David Bentley Hart | |
|---|---|
 Hart in 2022 | |
| Born | (1965-02-20)February 20, 1965 (age 60) Howard County, Maryland, U.S. |
| Education | |
| Occupations |
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| Notable work | See bibliography |
| Awards |
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| Education | |
| Thesis | Beauty, Violence, and Infinity: A Question Concerning Christian Rhetoric (1997) |
| Doctoral advisor | Robert Louis Wilken (on dissertation committee) |
| Philosophical work | |
| School | |
| Institutions | University of Notre Dame |
| Main interests | Philosophy of religion Philosophy of mind Oriental philosophy History of philosophy |
| Website | davidbentleyhart |
David Bentley Hart (born February 20, 1965) is an American philosopher, theologian, essayist, cultural commentator, fiction author, and religious studies scholar. He is the author of twenty-four books (including translations), as well as over one thousand essays, reviews, and papers. From a predominantlyAnglican family background, Hart becameEastern Orthodox when he was twenty-one. His academic works focus onChristian metaphysics,philosophy of mind,Indian andEast Asian religion, Asian languages,classics, and literature as well as aNew Testament translation. Books with wider audiences includeThe Doors of the Sea,Atheist Delusions,The Experience of God,That All Shall Be Saved,Roland in Moonlight,A Roland Colonnade, andAll Things Are Full of Gods.
Born and raised inMaryland, Hart regularly references his family roots and theBaltimore Orioles in his writing. Hart graduated with a BA in interdisciplinary study from theUniversity of Maryland, completed an MPhil in theology atCambridge University, and then a PhD in religious studies at theUniversity of Virginia. Hart received the Templeton Fellowship at theUniversity of Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study in 2015.
Hart's translation of the New Testament was published in 2017 with a second edition in 2023.[1] Five of his books have received awards or book of the year recognitions. Hart has written essays on diverse topics such asart,baseball,literature,consciousness, theproblem of evil,apokatastasis,theosis,fairies,film, and politics. Hart maintains a subscription newsletter calledLeaves in the Wind that features original essays and conversations with other thinkers.
Hart notes that most of his ancestors lived in Maryland for generations since their arrival there in 1634.[2][3][4] Born inHoward County and graduating fromWilde Lake High School in 1982 with classes inLatin and Greek, Hart was a National Merit Scholar.[5] Hart grew up with two older brothers and writes that this "has always made me feel more like a creature of the 1960s and early 1970s than do some of my friends of roughly my age."[6]
Hart writes that "regional pride dictated that the tender souls of schoolchildren be regularly exposed to the works ofH. L. Mencken" and that this shaped his own writing style so that he would spend his life "striving to suppress my assassin's smile while heaping one elaborately vituperative subordinate clause atop another."[7] Outside the high school curriculum, Hart took up French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and modern Greek. At the University of Maryland, Hart studied classics, history, world literature, religious studies and philosophy while also learning to read Chinese and Sanskrit. As a teenager, Hart started to read the earlyChurch Fathers along with contemporary Eastern Orthodox theologians, converting to Orthodoxy at the age of twenty-one.[8][9]
Hart earned a B.A. in interdisciplinary study from theUniversity of Maryland, a M.Phil. in theology from theUniversity of Cambridge, and a Ph.D. in religious studies from theUniversity of Virginia.[10] He taught at the University of Virginia, theUniversity of St. Thomas (Minnesota),Duke Divinity School, andLoyola College in Maryland. He also served as visiting professor atProvidence College where he held the Robert J. Randall Chair in Christian Culture. During the 2014–2015 academic year, Hart was Danforth Chair atSaint Louis University in the Department of Theological Studies. In 2015, he was appointed as Templeton Fellow at theUniversity of Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. As part of this Templeton Fellowship work, Hart organized a conference focused on the philosophy of mind.[11] In an April 19, 2023 email, Hart noted that he is currently a collaborative research scholar at the University of Notre Dame.[12][13][14] His primary areas of research have beenphilosophical theology,systematics,patristics,classical andcontinental philosophy, andSouth andEast Asian religion with recent focus on the genealogy of classical and Christianmetaphysics,ontology, the metaphysics of thesoul, and thephilosophy of mind.[15]
