I love David Bentley Hart. He’s not only a great writer and philosopher, he’s a wonderful speaker and explainer of big, complicated ideas (actually, the biggest and most complicated ideas imaginable). He also has a scathing wit and a talent for skewering stupid ideas masquerading as wisdom.
I’ve read a lot of Hart’s work, and watched many of his interviews on Youtube (there are a ton of them). My favorite is posted above, and I encourage everyone to check it out. However, if you’re new to DBH’s work, you might find yourself frantically looking up a lot of terms that frequently come up. (I still do.) So, in order to ease the transition, here is a handy cheat-list of some of the more important ones:
Ontology – The philosophical study of being itself, especially in the questions of why is there something rather than nothing and does God exist.
Dualism – The idea that human beings are composed of two fundamental, separate things: mind and matter. This concept is most closely associated with René Descartes (i.e., Cartesian Dualism) and his famous statement, “cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”). Dualism is usually contracted with monism, the notion that all aspects of human life are reducible to one fundamental thing (typically, the physical laws of nature).
Materialism (a.k.a. Reductionism, Physicalism) – The notion that all aspects of human life, including consciousness, can ultimately be explained by scientific laws. That is, the fundamental forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force), genetics, Darwinian evolution, etc.
Apophatic – The idea that, because God (if He exists) is ineffable and beyond human comprension, we can only talk about Him in terms of what He is not rather than in terms of what He is (i.e., Cataphatic theology). For example, we can say that God is neither male nor female (despite the fact that most people use a male pronoun). But we can’t really say what His nature is.
Contingent – The concept of contingency refers to the fact everything in the physical universe exists as a result of something that came before it (including, ultimately, the Big Bang). THis becomes important in the so-called Ontological Arguments for the existence of God.
Thomist – The adjective used to describe ideas that derive from those of St. Thomas of Aquinas. (It’s pronounced TOME-ist.)
Qualia – Qualia is a fancy word used by philosophers–especially those concerned with the so-called Hard Problem of Consciousness–to describe feelings. That is, what it’s like to be conscious and experience things as a living being, and how is this possible.
Panpsychism – the ancient idea that all things–even those things we usually call inanimate–might have some kind of consciousness.
Apokatastasis – A Greek work referring to the restoration of all creation to a divine state. In some Christian philosophical schools of thought, it also refers to the eventual salvation of all souls (even those in hell, including the Devil). Hart has written extensively on this subject in his book That All Shall Be Saved.
Ash Clifton, Writer 