Hildegard of Bingen: Visions of the Trinity - St Paul's Forum

I'm Sarah I'm Steinem chaplain here and it's a great pleasure to welcome you today and particularly to welcome professor Jun boys Tilghman who as you all know is an expert on Hildegard of Bingen at the 10th century mystic and one of the newest Saints she's very recently being made a saint and so in honor of the occasion obviously we've got all these bunting professor Dubois Tillman is also a distinguished composer and teacher of music professor of music at Winchester University and has a particular interest in music spirituality and theology and including music in education today she's going to introduce Hildegard for us and in particular her visions of the Holy Trinity she'll speak for about 30-40 minutes and then there'll be an opportunity to ask questions at the end we've also got copies of her book the creative spirit that I understand came about through miraculous intervention at the last minute so these will be available for sale at the end of the hour that we've got together so if I could now hand over to Professor G I'm going to do the the presentation in two parts the first I'm going to tell her story so that you have some idea of where she was and who she was and I shall tell that by becoming Hildegard for a while only temporarily so don't worry and then I will talk about the visions of the Trinity contextualized them in the Middle Ages and then seeing their applications for today and as part of the present to these story of Hildegard I will sing a hymn to the Virgin were in Latin which was the language that she used and you have the translation of that him on the sheet labeled a singing the mystery thank you very much I am Hildegard I know the cost of keeping silent and I know the cost of speaking out here my story perhaps you know me as Hildegard of Bingen but it was several miles from Bingham where I was born in the nerve alley in Germany in the year of our Lord 1098 do you know the right lad do any of you know it yes which is the most beautiful place is it not rich should green moist and fruitful the Rolling Hills stretch as far as the eye can see crowned here and there with tall crags and watchtowers that seemed to reach to the sky and on the southern slopes the carefully tended vineyards ripple like waves on the skirts of the hills and in the valleys the neat fields and tidy villages offer ample sustenance for humankind and their beasts and through it all flows the Mighty River Rhine bringing growth and fruitfulness to the earth and a means of movement and transport to all who live there they call it now I believe the fatherland to me it will always be mother for the earth is our mother she is the mother of all for she contains with all the sin within herself all the seeds of all the earth produces all burden see all fruitfulness all creation comes from it and it contains not only the seeds of humankind but the substance of the incarnation of God's own son being the tenth child I was ties to God and sent at the age of eight to live the abbey of Synn disavowed where I lived with an anchor s called erta from yota I learned so much of everyday things of spinning and of weaving and of the ever-present all encircling love of God and of the Holy Spirit which flows like SAP through our lives and our bones from my earliest childhood God revealed himself to me in many ways sometimes in words sometimes in images sometimes in music sometimes in all three but always he shows himself in the splendor of the natural world but I learned also to see the corruption of the world the violation of the natural world the injustice in church and state and I knew anger as well as joy I looked and I listened I saw and I heard but I kept silent yet ever within me grew the pressure to speak out but how could I a woman make my voice heard who would listen to me who would believe my words not learned by rote from any human tutor how could my words be in any way useful for it was not out of humility but had other it was not out of stubbornness a tariff you said it was supposed to humility that I refused to speak how could I then have recognized the burning torment spoken of by the prophets of the Old Testament when the Word of God burns in the heart and aches and the bones I consulted my spiritual directors and people I was accustomed to respect and indeed to obey they told me it was not my place to speak out my role was to tend the needs of my community and pray ever faithfully but silently but low in the 41st year of my life's course I was taken up in a vision and then it I beheld a great radiance and in the radiance was formed a voice and the voice spoke to me and said dust of dust ashes of Cash's corruption of corruption tell and write what you see and what you hear and behold I stood up and I set my hand to writing the words poured out of me in a torrent a great outpouring of God's Word his spirit his daiba and I no longer felt beaten down I started to write my first book I called it skeevy ass knowing the ways it was to take me ten years to complete and contrary to my previous fears and timidity I was heard people came to me from far and near and I received and sent many letters some to the leaders of the day Bernard of Clairvaux and the Emperor Barbarossa the holy father heard of me he sent a commission to investigate me they found me competent