Erotic Entanglements with the Christian Mystical Tradition: A Heuristic Notion of Mysticism for Feminist Theology from Bernard McGinn, Sarah Coakley, and Catherine Keller

The term “mysticism” has admitted a variety of definitions throughout history, most of which have been inflected by more or less explicit gender biases. These understandings have impoverished considerations of the Christian mystical tradition and problematized feminist theological retrievals of Christian mysticism. In this dissertation I propose a heuristic notion of mysticism as a dynamism of eros by developing Bernard McGinn’s understanding of mystical consciousness and enriching it with insights from Sarah Coakley and Catherine Keller, arguing that this notion critically anchors feminist retrievals of the Christian mystical tradition.

In Part I, I deconstruct the term “mysticism” from a critical feminist perspective. In chapter one, I identify several theoretical problems of the term and then offer an account of the term’s history, focusing on the early modern period, which attends to its latent gender biases. In chapter two, I analyze and evaluate several contemporary paradigms for understanding mysticism: that of William James, Luce Irigaray, Steven T. Katz, and Sandra Schneiders. I determine that a more robust theoretical understanding of the mystical is required from a theological, historical, and feminist perspective. I then argue that Bernard McGinn’s understanding of mysticism provides such resources.

In Part II, I critically appropriate McGinn’s heuristic understanding of mysticism as the preparation for, attainment of, and effect of mystical consciousness of the presence or absence of God. In chapter three, I adopt his methodological approach to the study of mysticism, critically ground the criteria for determining a mystical canon with assistance from David Tracy’s notion of the classic, and survey McGinn’s reconstruction of the history of Western Christian mysticism. In chapter four, I turn to McGinn’s paradigm of mystical consciousness. I develop its details along lines congruent to the thought of Bernard Lonergan, more precisely delineating the relationships among the experiential, noetic, and textual dimensions of the mystical. My appropriation of McGinn culminated with my suggesting that his account of mystical consciousness implicitly configures mysticism as a dynamism of eros.

In Part III, I supplement my notion of mysticism through the work of two contemporary feminist theologians who have articulated notions of mysticism in concert with rehabilitations of “eros.” In chapter five, I evaluate Sarah Coakley’s notion of the mystical as a contemplative matrix of eros, and in chapter six, I evaluate Catherine Keller’s notion of the mystical as attunement to the mystery of erotic relationality. I suggest that both feminist theologians furnish insights into the erotic dimensions of the mystical which supplement my heuristic notion of the mystical as a notion which can critically anchor contemporary feminist engagements with the Christian mystical tradition.