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Document Details : Title: John of the Cross's Spiritual Senses Revisited Subtitle: A Study in the Epistemology and the Interpersonal Dynamics of Spiritual Sensation in St. John of the Cross Author(s): SHOUP, Benedict Journal: Studies in Spirituality Volume: 32 Date: 2022-2023 Pages: 353-374 DOI: 10.2143/SIS.32.0.3292465 Abstract : Scholarly work on John of the Cross’s spiritual senses has focused almost exclusively on John’s late prose works. This article argues that the failure to relate these later treatments of the spiritual senses with John’s earlier accounts has left important questions unresolved concerning the very existence of a developed theory of the spiritual senses in John’s corpus. The present study begins to address these questions by analyzing and interrelating John’s first major treatment of the spiritual senses in the Ascent of Mount Carmel with his later treatment in the Living Flame of Love. This investigation reveals that in the Ascent, John explains the nature of the spiritual senses in terms of a complex and interrelated set of epistemic and interpersonal frameworks. In the Flame, he continues to rely on these basic architectures, while also offering significant Trinitarian, epistemological, and anthropological developments to his theory. Taken together, these results uncover the sophisticated depth structure of John’s theory of the spiritual senses. They also provide tools for relating the spiritual senses to other important theological themes in John’s writings concerning discernment and ecclesiology. |
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