Matthew Levering’s Tedious Failure to Understand David Bentley Hart

A reader of this Copious Flowers newsletter asked me for some thoughts on an excerpt recently shared by the Church Life Journal from Matthew Levering’s book Newman on Doctrinal Corruption (published by the Word on Fire ministry of Bishop Robert Barron). With this request, the reader noted to me that “Levering is an immensely read and formidable theologian as well as equally generous.” This portion of Levering’s recent book joins a long string of articles in the Church Life Journal criticizing David Bentley Hart over the past few months. Be all of this as it may, Levering spends a little space in his book arguing that “Hart’s critique of Newman can be seen to arise from religious liberalism.” Levering’s case, with this specific claim, is all disappointingly vapid, however, as it is built upon only the most meaninglessly trite categories and entirely fails to represent what Hart actually said in Tradition and Apocalypse. It all sounds like the kind of thing that American Christians would love to read as they worry endlessly over the liberal Christian theology that has, in reality, virtually disappeared from the American landscape a generation ago (although perhaps it lingers on in Catholic circles after its brief heyday in Protestant ones).

In his passing treatment of Hart’s book, Levering pulls a few quotes from Hart out of their larger context to conclude that what “Hart proposes is a religiously liberal Christianity that retains the doctrine of eschatological hope and a confidence in the creative fruitfulness of the liberated tradents.” Following this, Levering points to Hart’s insistence that universalism is the only legitimate form of Christianity as an illustration of the fact that “liberal theologies are as enmeshed in absolute dogmatic truth as are any other theologies, but on different grounds.” Because I have other things to read and write and because I have explained all of this before here with a ridiculously sensationalized and absurd “review” of Hart’s book by a Protestant historian, I will not spend much time with this response to Levering’s far more even-tempered but equally pointless dismissal of Hart.

At the bottom here, I will briefly lay out how Levering entirely fails to understand Hart’s points within Tradition and Apocalypse. However, before getting to this, I have to reiterate that what hits me first is what a sickeningly tired and lifeless message Levering is peddling when he beats these drums over the threats of “liberal Christianity.” Liberal Christianity is as dead as the ashes of Christendom from which it arose about a century ago. We are now in a solidly post-Christian age where the Christian heterodoxies of secularism, atheism, and ideological futurism have replaced any forms of Christian orthodoxy as the public norms of our contemporary world. It bothers me a great deal that, within such a reality, Christians continue to bicker over such shallow and dated categories as “liberal Christianity.” Furthermore, the reality is that Hart is a far more effective critic of liberal Christianity than Levering will ever be. For example, Hart dismissed the idols of liberal Christianity in a recent interview with The Christian Century (the most prestigious magazine of liberal Christianity): “I’m not a modern rationalist. For starters, Tillich was a joke” and “Bultmann’s attempt to reduce everything down to apocalyptic inner illumination simply because the cosmology of the first century doesn’t match the cosmology of the 20th—I mean, it’s just the Protestant principle reaching its reductio ad absurdum.” Turning to a Catholic liberal, Hart also said: “I don’t deny the historical reality of the resurrection, or even of the empty tomb. ...I’m not talking about Schillebeeckx’s notion, where everybody gets together after the crucifixion and discusses it and Easter becomes salvation through group therapy.” Given the fact that Hart is a more thoughtful critic of liberal Christianity than Levering, it is truly sickening to read along as Levering throws Hart into the big bad bucket of “apocalyptic religious liberalism” and walks away.

If only scholars like Levering would stop running in fear from the by-gone specter of liberal Christianity, and engage instead in some meaningful theology, it would help them to better understand the work that Hart is doing and to better minister to those in our complex and profoundly hurting, post-Christian world. This is not to say that Levering is not talking about engaging with good and meaningful things. He certainly is. However, his eagerness to fit everything into the simple polarized categories that Americans love rendered his work, in this short book excerpt, sadly empty. For example, one opportunity that Levering missed were the many fascinating connections related to his own discussion of how “Newman made the point in On Consulting the Faithful that the doctrinal heritage of the Church is not solely enunciated by councils and popes but also is handed on in the Church ‘by liturgies, rites, ceremonies, and customs, by events, disputes, movements, and all those other phenomena which are comprised under the name of history.’” According to Levering, “Newman explains that it follows from this richer understanding of Tradition that ‘the body of the faithful is one of the witnesses to the fact of the tradition of revealed doctrine,’ and indeed also that ‘their consensus through Christendom is the voice of the Infallible Church.’” All of this reminds me wonderfully of the concept of sobornost and the profound ecclesiology of Sergei Bulgakov that I’ve written about recently here behind my paywall and will certainly write about again more than once within the coming year. (Incidentally, Bulgakov’s ecclesiology, along with the tradition of the Holy Fool, is the best context in which to understand Hart when he tosses off comments such as: “I will admit, though, that I no longer have much use for the organs of authority” within the church.)

