David Bentley Hart is, at heart, an evangelist. And The Beauty of the Infinite Footnote ¹ is really a book for evangelists, for Gospel heralds, because at the end of the day, and from the beginning of the book, Hart is most interested in providing an account of “the power of the Christian story to persuade” (414).Footnote ² The core of his thesis is that the Gospel is a peaceable, non‐coercive persuasion because Christ, as the beauty and rhetoric of God, provokes our desire rather than seeks to overpower our will or reason: “Because he is no beautiful soul, no withdrawing and perishing beauty, Christ offers, in himself, a peace that enters history always as rhetoric, as a persuasion, as a gift that can be received only as a gift” (413). Countering contemporary (“postmodern”) accounts of hermeneutics that construe rhetoric and interpretation as inherently violent, Hart is out to make sense of the admittedly audacious claim that only Christian rhetoric is peaceful—that it is unabashedly aimed at conversion, but that this discourse aimed at conversion is not coercive or governed by mechanics of power.

In this respect, Hart's project is fighting on two fronts (forgive the belligerent militaristic metaphor for a project aimed at peace): on the one hand, he wants to challenge the “postmodern”Footnote ³ (or Nietzschean) account of rhetoric as ultimately reducing to violence (power‐over) and war. He challenges this hermeneutics of violence on theological grounds (the doctrines of Creation and Trinity yield a very different account of relations and language), but also most interestingly for what we might call their resultant politics: the hermeneutics of violence can end up only advocating a false humility allied to skepticism which really precludes one from saying anything particular—anything specific or contentful.Footnote ⁴ In other words, the only way to not be violent in discourse is to not say anything—or at least not say anything as if you actually believe it to be true. “By Lyotard and Caputo both,” Hart comments, “one is reminded of how much unreflective conventional liberalism underlies the ‘radicality’ of this hermeneutics” (425). Thus he rightly notes that despite all their talk of difference, this hermeneutics of violence ends up “advocating a strategy of simple liberalism, a social hygiene for preserving the openness of a marketplace of ideas” (423). In particular, this supposedly “postmodern” account ends up resorting to one of the mainstays of liberal, Enlightenment politics: the myth of some kind of secured neutral space: “In order for there to be this letting be of different voices, a certain neutral space must first be secured: so much difference must be converted into indifference, so many voices must be suppressed; the consensus of the forum always excludes the overly garrulous fabulist, the storyteller who knows too much” (422).Footnote ⁵ Contra this false humility which is really a skeptical ignorance, Hart wants to retain the thick particularity and conversionist impulse of Christian rhetoric while at the same time arguing that this particularity and goal of persuasion is not violent or coercive (427).

But this evokes the second front on which Hart is battling: while he advocates an unapologetic Christian proclamation as a mode of persuasion aimed at conversion, the mode of this proclamation is not at all triumphalist vis‐à‐vis expectations of effectiveness. Boldness, here, does not translate into domination (though the “postmodern” account must equate the twoFootnote ⁶). The bold and unabashed narration of the Christian story is not an announcement that is made in order to dominate or colonize public discourse.Footnote ⁷ The Gospel herald is not out to rule—is not even out to “win” an argument, since Christian rhetoric operates outside of the agonism of hermeneutical war. So rather than a discourse which seeks to master all others by appeal to a rational legitimation, Christian rhetoric is ultimately a mode of martyrdom: “Theology must, because of what its particular story is, have the form of martyrdom, witness, a peaceful offer that has already suffered rejection and must be prepared for rejection as a consequence” (441).

It's here that I think Hart's account is most illuminating and deeply challenging, precisely because its hard to see how so much of the “Christian rhetoric” that pervades our public discourse could be described as allied to martyrdom. To the contrary, this more common Christian rhetoric is invoked in complete accord with the hermeneutics of violence, plays according to the logic of domination, and is precisely interested in ruling the public sphere. In such modes of discourse, “Christian rhetoric” is marshaled to win an argument, to justify a coercive configuration of the public sphere, or to underwrite a foreign policy which is the exact antithesis of “martyrdom.”Footnote ⁸ If Hart's unapologetic Christian rhetoric is opposed to the thin skepticism of “postmodernism,” it is equally opposed to the bastardization of Christian rhetoric that is ultimately coercive. The figure that embodies his opposition on both fronts is the martyr.Footnote ⁹

It is at this juncture that I would like to explore a little further with Hart, affirming the core of his project precisely by raising a concern. I'll try to get at this under the rubric of “apologetics”—a longstanding temptation for evangelists.

