Liturgical Experience Research Articles

‘The Hidden Present’: Time and Eschatology in Jean-Yves Lacoste

This article explores the phenomenology of time and eschatology in the thought of Jean-Yves Lacoste, including his recent book on the philosophy of history. Lacoste’s idea of “the hidden present” is examined within the context of his broader theological and philosophical framework, with a particular focus on the way it addresses the intersection of temporality and eternity. Human temporality is characterized by finitude and death, which are interpreted both philosophically—under the influence of Heidegger’s philosophy—and theologically. Using Husserlian and Heideggerian concepts, Lacoste proposes a theologically inspired conceptual network: phenomenological reduction versus theological reduction, world versus creation, death versus resurrection, care (Sorge) versus eschatological restlessness, and time versus eschaton. All of these describe the liturgical experience of man before God and the possibility of an eternity which, from the point of view of the world and of our experience in the world, can only take on the ever-provisional figure of anticipation. The present article argues for the existence of a theological paradox of eschatology in the writings of the French phenomenologist: even if eschatology is only anticipated, the liturgical man, situated before God (coram Deo), experiences it in an incomplete and apophatic manner.

Antiochian Orthodox Liturgy and Formation of Young Adults: Union with the Lord

This practical theological study considers what the participation of young adults in the Antiochian Orthodox liturgy in Lebanon means for their formation. We distinguish four formational categories: (1) formation through liturgical rituals, (2) formation through education and coaching, (3) formation through the energies of God in the dimensions of beauty, peace, and protection, and (4) formation into liturgical lives. The first two categories demonstrate the mutuality of participation and formation. In the third category, the mystical tradition yields an affect, expressed by words such as beauty, peace, and protection. This affect points to the energies of God in which the young people long to participate. This received love of God in liturgy is shared (in a diaconal way) in daily life. However, this liturgical experience remains incomprehensible for those not properly initiated through the channels of youth movements or clubs.

Inhumation as Theophanic Encounter: The Eastern Orthodox Rejection of Cremation

Abstract This essay aims to articulate why the Orthodox have historically, and to the present, opposed cremation. Its primary line of argument is that inhumation is a site of “theophanic encounter”: a manifestation of the Glory of God. This theophanic quality is borne out in the scriptures and the Church’s liturgical experience. In particular, the connections between the funeral service and the entombed Christ on Holy Friday and Saturday properly situate the meaning of the post-mortem body. This intimate connection between the deceased and their body is clear in Orthodoxy’s “hylomorphism,” the soul-body unity, which champions the eschatology of resurrection. Finally, all of the above is concretely experienced in the cult of the saints and their relics, which become vehicles for the divine energies: a theophany of Christ’s ongoing conquest of sin and death. Thus, cremation can only be viewed as a tragic misunderstanding of the dual meaning of “doxa” in Orthodoxy: right-belief and right-glory.

Initiating into the Celebration of the Mystery: Evaluating the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd in Light of the 2020 Directory for Catechesis

ABSTRACT: Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS) is a method that integrates catechetical, intellectual, and theological approaches with experiential, embodied, and liturgical ways of learning and knowing. This article examines CGS through the lens of the 2020 Directory for Catechesis . This study seeks to demonstrate that CGS succeeds, especially through its liturgical elements and application of Montessori principles, at the Directory 's task of "initiating into the celebration of the mystery." By drawing from CGS's founders and from concrete examples of its approach, the article also argues that young children are capable of, and should be invited into, profound liturgical experience.

Ligatures and Fusions: Joinery and Conjunction in Fay Jones’s Thorncrown Chapel (1980) and Mildred B. Cooper Memorial Chapel (1988)

