Search Results (350)

This paper juxtaposes the katechontic political theology of modern sovereignty that sacrifices life in the name of its protection with a paradigm of mystical sovereignty whose purpose is to serve the power of life. Reclaiming the power and politicality not only of theology but also of an overlooked and denigrated discourse, such as mysticism, serves two purposes: it restores the true content of mystery and elucidates the political dimension of theology. Mysticism has been either unduly dismissed in secular modernity as obscurantist, or its meaning has been abused by modern sovereignty for the purpose of investing power with an air of transcendent legitimacy. The proper restoration of the meaning of mysticism may eventually help us reconstruct an alternative conception of sovereignty, one that inverses the attributes Schmitt associates with sovereign power: mastery, supreme potency, legitimate exercise of arbitrary violence. Such an alternative conception of sovereignty, as vulnerability, sacrifice, service, and potent powerlessness may then enable us to appreciate the resources mystical theology can contribute to rethinking the nature of the political and the political nature of theology. Full article

This paper examines the four-stage process of mystical experience in the Huzi and Lady Yu allegories of the Zhuangzi. It begins with a lifeless stage enabled by the mystic’s purgation of the world and the self. It is followed by a revitalization stage in which Oneness is experienced not only as the introvertive experience of the self but also as the extrovertive truth of reality. It is then followed by the mystic’s experience of emptiness that transfigures reality through the reconciliation of things and the cessation of time and motion. Eventually it leads to the deconstruction of the transcendental Dao and the following of the spontaneity of things. The allegories provide a rich variety of mystical experiences, such as the exuberance of vitality, tranquil emptiness, and bliss in reconciliation. As the core theme of mysticism, Oneness is not regarded as the superior and final stage, but rather paves the way for the reconciliation of things in the co-presence of Oneness and multiplicity, and eventually leads to the deconstruction of Oneness and the return to the multiplicity of things. The pursuit of Oneness and the very deconstruction of it constitute the characteristic paradox of the Zhuangzi’s mysticism. Full article

This article highlights the importance of the discourse on sound media for the development of so-called “cosmic music” in Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Already the slogan of the Ohr record label “Macht das Ohr auf” (Open up your ears) testifies to the awareness of Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser, the founder of the label, and the bands gathered around him about the impact of media on everyday practices and the reflection on the physiological effect of sound. In particular, this article focuses on the figure of Kaiser and his Buch der neuen Pop-Musik (1969), where the author stresses the emancipatory potential of popular music starting from the considerations put forward by H. Marcuse, T. W. Adorno and M. McLuhan. On the basis of these suggestions, Kaiser envisages the possibility of a ‘functional transformation’ of sound media, placing himself in a long German tradition of reflections on the relationship between man and technology, in which it is possible to identify a line that proposes a progressive and socialist use of technical reproduction apparatuses (Benjamin, Brecht, Enzensberger) and another line that questions the connection between media and mystical experience (Mann, Hesse). In this sense, this paper explores the intellectual and literary context of the media anthropology on which the sound aesthetics of German cosmic music was founded. Full article

This article explores the often-overlooked question of how literary reading might give rise to experiences that readers themselves identify as spiritual. Framed by William James’s account of “mystical susceptibility” and recent psychological models of spirituality as altered states of consciousness involving shifts in perception, affect, and cognition, the essay asks how engagement with narrative may occasion such states. Drawing from selected examples and critical traditions, it examines the conditions under which reading becomes spiritually resonant. Theologically, the piece considers the formation of attentiveness and imaginative receptivity in writers such as Teresa of Avila and Jessica Hooten Wilson. From affect theory, it engages Rita Felski’s language of enchantment; from cognitive studies, it draws on empirical approaches to literary studies and Tanya Luhrmann’s work on absorption and the cultivation of spiritual perception. By drawing attention to absorption as a psychological and aesthetic phenomenon, this article suggests a renewed interdisciplinary approach—one that connects empirical studies of attention and transformation with older theological and affective insights. In this way, literature may be examined not as a site of doctrinal meaning or subjective feeling alone, but as a form of engagement capable of opening readers to spiritual insight whose impact might be measured through qualitative means. Full article

