Christian Mysticism

In order to better cope with the pressures and stresses of the current day, modern psychology is anxiously seeking to find new therapies to address the increasing disorders within the human psyche. In the process new fields of research, such as humanistic and transpersonal psychology, curiously appear to borrow more and more from the wisdom of the ages. This volume, containing eighteen articles by noteworthy expositors of the perennial philosophy such as Huston Smith, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Frithjof Schuon, presents the spiritual psychology of the wisdom traditions as a much-needed antidote to the current impasse in modern psychology.

Some Endorsements for Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy:

“[Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy] is more than an anthology. It is a wisely crafted collection of classic and contemporary scholarship noting that what many are seeking is what has always been, a perennial philosophy, that remains foundational. As one of the authors, Tage Lindbom, properly notes, ‘Secularization is a fish in troubled waters.’ This book claims the waters and is essential reading for all those who may have forgotten or are simply ignorant of the rich foundation provided by the perennial philosophy.”
—Ralph W. Hood, Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, past president of the Psychology of Religion division of the American Psychological Association, co-founder of The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion and co-author of The Psychology of Religion

“A necessary and bracing critique of the assumptions and limitations of contemporary Western psychology, this generous volume is also a passionate call and learned guide towards a truer perspective that embraces man's spiritual nature.”
—Gabor Maté, M.D., and author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

“Knowing the nature of the mind is perhaps the most difficult undertaking, especially in today’s world. To comprehend the nature of mind one needs to turn to the domain of religion and spirituality. Yet the truth of the mind and its complexity cannot explicitly be defined in words. Inner or transcendent wisdom sees the mind’s own nature without the duality of the seer. Suchness (tathatā) of mind is only experiential and not expressible. The words used to describe thought are themselves a product of thought, which is conditioned and limited. Thus, differences and contradictions are unavoidable. Therefore, a comparative study of different viewpoints and commentaries is immensely important to awaken the inner intelligence to see the mind as it is. Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy: Studies in Comparative Religion edited by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is an outstanding effort in this direction.”
—Samdhong Rinpoche, former Prime Minister (Kalon Tripa) of the Tibetan Government-in-exile, author of Uncompromising Truth for a Compromised World: Tibetan Buddhism and Today’s World

“The rise of psychology has impacted the study and practice of spirituality, the experiences and attitudes relevant to ultimate human values that transcend ordinary behavior. Each chapter of this remarkable book demonstrates this interaction in a unique and provocative way. But rather than using psychology to reduce and ‘psychologize’ spiritual topics, its authors demonstrate how directives from the spiritual traditions can enhance and even illuminate the enduring importance of psychology in the 21st century.”
—Stanley Krippner, Saybrook University, co-author of Spiritual Dimensions of Healing

“The work at hand is a thinking and debating man’s delight. If you have any interest at all in attempting to include an educated and enlightened view of man’s higher functions in your purview of the world, you will learn from and enjoy this collection of essays. If you already have some knowledge in this area, brace yourself: you may see some of your favorites sharply criticized. A thought-provoking work.”
—Bruce W. Scotton, University of California, San Francisco, co-editor of Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology

“This book, superbly edited by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos, is a masterful critique of the field of psychology and its loss of the sacred ground in which it once was rooted. It offers depth psychologists an opportunity to contemplate timeless truths echoed through the centuries by perennial philosophers who have always claimed psyche is subordinate to Spirit. Although ignored in depth psychology’s early years due to prejudice and lack of understanding, this is a message today’s psychotherapists must take seriously. Human beings need a deeper and wider transpersonal vision of who and what we are, which the saints and sages of the world’s spiritual traditions have always pointed to. In psychotherapy with a therapist committed to such a vision, patients penetrate into their unconscious depths and not infrequently awaken to the Ground of all Being. Their suffering itself occurred because they had turned away from Spirit. Above all, this volume passionately calls upon depth psychology to remember its origin in the perennial wisdom at the core of the great religions. There is something of a polemic in these pages. It deserves to be considered by depth psychologists of all persuasions.”
—Bryan Wittine, Transpersonal psychologist and Jungian psychoanalyst