Abstract: The American architect Fay Jones (1921–2004) designed chapels that are recognized for their modern interpretation of traditional ritualistic practices to enrich the spatial, visual, and liturgical experience of worshippers and visitors alike. This note will examine two prominent chapels that Jones designed in Arkansas—the Thorncrown Chapel (1980) in Eureka Springs and Mildred B. Cooper Memorial Chapel (1988) in Bella Vista—to interpret the architect’s material and phenomenological intents in joinery and conjunction. By considering Jones’s interpretation of anthropomorphism in relation to Gothic structural systems, this note offers a comparison of the two celebrated chapels. In both chapels, Jones applied an inconsistent means of joining one material to another to evoke specific spatial and architectural experiences. This note proposes that these material junctions constitute ligatures and fusions. This study defines ligature as a tied or fastened connection, and a fusion as juxtaposition of materials by adjacency. Architecturally a ligature is a junction where one material is fastened to another through the agency of a third element, a mediating element—a connector, or a space—as in the case of the voids at the crossings of the steel roof trusses at Thorncrown Chapel. Fusion is an intersection where one material rests on another, without the assistance of a mediating element—as in the instance of the tall steel columns that rest on the stone lateral walls at Cooper Chapel. Based on these classifications, this essay explores the analogous relationship between human skeletal joints and architectural junctions in the chapels. This comparison demonstrates the nuances of Jones’s orchestration of spatial, material, and structural elements as architectural tropes of the human anatomy. Utilizing sketches, drawings, and photos from the Jones papers housed at the University of Arkansas as well as illustrations prepared for this analysis, this note offers an anthropomorphic interpretation of the details and joinery in the work of Fay Jones.

Day-VII Architecture: A Catalogue of Polish Churches post 1945

Day-VII Architecture: A Catalogue of Polish Churches post 1945

Acrostic in Byzantine Hymnography and Slavonic Spiritual Poetry in Byzantine Hymnography

The purpose of the work is to investigate the functioning of the acrostiс verse in various contexts of the spiritual culture of the European space. This ancient form is used in Old Testament poetry, Byzantine hymnography, Ukrainian sacred monody and spiritual song. The methodological basis is the application of systemic and complex approaches, which ensured the establishment of valuable social and cultural functional elements within the historical development of mankind. The use of comparative method of research contributed to the identification of structural models that ensured the integrity and systematicity of the evolution of culture on the example of form-forming structures. In this context, we also use the heuristic method of research, which contributes to the modeling of structural connections within cultural and artistic forms. The use of the specified research methods contributed to obtaining own theoretical results. The scientific novelty of the study is determined by the originality of the theoretical principle of comparing the form of the acrostic in different genres over time intervals. Conclusions. The ways of arranging poetic texts, which laid the foundations of Byzantine hymnography, are a complex system formed on the basis of ancient metrical and melodic constructions. The acrostic became the evidence of the adaptation of such experience of ancient forms of poetry – as a source of a number of important form-creating processes. The long-term use of the acrostic is evidence of the use of liturgical experience in the context of synthesising the “technological developments” of ancient cultures and singling out among them the most functional, in particular, the acrostic.
 Key words: acrostiс, Byzantine hymnography, sacred monody, baroque poetry, Bohohlasnyk, spiritual song.

Deification through the Cross: An Eastern Christian Theology of Salvation by Khaled Anatolios

