The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth

by David Bentley Hart

The Beauty of the Infinite is a splendid extended essay in "theological aesthetics." David Bentley Hart here meditates on the power of a Christian understanding of beauty and sublimity to rise above the violence -- both philosophical and literal -- characteristic of the postmodern world.

The book begins by tracing the shifting use and nature of metaphysics in the thought of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Lyotard, Derrida, Deleuze, Nancy, Levinas, and others. Hart pays special attention to Nietzsche's famous narrative of the "will to power" -- a narrative largely adopted by the world today -- and he offers an engaging revision (though not rejection) of the genealogy of nihilism, thereby highlighting the significant "interruption" that Christian thought introduced into the history of metaphysics.

This discussion sets the stage for a retrieval of the classic Christian account of beauty and sublimity, and of the relation of both to the question of being. Written in the form of a dogmatica minora, this main section of the book offers a pointed reading of the Christian story in four moments, or Trinity, creation, salvation, and eschaton. Through a combination of narrative and argument throughout, Hart ends up demonstrating the power of Christian metaphysics not only to withstand the critiques of modern and postmodern thought but also to move well beyond them.

Strikingly original and deeply rewarding, The Beauty of the Infinite is both a constructively critical account of the history of metaphysics and a compelling contribution to it.

Genres: Theology, Philosophy, Religion, Christianity, Nonfiction, Christian, Spirituality

448 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003

About the author

David 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.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like anyone, I enjoy listening to music. I never learned to play an instrument and I don’t really have a critical ear for the skills of musicians. But I have friends who are skilled musicians. We can listen to the same song and because of their understanding of music, they appreciate the song on a different level. I may recognize that it is a good song, but there is a lot more going on than I fully understand.

This is how I feel about David Bentley Hart’s amazing book The Beauty of the Infinite. It is like a classic symphony played by a full orchestra. I hear the music and get that something beautiful is happening, but I also know there is a lot more going on that I don’t fully understand. Hart’s book engages with everything from 20th century philosophy to the early church fathers; he has a command of an incredibly wide breadth of writings. The first 150 pages when he discusses the philosophies of people like Deleuze, Foucault, Levinas and others…well it made me wish I had taken more philosophy courses in college. There were moments I wanted to give up. There were numerous words I underlined simply because I had never seen them before (and I wonder if Hart just invented some of them, honestly).

Once he began talking about Nietszche and then after that theology, I understood more what he was talking about. Even here though, the writing stretched me. This is advanced philosophical theology at its best. Just as there is nothing wrong with a fun three-minute country diddy, so there is nothing wrong with an easy-t0-read and understand theology book. At the same time, there is great worth in stretching yourself, whether it be the classical symphony or the lengthy philosophical theology.

So what is Hart’s primary point? What’s the book about? Postmodern philosophies, really the ideas that have permeated our culture, see all difference as violence. There is an inherent violence that happens when one encounters the other. Christian theology, Hart argues, presents a different story. This story, rooted in the Trinity, is one that allows difference for in the Trinity we see difference and diversity without any sort of violence or confusion. As he continues to show how this plays out through Creation, Salvation and Eschatology…I’ll just say it is one of those books that makes me want to be a Christian.

Another point I appreciated is Hart’s urging for Christians to focus on announcing the Christian story. Nietzsche was correct, to some degree, as he criticized Christianity and put forth an alternative approach to the world (the will to power). The choice is clear: power over the other, a power rooted in violence where the strong survive, or peace with the other through Christ. The best thing Christians can do is live out, literally illustrate, this alternative to the will to power idea.

I am sure there is much more there. This book will need a re-read sooner rather than later. For those who want a theological feast, this is the book for you.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me several months to finish this book. Hart argues for getting beauty back as a theological category. Reformed and the more intellectually rigorous evangelicals are the ones who will likely read this book. That is good. Those are the ones--and I am reformed--who need to see beauty in theology. Hart uses the latest vocabulary from postmodern philosophy. the reader is urged patience in this regard. The first section of the book (the first 150 or so pages) is incredibly hard to read. Hart assumes that his readers are intimiately familiar with Nietzsche, Derrida, and Levinas. I wasn't.

