The Lost Way to the Good: new book coming soon from Angelico Press

The West has lost its way. But which way was it? And can any Western way really be worth following any more?

 
Disoriented by postmodern relativism and critical theory, many seek refuge in the old certainties of religious or political traditions, from Tridentine Catholicism to Enlightenment Liberalism. But these paths are only recent forks off a wider, older road: a way which belongs as much to the East as to the West, and can unite Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and more in pursuit of the truly common Good.

This Way is the nondualistic philosophy of Eastern or “theurgic” Platonism. Claiming Indian and Egyptian roots, it entered mediaeval European universities through the works of Dionysius the Areopagite. Overshadowed in the West, it continued to thrive in Eastern Christian and Sufi spiritual teachings that spread along the Silk Road, giving a basis for creative dialogue with Taoists and Buddhists. 

Thomas Plant will guide you on a spiritual and metaphysical journey with Dionysius from Athens to Kyoto and the True Pure Land Buddhism of Shinran Shonin. Find out where the West deviated from the track, and how even radically different religious traditions can unite to resist the divisive forces of Western secular modernity. 

Fr Thomas Plant is Chaplain of Rikkyo University, Tokyo, and Fellow of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism, where he leads the Muslim-Christian research project, Metaphysics Across Borders. Since writing his doctoral thesis on the comparative philosophy of Dionysius and Shinran, he has been involved in longstanding active interfaith dialogue with Shin Buddhist clergy and academics in the UK and Japan. Plant has been a contributor to Living Church, The Mallard, The Eastern Buddhist, Faith and Worship and Third Way. He lives in Ikebukuro with his wife and daughters, and enjoys practising Aikido and playing the shakuhachi flute.