Reviewed by: Deification through the Cross: An Eastern Christian Theology of Salvation by Khaled Anatolios Daniel Galadza Khaled Anatolios. Deification through the Cross: An Eastern Christian Theology of Salvation. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020. 464 pp. The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed explains that the Incarnation was “for our salvation.” What the essence of this salvation is, and how it comes about, is the focus of Father Khaled Anatolios’s Deification through the Cross, which examines the implications of Christian doctrine regarding the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ for academic theology and for Christian life. The centrality of salvation to theological discourse should be apparent, but in his introduction Anatolios shows how certain theologians have overemphasized or avoided one or another prominent aspect of the Gospel in their construction of soteriological “models” (i.e., ransom, atonement, [End Page 150] penal substitution, satisfaction, etc.), often without elaborating upon any experiential access to salvation (23). Instead of adding yet another model to the “cafeteria buffet,” Anatolios proposes deification as the content and goal of salvation, made possible by the Son of God becoming a human being who suffers the Passion, dies on the cross, and rises from the dead, granting victory over death and freedom from disordered passions; this inspires repentance and rejection of sin in light of the joyous news of Christ’s already accomplished salvation, leading to human deification, which consists of the glorification of God. The thread running through the whole book is the “dramatic synthesis of the dialectic of sorrow over sins and the celebration of divine glory” (81), which Anatolios calls “doxological contrition.” The soteriology of doxological contrition is constructed in the first part of the book on the basis of liturgical experience, Scripture (with a critique of the historical-critical method), and conciliar Trinitarian and Christological statements from the seven ecumenical councils, before building a systematic theology of doxological contrition in the second part, which examines sin and reintegration into the life of the Trinity. His main thesis is that “Christ’s salvific work includes a representative and vicarious repentance on our behalf that has as its points of departure and destination the communion with divine glory” (141). The starting point for his theology of salvation is the Byzantine Liturgy. Anatolios begins with an analysis of what the prayers (more precisely hymns) from Great Lent, Holy Week, Pascha, and Pentecost say about repentance and salvation, using the lens of a “worshipper-response” approach. Doxological contrition expressed in first-person voice hymns, sung by the “ideal worshipper” (68), conveys the paradoxical experience and “dialectical simultaneity of lost and found glory” (84), so that “the Byzantine liturgy does not prescribe doxology along with contrition; it leads one into a contrition that is doxological through and through” (92), joyfully intertwining the salvific efficacy of Christ’s death and Resurrection in its soteriology of exchange. The lens of “doxological contrition” through which Anatolios views the liturgical hymns offers a constructive development and perhaps unintentional synthesis of recent studies in liturgy not referenced in this book—for example, the “penitential self” in Derek Krueger’s Liturgical Subjects: Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative, and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), and the human person’s “doxological vocation” in Brian A. Butcher’s Liturgical Theology after Schme-mann: An Orthodox Reading of Paul Ricoeur (Fordham University Press, 2018). This book’s rich presentation of doxo-logical contrition offers the reader immense satisfaction but nevertheless leaves avenues of investigation open in the realm of liturgy and contemporary Eastern Orthodox theology. Anatolios points to discoveries of explicit correlations in a variety of patristic authors between contrition, doxology, and Christ’s salvific work that become obvious once the reader knows to look for them (222–23), but he sets aside the task of unpacking these discoveries for a future book. The correspondence between the content of Byzantine hymns and soteriological themes throughout the book are instructive; an examination of the liturgical and biblical sources in part 1 using, for example, the recently published thesis of Hieromonk Macarius (Gerard Bonnet) of Simonopetra, in Mystagogie du Grand Carême: Essai de théologie du temps liturgique (Monastère de Simonos Pétra, 2018...

“All of Us” before God: Phenomenological Contours of the Liturgical Assembly according to Franz Rosenzweig and Jean-Yves Lacoste

This article treats the notion of liturgical experience that was introduced into contemporary philosophy by Franz Rosenzweig at the start of the twentieth century. His original and deep thinking in the Star of Redemption describes, among other things, the liturgical feasts of Judaism and Christianity as ramparts against finitude and as openings onto the ultimate. The article will bring together his descriptions of the liturgical assembly as a dialogical and choral “we” or “all of us” with the work of Jean-Yves Lacoste who has made liturgy the very heart of his magisterial phenomenological work. Putting these two authors into conversation allows us to uncover some salient traits of what makes for a liturgical community, such as the link between the liturgical assembly and the notion of communion. Drawing on both Rosenzweig and Lacoste, we can see, first, that this community is not simply cultural or ideological, but that its core lies in the concrete experience of exposing oneself before God. Next, I take up the idea of eschatological presentiment in Lacoste and the choral response-structure in Rosenzweig and suggest that this eschatological anticipation is manifested in the flesh of the assembly, endowing it with a dimension of responsibility. Finally, the liturgical assembly becomes a concrete body in which the kingdom is able to come near in the density of presence as fraternity within an aura of love. By doing so, a “thinking otherwise” may prove capable of illuminating philosophical understandings of human community more broadly.

“Being-Placed before God”: Reading the Early Heidegger’s Phenomenology of Liturgy with Jean-Yves Lacoste

This article aims to demonstrate, by means of a comparison with Lacoste’s proposal, that we can find a particular phenomenology of liturgy in the early Heidegger’s phenomenology of religion, centered in the structure of “being-placed before God”. His examination of this structure manages to go deeper than Lacoste in order to account for the essence of human existence. With this purpose in mind, in the first section of the article I will the present the basic features of the liturgical experience, as it is introduced in Experience and the Absolute. In the second section, I will analyze the early Heidegger’s phenomenology of religion and its interpretation of Christian factical life experience. Finally, in the third section, I will bring the insights from both sections together to establish the particularities of Heidegger’s phenomenology of liturgy.

