‘A Dayspring to the Dimness of Us: The Symbolic Reality of Edith Stein, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Marie-Dominique Chenu’

This article explores ‘the symbolic reality’ of two twentieth century theologians inspired by the works of Dionysius the Areopagite: Edith Stein/Teresia Benedicta a Cruce O.C.D. (1891 – 1942) and Marie-Dominique Chenu O.P. (1895 – 1990). To illustrate their arguments about the role of the symbolic in Christian life, the author takes as his text the great narrative poem of the English Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889), The Wreck of the Deutschland. The article argues that the symbolic theology provides resilience to those undergoing psychological and physical trauma as they enter into what Stein called ‘the Science of the Cross’.