Desire For God Research Articles

Kay L. Northcutt, Kindling Desire for God: Preaching as Spiritual Direction

Kay L. Northcutt, Kindling Desire for God: Preaching as Spiritual Direction

Word about Recent Book: III. Ministerial Studies: Kindling Desire for God: Preaching as Spiritual Direction

Word about Recent Book: III. Ministerial Studies: Kindling Desire for God: Preaching as Spiritual Direction

Kant’s imitatio Christi

This article retrieves Kant’s imitatio Christi as a viable alternative to the recent construal of mimesis as a universal human desire, in particular to Ward’s reformulation of the imitatio Christi in such terms (in which the human condition is defined by an intrinsic desire for God as other). Kant’s writings participate in a very different debate on imitation (one sceptical of its ethical value), and this plays out as a continual ambivalence towards the concept in his work. Kant’s imitatio Christi, however, does, I contend, make possible a moral form of imitation by characterising it as a rational and intersubjective debate upon the good. Imitating Christ becomes part of human ethical living in the world.

Directed by desire: An exploration based on the structures of the desire for God

AbstractThe concept of ‘desire’ offers an interesting bridge between cultural phenomena of contemporary society and the theological tradition. The exploration of some key elements of this tradition concerning desire supports the launching of a ‘theology of desire’. Although the natural desire for God, as discussed in the so-called ‘théologie nouvelle’, provides very valuable material for this exploration, ‘desire’ is conceived here in a somewhat broader sense. Three levels of desire are distinguished. The ‘lover's desire’ refers to the conscious affirmation of the presence of God's love. The second level, called the ‘seeker's desire’, concerns a more general desire for happiness. Third, the desire for God as an ontological term refers to the relationship between God and humankind. The desire for God, revealed by Jesus Christ, demonstrates the ultimate capacity of our human nature. Thus christology, and especially the creed of Chalcedon, offers the key to systematic anthropology. Finally, the daily reality of the desire for God is discussed with the help of Gregory of Nyssa's concept of asceticism. The integrating power of the Holy Spirit makes the channelling of our desires possible, so that the desire for God forms a part of daily life. Three challenges to encourage continuation on the way toward a theology of desire form the conclusion. The reconsidering of an ontological approach in theology, the priority to christology in systematic anthropology and the ethical and missionary possibilities of the desire for God are invitations for theologians to further explore the theology of desire.

Aquinas on the Natural Desire for the Vision of God: A Relecture of Summa Contra Gentiles III, c. 25 Après Henri De Lubac

