SSCS member Christopher Morris's PhD dissertation (University of Divinity, 2020) is freely available for download. Here is its abstract:
This thesis is a study of the work of the Camaldolese Benedictine monk, Fr Bruno Barnhart (1931-2015). He envisions the Christian life from the perspective of wisdom and centred in participatory knowing. Barnhart develops a vision for wisdom today inspired by the Second Vatican Council and framed around four key ‘turns’: an umbrella turn, ‘the sapiential awakening’ representing the fundamental turn towards a wisdom approach; and three further turns to respond to today’s diverse context - ‘the eastern, western and global turns.’
The thesis will show how the four turns can be interpreted as four principles of ‘wisdom knowing’ - a core principle (radical participation) and three dynamic principles (nonduality, creative freedom, and communion). It will argue that wisdom knowing contributes to two issues identified by scholars of the discipline of Christian spirituality. Firstly, the need to foster wholeness in Christian life through engagement with multiple perspectives. Secondly, in light of the diversity of these perspectives, to develop processes of interpretation to discern Christian specificity. The discipline proposes the category of lived experience to address these issues.
The relationship between lived experience and wisdom knowing provides the basis for further investigation into its potential for cultivating wholeness in Christian life. The investigation will centre on the three dynamic principles of wisdom knowing and their significance as orientation points for three key areas of Christian lived experience: nonduality for self-transcendence; creative freedom for life-integration; and communion for the movement towards fullness of life in God.
The findings of the investigation show how wisdom knowing merits consideration as a way to cultivate wholeness through its engagement with lived experience and also three areas of Christian history: nonduality highlights the unity at the source particularly alive in the early church; creative freedom provides a means to navigate the growth of rationality in the period of the Enlightenment in terms of the incarnational process; and communion offers a process to engage with postmodern conditions whilst maintaining a unitive horizon. The potential of wisdom knowing is further revealed by developing a framework to demonstrate its practical application through theological, personal and textual engagement. The thesis concludes by making recommendations for its wider application in the life of the church.
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