Hart has authored twenty books and produced two translated works.The New Testament: A Translation was published in 2017 withYale University Press[16][17][18][19] and a second edition in 2023.[20] His translation in collaboration with John R. Betz ofAnalogia Entis: Metaphysics: Original Structure and Universal Rhythm byErich Przywara was published in 2014 byEerdmans.[21] Hart's academic books includeThe Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Eerdmans, 2003),The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (Yale, 2013),[22]The Hidden and the Manifest: Essays in Theology and Metaphysics (Eerdmans, 2017),That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation (Yale, 2019),Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest (Notre Dame, 2020),[23]Tradition and Apocalypse: An Essay on the Future of Christian Belief (Baker, 2022),[24] andYou Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature (Notre Dame, 2022).[25]
In April and May of 2024, Hart delivered theStanton lectures at theUniversity of Cambridge with presentations across five days entitled "The Light of Tabor: Notes Toward a Monist Christology".[26][27] Hart's bookAll Things Are Full of Gods: The Mysteries of Mind and Life from Yale University Press released in August of 2024.[28]
Hart is known as a cultural commentator and polemicist.[29] Since the late 1990s, Hart has published hundreds of essays on varied subjects includingDon Juan,Vladimir Nabokov,Charles Baudelaire,Victor Segalen,Leon Bloy,William Empson,David Jones,The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (1893), andbaseball. These often provocative essays have appeared inFirst Things (2003 to 2020),[30]The New Atlantis,[31]Commonweal,Aeon,The Wall Street Journal,The New York Times, and many other periodicals. Several of these have shaped future books such asThe Doors of the Sea,Roland in Moonlight, andAtheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale, 2009). Since May 2021, Hart also writes regular essays for hisLeaves in the Wind subscription newsletter. This newsletter also features conversations with other writers such asIain McGilchrist,Rainn Wilson,China Miéville,Richard Seymour,Tariq Goddard, andSalley Vickers.[32][33]
Ed Simon writing for theLos Angeles Review of Books in 2022 said that "Hart is often difficult for some people to categorize" with his "thousands of essays, reviews, and papers" but that "what's agreed upon is that he's wide-ranging and deeply read in his seemingly limitless interests, and loquacious in his refreshingly baroque prose style" as well as "the rare theologian" who can "poetically invoke" beauty with descriptions of color and light.[34] Simon also quoted as "an evaluation with merit" the claim byMatthew Walther that Hart is "our greatest living essayist."[35] Hart's style has been praised for "its thought and humor and spleen"[36] and called "extremely rude."[37] Martyn Wendell Jones has said of Hart's style that, while it may "constantly verge on the immoderate" and rarely "make a point squarely without infusing a bit of accelerant," what might be seen as "needless indulgence" is also "an act of generosity toward his readership" because "his maximalist impulses ...enable him to consistently generate interest on the level of his individual sentences."[38] His essays often mix humor and critical commentary as with "A Person You Flee at Parties: Donald and the Devil" (aboutDonald Trump from May 6, 2011, forFirst Things).[39] Hart's essays sometimes explored the boundaries between different religious traditions as with "Saint Sakyamuni" (2009)[40] or the boundaries of orthodoxy as with "Saint Origen" (2015).[41]
In 2012,The Devil and Pierre Gernet, a collection of his fiction, was released byEerdmans.[42] Two of his books,A Splendid Wickedness in 2016 andThe Dream-Child's Progress in 2017, are collections devoted to popular and literary essays that also include several short stories. His short stories have been described as "Borgesian" and are elaborate metaphysical fables, full of wordplay, allusion, and structural puzzles.[43] Hart added two books to his fiction works in 2021:Roland in Moonlight andKenogaia (A Gnostic Tale).[44][45][46] His bookRoland in Moonlight has a largely autobiographical framework while consisting primarily of dialogs with his dog Roland as well as accounts of his fictional great uncle Aloysius Bentley (1895–1987). Hart had written previously about both Roland and Aloysius in essays forFirst Things, with two about Aloysius 2011 and six about Roland from 2014 to 2016. ReviewingRoland in Moonlight for a review inChurch Times,John Saxbee (former Bishop of Lincoln) wrote that "sometimes, a book defies description or, rather, refuses to settle into a conventional genre" and comparedRoland in Moonlight toSophie's World meetsAlice through the Looking-Glass orDon Quixote meetsThe Wind in the Willows.[47]
