The Sacralization of the World in the Seventeenth-century - The Experience of Holiness in Everyday (Hardcover)

This work examines the English and Russian Churches during the seventeenth century, with special attention given to the period after the Civil War in England and the raskol' in Russia [i.e., 1660-1700]. The study argues that the logocentric religious identity overcame the iconographic perspective during the years 1660 to 1700, and that this development weakened the English Church. The first chapter reviews the academic literature and concludes that the tendency to conceptualize the history along a series of binary polarities [e.g., Puritan / Anglican] is too narrow and hence misleading. The second and third chapters suggest an alternative conceptual model, more inclusive and hence possessing greater explanatory scope, based upon logocentric and iconographic religious identities. The logocentric model is centered upon texts; texts as sacred canon, texts as sources for exegesis and interpretation, and texts as applied to our lives both in and out of church. This means that we encounter the divine through reading, hearing, meditating upon, and applying Scripture. The iconographic model is centered upon a holy space and holy time permeated with sacred images and sounds. These function as hierophanic doors through which we travel from the profane to the sacred. The last two chapters apply these models to sacramental theology and practice, focusing on the Eucharist, and definitions of the church and the Christian life.