Had strait marriage shown itself ideal and without flaw, any argument in favor a marriage equality would have considerably less merit. Biblical exegesis is of course a pivotal aspect of the universalist debate, and Harts The New Testament: A Translation (2017) is an integral part of his argument for universalism, as he indicates in the new book (3). WebDavid Bentley Hart is a fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. Meanwhile, the philosophical heavyweights were gearing up for a more sophisticated engagement with Hart. Copyright 2023 The Gospel Coalition, INC. All Rights Reserved. Nor need we believe that Jesus would condemn a young couple living together without first being married. WebHart attempts to explain the people, history, events, and reasons behind what he sees as Christianity's rise, achievements, mistakes, and recent decline in the face of materialism and the power struggles of world leaders. ", [Michael Sean Winters is NCR Washington columnist and a visiting fellow at Catholic University's Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies. David Bentley Harts polemic against the alleged doctrine of The salvation of all, Hart writes, is a claim that follows more or less ineluctably from any truly coherent contemplation of what it means to see God as the free creator of all things ex nihilo (6667). David Bentley Hart - Reddit 18:8; 25:41). In a word, Hart has told half the story. He exposes his opponents errors of fact or logic with ruthless precision.. The newest member of this unique club is Orthodox theologian and scholar David Bentley Hart, who published his own translation of the New Testament last year. mine). Brad Littlejohn (Ph.D, University of Edinburgh, 2013), is the Director of the Davenant Trust, a non-profit dedicated to the renewal of Protestant theology and ethics at the intersection of the church and academy, and an Associate Editor of the journal Political Theology. Old Natural Law theorist Edward Feser, in a blistering dissection of Harts essay, agreed with Snells accusation of straw-manning. Indeed, Feser pointed out that it wasonly by running together the two main contemporary approaches to natural law that Hart can seem to have struck a blow against either and that Hart was directing his attack at a phantom position that no one actually holds. For new natural law theorists, as Snell pointed out, grant the validity of Humes dictum, and accordingly self-consciously reconfigure their theory in such a way as to avoid violating it, whereas old natural law theorists refuse to grant the validity of the dictum. Hart depicts himself as a lonely battler for the truth of universalismwhich hardly seems to be the case, given that many academic theologians today share his views.