Prayers from the Church of England

A General Thanksgiving

ALMIGHTY God, Father of all mercies, we thine unworthy servants do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-kindness to us, and to all men; We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all, for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. And, we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and that we shew forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives; by giving up ourselves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen.




A Collect or Prayer for all Conditions of Men, to be used at such times when the Litany is not appointed to be said.

O GOD, the Creator and Preserver of all mankind, we humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of men: that thou wouldest be pleased to make thy ways known unto them, thy saving health unto all nations. More especially, we pray for the good estate of the Catholick Church; that it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life. Finally, we commend to thy fatherly goodness all those, who are any ways afflicted, or distressed, in mind, body, or estate; that it may please thee to comfort and relieve them, according to their several necessities, giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of all their afflictions. And this we beg for Jesus Christ his sake. Amen.




2 Cor. xiii.

THE grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.

Otto

The Priority of the Numinous:
An Analysis of the precepts of Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy


Tarjei Park




Introduction

This essay is not intended as a study of Rudolf Otto’s developed system of the numinous, but of its assumptions and precepts. I shall not be attempting a phenomenological analysis of the elements of Mysterium, Tremendum et Fascinans. There is ample scope for detailing prominent and representative religious experiences in differing World Faiths, showing how they deviate from or contradict Otto’s category, and subsequently developing a critique.

I have instead decided to concentrate on an area less touched upon by the few writers who have written on this subject. Of these few, most allow only sporadic paragraphs on Otto; at most a chapter. I shall deal with four aspects: The Rational and the Non-rational, The Numinous, Autonomy, and ‘The Holy’ as an a priori category. In each case I shall outline Otto’s argument and then respond.

The Rational and the Non-rational

Rudolf Otto draws a clear distinction between the rational and the non-rational. The indefinable starting point in all religions is subsequently rationalised through the process of conceptualisation. This process is the means by which a particular religion gains ‘high rank and superior value’. That Christianity contains conceptions about God in unique clarity and abundance is a very real sign of its superiority.

What should be made clear at the outset is that what Otto means by ‘non-rational’ is not ‘anti-rational’. It is not so much that the ‘rational’ is wrong, but that it is inadequate and secondary. The ‘rational’ functions as belief. It is through conceptualised thought in the form of belief that (by faith) religious knowledge is made possible; and hence an explicit theology. Yet what must be guarded against is the notion that ‘the essence of deity’ can be fully understood and transmitted by ‘rational’ conceptualisation. Conceptualisation stems more from traditional Western aims in the use of language than from a desire to understand God. As Otto states:

‘All language, in so far as it consists of words, purports to convey ideas or concepts;- that is what language means;- and the more clearly and unequivocally it does so, the better the language. And hence expositions of religious truth in language inevitably tend to stress the ‘rational’ attributes of God.’1

Otto regards this emphasis as seriously misleading. ‘Rational’ attributes of God are so far from exhausting the idea of deity that they ‘in fact imply a non-rational or supra-rational Subject of which they are predicates.’2 Although they are ‘essential’ and not mere ‘accidental’ attributes they are ultimately synthetic essential attributes.

An understanding of God is not possible by the exclusive use of conceptual thought. This does not necessitate an apophatic response. The ineffable can be elaborated upon as, Otto claims, is witnessed by the copious eloquence of mystics. What is being argued for is that the idea of God is not to be contextualised by rationalist conceptions.

What must be remembered is that rationalism is no recent approach. Orthodox Christianity itself is responsible for the intellectualisation of the supra-rational. By an emphasis upon doctrine the supra-rational became limited and diminished in importance. A system of language or a vocabulary must therefore be formulated that adequately represents the supra-rational; that being a vocabulary that does not depend upon a rationalist conceptualising frame of reference. What is explicitly argued is that language relating to religious experience must have complete autonomy:

‘For if there be any single domain of human experience that presents us with something unmistakably specific and unique, peculiar to itself, assuredly it is that of the religious life.’3


Reply

What must be addressed is how far two trends exist in representing God. How fair is Otto in arguing that a supra-rational response has been systematically supplanted by a rationalist response? In terms of Christian origins, Jesus seems, albeit figuratively, to have represented a God of parental concern that deals rationally over the actions of human beings. The human response to God was presented as a cause and effect dialectic grounded in the rationally conceived. Even the tone and content of Jesus’ notions of prayer very much tend to accessible images that dictate tangible actions on the part of humans. To expand this further, we must ask whether Christianity is essentially experiential or doctrinal. Which, if either, has priority? Is Christian experience of God dependent upon a moral mode of living, or does this mode proceed from an experience of God? Having said this, this does not mean that a linear relation between the two has to be entertained. A revelatory Damascus road experience would not seem to depend upon a prior moral mode of living. Yet the general Christian experience of living in the presence of God would seem to demand a morally characterised Christian intention however subliminal.

Otto argues that rational language systems have overwhelmed the more essential supra-rational character of and response to God. This presupposes to some length that doctrinal language is itself essentially ‘rational’. It is rather telling to note the level of negation present in credal formulations. It must be remembered that Chalcedonian Christianity was essentially defensive, as is exemplified by the negations dealing with Christ, asunchutos, atreptos, adiairetos, achoristos.

Furthermore, the contention that the primary aim of language is that of clarity, precision and hence diminishment is not entirely correct. The languages of conversation, poetry, emotional situations, and, indeed, creeds themselves are characterised by as much metaphor and abstraction as definition and confinement.

Although acknowledging the historical existence of supra-rational sounds and words used of deity, Otto does not display how widespread such an approach has been and is. Archaic language such as Latin and Seventeenth century English has acted as a linguistic method of experiential displacement; a stripping away of the mundane by use of an ‘other’ language. Liturgical formulations can scarcely be reduced to a rationalist response, its sacramental vocabulary itself defies such interpretation.

Interestingly Western converts to Buddhism have retained Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese terminology in their practice. What is here so ironic is that the essentially utilitarian methods of orthodox Buddhism have gained a mysterious quality that is clearly in contradiction with their intentions.

I should like to finish this chapter with what is most probably the essential problem encountered thus far in Otto’s argument. That is, is there meaning in such a thing as non-conceptual thought? Clearly it is hard to know of what a non-conceptualising response consists. This is most explicitly illustrated by reference to Ch’an Buddhism. The Platform Sutra asserts that a True Reality exists independently of the phenomenal world. Here ‘things in themselves’. let alone the conception of them, are deemed completely irrelevant, the sutra maintaining the singular importance of a non-referential True Reality. Non-conceptual thought itself seems a contradiction in terms. If we accept the justifiable assumption that language precedes logic, that is, that cognition is dependent upon culturally bound linguistic structures, then a radical negation of conceptual logic would necessitate a cognitive neutrality that was impossible to represent.

If True Reality is mentally perceived when conceptual thinking and the phenomenal world has been discarded, how far does it exist noumenously, that is, independent of mind or ‘in itself’? In the case of the Platform Sutra it would appear, as a result of the sutra’s theory of internalisation, that it is a reality that is restricted to mind and therefore a psychological construct only. If it is as such non-propositional and therefore non-referential phenomenologically, the charge that it is pseudological might seem warranted.

Such a problem is, of course, not restricted to the Platform Sutra. Of a theistic correlate to Ch’an Buddhist ‘True Reality’ Anthony O’Hear has stated:

‘The notion of pure being is one we have found wanting in intelligibility on a number of occasions, as being indistinguishable from a pure nothing.’4


‘Numen’ and the ‘Numinous’

Otto maintains that an uncorrupted word for this supra-rational experiential starting-point no longer exists. Specifically, the term ‘holy’ has acquired ethical overtones that do not represent its essence and that are secondary. Of ‘the Holy’ he states: ‘...if the ethical element was present at all, at any rate it was not original and never constituted the whole meaning of the word.’5 ‘The Holy’ has come to mean the perfectly moral, as is exemplified by Kant’s terming the will which remains obedient to the moral law a ‘holy’ will.

