David Bentley Hart: belief

Transcript context

…What do you think of the Book of Mormon? And what is it about the Bible that so lent itself to this new spin-off or start-up? The Book of Mormon. I have no opinions about it whatsoever. It’s kind of silly, the way it comes across to me. I’ve only read it once. I think that if you say the Bible lends itself to spin-offs, any religion that has tendencies towards the collapse of the difference and significance between history and eternity is always likely to inspire new historical projects that consider themselves . . . After all, this is something of the Abrahamic religions: They’re so supersessionist in the way they proceed. Even within the history of Judaism before Christianity, it’s one covenant superseding another. Then Christians claim that they’ve superseded the covenant in some sense. Then Islam is a supersession of the revelation with yet another revelation. This seems to be just part and parcel of the whole Western Abrahamic or the whole Abrahamic religious tradition. I suppose I would say that Mormonism is just another example of the claim of a new revelation. This is a general question I have about the roles of reason and faith in theological argument. When I hear members of the Orthodox Church criticize, say, the papacy and ex cathedra doctrine, what they say makes perfect sense to me. They deploy reason; they have arguments of reason against the doctrine. But in other contexts, religions, including Orthodoxy — they’re quite willing to invoke faith, so, we have faith in whatever. So, is it reason or is it faith that determines when an argument from reason or an argument from faith is appropriate?…

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