Thesis advisor: John Baldovin / Thesis advisor: Brian Dunkle / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

This thesis explores the potential role of the spiritual senses in contemporary mission. Responding to the development of a new type of non-religious spirituality known as contemporary spirituality, which has emerged in response to cultural change in the West, this thesis enters into a conversation between contemporary spirituality, contemporary Christianity and John Wesley's theme of the spiritual senses. The theme of the spiritual senses has a rich history and this thesis aims to discover if a revisit of Wesley's particular employment of the spiritual senses has the potential to offer a meaningful contribution to Christian mission in the twenty-first century. Using Gordon Lynch's application of Don Browning's revised correlation, seven key motifs within contemporary spirituality are identified as foundational and used to develop the conversation. The thesis proceeds to use these motifs namely, creation spirituality, individualism freedom and choice, innate spiritual perception, the physical senses and spirituality, the sacred within, a call to community, and religious pluralism, to embark on a conversation between contemporary spirituality and contemporary Christianity. In all of the key areas points of convergence are noted, along with some differences, and suggestions are made concerning further engagement. It is argued that, whilst the findings of this conversation, and the practical applications that flow from them, can be used to engage with contemporary spiritual seekers, nevertheless all would benefit from a renewed framework that responds more particularly to the foundational motifs of contemporary spirituality and that Wesley's application of the spiritual senses might offer this framework. Following this, an investigation of Wesley's employment of the spiritual senses, in his own terms, is embarked upon, where his key tenets are discovered. This section confirms the unity between the spiritual senses and the restoration of the life and image of God, moving from complete cognitive unawareness of God or the spiritual world, through prevenient grace to awakening and the new birth including faith, assurance and sanctification. These basic tenets are then developed showing the spiritual senses to be drawn from the creative moment, personal and yet inclusive, accessible, experiential, centered on both healing and forgiveness, based on the value of the individual, freedom, and choice, based on restored, intimate, and ongoing relationship with the creator, facilitating transformation, communal, and working in harmony with reason. Given the similarities to the key motifs of contemporary spirituality, it is affirmed that Wesley's theme of the spiritual senses has potential to make a significant contribution to the conversation between contemporary spirituality and contemporary Christianity. Finally the conversation between all three parties is developed. Here the information gathered in the previous conversation is correlated and synthesised to specifically identify the contribution that the spiritual senses might offer to contemporary mission. Based on the findings of the conversation, a reconstructed gospel message is presented that, it is argued, both correlates with the aspirations of contemporary spirituality and yet is grounded in the Christian tradition, thus affirming the significance of the role of the spiritual senses to contemporary mission.

<p>Against the dominant contemporary options of usefulness and disinterestedness, this dissertation attempts to display that beauty is better--more fully, richly, generatively--described with the categories of fittingness and gratuity. By working through texts by Gregory of Nyssa, this dissertation fills out what fittingness and gratuity entail--what, that is, they <italic>do</italic> for beauty-seekers and beauty-talkers. After the historical set-up of the first chapter, chapter 2 considers fittingness and gratuity through Gregory's doctrine of God because Beauty, for Gregory, is a name for God. That God is radically transcendent transforms (radicalizes) fittingness and gratuity away from a strictly Platonic vision of how they might function. Chapter 3 extends such radicalization by considering beauty in light of Christology and particularly in light of the Christological claims to invisibility, poverty, and suffering. In a time when beauty is wending its way back from an academic exile enforced by its associations with the `bourgeois,' such considerations re-present beauty as deeply intertwined with ugliness and horror. Chapter 4 asks how it is a person might perceive such beauty, which calls for pneumatological and anthropological reflections on Gregory's doctrine of the spiritual senses. The person who sees beauty rightly, for Gregory, is the person who is wounded by love.</p> / Dissertation

John Smith (1618-1652), the 17th century Cambridge Platonist, employed the traditional language of the spiritual senses of the soul to develop an early modern theological aesthetic central to his religious epistemology and thus to his philosophy of religion and systematic theology. Smith's place in this tradition has been under-appreciated by scholars working on the Cambridge Platonists and the spiritual senses. However, as a Christian Platonist, Smith advocated intellectual intuition of Divine Goodness as the key to theological knowledge and spiritual practice. Furthermore, Smith's theory of prophecy rests on the reception of sensible images in the imagination. In order to demonstrate this the dissertation first presents an interpretive summary of the spiritual senses tradition and proposes a functional typology that registers three uses of non-corporeal perception throughout the history of Christian theology: (1) accounts of the origin and methods of theological knowledge, (2) descriptions of spirituality, and (3) attempts to systematically present or defend Christian theology. Additionally, Smith's historical and intellectual context in early seventeenth century England is discussed with particular attention to how his education prepared him to contribute to the mystical tradition of the spiritual senses of the soul. Through a close reading of his extant writings it is shown that Smith's theories of theological knowledge, method, and prophecy rest on his development of the spiritual senses tradition, combining intellectual intuition and imaginative perception. Likewise, the role of spiritual aesthetics in Smith's prescriptive account of Christian piety is presented. Here the spiritual senses are both means and reward in the spiritual life through the process of deification (theosis). Moreover, it is shown how Smith's theology forms a coherent system with intellectual intuition informing natural theology and revelation being supplemented by spiritual perception via the imagination. The central uniting feature therefore is the spiritual perception of theological truth. Finally, the dissertation closes with a summary of Smith's various uses of the spiritual senses and proposes future research on his influence upon later figures including Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, and suggests future constructive work inspired by Smith's combination of reason and experience in religion.

