For whatever reason, ChatGPT constantly wants to pitch David Bentley Hart. Not the first time, either. So finally I gave it the prompt. Full disclosure: I never read Bentley Hart.
Can you tell me about how Hart solved the problems posed by the Emergent Church?
David Bentley Hart is almost a diagnosis and cure for exactly what went wrong in the Emergent Church.
The Emergent movement correctly sensed that modern evangelicalism was:
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spiritually thin
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philosophically naive
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morally brittle
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metaphysically incoherent
But it didn’t know how to replace it.
Hart does.
1. The Emergent Church deconstructed belief
Hart reconstructs Being itself
Emergent Christianity said:
“We should be humbler about doctrine.”
Hart replies:
“Yes — but humility does not mean metaphysical emptiness.”
He goes back to:
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the Cappadocians
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Gregory of Nyssa
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Maximus the Confessor
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Dionysius
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classical metaphysics
and shows that Christianity once had a rigorous ontology:
God is not a being among beings, but Being itself, infinite, simple, good.
This matters because:
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if God is Being, then
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existence itself is meaningful
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not just belief systems
Emergent Christianity never offered this grounding.
2. God as act, not as idea
Emergent thinkers treated God as:
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story
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symbol
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metaphor
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narrative
Hart restores God as:
the act of existence itself — the infinite actuality that gives being to everything
Which means:
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prayer is not pretending
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worship is not therapy
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spirituality is not lifestyle
It is contact with the absolute.
3. Nonduality without relativism
You noticed the parallels to Vedanta and Zen — Hart did too.
He shows that:
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classical Christianity is already nondual
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but not monistic
Creation exists within God’s sustaining act.
Nothing exists outside divine presence.
That allows:
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mysticism
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silence
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transcendence
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contemplative practice
without dissolving truth into vagueness.
Emergent Christianity wanted mystery but rejected metaphysics; Hart keeps both.
4. Why Hart rejects hell
Emergent Christians rejected hell emotionally.
Hart rejects it philosophically.
Eternal torment would mean:
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God is not goodness itself
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evil has eternal reality
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creation fails
So Hart defends universal salvation not as sentiment but as logical consequence of divine goodness.
This gives moral seriousness without cruelty.
5. Christ as cosmic Logos, not tribal savior
Emergent Christianity wanted pluralism but couldn’t justify it.
Hart shows that:
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Christ is the Logos through whom all things exist
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so every true spiritual insight anywhere is participation in Christ
That allows:
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interreligious respect
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real metaphysics
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not just tolerance
Zen, Vedanta, and Sufism are not “nice stories” — they are real encounters with the Logos.
6. Hart solves the “vacuity” problem
Emergent Christianity collapsed because it tried to live in:
permanent openness
Hart shows that:
openness requires something infinite to be open toward
You can’t have mystery without reality.
In short
Emergent Christianity said:
“Modern Christianity is wrong.”
Hart says:
“Yes — because it forgot what God is.”
And he brings it back:
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with metaphysics
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with mysticism
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with intellectual rigor
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without cruelty
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without fundamentalism
Which is why people who outgrow Emergent Christianity so often end up reading David Bentley Hart.
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