'Beauty of the Infinite' - Review

I finally completed Beauty of the Infinite. As I've mentioned in other posts, it was a difficult read for me in terms of my lack of familiarity with the works of many of the philosophers and theologians -- and the epochs of thought -- which Hart's argument builds upon. Though, I imagine it's also partially due to Hart's style, most notably his unrestrained erudition and massive vocabulary (spanning multiple languages), though this could be a false perception. In any case, the read became much easier as the book progressed, though I'm not sure if the latter half of the book is "objectively" less difficult, or whether I just became accustomed to the language and style of thought by that point.

This text doesn't seem to be intended for a lay audience at all, but it was an extremely rich, rewarding and perhaps revolutionary read for me. I never really thought that Christian tradition was lacking in theological richness, or in philosophical resources, but Beauty of the Infinite took my appreciation for that tradition to new heights. Much of that richness was undoubtedly already present in tradition, and I had just never encountered it. This is evident in the sections where Hart merely summarizes the thought of various theologians -- such as Gregory of Nyssa and Athanasius -- and those mere summaries of their thought gave me a greater appreciation for the Christian intellectual tradition.

On top of this mini-revelation are Hart's own theological and philosophical contributions which -- again from my vantage as a member of the laity -- are thorough, brilliant and enlightening. Hart's discourses on the analogia entis (the 'analogy of being'), Trinitarian dogmatics and the aesthetics of Christian truth particularly opened my mind just what it is that fundamentally differentiates Christian thought from other forms of thought, and the radical possibilities that open up as a result.

Specifically, the notion of the supremacy of surfaces and rhetoric (over and against 'essences' and 'dialectic') in Christian thought was something I had never fully grasped and which this text clarified for me. That the 'form' of Christ -- in all his particularity and beauty -- is fundamentally everything that Christianity has to offer. And how contrasting this style of thought to both the reductionist tendencies of modernity, as well as the nihilistic totalizing of postmodernity, reveals how Christian thought can accept that it is a kind of rhetoric, only one without peer.

This elevation of rhetoric -- the rhetoric of the Father as incarnate in Christ -- leads directly into the idea that Being is an expression of the Trinitarian God, as opposed to it being a 'univocal' expression. I had never fully considered the consequences of this. For if Creation is a truthful expression of its Creator then that Creation should express certain characteristics in its very fabric, and a 'univocal' expression of being would be very different from a Trinitarian expression. The Trinity possesses an internal dynamism, a life, an intrinsic grace, and when this conception of God is analogized to Creation, Creation should take on a certain form which also contains an irreducible dynamism.

So many discourses on being -- virtually all of them, even some Christian ones -- according to Hart, fail to completely grasp the implications of this "theological interruption" and what it consequently makes possible. In other words, Christian thought can, in many ways, consider itself immune to the critiques of modernity and postmodernity, once the critiques are properly understood. Not that it can evade engaging those critiques, but that it can answer them in a way that other forms of thought can not. Once the project of modernity -- to dissemble and distill reality into sets of self-evident truths, by way of "disinterested rationality" -- failed, Christian thought knew that this was inevitable because Truth is contained in the surface. And that surface is a a reflection of the Trinitarian God who similarly can not be reduced to principles or 'truths' that are more essential than (and therefore less than) the totality of Himself, as expressed in the form, the surface, the particularities of Christ.

This is a very inadequate summary of some aspects of Hart's arguments, but hopefully you get the general idea. This understanding of Christian truth was a revelation for me as the implications of this understanding have actually proved to be quite extensive. For anyone with any theological or philosophical training, Beauty of the Infinite is essential reading. For any lay person with a fairly intense intellectual curiosity and dogged persistence, the text can prove extremely rich and rewarding as well.

X-men: First Class - Review

The best parts about the Bryan Singer helmed X-men films (let's all forget the Rattner one, please) were Wolverine and the relationship between Xavier and Magneto. The tension between their opposed worldviews, the philosophizing, their continued friendship (of sorts) that persists even when they are on the opposite sides of a chasm of thought. Not to mention the superb casting of Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart. Though, because this dynamic only evolves over the course of two films packed with characters, it's given short shrift. What is there is fantastic, but it's necessarily -- and unfortunately  -- very limited.

The makers of X-men: First Class (helmed by Matthew Vaughn) smartly make the Charles-Erik (or Professor X - Magneto) dynamic the heart of this film as well, and it pays dividends. The casting is, once again, excellent and the respective performances are pitch perfect. James McEvoy plays a young, ambulatory Professor X with charm and class. While Michael Fassbender's Magneto is seething with a thirst for vengeance, and his performance is explosive.

The film acts as a prequel to the trilogy of films released last decade, even using one of the first scenes from the first X-men film as the opening scene for this one. Exploring the seeds of division that resulted in Professor X's school for mutants and Magneto's Brotherhood, the film revolves around the two characters and their relationship. Set during the Cold War, the events embroil mutants in the affairs of humans and serves to explain the origins of Magneto's antipathy and Xavier's pity and compassion toward them.

It was satisfying to get more of this relationship and these characters, but once again I felt as if the film would have benefited from narrowing its focus even further, at the expense of giving less attention to minor characters and plot.

