. The fall of rational creation and the conquest of the cosmos by death is something that appears to us nowhere within the course of nature or history; it comes from before and beyond both. We cannot search it out within the closed totality of the damaged world because it belongs to another frame of time, another kind of time, one more real than the time of death- perhaps the divine or angelic aeon beyond the corruptible sub-sidereal world of chronos, or perhaps the Dreamtime or the supercelestial realm of the pure forms or the Origenist heaven of the primordial intelligences, or what have you.
"Within the bounds of our normal human experience of nature and history, no claim seems more evidently absurd than that creation is- in any but the most qualified, conditional, local, and inconstant sense- something good; and no piety seems more emptily saccharine than the one that exhorts us to regard our own existence as a blessing, or as grace, or as anything more than a sheer brute event (and a preponderantly rather horrid one at that). Yes, lilacs arc lovely, puppies delightful, sexual intercourse (ideally) ecstatic, and every pleasure of the flesh and mind an invitation to the delirious dance of life. But all the things about the world that enchant us, viewed in proper proportion to the whole, arc at best tiny flickers of light arnid a limitless darkness. The calculus of our existence is quite pitilessly exact in the end. Children die of monstrous diseases, in torment; nature is steeped in the blood of the weak, but then also of the strong; the logic of history is a gay romp through an endless abattoir, a succession of meaningless epochs delineated only by wars, conquests, enslavements, spoliations, mass murders, and all the empires ofthe merciless. The few happy savages among us whose lives pass in an unbroken flow of idyllic contentment and end in a final peaceful sleep arc so rare that their good fortune, posed against the majestic immensity of the rest of humanity's misery, looks like little more than one of fate's more morbid jests. Everything we love vanishes, and so do we; every attachment is merely the transient prelude to an enduring bereavement; every accidental happiness terminates in an essential sorrow. And, if the teachings of most religions are correct, even death offers most of us no respite from our misery, but only new dimensions and amplitudes and ages of suffering-ceaseless karmic cycles of transmigration, interminable torments in hell, and so on. The conatus essendi or tanha or whatever else it is that binds us to this world has plenty to feed upon, of course, as many good things are contained within the compass of the whole; but certainly the whole is nothing good. If, as Thomas and countless others say, nature instructs us that we owe God our utmost gratitude for the gift of being, then this is no obvious truth of reason, but a truth more mysterious than almost any other-rather on the order of learning that one is one's own father or that the essence of love is acertain shade of blue. Purely natural knowledge instructs us principally not only that we owe God nothing at all, but that really we should probably regard him with feelings situated somewhere along the continuum between resigned resentment and vehement hatred.
"And yet Christians must, of course, believe in the goodness of all being, with a certitude that even the most sanguine Platonist could not match, because they are committed to the doctrine that all things are created from nothingness by a God of infinite power, wisdom, and benevolence. And so certain affirmations - metaphysical, moral, and narrative- prove inevitable for any coherent Christian reflection on the problem of evil, not only to answer the question of evil's origin, but also to defend the innocence of God against the evidences of finite experience. One of these affirmations is that evil possesses no proper substance or nature of its own, that it exists only as a privatio boni, that though it is real-exorbitantly and ubiquitously real- it is so only in the way that cancer is real: as a corruption and perversion of something that in its own proper nature is essentially good. Thus we may say that, in a purely metaphysical sense, God is implicated neither as substance nor as direct cause in the existence or effects of evil. Another equally indispensable claim is that evil possesses a history, one composed entirely of contingencies and comprising both a first and a last moment. Thus we may say that evil, in all its cosmic scope, is still only an episode, with no share in God's eternity. Another is that the proximate cause of sin lies in the mysterious difference between rational creatures' natural
wills (which necessarily seek the one Good in which all things have their true beginning and end) and their deliberative wills (which, under the transcendental canopy of the Good, can nevertheless be diverted toward lesser goods and false ends). Thus we may say that evil is the creature of our choices, not of God's creative will. Yet another is that the moral apostasy of rational beings from the proper love of God is somehow the reason for the reign of death and suffering in the cosmos, that human beings-constituting what Maximus the Confessor called the priestly "methorios" (the boundary or frontier) between the physical and the spiritual realms-severed the bond between God's eternity and cosmic time when they fell. Thus we may say, as fantastic as it seems - and as fantastic as it truly is when reduced to fundamentalist literalism regarding the myth of Eden- that all suffering, sadness, and death, however deeply woven into the fabric of earthly existence, is the conscequence of the depravities of rational creatures, not of God's intentions. Not that we can locate the time, the place, or the conditions of that event. That ours is a fallen world is not a truth demonstrable to those who do not believe; Christians can see it only within the story of Christ, in the light cast back from his saving action in history upon the whole of time. The fall of rational creation and the conquest of the cosmos by death is something that appears to us nowhere within the course of nature or history; it comes from before and beyond both. We cannot search it out within the closed totality of the damaged world because it belongs to another frame of time, another kind of time, one more real than the time of death- perhaps the divine or angelic aeon beyond the corruptible sub-sidereal world of chronos, or perhaps the Dreamtime or the supercelestial realm of the pure forms or the Origenist heaven of the primordial intelligences, or what have you.
May 16, 2020
Really enjoyed the variety of subject areas! I have read and studied works in all but one, that being the literature section. The literature section challenged me to expand my reading in that area, so I intend to start by reading the works of those DBH covered in this book.
I continue to enjoy and appreciate DBH's perspectives in philosophy, theology, culture, science, and literature. Even if you dislike some, or all of his writings, IMHO he ought not to be ignored by any person who values thought-provoking ideas in these areas. Personally, it has been challenging, encouraging, affirming, amusing, and in sum, refreshing, to explore these theological territories alongside DBH.
Don't pass on a chance to read any of his works, you will be the better for having done so.
I continue to enjoy and appreciate DBH's perspectives in philosophy, theology, culture, science, and literature. Even if you dislike some, or all of his writings, IMHO he ought not to be ignored by any person who values thought-provoking ideas in these areas. Personally, it has been challenging, encouraging, affirming, amusing, and in sum, refreshing, to explore these theological territories alongside DBH.
Don't pass on a chance to read any of his works, you will be the better for having done so.
January 5, 2024
I’m on my phone so this will be short. Reading DBH on the kindle has the advantage of the built in dictionary that assists the neophyte with the inexorable slog of difficult vocabulary. The first two parts of this compendium of essays were the most interesting to me for the simple reason that I enjoy his take on theology and the relationship between theology and the sciences. The last essay held my attention because he discusses the translation choices that angered the most folks.
July 4, 2020
A must-read to fully appreciate why one must understand that ethics, science, literature, and biblical hermeneutics are a seamless garment of our understanding of the difference in human beings and the difference it makes. We can more easily see why religion, science, and the Divine are one.
March 6, 2021
One of Hart's best works. The range and span these essays take on is stunning. I heartily recommend its wide theological reading.
November 4, 2023
Honestly I probably just bit off more than I could chew with this one, but it was physically painful to get through (but more in a long distance running way than getting beat up way)
September 30, 2020
A really very good series of essays on theological and related points. I highly recommend everyone read David Bently Hart!!!
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