A Non-Exculpatory Explanation, and an Attempt to Rectify

I have avoided it for as long as possible. It has been my own personal manifest destiny, that I would one day be ready to approach it. An anonymous letter yesterday confirmed to me that it was time. The letter knew what I did, that there is in fact a rare collection of intelligent theist who pose the common atheist a problem. They represent the intelligent responses to the average defense against the dark arts we share against the breed of Christian defenders most apologists fall under (CARM, C.S. Lewis Society, Calvinists), for which I am noticeably excluding the truly insane variants summed up by AIG. The fear; a sort of theology I imagine I would argue for if I were a believer, the insight and clever worldly knowledge of an atheist, coupled with the organization and rare clarity of a literature forged theist. The e-mail I received yesterday said it all, “Dane, when are you going to tackle D.B.H?”.

David Bentley Hart.

I mentioned this person only recently to Derek and Chloe. Few on AANR know, so the letter was someone who was familiar with my early papers, and my presence on one of the great defense forums, and probably recently finding my current writing. There was a time when I spent most of my internet presence with scholarly atheists only, the type who cared only for cases and defenses. This person wants to know if I still consider Hart dangerous now that he had a few years to develop, and do I have the ability to intelligently engage in a decent rebuttal to his general work…

Yes, to both. I have avoided Hart. I am not as an accomplished writer as I have intended to be at this point in my life, and with the activism, AANR, and work, I have mostly stayed away from arguments and debates. Hart, depending on his development in thought, was suppose to be a ongoing project, allowing him to speak enough to eventually expose himself in different fields as another failed Christian philosopher, impotent to modern philosophical and theological vision.

I was wrong, and now we, as a collective group of thinkers are far behind. Hart has gone unchallenged and uncontested deep into the fields of theological thought, and emerged in my opinion, as the sharpest modern theological mind living. This guy could cream me in a live debate, my own personal forte. Evidently, he is up the street from me, literally, as the current Robert J. Randall Chair at Providence College.

I have ignored my roots for too long. I will reply to Professor Hart, on here, publicly. Obviously, the dichotomy that exists for our mutual existence is based on two systems of a world view in stark opposition. I do not believe in any version of god, and David Bentley Hart argues strongly for the existence of the Christian God. He does not offer arguments for the existence of God, rather forges, in amazing literary voice mind you, theological arguments based on philosophy, most often about the Problem of Evil.

The first article, I have chosen randomly, and in it, a rant in common style by Professor Hart about the freedom Christianity offers from Paganistic Nihilism. The article is 4 years old, but his material is spread out wildly, and I have already mentioned that we are behind…

It is called “Christ and Nothing“. Read it first, my work and comments are forthcoming.