Studies in Spirituality 26/2016

Bernd Jaspert ‘Spiritualität’ in deutschen theologischen Lexika des 21. Jahrhunderts The use of the term ‘Spirituality’ (Spiritualität) in five German theological dictionaries of the beginning of 21th century (two from Catholic and three from Protestant) is more common than the old term ‘piety’ (Frömmigkeit). Only some authors distinguish between the two terms. With the blurred and large idea of spirituality people can express much things which have no place in piety. All together (with Peter Eicher): Religion is not all. But without religion there is no humanity and divinity. Therefore spirituality is necessary.

Henk Barendregt Keys to Two Intimacies – Mathesis and Mysticism The subjects mathematics and mysticism come from my main scientific interests: mathematics and meditation phenomena. We will discuss two types of keys for these topics: the personal, through inner experience, and the transpersonal, described as an objective natural process. The two types of keys exist for both subjects.

Janet Ruffing ‘They Say that We Are Wound with Mercy Round and Round’ –The Mystical Ground of Compassion In the context of spiritual direction, spiritual directors can more effectively promote healing and reconciliation in their directees when they themselves are able to mediate God’s compassion to them. In both the Jewish and Christian tradition, God reveals Godself as characterized by compassion. Participating in God’s compassion is transformative and healing for directees whose directors experience themselves as participating in God’s compassion and who can encourage them to welcome the grace to heal and forgive from the same place of compassion. These dynamics are illustrated by a case study.

Marie Baird Toward a Kenotic Model of Spiritual Subjectivity This essay contends that the developmental models upon which many Western psychologies of religion rest – and their seemingly ‘obvious’ focus on intentional consciousness as primary – fail to consider (at least two) postmodern challenges. What is needed is a new model of spiritual subjectivity that takes seriously the ‘kenotic’ impulses implicit in the dethroning of an intentionality assumed to be primary and the ascendancy of secularizing forces that help to form such a subject in the first instance. Focusing first on Emmanuel Levinas’s ‘relation to the Infinite’ as the enactment of ethical subjectivity, and then on Gianni Vattimo’s analysis of a secularizing culture that enables a robust spirituality given the death of the ‘metaphysical’ God, we will be able to formulate a ‘kenotic’ model of spiritual subjectivity without foundations that enacts itself in charitable responsibility for the other.

David T. Bradford Mystical Process in Isaac the Syrian – Tears, Penthos, and the Physiology of Dispassion Tears is understood in the ascetic tradition of Eastern Christianity as a prolonged process of spiritual development motivated by compunction (penthos). One of its dominant behavioral expressions is weeping. The experience and theology of tears are reviewed in the first part of this essay. Evagrius’s writings on tears are reviewed in the second part, and Cassian’s in the third. The fourth begins with a review of the anatomy and physiology of weeping, followed by an application of the scientific material in an analysis of several chapters on tears, prayer, and stillness (hesychia) written by Diadochos of Photike and Mark the Ascetic. In the fifth part, tears and ordinary weeping are compared in terms of their social and evolutionary dimensions. In the sixth, a process analysis of tears is contrasted with hierarchical classifications in which the experience of tears is divided into discontinuous stages. The seventh part is a process analysis of Isaac the Syrian’s description of the full course of tears. The eighth shows that tears culminates in dispassion and establishes a new homeostasis of the autonomic nervous system. For Isaac, tears leads to the personal realization of eschatological expectations, as discussed in the final part.

Ben Schomakers An Eternal Incorrigible Metaphysician – Decoding the Christology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite Reading – or rather decoding – (Pseudo-)Dionysius the Areopagite (fl. end of 5th century) is extremely difficult. In his corpus, the main tenets are without exception expressed merely in ambiguous allusions. Dionysius seems to be concealing his convictions in order not to moot them in the fierce, at times violent atmosphere of mid 5th century theological debates. Particularly vehement was the debate on the nature(s) of Christ. And particularly elusive is Dionysius’ position in this debate. This essay attempts to reconstruct this position by discussing all relevant passages in the corpus, interpreting them against the metaphysical background which provided Dionysius with his philosophical framework. The key to this reconstruction is the concept of ‘unification’ which reflects the unified nature of God and is present to man both as the image in the intellect of the all-causing principle and as the atemporal unity of man’s individual life. This unification is Christ, the experience of the unification via the intellect is Dionysius’ philosophical interpretation of the incarnation, the experience of the unity of life as expressing itself in the parts of life his rendering of the resurrection.

