Bach as theologian

David Bentley Hart writes:

Bach is the greatest of Christian theologians, the most inspired witness to the ordo amoris in the fabric of being; not only is no other composer capable of more freely developing lines or of more elaborate structures of tonal mediation (wheresoever the line goes, Bach is there also), but no one as compellingly demonstrates that the infinite is beauty and that beauty is infinite. It is in Bach's music, as nowhere else, that the potential boundlessness of thematic development becomes manifest: how a them can unfold inexorably through difference, while remaining continuous in each moment of repetition, upon a potentially infinite surface of varied repetition. p. 282-3

Choosing Bach of course presents Hart with fewer difficulties than Barth's choosing of Mozart: Barth had to admit that Mozart was not a good man, and probably not a very firm believer. So, he had to seperate the music from the man. Here, no such problem: the composer could not, would not have composed as he did apart from the knowledge of God that he clearly had.

I find it interesting that Hart the Eastern Orthodox exults Bach the Protestant when Hart is so anti-Protestant in general. And yet there is a Protestant plainness to Bach, even when he is writing music for Masses. This aesthetic, far from being evidence of a dour disposition, is I think one of Protestantisms great strength: it is in better taste than the alternatives within Christianity (think the saccharine ornateness of much Catholic and Orthodox art...). At least, that is a Hartian argument!

Hart on impassability

At Wittenham Clumps, Oxfordshire, in the dead of winter...

The doctrine of the impassability of God has been something of an embarassment for modern theology. For Anglicans, it stands very prominently at the head of the 39 Articles: God is 'without body, parts or passions'. The suspicion is that this is yet another piece of Greek metaphysics entering into the doctrine of God, a metaphysics that should be scoured from its surface immediately and forthwith.

Not so fast, says David Bentley Hart:

...I should observe that the widespread impatience among theologians with the language of divine impassability, always fortified by the prejudice that such a doctrine represents an unreflective 'hellenization' of the gospel, has too often served to obscure the real question at issue, the doctrinal concerns that the teaching of divine impassablity answers, and the real philosophical revision - utterly consistent with itself and Scripture - that the teaching underwent in the hands of the greatest of the patristic theologians... p. 158

Which is to say, the 'oh, its Greek' accusation is far too simplistic. The doctrine protects us from imagining God as somehow dependent or interdependent on the creation. The absence of creation (says Hart) would no way alter God as God... Hart especially has a go here at the Teutonic Hegelianism of Moltmann, Juengel, Pannenberg and co. God, he says, does not require creation to fecundate his being or to determine his personality.

Hart on the sublime

I am somewhat frustrated by not yet reaching the theological sections of Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite. One of the problems was the section 'The Veil of the Sublime', which I found quite baffling. I still don't know really what is meant by 'the sublime' other than 'that which is unrepresentable'. For Kant, the subline 'is suggested to us in moments when, presented by an immensity, grandeur, or force that exceeds representation - because it requires of apprehension an 'infinite' activity that surpasses the power of comprehension, which is itself dependent upon the inward synthesis of the sense of time and hence finite - reasons must return from the realm of the sensible...' p. 45-6

Anyhow, why this matters is that Hart goes on to classify postmodern thought under four 'narratives of the sublime':

1 - the differential sublime, 'which might also be called the sublimity of exteriority'. Here he characterises Derrida's differance. Instead of order and classification, the sheer play of difference is celebrated.
2 - the cosmological sublime, 'which is the form the discourse of the unrepresentable can take when the Nietzschean impulse predominates', as it does with Deleuze, and then Foucault.
3 - the ontological sublime, represented by Heidegger
4 - the ethical sublime, whose chief figure is Levinas.

Hart is quite delightfully savage with some of these idols of our time. Chiefly, he attempts something very worthwhile, which is to sure why postmodern philosophers do not succeed even on their own terms. But, I am still left with that rather stupid feeling you get when you read what you don't understand...

I have some doubts about Hart...

Photo: In Nantes Cathedral

Some further thoughts on DB Hart:

Hart mounts a defence of the ‘beauty to whose persuasive power the Christian rhetoric of evangelism appeals’[1] against the charge from contemporary philosophy that this Christian rhetoric of peace is in fact inescapably violent. As Hart writes:

Christ is a persuasion, a form of evoking desire, and the whole force of the gospel depends upon the assumption that this persuasion is also peace: that the desire awakened by the shape of Christ and his church is one truly reborn as agape, rather than merely the way in which a lesser force succumbs to a great, as an episode in the endless epic of power.[2]

If the gospel is merely an iron fist, even if placed in a velvet glove, then the Nietzchean/postmodern charge – and the Tempter’s charge against Thomas – is sustained. Hart closes his book with a chapter entitled ‘The Gift of Martyrs’, in which he shows well that the Christian practice of authority contrasts markedly in form from the exercise of governmentality (to use Foucault’s term) because it is different in nature:

