The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss Hardcover – September 24, 2013

My general preamble to Amazon reviews these days starts the same way: I have fallen out of the habit of writing reviews because I think to do a review properly takes the time and energy at this moment in my education I would prefer be spent reading. Nonetheless both the excellence of this book and what in my humble opinion is the poorness of another review, have momentarily called me back. It is of course anyone's right to give a one-star review to a book--even a book I love; in doing so however one would hope cogent reasons other than "I didn't understand it" or vague incriminations of association with a journal one apparently dislikes, would be more than forthcoming. Sadly, such was not the case. That said, I can assure you that my "five-star" rating is not merely serving as a countervalence to the one-star, it is my genuine opinion of the book that would have been given either way. But now that the throat-clearing is done, lets get down to business.Long story short: if you have read Hart and enjoyed his learnedness and witticism in the past, buy this book. If you haven't read Hart but are intrigued: this, or Atheist Delusions, are the places to start. In short: buy this book. Read it, Enjoy it. Pop some popcorn and wait for the fireworks. There really is no second guessing (especially at the affordable price). I was initially expecting something of a sequel to Beauty of the Infinite (which I still consider my favorite of Hart's books, despite its difficulty) but really for those interested I would consider this more akin to Atheist Delusions than anything. Much like Hart taking great pleasures dismantling many of our august myths regarding Christian history, here Hart takes aim at much of the tosh that passes for "talk about God," in the modern arena--particularly in the "God debates" between Fundamentalists and New-Atheists of all sorts. If you were like me, and were confused by the description of the book (Sanskrit? Hinduism? What is going on?) Hart attempts to dismantle--in classical Hart style--all these poor imitations of the Almighty by marshaling the resources of the "Classical theistic traditions" (note the plural, Hart includes Judaism, Islam, several forms of Hinduism, and others alongside Christianity). Here Hart thus takes an interesting--and perhaps controversial, for those of us still riding the avalanche of trinitarian scholarship of the last thirty years--approach by noting many of the conceptual similarities between these traditions and their theological and philosophical attempts to come to a "rational" picture of God. Thus Hart explicitly marshals the language of Thomas (which I'm sure many will recognize from Rahner's criticism of it): "There is an old Scholastic distinction between religious treatises written 'De Deo Uno' [on the one God] and 'de Deo Trino' [on the Triune God]..between, that is, those that are 'about the One God' known to persons of various faiths and philosophies, and those that are about the 'Trinitarian God' of Christian doctrine. I want to distinguish in a similar way between, on the one hand, metaphysical or philosophical descriptions of God and, on the other, dogmatic or confessional descriptions, and confine myself to the former." (4)In doing so, Hart opens with the wonderful line "this is either an extremely ambitious book, or an extremely unambitious book." Which is to to say the goal of the book is such: "My intention," says Hart, "is simply to offer a definition of the word 'God' or of its equivalents in other tongues, and to do so in fairly slavish obedience to the classical definitions of the divine found in the theological and philosophical schools of most of the major religious traditions." As such, Hart wants to clarify just what this "God" is that we should, or should not believe in. He organizes this task around three themes familiar to anyone who has read the subheading to the book: Being, Consciousness, Bliss. Which is to say, how these "moments" or "concepts" implicate, and are implicated by, God: (taking some limited examples from the chapters) our Being as contingency implying an Ultimate non-Contingent, our conscious orientations to the world presupposing in every mundane thought, act, and supposition a reference to the infinite, and indeed a saturation by it--or that the mind and reality should be compatible with each other at all, and (to those familiar with Hart's work on Gregory of Nyssa this will sound familiar) our "bliss" or the ecstatic moments of rapture and joy, our "stretching out" or epektasis into infinity. Thus Hart provides three basic reasons for these terms: 1.) They more or less adequately summarize three concepts by which classical theism represented God (here those with Trinitarian hesitation to Hart's "separation of Treatises" will be relieved to note Hart's extensive talk of the Cappadocians, Augustine, Maximus the Confessor, and Bonaventure's concept of God as Love in Trinitarian form, a la Beauty of the Infinite. Hart has not strayed from his roots) 2.) Represent how humankind's relationship to God can be summarized by concepts and 3.) These three "moments" represent that which, it seems to Hart (quite rightly, I think) cannot be "metaphysically accounted for" by assuming metaphysical naturalism (42-45).Thus, following Beauty of the Infinite's discourse of the "beautiful rhetoric" of Theistic discourse's ability to "illuminate existence," there is here a limited apologetic purpose; Hart repeatedly affirms that he is not attempting to "prove" God, yet he also frequently repeats that authentic theology and apologetics have a fuzzy line, and that part of the task of unburdening us of idols and caricatures of God is also to bring forth the true power of the theistic tradition's actual "picture of God" (for lack of a better term) and how it represents a rationally, emotionally, and aesthetically robust "explanation" (again, for lack of a better term) of reality. This is, of course, not "God-of-the Gaps" here, where God appears in spaces allowed by the aporia of some natural mechanism: "All the classical theological arguments regarding the order of the world" in fact "assume just the opposite: that God's creative power can be seen in the rational coherence of nature as a perfect whole; that the universe was not simply a factitious product of a supreme intellect but the unfolding of the omnipresent divine wisdom or logos." (38)It would be difficult to summarize further without simply spoiling the book, but I will end with a few anecdotal observations of my own. The first is that one of the great surprises of the book is its readability. Atheist Delusions was of course quite readable, but this book represents Hart at his most "purified" and understandable (contra another reviewer, in my opinion); he is of course classic Hart (thus there are still flourishes that will make one reach for the dictionary), but classic Hart, I might say, doing his best Chesterton impression. His lucidness here is uncanny, as his ability to calmly explain and lay out themes one may already have familiarity with. There are--at least there was for me--many "wow" moments when Hart shows you something you have been looking at but did not quite recognize you saw. This is also, in my opinion, Hart's funniest book, with Hart's typically penetrating observation producing (at least for me) some actual laugh-out-loud moments. There is for example (I won't ruin it) a particularly great moment where Hart is tearing into analytic theology by telling a brief story of a coffee-loving dolphin; or there are great one-liners like "I am enough of a romantic to believe that if something is worth being rude about, it it worth understanding as well." Other surprises abound. For example, Hart takes on analytic theology repeatedly (though he is quite respectful of those like Alvin Plantinga, he is almost palpably frustrated by others), and I for one was quite surprised with Hart's extensive engagement with evolutionary and cognitive science literature (some of Hart's book reads very similar to his friend Conor Cunningham's book Darwin's Pious Idea). These are fun new territories to watch Hart turn his immense talents and intellect toward. Further, if I had a complaint about Atheist Delusions it was that Hart, despite his obviously immense learning, is often coy about his sources. I do not doubt the veracity of his claims, but for those like myself who like to hunt down new avenues of reading, the sparse annotations and bibliography were irritating. Here, Hart does follow much the same formula, with very few endnotes trailing his oceans of prose. However he adds a wonderful (and surprisingly fun to read) "Bibliographic Postscript" which is a sort of annotated bibliography (343-350), but reads more like one is having coffee with Hart and he is giving his opinion on sources used, and others which should be read by those interested.But enough of my review, go start reading. Get lost in Hart's beautiful prose and wonderful mind. Even if you end up disagreeing with everything he wrote, I think you will have at least left the encounter having learned quite a bit.