The Transcendental and the Immanent as Liturgical Experience – the Greek Orthodox Case

The essay is a quantitative analysis of a questionnaire distributed to a sample of 775 worshipers immediately after the Sunday Liturgy in a random number of churches in Athens, Thessaloniki and Mytilini. The questions addressed to them try to grasp feelings and thoughts felt during liturgical experience and effervescence as such, as well as reflections concerning the religious and the political self. The findings suggest that the liturgy has profound effects on those who attend service often, but it is not irrelevant even to those who attend service less often. Those who attend service often and feel strongly the liturgical rite tend to identify religion, both doctrinal and vernacular (the ‘little traditions’), with politics, consider themselves to be rightist and hold political beliefs revolving around antinomian egotism and authoritative paternalism. Those who attend service rarely and do not experience any effervescence, as the mirror-image of the former, tend to identify themselves as leftist and hold political beliefs revolving around revolution, defiance and the like, and reject democratic institutions. The study underlines the very close connection of church attendance to ‘magical’ aspects of the Orthodox religion, as well as the very strong presence of icons in the life of the believers irrespective of their frequency of liturgical attendance.

ПРОБЛЕМА РЕЛИГИОЗНОГО ЯЗЫКА И РЕАЛИСТИЧЕСКАЯ ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИЯ: НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ ГЕТТИНГЕНСКИХ ЛЕКЦИЙ А. РАЙНАХА

The article aims to discover potential of realistic phenomenology for analysis of prayer as the most significant form of religious language. To that end, the prayer thematization in the framework of religious discourse (as exemplified in works of metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh and R. Schaeffler) is compared to theoretical statements of Reinach’s lecture course “Einleitung in die Philosophie”. The study of texts by metropolitan Anthony and Schaeffler on prayer identifies a basic opposition – between a canonic liturgical text and subjective experience of the one who prays, that opposition manifests itself in reasoning of ordinary discussions on the topic and is overpassed in different ways by the religious thinkers. At another point Reinach’s reflections on some regularities of inner experience, concentrating on the example of artistic forms, offer a new approach to the opposition between formalised ritual and personal experience. While analysing a phenomenon of empathy, Reinach concludes that traditional terms of “the one’s own and the stranger’s” applying to experience must be substituted with an opposition between the immediate and the mediated. From such point of view hymnography is comprehended as a form of symbolic mediation of the ideal contents of religious experience, which allows to speak about the “deprivatization” of religious experience as an original contribution of realistic phenomenology to the philosophy of religion.

Liturgische Theologie als Praxisreflexion. Qualitative Forschung unter Benediktineroblaten

The relation between liturgical practice and theological reflection is by no means self-evident, especially in a secularized society. How can academic theology be rooted in liturgical life, and how can liturgical involvement play a vital role in the task of theology to reflect on liturgical tradition and practice? Liturgical theology is an attempt to bridge that gap between practice and reflection. The voice of practitioners as part of theological discourse is an important ingredient for this hermeneutical dialogue. Monastic life offers a space where liturgical and theological life can meet, especially in Benedictine abbeys. There, liturgical experience (theologia prima) is directly linked to theological reflection (theologia secunda), which leads to critical impulses for both, liturgy and theology, inside and outside abbey walls. Today, monastic communities are shrinking, but there is a growing interest in liturgical life among affiliated members of abbeys: the number of Benedictine oblates are growing. What is their view on liturgical experience, reflection and criticism? In this article, I present findings from a qualitative survey among fifty-three Dutch Benedictine oblates. Their answers are analyzed by coding procedures and interpreted theologically. They form an example of liturgical theology as practice-reflection.

On Martyrdom, Suicide, and Christian Bioethics.

Confusing martyrdom and suicide locates ethics outside the Church by bending language around the 5th commandment. St. Ignatius of Antioch's martyrdom clarifies the role of the Christian bioethicist to situate health care in the Church's life-giving liturgical experience.

Trans/Criptions

Abstract Phenomenological theology can provide a helpful reframing of the bodily rituals of transgender and disabled experience, embracing the ways in which they waste time and energy and sacralizing this waste as a microtactic of resistance to oppression and a site for the in-breaking of the transcendent in the everyday. Using Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's model of the misfit, trans and disabled experience can be understood as a temporal misfitting under the cis and abled norms of neoliberal capitalism, which seeks to contain, suppress, or eliminate their inefficient, flexible, and waste time. A coalitional politics of trans/crip misfitting must resist the capacitating imperatives of normative time, instead leaning into the rupture created by trans/crip time as a space-time of potentiality and openness to alterity. The theological thought of Jean-Yves Lacoste can help frame the little rituals and bodily practices of trans and crip life as de Certeauvian microtactics that embody resistance to the coercions of neoliberal capitalism and, through their very frustration and difficulty, as sites of possibility for true liturgical experience.