and authentic and he wrote commending and encouraging my writing by this time Yatta had died and I had been elected leader or Abbess you might say of our small community of women we were still clamped together Anita's tiny house the monks of San DC bowed had expanded to and taking up all the available land for their buildings and their farms Abbot kuno was implacable and can you imagine the endless meetings the arguments in the counter arguments and the end is frustration of not being heard in the end we just packed up our things and left taking our dowries with us not waiting for the men's permission we started to build on the side of the Rhine on a hill that I dedicated to my dear son true pert I myself supervised the building making sure that all was spacious and comfortable we even had piped water perhaps I remembered all those journeys to the washing trough and the breaking of the ice on it but more I think our Creator God does not delight in our bodily discomfort especially when it is self-inflicted I have heard it said that the body is at war with the soul but how can this be he made us as whole beings and our souls can only find expression through the actions of our bodies indeed I am persuaded that when body and soul act together in mutual agreement they received the highest reward of mutual joy on the rupert's bird I and my sisters explored new ways to worship God sometimes wearing colorful robes and golden crowns as befits the brides of Christ not always I may say with ecclesiastical approval my vast correspondence continued and I wrote many books on the lives of the saints for medicine and healing theology and I a woman in her 60s preached from the pulpits of the great cathedrals and Abbey's and ever I spoke of God's justice and I exhorted the leaders of church and state to excise corruption and to work for the peace and harmony of all creation and in it and through it and round it is always the music for music expresses most clearly the souls longing for God and the peace and harmony of all creation as God first made it but in the last year of my life the music was silenced it was a time of great grief and heavy sadness you see we had buried in the grounds of our convent a young man who had been excommunicated as a revolutionary and we would not yield up his body but he'd confessed before he died and his body was entitled to rest in hallowed ground I though I was old and ill went out and removed all traces of the grave so it could not be violated for I fear the Justice of God more than the justice of men the bishop did not agree with me he placed us under the interdict so he could no longer sing the office or receive communion after eight months I wrote him a letter about the theology of music and reminding him that those who silence the music of God on earth will have no part of the song of the angels in heaven the interdict was lifted and the music goes on oh very do you see my vehicle queendom tours or flapper August guitar t he oniy sanctorum Hardesty come very temples go to who follow Haru who is the Irani Stewie's ha of a CTV Clea Carlo so listen Tessa who donít see cou who Todd or paalsamy Nam a hint a flora with polka flows qui order em dead omnibus are Amati boots query dawned upon me inability Tata play no wonder Sally he didn't draw him super Grauman head home mr. Ali Taha fact is corneum viscera oopsie use frou who meant on pro - Laurent at corneum below crazily need OC nips are then the is the scar mini-boss headcount IAM on you a pool on see warm under o swabby spherical intern known defeat home god hey me i bar contempt seat nonk out m love seat hearty see mo but the words of the songs that i uttered came not from any human source god moves where he wills and not at the will of any earthly creature and i am ever in fear and trembling and I ever doubt my own capacities but I lift my hands to God that I may be carried as a feather is carried without power or strength of its own on the breath of the wind I died in the year 1179 but I do not think the death is silenced me some of you today may hear my voice I was eighty one year years old when I had died so I had kept silent for half my life and I had spoken out for path half my life perhaps that is the right balance taking in receiving and giving out in and out like breathing like the breath of God there she is so what is she to say to us about the Trinity that's a little bit about her where are we there there she is that's how she signs herself you see herself with the visionary experience coming down in the in the fire from heaven and her faithful priest partner a priest Vollmar whose task was simply to take down what she said make it into decent Latin and got told off if he put anything else in she wouldn't have had the formal education that the men would have had in Latin she would have simply learnt it by being immersed in the life of the of the monastery she is often portrayed in this particular one with Vollmar but also possibly retired as a starter there where you see her in the context of the convent and so unlike some of the Mystics where they're portrayed on their own she's always portrayed in a community and you'll see how that fits her thinking she's not on her own she's contextualizes it in that community that's perhaps the most famous vision often used as a mandala by people that's a vision of the angels and