You Are Gods

David Bentley Hart

Description

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.

In recent years, the theological—and, more specifically, Roman Catholic—question of “the supernatural” has made an astonishing return from seeming oblivion. Until very recently indeed, most theologians with any knowledge of the question’s history had been working under the impression that the issue was more or less settled, and that the early modern theology of supernature and nature that had been briefly dominant in Catholic thought—the infamous “two-tier” system of “manualist” or “commentary” or “second scholastic” Thomism—had been decisively defeated by the far superior and more orthodox theologies of grace that had displaced it. Certainly, those two or three remarkable generations of systematic theologians who made the twentieth century one of the genuinely golden epochs of Roman Catholic thought seemed to have been able to accomplish as much as they did precisely because they had freed themselves from the desiccating atmosphere of that tradition. After all, as we had all been led to believe, the theological proposals of the manualist schools had been curious anomalies in the history of Christian thought, so alien to the whole of patristic tradition, and to most of the mediaeval, and so plainly irreconcilable with cardinal tenets of classical Christian thought and dogma, that they were incapable of producing theology of any particular range or substance, or of exercising much influence outside the small circle in which they had been gestated. Taken together, they appeared to constitute a depressingly sterile system, one that was eerily immune to any kind of enrichment or healthy development, inasmuch as any attempt at either could only expose its internal incoherence; at most, the system could be curated, defended, and endlessly reiterated by the small but indefatigable faction devoted to it.

It seemed only natural, therefore, to suppose that, once something better, fuller, finer, and more rational had come along (call it la nouvelle théologie or ressourcement or the patristic restoration or even “the Eastward turn”), nothing as morbidly barren, impoverished, and unattractive as the manualist tradition would ever again have the power or allure to inspire any sane soul’s allegiance. Why, after all, would anyone want to set aside the lush, velvety, heady wines of Catholicism’s magnificent twentieth-century theological renaissance to quaff the thin, acrid waters of Wormwood from a rusting tin cup? Why, in particular, would today’s students of Thomas want to retreat fromthe repristinated figure of modern research—an inheritor of the fathers and a truly mediaeval metaphysician possessed of genuine synthetic genius—to recover the caricature produced by manualism, which spoke in an attenuated early modern language of causality, presumed an early modern vision of desacralized nature, and practiced an early modern style of propositional logic? Surely the whole sordid episode of commentary Thomism could now be written off as a closed chapter in theological history, a curious anecdote that had briefly interrupted the authentic narrative of Catholic dogma and theology. Alas, it was not so. Die Wiederkehr des Verdrängten is a law as much of institutional as of personal psychology. And so now this once seemingly very dead tradition is enjoying a revival (or, better, recrudescence) in certain traditionalist Catholic sects, most especially here in America, where some odd perversity of our national temperament forbids us from ever allowing any ideological project or alliance, no matter how diseased, to die with dignity.

Why this has happened I cannot really guess. It turns out that all those prejudices that those who came after the perceived fall of the two-tierist systems were taught to hold, when examined closely and scrupulously, are not mere prejudices at all, but simple statements of fact. So the system’s return is an altogether shocking reversal of all expectations, rather as if some adventurer long thought dead and buried (or eaten, or frozen, or drowned) in some unknown and far-flung quarter of the uncharted wilds—one who has been pronounced legally deceased, whose estate has already been apportioned to his heirs, and whose wife of many years is now wed to another man—were suddenly to appear at the door of his old home, gray and gaunt and marked by the ravages of time and misfortune, but very much alive and adamantly demanding the restoration of everything he has lost in his absence. In either case, that of the obsolete theological system or that of the truant adventurer, the return has come too late in the day to be a cause of much rejoicing; the newer generations of theologians, the heirs of the estate, the widow secundum legem, even some older theologians formed in the abandoned system, or even some of the forgotten explorer’s life-long friends—all of them are more likely to find the new situation far more of a predicament than a blessing. I tend to think that the current enthusiasm for early modern Thomism is a matter for psychological or sociological investigation rather than something that can be explained in terms of logic or of some genuine spiritual imperative. But I cannot say that this is so with perfect confidence, since I cannot enter imaginatively into minds that find, say, Garrigou-Lagrange’s books deeply moving, or even vaguely palatable. The whole phenomenon must remain a mystery to me, one whose more occult causes will forever be veiled from my eyes behind a curtain of Baroque fustian (or perhaps sickly puce).

If, by the way, my language to this point seems a bit weighted toward one side of the debate, I can only assure readers that my motives are entirely sincere and disinterested. I am not Roman Catholic, after all, and so none of this concerns me personally; and, really, the future of Catholic theology is of no consequence to me at all. The topic interests me only insofar as it raises issues of a more general kind regarding the contents of Christian faith. Precisely because I regard the “two-tier” understanding of nature and supernature as irreparably defective, and in fact among the most defective understandings of Christianity imaginable—in many ways the diametric opposite of everything the Christian story has to say about reality and about the relation of creation to God and about the person of Christ—the unwelcome return of this superannuated vagabond provokes me just enough to make me want to advance an altogether different picture. Perhaps I cannot lay the ghost of two-tierism, or exorcise it from modern theological discourse. But I can, at the very least, take advantage of the moment.

