Tradition and Apocalypse – An Essay on the Future of Christian Belief - Hardcover

Hart, David Bentley

 
9780801039386: Tradition and Apocalypse – An Essay on the Future of Christian Belief
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 080103938X ISBN 13: 9780801039386
Verlag: Baker Academic, Div of Baker Publishing Group, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

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.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Bentley Hart (PhD, University of Virginia) is a philosopher and a religious studies scholar whose work encompasses a wide range of subjects and genres. He has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of St. Thomas, Loyola College in Maryland, Providence College, and Saint Louis University. In 2015, he was granted a Templeton Fellowship at the University of Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. Hart has written numerous books, including The Beauty of the Infinite, The New Testament: A Translation, The Devil and Pierre Gernet, Theological Territories, and That All Shall Be Saved.

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From the Book
It seems clear to me that the concept of "tradition" in the theological sense, however lucid and cogent it might appear to the eyes of faith, is incorrigibly obscure and incoherent. This, I would argue, is true not only of the vague, popular version of that concept that a good many believers harbor but rarely think about. It is true also of the version that many (perhaps most) Christian theologians have tended consciously to adopt since the publication in 1845 of the first edition of John Henry Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, which more or less set the agenda for discussion of the topic, and to which no alternative account of any very great significance has yet been proposed. . . . The general neglect of the topic leaves a fairly enormous unresolved question in Christian thought lying quite conspicuously and troublingly open. When we speak of "Christian tradition," what are we really talking about? Can we really prove the existence of--and then in fact identify--a particular living, continuous, and internally coherent phenomenon that corresponds to that phrase, or will any attempt to do so find evidence only of a product of pure historical fortuity, consisting in a mere mechanically determined series of consecutive viable forms united more by evolutionary imperatives than by internal rationality?

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Verlag
Baker Academic, Div of Baker Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
080103938X
ISBN 13 
9780801039386
Einband
Tapa dura
Anzahl der Seiten
208
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Verantwortliche Person
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