nine orders of the Angels very carefully drawn with the mystery of God in the middle I suggested that's an incredibly powerful image for this Trinity Sunday really so where did she sit today this is a Korean theologian talking about Western theology that its emphasis on individual salvation morality was often disruptive of non-western cultures focusing on individual with no recognition of community or social context so she sits in the context of Western culture in the loss of that communal aspect which would have been second nature for her in the Middle Ages in Europe but somehow or other once we got Parsi and so-called enlightenment it got lost along the way the models of the Trinity that we have around us now this is perhaps the most famous the Rublev icon of the Trinity three people with the fourth side open for us three people in neutral relationship the unity and the diversity well expressed and us being called into that particular feast they're the eastern model that we have it's at the top they're very grateful to two of my colleagues to helping me draw those models so that's East and model the Western model again the distances is in many ways emphasize there we have the Creator the Redeemer in the spirit but somehow a bit separate from us and operating on the world from a distance and sometimes when I sing the great Trinitarian hymns I think it sometimes emphasizes a distance although the sermon this morning told us much more about the the the the presence and that the distance in a way that sometimes it's not preached on Trinity Sunday and here we have a Western image from the one of the books of ours of God because he looking down the Spirit is all those wings around there upon the the dead Sun there so but the problem with that particular model it expresses a hierarchical God which in some ways infantilizes human beings requiring people to remain in positions of children forever rather than relationships of mutuality so the notion of mutuality is something again which Hildegard speaks to as we shall see but interestingly people often say well she was ahead of her time actually she wasn't she was part of her time the prevailing doctrine of a prevailing system of medicine that we have juicy set out there is the doctrine of humors and the doctrine of humors which originated in gay Galen's rediscovery of Hippocrates saw the whole of the natural world and us in relationship so it gave it sort and this is this this left-hand side the black bile phlegm blood and yet has been one of the reasons is being discredited but because we can't look we can't find what the substance called black what they meant by blackmail but the temp that the notion that there are temperaments that each of us are either hot cold wet and dry so there you see nature is a balance of cold dry cold wet warm wet and warm dry and they're associated with the elements along the side there and that all of us are somehow rather we have one of those elements dominant dominant so if it's we're cold driver melancholic and so on the phlegmatic and so on and so forth but the the way the system worked was if you're going to prescribe something for somebody let's take today let's take me probably quite fiery and it's raining outside so i'm not in my chosen element you have to put all that in the equation before you start deciding whether you're going to give me phenyl or spelt because in a sense we're not independent of that we're in relationship with the natural world and so on so that was the system that was prevailing the medical system and in some ways it's a much more subtle system than we have at the moment with again that excessive individuality and that if you prescribe this this is what will happen whether the person is old young well ill you know short fat tall thin that notion a very simple primitive cause-and-effect is much more primitive than there are more subtle relationships as dr. Hume knows which we find of course in Ayurvedic systems and also to a certain extent in the Chinese systems another drawing of it we can see hot dry wet and cold in relationship to the seasons as well so we have a sort of chosen season as well in some and then we get people today like Isaac and his theories of intelligence taking it up and developing the notion of personality typology based on that particular you see he hasn't linked it with a natural world we've got sort of colors which might but it's now much more linked to the theory of personality but what it shows us is that people are again picking that up as part of the system and here we have a diagram from that period we see the human being and so on connected and that makes sense of some of the Hildegard drawings so in the ecological model we have the world in the middle rather than we have the Trinity the world in the middle of the Trinity rather than the Trinity separated and we'll see that this is her main one of the main drawings of the Trinity the so called person in sapphire blue and the person in the middle we can see that it could be the picture of the Christ or Jesus and there's a description the bright light designates the father that's the outer circle the figure in sapphire blue without flaw of obstinacy envy or iniquity so writing in CES designates the Sun and the glowing fire is the Holy Spirit so again that's quite often an image that people use but putting themselves in