Skip to content

Like this? Share it!

  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Email
Closer To Truth
  • Watch
    • Seasons & EpisodesWatch complete episodes as aired on public television
    • Curated PlaylistsExplore collections of videos curated by our team
    • ProjectsDiscover collaborations with leading institutions
    • ContributorsMeet the greatest thinkers exploring the deepest questions
    • CTT ChatsWatch candid conversations with the brightest minds on the boldest ideas
    • Roundtable ArchivesView roundtable discussions from our early years
  • Topics
    • Cosmos, Life, Consciousness, Meaning: Explore the fundamental questions of existence.Topic Guide
    • All Topics
      • CosmosExplore cosmology, physics, and the fundamentals of existence
        • Back
        • All Cosmos
        • Deep Laws of Nature
          • Back
          • All Deep Laws of Nature
          • Cosmic Fundamentals
          • Time and Space-Time
          • Quantum Theory
          • Philosophy of Science
          • Complexity and Emergence
          • Mathematics as Fundamental?
          • Information as Fundamental?
          • Universe as Simulation?
          • Deep Discoveries in Science
        • Vast Cosmos
          • Back
          • All Vast Cosmos
          • Cosmic Immensity
          • Cosmic Beginnings
          • Cosmic Structure
          • Multiple Universes (Multiverse)
          • Black Holes, Dark Energy, Dark Matter
        • Our Special Universe
          • Back
          • All Our Special Universe
          • Fine-Tuning of the Universe?
          • Fine-Tuning the Universe for Life & Mind?
          • Breathtaking Universe
          • Alien Intelligences?
          • Far Future of the Universe
        • Breakthroughs
          • Back
          • All Breakthroughs
          • Breakthroughs in Science
          • Breakthroughs in Mathematics
        • Science and Religion
          • Back
          • All Science and Religion
          • Science vs. Religion?
          • Science and God
          • How Science and Religion Think
          • The New Atheism
          • Limits of Science
        • Mystery of Existence
          • Back
          • All Mystery of Existence
          • The Mystery of Existence
          • The Mystery of Laws & Cosmos
          • Metaphysics of Cosmos
          • Why Anything at All?
      • LifeJoin our in-depth exploration of life on planet earth and beyond.
        • Back
        • All Life
        • Philosophy of Biology
          • Back
          • All Philosophy of Biology
          • Why Philosophy of Biology?
          • Philosophy of Evolutionary Biology
          • Philosophy of Genes and Information
          • Philosophy of Evolution and Religion
        • What is Life?
          • Back
          • All What is Life?
          • What is Life?
          • What is Death?
        • Human Biology
          • Back
          • All Human Biology
          • Human Nature & Uniqueness
          • Evolutionary Culture and Ethics
          • Sex and Gender
          • Biology of Race
          • Medicine and Healthcare
          • Biological Futures
        • Life in the Cosmos
          • Back
          • All Life in the Cosmos
          • Life in the Cosmos
        • Biological Concepts
          • Back
          • All Biological Concepts
          • Mathematics and Biology
          • Deception
          • Plant Sentience
      • MindSearch mysteries of mind and individual awareness
        • Back
        • All Mind
        • Mind-Body Problems
          • Back
          • All Mind-Body Problems
          • The Mind-Body Problem
          • Brain Structure and Function
          • Brain Explains Mind?
          • Elements of Mind
        • Consciousness
          • Back
          • All Consciousness
          • Mystery of Consciousness
          • Landscape of Consciousness
          • Consciousness as Emergent
          • Consciousness as All Physical?
          • States of Consciousness
          • Sleep and Dreams
          • Purpose of Consciousness?
          • Metaphysics of Consciousness
        • Persons
          • Back
          • All Persons
          • Persons and Selves
          • Personal Identity
          • Life After Death?
          • Souls?
          • Human Uniqueness
          • Creativity
          • Music
          • Epistemology
          • Belief Systems
          • Mind and Society
          • People and Society
