1 Hart, David Bentley, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003)Google Scholar. All parenthetical references in the text refer to this work.

2 This is not to suggest that is an evangelistic book, as if it were some kind of mammoth tract we could hand out to passers‐by.

3 I will let this slippery term stand as employed by Hart, for lack of space to complexify the issue. That said, as a scholar of Continental philosophy, I find myself in deep agreement with his assessment of what is ultimately going on in the work of Lyotard, Derrida, Vattimo, and Caputo—despite some of their own protests to the contrary. For my own critical accounts on the same themes, see Smith, James K.A., The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), pp. 87–129Google Scholar and idem., Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post‐Secular Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), pp. 49–60Google Scholar and 108–116.

4 As Hart puts it, “When Caputo describes radical hermeneutics as a kind of humility, a frank expression of ignorance, it is difficult not to conclude that, for him, this style of ignorance is the only acceptable form of humility” (431). What is most worrisome is how many Christians have been taken with this mode of false humility as a way of undoing their fundamentalist past.

5 Hart goes on to then note the way in which this “radical hermeneutics” plays right into the hands of the market (431–434). This is echoed in Alain Badiou's astute analysis of the way in which postmodern celebration of difference is everything capitalism could have hoped for: “What inexhaustible potential for mercantile investments in this upsurge—taking the form of communities demanding recognition and so‐called cultural singularities—of women, homosexuals, the disabled, Arabs! And these infinite combinations of predicative traits, what a godsend! Black homosexuals, disabled Serbs, Catholic pedophiles, moderate Muslims, married priests, ecologist yuppies, the submissive unemployed, prematurely aged youth! Each time, a social image authorizes new products, specialized magazines, improved shopping malls, ‘free’ radio stations, targeted advertising networks…” (Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Brassier, Ray [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003], p. 10Google Scholar). Nothing is more interested in difference than the market.

6 That is, insofar as Derrida's account simply equates particularity with violence, any “thick” (i.e., particular) story will be violent simply insofar as it is proclaimed. For further reflection on this, see Smith, James K.A., “Determined Violence: Derrida's Structural Religion,” Journal of Religion 78 (1998), pp. 197–212Google Scholar and idem., “Determined Hope: A Phenomenology of Christian Expectation,” in The Future of Hope: Christian Tradition Amid Modernity and Postmodernity, eds. Volf, Miroslav and Katerberg, William (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 200–227Google Scholar.

7 The difference between the (rational) apologist and the (aesthetic) herald, I might suggest, is that the latter acknowledges the rational “contestability” of his story. On the recognition of contestability as a condition for pluralism, see Connolly, William, Why I Am Not a Secularist (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 9Google Scholar.

8 Martyrdom would be the antithesis of Constantinianism, which is the primary mode of “Christian rhetoric” in the public sphere today.

9 Cp. the role of the martyr in Marion, Jean‐Luc, God Without Being, trans. Carlson, Thomas A. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 195–197Google Scholar.

10 I have explored this in more detailed in my “Empire, Ekklesia, and Evangelical Public Theology: A Reformed Objection to Natural Law,” forthcoming.

11 The notion of “apologetics” is largely left unqualified in Hart. One could, however, note the difference between a “negative” apologetics (which seeks to simply level the playing field and show that all “stories” operate on the basis of contingent, shared sets of commitments) and “positive” apologetics (which presumes a universal reason which yields universal justification or warrant, as in “natural theology”). When Hart (and I) refer to “apologetics,” he seems to mean the latter. The former (which would include Reformed epistemology) is not susceptible to the same critique.

12 Here Hart echoes Milbank, Theology and Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), p. 1Google Scholar: “If my Christian perspective is persuasive, then this should be a persuasion intrinsic to the Christian logos itself, not the apologetic mediation of a universal human reason.” This notion of postfoundationalist narration and out‐narration is also why it is not entirely surprising that some have explored overlapping sensibilities in Rorty and Hauerwas.

13 This is not, however, an abandonment of “truth;” indeed, beauty is “inseparable from truth” (3). It does, however, represent a move away from thinking about the cognitive as primary with respect to truth. It is, we might suggest, a Pascalian move.

14 I don't mean to claim that Hart's interest or goal is a coercive apologetics, but only whether his account of aesthetic attraction could, if it fell into the wrong hands so to speak, be employed as a kind of natural theology.

15 Actually, there seems to be a frustrating editorial glitch in this line, as it literally reads “it can be recognized in de‐spite of desire.” Granted, my ‘smoothing’ of the quote above is only one possible rendering.

16 This sense of “overwhelming givenness” brings to mind the sort of hyper‐objectivity that one might associate with Jean‐Luc Marion's account of the givenness of phenomena—precisely a donation that overwhelms (and therefore undercuts) hermeneutic conditions. I hope to develop this intuition further elsewhere.

17 I'm trying to formulate this in way that will evoke parallels in Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments. Or we could also replay this in terms of discussions about the sacraments (does beauty operate ex opera operato?), in which case my position will replay Calvin's doctrine of the Eucharist to a certain extent.

18 Though I think one could generate the same critique from resources in the Orthodox tradition, particulary in the account of the corruption of nous. My thanks to Terence Cuneo on this point.

19 See, for instance, Alvin Plantinga, “The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology” in Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association (1980).

20 Again, for a ready example, see Plantinga, Alvin, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 213–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 It would be interesting to develop this from a dialogue with Jonathan Edward's semiotics.

22 In other words, an aesthetic proclamation could still be coercive. Couldn't one suggest that fascism is often driven by an aesthetics that assumes something about the perceptive capacities of the Volk, and therefore marginalizes and excludes those who can't see?

23 Since such is located ecclesially, this point also undercuts any temptation to enlist an aesthetics for a Constantinianism of the beautiful.