In the final chapter of The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism, Denys Turner asserts that our contemporary ideas of what constitutes "mysticism" have tended to focus on a kind of experientialism that would seem very foreign to the historical authors we classify as mystical theologians. Rather, beginning with observations offered by Andrew Louth on the mystical theology of Denys...
In previous posts we have examined several iterations of the Eucharistic performance within the framework of a postmodern understanding of the inherent instability of the text. Now we turn to a final criticism often raised in opposition to innovations within the spiritual life of the church.
Let us turn to the final task laid out in the introduction: the potential for a reading of the Eucharistic text in which an unordained person acts as celebrant. From the perspective of the magisterium's teachings or the Eastern Orthodox tradition, this may seem an impossibility. However, let us draw on one other scenario in which (iterative) translations play out.
While the contemporary Eastern Orthodox fixation on the bishop runs just as deeply as the Roman Catholic tradition, there are differences in the iterative understanding of the episcopal role in the Lord's Supper. The modern Eastern tradition shares the understanding of the bishop's privilege in the Eucharist found in St. Ignatius' writings. But a fundamental difference remains within Orthodox...
In the middle of the third century a conflict emerged in the church over the use of water instead of wine as an element in the Eucharistic feast. Attacking the practice in a letter to a fellow bishop, Cyprian of Carthage argued: "For if Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, is Himself the chief priest of God the Father, and has first offered Himself a sacrifice to the Father, and has commanded this to...
In a previous post we discussed Derrida's claim that an adequate translation can only be made when we understand not only the grammar and vocabulary of a language, but also the rhetorical uses of the language, as well as the history and the cultural context of work. With this in mind, we return to Marion, whose explication of the Eucharistic site of theology and the role of the (Roman Catholic)...
In our previous post we explored Derrida's concepts of iterability and (un)translatability. In this post we apply the first of these concepts in an examination of iterations of the Eucharistic text.
il n'ya a pas de hors texte…[1] Summarizing Derrida's deconstructive project would be a colossal task. Because of its very nature, there is no short, clear exposition of deconstruction. However, for our purposes we will focus on only a couple of its concepts, gleaning insights from a few key texts. The first of these, perhaps the most famous axiom of postmodern thought: there is nothing...
In God Without Being, Jean-Luc Marion explores the Eucharistic event as the scene of inbreaking of God's unconditional gift to humanity – a theological site where sign, locutor, and referent all converge in the person of Jesus Christ, the living Word.[1] However, along with the gift Marion includes a conditional that keeps on giving: the bishop as mediator of Christ, or put another way, a human...
Through withdrawal from the system that runs us and tells us who we are, we create the opportunity for the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit to speak within us, presenting us with a new identity.