David Bentley Hart on Hell, American Orthodoxy, and Going Out of His Way to Provoke

On November 3, 2022, I had an opportunity to interview David Bentley Hart in person for content that I have largely shared here in connection to my work as the director of this ClassicalU platform:
classicalu.com/courses/david-...
This video here, however, contains some additional content from Hart on three topics: 1) American Orthodoxy, 2) why he often goes out of his way to provoke, and 3) his vision of hell. I am embedding this video here where I write along with a few others:
jesusandtheancientpaths.com/2...
And kindly shared by Hart here:
davidbentleyhart.substack.com...

[@colinpurssey9875]

Got to admire both his evaluative insights and his fearlessness in publicly expressing them --unlike too many other theologians and clerics who , although often recognizing moral failure in institutional ecclesiastical and political entities , pusillanimously shrink from denouncing them . DBH has exemplary bold honesty .

[@daMillenialTrucker]

I like to paint rocks

[@tonyoliver2750]

@@daMillenialTrucker I'm happy for you.

[@LyovaCampos]

☦Admire false prophets & blasphemers? Listen brother, if you follow him he will drag you to the everlasting fire of Sheol

[@tonyoliver2750]

@@LyovaCampos Why is that?

[@LyovaCampos]

@@tonyoliver2750 Because he's the biggest blasphemer of our time & follows Origen the heretic who allegorized our holy Scripture's historical narrative & like him he spits on Scripture, twist it & the words of St. Nyssa who he misrepresents & believes in the abomination of Universalism the heresy which was condemned by the Ecumenical council, which he also tries to twist. He's also arrogant & an embarrassment to our faith. Don't listen to his heresies

[@DIBBY40]

I like that: "Hell is a room of mirrors"

[@LyovaCampos]

☦Yes, in the sick pretentious heretical mind of this false prophet - stay away from him if you don't wanna end up forever in the lake of fire with him. He better repent & fast. Despicable

[@colingallagher1648]

Thanks for posting

[@wordscapes5690]

I went to your page because I love DB Hart. I tried to access this course. It said I could not access this course unless I applied for a free trial period. I applied for a free trial period. After accessing the "free" trial period, it said I could not access this course unless I paid a $20 monthly subscription fee. Thanks for the labyrinth that contained no Minotaur at the end. I shall remain in Arcadia, as I am poor.

[@jjhake]

Email me at [e-mail], and I’ll set up your free access quickly for you. Sorry for the trouble. Very many people signed up successfully.

[@thesampo]

Was there a section in the paper he references on humility? We could all benefit from a closer reading of that.

[@daMillenialTrucker]

It's pretty sad people need to be taught humility, Paul said "to see others as better then yourself". Plain and simple

[@PC-vp2cg]

​@@daMillenialTrucker Anyone who claims humility is easy, is definitely not humble

[@osip7315]

"its a wing of southern baptist with incense" hilarious !

[@tonyoliver2750]

It is funny, but you could equally say of DBH that he's a wing of the Southern Poverty Law Centre with incense. 🤣

[@PC-vp2cg]

​@@tonyoliver2750 Well, Jesus was concerned with the poor, so that seems to fit.

[@tonyoliver2750]

@@PC-vp2cg Socialism isn't concerned with the poor, it makes people poor.

[@PC-vp2cg]

@@tonyoliver2750 Alright, thanks for outing yourself as an American, I'm outta here

[@tonyoliver2750]

@@PC-vp2cg I'm not an American, North, Central or South. Your conclusion simply defies logic, so perhaps getting "outta here" (an Americanism, surely?) is probably your best option.

[@shanegfenwick]

Great video! Thanks for making this available, Jesse. Only thing missing is DBH's thoughts on psychedelics. ;-)

[@ericday4505]

I can remember as a young christian, I read his book Beauty of the Infinte. And I thought wow this is going to be a tough religion to grasp. And I came back and read Hart consistantly, he is brilliant yes, but why does he always have to remind you of it.

[@tylerlynch2849]

Big fan of DBH, really happy to see a good quality interview filmed with him

[@circuscyaneus3709]

Was this filmed in DBH's house by any chance?

[@heatherescontrias8218]

I enjoy his provocations. We do need wake-up calls.

[@10.6.12.]

American orthodoxy so often lapses into a wierd simulated version of American Pietism laced with Victorian sentimentality.

[@broderickwallis25]

To me, David seems to be quite a well balanced man !

[@derris3989]

God bless this man. I love him!

[@TheHumbuckerboy]

It would be great to hear more from DBH concerning his ideas about Heaven and Hell . The interview got very interesting right at the very end.

