Doors of Perception/The Illuminating Icon:
Jordan, Patrick
IN BRIEF Doors of Perception: Icons and Their Spiritual Significance, by John Baggley, with an Appendix by Richard Temple. St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, $12.95, 160 pp. The Illuminating Icon, by...
...The Illuminating Icon, by Anthony Ugolnik...
...Their beauty and inner harmony, once appreciated, attract and then transform...
...What is the particular quality of light that shines from within certain Orthodox icons...
...In examining their insights, he underscores the aesthetic and communal qualities of Orthodoxy, which, he argues, could help the West rediscover its spiritual purpose...
...He displays a rich background in Orthodox theology, particularly Russian theologians of the last two centuries, not a few of whom suffered government persecution...
...Doors of Perception succinctly describes the mechanics, aesthetic theory, history, and theology of icons...
...as well as the materialist tenets of the Soviet system...
...In that sense, it is like the remarkable icons that inspire and illuminate both these works...
...William B. Eerdmans, $18.95, 280 pp...
...Or the harmony that is produced in the resounding chorales of Orthodox liturgies...
...His love of his heritage is immense, instructive, and inviting...
...In the Catholic sense, icons are thus sacramental: human works that image forth and make present the imageless...
...These two books lead us into unfamiliar but inspiring territory: the aesthetic, theological, and sacramental genius of the Russian Orthodox sensibility...
...In The Illuminating Icon, Anthony Ugolnik, a Russian Orthodox American, reflects on the aesthetic and communal qualities of his religious heritage and brings them critically to bear on the major antagonists of the cold war...
...An icon is a painted image that serves as a "door" or threshold through which the whole person passes into the divine realm, "a meeting point of divine grace and human need...
...What in heaven, or earth, do they teach us...
...They instruct, they edify...
...P.J.s...
...They lead the faithful more deeply into the communal and liturgical life of the church, and to participation in the divine life...
...The authors see in the multidimensional attributes of Orthodoxy a suitable antidote to the twentieth-century materialist malaise, whether Marxist or capitalist...
...An ordained deacon, college professor, army veteran, frequent visitor to the Soviet Union, and self-styled cultural outsider, Ugolnik questions the individualized civil religion of the U.S...
...P.J...
Vol. 116 • November 1989 • No. 20