The Thomist 73 (2009): 523-91 AQUINAS ON THE NATURAL DESIRE FOR THE VISION OF GOD: A RELECTURE OF SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES III, c. 25 APRES HENRI DE LUBAC REINHARD HOTTER Duke University Divinity School Durham, North Carolina Thomas ist ein schwieriger Denker, der sich im Licht verbirgt und niemals seinen ganzen Gedanken auf einmal sagt.1 Josef Pieper lOSEF PIEPER'S apt observation has special pertinence when one approaches the interpretive as well as the speculative challenge of comprehending Aquinas's thought on the natural ire for the vision of God. This teaching was contested among interpreters of Thomas Aquinas long before Henri de Lubac contributed to the debate in 1946 with his influential and controversial study Surnaturel.2 William O'Connor, in an unjustly forgotten, instructive study from 1947, The Eternal Quest: The Teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Natural Desire for God,3 argued that since the days of the principal sixteenth-century commentators on Aquinas's thought on the natural desire for the vision of God, one can usefully distinguish between a tradition of minimizing and a 1 "Thomas is a demanding thinker who so conceals himself in the light that he never reveals his complete thought at once without remainder." 2 Henri de Lubac, Sumaturel: Etudes historiques, ed. and intro. by Michel Sales, S.J. (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1991). On the background of the controversy that erupted shortly after the publication of Sumaturel, see Aidan Nichols, O.P., "Thomism and the Nouvelle Theologie," The Thomist 64 (2000), 1-19. 3 New York and London: Longman, Green, and Co., 1947. 523 524 REINHARD HUTTER tradition of maximizing interpreters. These two tendencies of interpretation draw in differing ways upon two series of texts in the vast corpus of the angelic doctor. In the first series of texts, Aquinas understands the desire to know the essence of the First Cause as a natural desire; in the second series he holds that the desire to know the divine essence is supernatural. Both series of texts run from the early through the later works and Aquinas sees no need anywhere to reconcile them.4 O'Connor argues that the tradition of "minimizing" interpretations has its roots in the commentatorial work of the Italian Dominican theologian Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1469-1534) and of the Spanish Dominican theologian Dominicus Banez (15281604 ), while the tradition of "maximizing" interpretations emerges from the commentaries of the Italian Dominican theologian Sylvester of Ferrara (1474-1528) and the Spanish Dominican theologian Dominicus Soto (1494-1560).5 Cajetan and Banez strongly privilege the first series of texts and prefer to interpret the natural desire in terms of an "obediential potency," a nonrepugnance or even a suitability in the created spiritual nature for the vision of God as he is in himself. Sylvester of Ferrara and Soto, on the other hand, read Aquinas as teaching a genuine natural desire for the vision of God, although with the significant difference that Soto understands this desire primarily as a "pondus naturae," a profound, innate natural impulse toward the vision of God as true human beatitude, while Sylvester of Ferrara takes the genuine desire to be not an innate, but an elicited desire that follows upon cognition. All four interpreters of Aquinas react to the profound impact Duns Scotus had on this debate with his strict Augustinian insistence that God in his divine substance is the natural end of the human being. All human volitions, Scotus argues, are ordained 4 O'Connor, The Eternal Quest, 7-23. For a complete listing of all the relevant passages in Aquinas's writings, see Jorge Laporta, La destinee de la nature humaine selon Thomas d'Aquin (Paris: J. Vrin, 1965), 147-61. 5 O'Connor, The Eternal Quest, 24-39, 55-72. For a concise introduction to these eminent interpreters of Thomas Aquinas, see Romanus Cessario, O.P., A Short History of Thomism (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005). NATURAL DESIRE FOR THE VISION OF GOD 525 to the divine substance as to their ultimate end. Scotus's doctrine had such discursive weight that it inevitably impacted the subsequent interpretations of Aquinas's thought, especially in the fifteenth...

Erasmus, Contarini, and the Religious Republic of Letters

1. A new kind of religious life 2. Creating an alternative community: spiritual values and the search for meaning 3. The spiritual quest: reading and writing about God and salvation 4. Necessary relationships: desire for God and each other 5. Defining the ideal: words of praise for fools and bishops, women and martyrs 6. Epilogue.

Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith: Union, Knowledge, and Divine Presence (review)

