Search Results (18)

This article examines the theological trajectories of Watchman Nee (1903–1972) and Witness Lee (1905–1997) on sanctification, union with Christ, and deification, situating their contributions within recent reappraisals of the doctrine of theosis in the academy. Though deification was universally affirmed by the early church and retained in various forms in medieval and early Protestant theology, post-Reformation Western Christianity marginalized this theme in favor of juridical and forensic soteriological categories. Against this backdrop, Nee and Lee offer a theologically rich, biblically grounded, and experientially oriented articulation of deification that warrants greater scholarly attention. Drawing from the Keswick Holiness tradition, patristic sources, and Christian mysticism, Nee developed a soteriology that integrates justification, sanctification, and glorification within an organic model of progressive union with God. Though he does not explicitly use the term “deification”, the language he employs regarding union and participation closely mirrors classical expressions of Christian theosis. For Nee, sanctification is not merely moral improvement but the transformative increase of the divine life, culminating in conformity to Christ’s image. Lee builds upon and expands Nee’s participatory soteriology into a comprehensive theology of deification, explicitly referring to it as “the high peak of the divine revelation” in the Holy Scriptures. For Lee, humans become God “in life and nature but not in the Godhead”. By employing the phrase “not in the Godhead”, Lee upholds the Creator–creature distinction—i.e., humans never participate in the ontological Trinity or God’s incommunicable attributes. Yet, in the first portion of his description, he affirms that human beings undergo an organic, transformative process by which they become God in deeply significant ways. His framework structures sanctification as a seven-stage process, culminating in the believer’s transformation and incorporation into the Body of Christ to become a constituent of a corporate God-man. This corporate dimension—often overlooked in Western accounts—lies at the heart of Lee’s ecclesiology, which he sees as being consummated in the eschatological New Jerusalem. Ultimately, this study argues that Nee and Lee provide a coherent, non-speculative model of deification that integrates biblical exegesis, theological tradition, and practical spirituality, and thus, present a compelling alternative to individualistic and forensic soteriologies while also highlighting the need for deeper engagement across global theological discourse on sanctification, union with Christ, and the Triune God. Full article

In this paper, I investigate what role religious emotions, passions, and prayer may play in what may be called the religion of the heart in early Syrian theology, especially in the several works of ’Aphrahaṭ, Saint Ephrem, and the anonymous collection titled the Book of Steps, all from the fourth century. In the original Syriac sources, one may see how in this vast corpus, religious emotions and prayer act as a corridor channeling the believer’s striving for the disclosure of the mysteries surrounding God. It will also be shown that while these sources advocate in unison for the heart’s function in connecting the believer with God, their respective interpretive theological contexts are different. These points are substantiated by virtue of a number of citations from the original texts. Full article

This article reconsiders literature’s capacity to express and evoke spiritual experiences by turning to William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, especially his discussion of mysticism and his suggestion that poetry can bring about such states. James’s ideas are especially promising given recent developments in postsecular and postcritical scholarship that problematize a religious/secular divide and call into question a hermeneutics of suspicion. Bringing James into conversation with Paul Ricoeur, I aim to show how receptivity to spiritual experiences in literature might generate expansive models of both poetics and hermeneutics. To pursue these possibilities, my study analyzes three examples of Victorian lyric poems that probe the edges of wonder: Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush”, Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Nondum” and Dollie Radford’s “A Dream of ‘Dreams’”. These case studies strategically select work by writers of various belief or unbelief positions, highlighting the dynamism of the late nineteenth-century moment from which James’s writings emerged. I argue that this poetry facilitates a re-imagination of hope, beyond a faith/doubt dichotomy, as well as a re-framing of revelation, from proclamation to invitation. Building on insights from both James and Ricoeur, my discussion concludes by making the case for cultivating an interpretive disposition that does not guard against but opens toward poetry’s latent potential to take readers by surprise. Full article