It is the meaning that exists independently of perfectly moral that Otto believes must be isolated. Yet to retain the term ‘holy’ would allow ethical content to remain. We must therefore ‘invent a special term to stand for “the Holy” minus its moral factor or “moment”, and, as we can now add, minus its “rational” aspect altogether.’6

This ‘unnamed Something’ is the ‘real innermost core’ of religion and has been previously rendered by the Hebrew qadôsh, the Greek agios and the Latin sanctus and sacer. Yet all these terms have subsequently been associated with absolute goodness, an association resulting from ‘rationalisation’ and ‘moralisation’ that constitutes a deviation from their original meanings. Originally, ‘the Holy’ was in itself ethically neutral and constituted a ‘unique original feeling-response’, that is, a non-rationally ‘conceived’, intuitive response to the ‘Wholly Other’.

The Latin word Numen (the most general word in early Roman religion for divinity or religious powers) is to represent the ‘...“extra” in the meaning of “holy” above and beyond the meaning of goodness.’7 The ‘numinous’ then being used of a unique category of value and the correlating perfectly sui generis mental state that is irreducible to any other. Although it can be discussed, this primary and elementary datum cannot be strictly defined. It can be understood only by means of intuition and direct experience.


Reply

Otto clearly believes that there exists a dual and separable content to the term ‘holy’ in which the ethical content can be stripped away from a primary meaning and discarded. This belief is dependent upon a particular history of religion; it is a syncretistic vision that does not fully acknowledge the radical evolution of religious perception.

It may do well to at least note that much of what Otto argues for relates to a hidden agenda. Without, at this stage, making judgements, it should be pointed out that an underlying universalism substantially colours Otto’s thinking.

Following Otto, John Oman has argued of the numinous: ‘in all religion it is perhaps the basis, as the world of touch is to the other senses.’8 He goes on to distinguish between ‘the undifferentiated holy’ and ‘the particularising holy...The one is a general sense of the supernatural as one absolute reality, and the other the feeling of this in almost any conceivable manifestation.’9 I think this argument might be best assessed by way of an analogy. What Oman seems to be arguing for is a common langue (‘the undifferentiated holy’) that obviously has different parôles (‘the particularising holy’), but that these all fully represent the langue. Yet that they contain a common mode of expression, which in religion might be ‘human response’, does not necessitate substantial similarly. That ‘Water contains Hydrogen and Oxygen’ and ‘John loves Susan’ share a langue does not necessitate their being even remotely substantially connected.

Otto clearly presupposes a religious ‘constant’ that has existed from time immemorial and has been retained in the great World Faiths of today. It is this constant that is the substance of the numinous, it is a constant that has remained through Primitive, Archaic, Historical and to Modern Religion. What this constant does not allow for is the disparate sense of what ‘the holy’ constitutes. There is almost a genetic fallacy at work in Otto’s thinking. That ethical content was not part of the etymological root of a term, excludes it from the genuine interpretation of that term. Otto subsequently develops the system of schematisation in which the ethical and rational becomes juxtaposed with the numinous to constitute ‘the Holy’.

All this can be more clearly illustrated by reference to Christianity. Christianity does not belong to the weltanschauung of Primitive and Archaic Religion, indeed, it is characterised by ethical monotheism and as an Historical Religion, both of which are not central to earlier religious forms. To isolate a non-ethical ‘feeling-response’ from Christianity involves, to an extent, a significant category mistake. What is so telling here is that Otto borrows the term ‘Numen’. This old Latin term was used with reference to an Archaic Religion that bears little specific resemblance to Christianity.

Furthermore, Christianity is largely founded upon the Christ-event. In Pauline theology the new found or restored relationship with God is dependent on and conditioned by the historical event of the Resurrection; an act by God is responsible for the subsequent Christocentric experience. Depersonalised experiences of ‘the Holy’ are rare in the New Testament and certainly not generally representative.

We must again note the influence of a certain syncretistic bias in Otto’s system, a bias (prominent in the early part of this century) that stems from an emphasis upon the group term ‘religion’, an emphasis that Barth was so aggressively to contest. This fashionable concentration on holiness in the context of ‘religion’ is forcefully exemplified by a statement made by Soderblom in 1913:

‘Holiness is the great word in religion; it is even more essential than the notion of God. Real religion may exist without a definite conception of divinity. The idea of God without the conception of the holy is not religion...Not the mere existence of the divinity, but its mana, its power, its holiness is what religion involves.’10

Such a statement might be adequate as a very general argument, however, it lacks a specificity clearly demanded when dealing with individual traditions; it certainly does not adequately cater for the essential Christocentric experience in Christianity.

In the light of this we must seriously question how far the numinous is the ‘real innermost core’ of Christianity. I would not want to deny that the numinous is experiencable by Christians, however, clearly the numinous is not the self-evident normative Christian experience of God.

It must be remembered that the vast majority of Christian experiences do not conform to Otto’s system. It is often easy to forget when talking of religious experience that the normative Christian experiences of a presence are not represented by those of Meister Eckhart or St John of the Cross. An awareness of the presence of God as Father, Son or the Spirit is most usually to be found in sacramental worship or private prayer. John Wijngaards, although not writing as an analytical philosopher, writes:

‘The core of our Christian belief is that God became visible to us in Jesus Christ ...It is as if God, who remains such a mystery as the ground of our being and the ultimate reality of the universe, has shown us his “face”.’11

For Wijngaards, meeting Christ ‘face to face’ constitutes the ‘inner circle of prayer’. Surely this constitutes, to use Otto’s phrase, the ‘real innermost core’ of Christian experience.

Otto’s claim that the numinous is sui generis, irreducible, indefinable and a ‘feeling-response’ is surely epistemologically weak. In allowing it such autonomy it is put beyond the reach of critical appraisal (I shall follow this up more in the next section). Yet, the numinous is given meaning that goes further than pure ‘feeling’. Otto in presenting the constituent parts of the numinous, Mysterium, Tremendum et Fascinans, details Creature-Feeling, Awe-fulness, Overpoweringness, Energy (or Dynamism) and Wholly-Otherness as prevalent aspects. These aspects go far beyond the rather ‘neutral’ response initially argued for. Furthermore, if these aspects are to be credible surely some framework for their substantiation is needed. Richard Swinburne’s Principals of Credulity and Testimony would seem to be apt examples of how this might be attempted. Yet, Otto explicitly denies the need for such a framework. What must be asked is how far such a denial is coherent.


Exclusivism and the Autonomy of the Numinous

According to Otto a personal acquaintance with the data is a crucial requirement in understanding the religious form of consciousness in question. Indeed, in this he is most abrupt:

‘The reader is invited to direct his mind to a moment of deeply felt religious experience, as little as possible qualified by other forms of consciousness. Whoever cannot do this, whoever knows no such moments in his experience, is requested to read no farther;...’12

What is important is the unique quality of religious states of consciousness rather than what is common to other similar states. It is for this reason that Otto is critical of Schleiermacher’s isolation of the ‘feeling of dependence’ as the central feature of ‘the quite unique and incomparable experience of solemn worship’13 The ‘feeling of dependence’ is undeniably analogous to mundane states of mind. Religious dependence differs only from other feelings of dependence by degree and not ‘of intrinsic quality’ and for this reason, Otto maintains, Schleiermacher is wrong. The numinous ‘cannot be expressed by means of anything else, just because it is so primary and elementary a datum in our psychical life, and therefore only definable through itself.’14 Yet Otto believes this experience can be given a name:

‘I propose to call it “creature consciousness” or creature-feeling. It is the emotion of a creature, submerged and overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to that which is supreme above all creatures.’15

Yet this, it is emphasised, is not a conceptual explanation. Creature-feeling purely denotes a ‘submergence into nothingness’ before an ‘absolute might’. Indeed, only by experience is this to be understood:

‘...the character of this overpowering might, a character that cannot be expressed verbally,...can only be suggested indirectly through the tone and content of a man’s feeling-response to it. And this response must be directly experienced in oneself to be understood.’16

Schleiermacher’s formulation is deficient as it is primarily a ‘category of self-valuation.’ This, according to Otto, is entirely opposed to the ‘psychological facts. “Creature-feeling” is itself a first subjective concomitant and effect of another feeling-element, which casts it like a shadow, but which in itself indubitably has immediate and primary reference to an object outside its self.’17


Reply

Otto presents a dualism of pure religious feeling and the non-religious that he believes is separable. Yet the way in which pure religious feeling is defined is highly problematic. ‘Creature-feeling’ as defined is clearly derived from and dependent upon a Judeo-Christian ontology. The autonomy of the numinous, although intended to span religious boundaries, is firmly located within a Judeo-Christian frame of reference. Indeed, in no way could ‘creature-feeling’ accommodate an orthodox Buddhist ontology. Similarly, its pronounced dualism is clearly incompatible with major Hindu traditions.

