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Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies

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To begin with, the book should probably be titled "Atheist Delusions About Ancient History." This book is not so much a debate with our Fashionable New Atheists (Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens -- "The Gang of Four?? :-) ) It is more a long, and endlessly fascinating, revisit of Ancient History.

It may not be surprising to learn that there are at least two main narratives commonly provided for "The History of Western Civilization." Here they are (very compressed):

Narrative #1: The Christian Version. "The world was lost in pagan immorality and darkness; man enslaved man and man dominated woman. Then, with the Birth of Christ, came the Divine Light, and the world was forever transformed. The barbarian, knuckle-dragging rapists of Europe were baptised and brought to Jesus, and the world got much, much better. Even today, there is no other known source of European civilization and we reject it at our peril." One of the most popular novels of all time, "Quo Vadis," is in this narrative tradition.

Narrative #2: The Modernist Version. "We had the Glory of Greece and the Splendor of Rome, but alas a bunch of superstitious people completely replaced the glories of Paganism with the knuckle-dragging ignorance of Blind Faith. The result was the Dark Ages, which only ended when Heroic Forces restored the classics of Greece to a benighted Europe. Then came the Enlightenment, and Democracy, and all manner of good things, once the Europeans cast off the shackles of Faith." Arthur C. Clarke and many other modern thinkers followed this narrative.

Whether you approve of my "summaries" or not, the point is that they are both tremendous oversimplifications and they are both therefore silly. If you want to be a propagandist, OK, take one of those simple-minded narratives. But if you really want to understand the history of Western Civilization, you need much more information.

One myth which has been repeated endlessly is that "Christian mobs destroyed the Library of Alexandria." This is completely false. In the first place, there were two libraries, and there have been a number of "suspects" beginning with Caesar, but nobody really knows what happened. (A man named Parsons wrote a whole book on the subject.) Another myth is that Christianity somehow destroyed the original Greek manuscripts of Aristotle, and that we had to get them back from the Arabs, in Arabic. If this myth were true, how could we possibly have all of Aristotle in the original Greek today? (The original Greek manuscripts were preserved in Byzantium.)

Things like this make the book under review invaluable, and there is one larger discussion I would like to share with you. It concerns Galileo, and the Myth of Galileo -- apparently launched by the great hypocrite Brecht. Basically, all you need to know is that "everything you think you know about Galileo is false," most particularly the idea that Galileo and other modern astronomers were engaged in some sort of running war with the dogmatic Catholic Church. Not at all. In the end, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton were engaged in a much larger and more difficult battle: they were overturning the dead hand of Aristotle, which had stifled European science for thousands of years. Newton's final victory was the collapse of Hellenistic "science" --- such as it was.

Well, I've either stirred up your interest, or I haven't! Back to Beethoven Op. 127. :-)

The only thing I dislike about Atheist Delusions is its title. A few other reviewers have pointed out that it seems to indicate the book will be a rebuttal of atheist writers like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and the rest. It is not. Indeed, David Bentley Hart asserts that men like them are hardly worth attention because of the infantile level on which they argue. What Hart does, instead, is provide a history lesson for the "fashionable enemies" of Christianity.

The delusions in question, Hart says, are mostly historical ones. One will not discuss religion with an atheist long before history comes up. What of the injustice of the Inquisition? The Crusades? The long-running war of religion against science? The Reformation and the subsequent wars of religion? We hear constantly that religion (read: Christianity) is the most destructive force in human history. It is Hart's purpose to debunk the delusions and historical fabrications that characterize historical arguments against Christianity.

The primary focus of Hart's book, hinted at in the subtitle, is the "Christian Revolution," those first, tense centuries AD when Christianity replaced ancient paganism. The pagan era has been eulogized since in the Enlightenment as an era of peace and progress, of scientific advance that was stymied by the bigoted, book-burning Christians of the "Dark Ages." Hart shows that, while we owe much to the ancient world, it was also an irredeemably ugly place of slavery, infanticide, of callousness and hopeless reconciliation to the whims of cruel fate. Christianity, which he calls the only true revolution in history, changed everything from the bottom up--and since Christianity was first accepted among the lower classes and slaves, it changed everything quite literally from the bottom up.

