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Humans seem naturally to respond to transcendence, often inprayer, whatever tradition they belong to. But what ishappening in prayer and meditation? How do we think about therelationship between us and the transcendent? The three Abrahamicfaiths emerging out of the Roman-Hellenistic era have a complex history ofphilosophical reflection accompanying their collective experiences ofGod. So too the dharmic traditions of South and EastAsia. Enlightenment philosophies and their successors raisesignificant challenges to ancient assumptions, but they also offer newpossibilities for finding a new coherence of thought and experience.
In these exploratory sessions, we will try to see some of the ways that experience shapes though tand thought shapes experience as humans strive to integrate their understanding of transcendence in the world. The readings week by week are available for you to read or not as you wish (don’t be intimidated by the amount, it’s not compulsory). However, .I will be referring to many of them in the course of each week’s session, and you may want to do follow-up reading afterwards.
In this session we start to notice some of the philosophies embedded in the spiritual traditions we inherit. This is the London Jesuit Centre, so we'll start with St Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises as a rich basis for reflection.
Required reading: extracts from the Spiritual exercises
Questions of the week:
- How do I know if I am in communication with God?
- What do I make of the answers in the Spiritual Exercises
1. Spiritual Exercises: imagination, narrative, visual, auditory content, reasoning, affective changes in the soul ‘about’, search for affective/cognitive states.(47-50)
2. Powers ofthe soul: memory, understanding, will. (47-50)
3. Spiritsat work (6,7, 10, 17)
4. Consolation and desolation (6, 13, 14, 15, 313-336)
5. God’saction on the soul, consolation without previous cause (15, 16, 175, 330)
6. Narrativeof God as source to experience of God as source (230-237)
7. Discernment of Spirits (329, 331-335)
8. Background: two spirits, Qumran; Luke, 1 John;
9. Cognition of the transcendent (Plato).
This week we look at classical theories of reality involving self, cosmos and God that underpin much of the language of spirituality in the Abrahamic traditions. We take a sideways glance at the spiritua lworld of the Upanishads.
Required Reading: extracts from Augustine and Ps-Dionysius
Question of the week:
How helpful are cosmological models like Plotinus’ or Ibn Sīnā’sfor helping us make sense of spirituality today?
1. Two models ofChristian meditation as ascent (Augustine/Ps-Dionysius)
2. Background: Spirit in the world (Stoics)
3. World ofmatter and world of forms (Plato)
4. Constructing a cosmos: soul, intellect, the One and intermediate beings
5. A fragment of an Upanishad: cosmos, self, meditation and liberation.
Recognition, understanding, communication. Spirituality claims encounter with reality and, often, access to new truth. What theories of the self and of cognition support the claims of the Abrahamic faiths? This week, we take a sideways glance at Buddhist thought.
Required Reading: Extracts from John of the Cross
Question of the week:
How far do these theories of the mind still provide a useful framework for thinking about religious experience?
1. Extreme negativity –John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul
2. Ancient models of the self and theories of cognition of the transcendent
3. The Theology and Physiology of engagement with God, angels and demons.
4. A fragment of Buddhist scripture on emptiness
This time we notice the challenge to claims of spiritual realismarising within the philosophical traditions. But is a sceptical approach friend, foe, or ambiguous friend – and is it possible to have a spirituality without God? A sideways look at Epicurus, andB ertrand Russell's transformative experience.
Required Reading: Extract from Hume’s Dialogues on NaturalReligion
Question of the week:
Do tensions between a religious narrative of the world and a scientific narrative have an effect on the experience of religion?
1. Alternative narratives(Epicurus)
2. Hume assceptic and empiricist – challenge to the transcendent God
3. Newcosmologies
4. Newepistemology: separation of thoughts and feelings
5. Newpsychologies (Freud and Jung)
6. Immanuel Kant: modest (critical) recovery of the transcendent
7. Transcendent experience of the non-religious (Russell)
Modern thought and philosophy is highly fragmented. What robust aids can we find to make sense of a spiritual quest in the modern context? We will be looking at ideas from the phenomenologist philosophical movement, the cultural commentary of Ian McGilchrist and the philosophical/spiritual insight of Karl Rahner.
Required Reading: Extract from Karl Rahner’s Introduction to Christianity
Question of the week:
How well do new narratives of self and theworld sustain confidence in older accounts of communication between God andhumankind?
1. Kant, Thomas Aquinas and Karl Rahnl
2.Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinians on religion.
3. Kantian variations: Levinas, Marion.
4. Two modern theories of the mind (Dennett, Goff)
5. Pope Francis, Pope Leo and Iain McGilchrist
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
John Moffatt SJ works at the London Jesuit Centre. His first degree was in Classics. He taught in London secondary schools intermittently between 1985 and 2016 and has worked briefly in University Chaplaincy. He has been involved with teenage and adult faith education in Britain and South Africa and has recently completed a doctorate in medieval Islamic philosophy.