I am very impressed with David Hart's "The Experience of God." This is the first book of Hart's I have read, after first discovering him through an article in First Things about atheism. I'm glad that this book was my introduction to Hart's theology since I plan to read the Atheists' Delusion next and expect to find it to be a good "sequel" to "Experience" although the books appear in a different chronological order. Hart's book is highly readable and deeply intellectually satisfying. He has a knack for anticipating his reader's questions and counterarguments and articulating these clearly so that I felt as though I were sitting across the table from him caressing a glass of Chablis as we conversed about transcendental, metaphysical, spiritual and religious questions: a truly exhilarating experience."Experience" is what I have been looking for in my frequent dialogues and debates with atheists: a definitive definition of what is meant by the term "God." This is needed because, IMO, atheists generally argue about God's existence based on a Straw Man God of their own creation, which Hart identifies as a problem in the God Debate on page 1 of his introduction: "...the concept of God around which the arguments have run their seemingly interminable courses has remained strangely obscure the whole time." Consequently, the contribution of a clearly articulated definition of God to the debate is helpful for us believers to analyze and refute atheists' arguments against God as well as for atheists to become aware of what they are truly up against when venturing into theological discussions rather than resorting to mockery and ridicule against their believer interlocutors. Many atheist debaters insist upon following the rules and structure of formal argumentation in talking about "claims" and "evidence" for God's "existence" without having done the heavy lifting of arriving at stipulated definitions of terms based on "...how the word "God" functions in the intellectual traditions of the developed religions..." (p. 2). Hart's book offers atheists the challenge and opportunity to explore a commonly agreed upon definition of God, although I anticipate that only the most dedicated will, since Hart puts a torch to their straw men and leaves them speechless before they can make a counterclaim to the claim that God exists. How does one argue against the existence of reality?From the beginning, Hart establishes the validity and credibility of his definition of God according to "...how the word "God" functions in the intellectual traditions of the developed religions" so that we dismiss the frequently used ploy of atheists that places different religious traditions in competition with each other as "evidence" that all of them are false as a basis for belief in God. Hart states that "[R]eligions ought never to be treated as though each were a single discrete proposition intended to provide a single exclusive answer to a single exhaustive question." Instead, he explains how all rigorous philosophical systems "...may be making more or less proximate approaches to some dimension of truth." This analysis affirms the reality of different linguistic, cultural, symbolic, mythological and mystical elaborations on a common and universal understanding of God. I think of this in terms of the notion of "God as I/we understand God" or the "God of our understanding" that both transcends and unifies religious diversity. It also means that in the rhetoric of atheism, a lack of a clear and common agreement as to what we are talking about when we talk about God, is a prerequisite to meaningful dialogue about whether or not "God" "exists." Hart points out that although God is "essentially beyond finite comprehension," God can genuinely be known, encountered and experienced "...with a fullness surpassing mere conceptual comprehension." Hart thoroughly analyzes and debunks the "demiurge" conceptualization of God, as well as the "God of the gaps" approach to defining God.Hart's treatment of the ontological question of God is masterfully straightforward and comprehensible, as he argues how historically more "spiritual" or "immaterial" causes "...had to be invoked to explain how the potencies of matter could be made actual and integrated into the coherent wholes of which nature is constituted." Hart has a complete command of the metaphysical arguments that support his concept of God as "the greater spiritual order of all things" with the human mind as the instrument "to interpret" physical reality. Hart expounds on the limitations of science, since science must presume the "lawfulness" of physical reality as a prior condition to its investigation. Hart successfully makes the argument that the universe "...as a physical reality, lacks the obviously supernatural power necessary to exist on its own" and this is what classical metaphysics identifies as God. His argument reminds me of the words of St. Thomas Aquinas: "This all men speak of as God."Hart brilliantly describes the simplicity of God as "the infinite unconditioned source of all reality" and thus sets aside arguments that there is only a numeric difference between polytheism and monotheism, as some atheists claim. Hart's nuanced and articulate argument supports his claim that "materialism" or "naturalism" has absolutely no logical superiority over theism. The theme of "bliss" is interwoven in these arguments, as he talks about consciousness and the human ability to know "the extraordinary within the ordinary, the supernatural within the natural." The concept of "qualia" or the qualitative dimension of experience serves to illustrate and affirm how God is known through our subjective consciousness, and even that the pure subjectivity of our experiences is a "primordial datum" and our ability to integrate experiences with a "transcendental grasp of the empirical data as a constant totality" pointing to God.Hart's book is full of priceless sayings and clever and razor-sharp quips that are unforgettable. One of my favorites is this: "Wisdom is the recovery of innocence at the far end of experience." I love this saying because it resonates with my own faith journey, where the more I learn about God and experience God, the more I recoup that innocence of my experiences of a powerful connection with my Creator, before knowing anything more of Christianity than the 23rd Psalm and the Lord's Prayer.I highly recommend David Bentley Hart's "The Experience of God" to those in search of fine-tuned intellectual arguments in defense of his/her faith as well as a spiritually uplifting and affirming experience for the soul.