Hart's first major work,The Beauty of the Infinite (2003), an adaptation of his doctoral thesis, received acclaim from the theologiansJohn Milbank,Janet Soskice,Paul J. Griffiths, andReinhard Hütter.William Placher said of the book, "I can think of no more brilliant work by an American theologian in the past ten years."[48]Geoffrey Wainwright said, "This magnificent and demanding volume should establish David Bentley Hart, around the world no less than in North America, as one of his generation's leading theologians."[49] In 2020,Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest was named Best Religion Book of the Year byPublishers Weekly[50] as well as winning Gold in the 2020 INDIES withForeword Magazine.[51] In 2011, Hart's bookAtheist Delusions was awarded the Michael Ramsey Prize in Theology by the Archbishop of Canterbury,Rowan Williams.[52][53] It was also praised by the agnostic philosopherAnthony Kenny inThe Times Literary Supplement: "He exposes his opponents' errors of fact or logic with ruthless precision."[54]Oliver Burkeman, writing inThe Guardian in January 2014, praised Hart's bookThe Experience of God as "the one theology book all atheists really should read."[55]You Are Gods won Gold in the 2022 INDIES withForeword Magazine for the Religion (Adult Nonfiction) category.[56]
Roland in Moonlight was chosen byA. N. Wilson as his November 2021 "Book of the Year" for theTimes Literary Supplement. Wilson described this "dialogue with the author's dog Roland, who turns out to be a philosopher of mind, with a particular bee in his bonnet about the inadequacy of materialist explanations for 'consciousness'" as "probably the dottiest book of the year" while noting that "I KEEP returning to it."[57][58] In 2022, theCatholic Media Association awarded a first place prize toKenogaia (A Gnostic Tale) in the category of "Escapism" for authors from other traditions.[59][60]
In addition to these accolades, Hart has been criticized by some scholars includingN. T. Wright,[61][62][63][64]Peter Leithart,[65][66]Edward Feser,[67] and others, especially after his 2019 publication ofThat All Shall Be Saved.[68][69][70][71][72][73][74] Other Christian scholars praised the book including Robert Louis Wilken who wrote that "Hart shows why most Christian thinking about eternal damnation is unbiblical" andJohn Behr who described the book as "a brilliant treatment—exegetically, theologically, and philosophically—of the promise that, in the end, all will indeed be saved, and exposing the inadequacy—above all moral—of claims to the contrary."[75] Archbishop Alexander Golitzin of theOrthodox Church in America recorded a public interview on January 14, 2022, in which he named Hart's bookThat All Shall Be Saved and said that it "draws upon some very prominent and worthy and holy teachers" in the early church who held that the "love of God will ultimately overcome the capacity of the creature to say no to God."[76] In February 2022, theGreek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (in collaboration with the Orthodox Christian Studies Center ofFordham University) invited Hart to deliver a public homily for the Sunday of the Publican & the Pharisee as part of their "Orthodox Scholars Preach" series.[77] In 2017, Hart served on a special commission of Orthodox theologians for the Ecumenical PatriarchBartholomew I of Constantinople to help compose "For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church [wikidata]" and to coauthor the preface.[78]
As indicated by the wide range of topics covered inhis essays, Hart has diverse interests such asbaseball,comparative religious studies,Gnosticism,metaphysics,The Dreaming,philosophy of mind,theological aesthetics, andworld literature.[79] Hart writes often aboutfairies and has commented several times about his belief in them[80][81][82] and related creatures such asmermaids.[83]
As an outspoken advocate ofclassical theism as seen, for example, in his bookThe Experience of God[84] who is also, more generally, engaged with the schools ofcontinental philosophy,idealism, andneoplatonism,[85] Hart also affirmsmonism. He said in a November 17, 2020, interview about a pre-release reading of his bookYou Are Gods that "at the end of the day, I'm a monist as any sane person is" and that "we can play games with it, but any metaphysics that is coherent is ultimately reducible to a monism."[86] In the text ofYou Are Gods, Hart describes variations of both dualism and monism that he calls grim and monstrous:
An absolute dualism, of course, is a very grim thing indeed; but a narrative monism unqualified by any hint of true gnostic detachment, irony, sedition, or doubt—by any proper sense, that is, that the fashion of this world is horribly out of joint, that we are prisoners of delusion, that not every evil can be accounted for as part of divine necessity—turns out to be at least as monstrous.
