Toronto Journal of Theology
May 1, 2026
L. Malcolm
In his commentary on the Magnificat, Martin Luther identifies experientia as the “school of the Holy Spirit.” By weaving together Pauline cruciformity with the evocative strains of the Psalms, prophets, and sapiential literature, Luther presents Mary's Spirit-wrought ecstasy not merely as private rapture, but as prophetic witness—a mystical upheaval that unmasks God's subversive activity in the...
Toronto Journal of Theology
May 1, 2026
H. Shiu
This article traces the development of Buddhist theology as an academic discipline, from its early emergence in missionary and Orientalist readings of Buddhism through a Christian lens to its later systematic formation as a field that runs parallel to, yet remains distinct from, Buddhist studies. Through this exploration, the article examines Buddhist theology as a means of constructive...
Toronto Journal of Theology
October 1, 2024
Louis Roy
This article highlights the similarities and differences between ordinary and mystical consciousness. In the first part, two current views of ordinary consciousness are explained and opposed. Then in the second part, there are explanations of two views of mystical consciousness. The article discusses Daniel Dennett's materialistic reduction of mental phenomena to a biological substratum. Many...
Toronto Journal of Theology
October 1, 2024
N. Gonotskaya, Nikita Vladimirovich Garadzha
Abstract:The Article examines the world view evolution of Father Sergius Bulgakov; namely, the stage of his radical reorientation to the problems of philosophical idealism and religious metaphysics. That world view is shaped by a tension between his mystical spiritual experiences described in his diary and jos attempts to externalize them as Christian politics. He articulates the relationship...
Toronto Journal of Theology
December 1, 2022
Jacob Holsinger Sherman
Part of a special section on Creation Care, this essay argues that Christian responses to the ecological crisis ought to move beyond a conversation organized around the demands of prevailing environmental philosophies before which religious tradition seeks to justify itself, and towards a more dialogical, theoretically rigorous, heuristic, and contemplatively transformative exploration of the...
Toronto Journal of Theology
October 1, 2018
Sj Terrance Walsh
[Figure: see text] I will consider the problem of the experience of God in light of the fact that God is not present to consciousness as a phenomenal object. I will present Hegel’s conception of experience in The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) as a valuable attempt to overcome the restrictions placed upon religious experience by Kant’s definition of experience as “empirical knowledge.” My...
Toronto Journal of Theology
September 1, 2011
Geoffrey B. Williams
Reviewed by: Fantastic Spiritualities: Monsters, Heroes, and the Contemporary Religious Imagination Geoffrey B. (Monty) Williams SJ J'annine Jobling . Fantastic Spiritualities: Monsters, Heroes, and the Contemporary Religious Imagination. London: T & T Clark International: A Continuum Imprint, 2010. Pp. 224. Cloth $100.00. ISBN 9780567030467. We live in a postmodern age, and one of its...
Toronto Journal of Theology
March 1, 2011
Dietmar Neufeld
Reviewed by: Paul in Ecstasy: The Neurobiology of the Apostle’s Life and Thought Dietmar Neufeld Colleen Shantz . Paul in Ecstasy: The Neurobiology of the Apostle’s Life and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. v + 267. Cloth, US$64.00. ISBN 978-0-521-86610-1. In a provocative, long-overdue correction of a primarily cognicentric approach to Paul, Shantz charts a finely...
Toronto Journal of Theology
March 1, 2003
Frans Jozef van Beeck
This essay, "a spiritual-theological sinfonietta in five movements of unequal length" is written to draw the reader's attention to a distinctive phase of growth in the affective life with both God and God's entire human family, the latter often referred to as "the neighbour" (i.e., any actual neighbour(s)). Being distinctive, it is possible to describe it; it actually has been described, not...
Toronto Journal of Theology
September 1, 2001
Michael Stoeber
3 citations
[…]mysticism is quite different from religious experiences in ordinary faith, where the relationship with the Divine is mediated through normal categories of experience given in a person's culture and history. This difference raises the question of the relationship of mysticism to ordinary religious experiences. What is the role and status of mystical experience in the spiritual life? What, if...