David Bentley Hart (born February 20, 1965) is an American fiction author, essayist, cultural commentator, philosopher, religious studies scholar, and theologian.

Hart has written essays on diverse topics such as art, baseball, literature, consciousness, the problem of evil, apocatastasis, theosis, fairies, film, and politics.

[1][2][3] Born in Howard County and graduating from Wilde Lake High School in 1982 with classes in Latin and Greek, Hart was a National Merit Scholar.

As a teenager, Hart started to read the early church fathers along with contemporary Eastern Orthodox theologians, converting to Orthodoxy at the age of twenty-one.

[19] His translation in collaboration with John R. Betz of Analogia Entis: Metaphysics: Original Structure and Universal Rhythm by Erich Przywara was published in 2014 by Eerdmans.

[20] Hart's academic books include The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Eerdmans, 2003), The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (Yale, 2013),[21] The Hidden and the Manifest: Essays in Theology and Metaphysics (Eerdmans, 2017), That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation (Yale, 2019), Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest (Notre Dame, 2020),[22] Tradition and Apocalypse: An Essay on the Future of Christian Belief (Baker, 2022),[23] and You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature (Notre Dame, 2022).

[24] In April and May of 2024, Hart delivered the Stanton lectures at the University of Cambridge with presentations across five days entitled "The Light of Tabor: Notes Toward a Monist Christology".

[28] Since the late 1990s, Hart has published hundreds of essays on varied subjects including Don Juan, Vladimir Nabokov, Charles Baudelaire, Victor Segalen, Leon Bloy, William Empson, David Jones, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (1893), and baseball.

This newsletter also features conversations with other writers such as Iain McGilchrist, Rainn Wilson, China Miéville, Richard Seymour, Tariq Goddard, and Salley Vickers.

"[36] Martyn Wendell Jones has said of Hart's style that, while it may "constantly verge on the immoderate" and rarely "make a point squarely without infusing a bit of accelerant," what might be seen as "needless indulgence" is also "an act of generosity toward his readership" because "his maximalist impulses ...enable him to consistently generate interest on the level of his individual sentences.

[46] Hart's first major work, The Beauty of the Infinite (2003), an adaptation of his doctoral thesis, received acclaim from the theologians John Milbank, Janet Soskice, Paul J. Griffiths, and Reinhard Hütter.

"[47] Geoffrey Wainwright said, "This magnificent and demanding volume should establish David Bentley Hart, around the world no less than in North America, as one of his generation's leading theologians.

"[48] In 2020, Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest was named Best Religion Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly[49] as well as winning Gold in the 2020 INDIES with Foreword Magazine.

[51][52] It was also praised by the agnostic philosopher Anthony Kenny in The Times Literary Supplement: "He exposes his opponents' errors of fact or logic with ruthless precision.

Wilson described this "dialogue with the author's dog Roland, who turns out to be a philosopher of mind, with a particular bee in his bonnet about the inadequacy of materialist explanations for 'consciousness'" as "probably the dottiest book of the year" while noting that "I KEEP returning to it.

[77] As indicated by the wide range of topics covered in his essays, Hart has diverse interests such as baseball, comparative religious studies, Gnosticism, metaphysics, The Dreaming, philosophy of mind, theological aesthetics, and world literature.

[82] As an outspoken advocate of classical theism as seen, for example, in his book The Experience of God[83] who is also, more generally, engaged with the schools of continental philosophy, idealism, and neoplatonism,[84] Hart also affirms monism.

He said in a November 17, 2020, interview about a pre-release reading of his book You Are Gods that "at the end of the day, I'm a monist as any sane person is" and that "we can play games with it, but any metaphysics that is coherent is ultimately reducible to a monism.

"[85] In the text of You Are Gods, Hart describes variations of both dualism and monism that he calls grim and monstrous: An absolute dualism, of course, is a very grim thing indeed; but a narrative monism unqualified by any hint of true gnostic detachment, irony, sedition, or doubt—by any proper sense, that is, that the fashion of this world is horribly out of joint, that we are prisoners of delusion, that not every evil can be accounted for as part of divine necessity—turns out to be at least as monstrous.During an April 2022 conversation with Hart about You Are Gods, John Milbank said we "agree that in fact neoplatonism and Vedanta and Islamic mysticism are monistic" and "that, actually, an emanationism, a monotheism, these are actually the more monistic visions and that, if we've got all these things in Christianity like Trinity, incarnation, grace and deification and so on, these aren't qualifying monism."

[93] Hart has cited a wide variety of inspirations and influences in his writing as well as across his various areas of scholarship in religious studies, philosophy of mind, and Christian metaphysics.

[96] An Anglican convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, Hart has praised Orthodox thinkers such as Kallistos Ware, Alexander Schmemann, John Meyendorff, and Olivier Clément.

[106]Hart is married and has one grown son, Patrick,[107] with whom he co-wrote the children's book The Mystery of Castle MacGorilla (Angelico Press, 2019); his wife is British.

[111] As of 2022, Hart lives in South Bend, Indiana and is asked to serve and contribute by leaders in his Eastern Orthodox tradition such as the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

[112][113] He follows contemporary concerns in Eastern Orthodox Christianity such as providing signature number 32 on a "Declaration on the 'Russian World' (Russkii mir) Teaching" criticizing theological justifications for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

[114] During a September 16, 2022, conversation with Rainn Wilson, Hart shared briefly about an "indescribable" past experience of his own on Mount Athos: I was in this state of spiritual despair, and I also had an encounter.