Lossky and Lent -a book of delights!

During Lent I want to take a closer look at what it means to be human from a Christian perspective, what we might call Christian anthropology. Recent conversation about women priests, gay marriage and so forth have brought me back to the basic questions about what God in Christ has revealed about what it means to be us, and how Christianity has come to understand the purpose of the Church and the Christian life in the light of that.

Who are we? What does it mean to be human? What is Christian anthropology?

I have gone back to a book I bought almost exactly 30 yrs ago while a theology undergraduate at Oxford. I read a lot, really a LOT of books, and bought far too many, but over the years I have given away almost all of my library twice. However, through all that turbulence this is one of the very few books to have survived, and its wisdom is still as fresh and enticing to me today as it was when I first discovered it, I guess, in the college library. The book? "The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church" by the great Orthodox theologian, Vladimir Lossky.

I have jumped into the middle of the book, to the chapter "Image and Likeness". Even if I don't read any other chapter that's ok by me, so long as I have really explored this treasure trove and got a hold of what the implications are for my own spiritual life, my own life in God.