During an April 2022 conversation with Hart aboutYou Are Gods, John Milbank said we "agree that in fact neoplatonism and Vedanta and Islamic mysticism are monistic" and "that, actually, an emanationism, a monotheism, these are actually the more monistic visions and that, if we've got all these things in Christianity like Trinity, incarnation, grace and deification and so on, these aren't qualifying monism." Instead, Milbank said that Hart's bookYou Are Gods shows that Christianity is spelling out or expounding monism and monotheism.[87]Robert Lawrence Kuhn, concludes that Hart "constructs an ultimate unified monism, first by showing that consciousness/mind and being/existence are profoundly inseverable" and then by "taking consciousness and being, already one and the same, and unifying it with God, to become, all together, the ultimate one and the same." Kuhn maintains, however, that "this is not pantheism (or panentheism), but based on Hart's Orthodox Christian convictions, a Christological monism".[88]
Hart's bookThat All Shall Be Saved was published on September 24, 2019, and makes the case thatuniversalism is the only coherent version of the Christian faith. Although grounded primarily in arguments from Christian metaphysics and moral philosophy, the book also considers biblical exegesis, systematic theology, and historical theology (with extensive references to universalist ideas among Christian patristic figures such asGregory of Nyssa). Hart, with his characteristic rhetorical provocations, uses terms such as "infernalists" to describe his opponents.[89][90][91] This grounding in Christian metaphysics, insistence on universalism being the only true articulation of the Christian gospel, and use of combative rhetoric all combine to make Hart's case for universalism more uncompromising than most previous Christian arguments, and this has led to the use of the term "hard universalism" to describe Hart's position.[92]
Hart refers to the idea of anatemporal fall (also called meta-historical fall) in his 2005 bookThe Doors of the Sea as well as in "The Devil's March:Creatio ex Nihilo, the Problem of Evil, and a Few Dostoyevskian Meditations":
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....It may seem a fabulous claim that we exist in the long grim aftermath of a primeval catastrophe—that this is a broken and wounded world, that cosmic time is a phantom of true time, that we live in an umbratile interval between creation in its fullness and the nothingness from which it was called, and that the universe languishes in bondage to the "powers" and "principalities" of this age, which never cease in their enmity toward the kingdom of God—but it is not a claim that Christians are free to surrender.[93]
Hart has recommended Sergei Bulgakov's 1939 bookThe Bride of the Lamb as the best exposition of an atemporal fall.[94]
Hart has cited a wide variety of inspirations and influences in his writing as well as across his various areas of scholarship in religious studies, philosophy of mind, and Christian metaphysics. With his essay style, Hart has often referencedH. L. Mencken as an influence. As literary influences, Hart and others have notedLewis Carroll andKenneth Grahame.[95][79] As "exemplars" in writing English prose, Hart has noted:Robert Louis Stevenson,Sylvia Townsend Warner,J. A. Baker,Patrick Leigh Fermor, andVladimir Nabokov.[96]
AnAnglican convert toEastern Orthodoxy, Hart has praised Orthodox thinkers such asKallistos Ware,Alexander Schmemann,John Meyendorff, andOlivier Clément.[95] Hart has also calledEcumenical Patriarch Bartholomew "one of the hopes of Orthodoxy"[97] andSergei Bulgakov "the greatest systematic theologian of the twentieth century."[98][99] Hart has expressed his admiration forsophiology and summarized his own understanding of it in his 2010 foreword toVladimir Solovyov'sJustification of the Good. Among American theologians, Hart has calledRobert Jenson the theologian with whom it is "most profitable to struggle."[100] Among contemporary thinkers, Hart's friendship and substantial intellectual common ground withJohn Milbank has been noted several times by both thinkers.[101]
More broadly, Hart and commentators have noted many other influences and inspirations (some of whom Hart can also criticize severely in certain respects). Among New Testament authors, Hart most frequently referencesPaul.[102] Greek fathers most often referenced by Hart includeGregory of Nyssa,Isaac of Nineveh,Maximus the Confessor, andSymeon the New Theologian. Among medieval thinkers,Eriugena,Meister Eckhart andNicholas of Cusa are often extolled by Hart, especially in his 2022 bookYou Are Gods. Among more recent Christian thinkers, Hart has noted a high regard forGeorge MacDonald. Russian religious philosophers such asVladimir Solovyov andNikolai Berdyaev are often praised by Hart along with Russian literary figures likeDostoevsky andTolstoy. Among Indian religious philosophers, Hart has most regularly referencedRamanuja andShankara.[103][104]
