Citation

Smith JKA. New Blackfriars 2007; 88(1017): 585-593.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1741-2005.2007.00185.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article engages David Bentley Hart's critique of coercive “demonstration” in apologetics in favor of Gospel proclamation in the mode of “persuasion.” More specifically, I evaluate Hart's articulation of persuasion as a discourse that is primarily aesthetic and traffics primarily in beauty. After expressing an appreciation for Hart's critique of the traditional apologetics of demonstration, I suggest that Hart's own proposal still has elements of an “apologetic”—a kind of natural “aesthetic” theology, but a natural theology nonetheless. I conclude by extrapolating the Reformed critique of natural theology (based on the “noetic effects of sin”) to include a critique of Hart's aesthetic quasi-natural theology by providing an account of the “affective” effects of sin.