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Quote by David Bentley Hart

“And now that we exercise so comprehensive a medical and technological mastery over whole regions or nature at whose mercy our ancestors lived out their lives, we enjoy the unprecedented luxury of being able to render the 'natural' at once remote and benign. It is we who summon it, rather than the reverse, and we do so at our pleasure; it dwells with us, not we with it. We are free to sentimentalize or romanticize it, or even weave a veil of empty and unthreatening sanctity around it - until the moment when disease, age, infirmity, or random violence suddenly defeats us, or fire, flood, tempest, volcanic eruption, or earthquake surprise us by vaulting past our defenses. Then nature astonishes and horrifies us with its power, immensity, and sublime indifference. Even at such times, though, it is unlikely that we truly hate it; ours is a disenchanted world because it is one from which our love, reverence, dread, and hatred have all been irrevocably alienated. Nature for us is a single, internally consistent thing, an event, lovely and enticing, then terrible and pitiless, abundant and destructive at once, but moved neither by will nor by intelligence; it is sheer fact.”

Quote by David Bentley Hart

Work

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

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Author

David Bentley Hart
David Bentley Hart

David Bentley Hart is an American writer renowned for his profound theological reflections and unique insights into religious philosophy. Born in 1965, he graduated from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in philosophy. Hart's work spans a wide range of subjects, including theology, philosophy, literature, and art criticism. His writing style is distinctive, often captivating readers with his deep insights and elegant prose. more

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“There is, of course, some comfort to be derived from the thought that everything that occurs at the level of secondary causality - in nature or history - is governed not only by a transcendent providence but by a universal teleology that makes every instance of pain and loss an indispensable moment in a grand scheme whose ultimate synthesis will justify all things. But one should consider the price at which the comfort is purchased: it requires us to believe in and love a God whose good ends will be realized not only in spite of - but entirely by way of - every cruelty, every fortuitous misery, every catastrophe, every betrayal, every sin the world has ever known; it requires us to believe in the eternal spiritual necessity of a child dying an agonizing death from diphtheria, of a young mother ravaged by cancer, of tens of thousands of Asians swallowed in an instant by the sea, of millions murdered in death camps and gulags and forced famines (and so on). It is a strange thing indeed to seek peace in a universe rendered morally intelligible at the cost of a God rendered morally loathsome.”

“Kakvi smo mi to ljudi? Kakav smo mi to narod?... Između Azije i Evrope, na granici vera, carstava, ginuli smo nerazumno, više za druge nego za sebe... i ne stekosmo ni jednog vernog prijatelja. Taj nesrećni i prokleti srpski narod! U Evropi smo danas jedina država koja nema nijednog istinskog prijatelja. Nijednog! Ali nas Bog opet sačuva. Sačuva nas zbog nečeg. I za nešto.”

“Mene više ništa ne može da porazi. Ni začudi. Ni zasmeje. Zato iskreno sažaljevam žive. Oni ne znaju da je od prostora na zemlji čoveku neophodan samo prostor komotnog ležaja. Od vremena, dok voli. Od imanja, da nije ni gladan ni žedan. Od znanja, da zna svoje telo. Od prava, da sme da ne voli onog koga ne voli. I još ponešto slobode za sebičluk i igru”

“U tim sećanjima nastoji da ne preobražava činjenice u svoju korist, iako shvata da je u ljubavi to najteže, možda i nemoguće. Ljubav, to odavno zna, hrani se lažima, ponekad uspešnije no istinama. A ishod tih preživljavanja i obuzetosti ipak je isti: i s tugom i s ozarenošću uviđa kako nema prava da joj išta zameri, a najmanje da se oseća uvređenim. Takva zaključivanja ne sadrže ni spokojstvo ni nadu. Naprotiv, iz njih se taloži ono najteže nespokojstvo koje zaljubljenima ne pruža izgovor za bilo kakvu osvetu zbog neuzvraćene ljubavi, te česte sklonosti i velikodušnih ljudi.”