Saints As They Really Are, by Michael Plekon

Michael Plekon is a man of many talents: he is a sociologist, an anthropologist and an expert in Kierkegaard’s thought. His spiritual pilgrimage includes converting from Catholicism to Lutheranism to Eastern Orthodoxy. His writing reflects all of this variegated experience, and for that reason it is sometimes tough to follow.

This new book on saints is not really about saints at all. After retreading some of the themes explored more popularly by Jesuit writer James Martin in My Life with the Saints and then by theologian Elizabeth A. Johnson in her highly regarded feminist critiques of traditional Catholic understandings of saints, Plekon turns to sociologist Peter Berger, his former professor at Boston University, for a framework for Saints As They Really Are. Plekon tells us that Berger “rightly insists that kenosis, the self-emptying suffering of God and victory of resurrection, is the center of faith.” This seems a bit like quoting Julia Child on the architecture of Languedoc, but never mind. Plekon sets off to explore holiness. That’s what this book is about.

Plekon articulates a definition of holiness derived from the thought of the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev: “The opposite of evil is not virtue but goodness, Godliness, holiness.” He follows this with: “Holiness is a gift, and it is given to every child of God.” Six pages later, he explains that as a gift from God, holiness is given “according to the overflowing love and the wisdom of God”—and that this happens across religious boundaries, in “the Old Covenant and Islam, even Hinduism, Buddhism, and humanism.” This vision of sainthood is expansive to say the least, and it stands in stark contrast to the official perspectives of the Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox churches.