Theophany's Water Blessing

Ashgate e-mails me today with the happy news that they are sending me a review copy of Nicholas Denysenko, The Blessing of Waters and Epiphany: The Eastern Liturgical Tradition (Ashgate, 2012, 198pp.). The book was just released at the end of August. About this book the publisher tells us:

This book examines the historical development of the blessing of waters and its theology in the East, with an emphasis on the Byzantine tradition. Exploring how Eastern Christians have sought these waters as a source of healing, purification, and communion with God, Denysenko unpacks their euchology and ritual context. The history and theology of the blessing of waters on Epiphany is informative for contemporary theologians, historians, pastors and students. Offering important insights into how Christians renew Baptism in receiving the blessed waters, this book also proposes new perspectives for theologizing Christian stewardship of ecology in the modern era based on a patristic liturgical synthesis. Denysenko presents an alternative framework for understanding the activity of the Trinity, enabling readers to encounter a vision of how participants encounter God in and after ritual.

I hope in the coming weeks to have more to say about the book and to feature an interview with the author whose scholarship Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies has been pleased to publish in the past. The jurors to whom we sent Denysenko's last article were unanimous in recommending publication and in praising his work as superlative scholarship.