The 6th Annual Costan Lecture

For more on this event, visit: https://bit.ly/2YKsvpm For more on the Department of Theology and Religious Studies: https://theology.georgetown.edu/ December 5, 2019 | Sarah Coakley is Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity emerita, University of Cambridge, Research Professor at Australian Catholic University (Melbourne and Rome), and Honorary Fellow, Oriel College, Oxford. Earlier in her career she has taught at the Universities of Lancaster, Oxford, Princeton and Harvard (where she was Mallinckrodt Professor of Divinity, 1995-2007). She was elected a Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2012, the same year in which she delivered Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen University. She is currently writing a four-volume systematic theology, the first volume of which was published as God, Sexuality and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’ (2013). Her Gifford Lectures are forthcoming as Sacrifice Regained: Evolution, Cooperation and God. This lecture recalls, first, the history of the re-discovery of the patristic doctrine of the “spiritual senses” in the 20th-century, a history in which reforming members of the Society of Jesus (de Lubac, Rahner, von Balthasar and Daniélou) played the crucial role – for reasons which are arguably intrinsic to the Ignatian tradition of spirituality itself. The lecture then turns to reconsider the importance of Gregory of Nyssa’s distinctive teaching on “spiritual sense” (a matter on which Coakley has published previously, but now wishes to extend, correct and deepen her analysis). Pace Daniélou’s sole focus on Nyssen’s “mysticism” and its relation to “spiritual sense” in his last commentary works, Coakley sees the significance of Gregory’s teaching on this theme as more broadly epistemological, and thus not merely an accompaniment to higher states of Christian “spirituality”. To demonstrate this thesis she reaches back into earlier texts in Gregory’s corpus and – from admittedly fragmentary discussions – proposes a vision of progressive epistemological purification through a lifetime which is the task and goal of all Christians propelled by the Spirit towards the life of the resurrection body. Finally, in a concluding section, Coakley proposes a bold new application of Gregory’s teaching to urgent contemporary issues for theology and ethics. If the purification of the sensual life to an attunement with Christ represents a core theme of graced Christian discipline and observance, then how might this insight transform our approach to resistant cultural aporiai such as systemic racism, unacknowledged sexism, and the corroding and addictive effects of pornography? Does it require a deeper theological analysis of these topics to understand not only how they are intrinsically connected, but also how they are all marked by a distorting incapacity to “see”/ “sense” the “other” as beloved-of-Christ? To this nexus of problems Nyssen’s work seems to have new application and significance.