This book is about two intended weddings. A Saudi seeking Jesus tells his story covering the years 1999 to 2002 and ends with a haircut as part of his Arabic prenuptial traditions. Osman observes his roommates rehearsals for a very different wedding where the ritual haircut precedes martyrdom leading to carnal heavenly rewards. The hero is skeptical of this roommates belief where sensuality is mixed with fiery warnings against anyone daring to leave Islam. His San Diego based employer, Unc...

A lively and wide-ranging collection from David Bentley Hart, A Gathering of Leaves invites readers to rediscover the sheer joy of reading.David Bentley Hart brings together reflections on everything from literature and music to baseball and tortoises in his newest book. The pieces roam freely in subject and tone—sometimes serious, sometimes playful—but are united by Hart’s distinctive voice: witty, attentive, and unafraid of digression.Rather than...

A stunning reexamination of one of the essential tenets of Christian belief from one of the most provocative and admired writers on religion today.The great fourth-century church father Basil of Caesarea once observed that, in his time, most Christians believed that hell was not everlasting, and that all would eventually attain salvation. But today, this view is no longer prevalent within Christian communities.In this momentous book, David Bentley Hart make...

In The Story of Christianity, acclaimed theologian David Bentley Hart provides a sweeping and informative portrait of a faith that has shaped the western world and beyond for over 2,000 years.From the persecutions of the early church to the papal-imperial conflicts of the Middle Ages, from the religious wars of 16th- and 17th-century Europe to the challenges of science and secularism in the modern era, and from the ancient Christian communities of Africa and Asia to the 'house chur...

Currently it is fashionable to be devoutly undevout. Religion’s most passionate antagonists—Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and others—have publishers competing eagerly to market their various denunciations of religion, monotheism, Christianity, and Roman Catholicism. But contemporary antireligious polemics are based not only upon profound conceptual confusions but upon facile simplifications of history or even outright historical ignorance: so contends D...

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 suffe...

The second edition of David Bentley Hart’s critically acclaimed New Testament translationDavid Bentley Hart’s translation of the New Testament, first published in 2017, was hailed as a “remarkable feat” and as a “strange, disconcerting, radical version of a strange, disconcerting manifesto of profoundly radical values.” In this second edition, which includes a powerful new preface and more than a thousand changes to the text, Hart’s purpose remains the same: to ren...

Publishers Weekly Best Book in Religion 2020Foreword Review's INDIES Book of the Year Award, ReligionIn 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 t...

Rowan Williams says that David Bentley Hart "can always be relied on to offer a perspective on the Christian faith that is both profound and unexpected." The Hidden and the Manifest, a new collection of this brilliant scholar's work, contains twenty essays by Hart on theology and metaphysics.Spanning Hart's career both topically and over time, these essays cover such subjects as the Orthodox understanding of Eucharistic sacrifice; the metaphysics of Paradise Lost;...

In a blossoming garden located far outside all worlds, a group of aging Greek gods have gathered to discuss the nature of existence, the mystery of mind, and whether there is a transcendent God from whom all things come. Turning to Eros, Psyche asks, "Do you see this flower, my love?"So begins David Bentley Hart's exploration of the mystery of consciousness. He systematically subjects the mechanical view of nature that has prevailed in Western culture for four centuries to dialecti...

A world-renowned philosopher’s genre-defying exploration of the mystery of consciousnessIn a blossoming garden located far outside all worlds, a group of aging Greek gods have gathered to discuss the nature of existence, the mystery of mind, and whether there is a transcendent God from whom all things come. Turning to Eros, Psyche asks, “Do you see this flower, my love?”So begins David Bentley Hart’s unprecedented exploration of the mystery of consciousness...

In The Light of Tabor, award-winning theologian David Bentley Hart proposes an approach to the nature of Christ that is profoundly radical yet deeply classical.For centuries, Christian theology has rested on a paradox. Beginning with the Council of Chalcedon in the fifth century, the major Christian traditions have held that Jesus Christ combines two distinct natures: he is fully God and, somehow, fully human. Yet this tenet has traditionally invited irres...