26 Comments
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James Murnau (aka Tim James)'s avatar

I've already made the mistake of buying DBH books I'm too dumb to understand, and I'm ready to make it again.

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Eleanor's avatar

I feel that.

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Steve Dublanica's avatar

Already preordered on Amazon for Kindle. I need the dictionary feature to keep up. :)

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Eleanor's avatar

That’s how I roll when it comes to DBH as well :)

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Jeffrey Altman's avatar

Is it subtitled the "Trouble with Ponies"? I have my dry sherry at the ready.

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David Bentley Hart's avatar

National Velvet 2: The Wrath of Seabiscuit

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Gary Chartier's avatar

While the paper version is already available, I won't get the ebook version, which I ordered last year, till next week. By which time everyone here will doubtless have read the book. Twice.

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David Bentley Hart's avatar

Would that it were so.

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William Green's avatar

In Psalms 82:6, from which Jesus quoted, God says to human beings: "I said, 'You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High.'" The Hebrew word translated "gods" is elohim, which literally means "gods" or "mighty ones"—although it is often rendered as "God" (that is, the true God) in the Bible. That's because, although plural in form, the word elohim is often singular in usage. -

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Bradford Blue's avatar

Just in case you haven't yet seen this: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2022/03/80430/

The 'reasoning' is typical Feser. I found the pearl-clutching at the end to be particularly amusing.

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David Bentley Hart's avatar

I will respond in time, but just now I am preparing for a trip to Ireland.

I’m surprised at how hazy his grasp of some of the concepts at issue is. He makes a mess of potentia oboedientialis. I expect him not to know much about the fathers or modern systematics. Those aren’t his things. But he doesn’t actually know the debates between modern Thomism and its critics.

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Adina Meyer's avatar

I quit drinking so will have to read with coffee.

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David Bentley Hart's avatar

Perhaps the book will make you reconsider.

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Steve Dublanica's avatar

Read the whole thing sober. What a great book. Now I have to read it again to see what I missed.

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ziply123's avatar

I hope there will be an audiobook version soon.

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David Bentley Hart's avatar

I don't think UNDP does audiobooks as a rule.

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MJS's avatar

I am very excited for this one. A great deal of my graduate research was on Henri de Lubac, and I am currently working in parish life amongst a revival of more or less traditionalist (which is to say, neoscholastic, sigh) understandings of nature and supernature. I'm looking forward to your illuminative reflections on this.

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David Bentley Hart's avatar

Suppress that revival of the neoscholastic position, if needs be by threats and coercions, and even by magic if all else fails.

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MJS's avatar

"Most of us thought it had been laid permanently to rest, in the deepest, dankest, and most dismal of theology's unvisited crypts. Apparently, however, someone neglected to drive a stake through its heart and cut off its head, because in the last two decades it has enjoyed a surprisingly robust reviviscence in some of the more militantly necrophile factions of traditionalist Catholicism."

This book is already a delight to my soul. The introduction alone was like breathing fresh air for the first time in years. And this paragraph is going onto my vision board, next to my bottle of holy water and garlic.

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David Bentley Hart's avatar

Thanks, but that should be "unvisited," not "uninvited."

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MJS's avatar

Mea culpa. In my defense, those crypts are thoroughly uninviting.

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David Armstrong's avatar

I'm sure the cover is meant to depict someone more felicitous, but the image suggested Phaethon to me, which afforded a layer of humor to the title for a brief moment.

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David Bentley Hart's avatar

It is Phaethon. One whose striving was correct, if his control was imperfect.

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David Armstrong's avatar

Sane! And of course, the meaning of Phaethon's myth was understood differently by different people at different times, as I know you know; Ovid also takes the position you outline here in the Metamorphoses, that Phaethon's daring was more significant and expansive than his failure.

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MJS's avatar

I love Dante's juxtaposition of Phaethon's striving, Odysseus' last journey (who in Dante's fan fiction, tries to sail to Mount Purgatory after he gets bored with Ithaca, only to be destroyed by a whirlpool), and himself (ever the humble poet) as they journey towards the supernatural. Such a rich image for this collection.

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David Bentley Hart's avatar

I thought so.

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