There are plenty of reasons why it’s a bad idea to write a book about ascending spiritual heights. The first is because that book has been written—by Plato (Symposium), Plotinus (Enneads), Pseudo-Dionysius (Mystical Theology), Dante (Divine Comedy), Bonaventure (The Mind’s Journey into God), Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae). There are many more, and they are weirder.
Jenson’s article explores the nature of sin in humanity as being curved in on oneself, which has manifestations in men and women as pride and sloth, respectively. Tracing the thought on inward curvature from Augustine to Luther and Barth, and looking at modern feminist critique, Jenson outlines the primary challenges to overcoming a self-focused way of living toward a more outward, Jesus-, and other-focused theological practice.
Try as we might to obscure the fact in increasingly subtle and beautiful theologies and liturgies, Evangelicalism is a movement of pietists who, like Wesley, take their bearings from a day when, metaphorically or literally, our hearts were “strangely warmed.” We can map that day spatio-temporally. We can remember a day in church and an […]