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CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY IN CONTEXT
SERIES EDITORS
TIMOTHY GORRINGE SERENE JONES GRAHAM WARD
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CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY IN CONTEXT
Any inspection of recent theological monographs makes plain that it is still
thought possible to understand a text independently of its context. Work in the
sociology of knowledge and in cultural studies has, however, increasingly
made obvious that such divorce is impossible. On the one hand, as Marx put it,
‘life determines consciousness’. All texts have to be understood in their life
situation, related to questions of power, class, and modes of production. No
texts exist in intellectual innocence. On the other hand, texts are also forms of
cultural power, expressing and modifying the dominant ideologies through
which we understand the world. This dialectical understanding of texts
demands an interdisciplinary approach if they are to be properly understood:
theology needs to be read alongside economics, politics, and social studies, as
well as philosophy, with which it has traditionally been linked. The cultural
situatedness of any text demands, both in its own time and in the time of its
rereading, a radically interdisciplinary analysis.
The aim of this series is to provide such an analysis, culturally situating texts
by Christian theologians and theological movements. Only by doing this, we
believe, will people of the fourth, sixteenth, or nineteenth centuries be able to
speak to those of the twenty-first. Only by doing this will we be able to
understand how theologies are themselves cultural products—projects deeply
resonant with their particular cultural contexts and yet nevertheless exceeding
those contexts by being received into our own today. In doing this, the series
should advance both our understanding of those theologies and our
understanding of theology as a discipline. We also hope that it will contribute to
the fast-developing interdisciplinary debates of the present.
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John of the Cross
Desire, Transformation, and Selfhood
SAM HOLE
1
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1
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Acknowledgements
This book originated as a PhD thesis at the University of Cambridge. I
first and foremost express my enormous thanks to my supervisor, Sarah
Coakley, who was an unfailing guide and support in the writing of this
study. I could not have wished for more sustained and committed care
for my work than she provided. Other scholars—notably Edward
Howells, Peter Tyler, Colin Thompson, and the anonymous readers
from Oxford University Press—also generously contributed their time
and wisdom to answer my questions.
I gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the award
of a doctoral studentship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
I also thank the Master and Fellows of Selwyn College, Cambridge for
the award of a Gosden Scholarship. Financial support from the funds
administered by the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge
was invaluable, enabling early versions of the ideas laid out in this study
to be presented at conferences in Nottingham, Durham, Oxford, and
San Diego.
It was a great privilege to be able to study the life and works of John
of the Cross in the context of formation for ordained ministry in the
Church of England. My time spent at Selwyn College chapel and
Westcott House was invaluable in helping me to set my learning in the
context of the church’s wider ministry and mission. In recent years I
have been grateful to those who have ensured that, amidst the many
commitments of parish life, I was able to develop the thesis into the
study as it is presented here. Jonathan Sedgwick, Rector of St George the
Martyr, Southwark, was a particular help in this regard. I also benefited
greatly from time as a Dean’s Scholar at Virginia Theological Seminary.
I am indebted to friends and family who have supported me on the
way. I am inestimably grateful to the faith and love shown to me by my
parents. I have found insightful conversation partners in many, including:
Silvianne Bürki, Hugh Burling, Alec Corio, Isidoros Katsos, Nathan Lyons,
Ragnar Mogård Bergem, Preston Parsons, Julian Perlmutter, Richard
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vi Acknowledgements
Stanton, Jonathan Teubner, David Torrance, and Daniel Trott. I found
joy in spending time with friends, among them David and Clare O’Hara,
Tom and Emma Nixon, Stephen Wastling, Alice Howell, Jon and Sarah
Reynolds, Ben and Lizzie Osborne, Jeremy Martin, and Mark Bostock.
Finally, words cannot express my gratitude to my wife, Emily
S. Kempson. She has been a source of all those qualities I found in
friends and family—joy, faith, love, and insightful conversation—as well
as much else besides. She is the one to whom, in this world, I can declare
John’s final exclamation in The Living Flame of Love: ‘how tenderly you
swell my heart with love’. I dedicate this work to her.
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Contents
List of Illustrations ix
A note on translations and abbreviations xi
Introduction: desire in recent theology 1
I. Desire, transformation, and selfhood:
four contributions 2
II. Desire in recent theology 9
III. Chapter summary 20
1. The neglect of desire: modern reception of
John of the Cross 25
I. The modern recovery of John of the Cross 27
Questions of genealogy: the importance of the late
nineteenth-century recovery 27
A guide to the spiritual life: the neo-scholastic revival
of mystical theology 30
John and mysticism 35
II. Developments since the mid-twentieth century 45
The rise of ‘spirituality’ 45
Mysticism and experience 52
III. Desire and the spiritual ascent 58
2. Desire and the spiritual ascent 62
I. John of the Cross: a life 64
II. The role of the appetites in John’s anthropology of the soul 68
III. The interior ascent 73
IV. Love and the ascent 82
Dionysian erōs and the metaphysical basis of the appetites 82
Late medieval reworkings of Augustine and Aquinas 86
Recogimiento prayer 90
V. The limitations and potential of language 94
Dionysianism and the limits of language 94
Cancionero and Italian Renaissance poetry 95
Carmelite reading of the Song of Songs 99
VI. Conclusions 103
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viii Contents
3. Language, form, and imagery in John’s poetry 105
I. Narrative and the God of love: the Romances 107
II. Paradox and ineffability in the glosas and coplas 112
III. Desire in the Noche, Llama, and Cántico 115
Noche oscura 116
Llama de amor viva 120
Cántico espiritual 122
The two redactions of the Cántico 122
Yearning in CB1–12 124
Spiritual betrothal and marriage in CB13–40 126
IV. Conclusions: language and the spiritual ascent 130
4. The ‘dark night of the soul’ and the purification of desire 132
I. The relationship between the Ascent and Night 133
II. Human sin and divine transcendence: the necessity
of the dark night 136
III. The night of sense 138
The active night of sense 138
The passive night of sense 143
IV. The night of spirit 147
The active night of spirit 148
Intellect 149
Memory 151
Will 154
The passive night of spirit 158
V. Conclusions 161
5. Union in the Canticle and Flame 163
I. Yearning for a ‘vision’ of divine ‘beauty’ 165
II. Pneumatological incorporation in spiritual ‘betrothal’
and ‘marriage’ 169
Spiritual betrothal 169
Spiritual marriage 171
III. Union and the beatific vision 173
Union in the Canticle 173
Union in the Flame 176
IV. The anthropology of the transformed soul 181
Memory 182
The unity of the soul 185
V. Conclusions 189
Conclusion: desire retrieved 191
References 205
Index 217
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List of Illustrations
1. Copy of the original sketch of ‘Mount Carmel’ drawn by
John of the Cross 141
