Christianity in Nutshell – Orthodox Style

In the opening of The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, David Bentley Hart offers a fantastic and compelling description of Christianity.

The earliest confession of Christian faith – kurios Iasous – meant nothing less radical than Christ's peace, having suffered upon the cross the decisive rejection of the powers of this world, had been raised up by God as the true form of human existence: an eschatologically perfect love, now made invulnerable to all the violences of time, and yet also made incomprehensibly present in the midst of history, because God's final judgment had already befallen the world in the paschal vindication of Jesus of Nazareth.

If that is in the first paragraph, it is clear that this is as an important work of theological construction for this century as any.  I am looking forward to it in the months ahead – after I finish reading about 5 other books.  I am also going to read through Lossky's The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church.  I find that much of the response to rationalistic atheism has been in terms of rationalism, and the Eastern perspectives of wisdom and mystagogy seem to offer a very different way to respond – especially through Hart's analysis.  After all, it was through aesthetics that Schleiermacher responded to the "cultured despisers" in 1799.

I could totally be Eastern Orthodox for a lot of reasons.  My Ukrainian ancestors would be proud.

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