Abstract: What is a “spiritual classic”' How are spiritual classics embedded in contemporary spirituality' Each article in this issue of Spiritus offers commentary on diverse paths of wisdom that continue to shape our Christian traditions and contemporary spiritual life. Claire Wolfteich opens with a beautifully crafted essay from her presidential address given to the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality during the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in November 2016. The essay focuses on the place of motherhood in Christian spirituality and raises several challenging questions: “How do we, as scholars of Christian spirituality, retrieve, adapt, name, and/or construct a fund of ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The history of Christian spirituality is filled with extraordinary models of holiness, tantalizingly different from contemporary everyday contexts such as the Desert Fathers who sit on pillars far from civilization, medieval women who find Jesus in an anchorage, Russian pilgrims who wander endlessly to learn how to pray, and young women who flee their comfortable homes to enter convents and then levitate amidst a soul-searing, heart-piercing union with God. I love to read and teach these classics, and as a practical theologian I seek to engage them in transformative and life-giving ways. But as I have studied and taught Christian spirituality for two decades, I, a laywoman, wrestle with the gaps between these ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In September of 2015 Pope Francis recorded a message for a meeting of the International Congress of Theology, held in Buenos Aires on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the theology faculty at the Catholic University of Argentina. In his address, he communicated his understanding of theology, beginning with a reflection on the relationship between what I call “academic theology” and pastoral theology: Not infrequently an opposition is generated between theology and pastoral thinking and action, as if they were two opposing, separated realities that didn’t have anything to do with one another. Not infrequently we identify the doctrinal mindset with being conservative and ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Those who love Anton Bruckner’s last completed symphony love it greatly, and put it on a par with Beethoven’s and Mahler’s final masterpieces. Many of them say they hear things like “sublime darknesses” and “equally transcendent light” when they listen.”(Stanislaw Skrowaczewski’s presentation of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony is accessible online and recommended for this reflection.)1 Yet, they do not hear light driving darkness away. Rather, darkness and light “come together,” mysteriously continuous from one to the other, distinct and still somehow identical. They say that darkness is both “vindicated” and “vanquished,” and light is also both “vindicated” and “vanquished.” Although I would not have ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: This article explores the potential for interpreting taekwondo as an Orthodox Christian contemplative practice. Certainly it is not an obvious connection given the disparate origins of the Korean martial art and the various Eastern Christian traditions. Yet, viewing the former in light of the latter seems both viable and valuable. Taekwondo is currently the most popular martial art in the world, exceeding seventy million practitioners in over two hundred countries; it is also a core sport in the Olympic Games. Eastern Christians around the world train and compete in taekwondo at all levels. Even so, to what extent is the distinctive ethos of Orthodox spirituality generally amenable to the practice of martial ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: I begin this essay with a 10th century riddle and will end it with a 9th century poem, both of which illume the monastic world of the book and of learning, faith, and art in the first millennium in Ireland. So, riddle me this and say what I am: You are a calf that becomes a book. The riddle-poem is found in the Exeter Book, a collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and it describes the process of creating an illuminated manuscript such as the Book of Kells, beginning with killing a calf, “ending its life,” and preparing its skin as vellum (from vitulus, Latin for calf) by soaking it in a bath of lime, scraping off the hair and fat, and stretching and drying it before cutting it into folios or pages. The ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The interrelationship of the affective and the cognitive is an issue in the spiritual and moral fields of the Christian tradition. Drawing on the analogical use of the spiritual senses together with insights from virtue ethics, this article investigates wisdom as loving knowledge in Dag Hammarskjöld’s Markings. The article has five stages: first, the various forms of love present in Hammarskjöld’s reflections are outlined; second, after a brief explanation of the affective and cognitive aspects of the spiritual senses, it probes a representative text in Markings on the process of knowing and loving God; third, it analyzes key passages in the journal concerning wisdom as a virtue; and fourth, in relation to the ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: If today Rome’s art treasures beckon travelers the world over, in the early modern period it was the presence of the martyrs’ remains that made this city such a popular travel destination. Foremost among these relics were of course those of Saint Peter, the first pope: he is quite spectacularly remembered in the basilica that bears his name. There are other places in Rome that display the mark of Peter’s passage, too. One of these is the Mamertine Prison: an unadorned, dark and damp cell, the oldest jail in Rome, carved into the slope of the Capitoline Hill in the fourth century BCE It is here that the Gaul leader Vercingetorix and the African King Jugurtha were incarcerated, and it is here, as legend tells ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Jason Blum’s book essays two tasks: first, to propose a methodology for studying accounts of mystical experience; second, to apply that methodology through three extended worked examples in his central chapters on the Islamic theologian Ibn al-Arabi, the Christian Meister Eckhart, and the Zen Buddhist Master Hui-neng. Some helpful discussion of Jewish examples is additionally included in the introductory first chapter. Blum sets out his methodological