Biography:David Bentley Hart

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Short description: American philosopher and theologian (b. 1965)
David Bentley Hart
David Bentley Hart with coffee in hand
Hart in 2022
BornFebruary 1965 (age 58–59)
Howard County, Maryland, U.S.
Education
Occupation
  • Writer
  • philosopher
  • religious studies scholar
  • critic
  • theologian
Notable work
See bibliography
Awards
  • 2011 Michael Ramsey Prize
  • 2020 Religion Book of the Year (Publishers Weekly)
  • 2021 Book of the Year (Times Literary Supplement)
  • 2022 First place in "Escapism" (Catholic Media Association)
  • 2020 and 2022 Gold INDIES (Foreword Magazine)
Philosophy career
School
InstitutionsUniversity of Notre Dame
ThesisBeauty, Violence, and Infinity: A Question Concerning Christian Rhetoric (1997)
Doctoral advisorRobert Louis Wilken (on dissertation committee)
Main interests
Philosophy of mind
Websitedavidbentleyhart.substack.com

David Bentley Hart (born February 1965) is an American writer, philosopher, religious studies scholar, critic, and theologian. Reviewers have commented on Hart's baroque prose and provocative rhetoric in over one thousand essays, reviews, and papers as well as nineteen books (including translations). From a predominantly Anglican family background, Hart became Eastern Orthodox when he was twenty-one. His academic works focus on Christian metaphysics, philosophy of mind, Indian and East Asian religion, Asian languages, classics, and literature as well as a New Testament translation. Books with wider audiences include The Doors of the Sea, Atheist Delusions, and That All Shall Be Saved.

Born and raised in Maryland, Hart regularly references his family roots and the Baltimore Orioles in his writing. Hart graduated with a BA in interdisciplinary study from the University of Maryland, completed an MPhil in theology at Cambridge University, and then a PhD in religious studies at the University of Virginia. Hart received the Templeton Fellowship at the University 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. Five of his books have received awards or book of the year recognitions. Hart has written essays on diverse topics such as art, baseball, literature, consciousness, the problem of evil, apocatastasis, theosis, fairies, film, and politics. Hart maintains a subscription newsletter called Leaves in the Wind that features original essays and conversations with other thinkers.

Early life

Hart notes that most of his ancestors lived in Maryland for generations since their arrival there in 1634.[1][2][3] Born in Howard County and graduating from Wilde Lake High School in 1982 with classes in Latin and Greek, Hart was a National Merit Scholar.[4] Hart grew up with two older brothers and writes that this "has always made me feel more like a creature of the 1960's and early 1970's than do some of my friends of roughly my age."[5]

Hart writes that "regional pride dictated that the tender souls of schoolchildren be regularly exposed to the works of H. 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."[6] 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 early church fathers along with contemporary Eastern Orthodox theologians, converting to Orthodoxy at the age of twenty-one.[7][8]

Academic career

Hart earned a B.A. in interdisciplinary study from the University of Maryland, a M.Phil. in theology from the University of Cambridge, and a Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of Virginia.[9] He taught at the University of Virginia, the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota), Duke Divinity School, and Loyola College in Maryland. He also served as visiting professor at Providence College where he held the Robert J. Randall Chair in Christian Culture. During the 2014–2015 academic year, Hart was Danforth Chair at Saint Louis University in the Department of Theological Studies. In 2015, he was appointed as Templeton Fellow at the University of Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. As part of this Templeton Fellowship work, Hart organized a conference focused on the philosophy of mind.[10] In an April 19, 2023 email, Hart noted that he is currently a collaborative research scholar at the University of Notre Dame.[11][12][13] His primary areas of research have been philosophical theology, systematics, patristics, classical and continental philosophy, and South and East Asian religion with recent focus on the genealogy of classical and Christian metaphysics, ontology, the metaphysics of the soul, and the philosophy of mind.[14]

Hart has authored eighteen books and produced two translated works. The New Testament: A Translation was published in 2017 with Yale University Press[15][16][17][18] and a second edition in 2023.[19] His translation in collaboration with John R. Betz of Analogia Entis: Metaphysics: Original Structure and Universal Rhythm by Erich Przywara was published in 2014 by Eerdmans.[20] Hart's academic books include The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Eerdmans, 2003), The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (Yale, 2013),[21] 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),[22] Tradition and Apocalypse: An Essay on the Future of Christian Belief (Baker, 2022),[23] and You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature (Notre Dame, 2022).[24]

