In this series of deeply meditative retreat conferences, Christopher Pramuk leads the reader through a sustained meditation on Wisdom-Sophia, the feminine face of God's presence alive in the world, who speaks and sings in the writings of Thomas Merton. With the sensitivity of a poet and the intellectual acuity of a seasoned teacher and Catholic theologian, Pramuk invites readers to taste and see for themselves the hidden presence of Christ and the dynamism of Love at play in creation; the biblical and mystical tradition from East to West calls this presence Sophia. Looking beyond Merton to...

This book looks to Thomas Merton as a "classic" theologian of the Christian tradition from East to West and offers an interpretation of his mature Christology, with special attention to his remarkable prose poem of 1962, Hagia Sophia. Bringing Merton's mysticalprophetic vision fully into dialogue with contemporary Christology, Russian sophiology, and Zen, as well as fi gures such as John Henry Newman and Abraham Joshua Heschel, the author carefully but boldly builds the case that Sophia, the same theological eros that animated Merton's religious imagination in a period of tremendous...