Christians did not, Hart shows, burn the Library of Alexandria, or torture millions during the Inquisition, persecute Galileo, or wreak havoc across Europe during the Reformation in the name of religion. Christianity gave the world hospitals, modern science, and the moral framework to regard all life as worthy of life. In this coup de grace, Hart even points out that it would not even be possible for men like Dawkins and Hitchens to make their arguments of justice and fairness were it not for the "Christian Revolution," that their concepts of justice and fairness are rooted not just in Western Civilization but in Christianity itself.

The only way in which Atheist Delusions left me wanting was in a discussion of the Crusades. I am a military and medieval historian and so this topic is near and dear to my heart, but Hart only gives the Crusades a paragraph or two at the beginning of one chapter. He claims that the Crusades were not rooted in any Christian doctrine of just war--but they were, and were he to investigate further he would see the reasons the Crusades were considered just. (To take up the slack on this topic, I recommend Thomas F. Madden's New Concise History of the Crusades.)

But that one niggling issue aside, Atheist Delusions is one of the best books I have ever read--and I do not say so lightly. I read through it as quickly as I could and have thought about it daily ever since. I've found more food for thought, more intellectual challenge and stimulation here than in any book I've read in years.

Highly recommended.

I will forgo the standard adjectives that came to mind when I read this book: brilliant, stunning, breathtaking. That is a given when one reads David Bentley Hart. This book is a combination of alternative history, apologetics, and smash-mouth theology.

Hart claims the Christian faith represented a revolution in the story of humanity (ix). It shattered the pagan cosmology (115) and introduced new categories of reality, the dimension of the human person for one. However, Hart's thesis is more subtle than that. He is not simply saying "Christianity has done a lot of good to the world; therefore, you need to belive,"--that would be a variant of the genetic fallacy that Hart so masterfully refutes. Rather, Christianity has its own telling of the story, a telling that reworks the categories of human existence within the framework of its own story.

Over against the story is the narrative of modernity. Modernity's telos is that of freedom. Its highest ideal is putting trust in the absence of a transcendental. Its freedom is nihilistic. Modernity's current defenders, and this is the first half of Hart's book, retell the Western story in a way to demonize Christianity in their defense of modernity. Therefore, Hart meticulously shows how Christianity did not impede science (the chapter on Galileo is hilarious), burn witches (the Inquisition, despite its bad moments, actually limited the bloodiness of the State's persecution of heretics), or fight religious wars (the Crusades are actually a different case, worthy of a conversation but not under this topic).

One slight criticism: Given Hart's thesis of the Christian revolution of thought and humanity, its shattering and rebuilding of worlds, it is rather surprising to see Hart end on so dismal a note. If the Christian Revolution is as powerful as he says and as I believe, and if the detractors of Christianity are slightly moronic, as appears to be the case, does this not ultimately point to the triumph of the Christian narrative? Of course, the word triumph needs to be carefully qualified.

Conclusion:
What many of Hart's readers might not realize with this book, but this is actually Hart's clearest piece of writing. Most of Hart's writing (*Beauty of the Infinite*), while beautiful, is borderline incoherent. This book, on the other hand, is understandable.

EDIT: I've actually become more critical of this book in particular, and Hart in general over the past year. Hart is quite learned and makes a number of pointed responses to the "New Atheist Detractors." And to be fair, if the New Atheists are going to ridicule Christianity in the most scathing of terms, they need to be ready to play hardball. That being said, this book started well, had a nice historical review, but had one of the most lame conclusions I've ever read. Imagine Beethoven's 9th ending with everyone humming "Kum-by-yah." I mean, there is a major dialectical tension in this book. If Hart is correct on the Christian narrative, then how does his conclusion follow?!?

