Phil Christman, with a passing view of David Bentley Hart’s new book:
Another thing that Hart’s system can’t give us is “an unimpeachable claim to Christian orthodoxy as many people define it.” His new Tradition and Apocalypse answers this charge the only way one can: By saying, in effect, “Well, so’s your mother.” No religious tradition is particularly stable. No version of Christianity doesn’t reject a whole lot of other ones. Our record of the early church’s beliefs and behavior, even if we just confine ourselves to what we find in the New Testament, shows a group of people whose opinions sit at every point on every chart, about very important things. … What else would one expect? These people had just watched history get invaded by God. He unfurled himself around it … and … died. Then he came back, ate fish, and flew away.
The attempt to keep fidelity with such a bizarre event will surely involve as much disagreement and confusion as unity “Faith,” [Hart] writes, “is not the assurance that one possesses the fullness of truth, but is rather a fidelity to the future disclosure of the full meaning of what little one already knows.” Efforts to reach “back through the welter of contingent events to some initial and pure impulse whose subsequent unfolding could then be followed” are doomed to failure, however interesting they may be. We are looking forward to love’s full disclosure, at the end of time, and for now we know love only – how else? – as through a glass darkly.
I would only clarify, for my own sake, at least, that those efforts to “reach back and follow” are doomed not to failure but to strife, friction. Understanding them this way can produce much harmony and joy in the midst of the strife—in the midst of the friction-that-is-not-failure.