L’objectif de cette thèse est de mettre en lumière la centralité du coeur dans la dynamique de la subjectivité et del’intersubjectivité augustiniennes. Elle se propose de regagner, à partir des oeuvres d’Augustin, le sens profonddu coeur comme source et centre ordonnateur de toutes les fonctions et potentialités du sujet : intellectuelles,volitives, affectives et perceptives. Le coeur est encore étudié comme noyau d’articulation d’une anthropologieapophatique, espace qui cache une profondeur incompréhensible, fondée dans la constitution iconique de l’êtrehumain. Ainsi, l’impénétrable mystère du soi se montre toujours situé dans un rapport primordial avec le mystèrede son Archétype, ce qui ouvre vers l’expérience de l’intersubjectivité. La deuxième partie de cette recherches’emploie à considérer comment, chez Augustin, le cor devient l’espace de résonance des rencontresintersubjectives avec les autres et avec Dieu. Pris entre le mystère du coeur de l’autre et la soif de la présence del’autre, le coeur abrite une tension essentielle qui projette le soi vers l’autre, vers le semblable. Or, l’élucidationdu sens de cette tension réclame un nouveau regard sur la thématique de l’amitié et de la charité. Le momentfinal de notre étude est consacré aux cheminements du coeur vers l’accomplissement du soi dans l’hospitalitéréciproque entre le créé et l’Incréé. Ce pèlerinage spirituel nous introduit dans un culte intérieur accompli dans lecoeur. Ainsi le soi, totalement consommé dans l’offrande de son coeur, est rétabli dans son être liturgique. / The purpose of this thesis is to shed light on the centrality of the heart in the dynamic of Augustinian subjectivityand intersubjectivity. It aims to regain, following the works of Augustine, the profound sense of the heart assource and center governing all functions and potentialities of the subject: intellectual, willing, emotional andperceptive. The heart is also investigated as an articulating core of an apophatic anthropology, as a space whichhides an incomprehensible deepness in the iconic constitution of the human being. Thus, the impenetrablemystery of the self is always situated in a primordial relationship with the mystery of its Archetype, and thisopens to the experience of the intersubjectivity. The second part of this research is dedicated to considering how,in Augustine’s conception, the cor becomes a space of resonance of intersubjective encounters with the othersand with God. Caught between the mystery of the other’s heart and the thirst of the other’s presence, the hearthosts an essential tension which projects the self towards the other resembling itself. However clarifying thesignification of this tension requires a new glimpse at the themes of friendship and charity. The last part of mystudy is devoted to the routes of the heart towards the accomplishment of the self in reciprocal hospitalitybetween the created and the Uncreated. This spiritual pilgrimage introduces us in the interior cult assumed withinthe heart. In this way the self, while totally consumed in the sacrifice of its heart, is reestablished in its liturgicalbeing.

