The Hidden and the Manifest: Essays in Theology and Metaphysics

by David Bentley Hart

Overview

Rowan Williams says that David Bentley Hart "can always be relied on to offer a perspective on the Christian faith that is both profound and unexpected." The Hidden and the Manifest, a new collection of this brilliant scholar's work, contains twenty essays by Hart on theology and metaphysics.

Spanning Hart's career both topically and over time, these essays cover such subjects as the Orthodox understanding of Eucharistic sacrifice; the metaphysics of Paradise Lost; Christianity, modernity, and freedom; death, final judgment, and the meaning of life; and many more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467446563
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	04/12/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	926 KB

About the Author

David Bentley Hart is a philosopher, theologian, writer, and cultural commentator who has taught at the University of Virginia, Duke University, and the University of Notre Dame. His other books include The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth; A Splendid Wickedness and Other Essays; and Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, which was awarded the Michael Ramsey Prize in Theology in 2011.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

1 The Offering of Names: Metaphysics, Nihilism, and Analogy 1

2 No Shadow of Turning: On Divine Impassibility 45

3 The Writing of the Kingdom: Thirty-Three Aphorisms toward art Eschatology of the Text 70

4 From "Notes on the Concept of the Infinite in the History of Western Metaphysics": Part I 90

5 The Destiny of Christian Metaphysics: Reflections on the Analogia Entis 97

6 The Mirror of the Infinite; Gregory of Nyssa and the Vestigia Trinitatis 113

7 The Hidden and the Manifest: Metaphysics after Nicaea 137

8 From "Notes on the Concept of the Infinite in the History of Western Metaphysics": Part II 165

9 Impassibility as Transcendence: On the Infinite Innocence of God 167

10 Thine Own of Thine Own: The Orthodox Understanding of Eucharistic Sacrifice 191

11 Matter, Monism, and Narrative: An Essay on the Metaphysics of Paradise Lost 217

12 The Whole Humanity: Gregory of Nyssa's Critique of Slavery in Light of His Eschatology 237

13 Death, Final Judgment, and the Meaning of Life 253

14 The Myth of Schism 269

15 Remarks in Response to Father Lawrence Dewan 285

16 Thrift 290

17 Christianity, Modernity, and Freedom 312

18 The Encounter between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy: A Brief Foreword 324

19 Remarks in Response to Gianni Vattimo 329

20 God, Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of Creatio ex Nihilo 338

Acknowledgments 351

Index 354

Editorial Reviews

John Milbank
-- University of Nottingham
"David Hart is unerringly learned, eloquent, and profound over an enormous intellectual range. Above all, this book (worth reading for the stunning Milton essay alone) shows just how the narrative vision of Christianity and its metaphysics of the simple, eternal, nonsuffering, and omnipotent God require each other. . . . With a glorious disrespect for shibboleths, Hart proclaims, with unique brilliance, how Christianity restores, fulfills, and transcends the earliest human intuitions concerning the obscure symbolism of nature, the priesthood of humanity, and the unnaturalness of death."

-- Tony Clark in Theology
"A veritable theological feast."

The Living Church
"[Hart] has an uncanny ability not only to write on theological problems with penetrating clarity and astonishing intelligence and insight, but his theology also maintains a striking, memorable aesthetic. This latest published collection of his theological essays presents him at his finest in both regards."

From the Publisher