Excerpt of "Theological Territories"

DAV ID B E N TLE Y HA R T

THEOLOGICAL TERRITORIES A David Bentley Hart Digest

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

Copyright Š 2020 by David Bentley Hart Published by the University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

∞This book is printed on acid-free paper.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments xi Introduction xiii

PART ONE.

Theology and What May Be Said

1 The Gospel According to Melpomene: Reflections on Rowan Williams’s The Tragic Imagination 3 2 Remarks Made to Jean-Luc Marion regarding Revelation and Givenness 26 3 What Is Postmodern Theology?

Reflections for Tomáš Halík

45

4 Martin and Gallaher on Bulgakov

55

5

Remarks to Bruce McCormack regarding the Relation between Trinitarian Theology and Christology

65

6 The Devil’s March: Creatio ex Nihilo, the Problem of Evil, and a Few Dostoyevskian Meditations

77

7

98

Tradition and Authority: A Vaguely Gnostic Meditation

viii Contents

PART TWO.

The Borderlands of Theology and Science

8 Where the Consonance Really Lies

123

9 Should Science Think?

138

10 The Illusionist: On Daniel Dennett’s From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds 153 11 Consciousness and Grace: Thoughts on Bernard Lonergan

PART THREE.

167

Gospel and Culture

12 Concerning By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment,

by Edward Feser and Joseph M. Bessette

183

13 Further Reflections on Capital Punishment (and on Edward Feser)

198

14 Orthodoxy in America

212

15 University and Magisterium: Remarks in Response to Reinhard HĂźtter

225

16 The Story of the Nameless: The Use and Abuse of History for Theology

232

17 Beauty, Being, Kenosis

245

18 A Sense of Style: Beauty and the Christian Moral Life

257

PART FOUR.

Literatures of Transcendence

19 The Shock of the Real: On Journey to the Land of the Real,

by Victor Segalen

275

20 Empson in the East: On The Face of the Buddha

289

Contents ix

21 David Jones: The Forgotten Modernist

297

22 An Introduction to Léon Bloy’s The Pilgrim of the Absolute 314

PART FIVE.

The New Testament

23 The First Radicals

325

24 Paul’s Theology Was Rather Different from What We Think

331

25 What It Says, Not What It Means

335

26 The Spirit of the Text

340

27 A Prayer for the Poor

344

28 Different Idioms, Different Worlds: Various Notes on Translating the New Testament

351

Index 390

INTRODUCTION

The large preponderance of the pieces gathered here are texts of live addresses delivered in various settings, and so have never before been published. The few that remain have appeared in print previously but are given here in alternative (and more authoritative) form, restoring material that originally had to be omitted for reasons of space; their claim to a place in this collection is that they, like the others, were written as occasional meditations, on topics usually assigned by others, without footnotes, and almost all of them were also at various points delivered as lectures or private talks; and yet, curiously enough, they fill in certain crucial dimensions of my thinking over the past several years. Like most scholars who have been at their work for any appreciable stretch of years, I find that I have committed a great many of my ideas—even some of the better ones, I think—only to public lectures, or to public remarks on the work of other scholars. In many cases, moreover, those ideas are expressed more concisely and with greater clarity than they might have been in the context of a large written text. A single address written to be delivered live belongs to a special genre, one that imposes certain exigencies on its author. One does not enjoy the liberty of extending one’s exposition beyond the scope of, say, an hour (or forty-five minutes, if one is merciful), but neither can one curtail one’s remarks before reaching some kind of satisfying conclusion. It is a usefully severe discipline, especially if one hopes to say anything of consequence in the time allotted.

The result, if one succeeds in one’s aims, can be a degree of economy and lucidity that the greater freedom of a longer text might actually discourage or thwart. But for the pitiless relentlessness of the clock on the wall, one might never strive for the kind of crystalline exactitude that becomes

xiii

xiv Introduction

necessary when one can say no more than what must be said to communicate one’s meaning within an unforgivingly fixed span.

All of this having been noted, the first chapter in this collection was in fact written initially as an essay and was published as an article in a symposium on Rowan Williams’s darkly scintillating book The Tragic Imagination, in Modern Theology (April 2018), in a somewhat shorter version than the text given here; only in a revised form was it delivered as a public lecture (at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, in March 2018).

I like to think that it is a fairly accomplished piece, structurally and stylistically at least, and that it makes an argument of some subtlety. That does not mean, however, that I can claim that its argument has proved quite as clear to every reader or listener as I might have hoped. In general, this has been my experience whenever I have addressed this topic. When I wrote on the relation of tragedy and theology in my first book, some years ago now, I found myself on more than one occasion being accused of disliking tragedy as a dramatic form. In point of fact, I am, if anything, excessively attached to it. My objection to “tragic theology,” back then and in this present piece, is partly the result of my belief that this style of theology has the effect of distorting and even obscuring something strange, crucial, and unprecedented in the Christian story; but it is no less the result of my indignation at the ways in which some of the tragic theology I have encountered in the past has almost invariably (as far as I can see) stripped tragic art of its true mystery, variety, and beauty and contracted it to a banal set of platitudes regarding hope despite uncertainty, hope despite suffering, hope despite the impenetrable darkness, hope despite . . .