Dont let the bombastic title fool you (it appears to be a play on both Dawkin's The God Delusion and the latter part of the title of Schliermacher's famous On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers and so is actually a rather sly title despite its prima facie inflammatory nature). This is by no means a standard book of apologetics. You will find here no trenchant rehashing of the so-called arguments for God's existence (cosmological, axiological, ontological), theodicy, or the well worn cart paths of the wearisome and quixotic Evolution vs Creationism debates. Rather what Hart attempts to do (and does beautifully) is to show that the assumptions of the "New Athiests," (e.g. Dennet, Dawkins et all) and the common mythology of atheism amongst laypersons and professionals pervading our contemporary atmosphere--namely that the history of Christianity is one of completely violent, doctrinaire aggression, suppression of scientific inquiry, fideistic stupidity, the abnegation of freedom and self thinking, and all in all the historical quintessence and amalgamation of nearly all the maladies and vicious shortcomings of Western history--are completely false.

To complete this task Hart sets forth a history of Christianity that shows, e.g. that Christianity was not some great and malicious interruption to the ideals of Classical and Hellenistic science in the so-called Dark Ages, but in fact preserved and expounded upon classical ideas, and even--interestingly enough--mediated to Islam via Syriac Christianity's copious translations of Aristotle the Aristotelian scientific heritage that eventually became re-integrated into the Western world. Or, for example, the notorious case of Galileo and his condemnation by Pope Urban the VIII is wonderfully narrated with the historical precision it deserves to show (rightfully, and finally in a way that will reach the popular consciousness) that this was an anomaly in the general historical relationship between science and the Church; that it was not in fact a battle between the incandescent purity of the reason of scientific legitimacy versus the stalwart bastion of traditional fideistic dogmatism of the church but rather the asinine conflict between two supremely egotistical men; that, if one looks at it, Galileo despite his brilliance could provide no empirical evidence for his Copernicanism (which, up to that point had created no stir in the church and found both admirers and detractors...in fact Pope Paul the 3rd, to whom Copernicus' book was dedicated quite liked it) and so, ironically (as Hart wonderfully puts it), it was the CHURCH that was demanding evidence from GALILEO, who was in many ways blindly devoted to the hypothetical system of Copernicanism despite the lack of empirical evidence for his heliocentricism; and, quite humorously, that the eventual success of heliocentricism in the likes of Kepler and Newton was not the eventual success of some Classical Greek scientific spirit obfuscated by some Christian decline, but its final and ultimate defeat by a new system of science which superceded the old Aristotelian prejudices due to the influence of Christianity.

This is only a small piece of the books recovering of Christian history, but overall Hart's thesis is that the Christianity transformed the ancient world: it brought dignity to human beings, liberated us from fatalism, subverted the cruelest aspects of pagan society, emphasized learning and self control, and elevated charity above all virtues. In fact, to summarize, no Christianity means the disappearance of most, if not all of the positive force of Western history (a lofty thesis, to be sure).

But the book is so much more than even this corrective. Hart is not only a scholar of profound depth, but he also has a sharp sense of humor that saturates his beautiful writing style with a glamor and a fluidity of reading that few academics of his stature can achieve. There were moments when I actually laughed out loud at some of Hart's hilarious observations, and overall I could hardly put this book down. I strongly recommend this book. Not only is it an innovative and historically accurate (though as Hart himself admits, not exhaustive) account of Christianity, and not only does it provide an excellent introduction to Hart apart from his much more difficult (but also amazing) Beauty of the Infinite, but it is a ripping good read in its own right. An indispensable read for Christians (and atheists!) of all levels of learning.

David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (New Haven: Yale, 2009). $28.00, 253 pages.

Over the past five years, atheists--some of whom grandiosely describe themselves as "Brights"--published a number of screeds against religion that, despite being more rhetorical than rational, nevertheless managed to sell briskly and convince (or confirm the pre-existing convictions of) a few people that unbelief is the way to go when it comes to religion.

Well, maybe. Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart admits, "I can honestly say that there are many forms of atheism that I find far more admirable than many forms of Christianity or of religion in general." He seems especially partial to Friedrich Nietzsche, for example.

Then again, maybe not. Whatever the merits of Nietzsche's insights, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens are no Nietzsches. Of them, Hart writes: "atheism that consists entirely in vacuous arguments afloat on oceans of historical ignorance, made turbulent by storms of strident self-righteousness, is as contemptible as any other form of dreary fundamentalism."