Literary writing

Since the late 1990s, Hart has published hundreds of essays on varied subjects including Don Juan, Vladimir Nabokov, Charles Baudelaire, Victor Segalen, Leon Bloy, William Empson, David Jones, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (1893), and baseball. These often provocative essays have appeared in First Things (2003 to 2020),[25] The New Atlantis,[26] Commonweal, Aeon, The Wall Street Journal , The New York Times , and many other periodicals. Several of these have shaped future books such as The Doors of the Sea, Roland in Moonlight, and Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale, 2009). Since May 2021, Hart also writes regular essays for his Leaves in the Wind subscription newsletter. This newsletter also features conversations with other writers such as Iain McGilchrist, Rainn Wilson, China Miéville, Richard Seymour, Tariq Goddard, and Salley Vickers.[27][28]

Ed Simon writing for the Los 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.[29] In 2017, Hart was described by Matthew Walther (a columnist at The Week and later founding editor of The Lamp) as "our greatest living essayist."[30] Hart's style has been praised for "its thought and humor and spleen"[31] and called "extremely rude."[32] 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."[33] His essays often mix humor and critical commentary as with one titled "A Person You Flee at Parties: Donald and the Devil" (about Donald Trump from May 6, 2011, for First Things).[34] Hart's essays sometimes explored the boundaries between different religious traditions as with "Saint Sakyamuni" (2009)[35] or the boundaries of orthodoxy as with "Saint Origen" (2015).[36]

David Bentley Hart and his dog Roland.
David Bentley Hart and Roland, the title character in Roland in Moonlight (2021)

In 2012, The Devil and Pierre Gernet, a collection of his fiction, was released by Eerdmans.[37] Two of his books, A Splendid Wickedness in 2016 and The 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.[38] Hart added two books to his fiction works in 2021: Roland in Moonlight and Kenogaia (A Gnostic Tale).[39][40][41] His book Roland 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 for First Things, with two about Aloysius 2011 and six about Roland from 2014 to 2016. Reviewing Roland in Moonlight for a review in Church Times, John Saxbee (former Bishop of Lincoln) wrote that "sometimes, a book defies description or, rather, refuses to settle into a conventional genre" and compared Roland in Moonlight to Sophie's World meets Alice through the Looking-Glass or Don Quixote meets The Wind in the Willows.[42]

Reception

Hart's first major work, The Beauty of the Infinite (2003), an adaptation of his doctoral thesis, received acclaim from the theologians John Milbank, Janet Soskice, Paul J. Griffiths, and Reinhard Hütter. William Placher said of the book, "I can think of no more brilliant work by an American theologian in the past ten years."[43] 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."[44] In 2020, Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest was named Best Religion Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly[45] as well as winning Gold in the 2020 INDIES with Foreword Magazine.[46] In 2011, Hart's book Atheist Delusions was awarded the Michael Ramsey Prize in Theology by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.[47][48] It was also praised by the agnostic philosopher Anthony Kenny in The Times Literary Supplement: "He exposes his opponents' errors of fact or logic with ruthless precision."[49] Oliver Burkeman, writing in The Guardian in January 2014, praised Hart's book The Experience of God as "the one theology book all atheists really should read."[50] You Are Gods won Gold in the 2022 INDIES with Foreword Magazine for the Religion (Adult Nonfiction) category.[51]

Roland in Moonlight was chosen by A. N. Wilson as his November 2021 "Book of the Year" for the Times 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."[52][53] In 2022, the Catholic Media Association awarded a first place prize to Kenogaia (A Gnostic Tale) in the category of "Escapism" for authors from other traditions.[54][55]

