The rising sun as typus Christi

Iam noctis umbra linquitur,
polum caligo deserit,
typusque Christi, lucifer
diem sopitum suscitat.

     Stanza 2 of the anonymous 5th or 6th century hymn "Deus, qui caeli lumen es."  One hundred Latin hymns:  Ambrose to Aquinas, ed. Walsh & Husch, Dumbarton Oaks medieval library (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 2012), 119 (118-121):

The shades of night are left behind,
the murk vanishes from the sky;
the light-bearer, symbol of Christ,
awakens now the slumbrous day. 

The Christian faith is "exceptionally rich"

"The 2,000-year old Western tradition, that of Christianity, provides, whether one believes in it or not, an exceptionally rich mythos – a term I use in its technical sense, making no judgment here of its truth or otherwise – for understanding the world and our relationship with it. It conceives a divine Other that is not indifferent or alien – like James Joyce’s God, refined out of existence and ‘paring his fingernails’ – but on the contrary engaged, vulnerable because of that engagement, and like the right hemisphere rather than the left, not resentful (as the Old Testament Yahweh often seemed) about the Faustian fallings away of its creation, but suffering alongside it. At the centre of this mythos are the images of incarnation, the coming together of matter and spirit, and of resurrection, the redemption of that relationship, as well as of a God that submits to suffer for that process. But any mythos that allows us to approach a spiritual Other, and gives us something other than material values to live by, is more valuable than one that dismisses the possibility of its existence."

     Iain McGilchrist, The master and his emissary:  the divided brain and the making of the western world, New expanded edition (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2019), 441-442.  But McGilchrist then moves on from the body and religion to art, or, more generally, beauty.

McGilchrist on theological liberalism

     "The Western Church has, in my view, been active in undermining itself. It no longer has the confidence to stick to its values, but instead joins the chorus of voices attributing material answers to spiritual problems. At the same time the liturgical reform movement, as always convinced that religious truths can be literally stated, has largely eroded and in some cases completely destroyed the power of metaphoric language and ritual to convey the numinous. Meanwhile there has been, as expected, a parallel movement towards the possible rehabilitation of religious practices as utility. Thus 15 minutes Zen meditation a day may make you a more effective money broker, or improve your blood pressure, or lower your cholesterol."

     Iain McGilchrist, The master and his emissary:  the divided brain and the making of the western world, New expanded edition (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2019), 441.  But see p. 316 for his comments on "the improbable doctrine of transubstantiation," which he treats as "the explicit analytical [(i.e. medieval scholastic)] left hemisphere attempt to untangle" the properly metaphorical "is" of the right, and thus does no more than mirror the parallel rejection of metaphor on the part of Protestant literalism (mere representationalism).

"Gotta serve somebody"

      "When we decide not to worship divinity, we do not stop worshipping:  we merely find something else less worthy to worship."

     Iain McGilchrist, The master and his emissary:  the divided brain and the making of the western world, New expanded edition (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2019), 441.