[@CHIEFTATELLI]

What Church does he mean when he says American Orthodoxy? All the Orthodox Archdiocese?

[@jjhake]

A little more here on that: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jYaWqpKeaZx1r6c

[@thomassimmons1950]

Thus spake the Pope of Pomp!

[@alrightthengreat]

He’s like the guy who found a really cool and obscure indie band that no one knew and he loved them, but when they became popular his nose turned up.“They sold out.” He’s a theological hipster.

[@jasonegeland1446]

What did he mean at the end of the video when he said "...from where we'll never return."? Surely DBH understands that hell is misunderstood as - the grave, no doubt.

[@gita6720]

“… hell is the ever diminishing, ultimately the ever diminishing residue of the nothingness from which we came and to which (i.e., the nothingness) we cannot return.”

[@jjhake]

I think he says, “the nothingness *to* which we can never return.”

[@jasonegeland1446]

@@gita6720 That makes sense. Thanks!:)

[@jasonegeland1446]

@@jjhake I get it, so he was saying it's impossible to not exist? I'll just go with that!:) Appreciate your thoughts! Cheers!

[@daMillenialTrucker]

​@@jasonegeland1446it's impossible to go back to not existing is what it means

[@bayreuth79]

I was pleased to hear David B Hart criticise in the strongest possible terms Patriarch Kirill. Too many Orthodox leaders have remained more or less silent with regard to the support that the Russian Orthodox Church has afforded to Putin’s terroristic war. I was also shocked and horrified to learn that the monks of Mount Athos had given their support to Putin, even their blessing. Outrageous.

[@feralandroid]

Was it ok for religious leaders to support the war against nazi Germany?

[@bayreuth79]

@@feralandroid If you think that there is an analogy between Ukraine and the Nazis (who were the aggressors, unlike the Ukrainians) then you are sadly mistaken. Just war theory is part of Christian tradition but Putin’s war does not fall into that category. Putin is a loathsome imperialist.

[@feralandroid]

@@bayreuth79 according to the Russians there have been Ukrainian nazis killing Russian citizens on the border for almost 10 years. Plus the whole Crimea affair. According to them Ukraine is the aggressor. I’m not saying I agree, but you make it sound like Russia is just invading Ukraine for the fun of it and anyone supporting them is obviously wrong. I don’t think it’s that simple, unless you are a pacifist and think all aggression is evil, even defense.

[@feralandroid]

Not to mention Zelenskyy is now outlawing orthodoxy in ukraine. Why would any orthodox support him?

[@bayreuth79]

@@feralandroid He hasn’t outlawed orthodoxy in the Ukraine! And you don’t love your enemies by murdering them!

[@broderickwallis25]

When one looks at, not only the religious mess on this earth but also the bigger mess in general, it would seem that the best reset of all w ould be the saving of ALL... If there were saved and unsaved you go back to the diviide and conquere principle which is how the corupt rule, including all organized religions rule !!! Praise God and give him glory😇

[@karinyaboriskova441]

You look good losing the jacket.

[@Devv_93]

DBH is such a breath of fresh air when it comes to studying philosophy and theology! He stands in a league of his own right now!

[@samwisegrangee]

“The nothingness from which we came and to which we can never return.”

[@Gruenders]

No one loves DBH more than DBH

[@lauterunvollkommenheit4344]

Thou shalt love thyself.

[@joestar6194]

You say that like it's a bad thing.

[@circuscyaneus3709]

I think he has a healthy distaste for false modesty.

[@wordscapes5690]

I assure you… I adore him more

[@ericday4505]

​@@wordscapes5690You must really like him, yeah.

[@daneracamosa]

Such a brilliant thinker on things spiritual and philosophical... Of course when he Strays into other topics, as he is so often want to do, his thinking becomes muddled and mushy and ideological. No different from many intellectuals with Superior intelligence who have never had to concern themselves with the practicalities of the material world.

[@RootinrPootine]

👶🧠

[@justchilling704]

Well articulated.

[@RootinrPootine]

@@justchilling704 👶🧠

[@ericmccarty5783]

It's as though he expended all of his considerable intellect on theology and philosophy and had nothing left for economics and politics. It's probably a good thing for me, though. If he was as brilliant across the board, I'd be tempted to wear a DBH t-shirt and that would be embarrassing for a grown man.

[@justchilling704]

@@ericmccarty5783 Right!

[@desertshadow72]

Is this the man who extinguishes the very fires of hell by his wit & whims, historically alone?

[@lauterunvollkommenheit4344]

There have always been Christians who couldn't accept the notion of eternal torture. Augustine mockingly called them misericordi nostri in The City of God, Book 21.

