‘Wounded by the Arrow of Beauty’: The Silent Call of Art

One of the urgent tasks facing Christian educators at the present time is how they might encourage the spiritual growth of their students. This paper invites reflection on this central question by discussing the role aesthetics might play with particular focus on its relationship to the ‘spiritual senses’, a theme which has been strikingly absent from recent publications on religion and Christian education. Paying particular attention to the work of the contemporary French phenomenologist, Jean‐Louis Chrétien, I shall argue that art invites us to listen to as well as to see the power of beauty. Educators should not ignore this capacity of art to engage the spiritual senses within a contemplative ethos of silence. But I go further than simply pointing to these seminal ideas about Christian formation, by discussing the ‘wound’ that beauty inevitably inflicts. I illustrate this suggestion by referring to Pope Benedict XVI's essay ‘Wounded by the Arrow of the Beautiful’ and to two visualizations of religion: Delacroix's painting Fight between Jacob and the Angel and Beauvois' film Of Gods and Men.     

The study of the Persian mystical fable’s capacity to be rewritten as spiritual literature for children in the light of the theory of relational consciousness

ABSTRACT

‘Relational consciousness’ introduces four kinds of relationships as characteristics of children’s spirituality: relation with self, others, environment and the higher being or God. These four relationships have also been noted in Persian mystical fables. The aim of the present study is to review some of these fables so as to assess their capacity for being rewritten as spiritual literature for children in the light of this theory. We contend that fables which pay more attention to the relationship with self and God, have less capacity because of their abstract concepts. Fables concerning the relationship with the environment and others are more suitable for being rewritten for the child reader, as they are more objective and perceptible. Many fables of this kind have the potential to guide the reader from the relationship with the environment and others to the relationship with self and God. The study also shows that Persian mystical fables could be used as a rich source for nourishing the child’s spirituality according to the theory of relational consciousness.     

Desire and the Good in Plotinus

Plotinus calls the first principle the One and the Good. According to Plotinus, ‘Good’ is an appropriate name for the One because the One is that which all things desire. Since he says that the One is beyond knowledge, beyond language, beyond intellect, and beyond being, however, what philosophical evidence can he provide for his claim that the One is that which all desire? In this article I offer some philosophical evidence, aside from mystical union with the One, for why ‘the Good’ is an appropriate name for the One, and for why calling the One ‘Good’ is not at odds with the fact that it is beyond knowledge, but rather entails it. To this end, after an initial consideration of the relationship between the good and desire in Plato and Aristotle, I focus on the role that desire plays in relation to the Good in Plotinus' thought.     

Peak Sexual and Spiritual Experience: Exploring the Mystical Relationship

Abstract

The nine-category phenomenological typology of mystical peak experiences proposed by Pahnke (1980) was used to construct a framework for understanding and relating peak potentials for sexuality and spirituality. Examples from mystics—St Catherine of Siena, St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila—demonstrate the erotic connectedness they experienced in spiritual peaks. It is proposed that integrating understanding of sexual and spiritual peak experience provides more knowledge of what it means to be ‘fully human’ and creates insight into the depths of intimacy with self, others, and the ultimate.     

An Introduction to the Horizon Model: An Alternative to Universalist Frameworks of Mystical Development

Critics have pointed out that the content and sequence of mystical development reported by different traditions do not seem very congruous with the contention that there is a universal path of mystical development. I propose a model of mystical development that is more subtle than traditional ‘invariant hierarchical’ models, and which explains how the apparently differing accounts of mystical development between traditions and thinkers can be reconciled with each other in a more convincing fashion, and brought together under one umbrella. The model preserves both the objective core of perennialism and the culturally subjective element of mystical ‘specialization’ that is undeniably evidenced in the mystical literature, and which hierarchical and invariant ‘universalist’ accounts struggle to integrate.     

The End(s) of Philosophy: Rhetoric, Therapy and Wittgenstein's Pyrrhonism

In Culture and Value Wittgenstein remarks: ‘Thoughts that are at peace. That's what someone who philosophizes yearns for’. The desire for such conceptual tranquillity is a recurrent theme in Wittgenstein's work, and especially in his later ‘grammatical‐therapeutic’ philosophy. Some commentators (notably Rush Rhees and C. G. Luckhardt) have cautioned that emphasising this facet of Wittgenstein's work ‘trivialises’ philosophy – something which is at odds with Wittgenstein's own philosophical ‘seriousness’ (in particular his insistence that philosophy demands that one ‘Go the bloody hard way’). Drawing on a number of correlations between Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy and that of the Pyrrhonian Sceptics, in this paper I defend a strong ‘therapeutic’ reading of Wittgenstein, and show how this can be maintained without ‘trivialising’ philosophy.     