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to depict, in its main elements, the conception of a Protestant “deconstructive theology”, and, secondly, to present the prophetic aspect of Eastern Christian Orthodox theology in comparison with it. According to the method of “deconstructive theology” as a method, the Scripture must be dismantled in order to be fresh and new. In the Orthodox understanding, the work of theology is understood to be, in the first place, a personal relationship with and experience of God, both from a mystical and sacramental perspective, and, through this, an actualisation of the work and message of God’s Revelation, making it present in the context of each historical and cultural circumstance. As will be presented below, this achievement could be completed only within the Church. Thus, Orthodox theology must deliver the eternal word and life of Jesus Christ, addressed to the contemporary context, in order to guide the Church and the Faithful toward the Kingdom of God. It is hoped that this comparative endeavour may be beneficial for general understanding between Christians, through placing in conversation two different perspectives regarding theology, which seldom encounter one another. Full article

This article examines the conceptions of divine revelation held by two prominent figures in Islamic thought, Ibn Sīnā and Al-Ghazālī, through a comparative lens within the context of metaphysical and epistemological processes. Ibn Sīnā views divine revelation as a metaphysical process occurring at the highest level of intellect. According to him, divine revelation is an abstract reflection of divine knowledge transmitted to the prophet’s imaginative faculty through the Active Intellect. This process, explained within a philosophical framework, is grounded in the development of human intellectual capacity. In contrast, Ghazālī defines divine revelation as a mystical experience and considers it a divine encounter beyond the limits of human reason. For Ghazālī, divine revelation manifests as an expression of God’s attribute of speech and occurs solely by divine will. Moreover, this experience cannot be fully comprehended by reason. Ghazālī’s approach, imbued with Sufi depth, regards divine revelation as an integral part of spiritual growth. This article explores the fundamental similarities and differences between these two thinkers’ understandings of divine revelation and metaphysics. By analyzing how Ibn Sīnā’s reason-based approach intersects and diverges from Ghazālī’s intuition and inspiration-based Sufi approach, this study provides an in-depth examination of how the concept of divine revelation has been shaped within Islamic theology and philosophy, highlighting the contributions of both thinkers to the discourse on divine revelation. Full article

This study addresses Roger Scruton’s understanding of what he called “moments of revelation”. In two short essays, both entitled “Effing the ineffable”, Scruton framed his discussion of moments of revelation with reference to the medieval Christian mystical discourse. Introducing the medieval discussion of this topic, this study provides an analysis of Scruton’s approach to the theme. In tune with the traditional discourse on revelation, his general aim was to demonstrate that there are ways of revealing important truths about the supernatural, of the world “beyond the window”, that do not require words to be pronounced. He calls our experiences of such phenomena moments of revelation and identifies four different transitory sources of revelation. This study deals with them one by one, after considering whether it is right to label such a revelation transcendental. The four sources of Scruton’s moments of revelation are natural beauty, the beauty of painting, the beauty of music, and personal encounters. The first three examples are connected to his thoughts on art and beauty as a substitute of divine revelation. Perhaps the most surprising of these is the last ones, moments of intersubjective human relationships, “our knowledge of each other”. Relying on both Buber and Levinas, Scruton makes the strong claim that it is in the other that we can experience that world “beyond the window”. His phenomenological exploration of human encounters sheds light on concepts like grace, shekhinah, or real presence and gift. He explains the Christian understanding of the human–divine relationship as well along the lines of the nature of interpersonal human relationship, both of them being in a certain sense, he claims, transcendental. From grace, his account moves forward to self-sacrifice and finally arrives at his idiosyncratic understanding of gratefulness for life. His moments of revelation in art and interpersonal exchange turn out to be, indeed, late and secular versions of the Christian understanding of revelation. In its summary, this study claims that revelation, understood by Scruton as a form of general human experience, allows to catch a glimpse of that which is beyond the window, by the direct, sensually based experience of either the existence of another person or of the beauty of nature and art. Full article