Happily, Williams’s book breaks from that ­reductive pattern. Like everything he writes, it is marked by an extraordinary degree of tact and penetrating intelligence. My essay is in one sense a reaction to his book, and partly to certain mild remarks it directs toward my earlier writing on the matter (as well as remarks not quite as mild made by Williams in a public lecture that I watched online); but it is more essentially a larger meditation on the nature of the Christian story, and on the relevance of tragic art to our understanding of that story. My approach to the matter might be said to be more or less the opposite of Williams’s, but I prefer to think of it as complementary. As I say in my essay, my concern is not so much to contest his claims regarding what tragedy has the power to reveal about reality but rather to ask whether he neglects adequately to

Introduction xv

consider what tragedy has the power to conceal. And, I confess, his sympathy for Hegel’s reading of Attic tragedy is one I cannot share; I have always found Hegel’s treatment of, say, Antigone deeply depressing, for the admittedly petty reason that it spoils the play for me, by turning it into what looks to me like a bourgeois morality tale, and thus robbing it of its terrifying pagan grandeur (but I deal with that in the essay).

I should note, by the way, that Williams offers some responses to my essay—and to several others also concerned with his book—in that same issue of Modern Theology; his remarks are well worth consulting and are probably wiser than my cavils regarding his argument. Here I will mention only that he arraigns me for perhaps falling prey to a certain “essentialism” regarding tragedy. He may be right. As a rule, that would not be a charge that would bother me very much, since it is one that can usually be deflected with little more than a languid wave of the hand and a surly tu quoque; anything to which we apply a general name—anything we situate in a particular category—is likely to be something we identify by certain essential qualities, and none of us can wholly escape his or her own generalizations. As far as I know, however, apart from some specific observations on the cultic context of Attic tragedy, my only intentional general characterization of tragedy as a genre or natural kind is in terms of the special affective power that it possesses: it excites a peculiar kind of pathos, one that occupies a particular place along the emotional spectrum. Ideally, tragedies are sad, comedies amusing, and so forth. Admittedly, I also advert to a certain somnifacient virtue in tragedy well performed, but that seems like a harmless rhetorical conceit to me. Even so, I do not dismiss Williams’s criticism, and I fully grant that nothing I say in my essay should be taken as the sole “correct” account of the tragic, and I definitely do not mean to suggest that Williams’s account is somehow objectively “wrong.” His is a rich and somewhat troubling meditation upon this most mysterious of dramatic forms, and one of con­ siderable originality. It has made me think many issues over again (but still, so to speak, on the obverse).

Most of the remaining pieces collected here, fortunately, require less by way of preface. Chapter 2 was originally delivered at the University of Chicago in May 2017, under the auspices of the Lumen Christi Institute; it was one of two addresses (the other being by Cyril O’Regan) made to Jean-Luc Marion on the occasion of the (oddly incomplete) publication

xvi Introduction

of his Gifford Lectures, and Marion replied to both with great grace and aplomb. Chapter 3 consists in remarks made to the great Czech philosopher Msgr. Tomáš Halik in November 2015, as part of a large colloquium on a research project he had undertaken when he and I were both fellows at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. Chapter 4 consists in comments on books by two extremely gifted scholars, Jennifer Newsome Martin and Brandon Gallaher, that I delivered while participating in a panel at the annual convention of the American Academy of Religion in Boston in November 2017. Chapter 5 consists in remarks made at the University of Notre Dame in April 2018, in response to a lecture by Bruce McCormack.

Chapter 6 is an essay that has been published previously (“The ­Devil’s March: Creatio ex Nihilo, the Problem of Evil, and a Few Dostoyevskian Meditations,” in Creatio ex Nihilo, edited by Gary Anderson, University of Notre Dame Press, 2017), albeit in somewhat different form.

Chapter 7 is the text of a lecture delivered at a conference on the idea of tradition (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) in the modern world, held at Valparaiso University in April 2018. Section III was omitted from the live reading, for reasons of length. The unabridged version will also be published in a volume comprising the full proceedings of the conference at some time in the future. This essay comes with a warning. For those with a mercilessly sober sensibility—and especially those of clericalist inclination—the experience of reading the first part of the text may be more jarring than interesting, and I would not blame them for avoiding it altogether. In a previous book, published not very long ago, I pledged that in future I would attempt a more emollient tone in my future theological writings. My resolve has already abandoned me, however. Life is short and generally tedious, so why make a virtue of blandness? And, truth be told, the savagery of the lecture’s humor is intended principally to distract the reader from the subversiveness of its more serious arguments (or what will look like subversiveness to anyone who cherishes an idyllically uncomplicated picture of dogmatic history). I should probably not admit that, of course, so please neglect to read the sentence directly preceding this one.

Chapter 8 is the text of a lecture delivered at the University of Notre Dame in April 2017 at a conference called “The Quest for Consonance: The Sciences and Theology,” directed by Prof. Celia Deane-Drummond

Introduction xvii

and the Center for Theology, Science, and Human Flourishing. Chapter 9 is a lecture originally delivered to the American Maritain Society at a conference held at Providence College in February 2014.