argument in his opening chapters and conclusion with exemplary clarity. In an account which promises to be a very helpful resource for any study group beginning to acquaint themselves with issues in the study of mystical spiritualities, he summarizes ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The Valiant Woman is a fascinating study of the ways in which nineteenth century American Christians, Catholics and Protestant alike, looked to the figure of the Virgin Mary and found in her a mirror for their perspectives on the role and nature of women in an era when class mobility was fluid and gender expectations were shifting in response to an emerging market economy. Elizabeth Hayes Alvarez draws upon her interdisciplinary training in Religious Studies to illuminate the complex ways that religion, refracted through the prism of the symbol of Mary, was practiced and imagined by U.S. Christians across denominations. Her sources are varied: she especially relies upon popular culture, commercial religious ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Scholars of Christian spirituality are always speaking into what Charles Taylor has termed a “Secular Age,” in both the Academy and the wider culture. How then to identify and claim a discourse for exploring the central Christian mystery of the “Word made flesh”' This volume, the third in a series of conferences on the “Power of the Word,” proposes poetic language as a way of exploring the revelation of the divine in history and everyday life, probing the relationship between language and the “flesh” or bodily experience. Its subtitle, “Word made flesh made word,” suggests the play of ideas among poetics, theology, and philosophy that this feast of conversations offers. This volume’s three ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Peter Tyler’s most recent book, focused on “soul-making,” is both erudite and somewhat confusing. In the compass of only two-hundred pages, including all notes and bibliography, he surveys the “soul” language of theology, twentieth century psychoanalysis, and philosophy. Philosophically, he begins with Plato and Plotinus, who shaped Catholic theology through the 13th century, providing a comprehensive and usable worldview for the many monastics and mystics who were shaped by this common philosophical background and world view. Skipping over Aquinas’ contribution completely, he jumps to Wittgenstein for the German turn to linguistic philosophy, and to Edith Stein for phenomenology and grace in the face of death ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Catherine Mooney’s expert analysis of historical and hagiographic sources of Clare of Assisi offers an exceptional study of an even broader question: how did 13th century women religious live out their spiritual calling within the contemporary vita apostolica. In the case of Clare and her followers, Mooney argues that their unique ties to Francis of Assisi gave them a fame and importance that brought papal attention that transformed Clare’s penitential community of women into “the flagship of the papal Order of San Damiano with Clare as its putative mother” (4). Through collaboration with other groups of penitential women, Clare and her followers fostered ways to resist and persist in the form of vocation ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In the first issue of Spiritus, Mary Frohlich argued for the self-implicating quality of the field of spirituality. “Spirituality,” she wrote, “can be an academic discipline only insofar as it coheres with its deeper character as a spiritual discipline.” To study spirituality, she insisted, asks “the utmost of us, both in our living and in our scholarship.” With The Cruelest of All Mothers, Mary Dunn has given us a powerful example of the study of spirituality as a discipline that implicates the scholar’s own lived reality. In this polished jewel of a book, Dunn explores the story of Marie de l’Incarnation’s abandonment of her eleven-year-old son, Claude, in the light of her own experience of ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Is this some kind of joke' We know that drinking wine can lighten our spirits, but can it make us “spiritual”' Does the fermentation of grapes actually do more than make the drinker gently intoxicated' (98) Sommeliers often compare the taste of wine to fruits, vegetables, chocolates, and other foods—but to the spiritual' How would one taste the “spirituality” of a wine' Kreglinger divides her study into two parts: “Sustenance” and “Sustainability.” She supports her argument for the spirituality of wine in the five chapters of the first section of her book by arguing that the spirituality of wine grows out of an understanding of the role of wine in the Bible, the history of the development of the ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: I teach a course on Monasticism(s) Old and New. Virtually all of my seminary students are Protestant, most of them moderate to conservative in theology. Some of them live outside the United States. Few are familiar with the history of monasticism. I decided to allow my students to choose between The Historical Atlas of Eastern and Western Christian Monasticism, edited by Juan María Laboa and Peters’ The Story of Monasticism. I also assign other readings and lecture-videos. Why I chose The Story of Monasticism, and why I feel compelled to require other resources is what this book review is all about. There are a number of things that Peters does well in this book, things that make it an ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: This volume comprises essays by Lutheran theologians, ethicists, and biblical scholars which aim to bring the resources of their tradition to bear on the planet-threatening issue of ecological peril. Timed to coincide with the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther sparking the reformation movements in Europe, this work is neither nostalgic nor antiquarian. Instead it appropriates resources from Luther and the tradition to address the ecological crisis created by the inter-related threats of climate change, the destruction of rain forest, loss of arable land to desert, the deterioration of air quality, and pollution of fresh water and oceans. Whereas Luther protested “salvation for sale” 500 years ... Read More Keywords: Christian literature; Motherhood; Christian women; Spirituality; Francis,; Symphonies; Martial arts; Bible.; Prisons; Imprisonment; Ibn al-ʻArabī; Mary; Clare PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
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