as the as the person in the middle now notice that if we go back one slide you'll see that the this figure in the middle has the top of the head open and that notion of opening the top of the head and so on links with Paul in a sense and channels of the spirit and all of that we go further in that image of the Trinity and we get to this one and that's the image that I want to concentrate on really this one we see now the head of God at the top a little head of God the Father and then we see the figure of the sum encapsulating the whole of the world with the human being in the middle of it and the spirit flowing around the outside so in this particular model the second person of the Trinity rather than just being Jesus or the Christ or Jesus Christ becomes the world becomes the second figure of the Trinity so the world is God's body and and that all inside and it's interesting that when we look at sign so we think of the debates about science we're having today of course the original origin of science was in order to understand God because he would investigate the very nature of God God created the world and therefore investigating the world and since this predates though some of those scientific thinking but it's it's in that frame of medieval Europe so God the Father appears bears the great wheel of creation his breast that is supported embraced by the figure of flaming love the spirit and in the middle of the universal wheel stands a human being projecting beyond the tiny earth into the realms of universal forces with their various elements and rays the human figure seems to hold the universal network or system in its hands thus accepting humanity's task of creative commitment to the world and so we're seeing we're getting a model of ourselves within the context of a wider world and within the context of God and here's another version now the head of God has gone but we still see that notion of the encompassing of the Spirit and there we have the the seasons within that so the changing Nisour the seasons is within that context of creation the cosmos so if the second person of the Trinity is the entire world were asked to view the world as God's body and Sally McFate takes this up there includes more than just Christians and more than just human beings and we have people like an abandonment talking about let's not call ourselves human beings and we have to talk about the human and the other than human world and she's invented the the descriptor Gaian beings there were gaion beings and we contain of course all the elements of the world within us and we are inextricably bound up in fact the myth of space travel is an interesting one as we realize that we're destroying the planet of course the idea of taking off in a spaceship and going somewhere else seems very attractive so you could wreck this place and then disappear off quite happily somewhere else and start again but of course the truth of space travel is that we have to take air with us because we can't exist with oxygen we're mostly made up of water so we've got to have a plentiful water supply we've got to be able to keep warm so we need some fire in space and we've got to have food which comes from the earth so the notion that we can take off from the world completely denies the fact that in human beings we're in X when X trick ibly bound up with the elements we can't actually exist without them so that notion of the the world as God's body and here this is um Hildegard writing my translation just as a creator loves the creation so also does a creation love the Creator creation was designed to be beautifully enriched to be lavished to be richly endowed with the love of the Creator the whole world has been hugged by this kiss so the notion of God hugging the world and hunting the world into being makes tilled of Magdeburg to take it up another 100 years later God said to the soul I desired you before the world began I desire you now as you desire me and where the two desires of to come together that their love is perfected so that notion of that that that's joining together this is Ron Williams in his book on Christianity sees the Trinity as the way in which God is known but he defines this as God encountered the sheer creativity the generative power in things but this perception must be tested and a sense denied by the awareness of waste cruelty and disorder but you heard in the story of Hildegard how Hildegard was constantly seeing life as the restoration of what she calls justice which is right relationship which is what Roe and Williams is picking up here so um this vision of God from called Sapp en Ciel which means a wisdom vision God is continually bodying forth creation so there's a continual process of incarnation going on the cosmic body of Christ where the further we enter into that synergy which the sapiens Co cosmology depicts the more we know ourselves is encountering the earning of God the divine eros experiencing the power of greening being transfigured by the spirit into shine whiteness so that notion of a cannot a once for all creation but continually embodying of creation if we embody the praxis which this implies we cannot separate the well-being and wholeness of the least sentient thing from the spiritual salvific the comings of the human person and the integrity of the whole of public life so it's interesting really here