A List of Online Articles (and a Reading List) by David Bentley Hart

A few folks have asked me for this list from time to time, so I plan to start maintaining it publicly. Here is a list of online articles by David Bentley Hart going back in time (with his exchange with N.T. Wright separated below):

• “Three Cheers for Socialism: Christian Love & Political Practice” in Commonweal Magazine on February 24, 2020 here.
• “A Pakaluk of Lies” in First Things on February 14, 2020 here.
• “Why Do People Believe in Hell” in The New York Times on January 10, 2020 here.
• “Misenchantment” in Commonweal Magazine on January 6, 2020 here.
• “Manoussakis and his Pear Tree”in Eclectic Orthodoxy on November 7, 2019 here.
• “‘Gnosticism’ and Universalism: A Review of ‘The Devil’s Redemption’” in Eclectic Orthodoxy on October 2, 2019 here.
• “1 Timothy 2:3-4: will, intend, or desire?” in Eclectic Orthodoxy on September 23, 2019 here.
• “Theodicy and Apokatastasis” in Eclectic Orthodoxy on September 20, 2019 here.
• “Divorce, Annulment & Communion: An Orthodox Theologian Weighs In” in Commonweal Magazine on August 26, 2019 here.
• “Quentin Tarantino’s Cosmic Justice” in The New York Times on August 6, 2019 here.
• “Can We Please Relax About ‘Socialism’?” in The New York Times on April 27, 2019 here.
• “Anent Garry Wills and the ‘DBH’ Version” in Eclectic Orthodoxy on February 11, 2018 here.
• “The Gospel According to Melpomene: Reflections on Rowan Williams’s The Tragic Imagination” in Modern Theology on January 26, 2018 (not fully accessible without a fee but can be previewed and purchased here).

Exchange with N.T. Wright:

• N.T. Wright published “The New Testament in the strange words of David Bentley Hart” in The Christian Century on January 15, 2018 here.
• David Bentley Hart published “A Reply to N. T. Wright” in Eclectic Orthodoxy on January 16, 2018 here.
• David Bentley Hart published “The Spiritual Was More Substantial Than the Material for the Ancients” in Church Life Journal on July 26, 2018 here.
• James P. Ware published “The Incarnation Doesn’t End with the Resurrection” in Church Life Journal on June 21, 2019 here.
• David Bentley Hart published “Looking Awry at Resurrection Bodies” in Church Life Journal on July 04, 2019 here.

A few older favorites by David Bentley Hart:

• “Saint Origen” in First Things from October 2015.
• “Traditio Deformis” in First Things from May 2015.
• “God, Gods, and Fairies” in First Things from June 2013.
• “Tsunami and Theodicy: Haiti” in First Things from January 2010.
• “The Secret CommonWealth” in First Things from October 2009.
• Here is the full list from his years at First Things (November 1998 to February 2020).

David Bentley Hart also frequently appears in online video interviews and podcasts. I have transcribed portions of some of these:

• See here for a conversation about the new heavens and the new earth as well as some philosophy of the mind in an interviewer with Robert Wright from February 26, 2020.
• See here for a conversation about the living cosmos in an interview here with Jason Micheli from April 13, 2018.
• See here for some conversation about classical liberalism, Karl Marx and other topics in an interview with Jason Micheli from October 18, 2019.
• (Separately, I also have various favorite passages from Hart’s books collected here along with a few of my own ruminations about some of his work.)

Finally, here is a reading list from David Bentley Hart that has frequented the internet since November of 2015 when Ben Davis posted an email from David Bentley Hart recommending these titles for any theologian:

Metaphysics:

• Metaphysics (4th edition) by Richard Taylor
• He Who Is by E. L. Mascall
• Existence and Analogy by E. L. Mascall
• The One and the Many by W. Norris Clarke
• Proofs of God by Matthew Levering

Theology (always start with the fathers):

• Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man
• Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and Resurrection
• Ps-Dionysius, Complete Works
• Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ
• Athanasius, On the Incarnation
• St Isaac of Ninevah (especially the “Second Volume”)
• Maximus the Confessor, Chapters on Love
• Maximus the Confessor, The Cosmic Mystery of Christ

Mediaeval and Early Modern Theology:

• Symeon the New Theologian’s Mystical Discourses (or whatever it’s called in English)
• Bonaventure’s Journey of the Mind to God
• Nicholas of Cusa
• Thomas Traherne, Centuries
• George MacDonald’s Unspoken Sermons

Modern Theologians:

• Sergius Bulgakov, Bride of the Lamb
• Hans Urs von Balthasar, Glory of the Lord. (This is a seven volume set.)
• Vladimir Lossky’s Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church
• Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World
• Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics part IV, (There are 5 volumes in this set. 14 total.)
• Henri de Lubac’s Supernatural (currently being translated I believe, but if you read French go ahead)
• Rowan Williams’ Resurrection (2nd edition)

good at pretending to understand more than I did

I got pretty good at pretending to understand more than I did, a skill which has served me through life. …But I’ve developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from.

From Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.

choosing its truths over its defects

Charity in reading involves avoiding quick dismissal and cheap disdain, resisting the ego satisfaction of allowing a text only to confirm one’s prejudices, and seeking the good in a text, choosing its truths over its defects.

From David Smith summarizing Alan Jacobs in Teaching and Christian Practices (a good book to come back to regularly).

aspiring toward a perfect attentiveness

If all great art is symbolic of a kind of moral plenitude, of conflicting attitudes and impulses explored and worked through toward some ideal clarity, the act of reading is itself a model of ideal human relations, aspiring toward a perfect attentiveness in which emotional possession and intellectual comprehension–what experience conditions us to see and what the text insists we see–inform and alter one another.  Reading well, in other words, is symbolic loving.

A friend quoted the poet Alan Shapiro as writing this. From his essay “The Dead, Alive, and Busy” (1984) published within In Praise of the Impure: Poetry and the Ethical Imagination: Essays, 1980-1991.

able to read what has been handed down

A written tradition, when deciphered and read, is to such an extent pure mind that it speaks to us as if in the present. That is why the capacity to read, to understand what is written, is a like a secret art, even a magic that losses and binds us. In it time and space seem to be suspended. The man who is able to read what has been handed down in writing testifies to and achieves the sheer presence of the past.

From Discerning the Mystery by Andrew Louth.

way more satisfying

Dramatically slamming a book shut upon finishing it was way more satisfying than switching my Kindle off and gently placing it on the table.

from Aaron Karo in Reader’s Digest (March 2012, page 101).