Chapter 10 is an article published previously (“The Illusionist,” on Daniel Dennett’s From Bacteria to Bach, in the New Atlantis, Summer/ Fall 2017), though—once again—in somewhat different form.

Chapter 11 is a lecture delivered at Marquette University in May 2017 at the annual convocation of the Lonergan Society—a conference with the rather cumbersome and enigmatic title “At the Level of Our Time: Lonergan between Today and Tomorrow.”

Chapters 12 and 13 are related to one another and have both been published previously (“Christians and the Death Penalty: There Is No ­Patron Saint of Executioners,” on Edward Feser and Joseph M. Bessette’s

By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment, in Commonweal, December 1, 2017; “Further Reflections on Capital Punishment [and on Edward Feser],” in the Institute for Church Life Journal, December 19, 2017), with some differences. Both are extremely harsh in the judgments they pass upon the book, and I have no inclination to revise my remarks now. I do not like altering the record after the fact; and, as it happens, my opinion of the book’s biblical, patristic, historical, theological, philosophical, and pragmatic arguments remains entirely unfavorable. I have to say, however, that in the course of private exchanges with one of the authors, the philosopher Edward Feser, he assured me that the callousness that I and other critics believed we had discerned in the book’s arguments is an appearance rather than the reality and is the unintended consequence of the somewhat forensic style the authors had chosen to adopt. I take his word on this unreservedly, am relieved to be corrected on the matter, and regret any impression I may have given that I think I can read the authors’ souls. And, to be honest, I cannot claim perfect purity of heart in this regard. I believe that Christian faith absolutely forbids the normal judicial application of the death penalty, and that any Christian who thinks otherwise simply has never understood the teachings of Christ or the example of the earliest Christians. The record of the first three centuries of the faith is clear and uncompromising on this matter. To me, there is not even an interesting argument to be had here. Moreover, I find the draconian American penal system and the brutality of its “justice” abhorrent. But I am not offended by those who argue

xviii Introduction

for the justice of capital punishment in certain particular cases where one cannot deny the presence of absolute evil. In fact, I think one would have to be inhuman not to feel the desire for a final retribution in certain cases. So I ought not presume to understand or judge the motives of others.

Chapter 14 is the text of an address delivered at Fordham University in September 2017, as that year’s Archbishop Demetrios Orthodoxy in America Lecture.

Chapter 15 contains remarks on an address by the redoubtable Reinhard Hütter, delivered at the University of Notre Dame in October 2015.

Chapter 16 is a lecture delivered at Duke University, also in September 2017, as a keynote address at the divinity school’s annual theology graduate students’ conference. Chapter 17 is the oldest text here, being a lecture whose first version was delivered in 1998 at the University of Virginia, and which has been delivered in ever shifting forms at many venues since then (I have probably delivered some version of it nearly a dozen times). Given its age, some of its phrases have also over the years insinuated themselves into my books and articles. Chapter 18, by contrast, is the most recent piece contained herein, though it resumes many of the themes of the preceding chapter and carries them in another direction. It is a plenary address made to the Society of Christian Ethics at that organization’s annual conference in January 2019 in Louisville, Kentucky. As I am not a member of the society, it was something of an honor to be invited to deliver the lecture, one for which I am sincerely grateful.

Chapters 19 through 21—though written as essays on particular ­writers—all appeared in different form, trimmed to the dimensions of book reviews, in various issues of First Things (respectively, “The Shock of the Real,” on Victor Segalen’s Journey to the Land of the Real, November 2017; “Empson in the East,” on William Empson’s The Face of the Buddha, May 2017; “The Lost Modernist,” on David Jones, March 2018). I have since severed all connections with that journal and really should have done so sooner; so these represent my last contributions to its pages.

Chapter 22 was originally written as a foreword to Cluny Media’s reprint of Léon Bloy’s The Pilgrim of the Absolute (2017). This version contains a few sentences judiciously omitted from the previously published version.

Introduction xix

After my translation of the New Testament appeared late in 2017, I was invited to give a great many interviews and to write a great many short articles on the project. Chapters 23 through 27 are all examples of the latter (in order: “Are Christians Supposed to Be Communists?” in the New York Times, November 4, 2017; “Everything You Know about the Gospel of Paul Is Likely Wrong,” in Aeon, January 8, 2018; “The Word Made Fresh,” in The Tablet, January 13, 2018; “The Spirit of the Text,” in Yale Books Unbound, November 3, 2017; “A Prayer for the Poor,” in the Institute for Church Life Journal, June 5, 2018), reproduced here with a few changes and additions, as well as the titles I gave them when I wrote them. Chapter 28, on the other hand, has never appeared in print before at all; neither was it ever delivered live, at least not as a lecture. Rather, it is a distillate of various remarks I made regarding my translation in the course of a number of radio and podcast interviews.

Given the nature of this collection, I should note, it is inevitable that certain arguments appear more than once, albeit not in an identical context. Some phrases and some passages resemble one another, because no lecturer should be obliged always to think of an entirely new way of saying the same thing. Even so, I ask the reader’s patience.

All reprinted pieces appear here with permission.