What we think we know about God
“Anyone who thinks he knows the orthodox consensus can always be shown to be wrong,” says David Bentley Hart.
Religion scholar David Bentley Hart (Jjhake / Creative Commons)
David Bentley Hart is an Eastern Orthodox scholar of religion and a philosopher, writer, and cultural commentator. He is author and translator of 23 books, including the award-winning Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest (2020).
Let’s start with You Are Gods, published last year. It’s a collection of essays arguing against the distinction between nature and supernature in Christian theology. In it, you say that “any coherent metaphysics is a monism.” What are the book’s main arguments? What are you hoping to accomplish with it?
The precipitating occasion for this book is the revival, in recent years, of a tradition in Catholic thought that many of us had happily thought dead and buried. Unfortunately we neglected to drive a stake fully through its heart, and so now it’s back. When people are seeking to be opprobrious, they call this tradition “two-tier Thomism,” so I call it two-tier Thomism. It is actually an early modern school of thought which arose in the 16th century and has very little to do with Thomas Aquinas. It sought to affirm the gratuity of God’s goodness by creating an absolute distinction between the natural and supernatural ends of rational creatures.
