Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton by Christopher Pramuk (review)

• Published in: Christianity & literature 2011, Vol.60 (3), p.502-505
• Main Author: Labrie, Ross
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Christianity; Context; Creative writing; Creativity; Culture; Death & dying; Epistemology; God; Literary criticism; Merton, Thomas (1915-1968); Poetry; Prose; Proverbs; Religion; Spirituality; Theologians; Theology
• ISSN: 0148-3331; 2056-5666

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: 502 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE by this vision would educate people to serve their local places in humility and discipline (190-91). In this book, Bonzo and Stevens certainly achieve their purpose of introducing an evangelical audience to Berry's thought. As its lack of bibliography and scant index suggest, this book does not intend to offer a serious, scholarly assessment of Berry's writing, and yet most readers of Christianity and Literature would find in the last two chapters an insightful vision of the good that their churches and universities should consider. And for those readers unfamiliar with Wendell Berry, this book can provide an overview that will encourage them to make their own foray into his writing. JeffreyBilbro Baylor University Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton. By Christopher Pramuk. Collegeville:Liturgical Press, 2009.ISBN978-0-8146-5390-6. Pp.xxx + 322.$29.95. In this perceptive and complex study of Thomas Merton, Christopher Pramuk addresses two of the most important issues facing Merton scholars: Merton's inclusiveapproach to religion and to culture generally and his paradisal vision. Although both of these phenomena have been linked in the past to Merton's Romanticism, Pramuk here associates them with sophianic theology. Merton's attraction to sophianic theology Pramuk traces to certain Russian Orthodox theologians in whom Merton became interested in the 1950s.Moreover, Pramuk attempts to square the circle in Merton studies, as it were, by uniting Merton's literary way of thinking, particularly his intuitiveness and his reliance upon the imagination, with his Christology . In part, Pramuk is attempting to raise respect for Merton in the theological community where Merton has often been relegated to the more modest role of spiritual writer rather than theologian. While Merton is not viewed as a systematic theologian, Pramuk attempts to make a case for him as a mystical theologian. Pramuk discusses Merton's sophianic spirituality largelyin the context of three Russian theologians-Sergius Bulgakov, Paul Evdokimov, and Vladimir Soloviev. The breadth of this spirituality is laid out in such a way that one sees the connection between it and Merton's writings from the late 1950s until his death in 1968. Beginning with the centrality of Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs, a conventionally seen, anticipatory image of Christ, Pramuk develops the thesis that Merton, like the