David Bentley Hart, YOU ARE GODS: On Nature and Supernature
(Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2022) – Reflection by Bradley Jersak
Based solely on repetition in every one of David Bentley Hart’s books, articles, lectures, and podcasts, his most scathing condemnation of any opposing argument is that it’s incoherent—i.e., confusing, incomprehensible. Given this savant’s comprehensive genius for language, philosophy, theology, history, mythology, literature, music, and baseball (a shortlist of his expertise), it’s not inexcusable if he seems to be the offender-in-chief of incoherence. But bear with me (and him)…
HART’S UNINTELLIGIBLE PATOIS
In his efforts to reteach peons the English language, Hart’s penchant for using precise, inaccessible, archaic, and invented vocabulary can seem self-defeating, if not self-indulgent. That’s aside from the dozens(?) of foreign languages he can use.
But I want to learn from him, so I keep track of words and ideas he thinks I should know. I’m reading You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature right now. I’ve recorded the following terms for further study since I could only guess what they meant and wouldn’t dare define, much less use in polite company. Please, repeat them aloud:
These are just from the Introduction and Chapter 1: dessicating, repristinated, recrudescence, fustian, theogonic, contrapuntal, fugal, pleonasm, patiency, goetic, leporine/leporinity, rapitude, ship of Theseus conundrum, mereological, deictic, patois, asperous, necrophile, adventitious, velleity, cyclophoria, inchoate, conduced, irrefrangible, aetiological, proleptic, incommiscible, quiddity.
Even my spell-checker was bewildered by seven in the list! But so what? My omniscient cell phone is within arm’s reach. Using a dictionary isn’t just time-consuming; it’s educational—learn or do not! If discovering new words and new ideas is not your thing, Hart’s not your guy and theology is not your passion. Far better to bypass this gibberish about God and get right to talking directly to God. And please pray for us while you’re there.
HART’S INCOHERENT OPPONENTS
Hart’s assaults on opponents’ ideas and reasoning can also feel convoluted, but from my vantage point, that’s largely because he’s right—whether their logic is incoherent or morally repugnant (Hart’s other big slam). His main targets, Calvin/Calvinism and the Manualist or Two-Tier Thomism are a case in point.
I’m not so sure the sane man is to blame when diagnosing a disorder. Sometimes the doctor must enter the fantasy world of his patients to beckon them out. Remember how the prisoners in Plato’s cave of delusion ridiculed their newly freed companion when, compelled by love, he returned from the sunlight back into their world with good news. He was judged as deluded and disoriented, when really,… well, you get it.
HART’S INCOMPREHENSIBLE TOPICS
But aside from their disagreements, Hart and his interlocutors are debating topics that can seem obscure, irrelevant, and a bit silly all on their own. Eye-rolling is not always out of order. Yet Hart’s concerns may also have pastoral consequences, especially where the gospel has been perverted by errors (e.g., eternal conscious torment, limited atonement, original sin) and the flock suffers spiritual abuse under toxic teaching. So, what he does kind of matters, if indirectly, even to the casual ‘believer.’
That’s where we rely on the patient souls who will wrestle through his words, debates, and topics (and even enjoy it) to bring back a sample coin from his treasury. Distilling Hart can be as hard as understanding him, and when one presumes to interpret him, the odds of misrepresenting him are high. Nevertheless, I occasionally dare to give it a go because he’s worth it and so are those who can’t read him. I can bear the guilt of saying it wrong. Or better, I’m happy to offer an imperfect reflection that makes sense to me.
For today, I’ll share just one coin, but it’s good and important. I hope readers find it helpful. If so, credit to Hart. If not, my bad.
ON “FINAL CAUSE”
In You Are Gods, David Bentley Hart advances five premises (p. xvii), the first of which reads,
“The sole sufficient natural end of all spiritual creatures is the supernatural, and grace is nothing but the necessary liberation of all creatures for their natural ends.”
The essays in his book expand on this thesis, which, once you see it, shouldn’t be unseen.
To begin with, let’s take a moment to learn about “final cause.” The Greek philosopher Aristotle thought about different ways we talk about “cause.” He named four types of cause in our world:
- Material cause: that from which something is made. The material cause of a wooden chair is the tree from which it is crafted.
- Efficient Cause: the agent that interacts with the object to change it. The efficient cause of the chair is the carpenter, who makes the chair what it becomes.
- Formal Cause: the essence or form of a particular object that makes it what it is. This would be like a blueprint or design that makes a chair a chair instead of a table.
- Final Cause: the ultimate end (telos) or purpose of the object, what the object is made for. The final cause of a chair is to be something we sit on.
I want to focus on this fourth type of cause. The wonderful thing about “final cause” is that the end goal of a thing actually causes its creation. Chairs allow for sitting, they don’t create sitting. The desire to sit causes and creates the chair! That’s how the end can cause the beginning.
Now let’s take a living thing, like an acorn that grows into an oak tree. The final cause of the acorn is… the oak tree! That is, acorns are created to produce and become oak trees. And so oak trees cause acorns so that acorns grow to maturity as oaks. It’s like the ultimate purpose or end of a thing (the oak) is calling what it causes (the acorn) to become what it will finally be.
