The Wound of Knowledge

Rating:
Summary: The wound of Kataphatic Mystics
Review: Author: ArchBishop Williams:
Dr. Williams started with this book's experience: an ecumenical journey to discover ancient Christian tradition, through delving into the patristic door. Living the faith, is part of his pilgrimage, reflected in his contribution to "Anglican quest for holiness," and ended, it seems with his book "the Making of Orthodoxy." He visited the cradle of monasticism in Nitria and has cordial relations with its monks.

Knowledge, Cataphatic and Apophatic:
Two types of knowledge were sorted by the desert fathers which never contradicted but supplemented each other. You start by the Cataphatic mystical way of the Alexandrines Clement to Didymus : Salvation by Knowledge of the Father through His only begotten: john 17:3. This knowledge is never intimate unless through the instruction of the Holy Spirit: john 14:26. Acquiring the Holy spirit is only through abiding in love: John 14:23. This gift of the Holy spirit requires kenosis, mortifying our negative passions, which leaves the disciple in complete darkness: Ps. 73:22, The realization of ignorance, delving in Divine darkness that lead to the wound of love ( real knowledge); Ps 73:21.

The Wound of Knowledge:
The Passion of my God; starts with faith, spirituality, belief (dogma) which Dr. Rowan represents in the Philippians Christological hymn. His first patristic example was Ignatius of Antioch, allegedly the kid who offered the five loaves to Lord Jesus. His masterful statement is, p17: "Thus martyrdom comes as a natural culmination of a far more prosaic process of un-selfing (kenosis);.. "The shadow of the Flesh":

The tour of the Mystics:
Starting with Philo the mystical Jewish kabbalist, Gnosticism, Irenaeus, and the Alexandrines: Clement, Origen, in a fascinating virtual tour. Throughout the book, he became absorbed in mystical expressions: End without End (Arian Crisis, and Athanasius), The glamour of the heart (Augustine of Hippo), Acrobats and jugglers.

Abba Rowan's Mystical Circus
The City? The desert (Antony, Macariuis, and the desert fathers). The Monastery is the third development in his account Cassian now carries to the West this monastic ideal (pl. see: The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal, by H. Workman), Benedict takes over, then Bernard of Clairvaux (12th century).

Ecstasy and understanding:
Here R. Williams contrasts the Apophaic tradition of the great Syrian mystic of pseudonym; Dennis the Areopagite with the Cataphatc Aristotelian theology of Thomas Aquinas, a back shift from Neo-Platonism of the East. Johannes Elkhart, another Dominican was dubbed heretical to those who could not perceive his mystical language.

The End Of Christendom:
The Sign of the Son of Man: Luther and Ockham, reformation and its dogmas: Faith, and Sola Scriptura. In the secret stair: R.W. recounts in the "Way of Denial", from a similar spiritual experience of john of the Cross and Luther, both being in hell, but broke off differently through an apophatic versus Luther's cataphatic solution.
Now John+ compares to associate Teresa of Avila, both found Carmelites failure to embody their vocation.
"Oh who my grief can mend! Come, make the last surrender that I yearn for,.."

a FAST theological History from the New Testament to luther and John+:
A long subtitle, for a fast virtual tour. In less than 180 pages you join the party of the Mystics and say with Abbot Chapman: "The unperceived, infused contemplation occupies the mind, and it can't think of something else;..." Alas, the party is over but never my longing for the company of the holy mystics Rev. Williams initiated!