Knowledge, Love, and Ecstasy in the Theology of Thomas Gallus. By Boyd Taylor Coolman
This study is part of an important series called ‘Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology’, edited by Sarah Coakley and Richard Cross. Boyd Taylor Coolman’s study of Thomas Gallus fits into this ‘changing paradigms’ project by setting out the distinctiveness of Gallus’ theology. The...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Review |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2020
|
| In: |
The journal of theological studies
Year: 2020, Volume: 71, Issue: 2, Pages: 934-935 |
| Further subjects: | B
Book review
|
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This study is part of an important series called ‘Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology’, edited by Sarah Coakley and Richard Cross. Boyd Taylor Coolman’s study of Thomas Gallus fits into this ‘changing paradigms’ project by setting out the distinctiveness of Gallus’ theology. The first full study of Gallus in English, it will be of great assistance to scholars trying to map out the development of the Dionysian apophatic tradition in Western Christian thought. Well-known works in this Western tradition are Bonaventure’s Journey of the Mind into God and various writings of the Victorines such as Hugh of St Victor and Richard of St Victor. Many people get interested in this Western apophatic tradition through their study of the anonymous Middle English text The Cloud of Unknowing and its related works. The anonymous Cloud author started off his corpus by producing a Middle English translation of Pseudo-Dyonisus’s Mystical Theology, working not from Greek but from the medieval Latin translations and commentaries available to him. Among these he cites in particular Richard of St Victor and Thomas Gallus (‘the Abbot of St Victor’) as his main sources. Until now, it has been easy for readers of The Cloud to chase up the works of Richard of St Victor, but the contribution of Thomas Gallus remained unclear. With this study, Coolman decisively fills that gap, and, perhaps to our surprise, we discover that Gallus is a distinctive thinker who helps to show how the Western apophatic tradition becomes something different from its origins in sixth-century Eastern Orthodox thought. In Gallus we find the relationship between the intellective and affective forms of human consciousness carefully explored, with both being forms of cognition. Coolman’s introduction sketches out the medieval definitions of ‘intellective’ and ‘affective’ with lucidity and concision, a helpful contribution in itself. Whereas the Cloud author tends to set up an opposition between the intellective and affective modes of cognition, Gallus stresses their interdependence. Like Bonaventure, Gallus pictures the mind ascending through various intellective stages to an apophatic stage which transcends them, but Gallus does not leave the story there. The apophatic level is better apprehended by the affective mode of cognition, and this in turn subsumes the intellective into it, and communicates with the lower intellective levels, enriching their perceptions and renewing their capacity for loving God. There is therefore a constant circling motion of the intellective and affective cognition of God, or a spiralling motion, as Coolman prefers to term it. This is useful for allaying the fears in some Western Christian traditions that the apophatic tradition involves bypassing the mind altogether. Coolman also helpfully explores the concept of ecstasy as a way in which the human creature can receive the inflowing of the Divine from above. Many medieval mystics use the term ecstasy, and it is not always easy for modern readers to understand its significance to them. Altogether, for anyone interested in both the Latin and vernacular theological and mystical writings of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, this is an invaluable study. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1477-4607 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of theological studies
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jts/flaa134 |