The persistence of spiritual experience among churchgoing and non-churchgoing Italians: sociological and psychological perspectives

ABSTRACT

The study presented in this article draws on theories and methods developed within the psychology of religion to examine, from a fresh perspective, a problem established within the sociology of religion: the ‘oddity of the Italian situation’. The study employs the notion of openness to mystical experience as an indicator of the level of spiritual awareness among a sample of 1,155 Italians ranging in age from 14 to 80 years. The data demonstrated that, while levels of openness to mystical experience remain quite high among non-churchgoing Italians, these levels are significantly associated with sex, age, religious attendance, and personal prayer. Moreover, the differences between attenders and non-attenders are sensitive to the ways in which aspects of mystical experience are expressed. The dialogue between the psychology of religion and the sociology of religion generates fresh insight into the religious and spiritual landscape of Italy today.     

Not the Words: Hymnody,Enacted Theology,and the Lutheran Inupiat

Abstract : The theology of hymnody is not text‐bound. This article asserts that for the Lutheran Inupiat of Anchorage (Alaska), the practice of singing enacts the important theology. The Lutheran Inupiat still use the missionary hymns of the 1880s—early 1900s. This article explores how singing hymns simultaneously perpetuates Inupiaq spiritual culture and participates in the adopted Lutheran heritage. Inupiaq naming‐practices and song‐genealogies enrich Christian understandings of the ‘communion of saints’, which is enacted through singing.     

Spirituality and ‘Mystical Religion’ in Contemporary Society: A Case Study of British Practitioners of the Iyengar Method of Yoga

This article addresses the under-researched, but very popular activity of yoga in contemporary Britain and attempts a preliminary sociological exploration of the religious and spiritual beliefs of yoga practitioners. A sample of dedicated practitioners of the Iyengar method of yoga was chosen for a case study. It was found that the sample practitioners are engaged in a technique that attracts a significant number of people interested in a type of ‘spiritual exploration’ that can probably be best explained by the concept of ‘mystical religion’, as introduced by Ernst Troeltsch and developed by Colin Campbell. These findings provide new salience to the idea of ‘mystical religion’ and a starting point for considering the role that a physical practice plays in contemporary spirituality and religiosity.     

Scotland and the ‘mystical matrix’ of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: an exploration of religious cross-currents

At the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century there were significant cross-currents of influence between Scotland and mystical movements in continental Europe. In particular the group of Episcopalian clergy and aristocrats in the north-east of Scotland, designated by G.D.Henderson as ‘the Mystics of the North-East,’ shows strong links with and influences from the continental spiritual writers Antoinette Bourignon and the French Quietist Madame Guyon. But the wider context reveals further links with German Pietism and others concerned with inward religion as precursors of the Evangelical Revival. This article explores the fascinating Sitz im Leben of ‘the Mystics of the North-East’.     

The Hesychast method of prayer: its anthropological and symbolic significance

Hesychasm is an Eastern Christian method of prayer based on the invocation of the Name of Jesus and on the ‘descent of the noÛs (‘intellect’, ‘mind’ or ‘spirit’) into the heart’. This spiritual path, the method of which emerged in its most explicit form between the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries on Mount Athos, is the core of Christianity, since it consists in the inner practice of the fervent and continuous repetition of the holy Name and aims to achieve metánoia (‘change of the noÛs’) for the entire human being; and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through an incessant militia super terram comparable to the Muslim jihād al-akbar (‘great holy war’). A meditated analysis of some forms of symbolism which characterize the method in question plus a few comparisons between some central components of Hesychasm, Sufism and other traditional spiritual paths may be an adequate starting-point to understand more deeply the symbolic and anthropological aspects of this eminently ‘paradoxical’ ascetic discipline.     

Christian Mysticism and Science: The Psychological Dimension

Abstract

In this third of three papers, I identify three fundamental psychological themes that have informed Christian mystical theology and then explore how these themes might be given further understanding via natural science. The first theme, desire, represents an ever greater love for God: an insatiability related to the limitations of human language. Such focused desire for God is likely associated with brain activity in the caudate nucleus (CN); associated permanent changes in the neuroplastic brain further enhance this desire. The second theme, discernment, is about listening to God, being open to God's graces, and waiting for the right time to make godly decisions. Such decisions reflect both cognitive and emotive skills, as verified by their overlapping neural circuits within the brain. Psychotherapy indicates that the mind can control the brain, consciously improving and directing chosen events, thus leading to enhanced discernment. The third theme is charity, which represents the universal link between love of God and love of neighbor. Neuroscience demonstrates how cognition gives rise to such features as willfulness, surrender, fragmentation and wholeness—all of which play significant roles in mystical experiences, including the evolution to charity. Love of neighbor can be taken as shared attention building on intersubjective perception; such shared attention represents a deep interaction of lovers in voluntary self-disclosure—surely the ultimate basis for charity.     