I wish I had written that sentence.

One might mistakenly assume, from what I've written so far, that Hart's book is a point-by-point refutation of the Dawkins-Dennett-Harris-Hitchens Axis of Unbelief. One might be wrong, however. Instead, Hart essays this purpose:

"My chief ambition in writing is to call attention to the peculiar and radical nature of the new faith in that setting; how enormous a transformation of thought, sensibility, culture, morality, and spiritual imagination Christianity constituted in the age of pagan Rome; the liberation it offered from fatalism, cosmic despair, and the terror of occult agencies; the immense dignity it conferred upon the human person; its subversion of the cruelest aspects of pagan society; its (alas, only partial) demystification of political power; its ability to create moral community where none had existed before; and its elevation of active charity above all other virtues."

In other words, the birth of Christianity was a revolution: "a truly massive and epochal revision of humanity's prevailing vision of reality, so pervasive in its influence and so vast in its consequences as actually to have created a new conception of the world, of history, of human nature, of time, and of the moral good."

Negatively, Hart goes on to argue that--contrary to the popular picture of the modern period as an age of liberation from medieval superstitions and oppressions--"the modern age's grand narrative of itself" is vastly overstated and even dangerous, hiding, as it does, the greatest era of barbarity in human history. The self-described atheist "Brights" may dun "religion" for its Crusades and Inquisitions, but those things hold no candle in sheer killing power to the gulag, laogai, and killing field.

To argue his thesis--in both its positive and negative aspects--Hart takes us on a historical journey of the Patristic Era, when the clash between Christian theism and Greco-Roman paganism first occurred. He shows us the Pauline demystification of the powers and principalities that peppered the pagan universe. He contrasts the tragic pagan spirit with the comic Christian spirit, the former filled with resigned despair at the cruelty of fate, the latter infused with hope in a God who saves. He shows, through a fascinating discussion of early Christian theological debates over Trinity and Incarnation, how the patristic theologians created the modern conception of personhood, and how Christian theology endowed even the lowliest of persons with dignity, unlike pagan ideology. He demonstrates that Christian theology liberated history from a chronicle of endless cycles of rises and falls and imbued human action with moral import and eschatological trajectory. And over and over again, he demonstrates how love animated Christians' actions in the world, at least in theology, if not always in actual practice.

In a sense, Hart's book is a historical representation of Nietzsche's critique of Christianity, although this time in its defense of that same religion. Nietzsche slammed Christianity for undermining the pagan "Superman" with its insipid love of the low-born, uneducated, sick and needy. He despaired lest the triumph of Christianity leave a post-Christian era of "Last Men" without the wherewithal to traduce Christian values, having become so enslaved to them. Nietzsche knew that one could not dispense with Christian metaphysics and yet retain Christian morals. Hart knows this too. Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens don't. They want to retain the good effects of the Christian revolution without their cause. Hart won't let them.

If you want Christian morals--a concern for rights, for the poor, for the wellbeing of the weak and innocent--you must have Christian metaphysics. Christianity created the modern concept of human being. A post-Christian world is a post-human one as well.

Atheist Delusions is well-written, even if its sentences can run to several lines. It is historically insightful, even if it wears its historical learning lightly. And it is utterly devastating to the standard atheist claim that the history of Christianity is a history of irrationality and oppression. Christians have, no doubt, had their moments. But the original revolution of Christian theology in the first four centuries of the Common Era lives on, ironically, in the moral aspirations and moralistic critiques of the atheists who don't understand or are unwilling to take their metaphysics to their logical conclusion.

Somewhere, Nietzsche is rolling over in his grave that he's stuck with such insipid thinkers as Dawkins et al, while the best advocate of his understanding of the relationship between Christianity and Western culture believes in the God and Father of Jesus Christ.

