Spiral Staircase

This is not one of my more scholarly musings, but a recording of various items which impressed me in reading Karen Armstrong's "The Spiral Staircase." Having read Karen's various works, I found this latest to be an intriguing picture of how she has achieved self-knowledge (admitting, for example, to bitterness which clouded her works from the 1980s), and how her own spiritual path has developed.

It was a deeply impressive book. The presentations brought much alive - having illness judged (by superiors - and a close-minded psychiatrist) to be a bid for attention - frustration in academic life - dealing with epilepsy - and, ultimately, a life centred largely on studying religious texts from varied traditions. (I am not going into much detail, not wishing to be a 'spoiler' for those who have not read the book and may wish to do so.)

I would agree that the great mystics ultimately saw God as unknoweable. (However, I believe most remained theists - their unknowing was a concession to the limitations of our own vision, not denial of an objective reality or idea that we have created God... though Lord knows we can do that very well.) Though I would highly recommend this book, I would caution those who are, for example, new Christian seekers that Karen's path, which indeed seems to work for her, is not in any way to be thought superior to orthodoxy. :)

This somehow brings the following to mind...

I receive some interesting mail at times, about the mystics about whom I have composed the introductory essays on my site. The idea often arises that the mystics were not orthodox believers, or set themselves up in opposition to the Church. (The grief which they received from the ecclesiastical authorities is another topic for another thread.) One needs to recall that, in the 13-14th centuries, the importance of church, public worship, and sacrament were not in question as they would be in later days. Authors from the period often do not mention 'basics' of the faith, because such would have been assumed. For example, the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, writing for one whom he has discerned to be called to high contemplation, would not need to tell her to receive Communion. Walter Hilton treated of only baptism and penance, not the Eucharist, in his writings - not because the Eucharist was not of importance, but because, in Walter's time and place, there were disputes about penance and baptism with which those whom he directed would have been familiar.

Karen's work is deeply impressive - but her analysis of texts seems more literary (understandable - with that being her field) than exegetical, historical, or theological. For example, her discussion of Paul of Tarsus presents only one of various possible views (I can think of prominent scripture scholars who would hold quite different ones), as if it were the 'answer.'