Even if we apply ‘creature-feeling’ to Christianity alone significant problems remain unresolved.

Theologically, there is little scriptural material that substantiates Otto’s position. New Testament theologies strongly favour a conceptual and personal relationship between the God-head and the individual. The Johannine Prologue describes those who ‘received Him’ and were given the ‘power to become sons of God’. A similar Christocentric emphasis is repeated (at length) in Paul’s writings again and again (Rom.6 & 8, 2 Cor. 5, Gal.2 & 3, Eph.1, Phil.2 & 3, Col.1 & 3, etc.). Even the ‘Third Heaven’ experience described in 2 Cor.12, although in seemingly supra-rational language, still emphasises a personal encounter and exchange between Paul and God. There are, indeed, passages that emphasise the overwhelming power of God, these tend to be Hebraic or Apocalyptic (Heb.10:31,12:29, Rev.1 & 4) and although often employing heavy symbolism, they still tend to the conceptual and personal.

Otto very definitely criticises Schleiermacher for opposing the ‘psychological facts’. Schleiermacher is criticised for inferring God from a psychological ‘feeling’. Instead Otto argues for the primacy of the ‘object outside the self’. Otto seems rather pseudological here. How far can his notions of ‘creature-feeling’ and the other ‘feeling-element’ be representative of psychological fact? It would seem no more so than those of Schleiermacher. Furthermore, is Otto arguing we can experience that a non-conceptual object outside the self is ontologically prior? How is our experience experienced as being secondary? If the experience is non-conceptual how is it then sequential and detailed as it is?

Philosophically, Otto claims for the category of the numinous an autonomy from analytical discourse claimed by (so-called) Wittgensteinian Fideists for religious modes of discourse. A close affinity between Otto’s argument and the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus has been argued for. This is followed up by H.D. Lewis who, when speaking of doctrines that appear openly to ‘flout the ordinary criteria of good sense and consistency’, states:

‘If...God is “wholly other”, if He is altogether outside the sphere within which formal explanations are possible, we appear to be confronted with an overwhelming and irreducible mystery and there seems to be no reason why beliefs, if they are possible at all, should conform to ordinary standards.’18

Clearly many of the problems encountered by fideist defences effect Otto’s argument. For example, although the claim might be made that religious discourse has a distinctive logic that is quite distinct from the logic of science or ‘the rational’, this might be questioned by religious propositional claims made that refer to nature, human beings, the cosmos and so on. Similarly Otto does not refrain from making conceptualisations that refer to ‘the rational’. Yet, non-conceptual discourse would seem an impossibility, and silence (the logical response to the God detailed by Lewis?) must somehow be contextualised.


The Holy as an a priori category

Otto argues that ‘the Holy’, comprising both rational and non-rational components, is a ‘purely a priori category’:

‘The rational ideas of absoluteness, completion, necessity, and substantiality, and no less so those of the good as an objective value, objectively binding and valid, are not to be “evolved” from any sort of sense-perception.’19

These ‘rational’ ideas are not ‘accounted for’ by sense-perception but by ‘an original and underivable capacity of the mind implanted in the “pure reason” independently of all perception.’20 For the non-rational elements of ‘the Holy’ we are referred to that ‘still deeper than “pure reason”’ - namely the fundus animae or ‘ground of the soul’ (Seelengrund).

According to Otto, therefore, ‘the Holy’ is not reducible to empirical explanations. Rather, experience is merely a stimulus to intuition of the numinous. The proof of Otto’s argument is to be ‘reached by introspection and a critical examination of reason’21 Otto follows Kant to the extent that he argues that the ‘thing in itself’ exists prior to our experience of it and hence is not reducible to our experience. The numinous is merely apprehended by a ‘hidden “predisposition” of the human spirit.’22 This predisposition ‘begins in undirected, groping emotion, a seeking and shaping of representations, and goes on, by a continual onward striving, to generate ideas, till its nature is self-illumined and made clear by an explication of the obscure a priori foundation of thought itself, out of which it originated.’23


Reply

It might be very useful to compare the sequence and content of this last quotation with those of other influential thinkers. My straying away from the field of philosophy might be pardoned by Otto’s insistence upon the psychological factuality of his system. My comparison might be best carried out by the use of admittedly crude, though hopefully representative diagrams.

Otto


The Holy - Undirected, - Generation - Explication
groping emotions of ideas of the Holy

This then might be represented as:

HOLY - EXPERIENCE - INTERPRETATION


This would clearly be questioned by certain theorists. The Feuerbachian transference theory would counter both the content and sequence of Otto’s system by maintaining that socially agreed high qualities are personified and projected as a religious ideal. A Feuerbachian alternative to the above diagram would be:

Socially conceived - Experience - Perception of correlating
high qualities figures

A similar sequence would be that of Freud:

Parent/Child - Relationship experienced - Perception of correlating
relationship cosmically figures

Both Feuerbach’s and Freud’s sequences might be summarised thus:

HUMAN CONCEPTIONS (A) - EXPERIENCE - REINFORCEMENT OF A

What is essential here is that the starting point is human and historically relative.

As we saw earlier, certain aspects of the numinous corroborate a Judeo-Christian conception of divinity. This might be seen as arguing for the Feuerbachian/Freudian sequence. It must be borne in mind that even in Otto’s sequence ‘the Holy’ is latterly interpreted in a way congenial to prior non-intuitive doctrine. It is certainly supportive of conceptual systems. However, it must be emphasised that the mere fact that there does not exist utter discrepancy between the numinous and a conceptual system does not logically negate Otto’s a priori claim. His claim of a priori can, I believe, be supported by a Jungian sequence. It should be made clear that Jung fully applied this sequence to religious perception although it obviously covered ‘wider’ ground.

Collective unconscious - Realisation - Individuation
Archetypes
God imago
Numinous

Here the Collective Unconscious (that is not reducible to individual sense-experience or to a geographical or historical setting) is the original point of reference. The archetypes of the Collective Unconscious are gradually perceived by the individual in the process of individuation. One such archetype is named by Jung ‘God Imago’; the awe-inspiring God. Jung borrowed Otto’s term ‘numinous’ here and widely used it elsewhere.24 Clearly here the Collective Unconscious repudiates the a posteriori categories in the sequences of Feuerbach and Freud.

Now it is unlikely that Otto would have accepted Jung’s system. He might well have discounted it on the grounds that it did not adequately represent the ‘Wholly-Otherness’ of the numinous. Yet what must be emphasised is that the Collective Unconscious exists prior to and independent of its perception by the individual.

That the a priori category of ‘the Holy’ is universal and universally the same, is questioned by the diversity of religious phenomena and experiences. Furthermore, that which constitutes ‘the Holy’ is by no means universal. This can be most clearly illustrated by reference to orthodox Buddhism in which Otto’s category would have no relevance whatsoever. Indeed, experiences encountered in meditation similar to those of the numinous would be firmly dismissed as useless psychological manifestations that interfere with meditative progress.

Philip Almond argues that the Kantian framework used to substantiate the notion of the a priori category of ‘the Holy’ militates against Otto ‘taking note of the phenomenological disparities...and persuades him to place both theistic and mystical experience within the broad category of the numinous experience.’25 Yet although the Kantian foundation might substantiate the claim for ‘the Holy’ as an a priori category, it does not necessitate the syncretism of Otto’s system. As Bastow has stated of Otto, ‘he assumes a phenomenological unity based on religious experience, and considers that he merely has to find out its nature’26 (his italics).


Conclusion

In making the distinction between the Rational and the Non-rational Otto unfairly presents the former as dominating religious discourse. Furthermore, his promotion of non-conceptual thought or response is problematic in that by therefore being non-referential it attains a radical neutrality that renders it rather meaningless. His belief that a non-ethical experiential core can be isolated from the term ‘holy’ is only possible through the generalisation of historical religions. It is certainly difficult to isolate such a ‘pure’ experience from New Testament accounts. By claiming that this ‘pure’ experience is sui generis, irreducible and indefinable, Otto makes the category epistemologically weak in that lack of substantiation renders conceptual claims made for it open to justifiable attack.