In addition to these accolades, Hart has been criticized by some scholars. New Testament scholar and translator N. T. Wright challenged Hart's translation of the New Testament in January 2018.[56][57] Hart responded on a few of the points, including on the Eclectic Orthodoxy blog and with his essay "The Spiritual Was More Substantial Than the Material for the Ancients" in Notre Dame's Church Life Journal.[58][59] Peter Leithart wrote a critical response to Hart's book That All Shall Be Saved called "Good God?" in October 2019 and posted a response from Hart five days later.[60][61] Edward Feser claimed in April 2022 that Hart's book You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature advocates pantheism.[62] Gerald McDermott criticized Hart's book Tradition and Apocalypse in July 2022 for "a gnostic reading of Genesis and heterodox views of Christology, creation, and salvation."[63][64] In late 2022 and early 2023, Fr. James Dominic Rooney wrote several articles for Church Life Journal (with the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame) that accused Hart of multiple heresies related to his books That All Shall Be Saved and You Are Gods.[65] Hart responded to Rooney in an interview on the podcast Grace Saves All with David Artman as well as briefly on his Leaves in the Wind subscription newsletter.[66][67] In a April 13, 2023 article for Notre Dame's Church Life Journal, philosopher Eleonore Stump argued against universalism and for the idea that "there are some people who never cease rejecting God." Stump did not name Hart but opposed several of Hart's ideas and cited Rooney's recent article in the same periodical that had accused Hart of being heterodox.[68] In a note on his Leaves in the Wind newsletter, Hart wrote that he did not plan to respond to Stump, adding that "I do not care about Stump's arguments" because "we have all heard them many times before, and they remain essentially silly—even embarrassingly so" but that this is a "depressing truth" because "Stump is not stupid, and neither are many others who have made the same claims."[69]

Despite accusations of heterodoxy, especially after his 2019 publication of That All Shall Be Saved, some Christian scholars praised the book. Roman Catholic scholar Robert Louis Wilken wrote that "in this original and lively book, Hart shows, why most Christian thinking about eternal damnation is unbiblical," and Orthodox Christian scholar John Behr 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."[70] Archbishop Alexander Golitzin of the Orthodox Church in America recorded a public interview on January 14, 2022, in which he named Hart's book That 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." The archbishop went on to clarify that "we can't teach universal salvation as doctrine, but we can hope for it" which Golitzin identified as "my own attitude ... which I take from Metropolitan Kallistos Ware."[71]

In February 2022, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (in collaboration with the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University) invited Hart to deliver a public homily for the Sunday of the Publican & the Pharisee as part of their "Orthodox Scholars Preach" series.[72] In 2017, Hart served on a special commission of Orthodox theologians for the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople to help compose "For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church" and to coauthor the preface.[73]

Influences

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 referenced H. L. Mencken as an influence. As literary influences, Hart and others have noted Lewis Carroll and Kenneth Grahame.[74][75] As "exemplars" in writing English prose, Hart has noted: Robert Louis Stevenson, Sylvia Townsend Warner, J. A. Baker, Patrick Leigh Fermor, and Vladimir Nabokov.[76]

An Anglican convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, Hart has praised Orthodox thinkers such as Kallistos Ware, Alexander Schmemann, John Meyendorff, and Olivier Clément.[77] Hart has also called Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew "one of the hopes of Orthodoxy"[78] and Sergei Bulgakov "the greatest systematic theologian of the twentieth century."[79][80] Hart has expressed his admiration for sophiology and summarized his own understanding of it in his 2010 foreword to Vladimir Solovyov's Justification of the Good. Among American theologians, Hart has called Robert Jenson the theologian with whom it is "most profitable to struggle."[81] Among contemporary thinkers, Hart's friendship and substantial intellectual common ground with John Milbank has been noted several times by both thinkers.[82]

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 references Paul.[83] Greek fathers most often referenced by Hart include Gregory of Nyssa, Isaac of Nineveh, Maximus the Confessor, and Symeon the New Theologian. Among medieval thinkers, Eriugena, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa are often extolled by Hart, especially in his 2022 book You Are Gods. Among more recent Christian thinkers, Hart has noted a high regard for George MacDonald. Russian religious philosophers such as Vladimir Solovyov and Nikolai Berdyaev are often praised by Hart along with Russian literary figures like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Among Indian religious philosophers, Hart has most regularly referenced Ramanuja and Shankara.[84][85]

In an August 2023 interview The 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 of Paul Tillich or Rudolf 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.[86]

Main interests and key ideas

As indicated by the wide range of topics covered in his essays, Hart has diverse interests such as baseball, comparative religious studies, Gnosticism, metaphysics, The Dreaming, philosophy of mind, theological aesthetics, and world literature.[87] Hart writes often about fairies and has commented several times about his belief in them[88][89][90] and related creatures such as mermaids.[91]

Monism

As an outspoken advocate of classical theism as seen, for example, in his book The Experience of God[92] who is also, more generally, engaged with the schools of continental philosophy, idealism, and neoplatonism,[93] Hart also affirms monism. He said in a November 17, 2020, interview about a pre-release reading of his book You 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."[94] In the text of You 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 about You 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 book You Are Gods shows that Christianity is spelling out or expounding monism and monotheism.[95]