Reviewed by: Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith:Union, Knowledge, and Divine Presence Nonna Verna Harrison Martin Laird Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith: Union, Knowledge, and Divine Presence Oxford Early Christian Studies Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 Pp. xii + 240. In this major new study Laird corrects some long-standing scholarly misperceptions of Gregory's epistemology and mystical theology. Through careful readings of key texts, he argues that in the context of apophatic discussions of the human mind's approach to God, "faith" becomes a technical term. What he designates as "exalted faith" names the mind's ability to reach beyond its own cognitive capacities and to grasp the infinite divine presence that surpasses its understanding. Laird carefully avoids ascribing Gregory's unique view of faith to Platonic influence but interestingly situates it in the context of late neoplatonists; in different ways they move away from Plato's denigration of faith vis-à-vis knowledge to consider it a privileged means of access to the divine. In addition, they identify supra-noetic faculties for knowing the transcendent God. Laird states that for Gregory exalted faith serves as precisely such a supra-noetic faculty. However, most of the book is devoted to a close analysis of knowledge of God and participation in the divine in Gregory's spiritual writings, especially his Commentary on the Song of Songs. With luminous clarity Laird analyzes the conceptual content of Gregory's brilliant metaphors, especially those of water, flow, and light. Through this textual evidence he demonstrates that although [End Page 428] one dimension of Gregory's mystical theology emphasizes apophaticism, divine incomprehensibility and darkness, the Cappadocian stresses knowledge of God and union with God in divine light even more. Laird also shows how exegetical concerns contribute to dominant emphases in each context; apophatic language occurs in Gregory's commentaries on biblical texts that speak of darkness or God's inaccessibility. One caveat here is that Gregory chooses which Scriptures to cite, so exegetical constraint does not mandate discounting certain themes in his works. However, Laird clearly acknowledges the place of darkness in his mysticism although he situates it within a broader context. The mind's flow is a major theme in Laird's analysis. He shows how for Gregory the human mind is in constant flux, and people are free to choose how to direct its flow. Our thoughts and corresponding desires are either dissipated among sensual pleasures and material things or gathered and channeled toward God. Through ascetic discipline and purification, one who focuses toward God attains discursive knowledge of divine activities and perfections. Beyond this, the mind reaches beyond its creaturely limitations to perceive God's presence and knows the divine nature itself, if only a little, through supra-noetic faith. Significantly, Laird stresses how faith mediates between the mind and God in both directions. One who reaches this exalted stage is deified through participation in God; then the mind receives knowledge from God and instead of remaining silent is called to teach others as the bride guides her maidens. Besides touching the ineffable, the mind receives words bearing insights about God and virtue. Thus, Laird states that Gregory's mysticism is not only apophatic but "logophatic." At an earlier stage one leaves aside many human words and concepts derived from created things to turn toward the transcendent God, but later, by faith, one receives a few words laden with the weight of divine presence and wisdom. Laird identifies several important themes in Gregory's mystical theology that others have missed. However, like other specialists he may have selectively over-systematized the Cappadocian's insights. He may have missed some essential continuities between what he regards as earlier and later stages. For example, for Laird desire and its redirection belong to the beginning stage of purification while the virtues and wisdom about them belong to the highest stage, deification. Yet for Gregory and other early Christians purification involves acquiring virtues, and deification involves intense desire for God. J. Warren Smith ably traces these continuities in another recent book on Gregory's mystical theology, Passion and Paradise (Crossroad, 2004). A key text for Laird comes in hom. 11 in...

Aquinas on Human Happiness and the Natural Desire for God

Aquinas on Human Happiness and the Natural Desire for God

KIERKEGAARD ON TAKING AN OUTING TO DEER PARK

I offer an exegesis of a few pages of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript and explain how going to Deer Park religiously fits into the general structure of Kierkegaard's thought. Because desiring God requires passion, and passion requires energy, there is a limit to how long any individual person can maintain a continuous desire for God. Kierkegaard discusses how a person who is at that limit can maintain a less intense love of God as he allows himself to desire temporal things.

Human Incompletion, Happiness, and the Desire for God in Sartre's Being and Nothingness

Human Incompletion, Happiness, and the Desire for God in Sartre's Being and Nothingness

On the Ethics of Sanctified Sacrifice: John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany

On the Ethics of Sanctified Sacrifice: John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany

Peace and Power in France Around the Year 1000

Chapter 1Peace and Power in France Around the Year 1000 Thomas Head During the difficult dynastic and social dislocations of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, members of the ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies in France tried to balance a desire for God's peace with the harsh reality of the exactions of lordship, both lay and clerical, in their society. The "peace" in question here is the Peace of God. It was a movement, or perhaps better a group of associated regional movements, begun by bishops and other churchmen to curb violence, particularly that directed against the church and its property. These movements began in the 980s and continued through the 1040s, when they were transformed into a more formal legal institution known as the "Truce of God," which was adopted far more widely than the original Peace movements. Those had flourished within the so-called "hexagon" of modern France, as well as in Catalonia, although these regions had varying forms of allegiance to the Capetian kings of the west Franks during the period under discussion. The "power" in question is most simply lordship, or in contemporary terms the bannum, that is the right to coerce.1 And let me hastily add that the juxtaposition of "simply" and "lordship" is an act of almost unforgivable scholarly hubris. Lordship was the exercise of power at its most fundamental and practical level. Lordship was far from monolithic in form or function, but varied according to local circumstances and was continually contested. This subject is at the center of an historiographical minefield. Over the past two decades the scholarly consensus on my chosen topic has changed from an orthodoxy built upon the work of Marc Bloch, Georges Duby, and Jean-François Lemarignier to a cacophony of questions. The older orthodoxy was that, under the rule of Hugh Capet and his successors in the new Capetian dynasty, their west Frankish realm and its neighbors (that is roughly modern France and Catalonia) witnessed radical social change. Power had devolved from the royal center to the local principes or "leading men," fundamentally altering the exercise of lordship. [End Page 1] These changes created that peculiar "regime-without-a-state" known as feudalism. The most convenient, if somewhat extreme, summary of this orthodoxy was published by Jean-Pierre Poly and Eric Bournazel under the title La mutation féodale.2 It was against this historiographical context that Richard Landes and myself edited a volume of essays on the Peace of God, published in 1992.3 That same year, a review by Dominique Barthélemy of the second edition of Poly and Bournazel's work signaled the beginning of furious scholarly contest over various aspects of this inherited scholarly orthodoxy.4 These debates have been largely phrased in binary terms: social change was revolutionary or merely slow evolution; violence wrenched society to an unprecedented degree or it was greatly exaggerated in the surviving sources by clerical rhetoric voiced against unsympathetic lay lords; apocalyptic expectations enlivened religious fervor in anticipation of the millennial anniversaries of the events of Christ's life or such apocalypticism was virtually nowhere to be found.5 The extremes of the new orthodoxies, and the place of the Peace of God in them, are currently defined, on the one hand, by the work of Dominique Barthélemy, who sees the Peace of God as a novel but in the end ephemeral development in a period of socio-political continuity, and, on the other hand, by R. I. Moore who sees it as a crucial element of The First European Revolution.6 What then did peace have to do with rulership or lordship in the decades around the year 1000? Gerd Althoff has argued that, "[The king] was primarily responsible for peace (pax) and justice (iustitia)."7 This is hardly unusual and has been quoted simply as an example of a scholarly trope: many other historians of early medieval monarchy have made similar claims. Such statements, however, elide historical developments. Carolingian authors frequently exploited the language of the Old Testament Books of Kings ("the Lord . . . hath appointed thee king, to do judgment and justice") to emphasize that the provision of justice was the...

Participation Metaphysics in Aquinas’s Theory of Natural Law

Interpreters of Aquinas's theory of natural law have occasionally argued that the theory has no need for God. Some, such as Anthony Lisska, wish to avoid an interpretation that construes the theory as an instance of theological definism. Instead Lisska sees Aquinas's ontology of natural kinds as central to the theory. In his zeal to eliminate God from Aquinas's theory of natural law, Lisska has overlooked two important features of the theory. First, Aquinas states that the desire for God is a primary precept of the natural law and thus constitutes a critical aspect of his ontology. Secondly, Aquinas theory of natural law must be seen in the larger context of his theory of participation since he says, The natural law is the rational creatures participation in the eternal law.

The Facticity of Being God-Forsaken

The early Freiburg lectures have shown us the degree to which Heidegger is influenced by Luther. In Being and Time, Heidegger designs a philosophy that can co-exist with a radical Lutheran theology of revelation. Heidegger's hermeneutics of facticity constitutes a polemic with the Scholastic idea of a natural desire for God and an accommodation of a theology of revelation. However, Heidegger's implicit assent to the Lutheran concept of God-forsakenness is philosophically problematic. To be God-forsaken is not to be ignorant of God; it is to be abandoned by God, to have a history of dealing with God that has resulted in a decisive rupture and distance. But if this is a theological position, as Luther would be the first to argue, it can be justified only theologically.

