2 Simon Smart at Broughton Anglican College
18 Simon speaking at Nowra City Church
19 Simon at Arden Anglican School
21 Simon at Rouse Hill Anglican College
Stanley Hauerwas
More than Myth-Busting
David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions – the Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2009)
Simon Smart
I have a cartoon scene in
my head. Christopher Hitchens sits on a stool in the corner of a boxing
ring; sweat dripping from his face and body. He is smoking and holds a
glass of scotch in his hand. A trainer attends to a cut above his left
eye, while another speaks in urgent tones trying to get a message
through to his clearly dazed fighter, who is bruised and battered,
barely able to maintain his seated position. Over Hitchens’ shoulder
can be seen a frantic looking Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Richard
Dawkins urgently mouthing words of instruction, which, drowned out by
the gathered throng, fall limply to the floor. In the centre of the
ring, unruffled, serene, yet impatient for the satisfaction of a final,
crushing blow so that he can move on to other more important tasks,
stands David Bentley Hart.
It’s a petulant thought,
and one that does no justice to the elegance, profundity, or indeed the
gravity of the subject matter of Hart’s latest book Atheist Delusions – the Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies. It
isn’t very respectful to Hart’s opponents either, although that part of
the image may well match Hart’s posture towards them.
The provocative title doesn’t match the seriousness with which this
book should be regarded, despite the obvious appeal for the publisher.
If only thought of as adding to the heat of debates between
‘enlightened secularists’ and believers, much would be missed in this brilliantly articulate treatment of the impact of Christianity—good
and bad—on Western culture.
The recent spate of atheist attacks on religion of all forms, most notably from Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens—the four horsemen of the apocalypse as they like to call themselves— are the function of a pervasive post-Christian culture. Hart aims some impressive guns at these prophets of modernist confidence, but his major contribution and focus is on the utterly revolutionary impact of Christianity on the West—on our culture, our consciousness, our view of ourselves and others, our spiritual and moral imaginations. This is the most positive element of the book that should be read by sceptics and believers of all flavours.
Hart warns that ‘to live entirely in the present, without any of the wisdom that a broad perspective on the past provides, is to live a life of idiocy and vapid distraction and ingratitude.’ (XIV). Much of what we see here is a corrective of misinformed or recklessly erroneous history that David Hart feels characterises popular ‘wisdom’ about what Christianity has brought to the world.
He brings to the task an encyclopaedic knowledge that is wide and deep. He speaks with authority and sophisticated understanding on an astonishing range of material from first century Roman households to the intrigues of the 16th Century French Court; from Classical and Medieval Science to the moral turpitude of failed 20th Century modernist ideologies. His writing is beautiful—scorching in argument, withering in criticism, hilariously funny in parts and simply a delight to savour. Such a substantial skill is held aloft on a sturdy rock of towering intellect, historical detail, insight, and wisdom. One gets the feeling that the world would be a lonely place for someone as clever as Hart, yet his writing is infused with a deep and resounding humanity. This is a book to keep and re-read.
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