“This anthology from Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is a must reference for anyone who is interested in psychology and its relationship to spirituality, and in developing an inclusive dialogue between disciplines that favor an integral outlook on the person and his or her potential. Selections in this anthology will inspire us to reexamine the metaphysical underpinnings of psychology, and remind us how important it is to rise above science’s attempt to reduce the human being to an epistemic object.”
—Sangeetha Menon, National Institute of Advanced Studies (Bangalore, India), Board Member of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), author of The Beyond Experience: Consciousness in Bhagavad Gita

“This anthology has some of the most discerning essays and reviews on spirituality and psychology, which provide much-needed care and caution to all those engaged in bringing them together or who wish to do so in future. Therefore, it is a must-read for all those who teach, research, consult, or study in such frontier areas as transpersonal psychology, states of consciousness, mind-body relation, holistic health, Indian psychology, and so on. It will be an invaluable textbook for courses in these and other related areas. I congratulate the editor of the book.”
—Kiran Kumar K. Salagame, University of Mysore (India), Board Member of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), author of The Psychology of Meditation: A Contextual Approach

“One of the finest collections of essays on the Perennial Philosophy—a must-read for all psychologists who are engaged with spirituality and transpersonal psychology. The essays which critique modern psychology (including transpersonal psychology, and the framework of Carl Jung), in the light of the Perennial Philosophy are a revelation and make compelling reading. The book serves as a corrective to the excesses of modern psychology, and to this end Sotillos has done a commendable job. I for one will include the book in some of the graduate courses that I teach.”
—Suneet Varma, University of Delhi, co-editor of Foundations of Indian Psychology

“To its credit modern science by-and-large is becoming more cognizant of the essential connection between spirituality and psychological health and well-being and most of all its positive implications within the field of psychology. While there is ample data to document this in a plethora of academic journals and books, this new book Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy adds a novel contribution to the dialogue between psychology and spirituality, which captures many nuances that for the most part go unnoticed within these discussions, and last but not least, it provides a keen eye of discernment to understand this intricate relationship on a deeper level that is crucially needed. This work will be a valuable asset to students and long term mental health practitioners and professors alike who seek to better understand the relationship between psychology and spirituality.”
—Harold G. Koenig, Duke University, Director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health, co-author of The Handbook of Religion and Health

Attributed to Master Heinrich of Constance, a sculpture of the Visitation from the convent of St. Katharinenthal in the Lower Rhine Valley (ca. 1310­20) portrays Mary and her cousin Elizabeth with two quartz cabochons inserted into their torsos, rock crystal representations of their wombs, which nurture the fetal Christ and John the Baptist. These crystals make the ​Visitation a strikingly unique devotional object in the eyes of the modern viewer, but when considered in the context of the fourteenth­century German Dominican convent, they also provide insight into the devotional practices of their users, cloistered nuns. In this thesis, I explore the nature and function of this unique object of devotion in the context of the Katharinenthal convent specifically in addition to the wider Middle High German spiritual milieu, particularly Rhenish Mysticism. ​I take a multidisciplinary approach to the study of this medieval artwork by making use of a wide range of sources: works from this same period found at Katharinenthal and other convents around the Rhine valley, theological treatises concerning the Incarnation (and, therefore, the Marian womb) the visionary accounts of Henry Suso and other Rhineland mystics, and the work of such medieval art historians as Jeffrey Hamburger, Caroline Walker Bynum, and Jacqueline Jung. Jung in particular describes the bodies of Mary and Elizabeth in the ​Visitation as “exuberant,” “thrusting the evidence of [their] virtues outward toward beholders and rendering them visible through the body’s materiality rather than through any internal motifs.” (“Crystalline Wombs and Pregnant Hearts,” p. 234). In this thesis, I use Jung’s analysis of the sculpture as a starting point to propose a new, though not mutually exclusive, model for interpreting the function of these crystal wombs.
In the first main section of the thesis, I examine the convent of Katharinenthal itself, a highly enclosed and communal female monastic environment, together with many of the surviving devotional objects from the convent around 1300 that formed Katharinenthal’s visual and material culture. The following section examines in closer detail the crystal wombs of the Visitation, considering both their theological connotations and their significance to medieval perception of the female body. The final section addresses the devotional function of Mary and Elizabeth’s crystal wombs by placing the ​Visitation within the context of both late medieval Euc​haristic theology and Rhenish mysticism. I conclude that the ​Visitation’s crystal wombs functioned as meditational foci, serving as “windows” into the visionary experience. These wombs, with their emphasis on transparency and interiority in their enclosed, conventual context, ultimately serve as a catalyst for mystical union with the divine.

