Overview

"This book offers a theological vision of learning informed by the mystagogical homilies of Ambrose of Milan, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, and Theodore of Mopsuestia. In dialogue with these four mystagogues, Hanna Lucas walks through the rites and liturgy surrounding baptism and the eucharist in order to establish a theological epistemology that sees knowledge as part of the ""capacitation"" of our nature for heavenly mysteries and union with God. The sacraments of initiation teach us that even the mundane aspects of knowledge, including the rudiments of matter and sensation, fit into a larger divine gift of capacitation. This book offers a holistic and integrated theory of knowledge that envisions one all-encompassing divine pedagogy that orients toward union with God. This union is experienced fully in the eschaton, but it breaks into time through the sacraments of the church, and it echoes down through the ordinary modes of knowing we encounter in daily life. Mundane knowledge beckons the knower to become capable of a sublime intelligence: to become capable of union with the divine. This integrative, unitive, and eschatologically oriented vision of knowledge stands in stark contrast to modern and postmodern epistemologies. Sensing the Sacred positions mystagogy as a timely remedy for the ""incapacitations"" that modernity offers us."

Full Product Details

9781666758054

Table of Contents

Reviews

"""Deeply rooted in patristic mystagogy, Hanna Lucas constructs a theology of learning that guides our faculties to receive God. Sensing the Sacred wisely counsels a return to an approach that integrates all learning--sensible, rational, and spiritual--into a unified process of capacitation for union with God. Teachers in every discipline, therefore, do well to heed Lucas's salutary appeal for a return to mystery."" --Hans Boersma, chair in ascetical theology, Nashotah House Theological Seminary ""I have sitting before me the classic beauty on love and learning by Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God. This bounty of a book by Hanna Lucas, Sensing the Sacred, walks Leclercq to yet deeper and fuller places, a vision of the mystagogical tradition at the core of salvation knowledge. Lucas has made deep dives and recovered many a priceless pearl--do read and inwardly digest soul nourishment of the highest level."" --Ron Dart, associate professor of political science, University of the Fraser Valley ""Hanna Lucas combines deep engagement with Latin, Greek, and Syriac mystagogical texts with a broad, enthusiastic, and constructive theological vision. What she develops in this volume is both a rich retrieval and a bold development of a theology of learning."" --Karen Kilby, professor of Catholic theology, University of Durham"

Author Information

Hanna J. Lucas is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow and an adjunct lecturer in theology at Durham University. She is also tutor in theology and ethics at College of the Resurrection in Mirfield, UK, and a research fellow of the Institute for the Renewal of Christian Catechesis.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available