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The So-Called Elite Conception of God
Dispensing with David Bentley Hart’s classical theism
Atheists are often chastised for plucking low-hanging fruit when they thrash the religious fundamentalist’s most uninformed arguments, rather than addressing more sophisticated theology.
Now, as far as I can tell, all apologetics is nakedly dishonest, the equivalent of a series of corporate advertisements. Yet there’s supposed to be a philosophical basis for theism, one that the leading intellectuals of all religious traditions have developed over the centuries.
The theologian and scholar David Bentley Hart is generally regarded as such a Christian thought leader. In his book The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, Hart is quick to distinguish his conception of God not just from the new atheist’s oversimplifications, but from the folk religious presumptions:
I want to distinguish in a similar way between, on the one hand, metaphysical or philosophical descriptions of God and, on the other, dogmatic or confessional descriptions, and then to confine myself to the former. This may leave some readers disappointed, and some may wish that I had written a book marked either by more philosophical completeness or by more evangelical zeal.