Obviously there are tons of reviews here that you can read to make up your mind over the purchase of this book, but as someone who has been on both sides of this debate, and as a trained historian and teacher of history, I can say that what I found most useful was the author's critique of so many mythical versions of history that pit religion (Christianity in particular) against reason, charity, science and history itself. At university I was indoctrinated with almost every alternate, pop-historical theory that supported a discounting of Christianity's usefulness, along with any possibility that the historical documents could have any usefulness in knowing what actually took place. The historical and exegetical gymnastics and twists that were employed by both myself and the faculty were, in retrospect, rather dishonest. But that is the post-modern milieu; distrust all ideologies (except the current one that got you your PhD thesis accepted).

So I would say check the book out at the library at least. It reads very well and Hart can turn a phrase. You may even laugh out loud a few times, either because you see his point or think he is so off the mark that you cannot believe it made it into print. But let's be honest, too much of the debate ignores history and is built upon straw men- barns full of straw. Hart helps clean the floor so we can be a little more honest with our sources. As he notes, "The past is always to some extent a fiction of the present."

And philosophically, he shows what seems obvious to many: the fundamental presupposition of a logical argument is not provable, but assumed. Questions about the existence or non-existence of God(s), and all epistemology, begin with begged premises that are then built upon based upon experience, history, reason, etc. It isn't virgin ground. It's been plowed a thousand times before we get to it. He writes, "All reasoning presumes premises of intuitions of ultimate convictions that cannot be proved by any foundations or facts more basic than themselves, and hence there are irreducible convictions present wherever one attempts to apply logic to experience. One always operates within the established boundaries of one's first principles, and asks only the questions that those principles permit." Faith is another way of saying "accepted first principle" whether one does or does not believe in God(s). It is assumed, not proven and the sword cuts both ways. But of course Hart uses the sword to cut against the pseudo-scientific (scientistic) myth. "Materialism is not a fact of experience or a deduction of logic; it is a metaphysical prejudice, nothing more, and one that is arguably more irrational than most any other."

Although Hart could have interacted more directly with the "New Atheist" foursome (he does, but not systematically), there are plenty of books that do so directly. For example, I would recommend at least looking into: Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins' Case Against God, Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism), Contending with Christianity's Critics: Answering New Atheists and Other Objectors, The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages:Their Religious, Institutional and Intellectual Contexts, Science and Religion, 400 B.C. to A.D. 1550: From Aristotle to Copernicus, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, Convictions: Defusing Religious Relativism, God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, The Restitution of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism and of course I would always suggest Miracles for a good overview of the materialist worldview.

The discipline of history involves the careful collection and analysis of historical incidents and artifacts, producing careful hypotheses on the basis of all the available evidence. Historicism, on the other hand, is the attempt to see an overall narrative emerging out of the historical process, from a particular ideological viewpoint. Hart's aim in this book is to debunk a particular kind of historicism that has gained a lot of currency in recent times; the idea that world history shows the inevitable emergence of enlightened, secular society out of the darkness of religious superstition. His particular brief is to investigate some of the areas where this historicist myth engages with the Christian faith, such as European religious wars, the Inquisition and other religious persecution, and the 'conflict' between science and faith. The main point is to show that these periods, like all real history, were in fact complex interplays of political, social, religious and spiritual factors, as well as the diverse motivations that we find in real human people.

The counter-narrative that Hart wants to construct is that of the 'Christian revolution'. He argues that we can detect in the past 2000 years of history the slowly permeating influence of a radical new conception of God and humanity, radiating from the teaching of Jesus Christ and the life of his Church. This revolution places ultimate value on the human person, on compassion and charity, and an eschatological hope for the transformation of the world. Though often ambiguous in its historical outworking at an institutional level, the influence of the gospel has been real and continues its transforming work today. He argues that modern atheism, far from being a liberating force, is actually a regression from this level, an attempt to return to pre-Christian paganism that ends up in nihilism because the gods are dead and cannot be believed in anymore.

Hart's writing style is delightfully ironic and he has the ability to produce flights of beautiful theological prose. His historical reasoning appears sound and based on solid research. Indeed, when your main historical argument is 'it's a bit more complicated than that...' you can hardly go wrong. His vision of the inner meaning of Christianity is a profound one, and is presented with great pathos and longing for what the Church might become. However, I found his vision of the modern world to be too pessimistic, relying as it does on the actions and thoughts of intellectual elites and ignoring the profound work of the Holy Spirit in all kinds of groups throughout the world today.