Seven years, and a bibliography of over 100 pages: that is what Detlev Koepke invested in researching the gospel of Thomas.
Over 600 carefully worded pages disclose in great detail his intricate study and findings on Jesus in the gospel of Thomas as well as in the New Testament, and Q.
Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist and James are discussed in a separate chapter each, and we are presented with a full translation from Coptic, and a commentary on the gospel of Thomas.

The second half of this book focuses on the New Testament and history of Christianity: its historical background, Josephus, Paul, the Roman Empire and Christian persecution are some of the highlights.
Detlev Koepke passed away in 2015, leaving behind a truly majestic piece of work on the gospel of Thomas, its relation to Christianity, and the historical Jesus. A most complete work on the combination of these topics.

Detlev Koepke was fluent in 4 languages, and learned ancient Greek and Coptic specifically for and during his research. Most of his research was conducted utilising Harvard Divinity School library as well as his own extensive personal library: "no stone has been left unturned".

2021 edition, republished with permission from his son, David Koepke

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Love constitutes a paradigmatic emotion deployed by mystical writers across the three monotheistic traditions as a counterpoint to ratiocinative discourse transporting the reader into a direct and intimate knowledge of the divinity in contrast to indirect knowledge that logic and scholastic argumentation engender. In my paper, the concept of love will form the main emotional pivot of analysis and will engage related phenomena of jealousy, desire, rapture, physical expressions of attachment (kiss), and poetics or language through which affection becomes articulated. In Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), I will be focusing on Elijah de Vidas’s main work, Reshit Hokhmah (The Beginning ofWisdom) written in Safed in the last decades ofthe sixteenth century. De Vidas’s work belongs to the genre of ethical literature (mussar) within the Jewish esoteric corpus with a clear focus on affecting and refining human character traits in order to cultivate greater love in a person for God as well as for other human beings. The base text that Reshit Hokhmah recurrently cites and comments on is the medieval kabbalistic classic, the Sefer ha-Zohar (Book of Splendor) and as such my analysis will draw on the Zohar’s rich symbolic and poetic layers to uncover how emotive states and feelings function in the creation of meaning in Jewish mysticism.
Love comprises a fundamental aspect of Christian mystical discourse and the writings of important female mystics, such as the medieval Beguine Hadewijch of Brabant, provide an especially fertile ground for fostering spirituality through embodied emotions. Speaking of the Divine through poetry is depicted by Hadewijch as not only a powerful means of awakening love in the inner person of the speaker but also diffusing this love in the hearts of members of her own community: “You must gladly speak of God. This is a criterion of Minne (Love), that the name of the Beloved is found sweet. Saint Bernard speaks of this: ‘Jesus is honey in the mouth.’ To speak of the Beloved is exceedingly sweet; for it awakens Love immeasurably.” In another poem the intersecting repetition of love and the ambiguous movement between the beloved and the lover creates a sense of union with the Divine through love:
O love, were I love, and with love, love you, love, O love, for love, give that love which love may know wholly as love.
The Sufi poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi will provide the third pivot for engaging the concept of love and emotions in Islamic mysticism. Rumi uses the image of a hunter and the deer to depict the attraction between the human soul and the divine beloved. The path to the deer begins with the hunter following the footprints of the animal but as he approaches closer the scent of the deer’s musk gland guides him finally to the prey. Reciprocity and mutual attraction is underlined by Rumi as a key principle in his doctrine of mystical love: “[A]s the beggar is in love with bounty and in love with the bountiful giver, so the bounty of the bountiful giver is in love with the beggar.”
Through the close examination of mystical sources in Judaism, Christianity and Sufism, my paper will chart new fruitful avenues for investigating the expression, theory, transmission, and practice of emotional states in the pursuit of higher religious ideals espoused by the authors of these texts.

