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On David Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite
Author(s) -
Malcolm Lois
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
new blackfriars
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1741-2005
pISSN - 0028-4289
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-2005.2007.00181.x
Subject(s) - philosophy , beauty , infinity , argument (complex analysis) , lament , doctrine , presupposition , appropriation , dialectic , hegelianism , theology , nothing , epistemology , mathematical analysis , biochemistry , chemistry , mathematics
In “The Beauty of the Infinite,” David Hart offers a persuasive case for why the beauty of God's infinity is at the heart of the Christian evangel of peace, a peace funded by our analogical participation in God's Trinitarian life. At the heart of his argument is an appropriation of Gregory of Nyssa's concept of infinity, which presupposes a “non‐dialectical creation of out of nothing.” He then links this understanding of infinity with what he calls the “Christian evangel of peace”, which he contrasts with what he calls a “genealogy of violence” (identified with Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger). His main contribution lies in his use of this understanding of God's infinity to rethink important issues in Trinitarian and Christological doctrine. Nonetheless, the question can be raised about whether his argument does justice to classically Christian understandings of the following: the presupposition, rooted in creation, of a shared human rationality, the importance of law, the centrality of the prophetic critique of idolatry and individual and corporate sin, and the place for lament in biblical depictions of Christ's death and the Christian life.