Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton

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 fragmentation and violence, might infuse new vitality into our own. A study of uncommon depth and scope, inspired throughout by Merton's extraordinary catholicity.