In an August 2023 interview inThe Christian Century, during a series of questions related to German higher criticism and modern theology, Hart said that although the "early church fathers were in many respects historical critical readers, to the degree they could be", Hart himself is not engaging in demythologization along the lines ofPaul Tillich orRudolf Bultmann:
I don't deny the historical reality of the resurrection, or even of the empty tomb. I'm not a modern rationalist. For starters, Tillich was a joke. He couldn't have made it as a philosopher, with his watery, middle-Schelling approach to things, and he wrote these huge, vapid books about a religion that he only barely knew anything about. And Bultmann's attempt to reduce everything down to apocalyptic inner illumination simply because the cosmology of the first century doesn't match the cosmology of the 20th—I mean, it's just the Protestant principle reaching its reductio ad absurdum.[105]
Hart is married and has one grown son, Patrick,[106] with whom he co-wrote the children's bookThe Mystery of Castle MacGorilla (Angelico Press, 2019); his wife is British.[107] He has two brothers: Addison Hodges Hart (also an author)[108][109] and Fr. Robert Hart (rector of Saint Benedict's Anglican Catholic Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina).[110]
As of 2022, Hart lives inSouth Bend, Indiana and is asked to serve and contribute by leaders in hisEastern Orthodox tradition such as theEcumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.[95][111] He follows contemporary concerns in Eastern Orthodox Christianity such as providing signature number 32 on a "Declaration on the 'Russian World' (Russkii mir) Teaching" criticizing theological justifications for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.[112] During a September 16, 2022, conversation withRainn Wilson, Hart shared briefly about an "indescribable" past experience of his own onMount Athos:
I was in this state of spiritual despair, and I also had an encounter. ...So I understand both the difficulty of explaining it and the impossibility of forgetting it, at once, and how it can change your life. But it doesn't come as a set of instructions. It sure as hell didn't turn me into a saint but did actually make me realize that the spiritual dimension of reality is reality.[113]
Even though he identifies with the tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy, in 2025 Hart said that "the best designation I seem able to come up with for describing my general spiritual sensibility is that of 'irreligious Christian'," by which he means "the faith of someone—myself, that is—who has little or no natural aptitude for religious sentiment, enthusiasm, devotion, or ritual observance. ... I have come to accept that I am a thoroughly secular man who happens to believe that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead."[114]
Hart is aChristian socialist and ademocratic socialist and has been a member of theDemocratic Socialists of America.[115][116][117] On August 8, 2020, Hart wrote:
I'm basically an anarchist and communalist. I believe that all that lilies of the field nonsense that Jesus preached was more than a daydream; and I think the longing for strict social hierarchy ...as an antidote to modernity is simply a longing for a reprise of the same sins that created modernity.[118]
With a few more specifics, Hart wrote on April 3, 2022:
In my heart of hearts, I want to vote for someone whose entire political philosophy is derived fromJohn Ruskin by way of Kenneth Grahame, with lashings ofWilliam Cobbett,Gilbert White, andWilliam Morris; failing that, I want to enjoy the luxury of writing inWendell Berry on every ballot. But the imminent collapse of the civil order of the entire world doth make pragmatists of us all. I long for the day, however, when I can return to my posture of airily insouciant disdain for the whole system and can again cast votes only for hopeless third party candidates with a clear conscience. But I suspect I will die before that day comes.[119]
No branch of the clan on either side managed to stretch out very far past the boundaries of Maryland between my forebears' arrival there in 1634 and the late 1970's... Well, apart from the Warfields, that is, on my mother's side, who spread out into Virginia and Pennsylvania, and whose most famous (or infamous) daughter, Wallis, became first Wallis Simpson and then Wallis Duchess of Windsor and who was, in consequence of the latter, indirectly responsible for Elizabeth II's reign of 70 years... But I am getting off track (and generally we do not boast about our distant relation to that particular Nazi-sympathizer).