Hart argues that the Trinity is the answer to the postmodern problem of *differance.* Where postmoderns see the world--and language--as chaotic and violent because of the inherent difference of reality, Hart sees the Trinity as a sublime answer to differance. The Trinity can accommodate differance because the Trinity can posit a reality that is both diversity without confusion, otherness without violence. This is the hardest part of the book. What Hart is saying is that postmoderns--and most Calvinists, ironically--assume that any difference in reality is necessarily violent. Hart shows how the Trinity solves the problem of linguistic violence.

The rest of the book after that is relatively easy to read. Hart divides his book into Trinity-Creation-Salvation-Eschatology categories. This is where his Eastern Orthodoxy is evident and provides a welcome relief to the strictly judicial categories of the West. The section on salvation literally sang! The last 200 pages were a brilliant tour-de-force.

This book has the potential to re-write American theology. It also can unify across confessional lines without watering the unity down into the usual WCC garbage. Let's hope that Hart writes more.

[Brent · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is perhaps one of the most important theological books that I have read in my career, and indeed, it came at a time when I was wrestling with many questions that were pertinent to what Bently Hart himself was exploring. The book itself is divided into three main portions: the first dealing negatively with deconstructing the deconstructionists as it were, such as Focoult, Nietzsche and others. The second portion is his positive contribution of how, simple put, Christian theology is the answer to many of the post-modern questions that have arisen the past century. In a word, Bently argues in re-understanding the infinite as the beautiful and not the contrary. Only such an understanding of God, as beauty, as bountiful goodness and aesthetic wonder, can help us solve many of the philosophical questions still looming large over our heads. Hart draws heavily on the Orthodox Fathers, especially the Gregorys. This was a fascinating, albeit dense, terse, and difficult, read. Anyone without any reading comprehension in Greek, Latin, German, and French will find this somewhat nauseating to slog through. Nevertheless, this is a gem. I will be utilizing Hart for my studies on impassibility.

[Paul H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beauty of the Infinite was my introduction to Hart; certainly impressive at the time, but in retrospect I'm amazed that Eerdmans let it go into the world in this state. It is difficult to adequately describe the pomposity and comic absurdity of Hart's prose style in this book; he seems to think that he's Chesterton and Voltaire and Horace all rolled up into one, tossing off wickedly sharp bon mots that reduce his stunned opponents to silence, where really he comes across as a dweeby grad student trying waaaaaaaaaaay too hard to be clever, probably holding a snifter of brandy in one hand and chuckling to himself at his own brilliance. And it turns out that Hart was, in fact, a dweeby grad student at UVA while writing most of this book (Beauty is a barely modified version of his doctoral dissertation under Wilken).

What's maddening is that Hart (as has been evidenced in the 15 years since the publication of Beauty) is, imo, the greatest theologian of his generation, but the pretentiousness of his early writing style is enough to make one THINK that it's all just smoke and mirrors, to an extent. If he wrote in a more unassuming style, I honestly think his ideas would have even more of an impact (see his recent book, Experience of God, for an example of toned-down Hart).

The opening section of Beauty is probably the strongest; I'm guessing that Hart had seen Pickstock's critique of Derrida (published a few years earlier in her After Writing) and wanted to outdo her critique by expanding it to all postmodern thought (he mostly succeeds). The final two-thirds of the Beauty is a somewhat tedious slog through systematic theology, though of course the argumentation is quite impressive.

[Alex McEwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have recently learned that nearly every academic pursuit is a quest for the divine. What is logic other than the search for total order? What is mathematics but the pursuit of the infinite? What is ethics other than the search for moral absolutes? In this wonderful work, David Hart reminds us that aesthetics too is a pursuit of the divine. There is beauty in the world because God is beautiful. And naturally, all beauty finds its telos in God and his wonderful attributes.