we are with flags and celebrating innocence monarchy in Western modernity and Enrique Roman antiquity kyriaki had been in tension with the Democratic ethos and system of equality and freedom in a radical democratic system power is not exercised to power over or through violence and subordination which some versions of the Trinity seem to imply but through the human capacity for respect responsibility self-determination self-esteem this radical Democratic ethos has again and again engendered emancipatory movements that insist on the equal freedom dignity and equal rights of all it's interesting to have to be under the flags because in a sense we have in our current monarch an example of interdependence and of a monarchy which has kept some sort of relationship and in that sense she has tried to merge the notion of the monarchy with a notion of democracy and of course has maintained so beautifully her own humility within that interdependence but in that model of the universe as God's body then there is a grudge greater sense of interdependence within it God click over that and so sin in Hildegard's thinking becomes broken relation it's everywhere a bro there is a broken relationship Sooners are out of touching us of the fact that we are in relation that our lives are connected at the root and that this is a sacred basis of creatureliness our humanity our lives together on planet earth we can the measure me by sin generation upon generation we do evil and this I think is interesting without having a clue it is evil that we are doing and all the thinking of the ecological people of about our footprint you know in a sense when we buy one of the t-shirts with that the motif for the there I mean do we really seriously think about the sweatshops in which it may have been made and when we argue about whether it's worth 10 pounds or 20 pounds are we not arguing about some of the other bits of creation which are in fact paying for that for us so it's without de Chivo so we're not we haven't got that sense that we're interrelationship and here we have this Carter Hayward talking about those examples and and examples of what we need courage compassion interestingly anger and you heard in the story of Hildegard she was very angry about where relationships are broken and that's a righteous anger about injustice and forgiveness touching healing and faith and of course anger and forgiveness are uneasy bedfellows at what point do you forgive at what point is justice that achieved and of course in our world there's an uneasy relationship between peace and justice peelings peace often means injustice and justice often means warfare and anger around and we see that being played out of course in Syria and the Middle East in many countries but even in our own country in various areas at the moment so there we have a sin not as my sin against somebody else although that's part of it but socio-historical sins cultural and ideological sins as well makes that notion not just me but the cosmos as a whole so we have the notion that the creation is a process in which we're engaging we are co-creators with God in this process there's a mutuality about it which will make new relationships we'll see where they're broken and renew them all the time and this is an ongoing process and so just to finish with to give time for the questions this was a hymn I was asked to write for essential because essential becomes different if we if we look at the world as God's body because if we are in God's body at ascension we all enter into heaven and the great gate swing ride for all of us and we all tumble into heaven so it isn't Jesus going away as I heard several times over this ascension tie it's not we are in Jesus and we tumble in together into the into the center of the Trinity so there we this is one of him there angel sing Christ procession it all creation enters into the middle all our hopes and all our fears all our joys and all our tears all our visions and despair nestled in God's sheltering care heaven and earth are interlaced God has shown that interface how our true integrity glows within the deity is an exciting wonderful isn't it so we don't just watch it we're in it it's not great and let the feasting now begin clowns and creatures tumble in in God's living we are free let us claim our Liberty okay and another one this was redeeming a hymn that I guess is sung here many times within the uncertain planets God's Spirit gently flows restoring right connection through which creation grows with subtle understanding God takes each tiny part and makes them fit together within a wounded heart come on we pray you vibrant spirit infuse our hearts today that we may act within you and understand your way the joy of rate relationship of the cosmos canyon breathe as you and circle all things and lovingly reawy and the strands of human living the joy disputes and pain are taken and rewoven to make life flow again and we are called to do your work and make the weaving Fair reflect your deep transforming love infusing our human institutions our politics our wealth bear fruit in justice making to serve a nation tell the difficult decisions to nurture and control of the maintenance of order and all that is involved we take place within your wisdom still making more things new we are that your amazing grace yes welfare we pass you that was my attempt