 | Title: Logos & Revelation: Ibn 'Arabi, Meister Eckhart, and Mystical Hermeneutics
Author(s): Dobie, Robert J.
Publisher: Catholic University of America Press
Publication Date: 2009
ISBN: 081321677X
ISBN-13:
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From The Medieval Review:In both Islam and Christianity there seems to be possible a "mystical" way of living and understanding of religious traditions. As Gershom Scholem, probably the most important authority on the subject, pointed out in his famous work Major trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York 1974), "there is no mysticism as such, there is only the mysticism of a particular religious system, Christian, Islamic, Jewish mysticism and so on." The mystical approach is characterized by searching for the deeper meaning in Holy Scripture that could lead souls directly to Divine Logos and therefore it represents the only true access to understand souls themselves and then to go further towards God's nature and will.
Read the full review at The Medieval Review web site.
Additional Description: What is "mysticism" and, most importantly, how do the great mystical writers understand it? Logos and Revelation seeks to answer this question by looking closely at the writings of two of the most prominent medieval mystical writers: the Muslim, Ibn `Arabi (1165-1240) and the Christian Meister Eckhart (1260-1328).
Through his careful examination of the writings of these men, Robert J. Dobie discovers that mystical reflection and experience are intrinsically and essentially tied to the "mystical" or "hidden sense" of the sacred text. Mystical reflection and experience are, therefore, at their roots interpretive or hermeneutical: the attempt by the mystical exegete to uncover through "imaginative reading" or philosophical analysis the inner meaning of revelation. What emerges is a theology of the Word (logos, verbum, ratio, kalima) in which it is the task of the mystical exegete to appropriate inwardly the divine Word that speaks in and through both the sacred text and all creation. What the mystical writer discovers is an increasingly fitting harmony between the text of revelation, properly interepreted and understood, and the inner dynamic of the soul's reaching out beyond itself toward the transcendent.
In contrast to modern notions of the phenomenon, Dobie argues that mystical reading is not about cultivating extraordinary personal experiences. Nor does it take readers doctrinally outside of, or beyond, religious traditions. Rather, mystical reading and listening should take us deeper into the sacred text and sacred tradition.
Most strikingly, strong analogies emerge between how Christians and Muslims appropriate inwardly this divine Word, which forms a real and solid basis for interfaith dialogue founded on a mutual listening to the divine logos.
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