I Believe in Love by Jean du Coeur de Jésus d'Elbée

The specific contribution of Ignatian spirituality is one in which personal discernment is given priority. This spirituality is placed within a tradition that recognizes humility as self knowledge, as evidenced in other traditions such as monasticism in Europe and North America.

I Believe in Love by Jean du Coeur de Jésus d

After preliminary definitions of religion and the characteristics of spirituality are provided, lgnatian spirituality is analyzed from the point of view of its holistic worldview and understanding of the human person. The qualities of Ignatian spirituality as a holistic spirituality are presented in this study of the psychology of religion.

I argue that Thomas’ approach to the different senses of Scripture is both more comprehensive and rigorous than that of Pseudo-Dionysius and that it still offers a guiding light through the hermeneutical fog of contemporary theology with its dual challenges both from historical/critical methods and from deconstructive neo-kabbalistic approaches, culminating in the God without Being of Jean-Luc Marion whose silence, ‘precisely because it does not explain itself, exposes itself to an infinite equivocation of meaning.’

In this present dissertation I examine how Thomas’ approach to Scripture, particularly in the value he assigns to the ‘literal sense’ of Scripture, begins to reconfigure the hierarchical vision of the cosmos found in Pseudo-Dionysius. This paper builds on my previous published thesis that whereas the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius entailed the complete unknowability of God as One beyond language, concept and being, Thomas developed a distinctly ‘positive apophaticism’ which transformed ‘Denys’ in the light of Augustine, Aristotle and especially Scripture itself.

I Believe in Love by Jean du Coeur de Jésus d'Elbée