Universalism

Hart's book That All Shall Be Saved was published on September 24, 2019, and makes the case that universalism 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 as Gregory of Nyssa). Hart, with his characteristic rhetorical provocations, uses terms such as "infernalists" to describe his opponents.[96][97][98] 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.[99]

Atemporal fall

Hart refers to the idea of an atemporal fall (also called meta-historical fall) in his 2005 book The 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.[100]

Hart has recommended Sergei Bulgakov's 1939 book The Bride of the Lamb as the best exposition of an atemporal fall.[101]

Personal life

Hart is married and has one grown son, Patrick,[102] with whom he co-wrote the children's book The Mystery of Castle MacGorilla (Angelico Press, 2019); his wife is British.[103] He has two brothers: Addison Hodges Hart (also an author)[104][105] and Fr. Robert Hart (rector of Saint Benedict's Anglican Catholic Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina).[106]

As of 2022, Hart lives in South Bend, Indiana and is asked to serve and contribute by leaders in his Orthodox tradition such as the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.[107][108] He follows contemporary concerns in Orthodox Christianity such as the "Russian World" (Russkii Mir) teaching.[109] During a September 16, 2022, conversation with Rainn Wilson, Hart shared briefly about an "indescribable" past experience of his own on Mount 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.[110]

Hart is a Christian socialist and a democratic socialist and has been a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.[111][112][113] 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.[114]

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 from John Ruskin by way of Kenneth Grahame, with lashings of William Cobbett, Gilbert White, and William Morris; failing that, I want to enjoy the luxury of writing in Wendell 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.[115]