Cette thèse entend poser les fondements philosophiques d’une « conversion écologique » en éclairant la dimension ontologique de la crise écologique. Tout en s’inscrivant dans le sillage de l’Encyclique Laudato Si’, où le Pape François lance un vibrant appel à la conversion écologique, l’auteur s’efforce de penser les enjeux proprement philosophiques liés à cette notion. En s’appuyant sur des auteurs tels que Heidegger et Hans Jonas, la première partie de la recherche montre la nécessité d’une véritable « conversion » face au péril métaphysique que représente la technique envisagée ici comme dévoiement de notre « être-au-monde ». Dans un contexte marqué par la résurgence du catastrophisme, l’auteur entend ici souligner la dimension humaniste qui constituait l’horizon de la pensée de ses fondateurs (Günther Anders, Jacques Ellül) tout en confrontant leur vision à celle du « Principe Espérance » porté par Ernst Bloch.La seconde partie de la thèse consiste à poser les fondements éthiques et religieux du concept de conversion. De la metanoia platonicienne aux thérapies de l’âme stoïciennes et épicuriennes, l’auteur explore la place de la connaissance de la nature (physis) dans le « retour à Soi » (epistrophè) de ces sagesses grecques. Peut-on voir en elles la source d’une véritable « conversion écologique » par laquelle il s’agirait autant de convertir notre regard sur la nature que d’être converti par elle ? Si oui, quelles en seraient les modalités ? Dans cette perspective, quels sont les apports de la metanoia chrétienne par rapport à la metanoia platonicienne ? En quoi la « conversion des sens » portée à la fois par la mystique franciscaine et la « prière du cœur » des Pères neptiques dans le monde orthodoxe, constitue-t-elle une étape capitale pour penser la conversion écologique comme conversion du corps et du cœur ? Pour mener à bien cette analyse, l’auteur emprunte la méthode phénoménologique afin de mettre en lumière les liens entre conversion et réduction.La dernière partie, plus spécifiquement consacrée à l’écologie contemporaine, s’appuie sur les modalités de la conversion écologique esquissées avec les penseurs grecs et chrétiens pour penser une transformation profonde de notre « affect du monde ». En s’appuyant sur les notions merleau-pontiennes de « chair du monde » et de « monde brut », l’auteur cherche à penser une « empathie universelle » comme socle d’une nouvelle éthique environnementale. A travers une relecture merleau-pontienne de deux grands courants de l’écologie que sont l’écologie profonde (deep ecology) et la wilderness, l’auteur jette les bases d’une ontologie relationnelle dans deux directions. La première envisage la conversion écologique comme un approfondissement du Soi. Dans le sentiment de la wilderness, c’est autant la nature vierge à l’extérieur de nous que le « monde brut » au plus intime de nous-même, qu’il s’agit de préserver pour ouvrir la voie à une expérience transformante du monde telle que la décrit Henri-David Thoreau dans Walden ou la vie dans les bois. La seconde vise un élargissement du Soi par lequel la réalisation de Soi devient indissociable, par un mouvement d’identification, de celle de notre environnement, jusqu’à faire l’expérience charnelle de ce « Soi écologique » dont nous parle Arne Naess en écho à la « chair du monde » merleau-pontienne et aux théories de la Gestalt dont s’inspirent les deux auteurs. Conscient des limites de la pensée occidentale pour cheminer vers cette non - dualité, clé d’une empathie universelle, l’auteur montre, dans la dernière partie de son analyse, l’influence de la pensée bouddhique sur la deep ecology et explore une spiritualité de la résonance avec le bouddhisme zen japonais incarné dans la figure de Maître Dogen, jusqu’à penser une « échologie de la Joie ». / This thesis is an attempt to provide the philosophical foundations for an ecological conversion while revealing the ontological aspects of the ecological crisis. Following the path described in the Laudato Si’ encyclical letter, where Pope François launches a vibrant call for ecological conversion, the author seeks to adress the philosophical issues in relation to this notion. Refering to philosophers such as Heidegger and Hans Jonas, the first part of this research accounts for the necessity of a true ecological conversion to face the metaphysical « peril » represented by the technical way of mind which leads to an unauthentic « being-in-the-world ». As catastrophism rages, the author underlines the humanistic aspect of its founders’ thought (Gûnther Anders, Jacques Ellûl) while confronting their vision to Ernst Bloch’s « Principle of Hope ».The second chapter of the thesis aims at laying down the ethical and religious foundations of the concept of conversion. From Plato’s metanoia to stoïcian and epicurian soul therapies, the author explores the importance of the knowledge of nature (physis) in the process of epistrophè (return to one’s « Inner Self »). Can these therapies be considered as the roots of a true ecological conversion throughout which we could not only modify the way we look at nature but also be transformed by it? If the answer is yes, what would the terms be? From this perspective, what is the specificity of Christian metanoia compared to Plato’s? To what extent can the doctrine of the “spiritual senses” experienced by both the Franciscan mystic and the neptical Fathers’ « Prayer of the heart » - be considered a crucial step to a living experience of ecological conversion that appeals to our body and heart? To carry out this research, the author relies on the phenomenological methodology, evidencing the links between conversion and reduction.The last part, more specifically dedicated to modern ecology, relies on the definitions of ecological conversion outlined with greek and Christian authors to think through a deep change in our « affect for the world ». Refering to Merleau Ponty’s notions of « flesh of the word » and « wild being », the author endeavours to develop the concept of “universal empathy” as the corner stone of environmental ethics. Through a merleau-pontian interpretation of two major ecological schools of thought, wilderness and deep ecology, the thesis provides tools for elaborating a relational ontology based on two concepts. The first one, called deepening of the Self, refers to the wilderness. The author shows that what has to be preserved is not only territories such as natural reserves but the “wild being” in the innermost part of ourselves so as to enable us to be transformed by nature itself through this experience of wilderness described by famous authors such as Henri-David Thoreau in Walden life in the woods… The second one, called “enlargment of the Self” refers to the experience described by Arne Naess as identification to other living beings as a source of self-realization, echoing the merleau-pontian “flesh of the word”.Aware of the limits of western thought to reach this universal empathy based on non-duality, the author points out, in a conclusive paragraph, the influence of the buddhist way of mind on Arne Naess’s deep ecology, explores a spirituality of the resonance with the world through zen buddhism embodied by Master Dogen, and goes as far as thinking an “echology of Joy”.