In a fast-paced world, what value does poetry hold?  What good is it, since as Auden famously opined, "poetry makes nothing happen."  Of course, this was meant ironically in a poem celebrating W. B. Yeats upon his death.  What poetry does offer is a different manner of seeing and being in the world.  A slower way of apprehending our place.  A stubborn way of opening to what is.  This essay draws on Charles Taylor's critique of modernity, and suggests what religion and poetry have in common--and what distinguishes them.  Both share a longing for a kind of transcendence that we find in the ordinary grit and rhyme of our lives, something "other" that moves us toward the world, and more deeply into our own lives.  Poems offer us what George Steiner calls the "shining through" of epiphany, though one that comes to us in indirect or mediated forms.  Or, as Adam Zagajewski puts it, "poetry searches for radiance."  In an age of saturation, of excessive but thin 24/7 "presence," that is gift enough to warrant our attention and capture our imagination--which, finally, is the singular gift of poetry, and why religion that is too prose-bound is finally less adequate for the work of praise.

"Vaterunserauslegung ,Unser liebste Herr Jesus´. Mystik als Katechesis in einer spätmittelalterlichen Vaterunserauslegung"
Das 15. Jahrhundert ist eine Wandlungszeit der religiösen Literatur. Anstatt der Anweisunge zur persönlichen Erfahrung Gottes, die im 14. Jhdt. im Umkreis der Deutschen Mystik enstanden, werden vor allem Themen als Erlösung, Busse, jenseitiges Leben, Höllenangst, Fegefeuer und Heilssicherung bevorzugt. Die „Mystik“ wird popularisiert, d.h. das religiöse Leben wird „heilsam“ reglementiert. Trotz dieser Lage tauchen jedoch hin und wieder kleinere Texte auf, die die philosophisch gewurzelte Spiritualität weiterführen. Zu diesen gehört auch die vorliegende Paternoster-Auslegung aus der ersten Hälfte des 15.
Jhdts., deren Handschrift auch in der Prager Nationalbibliothek aufbewahrt wird. -- Der Artikel beinhaltet auch eine kurze Übersetzung aus dem betreffenden Text.

This study focuses on the exegesis of Gregory of Nyssa, a 4th century exegete, a Church Father, and one of the three Cappadocian Fathers. The main primary source of my thesis is Gregory’s treatise The Life of Moses, an intriguing example of Patristic exegesis based on the Exodus narrative. The main purpose of Gregory’s treatise is not to make a historical presentation of the journey of Moses and the Israelites, but to elevate the reader into a higher state of consciousness in order to perceive the spiritual meaning of the narrative. The kind of exegesis that Gregory applies is often defined as allegorical interpretation or allegorical exegesis, rich on symbols and enigmas, which was at first neglected in scholarly discussion. Fortunately, there has been a growing interest in Biblical interpretation of the Church Fathers since the mid-20th century. The main objective of my thesis is to focus on Gregory’s interpretations of topographical imagery presented in the Exodus narrative. Greg...

Jest to pierwsza analiza lingwistyczna Dzienniczka św. Faustyny Kowalskiej. Celem pracy było ukazanie językowych obrazów dwóch rodzajów doświadczeń mistycznych – objawień i stanów duszy, a także zestawienie różnic i podobieństw w ich słownym wyrażaniu. Tekst świętej został przebadany przy użyciu teorii językowego obrazu świata (JOS). Do zbadania leksyki wyekscerpowanych opisów posłużyła metoda jakościowa oraz ilościowa.

