David Bentley Hart: evaluation

Transcript context

…It seems like a lot more testimony than, say, from the apostles or in the four gospels, that if we weigh testimony, one is led in many different directions, including, of course, the Book of Mormon. Whose testimony? Come on. The Book of Mormon is supposedly read off from these golden plates that Joseph Smith was shown and able to read with magical spectacles, plates that no one else ever saw. That’s very much a story. If you want to believe it, you can. You can say the same about everyone’s testimony. There are judgments you have to make at times. Just, no one’s testimony should be taken as an absolute authority. No one, because no one is free from psychological limitations. Even if he or she is perfectly sincere, that in itself doesn’t prove anything. You can make judgments on character. You can make judgments about coherence. These are, again, relative judgments. They’re not absolute. I think that when the story becomes . . . I don’t know why you keep bringing up Mormonism. I have absolutely no connections. [laughs] I’ve never written about it. My only connection — I’ve met a few nice Mormons. I’ve read the Book of Mormon once. I didn’t find it particularly well written, but neither, for that matter, is most of the New Testament. I think it’s based on historical claims that are objectively false, that there are these ancient civilizations in the Americas that just didn’t exist. I think the story of the genesis of the Book of Mormon is a bit more incredible than, say, somebody in the first century writing down what his theology is based on, as in the case of Paul, obviously a person whose life was turned upside down by some kind of experience. Maybe he was a psychotic, I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem that way when you read it. There’s some powerful spiritual apprehension that he has discovered about the love of God and the grace of God, and over many decades of a self-sacrificing life, leading ultimately to his death, he lays that out. Well, that’s compelling to me in a way that other sorts of claims that seem more incredible aren’t. In the United States, has progressive politics become the new version of a secular Christianity?…

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