{"title":"To Be and Become the God-Beyond-God: Deification in the Thought of Meister Eckhart","authors":"Anthony J. Scordino","doi":"10.1080/20465726.2022.2139458","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20465726.2022.2139458","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The past few decades have enjoyed concurrent surges of interest both in the thought of Meister Eckhart and in theologies of deification. Curiously, though, these two lines of scholarship often run parallel. Yet, Meister Eckhart was as much a systematician and theologian of deification as he was a preacher of mystical union, and his corpus is rendered uniquely cogent when framed in those terms. In this paper, I delineate the theo-logic substantiating the successive stages of Eckhart's account of the human person's journey towards divinizing union with God. By tracking this spiritual itinerary from creation to the soul's uncreated spark and divine ground, and from there to the Word's eternal birth and the breakthrough to the Godhead-beyond-God, I elucidate the ways in which Eckhart navigates and manipulates deification's understandably hazardous semantic field, the result of which arguably represents the apotheosis of deification theology in the Western Christian tradition.","PeriodicalId":40432,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Mystical Theology","volume":"31 1","pages":"109 - 120"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42940665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Studying and suffering divine things: St. Thomas Aquinas on Hierotheus","authors":"Urban Hannon","doi":"10.1080/20465726.2022.2139455","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20465726.2022.2139455","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The mysterious figure of Hierotheus—purportedly the teacher of the equally mysterious St. Denys the Areopagite—appears in the very first question of the Summa Theologiae. There St. Thomas Aquinas invokes him as an example of someone who has experienced or ‘suffered' divine things and who can therefore judge by a higher wisdom than can the ordinary student of sacra doctrina. Drawing deeply on St. Thomas' Divine Names commentary, this paper considers St. Thomas' presentation of Hierotheus as both theologian and spiritual teacher. It looks especially to what, on Thomas' view, Hierotheus can teach about the relationship between theology and mysticism, between the wisdom of learning and the wisdom of charity, between studying and suffering the things of God. The central argument of this paper is that, in St. Thomas’ overall thought, the great mystic Hierotheus is not intended as a contrast to theologians but as a model for theologians.","PeriodicalId":40432,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Mystical Theology","volume":"31 1","pages":"80 - 90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45636440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Revelation of Weakness: Julian of Norwich, John Caputo, and the Event of Hospitality","authors":"D. Fishley","doi":"10.1080/20465726.2022.2139454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20465726.2022.2139454","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study is foremost a close reading of chapter 22 of revelation nine from Julian of Norwich’s (c. 1343–1416) Revelations of Divine Love. I reflect on the implications of a section from the chapter’s introduction in which Christ asks Julian if she were satisfied (‘payde’) for the suffering he underwent for her. Upon hearing her affirmative response Christ tells her that ‘If thou art payde, I am payde.’. In my analysis, I turn to the interpretive strategies offered by the philosopher and theologian, John Caputo (b. 1940), to reflect on the theological images being presented in this chapter. Specifically, I consider the subordinate depiction of Christ in relation to Julian that this section suggests. To do this, I draw on Caputo’s notion of ‘weak theology’ combined with his idea of ‘the event’ and his ethics of ‘hospitality’ as fruitful hermeneutical strategies for thinking through the Christological implications of this chapter.","PeriodicalId":40432,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Mystical Theology","volume":"31 1","pages":"67 - 79"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42287507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Introduction from the Editor of Medieval Mystical Theology","authors":"Duane D. Williams","doi":"10.1080/20465726.2022.2139453","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20465726.2022.2139453","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40432,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Mystical Theology","volume":"31 1","pages":"65 - 66"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47803384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Perceiving the Humanity of Time: Time Explained Through the Communion of Eihei Dōgen and Maurice Merleau-Ponty","authors":"Ben Betney","doi":"10.1080/20465726.2022.2094562","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20465726.2022.2094562","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Through engaging with the major works of Eihei Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzo (in particular his ‘Uji’ fascicle) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, I reveal the nature of time, by exploring how the phenomenon of time’s passage is perceived. I focus on how time’s presentation of having a past, present, and future is perceived by us within the immediate now or present moment. Therefore, I will be looking at the ramifications our human body has on our perception of time. This will bring into discussion both Dōgen and Merleau-Ponty who both express the view that the body is found to be the foundation for our perception. Therein, the reader will find that our body creates the conditions needed to perceive the passage of time.","PeriodicalId":40432,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Mystical