References

  1. ↑ "Thoughts In and Out of Season 4". January 15, 2023. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/thoughts-in-and-out-of-season-4. "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)." 
  2. ↑ "The Abbot and Aunt Susie". December 3, 2010. https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2010/12/the-abbot-and-aunt-susie. 
  3. ↑ "The Greatest Nation on Earth". September 17, 2010. https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2010/12/the-abbot-and-aunt-susie. "My remotest ancestors on this continent settled in Maryland in 1634, as titled freeholders under the sheltering canopy of a royal charter." 
  4. ↑ "National Merit Scholarship Honored" (in en-US). The Washington Post. September 29, 1982. ISSN 0190-8286. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1982/09/29/national-merit-scholarship-honored/a1707099-bebd-4eeb-ba51-92343f6dacd2/. 
  5. ↑ "Thoughts In and Out of Season 4" (in en-US). January 15, 2023. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/thoughts-in-and-out-of-season-4. 
  6. ↑ "Addenda et Notanda". August 26, 2022. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/addenda-et-notanda. "Regional pride dictated that the tender souls of schoolchildren be regularly exposed to the works of H. L. Mencken." 
  7. ↑ "The Brilliant David Bentley Hart". May 13, 2014. https://www.jamesmumford.co.uk/the-brilliant-david-bentley-hart/. 
  8. ↑ "Addenda et Notanda". August 26, 2022. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/addenda-et-notanda. "[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." 
  9. ↑ "David Bentley Hart to Speak at Benedictine College". March 14, 2014. https://www.benedictine.edu/press-room/news/2014/david-bentley-hart-speak-benedictine-college. 
  10. ↑ "David Bentley Hart To Lead Colloquium On "Mind, Soul, World: Consciousness In Nature"". February 22, 2016. https://ndias.nd.edu/news-publications/news/david-bentley-hart-to-lead-colloquium-on-mind-soul-world-consciousness-in-nature/. 
  11. ↑ Hart, David Bentley (19 April 2023). "public questionings of your connection to Notre Dame". Letter to Jesse J. Hake. 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.
  12. ↑ Hart, David Bentley (19 December 2022). "folder with video and audio files from Jesse". Letter to Jesse J. Hake. My fellowship at NDIAS is over. My official position at ND now is as “Collaborative Scholar” in the departments of Theology and German.
  13. ↑ "David Bentley Hart: Commentary on the Liberal Arts, Civilization, and the Future of Christianity". December 1, 2022. https://classicalu.com/courses/david-bentley-hart-commentary/. 
  14. ↑ "David Bentley Hart". July 26, 2017. https://ndias.nd.edu/fellows/hart-david-bentley/. 
  15. ↑ "Description of The New Testament: A Translation". December 1, 2017. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300248449/the-new-testament/. 
  16. ↑ de Lang, Marike H (September 14, 2022). "David Bentley Hart's New Testament Translation". The Bible Translator 73 (2): 181–190. doi:10.1177/20516770211039495. https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/tbtd/73/2. 
  17. ↑ Berneking, Steve (September 14, 2022). "What's New About David Bentley Hart's Translation of the New Testament; Assessing its Translation Effectiveness and Affectiveness". The Bible Translator 73 (2): 191–202. doi:10.1177/20516770221108341. https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/tbtd/73/2. 
  18. ↑ Ebojo, Edgar Battad (September 14, 2022). "The 'Ideal Version of the Text': A Text-Critical Review of the Greek Text Behind David Bentley Hart's New Testament". The Bible Translator 73 (2): 203–212. doi:10.1177/20516770221108461. https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/tbtd/73/2. 
  19. ↑ "Description of The New Testament: A Translation (Second Edition)". September 27, 2022. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300265705/the-new-testament/. 
  20. ↑ "David Bentley Hart". July 26, 2016. https://www.eerdmans.com/Authors/Default.aspx?AuthorId=17073. 
  21. ↑ "The Spirit of the Text". November 3, 2017. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2017/11/03/the-spirit-of-the-text/. 
  22. ↑ "Theological Territories". February 12, 2020. https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268107185/theological-territories/. 
  23. ↑ "David Bentley Hart". February 12, 2022. http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/authors/david-bentley-hart/3506. 
  24. ↑ "You Are Gods". April 12, 2022. https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268201944/you-are-gods/. 
  25. ↑ "Featured Authors". https://www.firstthings.com/featured-author/david-b-hart. 
  26. ↑ "David Bentley Hart". July 20, 2008. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/authors/david-hart. 
  27. ↑ "An Introduction to Leaves in the Wind". July 1, 2021. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/an-introduction-to-leaves-in-the. 
  28. ↑ "Leaves in the Wind (YouTube channel)". September 16, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/@leavesinthewind7441. 
