Monastery of the Holy Cross

David Bentley Hart is a theologian whose style is particularly congenial to my own tastes, and this book did not disappoint.  Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies was a book I could hardly put down.  Hart’s prose is not for everyone, but he seems to me to grow more readable with experience.

Hart takes on the ‘New Atheists’ in this book, in my opinion showing up the poor arguments and, indeed, bad faith that suffuses the books of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.  I must confess that I’ve not read their books on atheism (I’ve read early books by Dawkins and political essays by Hitchens).  Here and there I’ve come across arguments by Dawkins and Dennett, and they’ve normally struck me as particularly empty philosophically.  If I ever felt the need to refute them, well, the job’s been done, and better than I could have succeeded.

Atheist Delusions functions well as a sophisticated book of apologetics, but goes much further.  My own weakness in apologetics stems from what often strikes me as a lack of comprehensiveness; the debates I’ve gotten into with those whose beliefs differ from mine have too often devolved into ticky-tack spats over minor points.  But even feuding over major points doesn’t usually change hearts.  This is where I think Hart does a marvelous job.  After several chapters addressing the historical…inaccuracies…of so much atheistic literature, Hart comes out and says that in the end these are minor points.  This is where his ‘Christian Revolution’ enters the picture.  The event of the Incarnation and the Resurrection of Christ brought about a true revolution in worldview, such as is almost impossible for us to imagine.  This is how total it was; much of the moral sensibility of even atheists today is indebted to this revolution that puts God in the center of the human drama; indeed finds God in human form, inviting even the least among us to communion with Him.

Hart’s chapters on ‘Indo-European’ paganism, for all that, are genuinely sympathetic.  He obviously appreciates the achievement of pagan cultures, even while he deplores the shortcomings (as he does, even-handedly, with the shortcomings of Christendom).  He poses the ‘glorious sadness’ of the old world of the gods as a contrast to the common modern illusion we have of a vigorous and joyful paganism.  I think that he is correct, and as a side note, was quite impressed by how closely his vision of the pagan world at its best matches Dante’s vision in the Elysian fields of Canto 4.

If you would like more reviews, you can find them at Amazon and elsewhere.  I wanted to end this reflection with one small quibble I have with the book.  Occasionally Hart is perhaps unnecessarily derisive of the New Atheists.  But that actually is of a piece with an odd gloominess that pervades much of Atheist Delusions.  The ending, peering into what might happen if the Christian ‘idea’ dies away and is replaced by the nihilism that is at the root of much of our culture, vaguely reminded me of conclusions arrived at by a similar writer, Fr Aidan Kavanagh, OSB, of happy memory.  In Kavanagh’s beautiful On Liturgical Theology, I noted many years ago that some of the ‘unsettled’ feeling of much of the book seems to stem from its presumed academic setting, and the rootlessness that universities seem to inculcate today.  Hart, who has not Fr Kavanagh’s advantage of being also a monk, seems to suffer from an even more reduced ecclesiology and Pneumatology.  Of course, his book is not about those things, but I wonder if the gloomy tone is related to those.

That said, I’m not sure ‘ecclesiology’ or ‘Pneumatology’ would be the answer, either.  These are, after all, just more ‘ideas’, and part of the difficulty of Hart’s book-length essay stems from the treatment of Christianity as an ‘idea’ rather than as the outgrowth of the encounter with God in Jesus Christ.  This led me to consider that perhaps a theology of ‘call’ would be a remedy for the trepidation with which the future is seen.  When the Church is in need, the Holy Spirit calls forth saints for the times.  We can’t possibly see how that will work out.  God, Who sees the whole span of time at once, will have no trouble crafting things to suit His purposes in love and mercy.  I don’t doubt that we are headed towards some frightening times, but I also do not doubt that God will find us a way through it.

I was pleased that Hart made reference to monasticism in his conclusion; though it seems strange that he thinks that this type of life can be lived by ’secular’ Christians.  All of these are mere quibbles, though, for the sake of articulating my own response.  Hart’s book is yet another tour de force for serious Christians, and just might be of interest for those who are otherwise persuaded by the New Atheists.