(Research and Theology, Literature and the Arts combined)
All seminars run from 5.-6.30 p.m. and will be held in the Upper Seminar Room at 4, The Square
Jan 14 th Dr Jessica Frazier (University of Kent)
The Fluid Self: Phenomenologies of Empathy and Emotion in Hindu Thought
Phenomenology is a key methodology in many Hindu technologies of experience. But in contrast to Descartes' inward-looking epoche, many Hindu thinkers observed the self in the midst of its inter-subjective, aesthetic, affective and narrative experience. The result was quite a different map of the self to that which is familiar in the Western post-Cartesian tradition. Here we look at two approaches that imply a 'fluid' ontology of the self: a phenomenology of possession, 'avesa', that is grounded in processes of inter-subjectivity, empathy, and imagination through which one self can seem to 'overflow' into another; and a phenomenology of devotion, 'bhakti', that is grounded in the dynamics of aesthetic response through which we seem able to 'distil' and intensify our emotions.
January 21 st Prof Ann Loades (Durham Emeritus)
Evelyn Underhill
In an age when women (all of them 'lay') in the Church of England at least would never occupy an institutional post in a theological college or university, Evelyn Underhill began her writing career from her domestic/family base as a poet and novelist. The Grey World (1904),
The Lost Word (1907) and The Column of Dust (1909) can be grouped with those of Arthur
Machen—anything but 'orthodox' religious imaginary. In her efforts to develop her education, however, she discovered Christian mysticism whilst struggling with the question of whether to become a Roman Catholic—a possibility closed off for her by the condemnation of 'Modernism' and the unease of her fiancé. Her book Mysticism (1911) was an entire success, running through many (increasingly expanded) editions in her lifetime.
She became an authoritative voice on the subject, and was central to the establishment of the 'retreat' movement between the two World Wars—an extraordinary phenomenon in a grim period.
January 28 th Dr Lloyd Ridgeon (Glasgow)
Women and Sufism in the Medieval Persianate world
This paper will discuss the extent to which women were involved in the Sufi movement, assessing arguments for their marginalisation or their full and active participation. I shall address the issue of whether the complementarity and segregation paradigm prevailed within the Sufi tradition by analysing a number of sources including hagiographies, histories, manuals and poetry. The divine beloved in Sufism will be contrasted with the ideal woman
(as depicted by Sufis) to provide an illustration of what women could hope to achieve.
February 4 th TBA (TLA)

February 11 th Dr Johannes Zachhuber (Oxford)
Ernst Troeltsch's understanding of the 'mystic' type of Christian social formation and the future of institutionalised religion
A century ago, Ernst Troeltsch published The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches. The book is well known for its distinction of 'church' and 'sect' as social types of religion, but
Troeltsch also introduced a third type, which he called 'mystic'. This third type was crucial for his assessment of modern Christianity and in particular for modern Protestantism. The paper will first offer an account of Troeltsch's analysis and will show that Troeltsch's assessment of the mystic type is far from affirmative; in fact it is deeply ambivalent, mirroring his scepticism regarding contemporary Christian developments. In a second part, the legitimacy of this sceptical verdict will be probed, showing that in many ways Troeltsch's analysis applies today as much as, if not more than, one hundred years ago. The paper will also offer an alternative theological response that takes us beyond Troeltsch's own perspective.
February 18 th READING WEEK: NO SEMINAR
February 25 th Dr Saeko Yazaki (Glasgow)
Annihilating or forgetting the self? – a comparative analysis of self-transformation and ethical conduct in Sufism and Zen
Overcoming the lower self (nafs) is therefore a crucial initial step for those who yearn to dissolve the self and continue their real existence in God. Adab (humble and well-mannered behaviour) has to be fulfilled both inwardly and outwardly to pass beyond the phenomenal existence of the self and achieve its union with the Absolute life. An echo of this can be found in Zen consciousness of the self, which requires becoming the non-self and then being its own self in the most absolute sense (anatman/muga). This spiritual realisation necessitates the practice of internal and external mindfulness, epitomised in the intense cultivation of every movement with humble appreciation in the Japanese tea ceremony
(sado), which developed alongside Zen. Yet, while many similarities can be found between
Sufi and Zen teachings, this paper addresses a fundamental difference which lies in the recognition of the Absolute as opposed to the self.
March 4 th Prof Gavin Flood (Oxford)
Hindu Visions of Immortality: Mysticism, Practice, and Explanation
Vision or the sight of the deity has always been an important practice in Hindu traditions.
This paper presents an account of visualization practices in a medieval text in Sanskrit, the
Netra Tantra that were intended to develop access to immortality, the realm of the deathless god (Amṛteśvara). It then raises questions about how we can understand these texts, what they tell us about our categories, particularly ‘mysticism,’ and what explanatory

accounts can be developed that make these texts relevant to broader discussion about religion and its nature.
March 11 th Deryl Davis (Glasgow)
Symbol, Metaphor, Silence: Theology Beyond Words
In his recent book My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer, American poet
Christian Wiman decries the impoverishment of contemporary theological language, which he sees as often merely propositional. Instead, Wiman calls for “a poetics of belief . . . a language capacious enough to include a mystery that, ultimately, defeats it.” Wiman goes on to assert that theology’s ultimate purpose is in fact “to make the silences clearer and starker to us, to make the unmeaning – by which I mean those aspects of the divine that will not be reduced to human meanings – more irreducible and more terrible, and thus ultimately more wonderful.” This paper explores the ways that poets like Wiman articulate the silences of
“unmeaning,” both ours and God’s, and in so doing, enrich and renew the language of revelation, investing it with added power, mystery, and meaning.
March 18 th Dr Simon Podmore (Liverpool Hope)
Between Mysterium & Mystification: Thinking Mystically on Suffering with Eckhart's
'Consolation' & Weil's 'Affliction'
The problem of suffering and evil lies, often obscured, at the root of even some of the most speculative of mystical thought. Yet thinking about suffering within a mystical framework treads an uneasy path between desolation and consolation, between mystery and mystification. This paper attempts to walk this path with guidance from Meister Eckhart
(1260-1328) and Simone Weil (1909-43): the former a medieval theologian (in)famous for his rarefied sense of speculative serenity (Gelassenheit); the latter a modern Jewish-
Christian thinker who agonised over her own inexorable sense of embodied affliction
(malheur). In search of a constructive mystical hermeneutic, this paper ask what it might mean to authentically view suffering under the gaze of the eternal (sub species aeternitatis).
March 25 th Prof Melissa Raphael (Gloucestershire)
Nostalgia, Trauma and the Numinous: Twentieth-Century Jewish Readings of Rudolf Otto's
Das Heilige
Over the course of the twentieth century, Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy was used in
Jewish religious thought to affirm the continuing existential immediacy of revelation in a modern secular age. Although German-speaking Orthodox thinkers, unlike Otto, regarded the holy as a daily habitus and left-wing Jewish rationalists rejected numinous experience as a threat to the moral integrity of the holy, meta-denominational Jewish thought, susceptible to spiritual nostalgia engendered by modernization, was far more receptive to numinous experience as yielding a sense of the alien, uncanny beauty of the Jewish past. In the post-
Holocaust era several theologians made further use of Otto’s account of the morally equivocal numinous to (more or less) reconcile a loving God with the mysterium
horrendum of the Holocaust.