David Bentley Hart on the sadness of paganism

Another highlight from Hart’s book, Atheist Delusions, is his discussion of how Christianity brought a message of joy and life to a world shaped by a profound sense of melancholy, what Hart calls paganism’s “glorious sadness”.

“[T]he Christianity of the early centuries did not invade a world of noonday joy, vitality, mirth, and cheerful earthiness, and darken it with malicious slanders of the senses, or chill it with a severe and bloodless otherworldliness. Rather, it entered into a twilight world of pervasive spiritual despondency and religious yearning, not as a cult of cosmic renunciation (pagan religious and philosophical culture required no tutelage in that) but as a religion of glad tidings, of new life, and that in all abundance. It was pagan society that had become ever more otherworldly and joyless, ever wearier of the burden of itself, and ever more resentful of the soul’s incarceration in the closed system of a universe governed by fate. It was pagan society that seemed unable to conceive of any spiritual aspiration higher than escape—higher, that is, than the emancipation of a few select spirits from the toils of an otherwise irredeemable world—and that could imagine no philosophical virtue more impressive than resignation to the impossibility of escape. The church, by contrast, was obliged to preach a gospel of salvation that somehow embraced the entire created order.” (143–44)

“Pervasive spiritual despondency and religious yearning”—sounds like Nick Cave. Bring on the glad tidings!