David Hart’s “The Beauty of the Infinite” was one of my favorite reads in a very long time. I don’t know if I have ever been moved to tears by an academic work before this.

This work is divided into three distinct sections and an introduction that really shouldn’t be missed. The introduction defines terms and sets up the premise of the argument.

The first section may be the most academic of the three. It argues that postmodernism is a worldview of violence and thus antithetical to beauty. This section feels a little austere at times and is hard to follow if you’re not steeped in Reformed theology, ethics, aesthetics, and comparative worldviews. Almost every other page, I found myself going down Google rabbit holes. However, this was part of the fun of the book. I can’t remember the last time a book pushed me to learn this much. This section does feature my all time worst pet peeve in academic works; when an author refuses to translate from other languages. There is a lot of Greek, Latin, German, and French with very little context, and often words that could be looked up are used in very niche ways that pertain to the argument. The reality is I didn’t enjoy the first section very much. However, the second section of this work is so important that I still think this work should be widely read. If skipping the first section of this work is going to get someone in the door, then I think they can do so in good faith and still take away the most paradigm shifting ideas of this book.

The second section of this book is where the work shines. Hart presents his material in a unique way when he brings up most of the classical systematic subjects and examines how they influence and are influenced by aesthetics. There isn’t a subject broached that isn’t absolutely paradigm shifting, but my particular favorite was the section on creation. We can create, and ethically should create beautiful things because we ourselves are made in the image of the very telos of beauty. Beyond that, God has made creation beautiful to reflect his invisible attributes. To enjoy beauty is to set on a path to enjoy the divine.

The final section of the book is a series of smaller essays on the subject of Aesthetics. They’re helpful, and the Christian reader will be encouraged by them, but they didn’t have the impact of the second section.

Overall, I think every Christian will be encouraged by this book. I wish I could pull the second section out to examine it outside of the context of the larger work. I was reading a borrowed copy of this book, but have already gotten an electronic version and intend to purchase the full work in print. I will be reading this again.

A day will come when the author of beauty himself descends from the clouds. And we will gaze upon such beauty as we have never seen. Creation will be made complete, even more beautiful than it was in that ancient garden. And we will look upon the very face of God, in all his radiant splendor. Until that undying day, may we hold fast. May we enjoy beauty and create beautiful things, even if we only experience in the miniature now. Amen.

[Joseph Chow · Rating 5 out of 5]

On multiple occasions, I’ve begun an essay detailing the disintegrating effect that postmodern thought has had on culture at large, intending to make war with the standard icons; Delillo and DFW; Paul Thomas Anderson and David Fincher; Vonnegut, Palahniuk, and Bret Easton Ellis; SNL and Letterman; Tyler Durden, cognitively mapping some ideological flowchart where Pynchon inspired PTA, who inspired Fincher, who inspired all the post-Fight Club Angry Young Men. In the end, all attempts were scrapped, because they were all didactic and sanctimonious, because they felt self-gratifying, in the sense of nothing indicates an overinflated ego quite like the aversion to the ego, and because nothing I came up with added much of anything new to Wallace’s magnificent essay, E Unibus Plurum, which painted my distresses just fine. I was growing increasingly convinced that postmodern thought was not only de-edifying, but also blatantly false, simply because no one could actually lived as if they believed it to be true. I watched my generation disprove Postmodernists tenets of “nothing matters” by caring about everything; identity politics, gender, sexuality, religion, technology, race, justice. If the prophets of the 80’s and 90’s were right about truth being dead so be cute and die, then why did us Millennials have to have an opinion on all of these things? Within 40 years, postmodernism was dead, people wanted to care about things instead of being hip, and Bret Easton Ellis was giving confused New Yorker interviews about how he didn’t understand outrage culture. How didn’t he realize that shattering existential foundations, just means people will invent their own meaning, including meanings Ellis’ wouldn’t understand? He lived long enough to be confused by the consequences of his own books.

