I Love, Therefore I Am: The Theological Legacy of Archimandrite Sophrony

St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, January 2003. Paper Back. New. With some trepidation but also the necessary measure of boldness, Hieromonk Nicholas Sakharov (a doctoral graduate of Oxford and great-nephew of Archimandrite Sophrony) has undertaken to present the western world with the first critical study of Fr. Sophrony as a theologian. Being so, expect the text to be necessarily thick with the language and exposition of academia, but do not despair -- because Orthodox theology is, by its very nature, an experience by which the eternal truths of the Christian faith are lived through the asceticism of love. To grossly simplify, Fr. Sophrony's theological legacy centers on the concepts of hypostasis (that is, the individual reality or personhood of each) and perichoresis (the communion, or mutual coinherence of the Trinity's three persons). Through perichoresis, each hypostasis can receive and contain the ultimate fulness of another's hypostasis. In Fr. Sophrony's words, ''Love transfers the existence of the person who loves into the beloved, and thus it assimilates the life of the loved one.'' In this way we understand the Trinity as the definition of love, existing eternally in dynamic unity and experienced by the faithful through prayer. As a spiritual father to hundreds, Fr. Sophrony intimately lived this doctrinal vision as (in Fr. Sakharov's terms) ''a true bearer of the ecclesiastical tradition,'' leading us ''to a fresh synthesis in theology.''