The Submerged Reality

In The Submerged Reality: Sophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics Michael Martin challenges us to reimagine theology philosophy and poetics through the lens of sophiology. Sophiology as this book shows is not a rogue theology but a way of perceiving that which shines through the cosmos: a way that can return metaphysics to postmodern thought and facilitate a (re)union of religion science and art.<p>This is a brave powerful and intensely fascinating book that will certainly prove controversial. The notion of the divine Wisdom Sophia has always proved contentious in theology but has remained persistent. For Michael Martin it is essentially a poetic intuition challenging our ways of perception and understanding. Exploring writers left in the shadows by conventional theology he taps sources from which theology and the life of the Church could find renewal.--ANDREW LOUTH<p>In The Submerged Reality Michael Martin suggests why a radicalized orthodoxy in the future will need more to 'walk on the wild side' and appropriate what is best in the esoteric occult and even gnostic traditions. He intimates that the past failure to do this is linked to a one-sidedly masculine theology downgrading the sacrality of life immanence fertility and the 'active receptivity' of the feminine. The consequence of this has been the perverse liberal attempt to distill 'order out of disorder' or the denial of real essences relations gender difference and the objective existence of all things as beautiful. Finally Martin argues that such a genuinely feminist theology would also be concerned with a space between the openly empirical observation of nature on the one hand and the reflective exposition of divine historical revelation on the other. In this space continuously new poetic realities are shaped and emerge under the guidance of holy inspiring wisdom.--JOHN MILBANK<p>This is a very clearly written and lively work of Catholic apologetics. Professors would be well advised to assign it as a text for undergraduate courses in theology. The Submerged Reality could win the hearts and minds of contemporary young people for Christian belief.--FRANCESCA ARAN MURPHY<p>Sophiology is best understood not as a 'doctrine' but as a way of seeing and feeling the deepest mystery of reality. In this wide-ranging and exhilarating book Michael Martin gives us the most important theological apologia for the contemplation of divine Sophia since the great Russian Sophiologists of the last century. Drawing on the Russian genius of Vladimir Soloviev and Sergius Bulgakov Martin's meditation on Sophia ranges across the contributions of figures such as Jacob Boehme and Rudolf Steiner Edith Stein and Pavel Florensky Hans Urs von Balthasar and John Milbank. In so doing he weaves a rich tapestry that illumines how a deeper gaze toward the feminine figure of Sophia begins to yield a more adequate response to the crisis of post-modern secular culture.--AARON RICHES<p>MICHAEL MARTIN is Assistant Professor of English and Philosophy at Marygrove College. He is the author of Literature and the Encounter with God in Post-Reformation England (Ashgate 2014) a work of literary criticism and a volume of poetry Meditations in Times of Wonder (Angelico Press 2014).