Introduction
1. Waking the Gods: Theosis as Reason’s Natural End
2. The Treasure of Delight: Nicholas of Cusa on Infinite Desire
3. That Judgment Whereby You Judge: Beauty and Discernment
4. Pia Fraus: Our Words and God’s Truth
5. Geist’s Kaleidoscope: Some Questions for Cyril O’Regan
6. The Chiasmus: The Created Supernatural and the Natural Divine

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la religion
• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Theology
• Essays
• Religious
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Garrigou-Lagrange
• Religious text
• Thomas Aquinas
• Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange
• Thomism
• General officer
• Theology
• Christianity
• Augustine of Hippo
• Aristotle
• General
• Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange
• Augustine
• Henri de Lubac
• Thomas d'Aquin

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268201951
• Langue: English

Extrait

YOU ARE GODS
YOU ARE GODS
ON NATURE AND SUPER NATURE
DAVID BENTLEY HART
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright © 2022 by David Bentley Hart
Published by the University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021948751
ISBN: 978-0-268-20193-7 (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20194-4 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20192-0 (WebPDF)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20195-1 (Epub)
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
For Alfred Turnipseed
अयम् आत्मा ब्रह्म
ἀπεκρίθη αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἰησοῦς· οὐκ ἔστιν γεγραμμένον ἐν τῷ νόμῳ ὑμῶν ὅτι ἐγὼ εἶπα· θεοί ἐστε; εἰ ἐκείνους εἶπεν θεοὺς πρὸς οὓς ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ οὐ δύναται λυθῆναι ἡ γραφή, ὃν ὁ πατὴρ ἡγίασεν καὶ ἀπέστειλεν εἰς τὸν κόσμον ὑμεῖς λέγετε ὅτι βλασφημεῖς, ὅτι εἶπον·
υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ εἰμι;
———
[Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law ‘I said, “You are gods?”’ If he called those to whom God’s Logos came ‘gods,’ and if scripture cannot be dissolved, do you then tell him whom the Father sanctified and sent out into the cosmos, ‘You blaspheme!’ just because I have said
‘I am the Son of God?’”]
—John 10:34–36
. . . ἀπεκρίθη αὐτοῖς καὶ εἶπεν οὐκ ἔρχεται ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ μετὰ παρατηρήσεως, ἰδοὺ ὧδε ἤ ἐκεῖ, ἰδοὺ γὰρ ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ ἐντὸς ὑμῶν ἐστιν.
———
[. . . he answered them and said, “The Kingdom does not come as something one observes, nor will persons say, ‘Look: Here it is’ or ‘There it is’; for look: The Kingdom of God is inside of you.”]
—Luke 17:20–21
CONTENTS
Introduction
ONE
Waking the Gods: Theosis as Reason’s Natural End
TWO
The Treasure of Delight: Nicholas of Cusa on Infinite Desire
THREE
That Judgment Whereby You Judge: Beauty and Discernment
FOUR
Pia Fraus : Our Words and God’s Truth
FIVE
Geist ’s Kaleidoscope: Some Questions for Cyril O’Regan
SIX
The Chiasmus: The Created Supernatural and the Natural Divine
Notes
Index
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, the theological—and, more specifically, Roman Catholic—question of “the supernatural” has made an astonishing return from seeming oblivion. Until very recently indeed, most theologians with any knowledge of the question’s history had been working under the impression that the issue was more or less settled, and that the early modern theology of supernature and nature that had been briefly dominant in Catholic thought—the infamous “two-tier” system of “manualist” or “commentary” or “second scholastic” Thomism—had been decisively defeated by the far superior and more orthodox theologies of grace that had displaced it. Certainly, those two or three remarkable generations of systematic theologians who made the twentieth century one of the genuinely golden epochs of Roman Catholic thought seemed to have been able to accomplish as much as they did precisely because they had freed themselves from the desiccating atmosphere of that tradition. After all, as we had all been led to believe, the theological proposals of the manualist schools had been curious anomalies in the history of Christian thought, so alien to the whole of patristic tradition, and to most of the mediaeval, and so plainly irreconcilable with cardinal tenets of classical Christian thought and dogma, that they were incapable of producing theology of any particular range or substance, or of exercising much influence outside the small circle in which they had been gestated. Taken together, they appeared to constitute a depressingly sterile system, one that was eerily immune to any kind of enrichment or healthy development, inasmuch as any attempt at either could only expose its internal incoherence; at most, the system could be curated, defended, and endlessly reiterated by the small but indefatigable faction devoted to it.