Indeed, I desired deeply to reject postmodern philosophy, but unfortunately, I could not find satisfying personal responses beyond succumbing to the postmodern preaching of the death of meta-narratives. Those that existed, such as DFW’s appeals to merely returning from irony and cleverness to empathy and sincerity simply because it was nice, living in the awe of the American Sublime of Delillo’s White Noise and Underworld, finding myself a Marla to hold hands with while watching our post-industrial collapse, and joining Letterman in mocking myself and everything else into oblivion, all ended in dissatisfying mental futility.

I found much relief in Christianity. Scripture painted a meta-narrative of a story that I loved and believed in; a cosmic sense of Jesus as King, and a personal sense that I now had a bridge from helpless sin to receiving a divine nature. CS Lewis, Tim Keller, Augustine, Bonhoeffer, Dallas Willard, Thomas Merton, John Piper, Kierkegaard, Beuchner, NT Wright, Thomas a Kempis, Chesterton, Rohr, Nouwen, Tozer, the fellows at the Bible Project (I’m sorry, no women, no minorities, maybe that will come over the next 1000 years of Christianity), all played various roles in unveiling Jesus, fleshing out Scripture, explaining theology, molding my thoughts, and introducing spirituality. But intellectually in a vacuum, I still viewed the choice between Christianity and a hybrid of existentialism-nihilism-postmodernism as a flip of the coin, there seemed to me to be valid reasons behind any worldview. I simply preferred the life of “love God/love neighbor” as it was the most fun.

David Bentley Hart’s the Beauty of the Infinite transcends my search. My search was an illusion. Sure, he answers the intellectual questions. He dismantles Kant, Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida, Heidegger, before going for the jugular of Nietzsche. He does it in only 150 pages or so. And I am biased. I haven’t read of any of those thinkers, which I suppose academically renders my judgement invalid, but I found my immersion in the art they influenced to be sufficient enough in understanding the language. And moreover the satisfaction was beyond the mind, for if DBH had merely played ball in their arena, I would have to read their rebuttals. But as in all the best answers in life, Hart points beyond the question to answer the question. He simply points to God, as infinite beauty. He reframes four major touch points of theology; Trinity, Creation, Salvation, and Eschaton, within the pursuit of the beautiful. God is beauty. God made a beautiful creation because he pursues beauty. Creation represents the infinitely unfolding nuances of God’s nature, like Bach taking a musical theme and compounding it again and again. God is not distanced from his creation, he is the distance and is beyond the distance. The Trinity desires and responds to one another’s desire. Christ represents the new story of humanity. In Christ, the economy of violence has a overcome by the God’s infinite beauty. Hart takes these simple sentences and whips up magisterial theology to support them that works as systematic and aesthetic, while overcoming the postmodern thought he opposes.

I must say, it’s a difficult book. I got lost often and missed much. I had to use the dictionary and Wikipedia to give a primer on all these names. Sometimes I didn’t want to google translate that French or Latin phrase. I’m not orthodox, and I’m not a universalist. But I’m deeply grateful for this book, not just in a literature vacuum, but in the context of the story of my life, for themes of it will pervade all aspects of my life going forward. We are in the midst of a pandemic, of social unrest, of economic inequalities and racial injustices, of people groups unreached by the Gospel, of a spiritual poverty. People are sick, dying, and suffering. I start graduate school, after a sabbatical gap year. The future feels very much laid out in front of me, may the Lord establish my steps. Being the captain of my fate, forging in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race seems like hubris now. There’s not much time anymore for the witty conjecture of postmodernism, there’s only the pursuit of the beautiful. They’re fine books to read and fun movies to watch, but they don’t produce a wisdom worth living by. My mental entertaining of Postmodern art had been weakly thrashing about in final throes before its death. Hart finished the deed.

[Simon Stegall]

Did not finish.

I made it about 200 pages, and even though I was pretty interested as long as I muscled my way on, the fact is that I am not a theologian and I don't read Greek and I just couldn't muster up the will to turn another page.