...theology has no choice but to cling to its own peculiar practice of persuasion, in order to resist the temptations of power (and in a history governed by sin, these temptations inhabit every moment); Christianity can only return to its understanding of peace, its unique style of rhetoric, as the sole source of accord; it must always obey the form of Christ, its persuasion must always assume the shape of the gift he is, it must practice its rhetoric under the only aspect it may wear if it is indeed Christian at all: martyrdom…Theology must, because of what its particular story is, have the form of martyrdom, witness, a peaceful offer that has already suffered rejection and must be prepared for rejection as a consequence.[3]

Through its imitation of Christ’s manner of rule – which the martyrs exemplify – the Christian community shows itself to be ruled by such a servant Lord. Hart’s emphasis on the ‘renunciation of violence’ as the core meaning of the crucifixion to be imitated in the practices of the church takes the place that rightly belongs to ‘sacrificial love’.[4] However, what he rightly shows is that, in the very ‘clinging’ of the disciples of Christ to that mode of speech and life which is the only one consonant with the message of the gospel Christians are commissioned to preach, the ubiquitous temptations of power are to be evaded.

[1] Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, p. 1
[2] Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, p. 3
[3] Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, p. 441
[4] I would further complain here that Hart’s language of ‘theology must…’ is a dangerous abstraction which contrasts with the concrete experience of martyrs. Who is this 'theology'?

Bruce D Marshall - Martyrdom and Truth

A number of authors I have encountered - namely Cavanaugh, Vanhoozer and DB Hart - stress the importance of martyrdom as the form of Christian truth-telling. Martyrdom is of missiological and apologetic importance - of course. It is a witness of a particular kind. In the postmodern as in the premodern world it is the ultimate proof that anyone can offer.

Bruce D Marshall in his book Trinity and Truth joins the ranks of the above. Is focus here is a epistemology. Here is fascinating excerpt in which he compares and contrasts two methods of establishing truth - scientific experiment and Christian practice:

The parallel between Christian practice and scientific experiment is, to be sure, inexact. As the martyr’s willingness to die for her faith in Christ most vividly shows, undertaking the life of obedience for which the gospel calls goes hand in hand with being convinced that the gospel is true, while scientists undertake experiments precisely in order to become convinced (or dissuaded) that an otherwise hypothetical set of beliefs is true. Failure of predicted results, moreover, tends to disconfimr the theory which underwrote the predictions, while Christians think they may and should believe the gospel precisely in the face of their own abject failures to live in a way congruent with it.

But the partial disanalogy apparently fails to bear on the relevant similarity of Christian beliefs to scientific hypotheses: the successful practice of the Christian community and its members might be explained otherwise than by the truth of the beliefs held by those who engage in the practice. An objector to the pragmatic thesis might agree to a significant extent with the Christian community's description of a practice...and might agree that the practice is good and right, but might propose a different, indeed incompatible, account of why the practice goes on and succeeds... (p. 186ff)

So, martyrdom is testimony, and as persuasive testimony perhaps as such there is: but it is not proof unless you already inhabit the world-view and practices of the martyr.

Marshall concludes:

Christians will inevitably encounter a kind of epistemic affliction, because they not only hold true, but insist on treating as epistemically primary across the board, beliefs which will be rationally contestable until the end of time…The affliction which goes with holding these beliefs may go beyond having to avoid giving them up. For the martyr’s willingness to die for her faith in Christ, a perseverance no less arduous for being whilly the Spirit’s gift, is rightly reserved the highest praise. p. 216

To summarise: the truth hurts. (Actually, is this a good title for my dissertation? Martyrdom - the Truth Hurts)

Hart on the bad taste of Nietzche

Hart's argument in The Beauty of the Infinite is that Christianity is jolly well the most attractive thing around, if you think about it. And other ways of thinking are, well, dog-ugly...

So he writes about Nietzche:

The most potent reply a Christian can make to Nietzche's critique is to accuse him of a defect of sensibility - of bad taste. And this, in fact, is the last observation that shuld be made at this point: Nietzche has atrocious taste. (p. 125)

!

I always thought that this ought to the Christian strategy to counter the rise of queer culture: camp is not just bad morality: it is bad art.

David Bentley Hart gets Calvin badly askew

David Bentley Hart restates the view (popular with the Radical Orthodox) which traces the decline of Western Christianity to the nominalism of the medieval period: when God became a kind of pure will. He sees Calvin as the moment when that poisoned stream becomes a flood:

...this state of theological decline was so precipitous and complete that it even became posible for someone as formidably intelligent as Calvin, without any apparent embarassment, to regard the fairly lurid portrait of the omnipotent despot of book III of his Institutes - who not only ordains the destiny of souls, but in fact predestines the first sin, and so brings the whole drama of creation and redemption to pass (including the eternal perdition of the vast majority of humanity) as a display of his own dread sovereignty - as a proper depiction of the Christian God. One ancient Augustinian misreading of Paul's ruminations upon the mystery of election had, at last, eventuated in fatalism... p. 134

This is a very nasty (and inaccurate) reading of Calvin, for whom God is primarily the life-giving and tender Father of his creation, and and loving redeemer of his people. This thought permeates the Institutes, rather than the pure omnipotent will of the scholastics. Again, the mode and style of Calvin's work makes all the difference - something you would think Hart would be hip to.