  29. ↑ Simon, Ed (July 24, 2022). "All Dogs Go to Heaven: David Bentley Hart's Canine Panpsychism". Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/all-dogs-go-to-heaven-david-bentley-harts-canine-panpsychism/. "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'." 
  30. ↑ "The Prospero of Theologians". March 24, 2017. https://freebeacon.com/culture/the-prospero-of-theologians/. 
  31. ↑ "Review: David Bentley Hart's 'Splendid Wickedness'". August 18, 2016. http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-splendid-wickedness-david-bentley-hart-20160818-story.html. "Hart's acuity on this theme aside, I welcome 'A Splendid Wickedness' for its thought and humor and spleen." 
  32. ↑ "A Mind-Bending Translation of the New Testament". December 10, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/the-new-testament-a-translation-david-bentley-hart/546551/. "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." 
  33. ↑ "Martyn Wendell Jones – Essay on Two New David Bentley Hart Books". October 27, 2017. http://englewoodreview.org/martyn-wendell-jones-essay-on-two-new-david-bentley-hart-books/. "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." 
  34. ↑ "A Person You Flee at Parties: Donald and the Devil". May 6, 2011. https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2011/05/a-person-you-flee-at-parties. 
  35. ↑ "Saint Sakyamuni". September 28, 2009. https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2009/09/saint-sakyamuni. 
  36. ↑ "Saint Origen". October 2015. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/10/saint-origen. 
  37. ↑ "The Devil and Pierre Gernet - David Bentley Hart". https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/1768/the-devil-and-pierre-gernet.aspx. 
  38. ↑ "DBH's the Devil and Pierre Gernet: A Pendulation of Spirit". April 29, 2013. http://www.curatormagazine.com/trevor-logan/a-review-of-dbhs-the-devil-and-pierre-gernet/. 
  39. ↑ "Roland in Moonlight by David Bentley Hart". February 20, 2021. https://angelicopress.org/roland-in-moonlight-hart. 
  40. ↑ "Kenogaia (A Gnostic Tale) by David Bentley Hart". December 1, 2021. https://angelicopress.org/kenogaia-a-gnostic-tale-david-bentley-hart. 
  41. ↑ "Captive Beauty". August 17, 2022. https://classicalu.com/captive-beauty/. 
  42. ↑ "Roland in Moonlight, by David Bentley Hart: John Saxbee learns from man's best friend". June 25, 2021. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2021/25-june/books-arts/book-reviews/roland-in-moonlight-by-david-bentley-hart. 
  43. ↑ Placher, William C. (September 6, 2004). "God's Beauty". https://www.christiancentury.org/reviews/2004-09/gods-beauty. 
  44. ↑ "The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth". March 2004. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/03/the-beauty-of-the-infinite-the-aesthetics-of-christian-truth. 
  45. ↑ "Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest". November 4, 2020. https://best-books.publishersweekly.com/pw/best-books/2020/religion#book/book-4. 
  46. ↑ "THEOLOGICAL TERRITORIES: A DAVID BENTLEY HART DIGEST, 2020 INDIES Winner Gold, Religion (Adult Nonfiction)". April 2020. https://www.forewordreviews.com/awards/books/theological-territories/. 
  47. ↑ "Winner of £10,000 Theology Prize Announced". May 2011. http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2052/winner-of-10000-theology-prize-announced. 
  48. ↑ "David B. Hart wins the 2011 Michael Ramsay prize". May 27, 2011. https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-05/david-b-hart-wins-2011-michael-ramsay-prize. 
  49. ↑ Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies. Yale University Press. February 23, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300164299/atheist-delusions/. 
  50. ↑ Burkeman, Oliver (January 14, 2014). "The one theology book all atheists really should read". https://www.theguardian.com/news/oliver-burkeman-s-blog/2014/jan/14/the-theology-book-atheists-should-read. 
  51. ↑ Patterson, Eric (April 2022). "YOU ARE GODS: ON NATURE AND SUPERNATURE, 2022 INDIES Winner Gold, Religion (Adult Nonfiction)". https://www.forewordreviews.com/awards/books/you-are-gods/. 
  52. ↑ "Roland Receives His First Book of the Year Notice". November 27, 2021. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/roland-wins-his-first-book-of-the. 
  53. ↑ "Books of the Year 2021". November 26, 2021. https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/books-of-the-year-2021/. 
  54. ↑ "Catholic Media Association 2022 Book Awards". July 9, 2022. https://www.catholicmediaassociation.org/userfiles/uploads/2022-CMA-BOOK-AWARDS-WINNERS.pdf. 
  55. ↑ "Book Awards". July 2022. https://now.dirxion.com/Catholic_Press_Association/library/Catholic_Press_Association_07_01_2022.pdf. 
  56. ↑ "The New Testament in the strange words of David Bentley Hart". January 15, 2018. https://www.christiancentury.org/review/books/new-testament-strange-words-david-bentley-hart. 
  57. ↑ "Translating the N. T. Wright and David Bentley Hart Tussle". January 24, 2018. https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/january-web-only/n-t-wright-david-bentley-hart-bible-translation-debate.html. 
  58. ↑ "A Reply to N. T. Wright". January 16, 2018. https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2018/01/16/a-reply-to-n-t-wright/. 
