The Future of Wisdom: Toward a Rebirth of Sapiential Christianity

This is the most ambitious effort so far to communicate the depth and power of the Christian sapiential tradition, or "wisdom Christianity," and the promise of its dramatic rebirth in our time. While much of the writing of Rahner, von Balthasar, Merton, Bede Griffiths, Abhishiktananda, Leclercq, De Lubac, and Odo Cassel is of this kind, theologians have been slow to connect the dots and to awaken to the organic gestalt of sapiential theology in its unity and vitality. The book shows how the sapiential consciousness and its theological expression develop both the unitive depth (or "East") and the historical dynamism (or "West") of the mystery of Christ. The work unfolds in 4 stages: the awakening of sapiential consciousness; the Eastern turn, which opens Christianity to its own unitive (or nondual) core; the Western turn, in which Christian wisdom is first challenged and then regenerated by its encounter with the personal and historical dynamism of the West (expressed in freedom, creativity, critical thinking, and historical progress); and the global turn of postmodernity, global consciousness, and the world church of Vatican II, in which the unity and intentionality of history become visible and understandable in a Christocentric perspective.

Table of Contents:
Movement I: The Sapiential Awakening; Movement II: The Eastern Turn; Movement III: The Western (Modern) Turn; Movement IV: The Global (Postmodern) Turn.

About the Author :
Bruno Barnhart is a Camaldolese monk of New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California. He is the author of The Good Wine: Reading John from the Center (Paulist, 1993) and Second Simplicity: The Inner Shape of Christianity (Paulist 1999), and co-editor of Purity of Heart and Contemplation: A Monastic Dialogue Between Christian and Asian Traditions (Continuum, 2001)

Review :
"There is a new day coming in Christian spiritual theology, and Bruno Barnhart is posting bulletins marking its progress and explaining its meaning. Christianity's opening to the East has sparked a resurgence of its own wisdom tradition, the Christ-centered nondualistic consciousness of the mystics, through which it touches in appreciative fellowship the other wisdom traditions of the world. Father Bruno traces how this renewed consciousness is breaking out of the conventional containers of Christian and Western religious experience and creating a new realization of the depth and dynamism of the divine incarnation in the human and in the world."--Sanford Lakoff "'Wisdom has built her house, ' and Bruno Barnhart has opened wide its doors and windows. At the center is the incarnation of Wisdom in the 'Christ event.' Barnhart has written a stunning survey of the wisdom tradition, which encompasses ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, and looks to the future with global paths. He contrasts the rise of rationalism with the recession of sapiential theology. In the present Vatican II era, he sees the rebirth of wisdom and the transformation of consciousness. This book could only be written by one who lives its mystery. It will become a classic source on the wisdom tradition." Ewert Cousins--Sanford Lakoff