to set out that theology of the world as God's body I think it's exciting I think it calls us to realize our role in that bringing together of all the parts of creation in right relationship the play of the Gaudette the the play of the God had the Trinity's dance embraces the earth in a sacred remote romance thank you very much thank you very much indeed I think that's the highest level of participation that we've had in one of these forum sessions so I imagine there was a lot in there do people have questions that they'd like to put - June well I think the Trinity is a very interesting concept I think it's brilliant I mean we can't understand and I'm talking for myself now rather than particularly rooting in that although that's colored my thinking at the end of the day religion is about God being not knowable that is the fundamental basis of religion that in a sense its purpose because it guards against human arrogance at its best religion so it has to keep the no ability in some con trust with the unknowability so whatever model we have of God is the attempt to know the unknowable so why is the Trinity a good one and I think it is a good one because it contains diversity and unity within that and period quite often Christianity has gone towards the unity and lost the diversity of the Trinity and that's where it fits with a diverse number of systems that there isn't a one system fits all a notion that diversity is there at the very heart of God and that notion that I think again it was a sermon this morning which was you know we so often turn diversity into division and I think that's a huge problem for us diversity needs to be celebrated not turned into reasons for for opposition so I think if we keep and it is it's a paradox you know it's a wonderful paradox 3 + 1 + 1 + 3 I mean you know in essence what could be a better meditation on 3 + 1 + 1 + 3 3 & 1 we can only hold that together we would know about systems which are both United and diverse but over and over again we go one way or the other in fact mostly in Christianity we want to emphasize our sort of monotheism so we you lose the diversity but as a model it says that diversity can be held together in some sort of relationship which is not uniformity so we both confuse diversity with division and we confused unity with uniformity and that's the dilemma over and over again those are and that's what I've dealt with in unconventional wisdom if we don't keep diversity and unity in relationship then both of them become twisted versions of what they should be so diversity becomes division and unity becomes uniformity and Hildegard in her middle book and I'm using her middle book this talks about advice being a twisted form of a virtue so if you see advice you don't ban it you say how do I untwist it into its right form and I think the notion of the Trinity and how we handle diversity and unity is a very good example if we don't keep diversity and unity in some sort of flow with one another then diversity becomes division and unity becomes uniformity and that happens over and over again now I know that the examples I gave here were of Democratic type systems and so on in your reflection on the UN I think we haven't I think there's a big question about you know exporting Western systems into other cultures and I don't think we've done it well and in many places it's been an excuse for him great corruption I was in Brunei relatively recently you know nothing Democratic about Brunei but a very rich man in charge of it and the people think it's wonderful you know and the level of gratitude I was reading the Brunei Times and I was there you know I was so grateful to the Sultan because he's got this wonderful house and you know we've given it was incredible I mean where are people in this society grateful for when they when they buy a house and they've got enough money to do it or they're given a lovely flat to live in you know there's more gratitude to be found there than there it where it's our right you know so I think you know we have a lot to learn from those societies as much as so I think that that's where diversity and you know if there's a richness in that diversity as well but I think the model of it I think it's a brilliant model it's complex but it contains the very heart of God which is very different difficult for West and that's paradox when West have a problem to solve it when the East have a problem they want to live with it so yeah the Trinity is a paradox it's like the sound of one hand clapping how can there be one god or three person and even perhaps you know it's wonderful it's a lifetime's meditation I hope that answers what you're doing well I don't think that those are models I think the Western model the Trinity is post Hildegard yeah I think you know it's a model it's developed I think beyond that I think one has to think about Hildegard in the context of the doctrine of humors in the context of of a society where God is a given I mean that the Western model feeds Richard Dawkins of course because if what you've got is God up here in the world down here in some strings all you have to do is to cut the strings in your okay I mean it feeds in isn't it you know okay straightforward but if you have got the world as the body but much more much much much more difficult to to break that division so neatly so I think that one course