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Mystical Joy: A Theopoetics of “Expressive Silences” in Christianity

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Mysticism, Ineffability and Silence in Philosophy of Religion

Part of the book series: Comparative Philosophy of Religion ((COPR,volume 4))

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Abstract

Rose Ellen Dunn analyses Christian mysticism through the lens of theology and philosophy of language, especially in Catherine Keller, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Louis Chrétien. She argues for the idea that silences can be expressive and relational, developing sacred space between humans and divinity, and allowing mystical seekers to become intertwined, or enfolded in the love of the Divine.

God, therefore, is the enfolding of all in the sense that all are in God, and God is the unfolding of all in the sense that God is in all. —Nicholas of Cusa. (Nicholas of Cusa 1997: Selected Spiritual Writings, trans. Bond H. L. New York: Paulist. P. 135.)

This essay is a revised version of material from Dunn, R. E. 2014: Finding Grace with God: A Phenomenological Reading of the Annunciation. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications. primarily Chapter Three (46–68) and Conclusion (93–106), used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers, www.wipfandstock.com. The phrase “expressive silences” is from Merleau-Ponty M. 1964: Signs. Trans. McCleary, R. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. p. 46.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Keller, C. 1986: From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and Self. Boston: Beacon. p. 251.

  2. 2.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1964: p. 46.

  3. 3.

    Keller, C. 1986: p. 250.

  4. 4.

    Keller, C 2003: Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming. London: Routledge p. 231.

  5. 5.

    Keller, C. 2003: p. 232 (emphasis in original).

  6. 6.

    Keller, C. 2003: pp. 231–32.

  7. 7.

    Keller, C. 2003: p. 238 (emphasis in original).

  8. 8.

    Keller, C. 2008: “The Apophasis of Gender: A Fourfold Unsaying of Feminist Theology.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 76/4. p. 905.

  9. 9.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1968: The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes. trans. Lingis, A. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. p. 154.

  10. 10.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962: Phenomenology of Perception. trans. Smith, C. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. p. 214.

  11. 11.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962: p. 214.

  12. 12.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962: p. 214.

  13. 13.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962: p. 214.

  14. 14.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962: p. 214.

  15. 15.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1963: The Prose of the World, trans. O’Neill, J. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. p.137.

  16. 16.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1968: p. 151.

  17. 17.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1968: p. 151 (emphasis in original).

  18. 18.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1968: p. 149.

  19. 19.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1968: p. 152.

  20. 20.

    See Merleau-Ponty, M. 1968: p. 123.

  21. 21.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1963: p. 56.

  22. 22.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1968: p. 126–27.

  23. 23.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962: pp. 178, 182.

  24. 24.

    See Merleau-Ponty, M. 1968: p. 247: “The invisible of the visible. It is its belongingness to a ray of the world.”

  25. 25.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1964: p. 41.

  26. 26.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1964: p. 46.

  27. 27.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1964: p. 46.

  28. 28.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1964: p. 41.

  29. 29.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1964: p. 46.

  30. 30.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1964: p. 46.

  31. 31.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1964B: Sense and Non-Sense. trans. Dreyfus H. L. and Dreyfus, P. A. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. p. 175.

  32. 32.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1964B: p. 175.

  33. 33.

    Merleau-Ponty, M.1993: “Eye and Mind.” pp. 121–149. The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting. Johnson, G. ed. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. p. 125.

  34. 34.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1993: p. 147.

  35. 35.

    Keller, C. 2003: p. 219.

  36. 36.

    Merleau-Ponty, M, 1993: pp. 121–149, 147.

  37. 37.

    Heidegger, M. 1971: “The Nature of Language.” On the Way to Language. trans. Herz, P. D. New York: Harper and Rowe. pp. 57–110, 107.

  38. 38.

    Heidegger, M. 1998: “Postscript to ‘What is Metaphysics?.’” Pathmarks. McNeill, W. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 231–238, 237.

  39. 39.

    Heidegger M. 2000: Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry, trans. Hoeller, K. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books. p. 62.

  40. 40.

    Heidegger, M. 1968: What Is Called Thinking?. Trans. Gray, J. G. New York: Harper & Rowe. p. 244.

  41. 41.

    Heidegger M. 1998: p. 236.

  42. 42.

    Heidegger M. 1998: p. 237.

  43. 43.

    See Heidegger M. 1991: The Principle of Reason. trans. Lilly, R. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. p. 38: “humans, in the concealed grounds of their essential being, first truly are when in their own way they are like the rose—without why.”

  44. 44.

    Merleau-Ponty M. 1993: p. 125.

  45. 45.