Further, Aristotle taught that the ultimate purpose or telos of a thing (the oak) is already somehow internal to what it has caused (the acorn). That is, the properties of the oak tree are already there in that little acorn, intrinsic to it. We now know this to be true from DNA and genome studies. The longevity of an oak tree is already baked into the DNA of the acorn.
ON “NATURAL ENDS”
What Aristotle called the “final cause” is, therefore, also the “natural end” of that thing. The natural end of an acorn is the oak. The end is there in the beginning, so that acorns don’t magically become something else… they become what they were always to become by nature.
Now Hart turns to spiritual beings, such as people. What is your natural end as a spiritual being? To discover this our final cause, we look to the Scriptures. Paul says that we are being “transfigured from glory to glory into the image of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 3:18). Peter says that we are “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). John says that when Jesus appears, “we shall be like him” (1 Jn. 3:2).
Paul called this transformation metamorphosis (transfiguration). The church fathers called it theosis, divinization, or deification. Their formula was, “God became human [Incarnation] so humanity could become divine [deification]… that’s right: in Christ, we are prospective “gods.” Hence Jesus striking claim that became Hart’s book title: “You are gods” (Jn. 10:34/Ps. 82:6).
Shocking, yes, but here’s the math: Jesus is, by nature, the image of God (fully human, fully divine). You are, by nature, created in that image, and by grace, being transformed into that same image (fully humanized, fully divinized). And what you will become (your natural end) is intrinsic to who you are now. You are, in the words of Gary Best, naturally supernatural. Your “final cause” is calling you into this transformation, from acorn to oak, caterpillar to butterfly, natural to supernatural, because that is your natural end.
A NECESSARY LIBERATION
Now back to Hart’s premise:
“The sole sufficient natural end of all spiritual creatures is the supernatural, and grace is nothing but the necessary liberation of all creatures for their natural ends.”
If I understand him, Hart is saying that as a spiritual creature, your natural end can be nothing less than supernatural. That by necessity, grace will free all creatures, all people, you and me to our natural ends, without fail. In fact, in premise 3, he says,
“No spiritual creature could fail to achieve its naturally supernatural end unless God himself were the direct moral cause of evil in that creature, which is impossible. Conversely, God [since God is good] saves creatures by removing… impediments to their union with him.”
In other words, your transformation from acorn to oak cannot not happen in a universe where God is good and not evil, because saving grace removes every impediment to that end. A God that could, but would not, so free us, would be immoral and not a savior at all.
Note too that Hart further specifies our natural end and final cause: the final cause of our supernatural end is union with God. Union with God inexorably draws humanity (and all creation) to its telos (end) where “God is all and in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). And that ultimate union is, again, intrinsic to our humanity because God has already united Godself to humanity in Jesus Christ—(1) from the creation of the cosmos, (2) in the Incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth, and (3) through his Passion and resurrection.
See for example Colossians 1 (the italicized all and everything are my emphasis):
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; allthings have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
THE HUMANITY OF GOD
Now with the words of Jesus, his apostles, and the church fathers behind him, Hart’s radical 4th premise may resonate:
“God became human so that humans should become God [a la Athanasius]. Only the God who is always already human can become human. Only a humanity that is always already divine can become God.”
Wait, what? I was ready for the first and third elements of this premise. If our natural end (divinization) is intrinsic to humanity, then it follows that something divine already appears in us now in seed form. Hart identifies that seed as our natural desire for the Transcendent Good (even when our desires are obviously disordered). He argues that we cannot have a natural desire for transcendence unless that desire is internal to who we are—spiritual beings whose first cause is our supernatural, divinized end.
But what does Hart mean by saying “Only the God who is always already human can become human?” Very odd, right?
Yet maybe no more odd than John calling Jesus Christ “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8).
The key here is the divine humanity of Jesus Christ, the God-man—in eternity and in time. Where “through the Passion, Jesus Christ, as man, becomes that which, as God, he always is” (Fr. John Behr). As Behr teaches it, it’s not that there was an eternal "pre-incarnate Word" who was not human, then later became human. Rather, we must always start with the One Lord Jesus Christ, human and divine, crucified and risen, and then we say, “This One, the cruciform Lamb, is the eternal Word and Son of God, Creator of all things, whose image was the pattern for humanity, and in whose image, humanity is becoming.”
Why? Because eternity is not “before” anything. Eternity is not on some “before and then later” everlasting timeline. Eternity is timeless and every point in time is immediately present to the eternal now.
When Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I AM,” who is talking? The human God who descends from above time, from eternity, from outside of time. And eternity is forever indivisibly and directly united with time through the Cross. On this, see John Behr, The Mystery of Christ.
So in Hart, perhaps the humanity of God “is already” as for Behr, “As God, he always is,” as for Jesus, “Before Abraham, I AM.” The grammatical clue is the present tense of eternity (as in "Christ IS risen), the union of the eternal God to his human life in space and time, so that God always IS the human Lamb slain from both the foundations of the cosmos and outside Jerusalem, at once.
This is a Mystery. Don’t worry. Be at peace. If I sound incoherent, be gracious. I’ve been reading David Bentley Hart. We’d covet your prayers.