50 Key Concepts in Theology
Part and John Tavener. This new Christian mystical music is enjoying
Download 0.85 Mb. Pdf ko'rish
|
50 Key Concepts in Theology - Rayment-Pickard
- Bu sahifa navigatsiya:
- Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious
Part and John Tavener. This new Christian mystical music is enjoying considerable popularity: recordings of Górecki’s Third Symphony have sold on a scale normally reserved for pop musicians, and Tavener’s music was used at the funeral of Princess Diana. THINKERS Augustine (354–422) records in Book 9 of the Confessions that he had a mystical vision in prayerful contemplation with his mother in Ostia: ‘my mother and I … were talking alone together and our conversation was serene and joyful … As the flame of love burned stronger in us and raised us higher towards the eternal God … At length we came to our own souls and passed beyond them to that place of everlasting plenty, where you feed Israel for ever with the food of truth.’ Jakob Böhme (1575–1624): a seventeenth-century shoemaker who saw the direct affinity between the human soul and the reality of God: ‘I did not climb up into the Godhead, neither can so mean a man as I am do it; but the Godhead climbed up in me, and revealed such to me out of his Love’ (Aurora). Denys (or Dionysius) the Areopagite (c. 500) argued in The Mystical Theology that knowledge of God comes from mystical practice. Marsilio Ficino (1433–99): a classic ‘Renaissance man’ (scholar, doctor, musician, priest) who drew upon the writings of Plato and Plotinus to develop a pia philosophia (sacred philosophy) structured around the immortality of the human soul and its ascent towards God: ‘There are three principal steps in Platonic contemplation. The first ascends from the body through the soul to God, the second abides still in God and the third descends to the soul and the body.’ Henryk Górecki (1933– ): an avant-garde Polish Catholic composer who uses liturgical and other sources to evoke a sacred, mystical sound-scape. Olivier Messiaen (1908–92): a French Catholic composer who explored the relationship between time and eternity in his music. Rudolf Otto (1869–1937) wrote a classic work, The Idea of the Holy, in which he argues that religion is founded on ‘non-rational, non-sensory experience’ of something numinous beyond the self. The numinous is a mysterium tremendum, something both mysterious and terrifying. Arvo Part (1935– ): an Estonian composer who developed the technique of ‘tintinnabulation’ or building up sound from simple components, producing a unique style of Christian mystical music. John Tavener (1944– ): a Greek Orthodox composer who strives to communicate the mystical in his minimalist music. IDEAS Asceticism: the practice of seeking religious insight by denying oneself earthly comforts. The numinous: a word indicating the dimension of the sacred and spiritual. (The word ‘numinous’ was used by Kant in a specific philosophic sense to refer to ‘things in themselves’ beyond our perception of them.) Ladder spirituality has been a staple of Christian mysticism. Jacob’s ladder combined with Plato’s ideas about the ascent of the soul planted a powerful image in Christian theology: the picture of prayer as a mystical ascent towards God. Notable examples of this tradition have been St John Climicus’ The Ladder of Divine Ascent and Walter Hilton’s The Ladder of Perfection. The ladder of spiritual ascent is contrasted by Origen with the ‘wheel’ of the imagination, which merely recycles human thoughts. BOOKS Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition (OUP, 2007) William Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Download 0.85 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
Ma'lumotlar bazasi mualliflik huquqi bilan himoyalangan ©fayllar.org 2024
ma'muriyatiga murojaat qiling
ma'muriyatiga murojaat qiling