Podstawowe pytania, na które stara się odpowiedzieć badaczka, brzmią: w jaki sposób można opowiedzieć o boskiej i ponadzmysłowej rzeczywistości ludzkim i zmysłowym językiem? Jakie pojęcia mogą przybliżyć niepojętego Boga? Które z elementów doświadczanego na ziemi świata można wykorzystać do opisu świata znanego głównie z doznań duchowych?

Monografia składa się z czterech części. Pierwszą wypełniają rozważania terminologiczne – dotyczące definicji mistyki i pojęć jej pochodnych, a także problematyki języka religijnego, do którego przynależy język mistyków. Celem tych rozdziałów jest też ukazanie Dzienniczka na tle polskiej literatury mistycznej. Druga i trzecia część ma charakter analityczny – jedna skupia się na opisach objawień, następna – na opisach stanów mistycznych. Czwarta część stanowi zestawienie i podsumowanie obu analiz.

In the last century there has been an outburst in criticism of traditional Luther research. The finnish school of research, led by Tuomo Mannermaa, has been one of the leading schools in this criticism, and provided a new view of Luther that has been called a paradigm shift in all of Luther research. Yet the new view of Luther, which is proposing that Luther had an ontological view of salvation closely related to the orthodox concept of theosis, has met resistance. One of the greatest criticisms and problems that has emerged concerning the finnish shcool is the fact that no clear motivation is given to why Luther should be read as having an ontological view of salvation. This criticism has not been met by the finnish school, but might be met in another branch of the Luther research. The results of the research dealing with Luther and mysticism is namely what I suggest that the finnish school needs as to give their own results real validity.

The combination of the finnish school and the mysticism of Martin Luther, is then providing a way of reading the theology of Luther, that I suggest is the best option.

Mors Mystica: Black Metal Theory Symposium. Eds. Edia Connole and Nicola Masciandaro. London: Schism Press, 2015. 422 pp.

CONTENTS
Introduction: On “Heroes/Helden”
Edia Connole & Nicola Masciandaro
Following the Stench: Watain and Putrefaction Mysticism
Drew Daniel
Ablaze in the Bath of Fire
Brad Baumgartner
Mycelegium
James Harris
dying to find I was never there
Teresa Gillespie
On the Ecstasy of Annihilation: Notes towards a Demonic Supplement
Charlie Blake
Autonomy of Death, Nothing Like This
Daniel Colucciello Barber
“It’s a suit! It’s ME!”: Hyper-Star and Hyper-Hero through Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man”
Caoimhe Doyle & Katherine Foyle
The Tongue-Tied Mystic: Aaaarrrgghhh! Fuck Them! Fuck You!
Gary J. Shipley
These Flames Will Lick the Feet of God
Heather Masciandaro
Mystical Anarchism
Simon Critchley
Die Maske des Black Metals
Dominik Irtenkauf
Xenharmonic Black Metal: Radical Intervallics as Apophatic Ontotheology
Brooker Buckingham
The Perichoresis of Music, Art, and Philosophy
Hunter Hunt-Hendrix
On Darkness Itself
Niall Scott
Haemál
Jeremy Dyer 
From Black Bile
Eugene Thacker
“This Place is a Tomb”: Infinite Terror in Darkspace
Dylan Trigg
Seven Propositions On The Secret Kissing Of Black Metal: OSKVLVM
Edia Connole
Wings Flock to My Crypt, I Fly to My Throne:
On Inquisition’s Esoteric Floating Tomb
Nicola Masciandaro
Symposium Photographs
Öykü Tekten

APPENDIX
Bound to Metal (Interview with Edia Connole for Legacy)
Dominik Irtenkauf
Theoria e praxis del Black Metal (Interview by Fabio Selvafiorita for L’Intellettuale Dissidente)
Nicola Masciandaro