This is not a direct response to the New Atheists, but to their skewed perspective of history (full of error and logical inconsistency). As such, it does not respond to their errors one by one, but instead attempts to show how influential the metaphysical underpinnings of Christianity have been and continue to be to the Western mind. It shows how often they rely on the metaphysical underpinnings of a Christian mindset to even make their arguments.

As has become typical of Hart's work, the reader will need a dictionary at their side while reading. That's okay, because learning a new word here and there can only help us in our precision, and precision matters immensely to Hart.

Hart has given the reader historical correction at its finest. He first takes the historical errors (such as the "Dark Ages") that have too often pervaded the Western mindset and places them into their proper context, often showing that what pop-historians often write as fact, is more a created myth than reality. He follows this correction by illuminating the reader to the radical Christian revolution in the West, which transformed its values, ethics and persona.

One cannot finish this book (no matter their philosophy) without having a great appreciation for the influence of Christianity, whether it be in regards to science and creativity, medicine and hospitals, education and the university or our entire conception of justice and "human rights." The reader may continue to disagree with the truth of such a view, but they cannot help but appreciate the results that it brought about in Western life.

The book does not end with a happy or triumphalist tone. In fact, Hart admits his fear that the West will continue to move away from the Christian vision (as much of the non-Western world may be moving toward it). He sheds light on the many negative products from the myth of "progress" when not tempered by a Christian ethic. He concludes by suggesting that in the West, the reasonable thing for Christians to do may be to follow our forefathers into the desert.

Overall, the book presents a fascinating historical analysis of Western humanity, the philosophical and metaphysical basis of why the West views individuals as it does and a prophetic perspective (through the eyes of Nietzsche) of what may lie ahead for the post-Christian West. I heartily recommend the book.

In Atheist Delusions, Hart raises a powerful polemic against contemporary unbelief popularized by the so-called "New Atheists". It is also, perhaps, the most formidable defense of Christian faith I have ever read.

I am a Christian skeptic. I tend not to believe things because someone told me it is so. I prefer to test everything, weigh everything in the balance of reason and evidence. I believe that God gave us minds to use! The result of all this is that I sometimes call much of what passes for Christianity into question. When I read what atheist skeptics are saying (as I often do), I find them to be correct in many of their assessments of belief.

Within this context, I found in Hart's book a powerful force drawing me into a much deeper appreciation for the place of Christianity in history, and the uniqueness of the Christian message. It also opened my mind (frighteningly!) to what a truly post-Christian era will look like. It is this flow of history, both in retrospect and in prospect, as seen through Hart's analysis, that greatly strengthens my assurance in the truth and viability of the essential message of Jesus.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. once remarked that "history has to be rewritten because history is the selection of those threads of causes or antecedents that we are interested in." And so the rewriting of history will always reflect prevailing current thought. This phenomenon is nowhere more blatant than in the selective retelling of history presently in vogue among the New Atheists. Hart's book offers a scholarly retort to the history of Christianity in the West being offered up by Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennet, and Harris. I suppose that the Holmes observation might apply equally to Hart's work. I will leave that case for others to make. But having read from the New Atheists, and having read Hart, I found Hart's retelling of Christianity's story to be the far more compelling.

Much of this book draws a contrast between the paganism predominate in the pre-Christian era, and the Christian "revolution" which supplanted it. It is popular in some quarters today to cast a nostalgic eye upon the "virtues" of paganism, and to lament its overthrow. Hart demonstrates conclusively how preposterous these notions are. He does not gloss over, nor deny the sad reality of injustices and crimes which have been committed in the name of Christianity, a litany of offenses which seems to completely engross the enemies of belief. Notwithstanding these blemishes, and with great skill and scholarship, Hart takes us on an enlightening stroll though history; he reveals how Christianity has advanced the sciences, social morality, and in particular, humanitarianism, far beyond the highest prospects of paganism. It is the Christian understanding of humanity, the elevation of what it means to be human, that is, in Hart's view, Christianity's most significant contribution. Against this backdrop, Hart paints the horrific prospects of inhumanity which lay before us in a post-Christian era. Here he finds an ally in Nietzsche's more thoughtful atheism. Hart deeply respects the intellectually honest unbelief of Nietzsche who clearly saw the frightening nihilistic consequences of the "death of God."