One (admittedly provocative) way of describing the bastardization of Christian rhetoric as coercion rather than martyrdom is to consider the revival of natural law and natural theology that has accompanied the rise of the Religious Right in the United States.Footnote ¹⁰ Both natural law and natural theology—allied to what I'll call “apologetics”—presume the possibility of demonstration of “Christian truth” because they presume a universal, neutral reason as the basis for “proofs.”Footnote ¹¹ And it is precisely this presumption of a universal (or common) reason that makes possible not only demonstration, but coercion. Apologetics, I would suggest, is always linked to coercion because it assumes a justification or warrant for Christian belief that is susceptible to (universal, rational) demonstration. Therefore, if the hearer of such “proofs” fails to receive/believe them, then the hearer is at fault—has just opened herself to the charge of being ir‐rational, and therefore actually in need of coercion in order to do what is good or right.

But here Hart rightly recognizes that “Christian thought always already stands in what might be considered a ‘postmodern’ position” with respect to the logic of demonstration (3). Because Christian theology “has no stake in the myth of disinterested rationality,” it is rightly suspicious of “the great project of ‘modernity’”: “postmodern theory confirms theology in its original condition: that of a story, thoroughly dependent upon a sequence of historical events to which the only access is the report and practice of believers, a story whose truthfulness may be urged—even enacted—but never proved simply by the processes of scrupulous dialectic” (4). Indeed, this is at the core of Hart's account: “the church has no arguments for its faith more convincing than the form of Christ” (3) and “no means whereby to corroborate its wildly implausible claim, except the demonstrative practice of Christ's peace” (2–3)—which is why she doesn't engage in apologetic discourses of demonstration, but rather kerygmatic proclamations of invitation. The church “stands before the world principally with the story it tells concerning God and creation, the form of Christ, the loveliness of the practice of Christian charity—and the rhetorical richness of its idiom. Making its appeal first to the eye and heart, as the only way it may ‘command’ assent, the church cannot separate truth from rhetoric or from beauty” (4).Footnote ¹²

I take it that Hart would be sympathetic to my claim that apologetics—linked as it is to demonstration—always colludes with a kind of coercion. And I also take it that Hart would suggest that the move from demonstration to persuasion, from apologetics to aesthetics, undercuts any linkage of Christian rhetoric to coercion, and thus would make non‐sensical any employment of Christian rhetoric as a tool of domination in the public sphere. If all we're doing is telling a story in a way that we hope is winsome and inviting—even compelling in a way—then such proclamation, even when it is aimed at conversion, is not coercive because it has renounced the universality of a logic that would be needed to corroborate such coercion (and to dominate those who reject the logic). Martyrs aren't out to win arguments. In sum, the move from apologetics to aesthetics is meant to undo the Constantinian projects of natural law and natural theology, and thus undercuts the logics of coercion associated with them.

So to circumvent the violence of “demonstration,” Hart moves the mode of Gospel proclamation to persuasion, and more specifically, to the matter of beauty Footnote ¹³: the evangel is proclaimed on the basis not of its rationality or demonstrative power, but on the basis of “the suasive loveliness of Christian rhetoric” (5) which reflects that “Christ is a persuasion, a form evoking desire, and the whole force of the gospel depends upon the assumption that this persuasion is also peace” (3). Now, it is here that I want to locate a certain ambiguity in Hart's project. While he rightly rejects “apologetics”—that is, coercive discourses of demonstration that are primarily “rational”—his articulation of a Christian aesthetics as an alternative may still harbor elements of an apologetics which presumes a certain objectivity or universality. In other words, even if he moves the primary locus for the “perception” of “Christian truth” from the cognitive to the affective (from the logical to the aesthetic), there seem to be some lingering aspects of the apologetic in his account of beauty.Footnote ¹⁴ In particular, some of his claims about beauty seem to attribute to beauty just the kind of universal “force” that made him see demonstrative programs based on universal reason coercive. For instance, when Hart claims that “Beauty is objective” (17), he glosses this by saying that beauty “can be recognized in spite of desire”Footnote ¹⁵ and that “[t]here is an overwhelming givenness in the beautiful” (17).Footnote ¹⁶ Furthermore, it is because of “the attractiveness of the beautiful” (17) that “Beauty evokes desire” (19) and reveals God's “glory” as “something communicable and intrinsically delightful” (17). It is “the indomitable event of beauty” (437, emphasis added) that shines through “creation's open and overwhelming declaration of God's glory” (21).

Well, yes and no. Even if we might affirm this claim regarding the objectivity of beauty, there is a correlate set of questions about the perception of this beauty which tend to be downplayed by Hart. For instance, while God's beauty objectively evokes desire, are there subjective conditions that are necessary in order for that operation to happen?Footnote ¹⁷ Even if it doesn't operate according to a coercive logic of demonstration, are there not also subjective conditions that are necessary in order for a story to “evoke” affirmation? Even if we affirm the instrinsic “attractiveness” of the beauty of Christ, is it not still legitimate to ask: attractive for whom? And how? If Christ offers himself as a gift, are there not conditions for the reception of a gift (cp. 413)?