This is an excellent read, though beware, between the first and last chapters (which are fairly straightforward) it can get a little 'dense', and I found myself struggling to follow DBH here and there, marking passages to which I need to return and give more consideration.Hart writes wonderfully and is surely one of the most sensible men alive. I read the 1 star reviews here in disbelief and sadness. It seems quite obvious to me that the criticisms being thrown around in that area come from minds which are closed and do not understand, or even wish to understand, what DBH is saying.Basically, rather than go on the 'apologetic defensive', DBH takes the opposite route, claiming that it is unbelief in Being itself (God) which is illogical, and that most of the 'new atheists'' attempts to debunk God, with such stupid arguments as Dawkins and co manage to come up with, are not really talking about God at all. As I read, I found myself occasionally laughing out loud at DBH's caustic wit. He is a man whose 'scientific baloney detector' is tuned to a razor sharpness. Absolutely wonderful!

David Bentley Hart has done a great service in clarifying so much of the confusion around the term God and making it clearer about what we are and are not talking about according to the major religious traditions of the world but especially Christianity.He musters powerful historical and philosophical evidence and, whilst respecting principled and reflective atheists' positions, shows that they need to know what they are talking about if the wish to properly enter the argument.With his characteristic humour he sheds much light on how the divine has been experienced across the centuries and cultures. In so doing he will bring back many to the best of their religious traditions for sure but he will also challenge many without faith to examine their own unexamined metaphysical presuppositions and perhaps open them up to a more creative space of uncertainty and fruitful doubt. Much needed in these times of uncertainty, when extremist positions whether religious, political or scientific materialist seem to offer so much false security.Hart unashamedly uses rhetoric to hammer home his points but he does so in order to reveal the "Nameless and Formless Reality" behind all images of G-d. Read it with an open mind. You will be rewarded!

I was hoping for some concise and penetrating thought from Mr Hart. All I have seemed to have purchased is some repackaged christian mumbo-jumbo that seems to try and make God so out of reach that he/she/it is impossible to attempt to define. Or at least I was anticipating an open minded approach to this enormous question but from the first few pages it readily became apparent that wasn't going to happen. Perhaps I was naive in expecting something intelligent on such a difficult subject, I have expected at least a ring fencing of the issues: the problem of evil, the total lack of evidence in the natural world, the strength of individual experience etc. but I found no satisfactory arguments. As always, make your own minds up but if you are looking for potential answers in this direction then maybe you should look elsewhere....

A very well argued and well written book. Bentley Hart contends that the 'new atheists' have a poor understanding and a wrong definition of God. The book could benefit from more examples and illustrations, but as a work of philosophical Theology it is excellent.

I wish more would read thisbook. Not always easy to follow but His logic and style of argument is perhaps too wordy for some but I am onlya third way through it and it certainly is challenging and has made my think and feel stronger in my faith.