Julian of Norwich’s performance within her longer Revelations of Divine Love involves layers of authorizing and devotional steps that frame it as a gift for her community. She presents herself not as an author, but as a revelator, in step with John’s acts of unveiling his visions and dialogue with the divine in the Biblical Revelations. Examining Julian’s act of presenting her visions in writing demonstrates how her daring yet insistently orthodox visions handle issues of spiritual authority and individual faith made urgent by the rise of Lollardy. My work with Julian’s Revelations is the foundation for a wider argument about the interchange between vernacular mysticism and public devotion through their use of affective piety and the performance of spiritual dialogue. In this article, I examine Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Divine Love to determine how it works as contemplative drama. I also look at The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Christ and The Cloud of Unknowing to set up Julian’s performance of contemplative devotion and the potential pitfalls of a pious English readership. Julian’s revelations demonstrate where interior contemplation is transformed into collective acts of devotion. Full article

Sor María de Ágreda (1602–1665), a Franciscan nun and Abbess of the Conceptionist monastery at Ágreda, was a prolific writer whose theological works are yet to be extensively studied. In this article, I examine the practice of divine ventriloquism in Sor María’s mystical (auto)biography of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, Mística ciudad de Dios (1670). I aim to examine the complexity inherent in Sor María’s ‘unmediated’ ventriloquizing of sacred voices and the positionality and power appropriated through this act. The argument focuses on the use of the ventriloquial mechanism, its relationship to Sor María’s authorial position, and how readers may conceptualize the production and reception of the sacred voice. The textual perforance with which readers are presented in Mística ciudad de Dios provides a rich example of how women religious writers appropriated divine authority, resulting in a complex position of agency and self-fashioned individuality. Full article

This article analyzes the three introductory epistles to Sufi hermeneutics written by al-Ḥarāllī, a mystic of Andalusian origin from the seventh/thirteenth century. According to this author, the objective of the Scriptures is to explain human beings to themselves. The revelation, received through a particular understanding called fahm, contains transformative knowledge that can change the life of the reader. In this foundational work, al-Ḥarāllī explains the relationship between the Qurʾān and preceding Scriptures, recognizing in the Qurʾān their unity and fulfillment. Dedicating the final chapter of the third epistle to the seven religions mentioned in the Qurʾān, which are, rather, ethical prototypes, he seeks to internalize the Qurʾānic critique expounded on each of these categories. In a reading that goes beyond polemics and offers significant elements to the Islamic theology of religions, al-Ḥarāllī demonstrates how the aim of the Qurʾānic narratives is not to present information about the past but rather to provide moral education for the Islamic community and the reader. Full article

The present study will focus on core parallels and nodes of theopolitical exchange between the two most politically and theologically consequential jurist “theosophers” of the twentieth century, the Religious Zionist founding father, the Jewish Rav Avraham Yitzchak Hacohen Kook (1865–1935), and the Shia Islamic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1900–1989). Unquestioned masters of the tradition of both medieval philosophy and mysticism, as well as the theosophies of the early-modern and modern eras, both Kook and Khomeini attempted to embed the rhetoric of theosophy within revolutionary notions of both clerical religious authority and the necessity of their respective nomoi to assume political form. The study will also correlate contemporary Shia reformist theosophies undergirded with anti-theocratic exoteric postures with pre-WW2 German-Jewish “existence philosophies” as represented by Franz Rosenzweig, noting a common appreciation for what the study will term “theopolitical risk”. It argues that the retrieval of medieval Judeo-Islamic political philosophy for the successful negotiation of reason and revelation in modernity against both theocratic juridical extremism and the iron cages of positivistic-realist secularism must be rethought in light of the theopolitics coursing through Iran and Israel, two states at the geographic periphery though fully within the horizons of the Modern West. Full article

Using a discussion of the etymology of re-lig-io as a starting point, this essay begins by considering the problem of religion—of understanding God, and of language as an instrument for achieving the ends of religion and that understanding—and the problem for religion of revelation and interpretation. It follows to the consequences of this double complication for understanding “war” in the biblical and early Christian traditions. The essay leads, then, to a tri-valent discussion of “jihad”, and from this jihad centerpiece toward further versions of these complications as they apply to mysticism, medieval Jewish thought and thence toward and into modernity, from Spinoza to Levinas. Full article

