Person

David Bentley Hart

American Eastern Orthodox theologian, philosopher, and cultural critic (b. 1965). He is one of the most rhetorically distinctive contemporary defenders of classical theism (the older view of God as simple, eternal, and beyond change rather than as the maximally-great person), a sharp critic of the New Atheist movement, and (controversially) a defender of Christian universalism (the view that in the end all people will be saved). Hart writes at the intersection of analytic philosophy, continental theology, patristics, and literary criticism. His writing style is widely described as the most ornate in current English-language theology.

Hart matters here on more than one axis. He is the foremost current defender of Classical Theism against the theistic personalism of much analytic philosophy of religion (see Classical Theism vs Theistic Personalism). He is the author of the standard New Atheist defeater (Atheist Delusions, 2009). And he is the most prominent current voice for patristic universalism (That All Shall Be Saved, 2019). These positions place him at once inside and outside evangelical orbit. He is widely cited, sometimes embraced, sometimes sharply rejected.

Biographical sketch

Education: B.A. University of Maryland (1986); M.Phil. Cambridge (1989); Ph.D. University of Virginia (2001).
Conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy during graduate years from a high-church Anglican background. Hart writes from inside Orthodox theology while engaging Catholic and Protestant interlocutors with equal skill.
Academic appointments: Loyola College in Maryland; Duke Divinity School (Templeton Fellow, 2014-2015); Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (Director's Fellow). For much of his career he has been mostly independent rather than tenure-track; he calls himself a "non-academic intellectual."
Brother of Robert Hart (Anglican / Continuing Anglican theologian, also a published writer).

Major works

The Beauty of the Infinite (Eerdmans, 2003), Hart's doctoral dissertation, revised. A sweeping critique of postmodern theology (Derrida, Levinas, Milbank) and a defense of trinitarian aesthetics as the answer to nihilism. The book that established him.
The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? (Eerdmans, 2005), short, accessible theodicy written after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Argues that Christianity treats suffering as a real enemy, not as divine pedagogy or hidden good. Closer to the Pauline "cosmic conflict" reading than to Augustinian eudaimonism (the view that suffering serves a hidden good).
Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale, 2009), the most evangelical-friendly Hart book. A historical and moral defense of Christianity's net contribution to civilization against the New Atheist polemics (Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris). A major contributor to the contemporary recovery of the "the church raised the moral horizon of antiquity" argument (see also Hypocrisy; Tom Holland's Dominion is the secular companion volume from 10 years later).
The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (Yale, 2013), Hart's defense of classical theism. Argues that the being-consciousness-bliss (Sanskrit sat-cit-ananda) triad shows up in Hindu, Sufi, and Christian-Platonist contemplative traditions, and that all of these point toward the same metaphysical reality. Controversial in evangelical circles because it leans toward perennialism (the view that all the major religions point toward the same underlying truth). Foundational reading for the Classical Theism vs Theistic Personalism dispute.
The New Testament: A Translation (Yale, 2017), Hart's own translation of the NT. He deliberately resists smoothing out the rough Greek grammar and adds extensive theological footnotes. Useful as a second opinion alongside standard translations for difficult passages.
That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation (Yale, 2019), Hart's case for universalism. The most aggressive book of his career. Argues that any eternal hell is incompatible with God's goodness, and that the patristic universalism of Gregory of Nyssa, Origen (partly), and Isaac of Nineveh is the true Christian tradition. Sharply rejected by evangelicals and Catholics; defended by a minority of Orthodox.
Tradition and Apocalypse (Baker Academic, 2022), engages the question of doctrinal development. Argues that tradition is apocalyptic (always being judged by the end of history) rather than organic-developmental (the Newman view, where doctrine grows like a plant).

Apologetic positions and contributions

Defender of classical theism

Hart's Experience of God (2013) is the current foundational text for defending the patristic, medieval, and Reformed conception of God (simple, unchanging, untouched by suffering, eternal, ipsum esse subsistens or "being itself"). It pushes back against the drift in analytic philosophy of religion toward theistic personalism (God as the maximally-great person). On the Classical Theism vs Theistic Personalism spectrum, Hart sits at the strict-classical pole alongside Brian Davies, Edward Feser, and the Orthodox-Thomist mainstream.

The argument: theistic personalism collapses into anthropomorphism (picturing God as a really big person). It makes God just one being among many beings (so the New Atheist critique can target him), and it cannot do the metaphysical work classical theism does (unity of being, creation out of nothing, the analogical use of attributes for God). The classical-theist God is not a being, He is being itself (ipsum esse subsistens, in Aquinas's term).

Atheist Delusions and historical-moral defense

Hart's Atheist Delusions (2009) is the standard historical-moral defense against New Atheist polemics. It argues:

The Christian revolution was the moral revolution of antiquity, lifting women, children, slaves, the poor, the sick, and the disabled to a dignity Greco-Roman civilization had not granted them.
Later atrocities done in Christian name (Crusades, Inquisition, religious wars) are real but were either (a) less destructive than the secular-modern alternatives (which killed hundreds of millions in the 20th century) or (b) departures from the Christian gospel rather than its consistent application.
The very moral framework the New Atheists use to attack Christianity is itself Christian-derived. The atheist who condemns the Inquisition is borrowing the equal-dignity ethic from the very tradition they reject.

This argument anchors several codex defeaters: Hypocrisy, Religion Causes Violence Objection, Women in Ministry (the women-status-in-antiquity sub-argument).

Universalism (controversial)

That All Shall Be Saved (2019) is the most controversial Hart book. He argues:

The Greek word aiōnios (translated "eternal" in most NT versions, e.g., Matt 25:46) means "of the age to come," not unending duration. Eternal hell, on this reading, is a translation artifact, not the NT teaching. (This connects to the Young's Literal Translation argument about aiōnios; Young also rendered it as "age-during.")
The classical Christian doctrine of God's goodness is logically incompatible with the eternal damnation of any creature.
Patristic universalism (Gregory of Nyssa explicitly; Origen and Isaac of Nineveh in adjacent forms) is the authentic Eastern Christian position. The eternal-hell consensus is a Western Latin development that came mostly from Augustine forward.

The codex's Hell and Eternal Punishment hub presents Hart's position as one of the live options in the three-way debate between eternal conscious torment, annihilationism, and universalism, while noting that orthodox-evangelical Christianity has generally rejected universalism.

Distinctive style

Hart's prose is widely regarded as the most ornate in current English-language theology: long sentences, baroque vocabulary, polemical bite, and an unwillingness to write down to the reader. This is part of why his work is divisive. Readers who like the style love it. Others dismiss it as needlessly difficult. The substantive arguments survive the style preferences.

His debate style is similarly aggressive. Hart famously does not steel-man his opponents in the New Atheist polemic. He treats Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris as the philosophically shallow polemicists he considers them to be, and his contempt for them is audible in the prose. Whether this is a virtue or a vice depends on the reader.