It seemed only natural, therefore, to suppose that, once something better, fuller, finer, and more rational had come along (call it la nouvelle théologie or ressourcement or the patristic restoration or even “the Eastward turn”), nothing as morbidly barren, impoverished, and unattractive as the manualist tradition would ever again have the power or allure to inspire any sane soul’s allegiance. Why, after all, would anyone want to set aside the lush, velvety, heady wines of Catholicism’s magnificent twentieth-century theological renaissance to quaff the thin, acrid waters of Wormwood from a rusting tin cup? Why, in particular, would today’s students of Thomas want to retreat from the repristinated figure of modern research—an inheritor of the fathers and a truly mediaeval metaphysician possessed of genuine synthetic genius—to recover the caricature produced by manualism, which spoke in an attenuated early modern language of causality, presumed an early modern vision of desacralized nature, and practiced an early modern style of propositional logic? Surely the whole sordid episode of commentary Thomism could now be written off as a closed chapter in theological history, a curious anecdote that had briefly interrupted the authentic narrative of Catholic dogma and theology. Alas, it was not so. Die Wiederkehr des Verdrängten is a law as much of institutional as of personal psychology. And so now this once seemingly very dead tradition is enjoying a revival (or, better, recrudescence) in certain traditionalist Catholic sects, most especially here in America, where some odd perversity of our national temperament forbids us from ever allowing any ideological project or alliance, no matter how diseased, to die with dignity.
Why this has happened I cannot really guess. It turns out that all those prejudices that those who came after the perceived fall of the twotierist systems were taught to hold, when examined closely and scrupulously, are not mere prejudices at all, but simple statements of fact. So the system’s return is an altogether shocking reversal of all expectations, rather as if some adventurer long thought dead and buried (or eaten, or frozen, or drowned) in some unknown and far-flung quarter of the uncharted wilds—one who has been pronounced legally deceased, whose estate has already been apportioned to his heirs, and whose wife of many years is now wed to another man—were suddenly to appear at the door of his old home, gray and gaunt and marked by the ravages of time and misfortune, but very much alive and adamantly demanding the restoration of everything he has lost in his absence. In either case, that of the obsolete theological system or that of the truant adventurer, the return has come too late in the day to be a cause of much rejoicing; the newer generations of theologians, the heirs of the estate, the widow secundum legem , even some older theologians formed in the abandoned system, or even some of the forgotten explorer’s lifelong friends—all of them are more likely to find the new situation far more of a predicament than a blessing. I tend to think that the current enthusiasm for early modern Thomism is a matter for psychological or sociological investigation rather than something that can be explained in terms of logic or of some genuine spiritual imperative. But I cannot say that this is so with perfect confidence, since I cannot enter imaginatively into minds that find, say, Garrigou-Lagrange’s books deeply moving, or even vaguely palatable. The whole phenomenon must remain a mystery to me, one whose more occult causes will forever be veiled from my eyes behind a curtain of Baroque fustian (or perhaps sickly puce).
If, by the way, my language to this point seems a bit weighted toward one side of the debate, I can only assure readers that my motives are entirely sincere and disinterested. I am not Roman Catholic, after all, and so none of this concerns me personally; and, really, the future of Catholic theology is of no consequence to me at all. The topic interests me only insofar as it raises issues of a more general kind regarding the contents of Christian faith. Precisely because I regard the “two-tier” understanding of nature and supernature as irreparably defective, and in fact among the most defective understandings of Christianity imaginable—in many ways the diametric opposite of everything the Christian story has to say about reality and about the relation of creation to God and about the person of Christ—the unwelcome return of this superannuated vagabond provokes me just enough to make me want to advance an altogether different picture. Perhaps I cannot lay the ghost of two-tierism, or exorcise it from modern theological discourse. But I can, at the very least, take advantage of the moment.

The essays collected here were all written within a relatively short span, each for a particular occasion, but all in pursuit of much the same intellectual quarry. Each in its way addresses the topic of the “natural supernatural,” and all were shaped by the same stream of reflections. The first, “Waking the Gods,” was originally delivered in somewhat different form at Fordham University for the Patterson Triennial Conference, “Faith, Reason, and Theosis,” in June 2019; the original version of the lecture is printed in Faith, Reason, and Theosis , ed. Aristotle Papanikolaou and George Demacopoulos (New York: Fordham University Press, 2022). Its relevance for this volume is obvious, as it lays out both the issue of the supernatural and the incorrigible logical flaws in the two-tier position. The second, “The Treasure of Delight,” was delivered at the University of Notre Dame at the conference “Cusanus Today” in September 2019. It rather seamlessly resumes one of the principal themes of the preceding essay: to wit, the impossibility of any spiritual nature resting content in a merely natural end. The third, “That Judgment Whereby You Judge,” was delivered at Holy Cr