Crawling out of the Cave: Re-enchantment through the Beatitudes

From the conference “Re-enchanting Discipleship: Christian Life in a Secular Age,” ACTS Seminaries, Langley, BC, February 9, 2018.

Re-enchantment has to do with identity, with our ability to see the world for what it already truly is: an enchanted place, which has its being from the being of God, a world that sacramentally participates, to varying degrees in the being of God.  In this presentation I turn to several church fathers' readings of the Beatitudes, looking for their assistance—not so as to re-enchant the world, but to re-enchant our own identities.  Insisting on biblical exegesis that is mystical in orientation (‘mountainous reading’), open to a variety of readings (‘multiplicity of meaning’), and inviting us into the very life of God (‘moral virtue’), the church fathers teach us how it is that through participation in God's happiness we ourselves are re-enchanted so as to live in harmony with an enchanted world.