This article offers a new interpretation of Bodin’s stance on the classic issue of action and contemplation -- a vexata quaestio of Bodinian scholarship that takes us to the heart of Bodin's views on ethics, politics, and theology. Taking into account the entire arc of Bodin's production, from the Methodus to the Paradoxon, the article considers Bodin's changing views on the 'best form of life' and argues that towards the end of his life Bodin came to redefine completely the problem by positing a third stage of human experience, which he called "reflection" (actus reflexus in Latin, reflexion in French) and described as the passive enjoyment of God's light reflected in the human soul as in a mirror. The article explores how Bodin's theory of reflection relates to his theology and spirituality, on the one hand, and to his ethical views on the other.  By raising the question of Bodin’s sources for this theory, the article also uncovers his profound debts to late-medieval Scholasticism and Christian mysticism, especially that of Nicholas of Cusa.

Mysticism refers to a religious philosophical approach emphasizing a deep, direct connection between the divine and a believer, achieved by faith and manifested through inspiration and illumination. The word finds its origin in ancient Greek, referring to the term for "to conceal." Similarly, individuals participating in mystery religions are referred to as mystae. Medieval mysticism and inspired forms of Christian faith influenced subsequent religious movements across Europe, such as the Protestant Reformation (especially its radical branch) and the so-called Counter-Reformation. During the Renaissance and the Reformation, mystical thought played a major role in the many attempts to reform the Church. Women, in particular, were instrumental in the diffusion of mystical ideas and practices in both the Middle Ages and in early modernity.

Background: The mathematical idea of Jesus Christ is ­ ~ ≤ X ≤ ~ and X = Y. Other mathematical ideas are the Cartesian coordinate system, n⁰ = 1 and ~, and n⁰ = 1 (X for the Lord ‘s day) and n ^n + 2 (Y for human’s day). Mathematically, it is scholarly that Christ came from heaven to earth and the dead people, and then came back to heaven through the earth. The gospel does not introduce a new Lord. There is no other Lord in Christianity, except Christ. The mathematical idea of - ~ ≤ X1 < ~ and X1 = Y1 is for Satan and the false prophet.
Objectives: To show mathematically that Jesus Christ is Lord and journey of Jesus Christ from heaven to earth and the world of the dead, then returned to heaven through this world. This journey is scholarly.
Methods: The n⁰ (X) and 10 ^2+n is mathematical ideas of days in God and human. The n⁰ = 1 and ~ in which -~≤ n ≤ ~ is for mathematical idea for one God. The ­ ~ ≤ X ≤ ~ and X = Y is mathematical idea for the spiritual journey of Jesus Christ. For the false prophet and Satan are - ~ ≤ X1 < ~ and X1 = Y1, and Cartesian coordinate systems were described.  Searched verses in the Bible manually and via the internet. Keywords included such as Christ, and the false prophet. 
Results: God in the Old Testament is the same as God in the New Testament. In mathematics, God is the same as one and ~. Mathematics can show who is God. Christ is the same as God. There is no other Christ. God became man in Jesus Christ to preach the gospel to humans. He went to the earth of the dead to preach the gospel 3 days, returned to the earth, and then to the heaven. This is the spiritual journey. Emmanuel is God with us.  A Christian could catch up into paradise as Paul’s vision. It was from the earth. It was not from heaven. It is different with Jesus Christ’s journey. Paul’s vision shows that the man catch up from the world to heaven, returned to the earth and died. He needed to wait the advent of Christ to rise up him from the death. Christ is eternal forever. The man in Paul’s vision still needs to be rise by Christ on the day of the Lord. The - ~ ≤ X ≤ ~ and X = Y fills Quadrant 1, Quadrant 2, Quadrant 3, and Quadrant 4 in the Cartesian coordinate system. Mathematical idea of -~ ≤ X=Y ≤ ~ is first the evidence as spiritual journey of Jesus Christ as the Father, Son, and the Spirit. The Cartesian coordinate system is the second evidence of the journey. Another evidence in mathematical idea, the third evidence, of the Father, Son and the Spirit is n⁰ = 1, ~. For example, if n is 1, 2, 3, the result is 1⁰ = 2⁰ = 3⁰ = 1. It shows that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit is one. The forth evidence is day in the Lord and day in human. Its mathematical idea is n⁰ = 1 (the Lord’s day) and n^n+2 (human’s day). Satan was from heaven and was thrown into the earth. It was not a spiritual journey. Satan, his angels and the false prophet have been thrown into the hell.  The mathematical model of the false prophet is - ~ ≤ X1 < ~ and X1 = Y1.
Conclusions: Jesus Christ is the Lord and scholarly. There is only one Lord Jesus Christ. The ­ ~ ≤ X ≤ ~ and X = Y shows that Jesus Christ is the Lord. Ten mathematical ideas or evidences can demonstrate the relationship between God, Jesus Christ, and the Spirit. This relationship also shows the Spiritual Journey of Jesus Christ. These include n⁰ = 1and~ , n0⁰ (X) and n^2+n, -~ ≤ X=Y ≤ ~, and the Cartesian coordinate systems. The false prophet has mathematic idea as - ~ ≤ X1 < ~ and X1 = Y1.