Nevertheless if I meet any theologians interested in how deconstructionism interacts with orthodoxy, I'll recommend this offhandedly.

[Jana Light · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still processing and reviewing and trying to make sure I understand what Hart is saying before I review it. :-) This could take a while, so don't hold your breath!

[Jack Naylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a while, I was confused as to what this book might be about - "an aesthetics of Christian truth." It's not exactly clear to one who hasn't read the book or been drowned in postmodern philosophy. In truth, however, the aesthetics is everything - it is a category through which Hart is able to explore all the major metaphysical conversations in Christianity (the being of God as trinity, the salvific work of Christ, and the eschatological promises that accompany both). In the process, he also launches delightful attacks against the alternatives - Hegel's arrogant reason, Nietzsche's bourgeois will to power, Heidegger's nihilating story of being, and Levinas' vacuous tale of the other. These critiques are vicious and thorough (thus, they require some prior knowledge of what is being critiqued), and they make his explication of Christian theology all the better.

As nearly every page is a sophisticated weave of claims, it would be very challenging to summarize what the book claims, and I certainly don't desire to do that. What I will say is that everyone who is serious about Christian metaphysics must read this book. Sometimes it's overbearing and pretentious, but it contains an immense cache of insights I have never found collected in such a marvellous fashion. Few books have inspired such personal delight in the truths of the gospel. The NT kerygma is not a complex one, but its implications for the world are so profound and beautiful as to persuade by their very existence. This proclomation really is the answer to the anxieties of the world - the gracious response to the violence of the postmodern effacement of tradition and conviction. Any attempt to justify history (whether the tragic solace of the modern man or vague justice of alterity) is a vain agitation before the original self-giving unity of the Trinity, for whom the world is a gratuitous extension of its internal movement of donation and diversification. Christ is not just a beautiful soul (as Nietzsche described him), but a persuasive force through whom the world is fully incorporated into God. The work of the trinitarian God exceeds all blustering philosophical narratives, with a yet greater narrative that encompasses them and shatters the limits of their imaginations. Of all the Christian thinkers I have read, Hart makes one of the most compelling cases for why the gospel is robust enough to confront the most potent philosophies of our day. One is left with the feeling that anything else is inadequate—all our hollow liberalisms and their economies of totality. The trinitarian God is the only narrative sufficient to save us.

[Jess]

Came for the 150-page introduction, a theological version of John Milbank’s post-postmodern social theory gambit: turn the tables & use the decadent Frenchies’ whole contingency bit against them!

Did not stay for the remaining two-thirds of the thing: an endless bone-dry systematic theology. I’m some kind of Christian, but I don’t need every last narratoontological takeaway from here to Easter (or any of them at all, really). DBH is elsewhere a rancorous gasbag—but here he’s mostly pretty restrained, knows his shit, and does in the final analysis indeed have a point.

[N Perrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow.

[Tyson Guthrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hart's was one of the most thought-provoking books I've read in years. An excellent critique of postmodernity in its own terms, yet without conceding its premises. This work was (and remains) challenging to read (and process). I will be chewing on and returning to this book for a long time.

[Ken Reese · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should be required Christian reading.

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I, like many other reviewers, can only complain that this early work of Hart's suffered from a lack of editorial rigor. But I might also add that it is possible that such excessive language as Hart uses in the Beauty of the Infinite is the only kind of language appropriate to his subject matter. There is no denying that his prose is lovely, and few deny that certain passages of this book seem to be without end. Perhaps an author arguing that being and difference are primordially Trinitarian peace, and that creation is purely gratuitous could simply lay out his case in clear, linear, and widely intelligible logical propositions, but perhaps it is far more fitting, which is not to say necessary, that such an author take the liberty to endow his argument with an aesthetic gratuity and symphonic excess analogous to that which he purports to describe.
In short, do not be turned away from this book because of its verbosity, and certainly, do not think that the style of the Beauty of the Infinite accurately represents Hart's writing style in general; since this publication, Hart has developed his prose style considerably, and I find reading his works a constant pleasure.

[Nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost unforgivibly avoids thorough discussion of natural evil (a start reducted just for that). Specifically, I expected at least a passing mention to the now-widely-accepted scientific fact of the inseperability of the elements of strife, violence, dominance, 'cruelty', and prey/predator relationships from biology, irrespective of human 'sinfulness'. Instead, we get the by-now tired references to Auschwitz and Gulags. Too safe. Also, the book can get frustratingly ornate and theo-babbly (but hey this is Hart we're talking about).

Other than that, this is quintissential theology from arguably one of the most well-read people on the planet, offering what I consider to be the most insightful deconstruction of post-modernism in print.

Update: 26/12/2017 This has through time proved an invauable resource, hence upped to 5 stars.

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this several years ago. It's a tough read, slogging through Hart's rhetoric. And honestly I wish he'd rewrite this in ordinary English, but with that caveat, I really liked it.

[Joel]

This book was just way too hard for me to read. Maybe someday.

[David Mosley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last read:
2012 (17 September-2 October)
2013 (5-20 May)

[Dann Zinke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me three or so years to get through the book, and didn't really understand most of it. The parts of it I did, though, were brilliant.

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hart’s thesis: “Is the beauty to whose persuasive power the Christian rhetoric of evangelism inevitably appeals, and upon which it depends, theologically defensible?” Hart writes from the height of postmodernism in the academy. Defines postmodernism as modernism come of age, an absorption of all reality to the autonomous ego. He is able to opposes postmodernism without taking the bait of reverting back to a metaphysical principle by narrating a trinitarian retelling of the gospel that makes difference into selfless love. His florid language exemplifies the rhetorical strategy of using beauty to persuade. Beauty is defined as the form, not the Kantian sublime beyond form. Hart is suspicious of general hermeneutics because it reduces every text to interpretation. Hart argues that hermeneutics (Hermes=god of war) violently subjects all truth claims to personal interpretation, which thereby undermines the dictum that all claims are interpretations. Hart resents the Gospel as a beautiful act of selfless love in eternity repeated in the incarnation. Affirms analogical relations between being and beings. Analogy of faith is refuted. Analogy of faith is based on reconciliation in Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, according to Barth. Hart makes beauty into the mediating principle. Beauty is God’s glory. Hart quotes Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius the Areopagite often. Uses Nietzsche as foil. Hans Urs von Balthasar and Erich Pryzwara serve as his modern inspirations, and John Milbank as a postmodern colleague. Hart converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. Is a universalist and socialist. Does a theology of glory bypass the Cross? Hart’s text has to be read, and I will read it again. I used a screen reader, but frequently paused vocal to take notes.

[Joel Wentz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is, quite simply, the greatest theological text I've ever read. Seriously. I feel like it would be a great disservice to even attempt to capture what's so wondrous about it (and, to be clear, I'm also not claiming that I understood all of it!), but there are a few things to say.

Hart's exposition of Trinitarian ontology/metaphysics/whatever....is breathtaking. Possibly one of the most profound claims is that difference is NOT violence, inherently, as difference is contained within peace and unity only within Trinity. Everything flows from that, the grounding for the incarnation, the eclipsing of the boundary of death in the resurrection of Christ, the summing up of everything and its restoration in the eschaton one day.....it's impossible to even approximate the way Hart captures these mysterious beautiful truths. Along the way, you get top-notch interaction with various so-called "post-modern" thinkers (Derrida, Foucalt, etc....) as well as expositions of some of the great patristic thinkers, notably Gregory of Nyssa and Athanasius, and Hart's interaction with Anselm in just a few pages is just one example of his masterful command of such a broad sweep of literature. And for those who have been put off by his acerbic posture and tone in more-recent writings, all of that is seriously tampered in this work. There are still some swipes at thinkers here and there, but it's not nearly as confrontational.

