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.

John Henry Newman

While John Henry Newman is a pivotal figure in 19th-century Western Catholic Christianity, he is unique insofar as he is not confined there or constrained by its categories--as so often happens to Western figures unknown in the East. Early in his life, half of which he spent as an Anglican of course, he was shaped by that uniquely patristic ethos of Oxford and the Church of England of his time (as Benjamin King has demonstrated in more detail than just about anybody in his book, Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers), and this formation made him of such interest to 19th-century Greek Orthodox thought that he was--as George Dion Dragas and C.S. Dessain had earlier showed--just about the only Western figure of that era to be translated into Greek and studied by Orthodox scholars.

Since his death in 1890, and more especially since the Second Vatican Council, the field of Newman studies has exploded, with many new books published and annual conferences organized about his thought, and journals devoted entirely to him. For those trying to find a place to begin in sorting out the riches of this vast world, you could start with a forthcoming collection set for release this fall: The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman, eds. Frederick D. Aquino and Benjamin J. King (Oxford UP, 2018), 640pp.

About this collection--edited by two who have published their own monographs and other collections on Newman--the publisher has this to say:

John Henry Newman (1801-1890) has always inspired devotion. Newman has made disciples as leader of the Catholic revival in the Church of England, an inspiration to fellow converts to Roman Catholicism, a nationally admired preacher and prose-writer, and an internationally recognized saint of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, he has also provoked criticism. The church authorities, both Anglican and Catholic, were often troubled by his words and deeds, and scholars have disputed his arguments and his honesty.

Written by a range of international experts, The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman shows how Newman remains important to the fields of education, history, literature, philosophy, and theology. Divided into four parts, part one grounds Newman's works in the places, cultures, and networks of relationships in which he lived. Part two looks at the thinkers who shaped his own thought, while the third part engages critically and appreciatively with themes in his writings. Part four examines how those themes have shaped conversations in the churches and the academy. This Handbook will serve as an important resource to critical and appreciative exploration of the person, writings, controversies, and legacy of Newman.