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Rhetoric and Rhapsody A response to David Bentley Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Gerard Loughlin
Gerard Loughlin*
Affiliation:
Department of Theology and Religion, University of Durham, Durham
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

I offer a brief outline of The Beauty of the Infinite, pointing up its similarities with and differences from John Milbank's Theology and Social Theory (1990), and the violence of its rhetoric. I then take issue with Hart's reading of Nicholas Lash on the death and resurrection of Christ. I argue that not only is Lash closer to Hart than Hart allows, but that Lash recognizes the necessarily unfinished nature of Christian story telling. Hart is led by his rhetoric of out‐narration to affirm an unsustainable completeness that elides the terrors of suffering and death, the very fault for which Hart chides Lash. Having noted Hart's misdirection I conclude with an appreciation of his aesthetics.

Keywords

David Bentley HartNicholas Lashrhetoricresurrectionmaster narrativesout‐narrationevil (incomprehensibility of)
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 88 , Issue 1017 , September 2007 , pp. 600 - 609
Copyright
Copyright © The author 2007. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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