Rachel Elior The unknown mystical history of the festival of Shavu’ot The extra-ordinary mystical history of the festival of Shavu’ot or Shevu’ot – the fourth of the seven ‘appointed times of the Lord’ detailed in the Pentateuch, associated with the Sinai Revelation (Ex 19-20), or Sinai covenant, and one of the three biblical pilgrimage festivals, is the subject of this article. The disparity between its centrality in the Bible and the fact that the holiday is not mentioned by any of its biblical names in the early rabbinic tradition recorded in the Mishnah, is discussed in light of the central place of this festival in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Book of Jubilees. The present article aims to decipher the reasons for this historical development, in the context of the dispute between priestly circles (Zadokites=Sadducees) and early rabbinic circles (Pharisees) and traces the unknown mystical history of the forgotten holiday in the later Jewish mystical tradition known as Kabbalah.

Martina Roesner Producing Life – Meister Eckhart, Postmodern Spirituality, and the ‘Poverty of Thought’ In the wake of Heidegger’s deconstruction of Occidental metaphysics, contemporary philosophy and theology have mostly subscribed to a passive, kenotic ideal of reason. Often this paradigm of ‘weak thought’ is associated with Meister Eckhart’s doctrine of ‘detachment’ (Gelassenheit), which invites man to renounce all his activity and become completely passive and receptive to the influence of God’s grace. This paper intends to call into question the tacit identification between ‘weak reason’ and Eckhart’s ideal of ‘poor reason’ by re-examining his theory of the intellect.

Michael McGlynn The Salmon of Knowledge, The Cloud of Unknowing, And Other Accounts of Instant Knowing This article considers the fourteenth-century treatise The Cloud of Unknowing as a description of instant, non-sensory cognition. The text has an ostensibly particular function as an instruction manual in Christian contemplation, but bears on a universal experience, that of quickly knowing without knowing how we know. To demonstrate the universality of quick knowing, the literary motif of instant knowing is briefly considered, and a survey of intuition and non-sensory cognition in cognitive science is sustained throughout. A case is made that the author-mystic’s experience of unknowing is not unrelated to some aspects of everyday cognition. A corollary argument is made that early religious and literary texts provide new meaning when viewed as ethnographically and empirically valuable (as opposed to recursive and indeterminate).

Neil Pembroke Ironic Imagination and Luther’s Mystical Bridal Imagery It is argued that there is clear evidence of a mystical strand in Martin Luther’s theology. In particular, Christ mysticism, expressed through bridal imagery, held a central place. The way in which ironic imagination features in Luther’s depiction of Christ as the spouse of the spiritual person is also discussed. The aim is not simply to highlight his (undoubted) creativity as a theologian. More importantly, the discussion shows that Luther fully grasped the fact that the life of faith has an ineradicable ironic structure. He was strongly opposed to any suggestion that it is possible to live without the polar tension. Christ the bridegroom abides in the heart of the Christian; through this union he exchanges his righteousness for her/his sin. But, paradoxically, while the new being in Christ is wholly righteous, s/he remains wholly a sinner. For this reason, Luther saw very clearly that the spiritual life of the Christian is lived in tension between freedom and bondage, law and gospel, gemitus and raptus, faith and love. A parallel is drawn between Luther’s approach and that of William Lynch in his work on faith and the analogical imagination.

Timothy W. O’Brien ‘Con Ojos Interiores’ – Ignatius of Loyola and the Spiritual Senses Recent scholarship on the Christian spiritual senses has neglected works by Ignatius Loyola, a notable omission because the senses are crucial in his spirituality and because some prominent commentators read his Spiritual Exercises in terms of spiritual sensation. This essay argues that the Autobiography and Spiritual Diary are more helpful than the Exercises for glimpsing Ignatius’s views on spiritual sensation. Scrutiny of these texts reveals strong connections for Ignatius between spiritual sensation, receiving theological knowledge, and experiencing inner certitude. Here, Ignatius brings the spiritual senses into contact with the pervasive sixteenth century desire for certainty in theological understanding, religious experience, and especially the discernment of spirits.

