Sensing Lent: The Sensory Elaboration of Lenten Theology (original) (raw)
Theologische Revue, 2025
Jeannine Marie Hanger's monograph, a revised version of her doctoral thesis at Aberdeen, explores the role of sensory imagery in the I am sayings of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel. She examines how these sayings employ sensory language both within the metaphors themselves and in their broader narrative contexts. H. argues that these sayings are deeply embodied and sensory, emphasizing the active participation of believers in responding to Jesus. She asserts that the I am sayings not only illustrate but also require embodied action in response. For example, in John 6, Jesus' feeding of the multitudes serves as a tangible demonstration of his claim to be the bread of life. In response, hearers are called to participate with Jesus by eating his flesh and drinking his blood. While previous studies have addressed the sensory aspects of the Johannine corpus (e. g., Rainer Hirsch-Luipold, Sunny Wang, and Dorothy Lee), H.'s work contributes significantly by engaging with emerging research in sensory anthropology and historical studies of the senses (see also the work of Dominika Kurek-Chomycz). In her introductory chap., she surveys scholarship on the I am sayings and introduces sensory anthropology, which posits that perceptions of the senses are culturally determined. As such, H. asserts that rather than accepting the universality of sense valuations -such as Aristotle's demarcation between "higher" and "lower" senses (privileging the senses of hearing and sight over all others) -senses must be understood and assessed within their cultural context. In the present vol., H. shows that the Fourth Gospel appears to resist the Aristotelian valuation of the senses by highlighting how the so-called 'lower' senses of smell, touch, and taste serve essential roles in the context of the I am sayings. One example is the extensive "taste-related" language used in relation to the bread of life saying. In addition to revaluing the senses, H. introduces the notion of renumbering the senses. H. expands her investigations of sensory experience beyond the traditional pentasensory model (seeing, hearing, taste, touch, and smell) proposed by Aristotle and still considered normative in the modern West today. Instead, H. employs a more expansive view of the senses that also incorporates the senses of speech and movement (kinaesthesia). She asserts that while it is "beyond the study's purpose to propose a sensorium for the Fourth Gospel" (15), she employs a septasensory model following the lead of Yael Avrahami in her research on the senses in the Hebrew Bible. While H. explains the reasons why some are skeptical about including movement and speech among the senses (for example, speech is considered a form of output rather than input, 88), she does not provide a rationale for their inclusion in her sensory schema either for modern or ancient readers of the text.
TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology
According to recent accounts of so called “liturgical anthropology,” human beings are ritual creatures shaped more by what they feel than what they think. This is because the liturgies that make up our daily lives orient our desires towards certain goals and visions of the good life. We seek to expand this vision of liturgical anthropology by offering a critique of a predominantly affective vision of human development in which liturgy shapes primarily what we love. Drawing insights from developmental psychology, we argue that affect and cognition and intertwined throughout development, each reinforcing the other. Instead of attempting to artificially separate cognition and affect, then, we offer a vision of liturgical anthropology that is holistic, paying attention to the ways in which both our desires and beliefs are shaped by participation in liturgies, whether these be religious or otherwise. Finally, we argue that the psychological concept of “joint attention” can provide a help...
2022
The first conference of the series “Experiencing the Sacred”, established by the SenSArt ERC project, aims to develop this topic further by triangulating the liturgy (broadly intended), the experience of the faithful (understood both as an individual and as social groups) and the sensoria (i.e. the diverse sensory systems that existed in the Middle Ages). In so doing, it aims at showing that the experience of the sacred was not homogeneous and static. On the contrary, it was a multimodal and multisensorial activity, one that bore complex and overlapping layers of meaning, and which was perceived in different ways by the diverse groups and individuals involved. The meeting will bring together a multi- and interdisciplinary community of scholars with a broad interest in the religious rituals of the late Middle Ages (ca. 1200 to ca. 1500), with particular respect to Art History, History, Musicology and Liturgy, in order to cross-fertilise these perspectives.
Creating Liturgically: Hymnography and Music, 2017
This paper explores the significance of compunction as a liturgical emotion in the Great Kanon of Andrew of Crete. It will consider the textual, musical and performative dimensions of the Great Kanon alongside its liturgical context in Byzantium. An important element of this investigation will be reimagining—to the extent possible—the historical performance of Andrew’s text within the Byzantine rite. After all, the Byzantines experienced hymnography as a liturgical event where sacred space, soundscape, ‘lightscape’, movement, gesture, scent and taste were infused with meaning. Hymnody and ritual embodied and mobilised godly passions amidst the mystagogy of the liturgy.
Senses, Religion, and Religious Encounter Literature Review and Research Perspectives
Entangled Religions, 2019
An overview of the senses in the study of religion and religious encounter is provided, along with reflections on the ways in which various specific senses were imagined to serve as modes of communication between human beings and between humans and transcendent beings. How the individual case studies collected in this volume inform such a project and further research on religion, the senses, and the role of the senses in religious encounter is a core concern of this introductory essay. We end by suggesting new directions for additional research for an integrated and systematic examination of how senses shape and are used in human encounters with the transcendent and the (human) religious Other. senses, taste, olfaction, smell, touch, visual, hearing, grammar, language incense to express worship of the divine. As such, his study shows that smell is an element in most forms of human and non-human interaction (Stoddart 1990). It is this communicative function, not merely of smell but of most of the senses, on which we intend to focus in this volume. Each sense on the one hand roots humans in their corporeal existence, while on the other provides the means, both literally and also within the symbolic imagination, of creating
Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online
Lent is a distinct fasting season in the liturgical year, comprised (nominally) of 40 days, prior to the feast of Easter/Pascha. Despite its widespread observance, the origins of Lent are unclear. The earliest unambiguous references to a 40-day fast before Easter date from the second quarter of the 4th century CE and these sources mention it as an already-established and accepted practice without providing an account of its origins and without indicating how recently it began to be observed. Over the following century, a few patristic authors make stock claims of an apostolic foundation (e.g. Jer. Ep. 41.3; Leo M. Serm. 44.2), but only much later, around and after the turn of the 1st millennium, do we nd authors presenting detailed accounts of Lent's origins-and these are problematic and contradictory. Owing to the gaps in the evidence, liturgical historians have o fered theories ranging from the speculative to the agnostic.
Senses and Religion. Introductory Thoughts
Traditiones, 2007
the theme 1 of the "senses and religion" conference of the sieF Commission for Folk religion (9-12 september 2006, Celje, slovenia) was based on two pillars. one was the sensual perception of reality and within this the place of the five human senses (sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste), and the other was religion as a process of cognition, in which the role of sensual perception may differ from one age and one culture to another. it is through our senses that we experience the natural and social reality around us. With their help we can know this reality, perceive interconnections, and shape relationships. the senses are gateways to memory, gateways to knowledge. this is a kind of cognition and communication that is culturally determined and creates forms dependent on culture. this means that the cultural use of the senses is not incidental, but can be described as a cultural system. however the rules are not immutable; they can be modified with the passing of time and changing circumstances. especially strong changes have occurred in the past two centuries with the rapid advance of technical civilization. this applies not only to the culture of the senses, but also to scientific research on sensual perception. the situation has changed from a superficial knowledge of sensual perception to a state of understanding. this is the consequence of psychological, scientific, and medical studies and research on the senses over the past 200 to 250 years. their findings have been incorporated into our everyday lives, also becoming part of commercial and advertising activity in the 20th and 21st centuries. in recent decades we have even seen the appearance