Anyway, enough grumbling from me. Here is the quick note promised about the beautiful conception of a living tradition that David Bentley Hart provides in Tradition and Apocalypse (that Levering entirely failed to mention or comprehend):

The great exponents of Nicene theology in the fourth century ...were engaged in a patient practice of critical anamnesis, a discipline of recollection that was also a synthesis of the full testimony of earlier generations of the faith; but that very synthesis and the conceptual and confessional revolution it produced required a standard of judgment that could render the whole tradition intelligible by drawing its various elements into a rational unity and directing them toward a more clearly understood end. That end, that final cause, was a model of deification adequate both to revelation and to reason. (125)

Levering unaccountably represents Hart as dismissive of Nicene theology and its development. However, as Hart told the few remaining liberal Christians in his interview with The Christian Century: “Nicaea is legitimate, and it’s not arbitrary.” Hart also points out that Nicaea was a “conceptual and confessional revolution” (a point that should be obvious to any student of Christian doctrinal history). Hart’s understanding of tradition is one of a “critical anamnesis” that is “a discipline of recollection that” is “also a synthesis of the full testimony” regarding Jesus Christ. What scholars like Levering can’t seem to understand (but what the “great exponents of Nicene theology in the fourth century” certainly understood and acted upon) is that this full testimony regarding Jesus Christ comes from every single human tradition of religion and wisdom in history. Because of the kind of revelation that we have in Jesus Christ’s incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Christianity must look to all of human history in order to learn to understand it, articulate it, and live it out. We must forever be synthesizing from all traditions of human learning. And as Hart so wonderfully put it: “that very synthesis and the conceptual and confessional revolution it produced” at Nicaea and, God willing, many times over require “a standard of judgment that” can “render the whole tradition intelligible by drawing its various elements into a rational unity and directing them toward a more clearly understood end.” I’ve written about some of this recently for Jacob’s Well (the magazine of the Diocese of New York and New Jersey of the Orthodox Church in America). Hart’s conception of Christian tradition is astonishing in it’s scope, but is also rock solid and life-giving. It is well worth taking the time to understand. When understood, it is nothing at all like the wishy-washy “liberal Christianity” that Levering imagines and dismisses.

To better understand all of this, take a look also at my response to Gerald McDermott’s review of Tradition and Apocalypse as well as some recent notes of mine on The Myth of Christian Beginnings by the eminent Catholic religious scholar Robert Louis Wilken. Even more, I highly recommend reading (and carefully comparing) two wonderful little books by Robert Louis Wilken (alongside of Hart’s visionary book):

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Feedback from Elsewhere

An Eastern Catholic friend in an excellent seminary (and far, far better read than myself) had this to say:

This [Levering’s book excerpt] is actually a decent article, though. In fairness to Levering, you provide instances of Hart dumping on easy "liberal" targets like Tillich, Bultmann, or Schillebeeckx but fail to address or even mention the central claim that compares Hart's approach to those of Alfred Loisy and Karl Rahner. Insofar as Hart has been committed to a Blondelian and Lubacian approach, the question of whether he succeeds with De Lubac in overcoming "Modernism" in the special sense it is used in Pascendi Dominici gregis or lapses into it again might been more apt, though it makes sense why Levering chose "liberalism" since he writes for the same postliberal mileux in which Hart himself rose to prominence.

You weakly note that perhaps this "liberal Christian theology . . . lingers on" in Catholic circles after its demise in Protestantism. I have to tell you, it is well-represented and arguably hegemonic in much of Catholic academia, my own institution included. I have to wonder with Twain whether its death elsewhere has been "greatly exaggerated."

My reply:

Helpful, but then the problem is basically that Hart is not interested in the specific issues that Catholics have, and yet Catholic theologians drag Hart in using big sloppy (and fear-based) categories like “liberal Christianity.” And I really can’t call it decent (with regard to Hart specifically) when it utterly misrepresents Hart in more than one completely obvious way.

My friend again:

We can't take Hart's disavowal of the specific issues Catholics have at face value. They have broad ecumenical impact. All his career David has been far more deeply enmeshed in intra-Catholic debates as a supposed "outsider" than in Eastern Orthodox debates, much as has Milbank the Anglican, which has generated both sympathy and annoyance. At least Uncle John will admit how Catholic he is and how much skin he has in the game; he never ends his critiques with a feigned disinterest that says "really I'm just an Anglican without a dog in the fight." Can you see how Hart's using Eastern Orthodox affiliation in that way comes off as disingenuous and haughty? He does it to provoke, I think, just as when he frames his theological work as a mere side interest ("This isn't even my passion but I still do it better than you all.")

My further reply:

Hart’s lack of interest in a host of specifically Catholic problems is genuine and simple. Yes, I can easily see why Hart comes across as using EO theology in haughty ways. However, the idiotic levels of blindness among current EO voices (at least popularly) with regard to the riches of their own traditions is absurd and deserves some derision. I continue to see no reason to abandon my theory that Hart is a very humble holy fool. None of this matters, however, besides the actual vision of living tradition that Hart advanced in his book (and that no one has responded to that I’ve seen). I quote in my little piece the one short passage that best encapsulates it I think.