Arguably the most influential Sufi thinker in Islam, Muḥyī l-Dīn Ibn ʻArabī (d. 638/1240), views revelatory knowledge and mystical experience, what he terms ‘spiritual unveiling’ (kashf), as a form of continuing divine revelation that is bequeathed to the spiritual elite or saints (awliyā’). As the self-proclaimed ‘Seal of Saints’ (Khātam al-awliyā’), who is the mystical heir to the wisdom of Muḥammad, the ‘Seal of Prophets’ (Khātam al-anbiyā’), Ibn ʻArabī has a unique method of deriving legal rulings. Not only does he emphasise the inner aspect (bāṭin) of all rituals and forms of worship, like many of his sufi counterparts; he, rather uniquely, extracts legal rulings from mystical experience. This study investigates the importance of revelatory experience and spiritual unveiling in the thought of Ibn ʻArabī and his followers. It then looks at what role these play in Ibn ʻArabī’s jurisprudence and, specifically, how he determines that hands should be raised (rafʻ al-yadayn) during formal prayer (ṣalāt) because he was commanded to by the Prophet Muḥammad in a mystical vision. By considering this issue, the deeper question of the epistemic status of mystical experience for Ibn ʻArabī, and the intricate interplay between mystical experience and textual evidence in his thought is explored. Full article

All Abrahamic religions have developed hypostatic and semi-divine perceptions of scripture. This article presents an integrated picture of a rich tradition developed in early kabbalah (twelfth–thirteenth century) that viewed the Torah as participating and identifying with the Godhead. Such presentation could serve scholars of religion as a valuable tool for future comparisons between the various perceptions of scripture and divine revelation. The participation of God and Torah can be divided into several axes: the identification of Torah with the Sefirot, the divine gradations or emanations according to kabbalah; Torah as the name of God; Torah as the icon and body of God; and the commandments as the substance of the Godhead. The article concludes by examining the mystical implications of this participation, particularly the notion of interpretation as eros in its broad sense, both as the “penetration” of a female Torah and as taking part in the creation of the world and of God, and the notion of unification with Torah and, through it, with the Godhead. Full article

Drawing a clear line between phenomenology and theology remains a challenging endeavor. This article has two parts: The first one argues that, from a methodological point of view, there is a need for a theo-phenomenology, a phenomenology which acknowledges religious faith as a given. The second part of the article tries to present the essence of religious call in Eastern Orthodox spirituality. Using ideas such as appeal and communion, divine grace, love, prayer, fidelity, apophatic intentionality, and a hyper-intelligible gaze before the Revelation, I will describe the phenomenon of religious call—God calling man and man calling God. The conclusion shows that religious call and answer are existential and theandric experiences, where one can work on askesis, the fidelity of thought, and mystical experience. Life in the Holy Spirit no longer distinguishes between call and answer for one who became a son of God by grace, faith, and good works. Full article

Faith undergirds the Refuge for World Truths, a multireligious heritage-scape that emerged out of an old Spanish land grant adjacent to the Wild West mining and ranching town of Crestone, Colorado. Established by an entrepreneurial husband-and-wife team in the late twentieth century, the Refuge’s spiritual centers were founded upon different faith commitments. Christian, [Sufi] Muslim, and Baha’i centers adhere to a monotheistic faith and claim divine revelation as the source of their presence in the Refuge. New Age, polytheistic, and nontheistic groups base their faith claim on the personal mystical revelations of “Glenn,” a local peripatetic and self-described prophet who hailed the arrival of the original couple. Two stints of ethnographic research point to the spiritual centers’ public ritual performances as both invitations to pilgrims to intensify this faith and as functional cogs in the integration and continuity of the heritage-scape’s ritual economy. Finally, the faith expressions underlying the Refuge for World Truths allow this unique locality to champion interreligious dialogue as a method for addressing diversity and negotiating potential onsite conflict on the path to peaceful mutuality. Full article