The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?

by David Bentley Hart

Book Overview

As news reports of the horrific December 2004 tsunami in Asia reached the rest of the world, commentators were quick to seize upon the disaster as proof of either God's power or God's nonexistence, asking over and over, How could a good and loving God -- if such exists -- allow such suffering?

In The Doors of the Sea David Bentley Hart speaks at once to those skeptical of Christian faith and to those who use their Christian faith...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802866867
• ISBN13: 9780802866868
• Release Date: March 2011
• Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
• Length: 119 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.2" x 7.4"

Customer Reviews

A Peace that Transcends Understanding

A very thoughtfully written book by a frighteningly intelligent man. When confronted with very real evil in the world, the joy that is found in Easter can and always does overcome it. Hart beautifully illustrates this. Yes be prepared to work to understand some of his writing, but do not complain, working to understand will make you more intelligent and help you really learn and know what is being said. With this in mind, his writing is just fun. I don't think you'll encounter many people with more breadth and depth of knowledge of history, literature, philosophy, language and anything else Hart happens to talk about. A very engaging, realistic book with an equally engaging and realistic message of joy.

Fantastic, poetic, beautiful.

Christian theodicy (that is, its defense of an all good, omnipotent, omniscient God in the face of the nihilant evil and suffering of the world) in its variegated forms has the unfortunate tendency to be cold, sterile, and hopelessly esoteric. Hart's book provides an illuminating critique of standard theodicic rebuttals within the world of Christendom, but also a staunch and unrelenting deconstruction of standard atheistic aggrandizing of the "failure" of the Christian system due to misunderstood theological tenants on both sides (that is, both Christian and atheist). Hart views with a critical eye the notion that the world process as it stands, evil and all, is part of some diligent calculus on God's part, some equilibrium of the "best possible world," or a necessity for God to show his grace. In this brushtroke of his mighty pen he chastizes epigones of Leibniz, Calvin, and others by working through the complaints of Voltair, Dostoevsky, and Mackie. Hart points out that if this were the case, that God has either made this evil for the greater good, or that evil actually has in itself a higher purpose, God would not be the God he is without the evil of this world. His Goodness would necessarily be reactionary, comparative, not essentially good or pure, always caught in the undulating dialectic of good/evil where God, though champion over evil, is the Good Savior only in reference to evil. Rather Hart points out that a truly biblical conception names no purpose to evil, superimposes no grant of life to death. Evil is in fact the ultimate meaninglessness of sin, and has no instrinsic purpose. The death of a child, the rape of a mother, the malignancy of a car crash, have no ultimate machination or design, but are all rendered ultimately meaningless as they are the privation of God's goodness. Hence God's goodness is not a dialectical goodness always paired as that good which overcame evil, but rather evil, in the ultimate illumination of God's effulgent glory, is defatigated and palliated into the nothingness that it truly is. To answer one question below, however, in regards to Noah, Hart is not denying that God might turn evil (or denying the Old Testament, as a reviewer below ponders) for the purpose of the Good, merely that evil has no ultimate design in the tapestry of God's economic plan. There have been a number of critiques faulting Hart for what is otherwise an impressive utilization of the spectrum of the english language. For its part, they who would chastize Hart in this way are correct in pointing out moments of obscurity due to the poetic flourish of language often pervading the text. And I sympathize in part with those who find Hart's language pompous and perhaps isolated from a more general audience, as a reviewer above notes there ARE ways to state Hart's arguments otherwise than through obscure words. These are, of course, things to be considered (and I would recommend a dictionary as a compliment to Hart's compendi

Absolutely Brilliant--a masterpiece

I have bought countless copies of this book as gifts. It is a stunningly beautiful, elegant, rigorous meditation. The prose alone is worth the price, but what so impressed me was the powerful articulation of the orthodox Christian understanding of good and evil. There is no mawkish sentiment, no appeal to pure emotion, no obscurantism. I have never encountered another book that, in so short a space, made me see how internally coherent and how revolutionary the Christian vision of reality is. The book is also a kind of poem to the beauty of creation, and a haunting lament over its sufferings. One of the reviewers below grows a bit petulant over a scattering of large words in the text, but that's a silly complaint against so distinguished a stylist. Hart uses the exactly appropriate word in any given context, and the euphony of his sentences is majestic.

Simply outstnding

Do not be misled by the title. Hart provides the most sensible and satisfactory logic on the role of God in creating and disposing of tragedy. He disposes of Mackie's famous "if God is indeed omnipotent, he manifestly is not good, and if he is good he manifestly is not omnipotent. En route he deals with Voltaire, Dostoevsky, Calvin, fundamentalists, original sin and many other ideas. I have read it twice and I will go back to learn even more. Not a hard read but you must pay attention.