scholarly journals Sublime Communion and the Costs of Evolution

2018 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-38
Author(s):  
Denis Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Important Resource ◽  
What Is Said ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Mystical Theology ◽  
John Of The Cross ◽  
Theological Understanding

Both the crisis of life on our planet and major developments in the sciences demand a rethinking of the theological understanding of the human in relationship to the rest of the natural world. Since Pope Francis’s theology of sublime communion provides an important resource for this work, the first section of the article analyses what is said of this communion in Laudato Si’. In the second section, a critical theological issue is raised, one not dealt with in the encyclical, concerning the costs of evolution: the pain, predation, violence, death, and extinction built into the natural world. In the last two sections, it is proposed that the word sublime that Pope Francis uses is capable of embracing the harsh side of creation, through a brief survey of the distinction between beauty and the sublime in philosophical aesthetics, and then through an exploration of the use of the word sublime in the mystical theology of John of the Cross.

scholarly journals St. John of the Cross and the Monopolar Concept of God in the Abrahamic Religions in Spain

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 372
Author(s):  
Daniel Dombrowski
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Concept Of God ◽  
Charles Hartshorne ◽  
Abrahamic Religions ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Mystical Theology ◽  
John Of The Cross

The aim of this article is to philosophically explore the tension between “the God of the philosophers” and “the God of religious experience.” This exploration will focus on the mystical theology of the 16th c. Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross. It will be argued that a satisfactory resolution of the aforementioned tension cannot occur on the basis of the monopolar theism that has dominated the Abrahamic religions. That is, a better understanding of mystics in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam can occur via dipolar theism as articulated by contemporary process philosophers in the Abrahamic religions, especially the thought of Charles Hartshorne.

scholarly journals “O Sweet Cautery”: John of the Cross and the Healing of the Natural World

Horizons ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 308-331
Author(s):  
Mary Frohlich
Keyword(s):  
Human Person ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Presence Of God ◽  
Full Capacity ◽  
The Cross ◽  
John Of The Cross ◽  
The Web ◽  
Lengthy Process ◽  
The Way

Contrary to what may appear in a superficial understanding of his spirituality, John of the Cross strongly affirms the goodness of creation and its capacity to mediate the presence of God. He specifically identifies the web of mutual interactions among creatures as a primary manifestation of divine love, and he affirms that the more a person participates in God, the more he or she participates fully and joyfully in this community of creatures. Activation of creation's full capacity to mediate divinity, however, depends on the full fruition of the human person in God. Experientially, this involves a lengthy process of a back-and-forth rhythm between the glimpse of God in creation and the complete renunciation of dependence on creaturely knowledge in favor of faith. John's writings invite us to participate in the healing of the natural world by pursuing this contemplative rhythm all the way to its fruitional climax.

Faith and Ethical Reasoning in the Mystical Theology of St John of the Cross: A Reasonable Christian Mysticism

1989 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Sanderlin
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Growth ◽  
Ethical Reasoning ◽  
Detailed Knowledge ◽  
Christian Mysticism ◽  
Dark Night ◽  
Advanced Stages ◽  
Union With God ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Mystical Theology ◽  
John Of The Cross

It is often said that Christian mystics and contemplatives deemphasize reason, especially during advanced stages of spiritual growth such as union with God. St John of the Cross insists that to be united with God in this life through faith, we must empty our intellect of all comprehensions of God in a dark night of unknowing. According to Zwi Werblowsky, John's teaching on faith means the annihilation of the intellect. Werblowsky distinguishes between cognitive and anti–cognitive mysticism, and calls John's mysticism anti–cognitive. According to Werblowsky, cognitive mysticism values distinct, detailed knowledge from divine sources about divine or human realities, while anti–cognitive mysticism rejects such supernatural knowledge as an obstacle to union with God.

The Cross of the Living Lord: The Theology of the Cross and Mysticism

1996 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franceen (Vann) Neufeld
Keyword(s):  
Martin Luther ◽  
Theology Of The Cross ◽  
Hebrew Scriptures ◽  
Mystical Tradition ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Mystical Theology ◽  
John Of The Cross ◽  
Evangelical Theology

The theology of the cross, that ‘thin tradition’ stretching back through Luther and Augustine and Paul to find its origins in the Hebrew Scriptures themselves, has often been counterposed to the thicker, yet equally long, tradition of mysticism. In recent years, however, distinctions between these traditions have been expressed less categorically. It is now generally recognized that mysticism cannot be regarded as a single phenomenon. Rather, an understanding of diversity within the mystical tradition is foundational to an adequate appreciation of the richness, not only of mysticism, but of the theology of the cross as well. Ecumenical concerns have provided an incentive for discovering complexities in both traditions, and for breaking down the artificial barriers of long-held prejudices. This may make it possible to perceive ‘mystical theology in Martin Luther and evangelical theology in John of the Cross’.

Nature and the Sublime

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Sandy
Keyword(s):  
William Wordsworth ◽  
Percy Bysshe Shelley ◽  
John Keats ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Gothic Fiction ◽  
John Clare ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Mind

An account of Edmund Burke’s central ideas about the Sublime and the Beautiful shows how the emphasis Burke gave to terror helped to shape the Gothic fiction of Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley. Focusing on examples from the poetry of William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Charlotte Smith, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and John Clare, the remainder of this essay explores the ways in which Romantic poets both thought about and attempted to represent those elements of the sublime that were instigated by their encounters with the natural world. What emerges as defining about these interactions between the mind and world is how imaginative impulses towards a sense of the sublime often led to a renewed sense of the material world and the very contingencies of existence they sought to transcend. Even Wordsworth’s more reverential response to the natural world as sacrosanct recognises the ‘awe’ of the sublime can be as much consoling as it is disturbing. These disturbing aspects of natural process and the sublime are self-consciously explored in the poetry of Shelley, who subjects notions of transcendence and idealism to sceptical scrutiny. With varying degrees of emphases, the poetry of Byron, Smith, and Clare elide distinctions between nature and culture to acknowledge a sublime more explicitly shaped by temporal and material processes. Finally, a key episode in Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale is read as exemplifying the many difficulties and complexities of the Romantic imagination’s encounter with, and its attempts, to represent transcendence and the sublime.

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