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A review by ben_smitty
The Experience of God : Being, Consciousness, Bliss by David Bentley Hart
5.0
“The mind unlearned in reverence, says Bonaventure (1221–1274), is in danger of becoming so captivated by the spectacle of beings as to be altogether forgetful of being in itself; and our mechanistic approach to the world is nothing but ontological obliviousness translated into a living tradition.”
David Bentley Hart is an Eastern Orthodox philosopher who specializes in metaphysics and ontology and is one of the smartest guys I've ever read. His apologetic of theism focuses on three phenomena of the world we inhabit: being, consciousness, and bliss. If I ever had a doubt about the feasibility of theism before, this book has annihilated any hint of doubt I'll have in the future.
Now the reason I call this a defense of theism rather a Christian apologetic is because Hart's vision of God is a Platonic ideal of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. This God is not simply, as Hart says, a being among beings, but the ground of Being itself through which all things "live and move and have their being." Because of this, Hart believes that God is the same God throughout all the (ancient) theistic traditions. Essentially, God is Atman, YHWH, Allah, etc. but in the metaphysical sense; his attributes are not attributes because he IS the ideal unity of all the different attributes that we have in mind about him.
When it comes to showing the absurdity of atheism and the materialist worldview, Hart is the best apologist and polemicist out there. But I don't know if I can buy Hart's vision of God simply because that would require me to read (as Hart does) the Old Testament in an allegorical fashion so that the picture of God in the OT is not taken seriously.
P.S. A lot of people seem to have a problem with his "rudeness," and at times he does seem to come across as a little arrogant. I think this is just his contrarian rhetoric coming out. It reminds me of H.L. Mencken, and I think he does it well.
David Bentley Hart is an Eastern Orthodox philosopher who specializes in metaphysics and ontology and is one of the smartest guys I've ever read. His apologetic of theism focuses on three phenomena of the world we inhabit: being, consciousness, and bliss. If I ever had a doubt about the feasibility of theism before, this book has annihilated any hint of doubt I'll have in the future.
Now the reason I call this a defense of theism rather a Christian apologetic is because Hart's vision of God is a Platonic ideal of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. This God is not simply, as Hart says, a being among beings, but the ground of Being itself through which all things "live and move and have their being." Because of this, Hart believes that God is the same God throughout all the (ancient) theistic traditions. Essentially, God is Atman, YHWH, Allah, etc. but in the metaphysical sense; his attributes are not attributes because he IS the ideal unity of all the different attributes that we have in mind about him.
When it comes to showing the absurdity of atheism and the materialist worldview, Hart is the best apologist and polemicist out there. But I don't know if I can buy Hart's vision of God simply because that would require me to read (as Hart does) the Old Testament in an allegorical fashion so that the picture of God in the OT is not taken seriously.
P.S. A lot of people seem to have a problem with his "rudeness," and at times he does seem to come across as a little arrogant. I think this is just his contrarian rhetoric coming out. It reminds me of H.L. Mencken, and I think he does it well.