%0 Journal Article
%T Questions About the Perception of “Christian Truth”: On the Affective Effects of Sin
%J New Blackfriars
%D 2007
%A Smith, James K. A.
%V 88
%N 1017
%P 585-593
%X This article engages David Bentley Hart's critique of coercive “demonstration” in apologetics in favor of Gospel proclamation in the mode of “persuasion.” More specifically, I evaluate Hart's articulation of persuasion as a discourse that is primarily aesthetic and traffics primarily in beauty. After expressing an appreciation for Hart's critique of the traditional apologetics of demonstration, I suggest that Hart's own proposal still has elements of an “apologetic”—a kind of natural “aesthetic” theology, but a natural theology nonetheless. I conclude by extrapolating the Reformed critique of natural theology (based on the “noetic effects of sin”) to include a critique of Hart's aesthetic quasi-natural theology by providing an account of the “affective” effects of sin.<p />
%G 
%I John Wiley and Sons
%@ 0028-4289
%U http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-2005.2007.00185.x