Pixelating the Sacred: Digital and Mechanical Reproduction and the Orthodox Christian Icon in the United States

Drawing upon recent ethnographic research (interviews and participant observation) conducted among members of an Orthodox Christian parish (Orthodox Church in America or OCA) located in the southern United States, I explore the ways that contemporary digital and other mechanical modes of reproduction complicate how contemporary American Orthodox Christians integrate icons, two-dimensional images essential to Orthodox worship, into their devotional lives. While theologians have traditionally emphasized hand-painted icons as fundamental to the Orthodox liturgical experience, mass-produced print and digitally downloaded reproductions have largely supplanted such traditionally crafted images in the lived, everyday experience of American Orthodox Christians. A key theme of this paper is the way these developing technologies enhance the agency of my informants as they make critical decisions regarding which images (within a prodigious visual landscape) to accept as “icons” over and against others simply dismissed and disposed of as mere “pictures.” The inherent tensions informants confront in the process of this decision-making as well as the ways they appeal to Orthodox tradition in sanctifying their iconographic selections will be featured in this article.

Liturgy and Trinity

This essay seeks to counter “liturgicism,” which gives to the liturgy alone the role of making known the content of divine revelation. Without slighting the liturgy, we should affirm that the word of God is given (as truth) in Scripture and Tradition. Thus, liturgical experience is informed by Scripture as dogmatically interpreted by the Church. Focusing on the Trinity, I defend this point by recourse to four late-patristic and medieval liturgical commentaries, each of which combines allegorical interpretation of the liturgy with the exposition of doctrine: St. Germanus of Constantinople’s Ecclesiastical History and Mystical Contemplation; Nicholas Cabasilas’s Commentary on the Divine Liturgy; Amalarius of Metz’s Liber officialis; and William Durandus the Elder of Mende’s Rationale divinorum officiorum.

Christian Mindfulness: Theology and Practice by Peter Tyler, and: Living with the Mind of Christ: Mindfulness in Christian Spirituality by Stefan Gillow Reynolds, and: Mindfulness and Christian Spirituality: Making a Space for God by Tim Stead, and: Right Here Right Now: The Practice of Christian Mindfulness by Amy G. Oden

Reviewed by: Christian Mindfulness: Theology and Practice by Peter Tyler, and: Living with the Mind of Christ: Mindfulness in Christian Spirituality by Stefan Gillow Reynolds, and: Mindfulness and Christian Spirituality: Making a Space for God by Tim Stead, and: Right Here Right Now: The Practice of Christian Mindfulness by Amy G. Oden Steven Chase (bio) Christian Mindfulness: Theology and Practice. By Peter Tyler. London, UK: SCM Press, 2018. 177 pp. A$35.00; Living with the Mind of Christ: Mindfulness in Christian Spirituality. By Stefan Gillow Reynolds. London, UK: Darton, Longman, and Todd, Ltd., 2018. 257 pp. $17.99; Mindfulness and Christian Spirituality: Making a Space for God. By Tim Stead Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017. 144 pp. $15.00; Right Here Right Now: The Practice of Christian Mindfulness. By Amy G. Oden Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2017. 112 pp. $14.99. We seem to be in the midst of a mindfulness storm. Peter Tyler Mindfulness was not just a practice of Jesus recovered today but has been a practice of the Church through the centuries, though often neglected and repressed. Stefan Gillow Reynolds Indeed, there seems today to be a mindfulness storm. Spiritus has noticed the storm in various religions, in secular practice, in therapy and psychology, in various academic disciplines, in the relatively new methodologies in contemplative studies, in sciences and ecology, in the study of play, and more. This essay will focus on four recent books specifically on Christian mindfulness in which a storm, or an Edenic garden, if you please, of mindfulness is lush and growing. Spiritus has picked for review four representative books focused specifically on Christian mindfulness. The books look at mindfulness from the viewpoints of Christian traditions, theology, psychology, scripture, spiritual practice, modes of personal experience and more. Peter Tyler's book is excellent in all of these areas, Stefan Reynolds' book is very good, and Amy Oden and Tim Stead provide helpful books on mindfulness in scripture and spiritual practice. One thing that the books mostly agree on is that the Christian church has, for centuries, neglected and repressed key components of mindfulness. These components include but are not limited to spiritual practice, the recognition of the sacred quality of the body and the earth, direct access to the soul and spirit through personal and communal liturgical experience, and a sense of divine presence. Many persons have left the church because of hierarchical power structures of neglect and disregard of body, mind, soul, and spirit. Mindfulness is often seen as a potential threat to entrenched power structures and patriarchal suppression. The books under review admit that they are not inventing the awareness and practice of Christian mindfulness. Rather, they are retrieving the roots of ancient practice within the church, they are developing contemporary methods of mindful experience and [End Page 356] practice, and they are recognizing the gift or grace of mindfulness to persons, communities, and creation itself. Each of the books under review here takes a different perspective on how such repression contributes to loss of spirit and mindful ways of living. Each, however, finds value in the contemporary storm of mindfulness, varied as the violent storms of resistant hierarchy may be. Many contemporary Christians view mindfulness (even as they practice it in some forms of prayer) with antipathy, resentment, fear, and as a threat to their faith and to their religion. Such perspectives view mindfulness as incapable of integrating any kind of Christian values or practice. Such viewpoints are unfortunate. These negative perspectives on mindfulness have a deadening effect on the works of Christian compassion, relationships with the "other," and communion with the God they proclaim. This, too, is a powerful storm. Two storms clashing can produce one storm that kills. What is a mindful reaction to these misunderstandings? We will look first at the work of Peter Tyler because of the quality of his writing, his ability to explore the depths of ancient Christian writers' use of essentially mindful practices (see, for instance, his chapter that looks closely at Teresa of Avila, 61–91), and his uncanny ability to translate ancient Christian formation techniques into contemporary experience, practice and desire. Tyler does excellent work examining the cultures of both...