    See Eckhart, M. 1981: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense. Trans. College, E. and McGinn, B. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. p 197: “God must pour out the whole of himself with all his might so totally into every man who has utterly abandoned himself that God withholds nothing of his being or his nature or his entire divinity, but he must pour all of it fruitfully into the man who has abandoned himself for God.” See also p. 186: “What is life? God’s being is my life.”

  46. 46.

    Nicholas of Cusa, 1997: p. 135. See also, Keller C. 2003: p. 232.

  47. 47.

    Chrétien J. 2002: The Unforgettable and the Unhoped For, trans. Bloechl, J. New York: Fordham University Press. p. 125.

  48. 48.

    Chrétien J. 2002: p. 119–20 (emphasis in original).

  49. 49.

    Chrétien, J. 2002: p. 120.

  50. 50.

    Chrétien, J. 2004: The Call and the Response. trans. Davenport, A. New York: Fordham University Press. p. 70.

  51. 51.

    Chrétien, J. 2002: p. 89.

  52. 52.

    Chrétien, J. 2004B: The Ark of Speech. trans. Brown, A. London and New York: Routledge. p. 56.

  53. 53.

    Chrétien, J. 2000: “The Wounded Word: The Phenomenology of Prayer.” in Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn”: The French Debate. New York: Fordham University Press p. 175.

  54. 54.

    Chrétien, J. 2000: p. 175.

  55. 55.

    Chrétien J. 2000: p. 164.

  56. 56.

    See Chrétien, J. 2000: p.164: “The vocative of the invocation is not simply the place of the praying man’s presence to God, but that of God’s presence to the praying man.”

  57. 57.

    Chrétien, J. 2000: p.164.

  58. 58.

    Chrétien, J. 2000: p.164. See notes 43–44 for Chrétien’s references to Franz von Baader.

  59. 59.

    Chrétien, J. 2000: p.175.

  60. 60.

    Henry, M. 1973: The Essence of Manifestation. trans. Etzkorn, G. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. p. 589.

  61. 61.

    Henry, M. 1973: p. 589.

  62. 62.

    Henry, M. 1973: p. 684.

  63. 63.

    Henry, M. 1973: p. 251.

  64. 64.

    Henry, M. 1973: p. 251.

  65. 65.

    Henry. M. 2000: “Speech and Religion: The Word of God.” Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn:” The French Debate. New York: Fordham University Press. p. 237.

  66. 66.

    Henry M. 2009: Material Phenomenology. Trans Davidson, S. London and New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 132.

  67. 67.

    Henry M. 2009: p. 132–33.

  68. 68.

    See Henry M. 2003: I Am the Truth: Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, trans. Emmanuel, S. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

  69. 69.

    Henry M. 2000: p. 225.

  70. 70.

    Henry M. 2003: p. 10.

  71. 71.

    Henry M. 2003: p. 17.

  72. 72.

    Henry, M. 2003: p. 23.

  73. 73.

    Henry, M. 2003: p. 23.

  74. 74.

    Henry, M. 2003: p. 25 (emphasis in original).

  75. 75.

    Henry, M. 2007: “Phenomenology of Life.” in Transcendence and Phenomenology. ed. Cunningham, C. and Candler, P. M. Jr., pp. 241–259. London: SCM Press. p. 252. Here Henry is quoting from Meister Eckhart, Sermon no. 6 (see n. 7).

  76. 76.

    Henry, M. 2007: p. 258: “Just as our Self, incapable of bringing itself into itself, refers back to the First Living Self, to the Word in which absolute life reveals itself to itself, so too in the same way the auto-impressionality which renders possible every impression and every flesh presupposes the Archi-passibility of absolute life (i.e. the originary capacity to bring itself into itself in the mode of a pathetic phenomenological effectuation).”

  77. 77.

    Henry, M. 2007: p. 259.

  78. 78.

    Corrington, R. 2003: “Unfolding/Enfolding: The Categorial.” in Semiotics 2002, edited by T. J. Prewitt and J. Deely. pp. 164–70. New York: Legas. p. 170.

  79. 79.

    Heidegger, M. 2000: p. 44.

  80. 80.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1964: p. 45.

  81. 81.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1964: p. 43 (emphasis in original).

  82. 82.

    Merleau-Ponty, M. 1964: p. 46.

References

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  1. Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Rose Ellen Dunn

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  1. Philosophy Department, The College of Saint Rose, Albany, NY, USA

    Laura E. Weed

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Dunn, R.E. (2023). Mystical Joy: A Theopoetics of “Expressive Silences” in Christianity. In: Weed, L.E. (eds) Mysticism, Ineffability and Silence in Philosophy of Religion. Comparative Philosophy of Religion, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18013-2_4

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