(1) Background: Among the most important authors of spiritual autobiography, Dag Hammarskjöld and Thomas Merton must surely mentioned. The first one, a Swedish Evangelical, and the second one, an American Cistercian monk, provide valuable and interdisciplinary works. Among the topics found, their political theology is also present. Noticing its relevance, we will try there to take into account the way the aforementioned topic is reflected in their work. (2) Results: Aspects such as communism, racism, diplomacy, or love will constitute some of the topics that we will bring into attention in this research in an attempt to present the particularities, common points, and differences of the approaches of the two relevant authors, one from the Protestant space and the other from the Catholic one, both with an ecumenical vocation and openness to dialogue. (3) Methods: As for our methods, we will use the historical inquiry, the analysis of documents, and the deductive and the qualitative method. (4) Conclusions: The work will therefore investigate the aspects of political theology found in their research and will emphasize their vision, the common points, the use of Christian theology in the understanding of political and social realities, but also the differences that may occur between their approaches. At the same time, the role played by the context where they lived, worked, and wrote will be taken into attention in order to provide a more complex perspective on the relationship between their life and work. Full article

It is widely acknowledged that there is a similarity between Wittgenstein’s later conception of language and a “religious point of view.” An equally well-received view is that there is an essential shift in Wittgenstein’s thought from early to later. However, what both of these contentions ignore is that there is also a similarity between his early philosophy and the “religious point of view”, the negligence of which has led to an exaggeration of the divergence between his early and later philosophy. This paper aims to show that Wittgenstein in fact conducted his early philosophical work from a “religious point of view” and continued to demonstrate such a view in his later writings. I will first identify some essential characteristics of the “religious point of view” in Wittgenstein’s early philosophy by focusing on the mystical. I will then illustrate how these characteristics continue and are developed further in his later thought. The findings of this paper are critical in two ways: on the one hand, they clarify a host of misunderstandings through a comparative investigation into Wittgenstein’s early and later thought; on the other, they provide a more comprehensive overview of Wittgenstein’s “religious point of view,” which will help to deepen our understanding of his philosophy. Full article

As first-hand testimonies and accounts of the Holocaust fade, scholars and artists alike have struggled to depict and contextualize the genocide’s monumental violence. But depicting violence and its aftermath poses several problems, including the question of how to recall loss without artificially filling in or effacing the absence so central to its understanding. In essence, remembering the Holocaust is a paradox: the preservation of an absence. Marianne Hirsch’s influential concept of postmemory addresses this paradox and asks questions about memorial capacity in the twenty-first century. This essay considers Hirsch’s postmemory in the context of W.G. Sebald’s 2001 novel Austerlitz, which uses a combination of prose and photography to engage the difficulties inherent in memory work without access to eyewitnesses. Through the interaction of printed text and images, Austerlitz subtly references Lurianic mysticism’s concept of tikkun and Tree of Life (ilanot) diagrams. The result is a depiction of memory that is both process-based and embodies absence. My reading of Austerlitz traces a Jewish heritage within the work of a non-Jewish German author by attending to a tradition of mystical thought embedded in the novel. This situates Sebald’s fiction in a much longer Jewish history that stretches out on either end of the event of the Holocaust. Structurally, Sebald develops a tikkun-like process of (re)creation which relies on gathering material scraps of the past and imaginatively engaging with their absences in the present. Images, just as much as text, are central to this process. Reading Austerlitz in the context of Kabbalah reveals an intellectual and artistic link to a Jewish history that, while predating the Holocaust, nonetheless sheds light on post-Holocaust memories of loss. Full article

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

Writing from a Reformed perspective, I intend to develop a concept of the duplex iustitia. I will argue that it is possible to affirm that infused righteousness is the sole formal cause of justification, while holding that imputation is its material cause. My goal in doing so will be to enumerate another possible area of agreement so that areas of disagreement can be stated in sharper dynamic clarity and therefore more precisely addressed. First, I will articulate what precisely is at issue in the disagreement between Roman Catholics and the Reformed on the matter of justification’s cause. Here I will discuss the role union with Christ plays in both Roman Catholic and Reformed concepts of justification. From these foundations, I will then argue that a Reformed perspective on justification coheres with the Tridentine affirmation that the sole formal cause is the “righteousness of God by which he makes us just”, while retaining the affirmation that its proper material cause is the imputed righteousness of Christ. In this section, I will defend a version of the duplex iustitia. Third, I will conclude by analyzing how this proposal might move beyond some of the agreements reached in the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDF henceforth) of 1999 and the International Catholic-Reformed dialogue document “Justification and Sacramentality” of 2015, while also stating the limitations of my proposal. Finally, I will answer some anticipated objections. Full article