        • Free Will
          • Back
          • All Free Will
          • Mystery of Free Will
          • Philosophy of Free Will
          • Free Will and Consciousness
          • Science of Free Will
          • Free Will and Morality
          • Theology of Free Will
        • Extrasensory Perception
          • Back
          • All Extrasensory Perception
          • ESP and New Realities?
          • ESP and the Nonphysical?
        • Art Seeking Understanding
          • Back
          • All Art Seeking Understanding
          • Aesthetic Cognitivism
          • Art and Philosophy
          • Neuroscience/Cognitive Science of Art
          • Neuroscience/Cognitive Science of Music
          • Art and God
          • Art and Religion
          • Art and Culture
          • Mind, Art, Transcendence
          • Art Seeking Understanding Projects
      • MeaningSeek whether God exists through diverse perspectives
        • Back
        • All Meaning
        • Philosophy of Religion
          • Back
          • All Philosophy of Religion
          • Concepts of God
          • Alternative Concepts of God
          • Faith and Belief
          • Conflict Among Religions
          • Philosophy and Analytic Theology
          • Contemporary Theological Engagement
          • How Philosophy Informs Religion
          • Religion Without God
          • Eastern Traditions and the Big Questions
          • Global Philosophy of Religion
        • Existence of God
          • Back
          • All Existence of God
          • Arguing God's Existence
          • Philosophical Arguments For God
          • Experiential Arguments For God
          • Arguments Against God
        • Attributes of God
          • Back
          • All Attributes of God
          • God's Nature?
          • God's Essence?
          • God's Powers?
          • God and Time?
        • God as Creator
          • Back
          • All God as Creator
          • God The Creator?
          • God's Interactions?
          • God's World?
        • Ultimate Destinies
          • Back
          • All Ultimate Destinies
          • God's Knowledge and Future Events?
          • Judgment (Heaven, Hell)?
          • Resurrection?
          • Eschatology (End Times)?
          • Eternal Life?
          • Search for Meaning
  • News
    • All NewsStay up-to-date with the latest from Closer To Truth
    • Book ExcerptsExplore recently authored books from our contributors
    • PerspectivesRead essays and articles from our community
  • About
    • About Closer To TruthWe are a digital-media nonprofit and TV series
    • The TV SeriesWhere to watch on PBS stations nationwide
    • DonateDonate now to keep our content free!
    • Meet the TeamMeet the host and team behind Closer To Truth
    • PartnershipsLearn about our partners and collaborators
    • Support Closer To TruthWays to engage with and support our work
    • PodcastListen on your favorite podcast player
    • StoreBuy official Closer To Truth merchandise
    • YouTubeSubscribe to Closer To Truth on YouTube
  • Donate
Search
  • Login
  • Join
  • Watch
    • EpisodesWatch complete episodes as aired on public television
    • Curated PlaylistsExplore collections of videos curated by our team
    • ProjectsDiscover collaborations with leading institutions
    • ContributorsMeet the greatest thinkers exploring the deepest questions
    • CTT ChatsWatch chats with the brightest minds on the boldest ideas
    • RoundtablesView roundtable discussions from our early years
  • Topics
    • Topic GuideCosmos, Consciousness, Meaning: Join us as we explore the fundamental questions of existence.
    • CosmosExplore cosmology, physics, and the fundamentals of existence
    • MindSearch mysteries of mind and individual awareness
    • MeaningSeek whether God exists through diverse perspectives
  • News
    • The Latest
  • About
    • About Closer To TruthWe are a digital-media nonprofit and TV series
    • TV SeriesWhere to watch on PBS stations nationwide
    • Meet the TeamMeet our host and our team
    • DonateDonate now to keep our content free!
    • PartnershipsLearn about CTT’s partners and collaborators
    • Support Closer to TruthWays to engage with and support our work
    • PodcastListen on your favorite podcast player
    • StoreBuy official Closer To Truth merchandise
    • YouTubeSubscribe to Closer To Truth on YouTube
    • FAQLearn about Closer to Truth membership
  • Login
  • Join

