David Bentley Hart Quotes

“For he says, 'In an acceptable time I heard you, and on a day of salvation I helped you.' Look: Now is any acceptable time. Look: Now is a day of salvation.–Providing no stumbling-block in any matter, so that the ministry should receive no censure, but instead commending ourselves in everything as God’s ministers, in immense endurance, in afflictions, in necessities, in narrow straits, in welts, in jails, in riots, in labors, in sleepless nights, in days of hunger, in chastity, in knowledge, in magnanimity, in honesty, in a holy spirit, in unfeigned love, in a discourse of truth, in God’s power; by righteousness’ armaments, on our right and our left, through glory and dishonor, through censure and praise; as both deceivers and truthful men, as both unknown and fully known, as both dying and–see!—we live, as both chastened and not put to death, as aggrieved yet ever rejoicing, as destitute yet enriching many, as both having nothing and possessing all things. (2 Corinthians 6:2-10)”
― David Bentley Hart

“This is all evidence, however, of a deeper truth about these texts: They are not beguiling exercises in suasive rhetoric or feats of literary virtuosity; rather, they are chiefly the devout and urgent attempts of often rather ordinary persons to communicate something "seen" and "heard" that transcends any language, but that nevertheless demands to be spoken, now, here, in whatever words one can marshal. (From Hart's Introduction)”
― David Bentley Hart, The New Testament

“The history of philosophy has been a history of prejudices masquerading as principles, and so merely a history of fashion. […] All I mean to urge here is that one should never be too naive regarding the quality of the current philosophical culture, or imagine that the most recent thinking is in any meaningful sense more advanced or more authoritative than that of a century or a millennium or two millennia ago.”
― David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God : Being, Consciousness, Bliss

“God cannot change over time as he would then be dependent upon the relation between some unrealized potentiality within himself and some fuller actuality somehow ‘beyond’ himself into which he may yet evolve; he would then be a conditional being. He also must possess no limitations of any kind, intrinsic or extrinsic, that would exclude anything real from him. Nothing that exists can be incompatible with the power of being that he is, as all comes from him, and this means that he must transcend all those limits that alienate and exclude finite realities from one another, but in such a manner that he can embrace those finite realities in a more eminent way without contradiction. Again, a classic image of this simplicity is that of white light, which contains the full chromatic range of the optical spectrum, but in a ‘more eminent’ simplicity.”
― David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God : Being, Consciousness, Bliss

“I can doubt that the world really exists, but I cannot doubt that I have intentional consciousness, since doubt is itself a form of conscious intention.”
― David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God : Being, Consciousness, Bliss

“In any event, even if one’s concept of rationality or of what constitutes a science is too constricted to recognize the contemplative path for what it is, the essential point remains: no matter what one’s private beliefs may be, any attempt to confirm or disprove the reality of God can be meaningfully undertaken only in a way appropriate to what God is purported to be. If one imagines that God is some discrete object visible to physics or some finite aspect of nature, rather than the transcendent actuality of all things and all-knowing, the logically inevitable Absolute upon which the contingent depends, then one simply has misunderstood what the content of the concept of God truly is, and has nothing to contribute to the debate. It is unlikely, however, that such a person really cares to know what the true content of the concept is, or on what rational and experiential bases the concept rests. In my experience, those who make the most theatrical display of demanding ‘proof’ of God are also those least willing to undertake the specific kinds of mental and spiritual discipline that all the great religious traditions say are required to find God. If one is left unsatisfied by the logical arguments for belief in God, and instead insists upon some ‘experimental’ or ‘empirical’ demonstration, then one ought to be willing to attempt the sort of investigations necessary to achieve any sort of real certainty regarding a reality that is nothing less than the infinite coincidence of absolute being, consciousness, and bliss. In short, one must pray: not fitfully, not simply in the manner of a suppliant seeking aid or of a penitent seeking absolution bur also according to the disciplines of infused contemplation with real constancy of will and a patient openness to grace, suffering states of both dereliction and ecstasy with the equanimity of faith, hoping but not presuming, so as to find whether the spiritual journey, when followed in earnest, can disclose its own truthfulness and conduct one into communion with a dimension of reality beyond the ontological indigence of the physical. No one is obliged to make such an effort; but, unless one does, any demands one might make for evidence of the reality of God can safely be dismissed as disingenuous, and any arguments against belief in God that one might have the temerity to make to others can safely be ignored as vacuous.”
― David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God : Being, Consciousness, Bliss