I truly, truly believe that DBH is a living legend in the realm of philosophy and theology. I think he is one of the only individuals writing today that stands a chance of still being read in 500 years. Seriously, he is that good. And this is the best of his that I've read. Utterly masterful and magisterial.

[Bryan Teresi]

I understand, being generous, perhaps half of what I have read so far, owing to this man's vocabulary and his engagement with Continental philosophy, of which I have only a rudimentary understanding. But, some gems:

"Christians claim that the beauty that appears in Christ, contrary to all judicious taste, abides with and in the poor, the godforsaken, the forgotten, and the lowly, not simply as a sweetening of their lot with bootless sentimentality, or because Christianity cherishes life only when it is weak, perishing, and uncomely, but because Christ--who is the truth of being--in dwelling among and embracing these "slaves," shows them to be luminously beautiful."

"I intend nothing facetious in saying that Nietzsche has bequeathed Christian thought a most beautiful gift, a needed anamnesis of itself--of its strangeness. His critique is a great camera obscura that brings into vivid and concentrated focus the aesthetic scandal of Christianity's origins, the great offense this new faith gave the gods of antiquity, and everything about it that pagan wisdom could neither comprehend nor abide: a God who goes about in the dust of exodus for love of a race intransigent in its particularity; who apparels himself in common human nature, in the form of a servant; who brings good news to those who suffer and victory to those who are as nothing; who dies like a slave and outcast without resistance; who penetrates to the very depths of hell in pursuit of those he loves; and who persists even after death not as a hero lifted up to Olympian glories, but in the company of peasants, breaking bread with them and offering them the solace of his wounds."

[Daniel Klawitter · Rating 4 out of 5]

No doubt about it, David Bently Hart is a smarty-pants. He is absurdly fluent in both patristic theology and continental and postmodern philosophy. The prose style at times mimics the turgid phraseology of postmodern academic slang: "alterity", "etiolation", etc. appear with mind-numbing regularity. But there is no disputing the magnum opus quality of this book, whose purpose is in part to subvert the nihilism of all systems of thought that are not based in the original goodness of creation grounded in the transcendence and infinite beauty of a loving God whose act of creation was a non-violent and aesthetic kenosis.

Hart's engagement with Nietzsche (the father of so much later postmodern philosophy) is of particular brilliance. Here is a small sample:

"Nietzsche may well represent...the appearance at long last of a philosophical adversary whose critique of Christianity appears to be as radical as the kerygma it denounces. Nietzsche grasped...how audacious, impertinent, and absolute was Christianity's subversion of the values of antiquity: thus allowing theology to glimpse something of its own depths in the mirror of his contempt. In short, with Nietzsche the voice of unbelief at last swells to the registers of the voice of faith and so, curiously, does faith honor."

Overall, a quite audacious and bracing book both in its scope and intellectual ambition. It is perhaps best read with a dictionary near by unless you have memorized most of your Derrida.

[Philemon - · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a familiar and compelling theme: five hundred years ago religious faith provided a communal base for social and intellectual activity; then, with the Englightenment, religion was largely replaced by the Reason's ethical abstractions; finally, in the 1970's or so, Reason begins to be displaced by largely chaotic elements under the loose heading of Postmodernism. With Postmodernism the whole idea of objective truth has come under attack; social cohesion has weakened as people focus on private definition; public ideals have yielded to less fettered impulses as powerful political and economic groups machinate for power in what has become a moral wasteland. Well, that's a schematic sketch, anyway.

David Bentley Hart brilliantly fleshes this out while tackling the question of where Postmodernism leaves us socially, intellectually, spiritually, even aesthetically. But his analytical fervor comes at a price: it's virtually unreadable. Sentences are twice as long as most readers (myself included) are prepared to assimilate. Philosophical / theological jargon words clog bloated paragraphs. Within a few chapters, the author has dived into a morass of Derrida, Deleuze, and Lyotard and failed to come up. If only he'd simplify now and then. As it is, I can't recommend it for anyone short of a grizzled, symposium-hardened academic. Oh well...

