The Heythrop Journal
2026
Gregory P. Floyd
Abstract I argue that Jean‐Louis Chrétien’s account of beauty and Bernard Lonergan’s account of art and aesthetic experience complement one another and, when taken together, offer an illuminating philosophical account of the ontological, ethical, intellectual, and transcendent aspects of art and aesthetic experience. Chrétien draws out with particular perspicacity the ontological dimension of...
The Heythrop Journal
May 16, 2023
Edda Wolff
2 citations
This essay argues that a negative hermeneutics, i.e. , a hermeneutics that takes its starting point from the experience of gaps, failures, and limits, is a suitable lens for the study of mysticism. It uses the concept of travail of the negative, which focuses on the dynamics of a continuous ‘unsaying’ and ‘subverting’ of traditional expressions of faith and religious practice, to explore the...
The Heythrop Journal
March 1, 2023
Yoshitsugu Sawai
This article is a semantic attempt to clarify the totality of Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) by describing his religious theory, characterised by such key terms as ‘the holy’ and ‘the numinous’. In his academic life, Otto had three ‘faces’, i.e., a Christian theologian, a philosopher of religion, and a scholar of comparative religion, all of which were organically interrelated in his Christian...
The Heythrop Journal
September 6, 2011
Simon D. Podmore
3 citations
In response to prevailing perceptions, I contend that Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) conceives of the wholly otherness of God via his dialectical category of the ‘infinite qualitative difference’ between the human and the divine, initially through the self's consciousness of sin and ultimately through the self's acceptance of the gift of forgiveness. Therefore, I claim that while the common...
The Heythrop Journal
April 7, 2009
Edward Howells
1 citation
Pp. xii, 324 , Oxford , Oxford University Press , 2005 , £55.00. This study of mystical experience examines what are called ‘extrovertive mystical experiences’. These are ‘mystical’ experiences in the sense that they display certain features commonly associated with mysticism, especially the sense of unity, knowledge and contact with reality, and ‘extrovertive’ in that they are experiences of...
The Heythrop Journal
December 20, 2006
Owen Ware
8 citations
This paper explores the ambiguity in Rudolph Otto's discussion of the mysterium tremendum in order to address a broader set of difficulties in The Idea of the Holy (1917). In doing so, I outline two common criticisms of Otto's position. The first attacks Otto for not providing a secure transition from the numinous experience of terror to the holy experience of faith. The second attacks Otto for...