  59. ↑ "The Spiritual Was More Substantial Than the Material for the Ancients". July 26, 2018. https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the-spiritual-was-more-substantial-than-the-material-for-the-ancients/. 
  60. ↑ "Good God?". October 2, 2019. https://theopolisinstitute.com/leithart_post/77497/. 
  61. ↑ "Good God? A Response". October 7, 2019. https://theopolisinstitute.com/leithart_post/good-god-a-response/. 
  62. ↑ "Whose pantheism? Which dualism? A Reply to David Bentley Hart". April 22, 2022. https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2022/04/whose-pantheism-which-dualism-reply-to.html. 
  63. ↑ "Hart's Turn to Heterodoxy". July 18, 2022. https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/07/harts-turn-to-heterodoxy. 
  64. ↑ "Gerald McDermott's "Review"". July 23, 2022. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/gerald-mcdermotts-review. 
  65. ↑ "James Dominic Rooney". October 18, 2022. https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/authors/james-dominic-rooney/. 
  66. ↑ "Ep. 108 David Bentley Hart responds to claims of heresy by Fr. James Dominic Rooney regarding the necessity of all being saved". January 9, 2023. https://www.davidartman.net/podcast/ep-108-david-bentley-hart-responds-to-claims-of-heresy-by-fr-james-dominic-rooney-in-regards-to-the-necessity-of-all-being-saved. 
  67. ↑ "Three Quick Announcements". January 13, 2023. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/three-quick-announcements. 
  68. ↑ Eleonore Stump (April 13, 2023). "The God of Love". https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/can-hell-and-the-god-of-love-coexist/. 
  69. ↑ David Bentley Hart (April 18, 2023). "Agenda, Notanda, et Quaerenda". https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/agenda-notanda-at-quaerenda. 
  70. ↑ "That All Shall Be Saved". September 24, 2019. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300258486/that-all-shall-be-saved/. 
  71. ↑ "Universal Salvation? - Archbishop Alexander (Golitzin)". January 14, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMtAP7eV79o. 
  72. ↑ "Orthodox Scholars Preach: Sunday of the Publican & the Pharisee - David Bentley Hart". February 13, 2022. https://www.goarch.org/-/orthodox-scholars-preach-publican-pharisee-david-bentley-hart. 
  73. ↑ ""For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church"". https://www.goarch.org/social-ethos. 
  74. ↑ "Addenda et Notanda". August 26, 2022. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/addenda-et-notanda. 
  75. ↑ "About: Leaves in the Wind". January 25, 2023. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/about. 
  76. ↑ "How to Write English Prose". January 9, 2023. https://thelampmagazine.com/2023/01/09/how-to-write-english-prose/. 
  77. ↑ "Addenda et Notanda". August 26, 2022. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/addenda-et-notanda. 
  78. ↑ "David Bentley Hart on Hell, American Orthodoxy, and Going Out of His Way to Provoke". December 20, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUWIpK7SFqo. 
  79. ↑ "David Bentley Hart: 'Orthodoxy in America and America's Orthodoxies'". October 2, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU3y_h47ByE. ""At minute marker 32:51"." 
  80. ↑ "The Genius of Sergei Bulgakov - David Bentley Hart". June 19, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf7f2WIE2i8. 
  81. ↑ "The Lively God of Robert Jenson". October 2005. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2005/10/the-lively-god-of-robert-jenson. 
  82. ↑ "'You Are Gods' with David Bentley Hart and John Milbank". November 16, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHwt6Cf45uU. 
  83. ↑ "Everything you know about the Gospel of Paul is likely wrong". January 8, 2018. https://aeon.co/ideas/the-gospels-of-paul-dont-say-what-you-think-they-say. 
  84. ↑ Hart, David (February 20, 2021). Roland in Moonlight. Angelico Press. ISBN 978-1621386940. https://angelicopress.org/roland-in-moonlight-hart. 
  85. ↑ "Leaves in the Wind". July 1, 2021. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/. 
  86. ↑ Allen, Ross M. (24 August 2023). "What we think we know about God". The Christian Century. https://www.christiancentury.org/article/features/what-we-think-we-know-about-god. 
  87. ↑ "About: Leaves in the Wind". January 25, 2023. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/about. 
  88. ↑ David Bentley Hart (December 30, 2022). "Saving Scholé with David Bentley Hart". Classical Academic Press. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezqs2qxGyeY&t=17s. "At the 2:42 mark: Remind them, and this is absolutely vital, that fairies are real." 
  89. ↑ David Bentley Hart (February 22, 2023). "The Armstrong Archives: Otherworlds with David Bentley Hart". Leaves in the Wind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA8TLn38dRw&t=4s. "At the 1:54 mark: Believing in fairies, ...right now, that's got to be part of orthodoxy, that's got to go right into the creed." 
  90. ↑ "Q & A 1". October 16, 2021. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/q-and-a-1. "Reader: 'Do you really believe in fairies? Have you ever seen any'? Hart: 'Of course I believe in them'." 
