Life’s Paradox

Having read David Bentley Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth last year (and quite enjoying it), I was very excited to find this wonderful new blog called Ipsum Esse by DJW. Below is the full text of his latest post:

I have not yet read David Bentley Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite, though I have read his small book on theodicy and various articles of his, many of which can be accessed for free on www.firstthings.com. I find him to be an exhilarating writer and am often carried away by the beauty of his prose. Until now, however, I had the same concerns over his theological orientation as I have over Milbanks’. I was therefore extremely pleased to see him address these outright in the latest issue of New Blackfriars.

He responds to three evaluations of his work and it is his response to James K. A. Smith that I was most interested in. He contends that Smith has misread his intentions in The Beauty of the Infinite, and aligned him far too much with ‘Yale School’ tendencies which he had expressed dissatisfaction with but had perhaps not sufficiently distinguished his position from. Thus he flat out asserts that:

In my haste to dismiss the Enlightenment myth of a “pure reason,” neutrally available to every reflective mind, undetermined by the particularities of language or culture, I seem not to have made it sufficiently clear that I was by no means calling into question the power of natural reason to discern many truths, to clarify its understanding of those truths, and to inform and receive nourishment from reasoned debate and reflection.

I have to say that this was music to my ears, coming as I do from a Roman Catholic perspective. I fully agree that there is no such thing as a “pure reason” but it seems to me that the rejection of this should not entail a rejection of the possibility of the human mind ‘naturally’ attaining truth. I think it’s all the more important for Catholics to remember that this is not a negotiable aspect of their faith.

Hart continues in the same vein when speaking of God‘s revelation:

He reveals himself in nature, in human reason, in human culture, in human religions: always now through a veil of sin and death, perhaps, but never unavailingly.

Hart, however, does not overstate the role of reason and his view of the analogia entis remains firmly within that established in 1215 by the Fourth Lateran Council wherein it was stated that:

For between creator and creature there can be noted no similarity so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them.

This was the view followed by Przywara and, following him, Balthasar.

Thus Hart remarks (perhaps rhetorically overstating the case in my view) that:

Still, all that said, I grant that we are talking about a very great difference of degree indeed—as great, perhaps, as the difference between the self-love of the suicide and the self-love of the saint (who loves himself wholly and only in God).

On a separate note, I must say that I was also very pleased when Hart, in the best tradition of 1 Cor 15:14, called himself an “unregenerate primitive” regarding the resurrection, unequivocally asserting that the resurrection only makes sense if it is understood as a literally historical event occurring after the crucifixion. I am of the same opinion and must confess myself completely befuddled as to what some theologians are really saying when it comes to the resurrection (Rahner in The Foundations of Christian Faith springs to mind). I often find myself exasperated at such equivocations and just want them to say outright whether they believe the resurrection really occurred in history.

I would also highly recommend DJW’s series of posts on John Milbank. There is a summary of Theology and Social Theory here, and a critical engagement with Milbank’s essay ‘The End of Dialogue’ that appears in the collection Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered, which can be found here, here, and here.

The ensuing conversation in these posts with Cynthia Nielsen and Brendan definitely worth the time. These are some really good critical engagements that are devoid of the usual sloppiness, snarkiness, and impatience found in anti-Milbankian polemics, making these quite refreshing reads.

It is perhaps also providence that DJW posts Peguy’s “Sleep,” which, though I had never read it before, this poem had just been recommended to me earlier this morning by a friend. In light of all the reasons why I need to take heed of this poem, it is a good thing that tonight begins a three-day weekend!

~ by Eric Lee on August 31, 2007.