video

Topic Series

David Bentley Hart

  • Watch Next
Cover image for Can Philosophy Discern Sex and Gender?

Can Philosophy Discern Sex and Gender?

Cover image for What Does Transhumanism Foreshadow?

What Does Transhumanism Foreshadow?

Cover image for Evolution vs. Religion: Anything New?

Evolution vs. Religion: Anything New?

Cover image for How did Cognition and Emotion Evolve?

How did Cognition and Emotion Evolve?

Cover image for Big Questions in Free Will Documentary

Big Questions in Free Will Documentary

Cover image for What is Human Nature?

What is Human Nature?

  • Details
  • Transcripts
    • Share
Featured In

  • Is God a "Person"?
Contributors

David Bentley Hart

David Bentley Hart is an Orthodox Christian philosophical theologian, cultural critic,...
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
David, you talk about what you call monopolytheism, which others have talked about as a theistic personalism in a pejorative manner – friendly, perhaps, but pejorative – and criticizing those, particularly some very distinguished philosophers of religion who claim that God is a person and that to understand God as a person is really to understand the nature of reality. And that is not a trivial attribute of God, but a very fundamental one. You fundamentally disagree with that?
David Bentley Hart
I don’t disagree that God is personal. I disagree with this tradition of thinking about what persons are in classical traditions that say that God is the fullness of all reality, and that everything that exists in the world we experience exists more fully and it’s more actual in its truer reality in the essence of God would include personality in that. That God is in fact infinitely personal. More personal than we are, if anything. We’re fragmented and isolated instances of personal relation which are never complete. At least in this life. My objection is to those who think of God as a large psychological subjectivity who think that God has to be thought of as somebody who goes through changes of temperament or makes choices or experiences pathos in order to be a person. But none of the theistic traditions deny the personal nature of God in the most vital sense, which is that God really knows and loves and is related to us. And if you think about it, if you think of personhood as the capacity for relation, well, in us then, personhood is rather imperfectly expressed. Merely being psychological subjects, we also withhold from one another. We can’t know one another. We cannot fully give ourselves to one another as we ought, ideally. Ego, psychological, empirical ego is quite often the enemy of personal existence, not its ground. The people who are called theistic personalists by a very distinguished Christian philosopher, Brian Davies, and as you say, I call monopolytheists, have reduced the idea of personality to psychology. To the empirical ego. And I think that’s an inadequate notion, not only of God, but of personhood as such.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Here’s the fundamental distinguishing fact between the two, the nature of time, because you believe that God is outside of time. That is, timeless. That God sees in this one moment everything from all times, cannot change, therefore. Is that then the fundamental distinguishing aspect between the two kinds of personhood? Because you’re saying God is a person, but in this enlarged sense of personhood. I have a sense that the nature of time is the critical distinguishing factor.
David Bentley Hart
Well, time is one of them, yes. I mean, if God were a temporal being who underwent changes, you could actually say at one moment, one thing in; one moment wont another, then he would be a psychological subject. It’s true. And then he would more closely resemble what some of the philosophers you’ve mentioned think of as a person. Yes. So, time is very – again though, if God is temporal, he’s a contingent being, he’s a conditioned being, he’s not God.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
You’re making that very quick relationship, and that’s not clear. If God is in time in some sense, God does not have to be contingent. God can be everlasting, God could be –
David Bentley Hart
But that would not be necessary. I’m sorry. Again, everlastingness as such would be a kind of factual necessity, perhaps. It would just happen to adhere in the nature of this being, that this being doesn’t pass away. But I reject that as an adequate notion of necessity for the Divine. That’s what Aristotelian – Aristotelian, Thomistic tradition, Imnoceno [ph] would call necessity by way of another thing.
David Bentley Hart
Which is not really necessity.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Right. What I would call happenstantial necessity, not logical necessity. And I do believe that logical necessity is intrinsic to any proper definition of the Divine. But that said –
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
So, what’s the most –
David Bentley Hart
You’re right. I mean, time is one of the issues.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
What else?
David Bentley Hart
Passability. The notion that in order – when we react with one another, in order to love one another, we have to be passable. That is, for us, it’s as much a passive as an active thing. Quite often, in order to feel sympathy for someone else, you have to feel pain. According to the picture of God that I believe is more coherent, God doesn’t require a pathos. His love is the very infinite act of who He is. He loves without the need of the negative, without the need for limitation. We participate in that reality in a finite way, so, it’s going to be modally entirely different, or very, very different. And what else? Well, many in the – many of these more recent theistic philosophers you mention believe that God must learn things about us, you know, in order to be properly personal. I don’t see how that follows at all. I don’t see why His omniscience somehow compromises His personal nature. And so, a lot of these arguments are simply a rather naïve psychologistic picture of what a person is applied on a much larger scale to God. And I don’t think – I simply don’t think they hold logical water.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
So, you talk about this absolute being of God being perfect love. Is that a deductive logical necessity, that that be? Why is it that? Why isn’t it just some neutrality?
David Bentley Hart
Well, if you confine yourself to ontology, probably so. But there are other dimensions of experience, of consciousness, bliss, that is a delight in the good, which have also, in all these traditions, been taken vindications of the nature of the absolute. What are the absolute orientations of consciousness? What is it that they crave on a most fundamental level? What is the transcendental logic of human desire and motivation? And when you reduce these to the ends that seem to be common to all acts of will, when you get away from their local motions, so to speak, such as goodness, these tend to be seen as indicative also of the nature of the absolute. And then of course, all these religions claim revelation, too. It would be a lie to say that all of these are simply deductions of reason. Obviously, every theistic tradition believes that God generously reveals.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
It’s a whole other category, for sure.
David Bentley Hart
But in the actual lived experience of these religions, they’re not separable. There is the ascent of reason to God and the descent of grace to nature.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Sure. And that makes sense. It’s just that that’s very difficult to evaluate on a third-person basis. If you feel it, I can’t argue with that.
David Bentley Hart
Right, yeah. Although even dogmatic traditions will make arguments not just from personal feeling but also from certain kinds of historical claim, which then have to be verified in some sense per experience.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
But they all contradict, so I don’t want to get involved in that.
David Bentley Hart
Many contradict, but many don’t. But no, it is true. However, again, the definition of God as absolute, remember, isn’t confined just to the realm of ontology. There are – it is asserted in all these traditions that there are moral experiences, epistemological experiences, which reveal more about the nature of God, but you don’t discuss those under the category of ontology.

