The book, You Are Gods, is a collection of six essays by Dr. David Bentley Hart where Hart dispels the understanding that orthodox Christianity teaches a two-tier understanding of nature and supernature. Rather, Christianity teaches that nature/supernature or nature/grace are indivisible. Whatever possesses a supernatural destiny must be supernatural – i.e must be divine – naturally and whatever enters into the life of the divine must always already have been divine. As Hart previously wrote in That All Shall Be Saved, protology and eschatology are but a single inquiry since in the end of all things is their beginning. p.68. The title comes from Jesus’ quotation of Psalm 82 in defense of his calling himself the “son of God.” John 10:34. This page is simply my summary of the various sections of the book as I work my way through the various essays themselves.
You Are Gods – Dr. David Bentley Hart
The book is a collection of six essays where Hart dispels the understanding that orthodox Christianity teaches (or can teach) a two-tier understanding of nature and supernature. Rather, Christianity teaches that nature/supernature or nature/grace are indivisible.
If the divine nature is extrinsically imposed us, then within that imposition we cease to exist. What does God accomplish by “saving us” or giving us a divine nature if within that gift, we cease to be who we are?
We are finite and contingent beings. Everything ‘natural’ about us is dependant upon some other source of power not only for its realization but for its very existence.
Every rational will, when unencumbered and freely moved, is always purposeful towards an end. Any act lacking purposefulness is by definition not an act of rational freedom. Further, the end to which the purposeful act is always directed is the Good.
The Incarnation shows the enternal campatibility of the human and divine natures. Therefore, “creation is already deification – is, in fact, theogony. For that eternal act . . . is the call that awakens the gods.”