Impossible Passions

(ProQuest Information and Learning: ... denotes obscured text omitted.) If said decisively: I have seen that which see would change. Instead the inconceivable unknown-wildly free before me, leaving me wild and free before it-there would be a dead object and the thing the theologian. -Bataille1 Discussions on the relation between deconstruction and negative theology settle, for the most part, on speculative questions: i.e., questions pertaining to the status the apophatic God beyond versus the status differance/khord below or without being. One the virtues John Caputo's book The Prayers and Tears Jacques Derrida is that it draws attention to the unique desires and passions informing apophatic and deconstructive discourses. Following Caputo, will explore the differences and strange affinities between the apophatic desire for God and the Derridean passion for the (impossible as that which surpasses and challenges the possible, in contrast with impossible as logical contradiction). will argue that Derrida's passion differs from apophatic eros most radically the point in which, for Derrida, the wholly other undercuts any distinction between divine and non-divine others. In this way, Derrida's conception the radical singularity and alterity the other blends the ethical (our love humans) and the religious (our love God) as allegedly distinct modes thought or practice. This blending constitutes, in a single gesture, Derrida's passion as and Derrida's passion for the impossible. Two Passions For The Impossible Differance/Hyperessentiality In How to Avoid Speaking: Denials, originally published in 1987, Derrida makes clear why he feels uneasy about negative theology, especially the writings Dionysius. He is uneasy about Dionysius's promise of such a presence given to intuition or vision . . . the vision a dark light. . . . leading to union with God.2 While Derrida admits that the detours, locutions, and syntax3 deconstruction and negative theology intersect to the point being indistinguishable, he is emphatic that deconstruction is not a precursor to mystical experience. Derrida's mode deconstruction, rather, exposes the non-origin and non-closure language, the constitutive play differance with-in and in-between speech. Deconstructive discourse always operates on the edge language and always risks the unintelligibility silence, but the silence deconstruction is not divine. The mute, terrifying form silence deconstruction encounters is not that a transcendent God, but a singular monstrosity constantly disrupting discourse, an elusive limit that places Derrida's texts at the edge the abyss, madness and silence.4 For Derrida, differance is a pure absence, a desert-like, empty space, much like Plato's description khora as the empty receptacle matter in Timaeus.5 In his essay Khora, Derrida asks: won't the discourse on khora have opened, between the sensible and the intelligible, belonging neither to one nor to the other, hence neither to the cosmos as sensible god nor to the intelligible god, an apparently empty space, even though it is no doubt not emptiness?6 The notion something that is not nothing, almost nothing, hovering between a thing and no-thing, is one the most common motifs in Derrida's writing career. It is, as we have already suggested with the differance/khora couplet, the way in which Derrida describes the differing and deferring permutations discourse. The neither/nor logic Derrida employs to gesture towards differance places the language deconstruction in close proximity to negative theology, which often describes God as neither being nor non-being. But Derrida argues that differance lacks nomination because it is thoroughly emptied any fixed centre, not because it exceeds the finite structure discourse. …

Religion as an Illusion: Prospects for and Problems with a Psychoanalytical Model