Elissa Cutter Eating and Drinking Condemnation – Jansenist and Puritan Spiritualities of Communion Following René Taveneaux and Robin Briggs, scholars have made general comparisons between Jansenism and Puritanism – such as their Augustinian theology and spirituality of strict morality – but few have investigated specific similarities between the two movements. This article aims to fill this lacuna by examining parallels between the sacramental theology of the two movements, using the writings of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and Antoine Arnauld (1616-1694). Through a close analysis of these writings, this article argues for a fundamental similarity between the theologies of these two figures, in spite of the denominational differences separating their understandings of the sacraments. In particular, this article explores the similar emphases that both Edwards and Arnauld put on using the model of the early church as normative for communion practices and on having an appropriate interior disposition before receiving communion.

Thomas Quartier Spirituality: Engagement and Reflection – Dialogical Explorations among Practitioners and Intellectuals How do spiritual life, intellectual reflection and societal engagement relate to each other? This article explores the question based on explorative dialogical research among practitioners of spirituality and intellectuals engaged with societal issues. Taking as a starting point the ideas of three witnesses of what the triangle of spirituality, engagement and reflection can mean, dialogues (collatio’s) have been held, recorded and analysed to explore associations of personal forms of life, analytical skills and social action. The three ‘ant-agonists’ are Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothee Sölle and Thomas Merton. We used core texts of all three during the fieldwork. The impulses of these texts provide a frame for our reflection on the data presented here. In the first part, the dimension of societal engagement is explored, in the second part the dimension of intellectual reflection and in the third part the dimension of a spiritual involvement. We found that a comprehensive self for practitioners of spirituality and intellectuals should entail transformative knowledge and substantive analysis of ultimate values, as well as an eschatological open attitude for study and research.

Bin Song Political Mysticism and Political Theology of Dorothee Sölle Political theology is for Dorothee Sölle a theological hermeneutics, which emphasizes that the truth of a theological statement consists in its answerability to concrete situations in human history and in its transformative effect in praxis. With this idea, political mysticism is, on the one hand, Sölle’s historical research concerning the political dimension of Christian mysticisms, and on the other hand, Sölle’s presentation of her idiosyncratic version of mysticism, a modern mystical journey, that reacts against the institutional injustice and individual powerlessness that are inherent in the current political and economic order of global capitalism. Inspired by other mystic thinkers such as Simone Weil and Rudolf Otto, Sölle’s political mysticism could possibly be improved to become more adaptable and functional in contemporary society.

Peter Jansen, Jan van der Stoep, Jozef Keulartz & Henk Jochemsen Notions of the Sublime – A Case Study into Layers of Depth in Experiences of Nature A re-experiencing of the wilderness ideal is taking place in the Netherlands. This is expressed in the attention that is being devoted to projects in which agricultural land is transformed into nature. One of these projects is central to this article: the island Tiengemeten. We aim to study the experiences of visitors to this project in order to gain insight into the extent to which there are layers of depth visible in these experiences. For a lot of respondents going into in nature in general and making a visit to an island such as Tiengemeten in particular are ways of escaping from their day-to-day existence. It is noticeable that the words and images that the visitors use to describe their experiences fit in mainly with the wilderness view of nature. The wilderness view of nature is connected with experiences of the sublime; so in this article we also ask the question as to what the shift to the wilderness view of nature means for the religious landscape of the Netherlands.

Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe Holistic Experience of Opera and the International Opera Theater (IOT) This article is based on my experience during two performances of International Opera Theater’s 2013 production of the new opera Camille Claudel. I describe the experience in as much detail as necessary to convey its essence to the reader. I define the experience as spiritual, within a non-religious framework of spirituality. Subsequently I critically explore the experience in a range of relevant contexts of opera, theatre, performance and consciousness studies. My approach is part of the paradigm shift in consciousness studies from third person approaches to first person approaches, in so far as the experience I describe, and on which my argument is based, is at this point my own experience alone.

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