Lecture 4: Knowing God
Mysticism and Personal Illumination
Dr. Ann T. Orlando
Sept. 25, 2008
Outline
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The Theme of this lecture: personal growth and experience of the
Divine
Augustine
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Augustinian Orders
Bonaventure
Petrarch, Ascent of Mt. Ventoux
Rousseau
Modern readings of Confessions IX
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Personal experiences of God
Rules of Spiritual Progress (how to prepare for divine illumenation)
Derrida
Merton
Key issue: Is interior illumination important way of knowing? Is
Augustine authoritative, sympathetic, ignored, rejected?
Confessions VIII - IX
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End of Book VIII is story of a moment of illumination
for Augustine in garden
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Book IX is story of Monica
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Story of Antony
Reading Romans
Her life and struggles
Moment of divine illumination with Augustine
Her death
Note that Augustine’s story of his past ends with her
life.
On True Religion
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Written shortly before his ordination (390)
Addressed to Romanianus, benefactor, and father of
his friend Licentius
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Romanianus was a Manichee, benefactor to Augustine in
his student days in Carthage
Licentius was a student of Augustine in Milan and
Cassiciacum
Heavily influenced by neoPlatonism
Givens steps on the ascent to truth and beauty
“Augustinian” Rule
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Three texts associated with Augustine are referenced for his
Rule:
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Regulations for a Monastery
The Rule
Reprimand and Rule for Quarreling Nuns (Letter 211)
The Regulations probably was not written by Augustine
The Rule may have been written by Augustine
Letter 211 was written by Augustine, but perhaps not as a Rule
How to live to prepare oneself for divine illumination
Bishop Augustine and His Priests
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What Augustine really wanted to do was live
in a monastery with like-minded friends to
study Scripture
He encouraged the priests of Hippo to live
with him in community
He was distressed by the financial
entanglements of some of his clergy and
their heirs
Medieval Appropriation of ‘Augustine’s
Rule’ for Reform
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Gregorian Reform
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Dominicans
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Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073-1085) concerned about corruption of canonical
clergy
Looks to ‘Augustine’s Rule’ as a way of reforming clergy, relation to their
bishop and correcting some of the problems of lay investiture
Canons could not live in private homes or own property
St. Dominic (1170-1221) was already living the Rule as a canon
Founded Order of Preachers to live a mendicant life devoted to preaching,
used Augustine's Rule as the Dominican Rule.
Following decree of Fourth Lateran Council that new orders should use a
predefined Rule
Other Orders using some form of Augustine’s Rule: Servites,
Premonstratenasians, Brigitines, Ursalines and Visitation Nuns
Impact on early Franciscans: St. Anthony of Padua had been an
Augustinian; St. Bonaventure
Late Medieval ‘Augustinian’ Orders
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Hermits
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Independent groups of communities throughout Italy and France
formed in 13th C to live the ‘Augustinian Rule’
Pope Alexander IV in 1256 forced them into one organization with
a common hierarchy
Became ‘secular’ monks, i.e. not cloistered
Emphasis on education and preaching, especially against
Pelagianism (Gregory of Rimini, d. 1358)
Martin Luther was an Augustinian Hermit
Canons Regular
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Goes back to the Gregorian Reform
Way of life for diocesan clergy, especially those working in
chancery
Erasmus of Rotterdam was a Canon Regular
St. Bonaventure (1217-1274)
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Franciscan, Master General
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Most famous commentary on Lombard’s Sentences
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“The Seraphic Doctor”
Augustine the greatest of all the Latin teachers Sent. III, d. 3
Argued against Aristotelian use of matter and form in
theology
Particularly drew on Augustine and divine
illumination in spiritual journey to God
Itinerarium Mentis in Deum
The Mind’s Journey Into God
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Written for University of Paris student retreat
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Mimics pilgrimage itinerary
Approach God by leaving world behind
Seven steps, one goes from one to the next by being
open to God’s grace
Importance of will
One possible difference: Bonaventure strongly
apophatic
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God unknowable
Augustine (perhaps) more that God is inexpressible
Meister Eckhart von Hockheim (12601329)
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Born in Germany, entered the Dominican priory in Erfurt
Studied in Paris on several occasions
Became prior at Strasburg and Cologne
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Preacher to Beguine houses
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Rhineland mysticism
Loose association of lay women religious
Viewed with some suspicion by some clerics
Charged with heresy for preaching that the creature is equal to
the Creator and for encouraging lay movements out side of
hierarchical Church
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Condemned by John XXII in 1329 shortly after his death
Eckhart’s Sermons
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From his time in Strasburg and Cologne
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Delivered primarily to lay people, some to Beguines
Encourages an apophatic spirituality
Sermon on Eph 4:23 (Sermon 12, “Sinking Eternally
into God,” pp177-180)
Sermon on Lk 6:33-42 (Sermon 30, “Be
Compassionate as your Creator in Heaven is
Compassionate,” pp 417-428)
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Note recap of On True Religion
Petrarch (1304-1374)
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‘Father of Humanism’
Studied as a lawyer, but emphasized reading
ancient classics
Particularly influenced by Cicero and
Augustine
Wrote Secretum, dialog with Augustine
Ascent of Mt. Ventoux
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April 26, 1336
Note relation of Petrarch to his brother
Opening the Confessions to a random
passage
What is significance of Augustine to
Petrarch? How is it different from
Bonaventure?
