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Sophia, Heidegger, and Jacob Bohme's the Way to Christ

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Sophia, Heidegger, and Jacob Bohme's the Way to Christ University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 1-1-2009 Imagination, Religious Practice, and World Transformations: Sophia, Heidegger, and Jacob Bohme's The Way to Christ Mark Allen Peckler University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Peckler, Mark Allen, "Imagination, Religious Practice, and World Transformations: Sophia, Heidegger, and Jacob Bohme's The Way to Christ" (2009). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 901. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/901 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. IMAGINATION, RELIGIOUS PRACTICE, AND WORLD TRANSFORMATIONS: SOPHIA, HEIDEGGER, AND JACOB BÖHME’S THE WAY TO CHRIST ____________________ A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the University of Denver and the Iliff School of Theology Joint PhD Program University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology ____________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy ____________________ by Mark A. Peckler November 2009 Advisors: Dr. Sandra Dixon and Dr. Frank Seeburger ©Copyright by Mark A. Peckler 2009 All Rights Reserved Author: Mark A. Peckler Title: IMAGINATION, RELIGIOUS PRACTICE, AND WORLD TRANSFORMATIONS: SOPHIA, HEIDEGGER, AND JACOB BÖHME’S THE WAY TO CHRIST Advisors: Dr. Sandra Dixon and Dr. Frank Seeburger Degree Date: November 2009 ABSTRACT This dissertation is offered as a work of original scholarship in the field of Religion and Psychological Studies (RPS). Through its hermeneutic preservation of Jacob Böhme’s The Way to Christ in “conversation” with selected works of Martin Heidegger, I retrieve the question of imagination’s relation to religious practice, attending to potentials for world transformations disclosed through this relationship, in order to develop a new hermeneutic option for the RPS field concerning this important question. This new hermeneutic option is developed in such a way as to ensure a subversive compatibility with psychoanalytic hermeneutics—our field’s koiné—while opening to certain radical possibilities of interpretation concerning imagination, desire, religious practice, and world transformations. In the course of the dissertation’s development, issues concerning the western esoteric traditions—Christian theosophy in particular—repentance, guilt, death, new birth, resignation (Gelassenheit), contemplation, and a radical encounter with Sophia are brought to the fore for consideration. In addition, this dissertation develops its hermeneutic out of the guiding orientation of a weakening ontology that opens a way for the “return of religion” in postmodern hermeneutic discourse, as articulated by Gianni Vattimo. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My special thanks to Paulist Press for their generous permission, since the use of extensive passages from The Way to Christ was essential to the writing of this dissertation. Excerpts from Jacob Boehme, The Way to Christ, The Classics of Western Spirituality, translation and Introduction by Peter Erb. Preface by Winfried Zeller. Copyright ©1978 by the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle in the State of New York. Paulist Press, Inc., New York/Mahwah, NJ. Reprinted by permission of Paulist Press, Inc. www.paulistpress.com Thanks and credit to rights holder HarperCollins Publishers for permissions to reproduce material from the following Martin Heidegger texts: Discourse on Thinking, translated by John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund, copyright ©1966; On the Way to Language, translated by Peter D. Hertz, copyright ©1971; and Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, copyright ©1962. My appreciation to electronic rights holder SCM Press Ltd. for their expedited determination regarding electronic rights for Being and Time. My thanks to the University of Michigan Press for authorizing use of excerpts from Jacob Boehme’s Six Theosophic Points and Other Writings, translated by John Rolleston Earle. Appreciation also to Eryl Humphrey Jones, Rights Director at Constable & Robinson Ltd. for his personal assistance in this matter. I thank as well Indiana University Press for authorizing use of excerpts from Martin Heidegger’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, translated by Richard Taft. I would also like to express my thanks and gratitude to Dr. Sandy Dixon, Dr. Albert Hernandez, and Dr. Frank Seeburger as members of my Dissertation Committee for their guidance, support, and patience during the research and writing of this dissertation. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 1 The Question ................................................................................................................................ 1 Academic Situation ...................................................................................................................... 3 Methodology ................................................................................................................................ 8 Critical Terms ............................................................................................................................ 25 Synopsis of Chapters .................................................................................................................. 39 CHAPTER TWO: JACOB BÖHME AND WESTERN ESOTERICISM ....................................... 41 Western Esotericism .................................................................................................................. 47 Görlitz ........................................................................................................................................ 52 Jacob Böhme .............................................................................................................................. 56 Jacob Böhme’s Synergy ............................................................................................................. 64 Jacob Böhme’s Legacy .............................................................................................................. 73 CHAPTER THREE: BÖHMIST THEOSOPHY AND IMAGINATION ....................................... 82 Böhme’s Theosophical Hermeneutic ......................................................................................... 88 Heidegger and Imagination ...................................................................................................... 100 Looking Forward ..................................................................................................................... 116 CHAPTER FOUR: THE WAY TO CHRIST AND REPENTANCE ........................................... 120 The Way to Christ .................................................................................................................... 121 Repentance ............................................................................................................................... 136 CHAPTER FIVE: SOPHIA, RESIGNATION, AND CONTEMPLATION .................................. 161 Sophia ...................................................................................................................................... 162 Böhme’s Resignation ............................................................................................................... 175 Contemplation .......................................................................................................................... 183 CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION ............................................................................................... 194 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 201 iv CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION The Question The question that is the focus of this dissertation concerns the relationship of imagination to religious practice. Specifically, what can be said of the possibility of this relation in a post-metaphysical discourse? With the recent advent of the “return of religion” to such discourse, new avenues of inquiry to advance this question have become possible.1 This dissertation is intended to explore one such avenue. The hermeneutical wager of this dissertation is that through opening a “conversation” between the twentieth- century German philosopher Martin Heidegger and the seventeenth-century German theosophist Jacob Böhme,2 an unexpected dimension of imagination will be disclosed. Further, that this dimension will prove of particular importance for our question of imagination’s relation to religious practice. Anticipating the end at the beginning, it may be stated that this dissertation will elaborate an understanding of the imagination as fundamentally world-disclosive and 1 My specific usage of the terms “post-metaphysical” and “return of religion,” which will be clarified shortly, is derived from the work of Gianni Vattimo. His short book Belief provides an excellent introduction, not only to what is being conveyed by these terms, but also to this dissertation as well. See Gianni Vattimo, Belief, trans. Luca D’ Isanto
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