Julian Hartt

In an age when ontology is in question and onto-theology has come to an end, the work of Julian Hartt is an important offering to the church. Hartt's first formal foray into ontology may be found in his (1940) Yale dissertation, ""The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God: A Historic-Critical Exposition of Some of Its Metaphysical and Epistemological Issues. His later thinking about ontology in service to theology may be heard in his Nathaniel Taylor lectures, ""The One God and the Several Worlds: Faith in God after the End of Salvation History. In between these two works, Hartt advanced his own ontology in the series of lectures published as 'Being Known and Being Revealed.' These lectures display the thinking of an erudite, original scholar who knows the history of philosophy intimately, particularly as it impinges on theology. He also knows the history of theology as it wrestles with Being. But beyond that, he brings his thought in touch with reality, even as his thinking soars--not to escape reality--but to gain a perspective that enables us to be grasped more firmly by the truth.

Dr. Julian Hartt, in a unique position to interpret the American college campus scene, sees a profoundly creative age just ahead, requiring clearness of purpose, wisdom in decision, steadfast hope, and the courage to do the unpopular thing when necessary. But without a serious confrontation of Christian commitment, university students may end up seeking fellowship in the appropriate mutual admiration society. What is the function of the theologian in the college atmosphere? What is the responsibility of the Christian college engulfed in a variety of theological beliefs? The college chapel, hit by the first shock wave of the turmoil outside the university gates, is the Christian center closest to the action, says Dr. Hartt. It could become a strategic theological arena for discussion of the key policy questions this nation will decide in years to come.

What kind of reality can be perceived when the core problems of theology are freed from dependency upon highly technical and arcane ways of thinking and speaking? Writing with the logical clarity and critical acumen for which he is well-known in theological circles, Julian N. Hartt demonstrates the reality of theology's problems and shows how they can be perceived as part of a divine restiveness in living. Hartt finds the demands of revelation to be most profoundly registered upon the imagination--that power of the spirit by which the shape of things to come is grasped. Sensing a great hunger for fresh approaches to fundamental theological concerns, Hartt presents a boldly original scholarly work. In it the persistent theological puzzles about method are clarified, the elements of that method are described and major historical controversies about method are critiqued. Topics discussed include: beliefs and reasons, knowing and proving God, faith and hope, authority and scripture, revelation and historical evidence. A significant contribution to theology, this book shows that theological method entails describing the ways in which faith makes sense. Doing this, it speaks about incorrigible beliefs, those convictions so fundamental that without them the very sense of life and world would disappear. Sensing that society has begun to think of theological matters as mere inventions of theologians, Hartt seeks to return to those fundamental questions that are the concrete situation of the serious-minded Christian in the contemporary world.

To Julian N. Hartt, our writers are the real creators of human history. It is they who from their imagination and their heritage fashion works that reflect as well as guide man's destiny. And their art, rather than science or philosophy, is the realm through which this theologian traces the present human condition. Hartt maintains that we have, for better or for worse, cancelled our heritage. Just how we have done so can be seen in the negation, death, and transfiguration in contemporary fiction of traditional images by which man has always seen himself: the epic image, the dream of innocence, the erotic image, and the eschatological image. To illustrate, the epic is now the anti-epic Ulysses, while our shattered dream of innocence is best described in Faulkner's Light in August and Camus' The Fall. Hartt sees the traditional marriage of flesh and spirit in the erotic image now modified to the concept of sexuality as a divine power in Lawrence, as totally blighted in Styron, cramping in Moravia, and as a possible pathway to creativity in Durrell. In his discussion of the eschatological image, Hartt asks what is perhaps the most crucial of questions: Has the hope for that Great Tomorrow of biblical disclosure--the appearing in glory of the perfected community--become too feeble, dim, remote, to minister to the frenzy, terror, and 'wisdom' of our age? The Marxist of In Dubious Battle has one answer, and Koestler another. But it is in Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country that Hartt finds this hope alive and vigorously represented. The mood in which Hartt writes is not therefore lamentation, and his purpose not another flagellation of that woeful creature, Modern Man. He has not made a point of consulting only those artists who have bad news for us. Nor has he lingered long with writers animated by a desire to speak comfortably to Jerusalem. The curse laid against false prophecy, though uttered long ago, is still binding: Woe to them who cry 'Peace Peace ' when there is no peace.