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Is Augustine an authority and/or a sympathetic
companion for Petrarch?
Petrarch Secretum
Dialog with Augustine
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Three books of dialogs between Petrarch
and Augustine
Petrarch worked on this throughout his life
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‘Secret’ book, for his use only; his philosophical
diary
Optional: introduction
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Where is God in this?
John Locke (1632 – 1704)
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Studied medicine in England and philosophy in
France
Worked against the establishment of an English
absolute monarchy
Also concerned by skeptical philosophy of some 17th
C continental philosophers
Empiricism as the way (only way) to know
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Rejection of religious feeling
Rejection of innate ideas
Essay Concerning
Human Understanding
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Book IV, Chapter 17: Ways of knowing
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Book IV.19, “On Enthusiasm”
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According to reason (empiricism)
Above reason (public revelation)
Contrary to reason (private revelation)
Enlightenment opposition to divine illumination
Rejection of another way of knowing
Available at
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Bo
ok4b.html#Chapter%20XIX
Augustine not mentioned by Locke (but then, why
should he be?)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(1712-1778)
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Born a Calvinist in Geneva, mother died in child-birth
Father watchmaker, forced to leave Geneva because of pretensions
beyond his class
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Arrived in Paris in 1742 and became part of ‘philosophes’ Diderot,
D’Alembert, Voltaire
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Lived in poverty
Jean-Jacques grew up with his uncle
Age of Reason
Individual freedom
Opposed to authority, especially ‘altar and throne’
But Rousseau also considered ‘father’ of Romanticism, opposed to
philosophes
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Importance of Nature (as inspiration to man, not subject of study)
Questioned the value of progress
Man naturally good, made bad by complex societies
Rousseau’s Confessions
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First ‘modern’ autobiography
Started writing in 1764 after he had read
Augustine, published after his death
Theme was to write unvarnished truth about
himself and those around him
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But without apology or desire for forgiveness
Probably written to counter attacks from
philosophes, especially Voltaire and Hume
Rousseau’s source of illumination: Nature
Jacque Derrida (1930-2004)
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French, Jewish, North African
“There is no outside the text”
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Language does not express philosophy; language is
philosophy
Opposed to metaphysics
Each reader creates his own understanding;
interpretation is fundamentally unstable
Violence comes from society’s efforts to enforce
particular meanings
Circumfessions
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Written in 1990
Derrida’s personal reading of Augustine's
Confessions Book IX
But also Derrida’s response to Geoffrey
Bennington’s reading and attempt to systematize
Derrida’s philosophy, Derridabase
Thus the work is two works
Is Derrida a sympathetic reader or an ironic reader of
Augustine?
Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
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Born in France, educated in United States
Convert to Catholicism
Fathered an illegitimate child, which kept the
Franciscans from accepting him, but not the
Trappists
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However, editors removed this from the Seven
Storey Mountain
“The Sleeping Volcano”
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Part of The Seven Storey Mountain (1948)
Tells Merton’s inner conflict about his
vocation
Note importance of Bonaventure, interiority
Climbing a mountain (Petrarch)
Leaving at school vacation (Augustine)
Assignment
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Augustine, Confessions VIII.xii – IX.xii
Augustine, On True Religion, 45-58 and 107-113
Bonaventure Itinerarium, http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon05295.html, Book I and
VII
Meister Eckhart, Breakthrough, Meister Eckhart’s Spirituality in New Translation, Introduction and
Commentary Matthew Fox, (New York: Image Books, 1980).
Petrarch, Ascent of Mt. Ventoux, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/petrarch-ventoux.html
Petrarch, Secretum, available at http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~amtower/SECRET.HTM (optional)
Rousseau, Confessions, Book I available at
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/rousseau/jean_jacques/r864c/book1.html
Locke, http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Book4b.html#Chapter%20XIX (Option)
Derrida, Circumfession, in Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp 1-31 (Preface and Ch 1-5 and pp 220-223, Ch 42 of
Circumfessions)
Thomas Merton, ”The Sleeping Volcano,” Seven Storey Mountain (Optional)
Possible theme considerations
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Source of illumination
Role of family (especially mother) and friends
Relation of author to God