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List of contents
Introduction
Part One: Retrieval
Chapter 1:
Scripture
Chapter 2:
The Early Church
Chapter 3:
The Latin West
Chapter 4:
The Middle Ages
Chapter 5:
Into the Modern Era
Part Two: Revival
Chapter 6:
Reviving solar symbolism
Chapter 7:
Resources for recasting the tradition
Chapter 8:
Sacred Direction: Are Christians to Pray Towards the Sun?
Chapter 9:
Light, Sun and Liturgy
Chapter 10
Jesus the Sun of Justice in a Sunless Age
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Presently a member of the team at the church of Notre Dame de France, London, Kevin Duffy has taught theology and spirituality in various countries including Ireland, Cameroon and New Zealand.
Summary
This pioneering study of Christian sun symbolism describes how biblical light motifs were taken up with energy in the early Church. Kevin Duffy argues that, living in a world of 24/7 illumination, we need to reconnect with the sun and its light to appreciate the meaning of light in the Bible and Christian tradition. With such a retrieval we can appreciate Pope Francis’s insistence that, like the moon, the Church does not shine with its own light, and assess the claim that the Eucharist is to be celebrated ‘Ad Orientem’, that is towards the rising sun in the East. Liturgy, architecture, poetry and the writings of saints and theologians such as Augustine, Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, and Thomas Traherne offer abundant resources for a much needed ressourcement.
While Christ was preached as the True Sun among sun-worshipping Aztecs, and the consecrated host was placed in a solar monstrance on Baroque altars, in the modern era solar themes have been neglected. In this accessible work, the author suggests that we rebalance a spiritual symbolism that has over-emphasised darkness and cloud at the expense of light and sun. He proposes a creative retrieval of the traditional title of Christ as the Sun of Justice. This title blends the personal, the social and the cosmic/ecological, and speaks powerfully to a secularising era that contemporaries Friedrich Nietzsche and Thérèse of Lisieux both described as one where the sun does not shine.
Foreword
The first book-length general treatment of Christian solar symbolism, with proposals for its revival.
Additional text
Kevin Duffy’s Christian Solar Symbolism and Jesus the Sun of Justice offers us a broad-brush sweep of Christian sources for a concrete, contemplative and natural theology of the place of Jesus Christ in the universe and in human history. By piecing together so many sources of solar symbolism, Duffy makes a mosaic pattern of breathtakingly colourful and rich pictures from an all-but forgotten tradition. We experience Christ in the brilliance of warmth, light and power in a way that opens up our minds and imaginations to the impulses behind much contemporary Christological thinking. Duffy’s book is as welcome as a ray of sunshine.
