The Devil And Pierre Gernet

Brilliant scholar and wordsmith David Bentley Hart turns his mind and imagination to narrative fiction in this volume, The Devil and Pierre Gernet, a thought-provoking collection of four short stories and one novella. Anticipating questions about his shift in genre, Hart writes that "God is no more likely (and probably a good deal less likely) to be found in theology than in poetry and fiction." These stories -- "The Devil and Pierre Gernet," "The House of Apollo," "A Voice from the Emerald World," "The Ivory Gate," and "The Other" -- beguile and entrance the reader through Hart's engrossing, opulent writing style and the complex characters he evokes and explores. Often bedazzling, sometimes heartbreaking, and ultimately mesmerizing, Hart's wide-ranging stories are united by a common thread of haunting religious and philosophical questions about this life and the next. Here is fiction to fully engage both the mind and the heart.

While Dickens's religion and religious thought is recognized as a significant component of his work, no study of Dickens's religion has carefully considered his often ignored, yet crucially relevant, The Life of Our Lord. Written by a biblical studies scholar, this study brings the insights of a theological approach to bear on The Life of Our Lord and on Dickens's other writing. Colledge argues that Dickens intended The Life Of Our Lord as a serious and deliberate expression of his religious thought and his understanding of Christianity based on evidences for his reasons for writing, what he reveals, and the unique genre in which he writes. Using The Life of Our Lord as a definitive source for our understanding of Dickens's Christian worldview, the book explores Dickens's Christian voice in his fiction, journalism, and letters. As it seeks to situate him in the context of nineteenth-century popular religion-including his interest in Unitarianism-this study presents fresh insight into his churchmanship and reminds us, as Orwell observed, that Dickens "was always preaching a sermon".

As news reports of the horrific December 2004 tsunami in Asia reached the rest of the world, commentators were quick to seize upon the disaster as proof of either God s power or God s nonexistence, asking over and over, How could a good and loving God if such exists allow such suffering? In The Doors of the Sea David Bentley Hart speaks at once to those skeptical of Christian faith and to those who use their Christian faith to rationalize senseless human suffering. He calls both to recognize in the worst catastrophes not the providential will of God but rather the ongoing struggle between the rebellious powers that enslave the world and the God who loves it wholly.

Religious scholar Hart argues that contemporary antireligious polemics are based not only upon conceptual confusions but upon facile simplifications of history and provides a powerful antidote to the New Atheists' misrepresentations of the Christian past.

As everyone knows, the bond between homo sapiens sapiens and canis lupus familiaris has traversed the ages. But few could have anticipated the remarkable exchange here recounted between David Bentley Hart and a noble beast named Roland. Roland in Moonlight breaks new ground within Hart's already astonishingly wide-ranging body of work. Eschewing the rigidity of the human either/or, Roland's diagonal approach offers secret illuminations and hidden affinities, as all and sundry come into his purview: paganism, dreams, language, myth, politics, American Christianity, Indian metaphysics, Japanese aesthetics... But perhaps most of all, the book is a kaleidoscopic exploration of the nature of mind and consciousness. Woven through all this is a candid memoir, a story of loss and recovery, of personal trials and tribulations, with Roland "leading the way through the darkened rooms and the sporadic shafts of icy moonlight, his mottled coat a constantly fluctuating counterpoint of shadow and light"-a strange and sure balm for the soul. Roland in Moonlight is a wholly unforgettable reading experience-a journey into the possible upon the wings of a heavenly discourse between man and beast, and the singular-indeed, blessed-rapport that guides their lives. It is impossible not to be swept along as Roland takes flight.

“A fiendishly sharp, intelligent examination of modern human life that is as funny as hell.” —The Times (London) The end is nigh and the Prince of Darkness has just been offered one hell of a deal: reentry into Heaven for eternity—if he can live out a well-behaved life in a human body on earth. It’s the ultimate case of trying without buying and, despite the limitations of the human body in question (previous owner one suicidally unsuccessful writer, Declan Gunn), Luce seizes the opportunity to run riot through the realm of the senses. This is his chance to straighten the biblical record (Adam, it’s hinted, was a misguided variation on the Eve design), to celebrate his favorite achievements (everything from the Inquisition to Elton John), and, most important, to get Julia Roberts attached to his screenplay. But the experience of walking among us isn’t what His Majesty expected: instead of teaching us what it’s like to be him, Lucifer finds himself understanding what it’s like to be us. By an author hailed by the Times Literary Supplement as one of Britain’s top twenty young novelists, I, Lucifer is “a masterpiece . . . startlingly witty, original and beautifully written” (Good Book Guide). “Duncan’s witty and perverse, yet somehow life-affirming, Lucifer is powerful indeed.” —Booklist

In the two thousand years that have elapsed since the time of Christ, Christians have been as much divided by their faith as united, as much at odds as in communion. And the contents of Christian confession have developed with astonishing energy. How can believers claim a faith that has been passed down through the ages while recognizing the real historical contingencies that have shaped both their doctrines and their divisions? In this carefully argued essay, David Bentley Hart critiques the concept of "tradition" that has become dominant in Christian thought as fundamentally incoherent. He puts forth a convincing new explanation of Christian tradition, one that is obedient to the nature of Christianity not only as a "revealed" creed embodied in historical events but as the "apocalyptic" revelation of a history that is largely identical with the eternal truth it supposedly discloses. Hart shows that Christian tradition is sustained not simply by its preservation of the past, but more essentially by its anticipation of the future. He offers a compelling portrayal of a living tradition held together by apocalyptic expectation--the promised transformation of all things in God.

Publishers Weekly Best Book in Religion 2020 Foreword Review's INDIES Book of the Year Award, Religion In Theological Territories, David Bentley Hart, one of America's most eminent contemporary writers on religion, reflects on the state of theology "at the borders" of other fields of discourse—metaphysics, philosophy of mind, science, the arts, ethics, and biblical hermeneutics in particular. The book advances many of Hart's larger theological projects, developing and deepening numerous dimensions of his previous work. Theological Territories constitutes something of a manifesto regarding the manner in which theology should engage other fields of concern and scholarship. The essays are divided into five sections on the nature of theology, the relations between theology and science, the connections between gospel and culture, literary representations of and engagements with transcendence, and the New Testament. Hart responds to influential books, theologians, philosophers, and poets, including Rowan Williams, Jean-Luc Marion, Tomáš Halík, Sergei Bulgakov, Jennifer Newsome Martin, and David Jones, among others. The twenty-six chapters are drawn from live addresses delivered in various settings. Most of the material has never been printed before, and those parts that have appear here in expanded form. Throughout, these essays show how Hart's mind works with the academic veneer of more formal pieces stripped away. The book will appeal to both academic and non-academic readers interested in the place of theology in the modern world.