My Last Word On This Subject
Well, the piece I spent a lot of this summer reading for is out. I should be done talking about David Bentley Hart for a while. (A few of my readers will be happy about this!) He wrote a bunch of books close together, and I had to weigh in on several of them.
To finish off this subject, here is a ranking of DBH’s books to go alongside my ranking of Muriel Spark and my ranking of Penelope Fitzgerald. As with those authors, everything is worth reading; I’m choosing among goods, or separating goods from greats, not separating goods from bads. I do not include his translations (the New Testament, Analogia Entis) or his books written in collaboration (The Mystery of Castle MacGorilla). Nor do I include that most precious part of any writer’s oeuvre, the books I wish or hope they’ll write. These include a book-length dialogue between him and Michael Robbins, undertaken while one or both of them is tripping on mushrooms and both are watching the film Head (1968); a collaboration between him and his two author-brothers, one of whom is a hippie contemplative and the other of whom appears to be a somewhat fiery trad who nevertheless is also a universalist; a Divine Comedy in which the same soul progresses from purgatorial Hell through to paradise; a brief introduction to opera; a deep dive into the JFK assassination …
16. In the Aftermath (2008)
The opening essay gives you a nice precis of the argument of Beauty of the Infinite. The piece where he argues that some German guy I’ve never heard of is way better than Kierkegaard is kinda fun. The slant of a lot of the pieces is culturally conservative in ways that I find morally troubling: when you find yourself worrying aloud about European birth rates, it’s time to take one of those walks in the woods with your dog.
15. The Devil and Pierre Gernet: Stories (2012)
The title story is a fun little riff on “Enoch Soames.”
14. Kenogaia (2021)
A throwback to the hauntological children’s fiction of the ‘60s and ‘70s—L’Engle, Children of the Stones, Sky, Sapphire and Steel, Wolves of Willoughby Chase—but too damn long.
13. The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami (2005)
A pair of essays written soon after the awful tsunami of 2004: in the first, Hart explains why the evil that happens in the world is not willed by God, even if God permits it, and in the second, Hart responds to that first essay’s atheist and Christian critics. Reading it now, I get the feeling that Hart was morally shocked by the tenacity with which some Christians (both Calvinists and “manualist” Thomists, who not surprisingly are his great enemies now) defended the idea that God actually wills and does evil. I wonder if this book is a hinge point. If so—if Hart is now totally dismissive of these theological traditions, because their representatives were the people who kept writing him indignant letters saying “Of course God willed this tsunami! It is to his greater glory to kill all these pagan brown people! It makes His muscles look bigger! Don’t be such a softy”—then I don’t blame him one bit.
12. A Splendid Wickedness (2016)
An earlier collection of his First Things columns. He introduces us to some of his most important recurring characters, including his uncle Aloysius, the Quaker Pagan, and his talking dog Roland. He also bodyslams Adam Gopnik, which is always nice to see.
11. You Are Gods
and
10. Tradition and Apocalypse (2022)
Short books on technical subjects, written in an entertaining way. The academic-essay-for-everybody is a genre I’d like to see more people write in, frankly.
9. The Experience of God (2013)
Useful and in places beautiful, but this is also the book where I noticed him doing the “everyone-is-ignoring-this-very-basic-point-that-any-informed-person-would-know-and-no-I’m-not-going-to-explain-it-except-in-the-broadest-terms” move to the point where it got distracting.
8. That All Shall Be Saved (2019)
DBH goes for broke and makes the most strongly-stated case for universalism of which I am aware, with none of the usual caveats and no pretense of respect for other positions. This book has almost certainly ended friendships—I mean just among readers of DBH who find themselves hotly arguing about it. It also contains some of his most moving writing; cf. his reflections on the imprisoning nature of the ego (no way that shit’s not autobiographical) or the interwtining of one’s own identity with everyone else’s.
7. The Story of Christianity (2007)
Almost like a gift book: the type of family reference work that is perpetually for sale in the discount section of Barnes and Noble. But extremely well-done. Because Eastern Christianity is hard to learn about, I got a lot of new information from this book. DBH does well when writing for a broad and not necessarily learned public.
6. The Hidden and the Manifest (2017)
A collection of his more academic essays. Brilliant and highly technical.
5. Atheist Delusions (2009)
I learned so many things from this book!: why the factoid about Christians burning the Library of Alexandria is wrong; that Gregory of Nyssa is at least the first Western intellectual to condemn slavery as such (and not just call for slave “masters” to be gentle about it); the actual role of medieval Christian scholars in preserving (not simply destroying) classical learning; etc. Also it’s funny as hell.
4. The Dream-Child’s Progress (2017)
The last collection of his columns for First Things, from the period when he was really getting weird with it. Several of the different flavors of “DBH being fun” are here: he gets mad at a translation of Orlando Furioso, marinates in the beauty of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s sentences, explains why Origen was not actually condemned by that one church council if you look at the paperwork carefully, and calls Donald Trump Satan.
3. Theological Territories (2020)
Another miscellany of his more academic work—mostly talks, in this case. Gives a good sense of where he is at the moment and what he does well. Starts, very characteristically, with an indignant rant about a bad performance of Tristan und Isolde.
2. Roland in Moonlight (2021)
DBH writes fanfiction about his dog. They settle the mind-body problem and wonder how to reenchant modern life and introduce the Argument From the Existence of the Beatles For God’s Existence. A wonderful, mad book nobody else could have written.
1. The Beauty of the Infinite (2003)
Life-changing. Best theology book that I’ve read from this century, at least. Worth reading Hegel to understand. What really inspires me about it is that it begins as a response to an already-out-of-fashion-and-frankly-dumb scholarly conversation—“Is it violent to try to convince people of stuff?” (A: No; and shit like that is one of many reasons I didn’t get a Ph.D. in English)—and unspools into everything.