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Modern Theology

ISSN 0266-7177

2 papers in the library · publishing 2013-2024

Papers

Humour, Transcendence, and Selfhood: An Essay on Lightness and Truth

Modern Theology November 25, 2024 Simon Ravenscroft

Comic perception and philosophical seriousness converge when transcendence is understood as an enigmatic otherness within everyday reality rather than a distant abstraction. This view introduces relativity and ambivalence into experience, producing a lightness that is nonetheless concerned with truth. Examining Plato's Phaedrus, biblical sources in Philo and Augustine, and Merleau-Ponty's reconceived cogito, the article argues that affirming transcendence destabilizes mundane knowledge and relocates the self's center outside itself through a movement of release. Growing toward truth requires renouncing self-possession; the self must give itself over to transcendent otherness. This increases mystery in both world and self, where humour and lightness emerge—not as despair, but as freedom from illusory absolute knowledge and a journey toward truth held with wonder.

DOI: 10.1111/moth.12971 Transcendence philosophy Lightness Psychoanalysis Aesthetics +6

Seeking the Pathos of God in a Secular Age: Theological Reflections on Mystical Experience in the Twentieth Century

Modern Theology July 1, 2013 Maria Clara Bingemer

In a time of epochal change, religious experience, particularly mystical experience, is being transformed. This article clarifies the concept of mystical experience, argues for the importance of mystical biographies and narratives in theology, and examines the life of Dorothy Day as an example of such experience. It concludes with reflections on how people find their way toward God in a secular age.

DOI: 10.1111/moth.12030