The Return to the Mystical: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Teresa of Avila and the Christian Mystical Tradition by Peter Tyler

Author:Peter Tyler
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Religion, Christian Theology, General
ISBN: 1441104445
Publisher: A&C Black
Published: 2011-06-15T23:00:00+00:00

The Emergence of the Spanish School

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unite them in an instant with God… we become suddenly recollected and the wonderings of our incautious thoughts are dispersed.’

As with de Osuna, and later with Teresa, Laredo does not describe the divine life but points towards it through implication and the preparation of the capacity of the self. The divine life will, as with Wittgenstein, ‘make itself manifest’, for it cannot be described within the mystical theology. For Laredo it is not an intellectual knowing but

‘a knowledge and understanding from experience’ (AM:15): So sublime is this science (mystical theology) that though this or that servant of His can speak of it, as it were stammeringly, only His boundless Majesty can cause it to be understood inwardly, make it to be felt within the soul and implant it into the heart.

(AM:15)

In common with the tradition there is the emphasis on the ‘divine unknowing’ that began life with Dionysius:

In the secrecy of this wisdom, the soul knows that it is united with the Divine fellowship, through Divine condescension through a bond of love; yet, notwithstanding, its knowledge is such that it understands not how it understands that which it understands. It knows it without knowing how it knows it; it knows that it has a knowledge of God but, because He Whom it knows is incomprehensible, it knows not how to know through understanding.

(AM:11)

As we have seen so many times already, this ‘divine unknowing’ is linked to the affect which for Laredo is the ‘upsurging power’ that brings us to God. The surge of love that leads us to God is described in the same direct fashion as Balma so that, unlike de Osuna who relies more heavily on the subtle distinctions of Gerson, we have in Laredo something closer to the strong upsurge described by the early Victorines.

The ‘mystical theology’ is thus for Laredo the vía de aspiración or the

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The Return to the Mystical

‘way of aspiration’ (AM:11). Where Laredo differs from Osuna is in the emphasis on the strength of this passion. At every point in the Ascent of Mount Sion (as with Balma’s Viae Lugent Sion) the ‘upsurge of the affect’ threatens to overwhelm the self. Laredo memorably describes it thus:

The heart, by which is here to be understood the fire of love, must be alive in every contemplative’s soul, must of a sudden pour itself wholly forth into infinite love, like a jug full of water when it is turned to face downwards.

(AM:27)

Laredo calls this element of the mystical strategy the ‘amative power’

or ‘loving ability’ ( amativa virtud) which he defines as ‘the eager will that attains quiet in love’: ‘la muy pronta voluntad, que está quietada en amor’ (AM:29). Thus, he says, his writings will ‘excite our affective nature’ so that we too may experience the ‘gentle sweetness’ of the divine, ‘melting those that have no warmth’.

The

Ascent concludes in a somewhat scrappy fashion. No doubt Professor Allison Peers would not approve. Yet in line with the view that what Laredo is presenting is mystical theology rather than speculative theology this seems appropriate.

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