In contrast to his respect for Nietzsche, Hart laments the shallowness of today's trendy unbelief. " ... the tribe of the New Atheists is something of a disappointment. It probably says more than it is comfortable to know about the relative vapidity of our culture that we have lost the capacity to produce profound unbelief" (page 220). This "tribe of New Atheists" has published a spate of atheistic titles over the last decade. Hart has offered a persuasive rebuttal. The gauntlet has been dropped. I anxiously await a scholarly response from the halls of unbelief. I doubt that one will be written.

Apparently David Bentley Hart had two mandates when writing this book. The first is to refute or at the least undercut the current, intellectually shoddy popularisers of atheism barnstorming best-seller lists. The second is to propose a metanarrative of Western history, AD, that attributes the chief virtues of its character and institutions to Christianity: "Much of modernity should be understood not as a grand revolt against the tyranny of faith, not as a movement of human liberation and progress, but as a counterrevolution, a reactionary rejection of a freedom which it no longer understands, but upon which it remains parasitic" (p. 108). Although the book begins and ends with the cold logical contemptuous verve of scholarly dismissal for which Hart has become justly notorious, he is far far more interested in the second purpose than the first.

This should not surprise. His opinion of atheists is so low that he cannot stomach subjecting himself to discussion on their terms. So his chapters often have a characteristic twin structure. At some point within the chapter he will engage the work of a notable atheist, point out flaws in the argument that appear to him significant (not necessarily insurmountable), then dismiss the entire discussion (including his own response) as tangential to his main thesis, that is to say, what he thinks is really going on. The rest of the chapter will tackle his second purpose. His problem with atheists is not (merely) that they argue badly (cf Christopher Hitchens in my favourite sentence of the book, "whose talent for intellectual caricature somewhat exceeds his mastery of consecutive logic" and whose recent book "raises the wild non sequitur almost to the level of a dialectical method" [p. 4]) but that they are arguing using entirely wrong presuppositions and categories. They are climbing ladders up the wrong trees. They are headed with speed in fruitless directions, inhabiting meaningless topoi. Such a rhetorical posture is exhilarating. Perhaps only Hart among contemporary Christian thinkers has the Messianic confidence to swim against the strong current of contemporary scholarship all by himself and take a reader with him. The thrill of reading these pages is gnostic. Hart alone has the truth and is revealing it to you.

I happen to think Hart is right, on the whole, chiefly because he is much smarter than I am and says quite well things that I have already intuited. I am on his side and therefore love this book. Whether you will love it remains to be seen. Much depends upon whether you share certain of his/our presuppositions. I am not sure what power of persuasion this book has. At the least, it seems to me to show that, if you are willing to accept (even for the sake of argument) the presupposition that the Christian God is at work in history the way the Christian Bible says He is, a historiography that hangs together and makes sense is possible. Not certain, not inevitable, but possible. Whether a similar atheist or Islamic metanarrative is possible is a question far beyond the scope of this book, no matter what snide remarks Hart may make to the opposite effect. Its persuasion may stand or fall on its vigorous use of historical facts. The pages are jammed with anecdotes and the occasional generalized statistic, most of which are not footnoted. Historians may pick holes in his interpretations, but if his facts are what he says they are he has a strong case to make. Within my own areas of expertise, his reading of the medieval period is on a much stronger footing than his reductively political reading of the Reformation.

Although the books are far different in many ways (not least in tone!), reading this book was for me an experience much like reading G. K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man. Someone smart, entertaining, and rhetorically aware compiles a case that Christian historiography makes sense. In order to do that you must jettison or marginalize most contemporary readings, a task Hart takes up with relish. But in the end, Hart's emphasis is exactly right: any lasting value of this book must come from its second purpose. Shake what can (and ought to) be shaken all you want, but only so that what cannot be shaken may remain.