[@t-bonet-bone713]

He kind of reminds me of James White.

[@kennethfurr7397]

Regarding this odd thing called Christian nationalism... It is incredible to me how many Christians say "Jesus is Lord" on Sundays and have not a single clue how radical a statement that actually is.

[@eugenebrumley]

Hmm... he criticizes the Russians for tribalism but praises the Greeks..? They're the most racist, superior, and insular of any Orthodox Christian group I've been a part of. I would like to hear him expand on why he thinks American Orthodoxy is a joke. Since he called it a wing of the baptist church but with incense I'm not optimisitic, but I hope it's something other than a political viewpoint.

[@fakeyououtdotcom2409]

Upon listening to DBH one might assume the highest virtue Jesus encourages us to attain would be intellectual arrogance with a side of condescension. 😂😂😂

[@lauterunvollkommenheit4344]

I hope he won't go to hell for calling others fools.

[@tookie36]

Thank Jesus. Someone says something about the ignorance of right wing evangelicals going into the orthodoxy

[@fr.johnwhiteford6194]

"The Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church" is available online, and you can find in several places by googling it. It is a very good document, but DBH perhaps doesn't like it because it is socially conservative.

[@ddecarlo86]

He really just needs to come out and say he's for gay marriage at this point, he seems to have hinted at much recently. Time for him to just admit it.

[@mariorizkallah5383]

@@chanting_germ. Patriarch Kyril prays for peace. Stop judging

[@fr.johnwhiteford6194]

@exercisewaterhart The war in Ukraine was started in 2014 when the US sponsored a coup that overthrew the lawfully elected government, and then we picked the leadership of the new regime. There is no government more responsible for the bloodshed there than our own.

[@fr.johnwhiteford6194]

@exercisewaterhart has he renounced Orthodoxy in public? He's undoubtedly a brilliant man, but his theology is not Christian. It's more an eclectic form of Buddhism.

[@youngyvidz716]

@@fr.johnwhiteford6194 Not sure how you could call it buddhism, if anything you could call it Christo-centric vedanta. Hart is basically just an ecumenically/sycrentistically inclined Christo-centric neoplatonist/vedantist.

[@Dlee-eo5vv]

Let's keep in mind, David is a scholar and not a priest.

[@costakeith9048]

I don't see much scholarship from him, mostly just sentimentalism and vain speculation. He doesn't demonstrate the mastery of the patristic literature that more capable Orthodox scholars do.

[@Dlee-eo5vv]

@Costa Keith I agree with you, it's very concerning when a person elevates himself or knowledge above the church.

[@costakeith9048]

@@Dlee-eo5vv If he wants to apply h is interpretations to the historic and literary record, I may not always agree with it, but that's what academics do, for better or worse. However, a prerequisite to this privileges is a complete mastery of the literature in the field, which in Orthodox Theology means pretty much the entirety of the Patrologae Graeca and about 50 more volumes of important synodal, patriarchal, imperial, patristic, and legal texts that would take too long to list here -- the vast majority of which is only available in Greek. Nothing I've seen from Hart suggests this level of familiarity that ought to be expected of a scholar, I've even seen him state ideas of his that would present a golden opportunity to reference one text or another I am familiar with (and, no, I don't claim to be familiar with the entire corpus of patristic literature, but nor do I fancy myself a scholar or academic), and it's clear that he's unaware of it because he fails to cite it even though doing so would considerably strengthen his argument. It's a very different experience from reading things written by people like Fr. John Behr or Fr. George Dragas, whose books and papers are worth getting just for the bibliographies, regardless of whether or not you're interested in the subject matter.

[@dubbelkastrull]

@@costakeith9048 And what books have you written lately?

[@costakeith9048]

@@dubbelkastrull While I may be able to attain to Hart's level of scholarship, that does not mean that I am sufficiently well versed to put pen to paper. Such audacity ought, ideally, to be left to the bishops, saints, and elders; but if we are to attempt it in an academic setting, it must at least be after obtaining a mastery of the patristic literature far beyond what either Hart or I have achieved. There are dozens of tomes of, mostly Medieval, Greek patristic literature that I have never even read, much less mastered. How could I contribute to the patristic tradition if I have not yet mastered what is already there? I'm not a saint, I cannot speak from Divine Revelation, all I can do is comment on the writings of my betters.

[@stefang.9763]

oh, finally an EO who has a "mirror" and also dares to allow himself to (fairly) critique his own denomination's shortcomings...

[@apmoy70]

We're not a "denomination", we're The Church of Christ

[@stefang.9763]

@@apmoy70 ah, you sound like the Pharisees when pridefully answering to Christ that they alone are the sons of Abraham...

