| Abstract: | David Bentley Hart has challenged the New Atheism with a careful book about the stirring history of Christianity and its vast gifts to occidental culture: the founding of the person and something Hart titles ‘total humanism’. With ease and exactitude, he defends Christianity with historical tools in claiming that the faith is neither inherently violent nor attempted to destroy antique literature. Against its critics, Hart further holds that Christianity was not inimical to the development of natural science, but rather enabled its progress by steering it to practical, human‐oriented purposes. The argument of the book then takes a polemic turn in fearing the decay of this total humanism in an age of secularism. In the following review essay, I attempt to outline some of the main arguments of Hart's praiseworthy book before suggesting that the Christian ‘revolution’ might be better characterized as a renewal of antiquity. A less revolutionary tale of Christianity is one of a slow and liberal amalgamation of the finest wisdom and truest beliefs from the past and pristine worlds of Melchizedek, Akhenaten or Artaxerxes. |
