Theology of Wonder. - Review - book review

Ecumenical Review, The, April, 2000 by Peter Bouteneff

Seraphim Sigrist, Theology of Wonder, Torrance CA, Oakwood Publications, 1999, 147pp.

Theology of Wonder is a collection of essays from a man who is both deeply learned and wholly free. Here are twenty-two vignettes which vary in genre -- meditation, tone-poem, travelogue, spiritual autobiography, spontaneous praise -- yet are held in coherence by a common theme: the wonder of human life as it intersects with the divine.

Rabbis, Norse myths, Majorcan geniuses, Hindu Upanishads, Simone Weil, Christian apologists and modern Roman Catholics (C.S. Lewis, Chesterton), early church fathers (Basil, Irenaeus, Dionysius), Dante, Pascal, the gospels -- and all this only in the first two short chapters, a total of twelve pages. The rest of the book follows suit with an unforced eclecticity which is a sign of the author's learnedness and attentiveness. He has gathered these gems, freely, unpretentiously into a synthesis around his theme.

Indeed, the book is both universal and particular, both free and grounded. No religious expression is rejected simply because of its source outside of Orthodoxy, or outside of Christianity -- rather all is considered for its value, for the light it may shed, for the Truth which it evokes. But this Truth is of course nothing -- or no-one -- other than the Word of God, whom we know as incarnate in Jesus Christ. This means that while it draws from a broad variety of sources, and in this way is "ecumenical", it does not suffer from the theological vaguery which characterizes so many explicitly ecumenical texts. It is highly eclectic, and yet it is not a postmodern pastiche begging for a reference point.

Theology of Wonder is all the more stunning when one considers the climate from which it emerges, a climate which it spurns and from which it tacitly declares utter freedom. The climate I am describing is that of many circles within the Orthodox church today, where the "default setting" is one not of affirmation but of refutation. Many Orthodox Christians today -- at least, those who are making themselves the most heard -- are more apt to negate, to criticize or ignore that which arises from outside the Orthodox church, than they are to affirm what is good, true, beautiful, what is of Christ, everywhere, throughout God's creation, within and without the canonical folds of Orthodoxy. A certain sectarian spirit is on the rise within Orthodoxy (as it is indeed within religious expression worldwide), which means that it is not an easy time to be proclaiming the wonders of Glastonbury, the joys of Annie Dillard, the wisdom one receives from rabbis, not to mention Tolkien's dwarves and wizards. It is all the more difficult to do so if you happen to be a bishop of the Orthodox church.

At times this book does stretch Orthodox dogmatic theology. The author's musings about sophia/wisdom, owing much to the Russian sophiologists, dances between the identification of Wisdom with the person of the Logos, in accordance with Tradition, and the description of a reality that is somehow separate if integrally related to the Logos. There are passing references to "the deification of the universe" and not only of the human person. While such is not to be ignored, this book is one of those instances where to dwell on dogmatic perfection is to miss its entire point. Beyond its theologoumena, this is a book that, while it is Christian above all else, breathes Orthodoxy.

I see this book as both a generous and a courageous act. It is generous because there is no reason whatsoever for Bishop Seraphim to have written it. In fact, the only reasons we have this book are the author's desire to support his beloved Hosanna community in Russia (to which all profits realized through the book will go), and his instinct to share his insights, experiences, interpretations. Yet I must qualify this last statement: Bishop Seraphim would never call these insights "his own". He is an innocent bystander who is there to take it all in, to receive this gracious gift of idea and synthesis. To share it is, for him, only the next natural step.

The book is courageous because of the context from which it comes, as I have already described. In our day people are keen to show how tenaciously they adhere to the Traditional Orthodox View, the Traditional Orthodox Practice, the Traditional Orthodox "Phronema" or "Mind". We Orthodox are living in times where one is attacked for using the word "Easter" instead of "Pascha". An essay of my own was recently called into question by a certain priest for calling Protestants and Catholics "Christians". I pray that Bishop Seraphim's inevitable (and sometimes perhaps even justified) critics resist the temptation to attack what may appear to be an "easy target", and simply relax for a moment, make the sign of the cross, and read again from the beginning.

I am grateful for such a book, which reminds us that orthodoxy can be bigger than Orthodoxy. We Orthodox often say that we know where the Holy Spirit is -- namely, in the life of the Orthodox church -- but we do not know where the Holy Spirit is not. This book gives us many indications of the manifold places where the Holy Spirit is.