The late modern world teaches us, in various and sundry ways, a highly reductionist account of what it means to know someone or something—including, especially, what it means to know God. With a metaphysic stripped of any real connection to a transcendent source of being, we cannot help but imbibe a truncated form of knowledge and learning. By mining the depths of patristic mystagogy—instruction in the rites of initiation (usually right after baptism)—Hanna Lucas brings to light a rich pedagogical tapestry that can show us a better way forward. Through patient and careful engagement with writings of Ambrose of Milan, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, and Theodore of Mopsuestia, Lucas shows how patristic mystagogy grounds a theological epistemology that sees knowledge as part of the “capacitation” of our nature for heavenly mysteries and union with God. The patristic catechists teach us how even the mundane aspects of knowledge, including the rudiments of matter and sensation, fit into a larger divine gift of capacitation. The result is 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.

Catechesis Institute

Alex Fogleman

Sensing the Sacred: A Conversation with Hanna Lucas, Simon Oliver, and Ephraim Radner

JAN 9, 2024-1 MIN
Catechesis Institute

Sensing the Sacred: A Conversation with Hanna Lucas, Simon Oliver, and Ephraim Radner

JAN 9, 2024-1 MIN

Description

In this virtual book launch, theologian and Catechesis Institute fellow Hanna Lucas presents her new book, Sensing the Sacred: Recovering a Mystagogical Vision of Knowledge and Salvation (Wipf & Stock, 2023), with responses and discussion from Simon Oliver (Van Mildert Professor of Theology at Durham University) and Ephraim Radner (Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto). Order a copy of the book here, with discount code CATECHESIS to get 40% off.