Spiritual Discourse and the Meaning of Persons

212 Pages·1994·25.391 MB·English

by  Patrick Grant (auth.)

SPIRITUAL DISCOURSE AND THE
MEANING OF PERSONS
Also by Patrick Grant
LITERATURE AND PERSONAL VALUES
READING THE NEW TESTAMENT
LITERATURE AND THE DISCOVERY OF METHOD
IN THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE
A DAZZLING DARKNESS:
An Anthology of Western Mysticism
LITERATURE OF MYSTICISM IN WESTERN TRADITION
SIX MODERN AUTHORS AND PROBLEMS OF BELIEF
IMAGES AND IDEAS IN LITERATURE OF THE
ENGLISH RENAISSANCE
THE TRANSFORMATION OF SIN:
Studies in Donne, Herbert, Vaughan and Traherne
Spiritual Discourse
and the
Meaning of Persons
Patrick Grant
Professor of English
University of Victoria
British Columbia, Canada
M
St. Martin's Press
©Patrick Grant 1994
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1994 978-0-333-56581-0
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First published in Great Britain 1994 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-23299-4 ISBN 978-1-349-23297-0 ( eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-23297-0
First published in the United States of America 1994 by
Scholarly and Reference Division,
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-12077-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grant, Patrick.
Spiritual discourse and the meaning of persons I Patrick Grant.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-12077-1
1. Man (Christian theology)-History of doctrines. 2. Jesus
Christ-Transfiguration-History of doctrines. 3. Christian
literature-History and criticism. 4. Mysticism in literature.
I. Title.
BT702.G73 1994
233'.5-dc20 93-39268
CIP
To A.D. Nuttall
Contents
Preface ix
1 Introduction: The Argument in Outline 1
On Religion and Literature 1
The Idea of the Person 10
Evolution, Compromise and Transfiguration 15
2 Jesus the Personal God 23
The Transfiguration Narratives 23
Encountering Spirit 34
A Trinity of Persons 37
3 Origen of Alexandria: Face to Face with the Beloved 46
Bridal Mysticism as Personal Encounter 46
The Commentary on the Song of Songs: At Play with
the Hidden Lord 53
Origen and Augustine on the Transfiguration:
From Hypostasis to Persona 59
4 Julian of Norwich: God's Gladdest Countenance 68
Monastic Culture and the Crisis of Contingency 68
Julian's Showings and the Tradition 73
Indeterminacy and the Transfigured Countenance 80
5 Erasmus: The Masks of Folly and the Face of God 90
Humanism, Reformation and Science 90
Folly and the Praise of Ecstasy 95
Erasmus on Transfiguration: The Debt to Origen 106
6 William Law: Imagination and the Transfiguring
of Nature 114
Self-shaping and Self-denial: Backgrounds to Law 114
The Spirit of Prayer: The Magic of a Working Will 124
Self Transfiguring 127
7 Newman's Apologia: The Self in a Faceless World 134
Newman's Idea of the Person 134
Newman and the Challenges of Liberalism 138
The Apologia: Conscience, Latency and Transfiguration 148
vii
viii Contents
8 Conclusion 157
Religion, Literature and Persons 157
Recapitulation: The Descriptive Element 162
Towards a Theory of the Personal 172
Notes and References 177
Index 198
Preface
In one way or another, previous books of mine have dealt with
relationships between literature and Christianity, usually through
the kind of historical scholarship and criticism that has been a
staple of mainline literary studies during the past fifty years or so.
The present book offers a more theoretical approach to this general
preoccupation, drawing on historical scholarship and literary ex
egesis to formulate a set of principles and ways of thinking about
religious culture in a modern world that is both pluralist and
increasingly secular. Throughout, I focus on the idea of the person,
with which I deal also in Literature and Personal Values, a study
directly preceding this one: although the present book is independ
ent of its predecessor, the two are to some extent companion pieces.
A basic conviction in these two studies - though also in my earlier
enquiries where it is more often latent than explicit - is that the
concept of the person offers an immensely effective means for
assessing and understanding the human condition; it is a cultural
achievement of great subtlety and power; and it remains urgently
significant.
My main claims in the following pages are quite straightforward.
Persons are historical creatures constituted in a dialectic between
experiences of participation and reflection (or prescription). The
liberation of persons from the contradictions of history entails accept
ing the identity of one's own good with the good one does to others
(the so-called 'golden rule' of the world's major religions, repro
duced by the 'Great Commandment' of the gospel). The injunction of
the Great Commandment is effected through experiences of trans
figuration- the mutual and simultaneous liberation, that is, of one's
self and of the other, in which the transformative power of personal
agency is disclosed. Throughout, I use the gospel story of Jesus'
transfiguration as a leitmotif for assessing the development of an
idea of the person at certain key phases of Christian culture. I do this
with special reference to Trinitarian theology, which describes God
in terms of relationships among persons. My claim is that theological
reflection on the idea of the person remains vital only if it enables a
recovery of transfiguring experience, and that the mimetic power of
literature effects something of this through what I will call the
ix
Preface
X
languages of participation. In short, I want to hold that Christian
spirituality is a mysticism of transfiguration; that an evolving idea of
the person is central to it; and that in written form it best finds
expression as literature.
It is easier to set out these points than to chart their elusive
interaction in the texts I have chosen both for the light they cast on
the historical development of the idea of the person, and for how
they might support my other main claims. Part of my intent is to
show that the meaning of persons is inseparable from the narratives
of their historical emergence, which in tum are perennially fraught
with elisions and contradictions pending the utopian transfigura
tion of each in all. The texture of history, that is, remains dense,
subtle, treacherous, and we need to know it as such. That I have
not found such knowing easy will become evident in the gap be
tween this convenient summary and the attempts in subsequent
chapters to engage and unravel the texts in question. Yet the direc
tion at least of the effort seems right, and in the final chapter I set
out some conclusions that follow from my general line of enquiry
about how the literature of spirituality has shaped our understand
ing of what it means to be a person, and why such understanding
remains significant.
I would like to thank Laurence Lerner, James P. Mackey, and
A.D. Nuttall for reading the typescript; their comments and support
have been, as ever, of inestimable help. Once again, Sue Mitchell
has been immensely patient and generous in enabling me to put the
parts together through several drafts and innumerable adjustments.
PATRICK GRANT