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Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley, editors The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011 Pp. xix + 316. $99.00.
What does it mean to perceive God with the senses? And are one's physical senses up to the job? Is it a purely mental activity? Or are the bodily senses somehow engaged? These questions reveal the variety of Christian reflection on the topic of spiritual perception. The perceiver and the perceived invite as much scrutiny as the process of and conditions for perception of God.
The editors have assembled sixteen fine essays, each (with a few exceptions) devoted to a specific Christian writer. Patristic writers include Origen (Mark J. McInroy), Gregory of Nyssa (Coakley), Augustine (Matthew R. Lootens), Gregory the Great (George E. Demacopoulos), Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (Gavrilyuk), and Maximus the Confessor (Frederick D. Aquino). Readers of this journal might be tempted to stop there. To do so, however, misses some fascinating developments in the tradition, as explored in essays on scholasticism, mysticism of the...