My remotest ancestors on this continent settled in Maryland in 1634, as titled freeholders under the sheltering canopy of a royal charter.
Regional pride dictated that the tender souls of schoolchildren be regularly exposed to the works ofH. L. Mencken.
[Kallistos Ware's] two most famous and influential books came early in his public career: The Orthodox Church (1963) and The Orthodox Way (1979). Neither has ever gone out of print. The latter was especially important to me when I read it in my teens. I had encountered the writings of the Eastern fathers by that point, but had not yet ever heard anyone speak of Orthodoxy in an idiom intelligible to my Anglican ears.
I am a collaborative research scholar at ND ...a 'Research Collaborator,' which is an appointment that requires no teaching but that also has no particular benefits beyond use of research resources. ...Feel free to use my description of the post's minimal requirements. You can also say, if you would be kind, that research appointments are not faculty positions and are not intended to last more than a few years.[self-published source]
My fellowship at NDIAS is over. My official position at ND now is as "Collaborative Scholar" in the departments of Theology and German.[self-published source]
Author of thousands of essays, reviews, and papers, as well as 15 books including Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, as well as That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation, not to mention an immaculate translation of the New Testament, Hart is often difficult for some people to categorize. What's agreed upon is that he's wide-ranging and deeply read in his seemingly limitless interests, and loquacious in his refreshingly baroque prose style; the rare theologian who can poetically invoke the 'glow of a gibbous moon set high in the sky, shining like a polished white opal on a bed of indigo velvet' or how a 'strong breeze was stirring the leaves in the high trees enclosing the grounds, and was shaking the branches of the lilac and oleander bushes bordering the path to the door ... ripples of silver ... coursing continually through the lawn's broad blades of fescue grass'.
Matthew Walther ...described Hart as the 'Prospero of Theologians' and 'our greatest living essayist' — an evaluation with merit.
Hart's acuity on this theme aside, I welcome 'A Splendid Wickedness' for its thought and humor and spleen.
He rehearses this argument in numberless witty variations against whichever non-God ideology happens to slouch beneath his pen. ...Unlike Chesterton—and this is how you know he's an early-21st-century guy, someone with Wi-Fi—Hart is extremely rude.
This note of self-aware hyperbole points to an essential part of the Hart persona; his writing voice is that of someone confident in his genius to a point of wanton, gleeful provocation. He knows his reader cannot meaningfully oppose him in even his wildest declarations. No one can, when he is writing in the Imperial mode. [From page 2:] The judgments that Hart renders constantly verge on the immoderate, and rarely does he make a point squarely without infusing a bit of accelerant. Under one aspect this habit is a needless indulgence, but under another, it's an act of generosity toward his readership. He has the good sense to pursue his maximalist impulses, knowing that they will lead him into his natural métier and enable him to consistently generate interest on the level of his individual sentences. [From page 3:] His intuition gallops across the range of human thinking and longing, mapped over decades of wild omnidirectional exploration, in search of examples and illustrations. ...His declarations over the history of ideas are cocksure, as full of gusto as his rages and raptures over cultural ephemera.
At the 2:42 mark: Remind them, and this is absolutely vital, that fairies are real.
At the 1:56:39 mark: Believing in fairies, ...right now, that's got to be part of orthodoxy, that's got to go right into the creed.
Reader: 'Do you really believe in fairies? Have you ever seen any'? Hart: 'Of course I believe in them'.
Should we favor the 'atemporal fall' view then? David Bentley Hart (Aug 31, 2022): Well, I certainly do. But the original Eden story isn't about the 'fall' at all, except in the vague sense that it was a mythic aetiology of life's miseries. Second Reader (Sep 2, 2022): Can you briefly describe what you understand or hold the 'atemporal fall' to be? Hart (Sep 2, 2022): No, not briefly. Second Reader (Sep 2, 2022): An extended response would, of course, be satisfactory also! But no, if you are aware of any particularly good reflections on it, I'd be grateful for a reference. Hart (Sep 2, 2022): Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb
"At minute marker 32:51".
Signature '000032 Dr. David Bentley Hart, University of Notre Dame, IN, USA'