This article, originally published years ago in the Laughing Man, a journal of contemporary spirituality, examines accounts of the extraordinary manners of death attributed to mystics, saints and sages of numerous spiritual traditions, including Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.

Augustine’s accounts of his so-called mystical experiences in conf.
7.10.16, 17.23, and 9.10.24 are puzzling. The primary problem is that,
although in all three accounts he claims to have seen “that which is,”
we have no satisfactory account of what “that which is” is supposed to
be. I shall be arguing that, contrary to a common interpretation, Augustine’s intellectual “seeing” of “being” in Books 7 and 9 was not a vision
of the Christian God as a whole, nor of one of the divine persons, each of
whom is equally God, according to Augustine. This becomes clear when
we attend to the fact that Augustine is appropriating a specific meaning
of “that which is” or “being” used by Plotinus in his account of the
lover of Beauty. This resolution, however, leads to a second question. Is
there anything distinctively Christian about any, or all, of Augustine’s
ascents? On the one hand, it would be odd if there were not, given that
the Confessions are addressed to the Christian God. On the other hand,
upon close inspection we find that the allegedly specific “Christian”
characteristics that modern commentators have identified in the
ascents of conf. 7 and 9 also occur in the Neoplatonists. I will argue
that there is in fact one important difference between Augustine and the
Neoplatonists here that has not been pointed out in these prior
interpretations.

Neste ensaio, partindo do que meditei em outros ensaios sobre a experiência estética e a vida espiritual baseando-me em São Tomás e outros místicos e filósofos cristãos, dedico-me a pensar no significado dos modos gregorianos. Procuro estabelecer possíveis relações implícitas na cultura que gerou o canto gregoriano comparando o significado estético dos modos com o significado teológico dos dons do Espírito Santo. Também busco uma compreensão de possíveis influxos psicológicos dos modos gregorianos numa analogia com os temperamentos clássicos teorizados por Hipócrates e os que nisto o seguiram e também pensando em analogias entre os modos e as estruturas da alma (segundo o pensamento escolástico). Tento compreender se num contexto específico cultural seria possível utilizar os modos para uma terapia que busque a prática e o desenvolvimento das quatro virtudes cardeais.

Some theorists argue that religion relates to politics in one of two ways: either it asserts its authority over the public sphere or it withdraws from the world in preference for spiritual concerns. In response, this special issue offers an expanded vision of what political theology can contribute to public reflection. Against those who appropriate divine authority in support of a given regime, Jewish and Christian negative theology argues that God is radically elusive. Where resistance movements sometimes struggle to transition from opposition to governance, negative theology models a critique that allows for robust affirmation. Although the tradition does not directly address democratic politics, it demonstrates that a commitment to radical transformation does not rule out the compromise required to enact concrete policies. In this way, negative theology offers resources for addressing the crises that currently threaten democratic politics in the West.