Early modern theologians often cast female curiosity as both a moral flaw and an epistemic transgression. Aware of this suspicion, Teresa of Ávila professed to have renounced such dangerous impulses in her youth. Yet the persistent presence of curiosity in her writings suggests a strategic redeployment—one that fosters attentiveness and subtly renegotiates ecclesiastical authority as she actively advances reform within the Carmelite order. Through life-writing and scriptural exegesis, Teresa cultivates a disciplined appetite for knowledge: an appetite that outwardly conforms to, yet quietly subverts, doctrinal anxieties surrounding women’s intellectual desires. Her use of curiosidad moves fluidly between sacred and secular registers—sometimes connoting superficial fascination, at other times signaling a deeper, interior restlessness. Resisting reductive interpretation, Teresa reveals a sophisticated and self-aware engagement with a disposition both morally ambiguous and intellectually generative. The same culture that once feared her intellect would ultimately aestheticize it. After her death, Teresa’s relics were fragmented and displayed in Philip II’s Wunderkammer, transforming her once-condemned curiosidad into curiositas, an imperial collectible. Reading Teresa alongside her posthumous interpreters—Fray Luis de León and Miguel de Cervantes—this essay explores how her radical epistemological ambition reverberated through Spanish intellectual culture. Spanning this cultural arc—from sin to spectacle, from forbidden desire to sanctified display—Teresa emerges as a masterful theorist and activist reformer of spiritual authority. In these expansive roles, she reveals the immense and often contradictory power that curiosity wielded in the early modern world. Full article

This paper reexamines the enduring role of esoteric traditions, as articulated by Frances Yates, in shaping the intellectual landscape of the scientific revolution and their resonance in the digital age. Challenging the linear, progress-centered narratives of traditional historiographies, it explores how esoteric principles—symbolized by transformative motifs like the Philosopher’s Stone—provided a framework for early scientific inquiry by promoting hidden knowledge, experimentation, mathematics, and interdisciplinary synthesis. This paper argues that moments of accelerated scientific and technological development magnify the visibility of esoteric structures, demonstrating how the intellectual configurations of Renaissance learned circles persist in contemporary expert domains. In particular, artificial intelligence exemplifies the revival of esoteric modes of interpretation, as AI systems—much like their Renaissance predecessors—derive authority through the identification of unseen patterns and the extrapolation of hidden truths. By bridging Renaissance esotericism with the modern information revolution, this study highlights how such traditions are not mere relics of the past but dynamic paradigms shaping the present and future, potentially culminating in new forms of digital mysticism. This study affirms that the temporal gap during periods of rapid technological change between industrial practice and formal scientific treatises reinforces esoteric knowledge structures. Full article

This article examines the contributions of Turkish screenwriter Ayşe Şasa (1941–2014) to Turkish cinema and visual culture through her engagement with Sufism and metaphysical themes. It explores how Şasa draws on esoteric Sufi concepts such as the oneness of being (waḥdat al-wujūd), asceticism (zuhd), and inspiration (ilhām), using cinema as a vehicle for spiritual inquiry and the quest for truth (ḥaqīqa). Her films—including Hear the Reed (Dinle Neyden), The Night That Never Was (Hiçbir Gece), and My Friend the Devil (Arkadaşım Şeytan)—are explored through thematic and interpretive approaches that uncover their Sufi dimensions. The methodological approach combines Gillian Rose’s visual methodology, Klaus Krippendorff’s content analysis, and Arthur Asa Berger’s interpretive model. Rose’s framework facilitates an exploration of symbolic narrative in Şasa’s films and writings, while Krippendorff’s methods identify recurring metaphysical motifs. Berger’s approach uncovers layered meanings in visual and narrative elements. Through narrative structure, symbolic imagery, color, setting, costume, light, and sound, Şasa constructs a spiritually resonant cinematic esthetic that challenges the secular paradigms of modern cinema. Ultimately, this article argues that Şasa develops a distinct cinematic language grounded in Sufi metaphysics, enriching Turkish visual culture with a profound spiritual and moral sensibility. Full article