The category of the numinous has a Judeo-Christian bias. Yet this is only insofar as the numinous represents a very general representation of Judeo-Christian notions of a ‘wholly other’ God. Specific New Testament theologies do not corroborate the experiential content of Otto’s category.

In maintaining that ‘the Holy’ is an a priori category I think Otto is on firmer ground. Certainly the weight of the correlating Jungian sequence undermines the disputation of such a position by the now classical, although rather naïve, reductionist sequences of Feuerbach and Freud.

It seems as if had Otto restricted himself to a more specific field of study his system would have been more feasible. His complete system of the constituent parts of the numinous might well be representative of certain Judeo-Christian traditions, yet in representing ‘religion’ it must be said that it is ultimately inadequate.


References

1. Otto 1958, p.2
2. ibid.
3. ibid. p.4
4. O’Hear 1984, p.240
5. op. cit. p.5
6. ibid. p.6
7. ibid.
8. Oman 1931, p.61
9. ibid. p.62
10. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, VI, p.731
11. Wijngaards 1987, p.17
12. op. cit. p.8
13. ibid.
14. ibid. p.9
15. ibid. p.10
16. ibid.
17. ibid.
18. Lewis 1959, p.36
19. op. cit. p.112
20. ibid.
21. ibid. p.113
22. ibid. p.115
23. ibid. p.116
24. e.g. Answer to Job, p.93f.
25. Almond 1982, p.117
26. Bastow 1976, p.169




Bibliography

Almond, P. Mystical Experience and Religious Doctrine, Mouton 1982.
Bastow, D. Otto and Numinous Experience, Religious Studies 12 1976.
Lewis, H.D. Our Experience of God, George Allen & Unwin 1959.
O’Hear, A. Experience, Explanation and Faith, Routledge & Kegan Paul 1984.
Oman, J. The Natural and the Supernatural, CUP 1931.
Otto, R. The Idea of the Holy, OUP 1958 (1923).
Religious Essays, OUP 1931.
Turner, H.W. Rudolf Otto’s ‘The Holy’, Aberdeen Peoples Press 1974.
Wijngaards, J. The Seven Circles of Prayer, McCrimmon 1987.
God Within Us, Fount 1988.

Selfhood and 'Gostly Menyng' in some Middle English Mystics

Selfhood and ‘Gostly Menyng’
in some Middle English Mystics:
Semiotic Approaches to
Contemplative Theology.




Tarjei Park

Pembroke College
University of Oxford





Selfhood and ‘Gostly Menyng’ in some Middle English Mystics:
Semiotic Approaches to Contemplative Theology.

Abstract

The thesis is a study of selfhood and ‘gostly menyng’ in the vernacular works of Walter Hilton, those associated with The Cloud of Unknowing, and Julian of Norwich: specifically, Hilton’s Scale of Perfection Books 1 and 2, Mixed Life, Eight Chapters on Perfection, and Of Angels’ Song, The Cloud of Unknowing, Deonise Hid Divinity, A Treatise of the Study of Wisdom called Benjamin, The Epistle on Prayer, The Discretion of Spirits, and The Book of Privy Counselling, and Julian’s A Revelation of Love.
The three authors only occasionally present direct teaching on contemplative psychology. Understanding their notions of selfhood must thus be made in the context of their presentation of contemplative praxis. To understand this comprehensively requires a close reading of the textual presentation itself, that is, how their language works in conveying their particular teachings. The sign-play in the texts often gives more pertinent information on its connoted plane than from its first-order denotation. This is both explicitly intentional, as with Hilton, and suggestively implicit, as with Julian. Furthermore, these connoted meanings will be shown to transgress those denoted. This is especially the case with Julian.
For these three authors the relationship between self and God typically functions as a dynamic grounded in the person of Christ. The union of the soul and God is rarely something understood in isolation from a governing Christ paradigm. What exactly is meant by self and God in Christ is to be understood by analysis of self as process in relation to the Trinity. All three authors give presentational accounts of what constitutes human selfhood. In each case these accounts are importantly different from one another. Equally, even though stemming from the common sign of ‘onyng’, the processes of self in apprehension of God mean for the authors quite different things.
In Book 1 of The Scale of Perfection Hilton gives the anchoress to whom it is addressed the rudiments of the contemplative life. In a series of hierarchical binary oppositions Hilton tells her that the active and contemplative lives correspond to outer and inner lives respectively. As the anchoress has withdrawn from the world so must she withdraw into her soul away from worldliness and fleshliness. Outer and inner lives correspond to ‘bodily’ and ‘gostly’ existence. Through conceptual and loving meditation on the life of Christ free from worldly thoughts and fleshly affections the rational eye of the soul will perceive the inner Christ. This is so because the soul is a created trinity of mind, reason, and will that mirrors the might, wisdom, and love that are the divine Trinity’s normative modes of disclosure. Spiritual sight and love of Christ in an interior move away from the physical senses ensures that the trinitarian soul is conformed to the image of the Trinity. In this contemplative process unsavoury knowledge is turned to wisdom, and fleshly love to ghostly love. The lantern of the soul is the faculty of reason by which Jesus is interiorly found. This is achieved by a concentration on the humanity of Jesus that leads to his divinity. In this Hilton presents a manifestly cognicentric process for contemplation that is characterized by the move from flesh to spirit. Thus the figure of Christ is ultimately presented by Hilton in a rather dehumanized form. The move from flesh to spirit is replicated in the way in which the signs used for contemplation work. Typically, physical images are used to convey spiritual sense. In the signification of these signs there is an emptying of physical denotation.
In Mixed Life Hilton repeats the binary oppositions used in Scale 1 of bodily and ghostly, outer and inner, active and contemplative, yet this time suggests that the secular gentleman to whom the epistle is addressed may move temporarily from one to the other. Although occasionally tempering the vigorous transcendentalism of Scale 1, Hilton maintains explicit hierarchy based on the opposition of flesh and spirit. The same oppositions are repeated in both Eight Chapters on Perfection where movement away from holy discipline is a movement to the flesh and in Of Angels’ Song where the soul is raised out of sensuality through purifying love of God so that the eye of the soul may behold ghostly things.
Scale 2 continues much of the thematic content of Scale 1 in detailing the soul’s reformation to the unfleshly state where it truly images the Trinity perichoretically present in the inner Christ perceived by the soul’s faculty of reason, the ‘gostly ei3e’. Much of Hilton’s teaching on contemplation is crystallized in the signification of this latter term. By denying denotation of a physical referent Hilton abstracts its connoted ghostly meaning from physical inference in the language itself. This is typical of a general textual procedure of such semiotic vacuity of the physical.
In his delineation of psychology in Scale 2 Hilton develops the notion of a lower part to the faculty of reason that deals with creaturely elements. This lower reason acts as a protective boundary between the cognicentric (sacred) and the flesh (profane) that reinforces the isolation of sapiential vision of Christ from physicality. For Hilton the quality of perception is dependent upon how flesh-governed a person is: in effect, one sees on the basis of what one is. Bodily existence corresponds to a closing of the eyes.
In many ways the Cloud author subverts much of the tradition as presented by Hilton by way of a dialectic that replaces a cognicentric system with an apophatic affectivity working in relation to ‘the cloud of unknowing’. In The Cloud of Unknowing the author presents the work of contemplation as the practice of monologic prayer that functions through a procedure of vacuity in signification. This vacuity is extended to a contemplative self-forgetting that entails denial of notions of interiority and transcendence as all such contemplative paradigms depend on physical denotation. Physicalist conception scatters the mind and undermines the unitive intent needed. For the Cloud author the work of contemplation may be characterized as a shift from fragmentation to union with God through accordance of will.
In the author’s mature work Priue Counseling the work of contemplation goes beyond the dialectic of word-centredness and volition presented in the Cloud of Unknowing to a form of Wesensmystik that more fundamentally grounds the play of absence and presence in the self’s apprehension of God in the being of the self. At the same time the author shows greater inclusion of cognition in contemplative union. Ultimately it is creaturely conception rather than cognition that is explicitly rejected by the author.
Julian of Norwich’s A Revelation of Love is perhaps the most complex text out of the three groups. Her text promotes a greater multivalency than those of Hilton or the Cloud author. This multivalency carries with it a greater sense of transgression than the more dialectical apophatism of the Cloud author. The textual Julian, that is, the textual first person singular, or authorial surrogate, becomes part of her visionary matrix. Aspects of the perceived visionary Christ become incorporated into Julian’s own sensory experience. In this sense there is a blurring, or rather continuous slippage of perspective in the course of her sixteen revelations. Julian sees Christ, sees through Christ, and sees as Christ.
Julian’s understanding of the self is largely informed by an Incarnationalism that sees the sensual self as inhabited by Christ. Through notions of mutual enclosure between God in Christ and the self Julian sees union with God as being more organically constitutional than something to be attained, as is more the case with Hilton and the Cloud author. In so doing she stretches the boundaries, as understood by the two authors, of what constitutes ghostly perception of Christ. Where in both Hilton and the Cloud author the figure of Christ functions as a means by which the contemplative moves from fragmented fleshly thoughts to a pure unitive apprehension, Julian’s Christology is typified by signs of physicality and procreation. This is most obviously the case with her image of Christ as mother, but it also manifests itself in her understanding of Christ having reunified the soul through his Incarnation to include sensuality. Julian has little need for protective boundaries that keep the spiritual abstracted from physicality.
All three authors deal with how their words are meant to be understood. Contemplative signs used by Hilton and the Cloud author tend to be governed by the binary opposition of flesh and spirit. Hilton sees his signs as gesturing to their referent, Christ, who is the true teacher in ‘gostlines’. The governing opposition of flesh and spirit in contemplation entails that Hilton’s understanding of Christ conforms to this opposition.
The Cloud author’s apophatism is not fundamentally a negation, but, rather, acts as a strategy within a clearly onto-theological framework. Where Hilton’s understanding of linguistic articulation is seen as a provisional, though initially reliable, gesture towards its referent, the Cloud author rejects absolutely conceptual approaches to God. Such rejection extends to language denoting interiority and transcendence, such a feature for Hilton.
Julian’s incorporation of aspects of the life of Christ into her presentation of her visionary perception extends to the form of the text itself. A paradigm sequence of Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection is maintained in the text that signifies on a variety of levels. The grounding paradigm of the life of Christ informs how Julian presents the life of her text, her understanding of the human condition, and her presentation of the contemplative life. Julian’s understanding of ‘gostly’ meaning is that it is ‘our lords menyng’. And this entails that the Incarnation pervades ‘gostlines’.
Selfhood and ‘Gostly Menyng’ in some Middle English Mystics:
Semiotic Approaches to Contemplative Theology.

Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 Walter Hilton
1. The Scale of Perfection Book 1
(i) The Pattern of the Contemplative Life.
(ii) Psychology and the Role of the Flesh.
(iii) The Image of Jesus and the Image of Sin.
2. Mixed Life.
3. Eight Chapters on Perfection.
4. Of Angels’ Song.
5. The Scale of Perfection Book 2.
(i) The Pattern of the Contemplative Life.
(ii) Psychology and the Role of the Flesh.
(iii) Knowledge, Love and the Trinity.
Chapter 2 The Cloud Group
1. Introduction.
2. The Cloud of Unknowing.
(i) The Pattern of the Contemplative Life.
(ii) Psychology.
(iii) Language and the ‘Werk’ of Contemplation.
3. Deonise Hid Diuinite.
4. A Tretyse of Þe Stodye of Wysdome þat men clepen Beniamyn.
5. A Pistle of Discrecioun of Stirings.
6. A Tretis of Discrescyon of Spirites.
7. Þe Book of Priue Counseling.
8. Christ in the Cloud Group.
Chapter 3 Julian of Norwich
1. Introduction.
2. The Revelations.
3. Selfhood in A Revelation of Love.
Chapter 4 Contemplation and ‘Gostly Menyng’
1. Walter Hilton - The Inner Christ.
2. The Cloud Group - The Way of Unknowing.
3. Julian of Norwich - The Body of Christ, the Body of Bliss.
Bibliography

Selfhood and ‘Gostly Menyng’ in some Middle English Mystics:
Semiotic Approaches to Contemplative Theology.