Theology","volume":"31 1","pages":"1 - 21"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45650478","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Divine Remaking: St Bonaventure and the Gospel of Luke; Way Back to God: The Spiritual Theology of St Bonaventure; Truth and Reality: The Wisdom of St Bonaventure","authors":"Luke Penkett","doi":"10.1080/20465726.2022.2084899","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20465726.2022.2084899","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40432,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Mystical Theology","volume":"31 1","pages":"61 - 63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60008815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation","authors":"Luke Penkett","doi":"10.1080/20465726.2022.2084844","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20465726.2022.2084844","url":null,"abstract":"process through which the subject is unified and transformed by Christ. However, Nelstrop qualifies her claim. Although she argues that Julian ‘accepted the idea of deification,’ for her, ‘this did not entail either the possibility of a this-worldly perfection or absorption into the Trinity’ (p. 127). Nelstrop wants to thus maintain the integrity of deification as a theme tied to Christ’s incarnation and the subject’s participation with that incarnational reality, without tying Julian to an account of deification which negates the boundary between creature and creator (p. 127). Following Jean Leclercq, Nelstrop argues that Julian echoes the monastic theological tradition which placed value on noting the aesthetic and emotional affects of a text (p. 131). This approach of intimately engaging the text gives rise to an awareness in the subject of an ‘inseparable independence on Christ’ (p. 146) and a growing understanding that God ‘is the ground of all that is’ (p. 155), the consequence of which is a subject transformed in the light of the knowledge of this intimate divine connection. Clarification of these claims and their link to lectio divina are given further account in chapter six. Nelstrop argues there, through an analysis of memory and biblical imagery, that Julian’s words and images can be understood as ‘the words and images of the Word’ (p. 238). Unity between the subject and God occurs here by developing practices which stress intimate engagement with the word itself. Nelstrop’s study, in conclusion, reveals that our grasp of medieval western notions of deification is granted greater clarity when classificatory models like those advocated by Russell are deployed. In doing so, we see that Julian and Rolle’s strategies of reading and techniques of writing suggest productive comparison with classical understandings of deification. Though, to be sure, further work on this topic is required to lend additional credibility to her thesis. Nelstrop’s text is a critical, thought-provoking, and important addition to our understanding of mysticism and deification in their medieval context.","PeriodicalId":40432,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Mystical Theology","volume":"31 1","pages":"59 - 60"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42840439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Divine Nothingness, Ecstasy and Self-transcendence in the Evangelical Pearl","authors":"Rik Van Nieuwenhove","doi":"10.1080/20465726.2022.2084840","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20465726.2022.2084840","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article considers a key topic from medieval theological anthropology by examining how ecstasy and self-transcendence relate to divine nothingness. It discusses this topic by examining a spiritual classic written by a female author and published in 1538 but largely forgotten, namely, The Evangelical Pearl, which encapsulates central themes from Jan van Ruusbroec and Meister Eckhart and passes them on to the modern age. This contribution argues that divine nothingness elicits a theological-anthropological response of ecstasy and self-transcendence, which is best understood as a disposition of radical recollection, dispossessiveness and gratuitousness of one’s memory, intellect and will. The final part of this paper considers the question whether our author’s negative theology of nothingness is vulnerable to Luther’s criticism of apophaticism and its alleged lack of Christocentric grounding.","PeriodicalId":40432,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Mystical Theology","volume":"31 1","pages":"33 - 40"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46139783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Two Masters Negating the Negation: A Comparative Study of Zhàozhōu Cōngshěn and Meister Eckhart","authors":"Duane D. Williams","doi":"10.1080/20465726.2022.2084841","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20465726.2022.2084841","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay is a comparative study of Zhàozhōu Cōngshěn and Meister Eckhart. I focus on how each of them achieves a negation of the negation, which is designed to more genuinely evince the Absolute. I begin with a close study of the Zen Buddhist Mu kōan, analysing some of the ways the inherent negation can be interpreted and explaining what it ultimately seeks to do. This is followed by an exploration of key extracts from Eckhart’s sermons and treatises, where I interpret through Plato’s dialogue, Sophist, the specific way Eckhart refers to negation and how this, in turn, is to be negated. In both Zhàozhōu and Eckhart, I demonstrate how a negation of the negation works and why it is necessary. I conclude by elucidating the similarities and dissimilarities at work in the form, content, structure, and outcome of each mystic’s negations.","PeriodicalId":40432,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Mystical Theology","volume":"31 1","pages":"41 - 57"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47461280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}