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a unique book—unlike anything I've read before. A lot of it was incomprehensible, despite my focused attempts, but the easier parts were stirring and even beautiful. Here's a taste of the prose:

"There is a specular infinity in mutually defining opposites: Parmenides and Heracleitos gaze into one another’s eyes, and the story of being springs up between them; just as two mirrors set before one another prolate their depths indefinitely, repeating an opposition that recedes forever along an illusory corridor without end, seeming to span all horizons and contain all things, the dialectic of Apollo and Dionysus oscillates without resolution between endless repetitions of the same emptiness, the same play of reflection and inversion. But the true infinite lies outside and all about this enclosed universe of strife and shadows; it shows itself as beauty and as light: not totality, nor again chaos, but the music of a triune God. Nietzsche prophesied correctly: what now always lies ahead is a choice between Dionysus (who is also Apollo) and the Crucified: between, that is, the tragic splendor of totality and the inexhaustible beauty of an infinite love."

[Matt Escott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure what rating to give this book because I probably only understood 30% of it. It is a very difficult book, particularly for anyone who doesn't have at least a master's degree in theology or philosophy); this isn't philosophy "lite." The parts I did understand were excellent; I particularly enjoyed and found useful his discussion of salvation and the cross.
There were many parts I did not understand. Some of this is due to the sheer amount of learning Hart has done; he speaks of writers and concepts mostly with the assumption that his readers already know what he is talking about, and which I often did not. Some of it is due to his writing style, which seemed at times to be unnecessarily complex, wordy, and laborious, but then again the concepts he is describing and the philosophies he is expounding and interacting with aren't terribly simple, so I shouldn't expect a Dr. Seuss book.

[James Hamilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a complicated book. Really this is a modified dissertation, and it shows, and is not meant for the uninitiated in philosophy/theology. There were definitely some great ideas and expositions of earlier theologians, but because the people Hart is critiquing are so wrong and have such complicated and confusing systems, Harts engagements with them are just not exciting, and really make this a task of trudging through it. But, in those moments where he is a little more straightforwardly talking about the kerygma, Jesus or other more graspable elements of the faith, it is refreshing, stimulating, and illuminating. However, those gems are fewer than I'd wish, and there are certainly personal beliefs of Hart that get in the way as well. For those who want to go deep, and know about 1,000 words that no one will ever use in an actual discussion, this might be good, but it is not a book for normal consumption.

[Scott Rushing · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been putting this book off for years, but I finally committed to reading a few pages every day this summer.

Anyone who makes it to the end of this book should receive graduate credits for a philosophy and theology degree. The scope of the argument reaches beyond the horizons it is so deep and wide. DBH grapples with every major philosopher of the 20th century, and even some I had never heard of.

In the end, DBH is not actually advancing a new thesis of the theological aesthetics. Rather, he is arguing a revival of the writings of Gregory of Nyssa. As a patristic theologian myself, I found his claims convincing and persuasive.

The audience for this book is microscopic. But the argument for advancing theological aesthetics against the postmodern condition is of the utmost importance.

[George · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm glad this book is good for so many people, but it isn't my jam. It is in the strain of modern theology that acts as a time machine where we are transported back in time to scholastic arguments about how many angels can stand on the point of a needle.

Hart's basic argument here is that God is infinite and beautiful. Therefore beauty calls us to remember that. This has implications when it comes to seeking beauty and that we have to reject the violence that is brought along with theories of beauty found in atheistic and enlightenment influenced philosophisies like Nietzche or some variants of Kant.

Was it interesting? Sometimes I guess. But really a pretty dense slog for me.

[Elliot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this during the summer of 2020- height of COVID. A phenomenal read on the metaphysics of Christian faith and the infinite distances Christ analogically inhabits. Never thought someone could convince me to read the analogia entis and metaphysics charitably but this book certainly accomplished that. (DBH also convincingly argues that Christian metaphysics are not simply "classical metaphysics" with Christian language attached).