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Sat yesterday in The Varsity, post-GALAS steering committee meeting, munching on a slaw dog and an orange freeze, pondering Immanence vs. Emanation in the theology of mysticism. Various big names in the theology of mysticism world--Dionysius, Dante(!), Leuba, Teresa of Avila, Boehme, Tauler, Philo, even Plotinus--come down on one side or the other, but even in mysticism, there are trolls who must have it that their conclusion is right and the other is wrong. Probably not original to me, but couldn't it be like the particle and wave theories of light, in that both are helpful, depending on which behaviors of light one is attempting to understand or describe? For me, immanence is preferable, keeping in mind the danger of slippage into pantheism. Immanence is preferable because it is how our ineffable Eternal One chose to reveal to us in the very immanence of Jesus. In this construct,"earth is literally 'crammed with heaven.'" p. 72 [see also, Gerard Manley Hopkins: "THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;. It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil."]"'God,' says Plotinus, 'is not external to anyone, but is present with all things, though they are ignorant that he is so.'" p. 72"...if God be truly immanent in the material world it is either sin or folly to refuse that world in order that we may find Him..." p. 73
1 John 4.20:
Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters,* are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister* whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen
A Visit from My Good Teacher
Mark and Dorothy Van Doren were here yesterday on their way back to Illinois--long enough to walk to the cow barn and back and for me to show Mark the novitiate.
I was happy to have him stand in these rooms, so wise a person, and lean against the bookshelf in the scriptorium and talk about some things that had come up when he was at the Hampton Institute the day before. The English professor there complained that his students had no preparation to read Shakespeare, and Mark said that everyone is prepared to read Shakespeare by the time they are eighteen. They have been born, they have had fathers, mothers, they have been loved, feared, hated, been jealous, etc.
At the cow barn we looked at brushfires being lit along the hillside of St. Bernard's field, and Mark talked about his love for fires and I talked of mine. We decided that everybody loves fires and that those who admit it are not pyromaniacs but just love fires reasonably.
When I talked a moment about Bulgakov, Mark quoted the wonderful lines at the end of Dante where he sees in Christ the face of man and the Face of God and they are one face. "But to explain it as hard as to square the circle," Mark said.
They were pleased that both their sons had married Jews this summer, and I too.
