Patrick Ryan Cooper

As It Is in Heaven

Theology

“Do not be fooled by Caitlin Smith Gilson’s self-admonition as a ‘novice in grief.’ Her approach in As It Is in Heaven fulfills the task of a philosophical Virgil, adeptly guiding us through the wounded non-experience of the death of the other. Gilson argues that not only does the loss of heaven reflect the diminished status of the powerful hylomorphic body-soul union but it nullifies our embodied hope in the resurrected state, as well as culturally dislodging Christianity.”

Tregenna Hill

Arts & Literature

“Gilson deftly employs a quite-daring sacramental coupling of the sacred and the erotic, retrieving once-familiar biblical and liturgical guideposts with the startling freshness and in-between of lovers, . . . the immediacy of peering through the lattice, where the line between leisurely gazing and having license to stare is blurred, wherein I no longer know where I end and you begin, thereby witnessing anew to the very incarnational faith that cries out with astonishment, ‘Caro cardo salutis.’”