Introduction
The Middle English Mystics of the fourteenth century are a group of writers who differ in the form and content of their writings as much as they cohere. Out of a somewhat larger group of writers and texts I shall concentrate on Walter Hilton, the group of texts associated with The Cloud of Unknowing, and Julian of Norwich: specifically, Hilton’s Scale of Perfection Books 1 and 2, Mixed Life, Eight Chapters on Perfection, and Of Angels’ Song, The Cloud of Unknowing, Deonise Hid Divinity, A Treatise of the Study of Wisdom called Benjamin, The Epistle on Prayer, The Discretion of Spirits, and The Book of Privy Counselling,1 and Julian’s A Revelation of Love. All these texts are vernacular texts that, in the case of Hilton and the Cloud author, tend to be written in epistolary form to aspiring contemplatives without apparent theological learning, or, in Julian’s case, a narrative form by one who, despite clear theological creativity, claims to be ‘a simple creature that cowde no letter’. In this regard the texts function as explanatory texts and do not intentionally depend upon extra-textual written sources for their meaning. There is thus a loose coherence between the texts in language, form, and theological scope. Such coherence, general as it is, does not pervade the content of the texts. The authors have particular contemplative agendas and repertoires.
Walter Hilton is perhaps the most traditional of our three authors. His texts echo with the voices of Augustine, Gregory the Great, Bernard, and Richard of St Victor. For Hilton the contemplative directs the sight of the soul interiorly to the inner Christ in whom the Trinity perichoretically dwells. From the point of view of study Hilton’s texts act as a foundation for the study of the Cloud author and Julian in that he represents an Augustinian storehouse of contemplative conventions.
The Cloud author is primarily driven by an apophatism that counters aspects of the more cataphatic Hilton, particularly the latter’s cognicentrism. Although he makes mention of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and claims that ‘Denis bookes’ will affirm all that he has said, the Cloud author is less concerned with the dynamics of agnosia per se than he is with the primacy of the loving will over the faculty of reason. In his psychological paradigm the author adopts a working version of the Augustinian (and Victorine) model assumed by Hilton, and this functions as the framework for his teaching on contemplation. Where he fundamentally diverges from Hilton is in his absolutist claims as to the unknowability of God and contemplation thus being singular volition.
Julian of Norwich’s text contains elements found in both Hilton and the Cloud author. However, hers is a truly original composition that abounds with the unconventional. Although formally a visionary, if contemplation centres on the soul’s union with God, she too must be seen as a writer on contemplation. Yet where Hilton and the Cloud author would see contemplation as a state of union to be achieved by contemplative means, Julian extends contemplative union via Christ’s Incarnation to a point where union with God is organically constitutional for the Christian.
In the ordering of the analysis of the texts one might thus superimpose a form of dialectical sequence that runs positive, negative, creative.
About the historical lives of the three authors little is known with certainty, and as I shall explain below, this will partly determine the methodological bias of this study. There is evidence that Walter Hilton spent substantial time in Cambridge where he studied Canon Law.2 From there he seems to have moved north to become an Augustinian Canon of Thurgarton in Nottinghamshire where he died on 24th March, 1396.3 Far less, if indeed anything, is known about the Cloud author. It has been variously conjectured that he was a hermit, a rural priest, a Carthusian, or even a Dominican.4 All such biographical speculation comes from possible inferences in the author’s texts that are essentially vague. Although not vague, a similar situation exists with the biographical data for Julian. Apart from possible mention in a few fourteenth- and fifteenth-century wills and mention in The Book of Margery Kempe,5 Julian’s text remains the source for details of her life. Such details as there are tell us nothing specific as to Julian’s theological milieu, but suggest that her revelations came to her on 8th May, 1373, when she was thirty and a half years old. A fifteenth century MS tells us that Julian ‘3it ys on lyfe anno domini millesimo ccccxiii’.6
The scarcity of historical data, especially for the Cloud author and Julian, means that I shall not be attempting to reconstruct a biographical backdrop to the texts. Whenever reference is made to the authors throughout this study it will be to the author as implied by the text.
The methodology employed in this study will be an eclectic, text-driven analysis. The determining influence on how the texts are interpreted will be the texts themselves. Thus possible theological influences on the texts will not operate as the lens by which the texts are viewed, but the texts themselves will constitute the lens by which cited and implied influences are seen.
The texts should not be interpreted by establishing an historically prior systematic framework which determines hermeneutic procedure. The texts are themselves the framework in which one might see earlier systems partially reflected. These earlier systems largely exist as conventional paradigms often of too fluid a nature to be directly attributable. If terminology is to be exactly understood by its originating systems, there would be the constant danger of a sort of ‘genetic fallacy’, that meaning is revealed at a beginning. Let us take Hilton as an example for a moment. It is indeed possible to infer quotation within the texts. However, understanding the plane of denotation is not dependent upon prior knowledge of specific classic texts. Hilton must not be read through the lens of Augustine, but Augustine through the lens of Hilton. This may be justified by a more obvious example. For all of the authors, and especially Hilton, the Bible exists as the most cited extra-textual authority. Clearly interpreting Hilton by the Bible would be unacceptable hermeneutically. Hilton’s quoted passages from Scripture become encoded by the governing signs of the text. This having been said, if on the connoted plane a sign emphatically recalls a specific system, such a system is to be recognized. The authority of our primary texts does not abstract them from the mainstream. Our texts appropriate signs operating within a cultural coding or langue. When psychologies are delineated within a text they are done so as much by a sense of conventional repertoire as by direct textual influence. What we cannot do is exactly define, in effect standardize, Hilton by analysis of the writings of Augustine. What we can do is recognize the originating paradigms. I shall thus refrain from ‘illegitimate totality transfer’7 in which, for example, Augustine’s trinitarian theory in his de Trinitate is imported fully into an understanding of Hilton. Rather, I shall attempt to record Hilton’s use of Augustine by the light of Hilton.
My concern will be to keep a brake on possible overcoding in the interpretation of the governing signs within the texts. Much valuable work has been done, particularly by editors of the texts,8 in identifying corresponding passages from Patristic and Scholastic sources, but, as I shall discuss in the following chapters, some scholars have in all likelihood exaggerated the importance of these passages as direct influences. This is most particularly so with Julian.
Rarely in the study of the English Mystics has the focus been on how the language of the texts works. Instead, studies have tended to concentrate on the historical precedents for the individual statements made within these texts, or have used contemporary or modern classifications of types of contemplative and/or mystical experience. In both these approaches the primary understanding of textual meaning has been that of understanding the texts as a sequence of propositions. By gleaning propositions from the text, either by inference or by abstracting quotations, it has been assumed that sense might be made of what the English Mystics are saying. I believe that none of this is really possible without having first looked for the strategies, codes, and patternings within the signs of any given text. Without having accomplished this, any abstraction of meaning from a text will also be a dilution and, indeed, a misrepresentation.
There is sometimes an implicit assumption that the theological analysis of texts need not function by way of any explicit critical theory. Theological analysis would thus be understood as distinguishable from, for example, ‘literary’ or ‘semiotic’ analyses. If a theological analysis of texts has shown a methodological self-consciousness, it has more often than not been in the field of Biblical Studies. In the study of the English Mystics such self-consciousness has been in evidence rather less often. What has sometimes been the case is that studies have implicitly assumed some sort of privileged access to the meaning of the text, with little or no acknowledgement being given to the way in which the analysis might determine the interpretation of the text. Obviously, theological analysis does not exist as a singular, neutral form of criticism. What is perhaps surprising however is the apparent lack of use of literary tools in the analysis of post-biblical texts. It has often been assumed, and is still assumed, that literary and linguistic analyses are a separate form of study to theology. Such separation, whether conscious or not, in the study of theological texts is questionable. As Kevin Hart has rightly stated: ‘Christian theology is always a study of signs.’9
In the texts of the English Mystics central or governing signs ground their teaching or reflection upon contemplation. These signs are not of stable or fixed signification. They have an incremental movement that makes them essentially context-dependent. Thus each sign has a dynamic within the text per se. Understanding central signs must involve tracing their signification.10
This study is primarily a study of the authors’ understanding of selfhood and ‘gostly menyng’. Apart from a few pockets of direct teaching in the texts, the authors convey their understandings of the self in their presentation of contemplation itself. Thus the scope of the textual subject matter will be necessarily broad. The analysis of selfhood will therefore be an analysis of the self in the teaching on contemplative process.
All three authors give presentational accounts of what constitutes human selfhood. In each case these accounts are importantly different from one another. Equally, even though stemming from the common sign of ‘onyng’, the processes of self in apprehension of God mean for the authors quite different things.
Obviously, for our authors there is little unease about talking of a self that exists independently of discourse. Such talk, however unpalatable for post-Wittgensteinian or post-Derridian persuasions, should not be anachronistically discounted. Not only shall I accept the Middle English authors’ notions of self as prelinguistic power-source on their own terms, but I shall myself strategically presume a ‘real’ subject, a subject of presence.
Each of the three authors makes use of a stratification of meaning, most commonly that of the ‘bodily’ and the ‘gostly’. This stratification is manifest within the same signifying chains. Bodily signs become the signifiers for ‘gostly’ meaning. The relationship between the physical and spiritual takes central place in the texts. This is clearly true even on a narrowly propositional reading, yet it is even more the case in the way in which the governing signs play. Yet often this latter activity would seem to subvert what would seem the most obvious propositional understanding taken from a denotative reading. This is particularly the case in Julian’s understanding of the role of the flesh.
I shall devote a chapter each to the texts of Walter Hilton, the Cloud group, and Julian of Norwich, and conclude with a fourth chapter dealing with ‘Contemplation and "Gostly Menyng".’
My analysis of Hilton will comprise a presentation of his teaching on contemplative praxis, his understanding of psychology and the role of the flesh, his notions of the ‘ymage of Iesu’ and the ‘ymage of synne’, and his developed understanding of knowledge and love in relation to the Trinity.
The chapter on the Cloud group will concern itself with the author’s delineation of the active and contemplative lives and the corresponding centres of devotional focus, his understanding of psychology, his treatment of language and the ‘werk’ of contemplation, and the place of Christ in his apophatic form of contemplation.
Analysis of Julian will be founded on an initial sequential reading of her sixteen revelations. From this I shall discuss her notions of the soul’s ‘substance’ and ‘sensuality’, her integrationist Christology, her understanding of the motherhood of Christ, and her particular use of triadic patterning.
The final chapter will discuss the texts’ presentation of contemplation with particular analysis of how certain foundational paradigms govern the principal signs deployed by the authors.
In each chapter I shall discuss the texts, paying particular attention to semiosis pertinent to the authors’ understanding of the self. These semiotic readings are a form of necessary preliminary analysis that must precede wider theological considerations. The relation between contemplative theology and systematic theology is beyond the bounds of this study. However, such discussion, if presuming to include the witness of contemplative texts, must be grounded in a thorough understanding of what and how the texts signify, what might be called semiotic approaches. For contemplative theology to function fully within a systematic theology, the great contemplative witnesses must be read closely. It is this close reading, this approach, that I shall attempt in this study.11