In einem trivialen Verständnis bedeutet Mystik das, was die Religionen der Erde jenseits ihrer institutionell-dogmatischen Ausprägungen miteinander verbindet. Inwieweit ein solch entkontextualisierter Mystik-Begriff wissenschaftlich vertretbar ist, soll genauso diskutiert werden wie die christlichen Voraussetzungen und Möglichkeiten einer sinnvollen Verständigung über fremde mystische Überlieferungen im interreligiösen Dialog. In diesem Zusammenhang sollen zwei theologische Ansätze (Josef Sudbrack und John Hick) näher besprochen werden, um zu zeigen, wie die (christliche) Theologie der Religionen über die Rolle und den Stellenwert der Mystik in der interreligiösen Verständigung urteilt. Es wird sich dabei zeigen, dass in der Einstellung außerchristlichen mystischen Überlieferungen gegenüber dieselben Dichotomien obwalten wie in der Beurteilung von nichtchristlichen Religionen: Schroffe Ablehnung des fremden Mystischen bei zeitgleichem Anspruch auf die Exklusivität der eigenen mystischen Tradition ist eher untypisch; inklusivistische und pluralistische Tendenzen sind desto häufiger anzutreffen. Vor diesem Hintergrund stellt sich die Frage, ob sich in der eigenen zweitausendjährigen Theologiegeschichte einen Ansatz findet, der nicht nur die zum Dialog erforderliche Offenheit fremden religiösen Überlieferungen gegenüber aufweist, sondern auch ein wissenschaftlich verantwortbares Umgehen mit der eigenen Tradition ermöglicht. Dabei geht es um den Ansatz der Negativen Theologie, dem beim rechten Licht gesehen sowohl das Absolutheitsdenken als auch der religiöse Relativismus fremd sind.

In this paper, I argue that the mystics Julian of Norwich and Teresa of Avila understand sin as blindness, a lack of sight and awareness of God's presence, and that, for both women, this understanding has implications for what humans must do (or not do) to achieve mystical union with God.

It was the emphasis of Søren Kierkegaard's railing against 19th-century Danish Christianity in all its ruthlessness that eventually led him to utterly reject and actively fight the majority of the contemporary as well as important aspects of the historical discourse on Christianity. One of the aspects that Kierkegaard distanced himself from sharply consists in the long tradition of Christian mysticism. Nevertheless his concept of the “knight of faith” reveals several deliberations that appear to be close to mystical Christian conceptions (e.g. the meaning of suffering or despair for the leap of faith, an increasing awareness of sin and guilt as well as the conditions for the knight of faith's secular ministry). Thus, Kierkegaard's critique of mysticism suggests his misunderstanding of the mystical perspective's implications. This essay tries to solve said misunderstanding between Kierkegaard and christian tradition by interrelating the process of becoming a knight of faith with the mystical responsibility before the divine and the ethical responsibility before all of humanity.

Thèse de doctorat présentée en décembre 2013, avec félicitations unanimes du Jury.
Une synthèse fondamentale du motif central et incontournable chez Balzac que représente la quête d'Absolu, présente dans toutes ses œuvres, au travers de ses personnages de fous, de génies artistiques ou scientifiques, et de mystiques.

In this chapter, we examine a few potential problems when inquiring into the ethics of medieval Christian and Islamic mystical traditions: First, there are terminological and methodological worries about defining mysticism and doing comparative philosophy in general. Second, assuming that the Divine represents the highest Good in such traditions, and given the apophaticism on the part of many mystics in both religions, there is a question of whether or not such traditions can provide a coherent theory of value. Finally, the antinomian tendencies and emphasis on passivity of some mystics might lead one to wonder whether their prescriptive exhortations can constitute a coherent theory of right action. We tackle each of these concerns in turn and discuss how they might be addressed, in an attempt to show how medieval mysticism, as a fundamentally practical enterprise, deserves more attention from practical and moral philosophy than it has thus far received.