  91. ↑ David Bentley Hart (2020). "Selkies and Nixies: The Penguin Book of Mermaids". The Lamp: A Catholic Journal of Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Etc'.' Issue 2. Assumption 2020. pp. 49-50. Quote: "Of course mermaids exist. Or, to be more precise, of course water spirits and magical marine beings of every kind are real and numerous and, in certain circumstances, somewhat dangerous. ...The modern reports of real encounters with mermaids or other water-spirits, such as two from Zimbabwe, one from South Africa, three from northeastern India, and so on ...are so ingenuous, well-attested, and credible that only a brute would refuse to believe them [and] there is a real moral imperative in not dismissing such tales as lies or delusions.
  92. ↑ "Metaphysics and the Experience of God: The Meditations of David Bentley Hart". January 17, 2014. https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/01/11916/. 
  93. ↑ "Mind, Soul, World: Consciousness in Nature". March 14, 2016. https://ndias.nd.edu/assets/191363/david_hart_templeton_colloquium_introduction.pdf. 
  94. ↑ "Episode 3: Gnosticism... It's Good (feat. David Bentley Hart)". Actually, It's Good podcast. November 17, 2020. https://anchor.fm/actuallyitsgood/episodes/Episode-3-Gnosticism----Its-Good-feat--David-Bentley-Hart-emklfi. 
  95. ↑ "'You Are Gods' with David Bentley Hart and John Milbank". University of Notre Dame Press. November 16, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHwt6Cf45uU. 
  96. ↑ "Review: That All Shall Be Saved". The University of St Andrews. January 29, 2020. https://theology.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2020/01/29/review-that-all-shall-be-saved/. 
  97. ↑ "Shall All Be Saved? David Bentley Hart's Vision of Universal Reconciliation—An Extended Review". Christian Scholar's Review. November 12, 2020. https://christianscholars.com/shall-all-be-saved-david-bentley-harts-vision-of-universal-reconciliation-an-extended-review/. 
  98. ↑ "Shall All Be Saved?: A Review of David Bentley Hart's Case for Universal Salvation". Credo Magazine. December 2, 2019. https://credomag.com/article/shall-all-be-saved/. 
  99. ↑ "The Incoherencies of Hard Universalism". Church Life Journal (from Notre Dame's McGrath Institute for Church Life). October 18, 2022. https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the-incoherencies-of-hard-universalism/. 
  100. ↑ Hart, David Bentley (2020). "The Devil's March: Creatio ex Nihilo, the Problem of Evil, and a Few Dostoyevskian Meditations". Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest. Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press. pp. 79–80. ISBN 9780268107178. 
  101. ↑ David Bentley Hart (August 31, 2022). "Sensus Plenior I: On gods and mortals". https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/sensus-plenior-i/comments. "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" 
  102. ↑ "Announcements and Observations". December 9, 2022. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/announcements-and-observations. 
  103. ↑ "Thoughts In and Out of Season 5". February 22, 2023. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/thoughts-in-and-out-of-season-5. 
  104. ↑ "Book list for author Addison Hodges Hart". https://www.amazon.com/Addison-Hodges-Hart/e/B002GWGXHO. 
  105. ↑ "The Pragmatic Mystic". December 9, 2022. https://addisonhodgeshart.substack.com/p/the-first-post-of-a-40-year-old-substack. 
  106. ↑ "Fr. Robert Hart". February 17, 2020. https://northamanglican.com/author/fr-hart/. 
  107. ↑ "Addenda et Notanda". August 26, 2022. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/addenda-et-notanda. 
  108. ↑ "Receiving the World Like Children: Next-Day Reflections on an Evening Stolen from (and Graciously Given by) David Hart". November 4, 2022. https://jesusandtheancientpaths.com/2022/11/04/receiving-the-world-like-children-next-day-reflections-on-an-evening-stolen-from-and-graciously-given-by-david-hart/. 
  109. ↑ "A DECLARATION ON THE 'RUSSIAN WORLD' (RUSSKII MIR) TEACHING". March 13, 2022. https://publicorthodoxy.org/2022/03/13/a-declaration-on-the-russian-world-russkii-mir-teaching/. "Signature '000032 Dr. David Bentley Hart, University of Notre Dame, IN, USA'" 
  110. ↑ "A Conversation with Rainn Wilson". 16 September 2022. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/a-conversation-with-rainn-wilson/. 
  111. ↑ "Three Cheers for Socialism". February 24, 2020. https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/three-cheers-socialism. 
  112. ↑ "David Bentley Hart, David Gornoski on the Politics of Jesus, Socialism, Property Ethics". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ng9SyXR7d4. 
  113. ↑ "McDermott's Ignorant Slander". July 19, 2022. https://jesusandtheancientpaths.com/2022/07/19/mcdermotts-ignorant-slander/. 
  114. ↑ "Comment at bottom: God is not Odin, God is not Zeus, God is not Marduk". 3 August 2020. https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2020/08/03/god-is-not-odin-god-is-not-zeus-god-is-not-marduk-3/. 
  115. ↑ "Thoughts In and Out of Season". 3 April 2022. https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/thoughts-in-and-out-of-season. 

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