Though there are things to like in the secondary characters and their interactions. The character arcs of -- and relationship between -- Raven and Beast are interesting and well done. And the training sequences of Havoc and Banshee are cool. Beast's birth is pretty awesome, being shown from a first-person perspective. Of course there are the big action set pieces and the mutant confrontations, and those are extremely well-done, especially the climactic sequence.

The villains are actually one of the film's somewhat weak points, I thought. Sebastian Shaw, played by Kevin Bacon (who always plays a great villain) looks and sounds like he should be just some kind of diabolical mastermind- human-pulling-the-strings-behind-the-scenes, but he turns out to have one of the ultimate mutations it almost feels unfair to the heroes (though if you're familiar with him from the comics, you know it going in). I generally like a foe with slightly more meager gifts, but a more brilliant plan (ultimately it's only dumb luck that does him in, which is a bit of a flaw in the script). The great thing about the main villain, Shaw, is that Magneto has an extremely personal vendetta against him, and that acts as perfect fuel to Fassbender's flame.

The Shaw-Magneto dynamic is very interesting, in terms of character, because of what it reveals about Magneto. He doesn't oppose Shaw because he aims to destroy humans, on the contrary, he shares his worldview (after years in his tutelage). The only thing he holds against Shaw is the harm he inflicted on Magneto's family. It's the most personal kind of grudge, and the set-up and payoff for that dynamic is marvelous.

X-men: First Class is definitely the best X-men film to date, which I give a high recommendation. Definitely earns its place right in the upper echelon of comic book films made since the comic-book-film explosion.

Pagan Devotions and Christianity

Many critics of Christianity often take the 'resemblance' of Christianity to various pagan myths to be evidence that Christianity itself is merely a variation of these myths, though perhaps mapped onto actual history. With that last qualification begrudgingly conceded to due to the wealth of available historical evidence corroborating Christian claims. Though, this very fact of historicity undermines the claims of similarity immediately, at one level, because pagan myths lack this element almost entirely.

Still, these critiques do present some questions that Christians have to confront: Is there such a resemblance? If so is it a significant resemblance, or merely a superficial one? If there is some substantial resemblance on some level, what does that mean? Does it mean that Christian claims are untrue, or that scripture is merely a re-tooled pagan myth?

Without even being particularly well-versed in history and simply utilizing formal logic, it can easily be seen that, even if there were substantial pagan precedents to Christianity, it wouldn't say anything about Christian truth claims, nor necessitate the conclusion that Christianity is also fully -- or largely -- myth, even if it had -- in some sense -- been preceded by religious practices and devotions in late antiquity. And, once you actually do delve into the details of history, this becomes all the more obvious because many of the supposed similarities to Christian belief and thought are superficial or non-existent, while the similarities that do exist are easily explicable within the bounds of Christian thought.

A podcast I listen to regularly (Take the Stand) recently tackled this issue, and they do a good job of employing the traditional (and potent) Christian apologetics on the issue. Some supposed similarities are simply fabricated; others are exaggerated; others exist but are superficial; others are legitimate similarities but only analogous to a single aspect of Christian belief (if that), not to the whole; Pagan myths differ in their very intent and content, whatever details may be vaguely similar.

On top of this, Christian thought maintains that Christ is the creator of all things and that Creation expresses the work of the creator in its fabric. With this being the case, its even less surprising that humans -- even prior to the Incarnation -- should stumble upon this truth, though necessarily in a pale, shadowy, incomplete form.

After I had just listened to this episode, David Bentley Hart wrote a new article on this matter as well. Hart takes a much different approach, instead choosing to acknowledge significant pagan analogs to Christianity "in the intensity of piety, in the spiritual longings it answered, even in its liturgical and sacramental conventions." Part of the intent of Hart's piece seems to jolt Christians out of their reactionary denials of any similarity, instead noting that certain stylistic and spiritual similarities are undeniable, and that this fact should hardly be surprising (though Hart deliberately narrows his focus to the styles of religious devotion, rather than the areas of moral or narrative content, historicity, truth, etc.)

Christianity is, in fact, historically rooted, so there's no reason to suspect that its worship, devotions, or language would differ markedly from the prevalent styles of the time. What we as Christians need to maintain is not complete originality on all matters, though we must argue in favor of the historicity of Christ, and deny claims of 'legend' or 'myth' being significantly present in scripture. What makes Christianity important and different is that it is true, not that it is wholly original in its human devotions or stylistic conventions.

Christian thought does make significant claims to telling a new narrative of reality and being and professes a content that is unlike any other in the ultimacy and finality of its truth (pagan myths were not even believed to encompass a complete account of being, but rather were almost always accounts of gods within an economy of gods) and on this count we should persist and be vigilant. The actual content of the Christian faith is something entirely new and original and true, and none of the vague, imprecise approximations of that content that existed in late antiquity (some of those being influenced by Christian thought, and not the other way around) do anything to circumvent this claim. Nor do they make the conclusion that the authors of Biblical texts 'copied' or 'appropriated' significantly from pagan myths any less untenable.