Die opbou van ’n missionale gemeente: ’n Verkenning van die invloed van Godsbegrip en liturgiese ervaring

The building up of a local missional congregation: The understanding of God and liturgy. The purpose of this article is to investigate the understanding of God by members of the Netherdutch Reformed Church (Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika [NHKA]), their liturgical experience and its influence on the development of a missional congregation. The world is currently in the midst of a wave of changes that have far-reaching implications for the church and, specifically, for the NHKA. In a changing world it is imperative that church members understand the value of the different metaphors of God as well as its value for the development of the missional congregation. From a practical-theological approach, this article aims to look at the influence of the liturgy of life on the development of a missional congregation.

Book Review: Balthasar on the Spiritual Senses: Perceiving Splendour

Balthasar on the Spiritual Senses: Perceiving Splendour. By Mark McInroy. Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 217 pp. $99.00 (cloth).Mark McInroy's book Balthasar on the Spiritual Senses sets itself to the task of uncovering Balthasars use and modification of the doctrine of the spiritual senses-that is, the doctrine that human beings have senses in the spiritual realm that are analogous to those of the physical. McInroy focuses on the function of the spiritual senses in Balthasar's thought because he desires to fill a lacuna in Balthasar scholarship, as he observes that only a handful of scholars have observed that the spiritual senses are a noteworthy feature of Balthasars (p. 4). This lack of scholarly investigation is significant, for after all, At the very core of Balthasar's aesthetics lies the idea that our perceptual faculties must become ?spiritualized' if we are to perceive the splendour (Glanz) of the form through which God is revealed (p. 2). Another way to summarize McInroy's efforts here is as a serious attempt to pull together various threads or themes quite prevalent in Balthasar and yet not always articulated as a unity.One of McInroy's basic points is that Balthasar is quite aware of how important embodiment is in the spiritual life, so much so that the spiritual aspect of human beings has senses. We must avoid reducing spiritual perception to the merely metaphorical (p. 21). Why we must do so is not at first apparent, though McInroy increasingly unveils how-ultimately-Balthasar is defending and elevating beauty, which is closely tied to our senses. McInroy reveals Balthasar's logic by stressing specific elements of his thought. So, the chapters focus tightly on a handful of interlocking ideas: the very real sense-quality, or sensuality, of the spiritual senses (see especially the study of Origen, pp. 18-36); the precarious balance that must be kept between spiritual sight and the invisible God (as on pp. 125-129,154-160); and beauty as the sensible revelation of being (especially pp. 132-133,143-154).Balthasar, and so McInroy, binds himself firmly to the conviction that the spiritual senses do not perceive God's nature, God in se, which Balthasar terms the Deus nudus (pp. 126-127). We should not imagine that God has a body, or that Balthasar thinks God does. This has much more to do with a Christian's perception of God's call of each person to a mission in the world, with liturgical experience, with encountering our neighbor (pp. …