The hermeneutical model of illusion, just as that of projection, has always been part of the psychoanalytic views of religion. The author presents a brief critical summary on this subject, and underlines that in relational psychoanalysis, the concept of illusion refers not to religion as such, but to the subjective experiences of desire and relatedness, that is, the source of the desire for God in man. Because of personal conflicts and their outcome, besides illusions one encounters also in such experiences, disillusion, disappointment, and even delusion. The author, while challenging the views of many scholars taking part in this debate: a) maintains that psychoanalytic interpretation is not concerned with the question of religious truth but with the formation and transformation of the process of believing; b) calls for special attention to the fact when speaking of religious representation, the focus is on the process rather than on the objects represented; c) raises his criticism at the often used expression, “unconscious representation of God”, because according to him, religion gives a name to the object of desire only when placed at the conscious and cultural level. Coherent with his basic distinction between conscious religious behaviour and the deep psychological pre-conditions, the author underlines the differences (and not necessarily the connections) between the unconscious processes of desire and the religious concepts, particularly, between the representation of God and the concept of God; between the parental imagos and the transcendent God; and between the capacity to “believe in anything at all” (Winnicott) and religious faith. The author concludes that in the illusion model, it is suggested that as part of religious maturity, one could construct the representation of God as something that is deeply connected with primary objects, while at the same time, assuming the capacity to take the necessary distance from personal desires and projections.

Gudbilledlighed og syndefald: Aspekter af Grundtvigs og Kierkegaards menneskesyn på baggrund af Irenæus

Gudbilledlighed og syndefald: Aspekter af Grundtvigs og Kierkegaards menneskesyn på baggrund af Irenæus

Sex After Natural Law

The Church is a sexed body, in both carnal and symbolic terms. The Church has sex, but being the Church it does so in a radically creative way. This article explores the contrast between sex as imagined by the Church and as imagined by evolutionary psychology (Darwinism). It argues that the latter reduces sex to reproduction (repetition) and makes this a metaphysical principle, whereas the Church transforms sex into a means for final beatitude. (Christian sex is not about self-perpetuation, but about welcoming strangers; not about children as possessions, but as God's most precious gifts.) Darwinism strangely repeats a debased (neoscholastic) form of the natural law, whereas the Church looks to follow a law that is the dispossessive desire of God for God. Sex after this law orders us towards the infinite joy of our consummation with and in God, in the fellowship of Christ and the holy saints.

THE SEDUCTION OF WORDS AND FLESH AND THE DESIRE OF GOD: A POSTSTRUCTURALIST READING OF JOHN 1:1, 14 AND THE PILLOW BOOK

This paper looks at John 1:1, 14 and Peter Greenaway's film The Pillow Book with the intention of reading afresh the Incarnation of the Word in the former and the Inscription of the Flesh in the latter, while focusing on the seduction of word(s) and flesh, the dynamics of speech and writing, and the desire of God, through poststructuralist theory. It investigates the relationship between text and image, and text, image, and reader, and it exposes the ocular-erotic character of reading. Connected to one of the most valuable collections of writings in Japanese literature, namely The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon , Greenaway's film treats the 'delights of the flesh and the delights of literature' as indistinguishable from each other. This paper defends the idea that the Incarnation exposes the reciprocity of desire of God: God desires our flesh as much as we desire his Word; and it identifies the Incarnation as the hymen which both unites and separates the human and the divine, the immanent and the transcendent, the flesh and the word, the audience and the book, this world and the other, foreplay and orgasm.

The Desire for God: An Assessment of Seminarians' Spirituality Through the Lens of the “Big Five”

The purpose of the study was to investigate a personological profile of Roman Catholic seminarians characterized by a high and a low level of prayerful desire for God. One hundred twenty-one Roman Catholic seminarians were administered the Polish Adjective List (PAL; Szarota, 1995) to appraise the normal personality characteristics measured by the factors of Neuroticism (N), Extraversion (E), Openness (O), Agreeableness (A), and Conscientiousness (C), along with a measure of desire for closeness with God. Results suggest that the seminarians with a high level of desire for God, in terms of personality characteristics, tend to be more tender, self-sacrificing, magnanimous and good-natured (A) as well more conscientious, dutiful, prudent, and reliable (C) than their counterparts. The findings of the regression analysis suggested that the five personality domains explained the 11% variance of the seminarians desire to abide with God.