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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Christian theology > General
David Bentley Hart offers an intense and thorough reflection upon
the issue of the supernatural in Christian theology and doctrine.
In recent years, the theological-and, more specifically, Roman
Catholic-question of the supernatural has made an astonishing
return from seeming oblivion. David Bentley Hart's You Are Gods
presents a series of meditations on the vexed theological question
of the relation of nature and supernature. In its merely
controversial aspect, the book is intended most directly as a
rejection of a certain Thomistic construal of that relation, as
well as an argument in favor of a model of nature and supernature
at once more Eastern and patristic, and also more in keeping with
the healthier currents of mediaeval and modern Catholic thought. In
its more constructive and confessedly radical aspects, the book
makes a vigorous case for the all-but-complete eradication of every
qualitative, ontological, or logical distinction between the
natural and the supernatural in the life of spiritual creatures. It
advances a radically monistic vision of Christian metaphysics but
does so wholly on the basis of credal orthodoxy. Hart, one of the
most widely read theologians in America today, presents a bold
gesture of resistance to the recent revival of what used to be
called "two-tier Thomism," especially in the Anglophone theological
world. In this astute exercise in classical Christian orthodoxy,
Hart takes the metaphysics of participation, high Trinitarianism,
Christology, and the soteriological language of theosis to their
inevitable logical conclusions. You Are Gods will provoke many
readers interested in theological metaphysics. The book also offers
a vision of Christian thought that draws on traditions (such as
Vedanta) from which Christian philosophers and theologians,
biblical scholars, and religious studies scholars still have a
great deal to learn.
This book examines the relationship between divine in/activity and
human agency in the five books of the Megilloth-the books of Ruth,
Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Esther. As works of
literature dating to the early Second Temple period (ca. 6th-3rd
centuries BCE), these books and the implicit interpretation of
these particular themes reflect the diverse cultural and
theological dynamics of the time. Megan Fullerton Strollo contends
that the themes themselves as well as the correlation between them
should be interpreted as implicit theology insofar as they
represent reflective interpretation of earlier theological
traditions. With regard to divine in/activity, she argues that the
Megilloth presents a certain level of skepticism or critical
analysis of the Deity. From doubt to protest, the books of the
Megilloth grapple with received traditions of divine providence and
present experiences of absence, abandonment, and distance. As a
correlative to divine in/activity, human agency is presented as
consequential. In addition, the portrayal of human agency serves as
a theological response insofar as the books advance the theme
through specific references to and reevaluations of earlier
theocentric traditions.
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