Notes
1. Although there is warranted doubt, which I shall discuss in chapter 2, whether A Treatise of the Study of Wisdom called Benjamin and The Discretion of Spirits are indeed translated by the Cloud author, they are included in this study because they have, from medieval MS traditions up to Phyllis Hodgson’s first editions of the texts, been included in the Cloud group. They further share common subject matter, and in the case of Benjamin provide an interesting ‘link’ between the theologies of Walter Hilton and the Cloud author. However, for the sake of convenience I shall in this introduction refer to Walter Hilton, the Cloud author and Julian of Norwich as ‘the three authors’.
2. See J.P.H. Clark ‘Late Fourteenth-Century Theology and the English Contemplative Tradition’, MMTE V, 1992, pp3-5.
3. See Joy Russel-Smith ‘Walter Hilton and a Tract in Defence of the Veneration of Images’, Dominican Studies, 7, 1954, pp205-211.
4. For a summary of the debate and the suggestion of the latter identity see David Knowles The English Mystical Tradition, London, 1961, pp68-70. See further Phyllis Hodgson (ed.), The Cloud of Unknowing, EETS (OS 218), Oxford UP, 1944, plxxxiii, and James Walsh (trans.), The Cloud of Unknowing, CWS, Paulist Press, 1981, p2 n4.
5. The Book of Margery Kempe, EETS (OS 212), Oxford UP, 1940, p42f.
6. See Marion Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics, Longman, London, 1993, pp215-216, and Benedicta Ward ‘Lady Julian of Norwich’, The English Religious Tradition and the Genius of Anglicanism, ed. Geoffrey Rowell, Ikon, Wantage, 1992, pp48-52.
7. The phrase comes from Professor James Barr and refers to ‘illegitimately’ reading one theological system by way of another. For example, interpreting the theology the Gospel according to St John by the writings of St Paul. See James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language, Oxford UP, 1961, p218, cf. p222, ‘illegitimate identity transfer’.
8. Particularly Phyllis Hodgson, Edmund Colledge, James Walsh, and John Clark in the extensive footnoting in the editions cited in the bibliography.
9. Kevin Hart, The Trespass of the Sign, Cambridge UP, 1989, p7.
10. The form of semiotic metalanguage that I shall be using in this study will be one ultimately derived from Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (1916), trans. Wade Baskin, Fontana, London, 1974, as developed by Roland Barthes in ‘Myth Today’, Mythologies (1957), trans. Annette Lavers, Paladin, London, 1972, and Elements of Semiology (1964), trans. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith, Jonathan Cape, London, 1967.
Any particular word, or linguistic sign consists of a signifier (signifiant) and a signified (signifié) which correspond, roughly speaking, to graphic or phonic expression and content, that is, form and meaning. The sign is the correlation of the signifier and signified.
Syntagmatic analysis deals with the sequential order of signs, and paradigmatic analysis deals with the signifying process of the individual sign.
A sign on a plane of denotation can act as the signifier for a connoted plane: ‘a connoted system is a system whose plane of expression is itself constituted by a signifying system’, Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology, p90. The precise semiological vocabulary here is, the meaning that constitutes the sign on the plane of denotation is the form that constitutes the signifier that connotes a signified concept. This process is the signification of the sign.
A further, though unrelated, point regarding terminology should perhaps be made here over my use of ungendered personal pronouns and possessives. Rather than use the gender specific ‘he’, I shall, even with singular nouns, use the plural form ‘they’. This will be done to minimalize unnecessary male bias. This is by no means a recent practice: ‘However, a feeling of awkwardness with this use of "he" is not new. The Oxford English Dictionary gives old examples of "they" (1526) and "them" (1742) used in the singular to avoid the male association of "he". "God send everyone their heart’s desire" is from Shakespeare. Despite the protest of grammarians this usage has continued to be strong...’ (Making Women Visible, A report by the Liturgical Commission of the General Synod of the Church of England, GS 859, Church House Publishing, London, 1988, p17)
11. Two parts of this study derive from my earlier article ‘Reflecting Christ: the Role of the Flesh in Walter Hilton and Julian of Norwich’, MMTE V, 1992, pp17-37. The derived passages are specifically to be found on: pp16-17, 21-23, 26-28, 54-60, and 157-162.

A typically fine text by the Bishop of London

From A Prayer for All Seasons: The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer
(Lutterworth Press, 1999):

Afterword by the Bishop of London

The Collects assembled in the Book of Common Prayer offer departure at all gates into the mystery of the God ‘whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts’. Here is no godlet confected out of our own fantasies; no neighbourhood god jogging with us through life's way but here is the entry into the God ‘whom no man hath seen at any time’, who has been made known by ‘the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father’.
The spirit of these ancient prayers has little of the improper confidence of those who are pally with Sion. By contrast these prayers approach the divine mystery by way of a defamiliarizing ceremoniousness and a shocking reverence which for those with ears to bear can deliver us from the waking dream in which humanity and not God is the centre around which the whole universe revolves. We have begun to appreciate the cost of believing that we are licensed to exploit, without limit, all that exists. These are prayers for use in a day when it is vital once again to respect the distance between God and human beings. Such respect is an indispensable preparation for wisdom and for any profound appreciation of the work of Jesus Christ in reconciling us to God.
Those who have the privilege of leading the worship of the Church in these words will always know themselves as ‘the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries’ and not as the managers of some Spirit Shop catering for popular religious tastes and feelings. I hope and pray that this volume will introduce a new generation to this treasury of prayer and I commend the zeal and efforts of the Prayer Book Society in ensuring that, like Richard Hooker in a similar time of crisis, ‘Posterity may know that we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream’.

‘ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire, or deserve; Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.’

+Richard Londin.

St Paul's Cathedral

Trinity 10
Genesis 37.1-4, 12-28
Romans 10.5-15
Matthew 14.22-33

May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

‘For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”’ (Romans 10.12,13)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

On August 28th, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. Martin Luther King had a dream, and it was a profoundly Christian dream. He said,
‘When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!”’

Dr King had a dream, it was a profoundly Christian dream, and it came straight from the Letters of St Paul, ‘For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.’ This was a teaching he repeats in all his great Letters. It is there, of course, in his Letter to the Romans, it is there in his Letter to the Galatians,
‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.’ (Gal. 3.28)

It is there in his Letter to the Colossians,

‘In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!’ (Col. 3.11)

To be a Christian you don’t need to have a particular nationality, you don’t need to have a particular coloured skin, you don’t need to have a particular language. Now in the Gospels Jesus himself speaks of the inclusive nature of the Kingdom of God in his parables and teaching, and he does so often by use of the image of a great feast, a great feast to which all peoples would ultimately be invited, and he tells his listeners,
‘Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God. Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.’ (Luke 13.29,30)

The religious elitists, who presume that they alone possess salvation, will find that those whom they derided in this life will feast in the kingdom before them. Because, for Jesus, everyone is invited to the feast, the haughty and the self-important keep themselves away, and so in the Parable of the Great Feast the host tells his servant,
‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.’ (Luke 14.23,24)

The elitists exclude themselves from the feast, and by doing so are cast ‘into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ (Matt. 8.12) But all who come are welcome to the feast. The last thing the risen Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew’s Gospel is this,

‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ (Matt. 28.18-20)

St Paul knew that the great commission was to make disciples ‘of all nations’¸ he risked his life time and again for the sake of reaching out to those whom religious bigots regarded as having second-rate cultures and second-rate spiritual lives. In the eyes of God no culture, no language, no colour of skin is second-rate. Thus when St John the Divine sees those white-robed martyrs of heaven in the Revelation he sees ‘a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb’ (Rev. 7.9).

Forms of Christianity which are taken up too much with the furtherance of one particular culture or nation have thus somewhat missed the point. In the Kingdom of God heaven and earth are filled with the rich cultural diversity of the children of God. Christianity is internationalist and not tribal; the Christian unity is not a unity of culture or language, but a unity found in Christ as the Body of Christ.

Yet we can, and should, take this one step further. Christian unity is something which should transcend different Christian denominations. The Church of England has for centuries taught that the universal Church is the company of all faithful people wherever they might be in this world and the next. It has taught that the Church of England is simply one small part of a universal Church which exceeds national and cultural boundaries. It is for this reason that all baptized persons who are communicant members of other Churches which subscribe to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and who are in good standing in their own Church, are welcome to receive Holy Communion at this service. Ecumenical acceptance of one another is a demand of the Gospel. Recently Brother Roger of Taizé wrote this,
‘One saying of Jesus that is becoming as relevant as never before is, “When you bring your offering to the altar and someone has something against you, leave everything and go and be reconciled first of all”.
“Go first of all.” Not, “Put it off till later”.

Christian denominations who bring their offerings to the altar but who have put off till later reconciliation and fellowship between the churches are not following our Lord’s command here. ‘Leave everything and go and be reconciled first of all.’ Everyone is invited to the feast in the Kingdom of God, the elitists exclude themselves.