Now, despite this talk of objectivity, manifestness, and “indomitability,” in other places Hart qualifies the effects or effectiveness of Christ's beauty. For instance, in discussing the power of Christ's beauty to non‐coercively evoke desire, he notes that “desire must be also be cultivated; the beautiful does not always immediately commend itself to every taste; Christ's beauty, like that of Isaiah's suffering servant, is not expressed in vacuous comeliness or shadowless glamour, but calls for a love that is charitable, that is not dismayed by distance or mystery, and that can repent of its failure to see; this is to acquire what Augustine calls a taste for the beauty of God (Soliloquia 1.3–14). Once this tasted is learned, divine beauty, as Gregory of Nyssa says, inflames desire… And, as Augustine also remarks, it is what one loves—what one desires—that determines to what city one belongs (Enarrationes in Psalmos 2.64.2)” (20, emphases added). But there are important questions to be asked, then: what makes this love possible? How is this “taste” learned? What effect could this beauty have for those who belong to the city of the earth? How does the “invitation” to another city happen, particularly since the overarching concern here is evangelism?

One can see a beginning of an answer later when Hart suggests that “the allure of this beauty must of course be visible to those outside the circle of the faith, as it unfolds into fuller expression, but the Christian vision of beauty can be more truly recognized, more deeply understood, more richly explored, only as one is appropriated by the language in which it unfolds itself” (34). But what of this language of degrees of seeing? Is this a difference of degree, or kind? Even if beauty is (objectively) visible, is it perceived as such? Is it not the case that it can been “seen” without (really) being seen? Here biblical language regarding an objective givenness that is not perceived as such is intriguing (Is. 53; Is. 6:10; Luke 8:10, where the aesthetics of the parable is also a concealing; Matt. 13:13–16: blessed are the eyes that can see what is “objectively” given to everyone, including those who can't see.) I think the language of degrees of seeing in Hart's account misses what might biblically be understood as a difference of kind—indeed, the very difference between perception and non‐perception.

So while he makes some qualifications, these don't seem to temper his other claims, or at least don't make up for failing to ask about the subjective conditions that are necessary for the perception of the beauty of “Christian truth.” There might be a couple of reasons for this:

1. 1. Hart's account does not provide much of an account of the effects of sin on perception, even aesthetic perception. (Of course, leave it to the Reformed panelist to raise the matter of sin and depravity!). In this regard, one could replay a little move from the Reformed playbook which is usually run against natural theology.Footnote ¹⁸ Here I want to use it against the latent aesthetic natural theology that one could derive from Hart's account. The Reformed tradition has long lodged an objection to natural theologyFootnote ¹⁹ because of what it has described as the “noetic effects of sin.”Footnote ²⁰ While the Reformed tradition would affirm a certain “givenness” or “objectivity” of God's revelation in creation, the effectiveness of this natural revelation is mitigated by the epistemic effects of sin on the perceptual capacities of sinful perceivers. I want to suggest that in the same way that there are cognitive or noetic effects of sin upon “understanding,” there are also affective effects of sin upon aesthetic “perception.”Footnote ²¹ The “objectivity” of beauty—the givenness of God's revelation in creation—does not translate into “objectivity” as it is commonly meant (that is, openly and universally perceived by all). The givenness of God's beauty in creation is “objective” in the sense that it is true of the object of perception; that is, it is true that “since the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly there to be seen” (Rom. 1:19), but this does not mean that they are seen as such or for what they are. In fact, Paul suggests the contrary: that despite the objective “givenness” of God's beauty in creation, this beauty is not seen, but rather suppressed (Rom. 1:21). Thus beauty is not as “indomitable” as might be suggested, precisely because it can be obfuscated, suppressed and ignored by those who lack the (renewed) perceptual capacities to see it as such. This undercuts any possibility of an aesthetic natural theology (and the attendant politicsFootnote ²²) that would replace a cognitive natural theology that Hart rejects.

2. 2. Questions about the conditions for the perception of Christian truth might also be downplayed because of a limited role for the Spirit in Hart's account. When Hart rightly invokes Augustine's claim that our “taste” for God must be learned and cultivated, and that this requires the proper direction of our love (20), it seems important to recognize that for Augustine, and Paul (I think), the proper formation of this love (and thus the proper direction of our desire and cultivation of taste) remains intimately linked to the Spirit's being shed abroad in our hearts (Rom. 5:5).Footnote ²³ In other words, the subjective condition of possibility for the perception of God's beauty is the regeneration by the Holy Spirit. The aesthetics of Christian truth demands a more fully developed pneumatology and ecclesiology—perhaps a specifically pneumatological ecclesiology (a new Pentecost!). While the beauty of creation does have a certain “givenness,” in order to see this for what it is requires the renewal of the Spirit and the (re)formation of our perceptive capacities through the practices of the community of the Spirit, the Church.