Sight and sacrament

the place of nature in religious experience

Christopher Dupee

pp. 203-214

in: Olga Louchakova-Schwartz (ed), The problem of religious experience, Berlin, Springer, 2019

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the place of material nature with regard to the liturgical thought of both Jean-Yves Lacoste and Jean-Luc Marion. I contend that, in both cases, the analysis of the place of spatiotemporal reality and material nature is deficient, and I look to the possible contributions of the Russian Orthodox writers Theophan the Recluse and Pavel Florensky toward a fuller phenomenology of both liturgy and nature. I hold that the two open up the possibility of a fundamental continuity between so-called earthly life and religious experience. I thus attempt to develop an ecophenomenological nuancing of the accounts of both Lacoste and Marion in conversation with the thought of Florensky and Theophan.

Cited authors

Marion Jean-Luc

Lacoste Jean-Yves