Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart has some kind of hang-up about Thomism. It leads him to do strange things. Two years ago, in First Things, Hart put forward a poorly reasoned critique of the Thomistic natural law approach to ethics. As his critics pointed out at the time, among the foibles of the piece was Hartâ??s conflation of the â??new natural lawâ? theory of thinkers such as John Finnis and Robert P. George with the â??old natural lawâ? approach of writers such as Ralph McInerny and Russell Hittinger. When the difference between these views is understood, Hartâ??s critique collapses.
Rather than trying to answer this objection and extricate himself from the hole heâ??d gotten himself into, Hart kept digging, relentlessly reiterating his fallacious conflation in a series of sometimes dyspeptic replies to his critics. I responded to Hart in a piece at First Things, in an article here at Public Discourse, and in a couple of follow-up posts at my own blog.
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