Doubting our Desires
Thu, 30 Apr
|Invitation only
Spring seminar with Jenny Leith
Time & Location
30 Apr 2020, 13:00 – 15:00
Invitation only
About the Event
Abstract: This paper explores the role of doubt in forming desire for God – and, more particularly, the ways in which social relations can be part of practicing a fruitful kind of doubt. The relationship between doubt and desire for God is well-established in the Christian apophatic tradition, particularly with regards to doubting the adequacy of our language to properly frame knowledge and love of God. This kind of doubting is understood to train the Christian to better attend to God, opening up the possibility of encountering the divine in new and surprising ways. There has been a tendency in the apophatic tradition to focus on individual contemplative prayer as the practice through which this kind of loving attention to God can be developed. However, I propose that corporate, worded contexts can also be places in which the Christian can learn to resist their tendency to attempt to know God in complete or finalisable ways. In engagement with the work of Rowan Williams, I suggest that social relations can also be part of training one to cultivate a quality of attention that is open to encountering God in new and surprising ways.