Christ For Us Today – Promeity in the Christologies of Bonhoeffer and Kierkegaard

In 1944, Bonhoeffer famously asked ‘Who is Christ really, for us today?’ This question is ambiguous: ‘Christ for us’ points to an objective claim concerning the personal identity of Christ, while ‘for us today’ signals the need for ever new subjective value judgements and contextual appropriations. Does emphasis upon the promeity of Christ, like that found in the work of Bonhoeffer, volatilize the identity of Christ? Examination of the theme of promeity in the work of Bonhoeffer himself, as well as that of Kierkegaard, demonstrates that in the hands of both these Lutheran theologians promeity is acknowledged to be intrinsic to the fides quae creditur. The subjective appropriation and contextual character of Christology then proves to be a function of a prior and more decisive reality, namely the very identity of God in Christ for us.     

Polemics and Proverbs: Religious Controversy in England, ‘German Lips,’ and the Character of a Genre

ABSTRACT

This article firstly reconstructs the usage and meaning of the early-modern English proverb ‘as just as German’s lips.’ It demonstrates that the meaning of the proverb, which has never been authoritatively established, can be ascertained through its frequent appearance in the context early-modern religious polemics in England. The study then argues that the proverb’s presence in, and subsequent disappearance from, printed literature is inextricably tied up with epochal cultural changes in England. These are reflected in the increasingly pervasive use of the vernacular for formal controversial theology and in English notions of social standing and intellectual credibility. It lastly suggests a possible source for the origin of the proverb under discussion.     

Absorption and spiritual experience: A review of evidence and potential mechanisms

Some people seem to have a ‘talent’ for spiritual experience: they readily sense the presence of supernatural beings, receive special messages from God, and report intense feelings of self-transcendence, awe and wonder. Here we review converging strands of evidence to argue that the trait of 'absorption' captures a general proclivity for having spiritual experiences. Participants scoring highly on the Tellegen Absorption Scale report vivid experiences of hearing God's voice during prayer, intense mystical experiences in response to psychedelics or placebo brain-stimulation, and strong feelings of presence and transcendence when confronted with natural beauty, virtual reality, or music. Several mechanisms may help to explain the relationship between absorption and spiritual experience. We suggest that absorption captures an experiential mindset that intensifies inner and outer sensory experience in ways that reflect both prior expectation and novel sensory engagement. It seems to enable that which must be imagined to feel more real.     

The ‘Connection’ Health Care Providers Make with Dying Patients

SUMMARY

The literature confirms illness and hospitalisation can become spiritual encounters for patients and their families. Further, it has been established that both patients and their families are better equipped to deal with loss and change if they have a healthily developed spiritual sense of self. The aim of the study sought to determine the benefit or otherwise of a previous model of spiritual care. It asked ‘from the perspective of the nurse and other health care providers, what constitutes spiritual care giving?’ An ethnography was undertaken where data consisted of field notes, interviews, records, and diary entries. This paper reports on interview data, from which themes were derived. The major theme titled their space is expressed via a new model of spiritual care. It was shown that when caring for patients and their relatives, nurses and other health care professionals enter the world of the other to determine the other's needs. In so doing they typify agapé (altruistic love), where the individual cares for a complete stranger as if that stranger were family. This connection with the patient and their family is the foundation for spiritual care.     

The ascetic twist

Within the field of church history, this article is a study of a specific topic with regards to the Reformation period, namely, asceticism, from an uncommon perspective. One of the most well-known Reformation treatises, Martin Luther’s On the Freedom of a Christian, is read in conversation with an earlier ascetic writing, Maximus Confessor’s The Ascetic Life, and then compared to an understudied debate from the late sixteenth century between the Lutheran Tübingen theologians and the patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremiah II. This textually-based study is concerned both with the methodological problems that characterize the politics of comparison and with the present debates surrounding asceticism. In the end, it is argued that asceticism is not only a historically valid topic of study in a Lutheran setting, but also theologically relevant. Based on a distinction between spiritual and physical exercise, I argue that there is a social dimension to be rediscovered if inner dimensions of “piety” are reconnected with embodied, visible and communal practices in the context of the counterculture that is the Christian church.     

‘Joining into God's breath’: travail of the negative as a connection between mysticism and political activism

This essay argues that a negative hermeneutics, i.e., a hermeneutics that takes its starting point from the experience of gaps, failures, and limits, is a suitable lens for the study of mysticism. It uses the concept of travail of the negative, which focuses on the dynamics of a continuous ‘unsaying’ and ‘subverting’ of traditional expressions of faith and religious practice, to explore the connection between aspects of practical and theoretical negativity in mystical expressions. It suggests that this approach to mystical theology makes an important contribution to the wider theological discourse and encourages theology to take the fundamental character of negation seriously.