David Bentley Hart

David Bentley Hart (b. 1965) is an American Eastern Orthodox theologian and philosopher of religion, trained at the University of Maryland, Cambridge, and the University of Virginia, where he completed his doctorate. He has held positions at the University of Virginia, Duke Divinity School, Providence College, and the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. Hart works within the tradition of classical theism, drawing on patristic, Neoplatonic, Thomistic, and Vedantic sources to articulate a metaphysics of God as the infinite ground of being, consciousness, and bliss. In 'The Beauty of the Infinite' (2003) he engages postmodern critique through a theological aesthetics indebted to Gregory of Nyssa and Hans Urs von Balthasar. 'Atheist Delusions' (2009) is a polemical historical defense of Christianity against the New Atheists, and 'The Experience of God' (2013) argues that contemporary atheism typically misidentifies its target as a finite demiurge rather than the God of classical metaphysics. His later 'That All Shall Be Saved' (2019) defends universal salvation, provoking sharp criticism from Reformed and traditionalist Catholic theologians such as Michael McClymond. His 2017 New Testament translation aimed at deliberate linguistic strangeness and was criticized for idiosyncrasies by N.T. Wright and others. Hart is known for an ornate, polemical prose style and for sustained critique of theistic personalism, analytic theism, and naturalist metaphysics.