The Beauty of the Infinite: 'The city and the wastes'

Hart's style is by turns infuriating, self-indulgent, hilarious and transcendent. It is obviously a deliberate choice to write in this way because of some aesthetic sensibility, given the book's subject matter. However, he doesn't always pull it off, it must be said.

In this brief chapter he takes on Milbank's critique of the post-moderns and Heidegger, explaining that they themselves did not escape the metaphysics of violence. Despite the left-wing credentials of Foucault, Derrida and co, Milbank argues that the neo-Nietzcheans cannot wriggle out of the implication that nihilism's true practical expression is fascism. He sees the ethical work of these philosophers as aberrent, postmodernism's 'emptiest gesture'. The postmoderns as power-critics are blind to their own use of power. In addition, postmodernism, far from overturning metaphysics, actually confirms it.

So Heidegger, also:

The Heideggerian project is, both late and early, just another transcendental vantage on being, and one whose own metaphysical presuppositions confine philosophy within th enarrative of a more subtle but more inescapable ontological violence: a univocal account of being which makes out the ruptures in or transition among manifestations of difference to be inadjudicable and arbitrary expressions of a being hidden by what has being. p. 42

(what the...?!)

Hart again

I added this paragraph to my 'power of scripture' essay (parts of which I have already posted here and here and here and here. Oh, and here ...)


"My argument in certain respects resembles that of David Bentley Hart in his monumental The Beauty of the Infinite. Hart mounts a defence of the ‘beauty to whose persuasive power the Christian rhetoric of evangelism appeals’ (p.1) against the same charge from contemporary philosophy that concerns us here: that this Christian rhetoric of peace is in fact inescapably violent. As Hart writes: ‘Christ is a persuasion, a form of evoking desire, and the whole force of the gospel depends upon the assumption that this persuasion is also peace: that the desire awakened by the shape of Christ and his church is one truly reborn as agape, rather than merely the way in which a lesser force succumbs to a great, as an episode in the endless epic of power’ (p. 3). This is our question too: though where Hart more generally speaks of the Christian evangel and the life of the church (which looms large for him as an Eastern Orthodox theologian) our focus is the Scriptures as the source and guarantor of Christian rhetoric. If the scriptures are merely an iron fist, even if placed in a velvet glove, then the Nietzchean/postmodern charge is sustained..."

[note please: self-quotation is definitely allowed within the rules!]

David Bentley Hart and Postmodernity

Sorry, Byron: I couldn't wait, and I have to confess to having dipped into The Beauty of the Infinite. It is one of those books with strong opinions - which have their own allure. His shredding of Tillich - whose theology is, in my opinion, best seen as a curious mid-century cul-de-sac - had me cheering in the stands.

Hart, like many theologians I like, is not unsympathetic to postmodernity; or rather, he sees postmodernity as moment of some opportunity for theology - 'an auroral astonishment following upon a nocturnal oblivion' (p. 5) at the moment when we discover that Enlightenment reason's attempt at universalising has failed. Having said that, he has a real go at the postmoderns too, bless him, for not being postmodern enough.

Here he finds a point of convergence:

'...if indeed God became a man, then Truth condescended to become a truth, from whose historical contigency one cannot simply pass to categories of universal rationality; and this means that whatever Christians mean when they speak of truth, it cannot involve simply the dialectical wresting of abstract principles from intractable facts..' (p.5)

The Beauty of the Infinite: and Christian rhetoric

I received my copy of David Bentley Hart's dazzling The Beauty of the Infinite yesterday... It begins by setting the question:

'Is the beauty to whose persuasive power the Christian rhetoric of evangelism inevitably appeals, and upon which it depends, theologically defensible?'

That is a great question, and it coincides with some of my interest in describing and defending the power of scripture . It's a good question especially given the eschewal of power rhetorics by Paul in 1 Corinthians 1-3.

Hart closes his book with a chapter entitled 'The Gift of Martyrs', and has this to say:

'...theology has no choice but to cling to its own peculiar practice of persuasion, in order to resist the temptations of power (and in a history governed by sin, these temptations inhabit every moment); Christianity can only return to its understanding of peace, its unique style of rhetoirc, as the sole source of accord; it must always obey the form of Christ, its persuasion must always assume the shape of the gift he is, it must practice its rhetoric under the only aspect it may wear if it is indeed Christian at all: martyrdom'. (p. 441)

This is salutary for evangelists and apologists, isn't it?