Watch Next

Cover image for Can Philosophy Discern Sex and Gender?

Sexual questions abound. What is “normal” sexual behavior in light of diverse sexual variations? LGBTQ+ issues? Is sex in animal models relevant for human sexuality? A...

video

Can Philosophy Discern Sex and Gender?

Episode 7

Season 27

26:47

Watch

Cover image for What Does Transhumanism Foreshadow?

Humanity’s future is now framed by artificial intelligence (AI) and increasing interventions in the body to enhance features and functions. This is transhumanism....

video

What Does Transhumanism Foreshadow?

Episode 8

Season 25

26:47

Watch

Cover image for Evolution vs. Religion: Anything New?

Two kinds of questions probe evolution vs. religion. The first explores discrepancies, even contradictions, between the science of evolution and the beliefs of religion. The...

video

Evolution vs. Religion: Anything New?

Episode 6

Season 27

26:47

Watch

Cover image for How did Cognition and Emotion Evolve?

What can evolution reveal about the developmental history of thinking and feeling? How did cognition and emotion (affect) co-develop over evolutionary time? Can evolution...

video

How did Cognition and Emotion Evolve?

Episode 5

Season 27

26:47

Watch

Cover image for Big Questions in Free Will Documentary

Do we have free will? After so many centuries of debate by so many great thinkers, can we still make progress in answering this question? That’s the goal of the Big...

video

Big Questions in Free Will Documentary

1:37:06

Watch

Cover image for What is Human Nature?

What is “human” nature? While human beings are animals, we believe we are special, radically different from other animals. Why? What traits are unique to humans? Are we...

video

What is Human Nature?

Episode 4

Season 27

26:47

Watch


Become a Member

Get free access to exclusive content and more.

  • facebook
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • Watch on YouTube
  • Find us on PBS
  • Donate
  • Contact Us

Policies Terms © Closer To Truth. All rights reserved Website by Visceral