The Light of Tabor - by David Bentley Hart (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In The Light of Tabor, award-winning theologian David Bentley Hart proposes an approach to the nature of Christ that is profoundly radical yet deeply classical.

For centuries, Christian theology has rested on a paradox. Beginning with the Council of Chalcedon in the fifth century, the major Christian traditions have held that Jesus Christ combines two distinct natures: he is fully God and, somehow, fully human. Yet this tenet has traditionally invited irresolvable metaphysical contradictions. David Bentley Hart delves deeply into the seemingly irresoluble tensions, providing the first theological attempt to show how the logic of the earliest churches' angelomorphic Christology is continuous with later Chalcedonian orthodoxy. Hart draws on theologians from every epoch of Christian thought, from Origen to Sergei Bulgakov, while making free use of concepts from other spiritual traditions, such as Vedanta.

The Light of Tabor proposes an approach to Christology that is thoroughly monistic, both as regards Being and as regards nature. Hart argues that the only coherent reading of the figure of Christ is one that fully embraces the essential unity of all things divine and natural through him, proposing an approach to Christology that affirms classical doctrine without retaining the dualistic presuppositions that have haunted theology since the age of the great councils.

Review Quotes

"For Hart, salvation isn't just about escaping this world or having our sins forgiven, as crucial as those things are. It's about becoming fully human, which means becoming like Christ. And becoming like Christ means growing into the union with God for which we were always created. . . . That's a vision worth wrestling with." --The Englewood Review of Books

"This final addition to his formidable oeuvre comprises the five Stanton Lectures . . ., plus three provocative appendices. . . . [The appendices] are not mere ballast to bulk out an otherwise slender volume, but further examples of Hart's idiosyncratic but always creative theological legacy." --Church Times

"Here, dogma is not a parsimonious restriction on speculation, but a grammar for ordering an assemblage of tensive concepts--a charged ambience which, every so often, explodes with radical insight." --Reviews in Religion & Theology

"Thoughtful and thought-provoking, exceptionally well written, organized and presented, The Light of Tabor: Toward a Monistic Christology is an extraordinary work of meticulous scholarship and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, seminary, college, and university library Christian Theology & Philosophy collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists." --Midwest Book Review

"This is everything we have come to expect from David Bentley Hart: never shallow, never dull, sometimes creatively contrarian, always profound and fresh. He offers a radically original reading of the scriptural and patristic sources for orthodox Christology, showing how much we miss as a result of misunderstanding or watering down the basic claim that Christ is 'all in all.'" --Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury and author of Discovering Christianity

"This is quite an extraordinary book from David Bentley Hart, both for its theological content and also for its brevity, clarity, openness, and generosity. It makes sense of the deepest parts of the Christian theological tradition in ways which are both properly traditional and highly original." --John Behr, author of John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel

"After Hart we can happily throw away most of our theology books." --John Milbank, author of Theology and Social Theory

"Nothing David Hart writes fails to get to the heart of the matter. The Light of Tabor is no exception. Hart beckons us anew to contemplate the mystery of Christ in all its familiar strangeness and strange familiarity. Beautifully written, characteristically capacious, productively polemical--a fitting diadem for a dazzling theological career." --Jordan Daniel Wood, author of The Whole Mystery of Christ

"The Light of Tabor is David Bentley Hart's theological testament, the summation of his life's work on the Bible, the cultures of antiquity, and the history of theology, all masterfully distilled into five compact and witty chapters." --Trent Pomplun, author of Jesuit on the Roof of the World

About the Author

David Bentley Hart is a religious studies scholar, philosopher, cultural commentator, and writer of fiction. He is the author and translator of twenty-three books, including the award-winning You Are Gods.