[@apmoy70]

@@stefang.9763 Whatever man, whatever makes you happy...nevertheless, Christ built a Church and this Church never disappeared nor went lost

[@darrenmiller8608]

DBH is the Nassim Taleb of theology.

[@ddecarlo86]

Hart's grown extremely bitter over the past few years, the personal resentment oozes out of him. Only a matter of time until he endorses SSM and Transgenderism, to own the Moscow Patriarchate of course!

[@ionutchiric5779]

The guy is a fraud. Probrably likes gay marriage.

[@user-ty1rj1zb7y]

There is no such inscription. Moreover, it misrepresents Fields’s mock epitaph written for a 1925 Vanity Fair article: "Here Lies / W. C. Fields / I Would Rather Be Living in Philadelphia". Indeed, Fields had a deep fondness (and a certain amount of disdain) for his hometown. Here again, DBH gets it wrong. If he can’t be trusted in the simplest details, don’t entrust those more sacred to him.

[@ironsandhammers359]

NATO... Nato as always.

[@southernstoic8279]

He's a Socialist? I'm a National Socialist too! Oh, wait. . . Joking aside, I have received much benefit from Hart's books (The Experience of God, That ALL Shall Be Saved, et al.), but I find his political views (what I know of them) repulsive. Jay Dyer referred to him as an ecumenical heretic. And so he is.

[@southernstoic8279]

@Gregory James Petersen That's usually the way it is (politics proceed from theology). It doesn't necessarily have to be that way, though.

[@RootinrPootine]

“I’m a Christian I just don’t believe in social Justice”. Cool story bro 😎 😂

[@southernstoic8279]

@@RootinrPootine I'm neither, dumdum.

[@AlyoshaKaramazov.]

Social and economic justice? Please tell me I'm not hearing what I think I'm hearing...not from a Christian apologist. I have read his That All Shall Be Saved book, and he makes a lot of sense to me. But in these interviews and debates he often comes across as supercilious. Am I wrong in perceiving that he has aligned himself with politically leftist ideology, based on the context of what he is saying here? I realize American Christian fundamentalists are far from perfect; but I would steadfastly argue that going in the opposite direction is nothing short of aligning oneself with the godless ways of the world, a group-think view that is completely antithetical to the core of all that we embrace in the Christian faith. Ah! I got to the end, where he calls conservatist thinking stupid and refers to himself as a socialist. What an ego! Listen to his choice of words, how quick he is to disparage fundamentalists in the church. Anti-capitalist? I am a Christian universalist, but these quasi-Communistic perspectives are enough to make me say bye bye, DBH. AND I'm Throwing away my That All Shall Be Saved book.

[@1otterclan]

That’s nice.

[@AlyoshaKaramazov.]

@Gregory James Petersen , with all due respect, brother (or peripheral friend of the faith), Jesus was not a socialist; His kingdom was not of this world. Any attempt to link the timeless truths of the gospel to political ideologies of any sort are antithetical to the basics of our faith in the Lord Jesus. Instead of flippantly asking me to read the New Testament (which I have read in English, Spanish, French, and Koine Greek), ask me about my father, a political prisoner in Cuba, a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, a man who suffered because he refused to yield his faith in the Lord to the execrable tenets of socialism...which, by the way, has horrifically shattered the people of Cuba, just as it has shattered ALL who have succumbed to the wretched thievery and human rights abuses of socialism. (Shhh, don't tell anybody, but it has NEVER worked...Shhh, don't tell anybody, but it is atheistic at its core.) ;)

[@AlyoshaKaramazov.]

​@Gregory James Petersen , how quick you are to offend, wow. I share my personal history as a Cuban man, and you write it off as not saying much. You are not in the faith, friend. DBH's That All Shall Be Saved made a lot of sense to me, I'll admit. But in interviews he comes across as extremely smug, and it's really disconcerting. Socialism is evil.

[@RootinrPootine]

DBH “We should improve society somewhat” You [melting down] “Supercilious!” DBH “charity and social justice are the core of the faith, not ego worship” You “What an ego! Criticizing economic equality (capitalism)? Not Christian! Now I have to throw away his book I already said was good!”

[@RootinrPootine]

Impressively dog-brained post, man 😂

[@FredvonHayek]

Hart should stay in his lane. His politics and economics are pathetic.

[@eugenegrushetsky4130]

This David Hard is a typical intellectual who speaks without any consciousness? just operating with terms such as ideology, orthodoxy and tribalism, -poor guy. A.I. could easily replace such theologians.

[@tonyoliver2750]

Who is this David Hard of whom you speak?