Yes, as Christians we are a culturally inclusive community. We exist as the Body of Christ as a community of different individuals. But there is a very real sense in which we need an understanding of ourselves in our corporate life as a community and an understanding of ourselves as Christian individuals. In our Gospel reading this morning we heard of Christ’s own manifestation of the two. He had fed the crowds with the five loaves and two fish, a great feast again where everybody is fed, and after having dismissed the crowds, we are told that he ‘went up the mountain by himself to pray’ where he was ‘there alone’. Christ’s regular withdrawal into the wilderness and on mountains in order to pray in solitary is a recurrent feature of his earthly life; it reminds us of the spiritual need to get away from it all for reflection and prayer. If we are, quite properly as Christians, integrated as a community, then also, quite properly, we need time for quiet contemplation and prayer. Life today is so very noisy for most of us. Our lives are lived against the seemingly never-ending background sound of traffic. Domestically too radios and televisions fill our homes with endless processed information. All of us need, on occasion, to get away and be still. Stillness is often one of the great spiritual gifts given us by our great cathedrals, and indeed, by our parish churches. All of us need regularly to sit quietly before the Lord. Whether it is at home in quiet moments of the day; whether it is in the cool and calm of our tranquil cathedrals; or whether it is altogether away to some natural place of quiet, all of us need to sit quietly to communicate with God. Often when we think of communication we quite naturally think of speaking and of words. And when we think of God speaking to us, we magnify and extend human communication so that we imagine perhaps God’s language to be a larger and louder form of human speech. Yet when, as we read in the First Book of the Kings, Elijah escapes into the wilderness after having fought the prophets of Baal he takes refuge in a cave. And we read that:
...the Lord passed by, and a great strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold there came a voice to him... (1 Kings 19.11-13)

God spoke to Elijah not in the form of the great strong wind, nor in the earthquake, nor even the fire, but in a still small voice. If we become too involved in the great winds, earthquakes and fires of our modern technological world we may easily miss the still small voice of the Lord.

Let me tell you a story. It is a story that comes from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers - the fourth century Christian hermits and monks of the Egyptian desert.

It was said that there were three friends who were not afraid of hard work. The first chose to reconcile those who were fighting each other, as it is said ‘Blessed are the peace-makers’ (Matt. 5). The second chose to visit the sick. The third went to live in prayer and stillness in the desert. Now in spite of all of his labours, the first could not make peace in everyone’s quarrels; and in his sorrow he went to him who was serving the sick, and he found him also disheartened, for he could not fulfil that commandment either. So they went together to see him who was living in the stillness of prayer. They told him their difficulties and begged him to tell them what to do. After a short silence, he poured some water into a bowl and said to them, ‘Look at the water,’ and it was disturbed. After a little while he said to them again, ‘look how the water is now,’ and as they looked into the water, they saw their own faces reflected in it as in a mirror. Then he said to them, ‘It is the same for those who live among humans; disturbances prevent them from seeing their faults. But when a person is still, especially in the desert, then they see their own failings.’

Without stillness any reflections we have of ourselves will be distorted reflections. We must allow our minds to clear like the water in the bowl so we might see clearly.

The Russian Orthodox Archbishop Anthony Bloom tells a lovely story about a lady who found enormous difficulty in getting down to pray. “Whenever I try, my mind wanders”, she told him. Bloom asked her what was her favourite pastime. “Knitting” she said. His advice was that she should light a candle, sit herself in a comfortable chair, and “knit silently before the Lord”. They met up again years later and even Anthony Bloom was surprised by what she reported. She told him that as she sat in silence, with just the rhythm and click of her knitting needles, the room was filled with what she called a wonderful ‘presence’. From then on wandering thoughts were never a problem.

We are in our spiritual lives to open ourselves to God, to be receptive so that we might hear what God wishes for us. As Christians we are people who seek after God and the Kingdom, we are not meant to be seeking after our own egotistical cravings. And what is here true of our spiritual lives individually is also so very true of our lives as a Christian community. We are to be open and receptive to each other, so that we may truly hear each other. To be a Christian is to be someone who listens as much as talks, who listens to God and who listens to fellow human beings. Now perhaps all of what I have said can be summarized in the following sentence, Christianity is an open faith and Christians are open people. We, as Christians, are open to all people of whatever culture, language and social background; we are open to each other, truly listening to each other; we are open and honest to ourselves; and we are open to God; and perhaps most importantly, God is open to us, God is open to us. In Jesus Christ the invisible God is revealed and accessible. And Christ invites us all to the feast. He invites us all. ‘Come to the feast, all of you. Come to the feast, you are all welcome.’ And by Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ we are healed, restored and sanctified. We are set right with God and with one another in Christ. So we come from east and west, from north and south, and eat in the kingdom of God. We come with all our differences as the rainbow people of God, beautiful in all our rich variety. We come accepting one another and loving one another as God has accepted and loves us. We come as open people to a God who is open in Jesus Christ.

To that same God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be all honour, might, majesty, dominion and glory, both now for evermore. Amen.

Kabbalah
Kabbalists have a strong sense of the reality of evil and the dark horror that is about everything living.
Gershom Scholem

To him who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone which no one knows except him who receives it.
Rev. 2.17

Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.
Rev. 12.17

*

She
She of the blue light,
She of sepulchres, tombs & caresses,
She of white skin, she of night skin.
The brilliance of Decay, the iron fist of Dismay, sweet death in foreplay...
Bedlinen my shroud & blackness veils my dizzy eyes yet I awaken to a new world of golden midnight danger, bejewelled skeletol mist of microscopic ruby & emerald rainshowers - perpetual unseen Terror infers a presence bloody & real.
Lingering kisses, the warm wetness of skin, bronzed darkness, intimacy of night...
She smiled, yet it was Death that kissed me.
Golden streams dance around her sweet physical prison, Night’s razor sharpness slashes my wet back.
She of the blue light,
She of sepulcres, tombs & caresses,
She of white skin, she of night skin.
Death kneels before me, she has dark eyes & soft hair, she has a vice-like mouth and eats me. I find no rest. I am made crimson & empty.

*

Far overhead the night’s pervading force
explodes the darkness into downward streams
of violent green. Stars mad with colour throb,
expand and burst through swirls of jewelled rain.
Great fires span thousand million miles of beach
with surging, wondrous purple flames that sigh;
with soft bronze sand beneath my back she lay
on me, her skin as gold as sunburst sky,
I soaked in her translucent turquoise eyes
and found soft expiation in her thighs.
I’ll swim through multicoloured midnight sea
- A psychedelic sunrise waits for me.

*

She of bouncing crazy cat feet
She of porcelain lunar face & astral skin
She of mane hair sharpness & attic despair
She of T.S. Eliot voice & kick back charm
She of smoothness, legs, shoulder-blades, alabaster
She of gold, she of glass
She of jazz night violence voyeurism
She of front seat feet on dashboard assertion
She of fragile stature, she of lovelessness.

*

20 Years
jazznight movement smoking sweat saxed bop
pass my hat - I’m gone
backstreet wail of trumpeted blues the open window
coffee night the girl’s fingers of blue smoke night
misty morning the bus & newspapers
working for the night
sticks of gage & crates of beer
jive-sisters at parties so diff’rent
conscious of fakes but movement, movement,
years, cafes & friends in different cities
the attic flat she blonde
folk-song smoke of steel-strung six string berets &
beards, ’the windy beach of crazy sorrow’
journeys of rainbowed night
Lucy & purple
short dresses rings flowers beads & Kerouac dead
Colour night of leathered angels
splinters of sunshine & screeming guitar freedom
countryside flow turquoise free Goddess she dancing & colour
& sugar-cube colour amplified beaches & fires in dunes
mystical journeys & Mexican eagles in sunlight
Rizla & rafia naked brown legs of revolution
Amsterdam Provos & Lennon in bed
death-jelly in jungles;
ten thousand death medals for each thousand dead men...
Jimi, Janis, then Jim...
embarrassment, anger
and
death
- the dream over,
no m
o
v
e
m
e
n
t

*

The Beach
The orange sky melted and heaven fell on her. There were fires in dunes. She still had the turquoise flower in her fist. It was late summer. She couldn’t remember the word that had been used and, as the sea danced and Jesus bled, she knew she wouldn’t go back.

*

Was it said?
Alive or dead
Black and red
A crimson head
A side that bled
Was it said?
Alive or dead