This paper aims to juxtapose bodhisattvas, awakened beings recognized in various Buddhist traditions and contemporary philosophies, as viewed through different lenses: as personified symbols, idealistic visions, mystical manifestations, naturalized sentient beings, and integral visions. Specific attention is given to the contrasting bodhisattva motivations and ideals articulated in Theravāda and Mahāyāna Buddhism as well as secularized psychospiritual–philosophical Western conceptions in neurophysicalism (naturalized bodhisattva) and participatory spirituality and theory (integral bodhisattva). The paradox of the traditional bodhisattva is to liberate oneself and all sentient beings by ending suffering and to act compassionately while realizing emptiness (Skt., śūnyatā), though with different conceptions undergirding ultimate realization. The paradoxical nature of bodhisattvas is discussed in regard to illusional ideation, moral agency, mystical nature, idealized devotion, and naturalized form. The ethical underpinnings of the traditional Buddhist bodhisattva notions and non-Buddhist ethics of Western bodhisattva conceptions are critically examined. Finally, the Buddhist and secular morals of bodhisattvas are discussed in the context of the moral relativism of the Post-Truth culture in the United States. Full article

Education, understood as the process of forming the human person in their integral dimensions—spiritual, intellectual, moral, and social—occupies a key place in the reflection on the evangelizing mission of the Church. This article presents education as a form of integral evangelization based on the thought and activity of the Polish religious sister and mystic Blessed Marcelina Darowska (1827–1911). The initial part outlines the development of the concept of “integral evangelization” in the teachings of the Catholic Church and its relation to personalist pedagogy. The following section presents the figure of Blessed Marcelina Darowska and her educational initiative, situated in the 19th-century socio-historical context of partitioned Poland. The main section of the analysis focuses on Darowska’s concept of education as the formation of the whole person, encompassing the discernment of talents, intellectual, religious, and social development, and preparation for responsible family and civic roles. It also considers to what extent this vision of education can be identified as an expression of integral evangelization in accordance with the criteria of contemporary Church teaching. This article further presents the development of Blessed Marcelina’s educational work and its impact on forming generations of women conscious of their identity. The conclusion offers a reflection on the relevance and potential of this educational method in the context of contemporary social and religious challenges, particularly in the work of new evangelization. Full article

Many scholars have claimed that the skills depicted by Zhuangzi can lead to self-transcendence of experiencing and attaining the Dao. However, this view is open to question. Based on a comprehensive reading of the received text of Zhuangzi, this paper attempts a comprehensive reinterpretation of its allegories of skills, including “Cook Ding Butchering an Ox”, “The Hunchback Catching Cicadas”, “The Ferryman Handling a Boat”, “The Man of Lüliang Swimming in the Torrent”, “Woodworker Qing Carving a Bell Stand”, “Artisan Chui Drawing Circles with His Fingers”, “Wheelwright Bian Chiseling Wheels”, “Bohun Wuren Demonstrating Archery”, and “The Old Metalworker Forging Weapons”. This study argues that the emphasis of these skill allegories is not on extolling skills but on pointing towards self-transcendence in a metaphorical way. Just as Mark Twain once likened an apple peel to the Mississippi River, the depiction of skilled performance and its contexts primarily serves as a vivid and illustrative vehicle for explaining self-transcendence rather than constituting self-transcendence itself. Logically speaking, exercising skills requires intentionality, whereas self-transcendence in Zhuangzi’s sense demands complete forgetfulness and a state of non-attachment. Since the states of intentionality and non-attachment are contradictory, the former does not necessarily enable the latter. Thus, the skill in Zhuangzi cannot directly lead to self-transcendence. The skill allegories in Zhuangzi represent the authors’ subjective elaborations, rooted in the focus and tacit understanding inherent in skill activities, and should not be interpreted in an overly mystical light. Full article