Senses and Perceptions of Things Divine

I well remember the moment (or do I? how reliable are senses and memories anyway?) at the turn of the century when we started seeing books devoted to exploring the role of the senses in Christian experience. Since then we have had books on smell and scent, on sight and visual culture, on hearing and listening, and other things besides. 

This year two more will be introduced into this category, their authors no strangers to long-time readers of this wee blog. The first is an edited international scholarly collection, Perceiving Things Divine: Towards a Constructive Account of Spiritual Perception, eds. Frederick D. Aquino and Paul L. Gavrilyuk (Oxford University Press, 6 March 2022), 272pp. About this book the publisher tells us this:

Sensory language is commonly used to describe human encounters with the divine. Scripture, for example, employs perceptual language like 'taste and see that the Lord is good', 'hear the word of the Lord', and promises that 'the pure in heart will see God'. Such statements seem to point to certain features of human cognition that make perception-like contact with divine things possible. But how precisely should these statements be construed? Can the elusive notion of 'spiritual perception' survive rigorous theological and philosophical scrutiny and receive a constructive articulation?

Perceiving Things Divine seeks to make philosophical and theological sense of spiritual perception. Reflecting the results of the second phase of the Spiritual Perception Project, this volume argues for the possibility of spiritual perception. It also seeks to make progress towards a constructive account of the different aspects of spiritual perception while exploring its intersection with various theological and philosophical themes, such as biblical interpretation, aesthetics, liturgy, race, ecology, eschatology, and the hiddenness of God. The interdisciplinary scope of the volume draws on the resources of value theory, philosophy of perception, epistemology, philosophy of art, psychology, systematic theology, and theological aesthetics.

The volume also draws attention to how spiritual perception may be affected by such distortions as pornographic sensibility and racial prejudice. Since perceiving spiritually involves the whole person, the volume proposes that spiritual perception could be purified by ascetic discipline, healed by contemplative practices, trained in the process of spiritual direction and the pursuit of virtue, transformed by the immersion in the sacramental life, and healed by opening the self to the operation of divine grace.

You will note here an impressive cast of contributors, including Sarah Coakley and Catherine Pickstock (who was going to be my doctoral director at Cambridge when I was admitted in 1999 before turning them down).  

The next book is Hearing the Scriptures: Liturgical Exegesis of the Old Testament in Byzantine Orthodox Hymnography by Eugen J. Pentiuc (Oxford UP, 2021), 456pp. 

About this book we are told:

Throughout the ages, interpreters of the Christian scriptures have been wonderfully creative in seeking to understand and bring out the wonders of these ancient writings. That creativity has often been overlooked by recent scholarship, concentrated as it is in the so-called critical period. In this study, Eugen J. Pentiuc illuminates the remarkable way in which the Byzantine hymnographers (liturgists) expressed their understanding of the Old Testament in their compositions, an interpretive process that he terms "liturgical exegesis."

In authorship and methodology, patristic exegesis and liturgical exegesis are closely related. Patristic exegesis, however, is primarily linear and sequential, proceeding verse by verse, while liturgical exegesis offers a more imaginative and eclectic mode of interpretation, ranging over various parts of the Bible. In this respect, says Pentiuc, liturgical exegesis resembles cubist art. To illuminate the multi-faceted creativity of liturgical exegesis, Pentiuc has chosen the vast and rich hymnography of Byzantine Orthodox Holy Week as a case study, offering a detailed lexical, biblical, and theological analysis of selected hymns. His analysis reveals the many different and imaginative ways in which creative liturgists incorporated and interpreted scriptural material in these hymns.

By drawing attention to the way in which the bible is used by Byzantine hymnographers in the living Orthodox tradition, Hearing the Scriptures makes a ground-breaking contribution to the history of the reception of the scriptures.

Palamite Anthropology

The rediscovery of Palamas in the contemporary period is one that must be regarded with some ambivalence insofar as he has often been used to posit certain polemical and apologetical positions by some Orthodox vis-à-vis the Catholic Church, and vice versa. Nevertheless, interest in him remains high, and we have a recent book that adds to it: Alexandros Chouliaras,

The Anthropology of St Gregory Palamas: The Image of God, the Spiritual Senses, and the Human Body (Brepols, 2020), XVI+243 pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

How are we to regard our body? As a prison, an enemy, or, maybe, an ally? Is it something bad that needs to be humiliated and extinguished, or should one see it as a huge blessing, that deserves attention and care? Is the body an impediment to human experience of God? Or, rather, does the body have a crucial role in this very experience? Alexandros Chouliaras’ book The Anthropology of St Gregory Palamas: the Image of God, the Spiritual Senses, and the Human Body argues that the fourteenth-century monk, theologian, and bishop Gregory Palamas has interesting and persuasive answers to offer to all these questions, and that his anthropology has a great deal to offer to Christian life and theology today.

Amongst this book’s contributions are these: for Palamas, the human is superior to the angels concerning the image of God for specific reasons, all linked to his corporeality. Secondly, the spiritual senses refer not only to the soul, but also to the body. However, in Paradise the body will be absorbed by the spirit, and acquire a totally spiritual aspect. But this does not at all entail a devaluing of the body. On the contrary, St Gregory ascribes a high value to the human body. Finally, central to Palamas’ theology is a strong emphasis on the human potentiality for union with God, theosis: that is, the passage from　image　to　likeness. And herein lies, perhaps, his most important gift to the anthropological concerns of our epoch.

Alexandros Chouliaras, post-doctoral researcher at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Department of Theology, holds a PhD in Theology from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Religion and Theology, under the direction of Professors Andrew Louth and John Behr. Some of his texts have been presented in international theological conferences and published in peer-reviewed academic journals. He serves as a parish priest in Athens, Greece (Metropolis of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki), where he lives with his wife and their four children.