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{"id":8482,"date":"2022-09-02T11:48:13","date_gmt":"2022-09-02T16:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rogereolson\/?p=8482"},"modified":"2022-09-02T11:48:13","modified_gmt":"2022-09-02T16:48:13","slug":"hart-you-are-gods-chapter-three-that-judgment-whereby-you-judge-beauty-and-discernment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rogereolson\/2022\/09\/hart-you-are-gods-chapter-three-that-judgment-whereby-you-judge-beauty-and-discernment\/","title":{"rendered":"Hart, \u201cYou Are Gods,\u201d Chapter Three: \u201cThat Judgment Whereby You Judge: Beauty and Discernment\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Hart, \u201cYou Are Gods,\u201d Chapter Three: \u201cThat Judgment Whereby You Judge: Beauty and Discernment\u201d<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n

*Note: If you choose to comment, please keep it brief (no more than 100 words), addressed to me, on topic, civil and respectful (not hostile or argumentative), and devoid of links or photos.*<\/p>\n

In my opinion, for whatever it\u2019s worth, Chapter Three of David Bentley Hart\u2019s collection of essays entitled \u201cYou Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature\u201d is the best of the first four (including the Introduction), but it steps aside from the main line of his argument so far and delves into the relationship between ethics and aesthetics. He argues against Immanuel Kant and other philosophers who he believes wrongly separated the two.<\/p>\n

It seems to me this chapter can be summed up in the following way: The human experience of beauty, the truly beautiful, is a revelation of God that cannot be explained by appeal to mere \u201ctaste.\u201d Some things just are really beautiful and some things just are not really beautiful. But when we encounter true beauty and have that sort of numinous experience of awe in the \u201cface\u201d of it, we know intuitively that it is a signal of something divine both in the universe and in us. Only real \u201cphilistines\u201d do not experience true beauty where it manifests itself\u2014through a painting, a poem, a musical composition, a sunset, etc.<\/p>\n

In addition, Hart argues that when we experience true beauty, we do not so much judge it as it judges us. \u201cAt once, we are made aware of what we are and of what we should be, as well as of the enormous distance between the two.\u201d (44)<\/p>\n

Then comes the sermon.<\/p>\n

Hart argues that true beauty, the most beautiful of beauties, shines forth from the cross of Jesus Christ and the mercy and grace of God revealed there. And we recognize it as the beauty of love revealed in lowliness. \u201cEven in Christ\u2019s dereliction, God\u2019s infinity is made manifest.\u201d (47) \u201cThe Father\u2019s power is manifest most profoundly in the Son\u2019s \u2018kenosis\u2019 because that power is the infinite peace of an eternal venture of love, the divine ecstasy whose fullness is the joy of an eternal self-outpouring.\u201d (48)<\/p>\n

This reminds me very much of Hans Urs von Balthasar. The whole chapter does.<\/p>\n

Right in the middle of this chapter, this essay, Hart gets very political. He argues that \u201cIn Matthew\u2019s gospel, one\u2019s failure to recognize Christ as the true face of the Father, the one who comes from above, is one\u2019s damnation, here and now. \u2026 one\u2019s failure to recognize the face of Christ\u2014and therefore the face of God\u2014in the abject and oppressed, the suffering and disenfranchised, is the revelation that one has chosen hell as one\u2019s home.\u201d (45)<\/p>\n

Then! He goes on a rant about \u201cour foul, degenerate, vicious, contemptible, worthless, brutishly stupid sociopath and dropsical orange goblin of a president and the little horde of oleaginous fascists who slithered out of the spiritual sewer by his side\u2026.\u201d (45-6) He calls \u201cour fellow-citizens\u201d who support the separation of children from their parents at our southern border \u201cchildren of the devil, who have chosen the side of the goats rather than the sheep.\u201d (46)<\/p>\n

This was written in October, 2018.<\/p>\n

To settle some doubts, in this chapter\/essay Hart identifies himself as an \u201cunregenerate Neoplatonist.\u201d (37)<\/p>\n

If you can get past the first section of the chapter, which is philosophical in nature, you will be at least rewarded by the sublime rhetoric and, I hope, by the central message of the chapter which is Christological as well as anthropological and metaphysical. Beauty if real; it is not merely \u201cin the eye of the beholder,\u201d and for Christians, anyway, it is most beautifully revealed in the crucified God (not Hart\u2019s words but Moltmann\u2019s) and in the faces of those hungry, thirsty, and homeless ones he told his followers to feed, clothe and shelter.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"