This past summer I began a series of posts reviewing David Bentley Hart’s book Tradition and Apocalypse. In the first post I discussed the general theological and historical issues Hart is addressing. In particular, I gave my own account of the development of early Christian tradition, particularly the doctrine of the Trinity, which is Hart’s major “test case.” In the second post, I discussed how the Reformation (my own area of expertise) fits into the picture, and the different ways in which... Read more

A Good Witch Is hard to Find In college, I was assigned Flannery O’Connor’s story “A Good Man Is hard to Find.” I was disdainful of modern literature at that time and initially reacted badly to this dark tale of banality and murder. I saw it as typical modern secular nihilism. (Yes, I was very obnoxious.) But one of my professors happened to be a Flannery O’Connor scholar, and with his help I came to see that O’Connor was after... Read more

In the past two posts, I’ve outlined the historical background to the arguments made by David Bentley Hart in his book Tradition and Apocalypse. Hart’s starting point is the evidence of diversity and disruption found in Christian tradition from the beginning. It’s simply not true that there’s an unbroken, unchanging stream of tradition linking modern Christians to the time of Jesus and the Apostles. Rather, Christian tradition is full of conflict and innovation. Ideas central to orthodoxy, such as the Trinity, were... Read more

I just finished reading John Updike’s novel Gertrude and Claudius. I had never read an Updike novel before. I knew he was famous for novels about the torrid sexual lives of 20th-century middle-class Americans. So here’s a novel about the torrid sexual lives of upper-class medieval Danish people. It also happens to be a prequel to Hamlet. I found the beginning of the novel a bit off-putting–the style seemed stilted and awkward and the analysis of everyone’s motivations and thoughts... Read more

In Part 1 of this review, I discussed the background for David Bentley Hart’s arguments in Tradition and Apocalypse, focusing on the issues he raises concerning the diversity of early Christianity and the discontinuity of fourth-century Trinitarian orthodoxy with much that had gone before. In this post, I’m going to continue the story by looking at the work of John Henry Newman. I’d intended to discuss Hart’s critique of Newman but my interest in the broader issues surrounding Newman caused this post... Read more

What is tradition? David Bentley Hart has a habit of saying things that I have already begun to think. But he says them  much better and with much more profundity and coherence. Sometimes, to be sure, he puts ideas in my head that weren’t there before. More often, though, he confirms my intuitions and helps me work out their implications in a more systematic way. That’s definitely the case for the book of his I’ve read most recently, Tradition and Apocalypse. I’ve... Read more

This Easter season I’ve been thinking about the message of the Resurrection in light of my recent reading of David Bentley Hart’s That All Shall Be Saved. This pugnaciously beautiful book has challenged my longstanding “hopeful universalism.” Hart claims that the kind of hope for universal salvation championed by Hans Urs von Balthasar is a weak compromise. Rather, he believes that Christians should affirm confidently that Jesus will save everyone. Anything less, Hart thinks, makes Christian theology incoherent and even immoral.... Read more

  My Patheos colleague David Schloss has just published a post on the evangelical theological movement known as open theism. I welcome this because I want to see Catholics engage more deeply with the theological discussions going on among Protestants. Also, my own encounter with open theism was tied up with my journey to Catholicism in several ways. The robot box First of all, I first encountered open theism in a Catholic context. (At least this is one of the... Read more

  Remembering Benedict a year after his death The death of Pope Benedict XVI a year ago prompted a wide range of responses, reflecting his decidedly mixed legacy and reputation.  I began writing my own reflections but never finished or  published them. The one-year anniversary of his death seemed like  a good time to revisit that unfinished post, so that’s what I’ve done here. And while I won’t be directly addressing Fiducia Supplicans, I’m well aware that I’m talking about... Read more

  In the shadow of Lent Advent has always stood in the shadow of Lent. As the “other” season of fasting and solemnity and “paring back,” it has often been treated as a milder version of the Great Fast. In the Byzantine tradition, it is practiced for forty days like Lent, and Lent is often referred to as “Great Lent” with the implication that Advent (and the two other fasting periods of the Byzantine tradition) are lesser examples of the... Read more