Theophanizing Love

A radical rethinking of God's relationship to creation

Theophanizing Love invites readers to see the world as suffused with God's presence. Bringing together insights from theological metaphysics and dogmatic theology, it shows why we may rightly say that we live, and move, and have our being in God.

Drawing on decades of study and writing on this topic, Hans Boersma argues that creation is best understood as theophanizing love: the activity of God's divine love appearing or shimmering forth in lesser, dependent modes of creation. Giving particular attention to the insights of Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor, Boersma shows how theophanizing love is most readily apparent in God's embodying himself in Christ, creation, Scripture, and human virtue.

The argument unfolds against the backdrop of modern disenchantment and reductive materialism, which Boersma traces back to the High Middle Ages. By returning to the much earlier wisdom of patristic theologians who were influenced by Neoplatonism, Boersma retrieves crucial concepts that have been forgotten or dismissed—immaterialism, hierarchy, and creation as emanation out of God—and in so doing, replaces the metaphysics of substance with a metaphysic of love. In Boersma's view, key patristic teachings on participation in God offer a much-needed corrective to modern disenchantment by illuminating God's presence in every part of creation.

A comprehensive volume that rewards careful study, Theophanizing Love will be of interest to theologians, philosophers, patristic scholars, and serious readers seeking a richer understanding of God's presence in the world.