it was the the illustration was in the Book of Hours which is post post Hildegard I'm not sure the date of the Rublev but icon but that's probably earlier but we don't know how much you know Eastern material was available in Western Europe at the time so we don't know how that split between orthodoxy and how much went you know was traveling around probably some of it was but we don't know in a sense what were those communications between the East and Orthodox traditions and the Western traditions so I wouldn't I what I would say is because over know again people who say she was ahead of her time said she was very much part of her time you know that was her time and when you look at that image of the of the you know the veins and the human being you can see that her visions are drawing on the stuff which is around at the time which isn't surprising but any sense that's a that's a a 21st century revisiting of looking back rather than one that originated there well the figure of wisdom is their wisdom as a figure with three wings one wing reaches heaven one ring reaches earth and interestingly because we always get heaven and earth in all our images but the third flies everywhere marvelous image of wisdom and that's her is and she is a wisdom theologian no no she has this notion and when we saw in that quotation for Mary Grey wisdom in wisdom theology God is intimately bound up with with creation and the much more dominant model so we have in a sense two strands of theology one is a much more separate model and we have a very linear model of God stretching across so God creates the world it goes all wrong the Sun comes redeems the world and at the end of time will not be judged so nice linear model stretched out in the the wisdom models the whole thing is much more circular it's going on all the time so redemption is always happening and so on it's not a once for all event the once for all event is revealing something which is a truth at the very heart of it all and so on so it's and God is intimately bound up with humanity and if we take the wisdom scriptures from the Old Testament they're marvelously practical document so if you throw a stone into your neighbor's garden they make their a stone back I mean you know I mean you know that's the way relationship works I mean it's a piece of practical advice and the essence of wisdom theology is the center point is incarnation what the world as the body of God says is the central doctrine of Christianity is incarnation that's you know okay we need redeeming but the central doctrine and we often forget it is that the God but God is intimately bound up with the world so that notion of the wisdom theology you see if we look at it as comes through history it goes along sort of here it pops its head up then of course the authorities get terribly worried by it because in general it's it's put by mystics who say I don't need you Pope Bishop Archbishop I don't need you lot because I've got a direct line to the spirit it so of course the authorities never like it so it gets dogged on the head and back it goes again then it sweeps up again in various figures starts to Dionysus the areopagus up through Hildegard tale the shout out and I we've got little pops of it all the way along the history but it doesn't sort of continue like the dominant streams of theology do and it says really and Mary Magdalene's the one if you look at the gospel of Mary Magdalene the kingdom of heaven is within so that notion and the mystic and the prophet are often the same person because in a sense they won't kowtow if the Spirit tells them to act in this way like the bishop she's gun to go as what was probably worse than excommunication actually which was to have to whisper the office not be able to sing for eight months but she'll risk that because she fears the Justice of God more than the Justice of men now that sort of person's a threat that's what Jesus was Jesus was a wisdom theologian I mean lots of things we associate with Jesus are simply straight quotations from the Hebrew wisdom scriptures you know so and he was crucified because he was a threat he's told people to you know the Pingdom of heaven was within that was the fundamental problem there in a sense so I think the notion of the mystic the prophet the notion of where wisdom theology sits but in wisdom theology God is constantly interacting now when you throw a stone into your neighbor's garden that's part of God you've messed up a bit yeah it's not something separate God isn't standing there a judge because think you know your neighbor you're in relationship with them one how'd you do that yeah go and sort it out so it's that wonderful intimate relationship of God does that soil does that answer the question absolutely whatever images we create of God like the Trinity they are an attempt to make some sense of the unknowable in that sense they're always flawed and in that sense they always teach us something of their good models and I think a good model always acknowledges that it always acknowledges my one of my colleagues at University of Teachers theology she writes on top of the board I may be wrong but and then gives her lecture so all knowledge is provisional and that is our humility it doesn't we don't know anything but it means we know enough to take the next step with integrity and that's all we're asked to do if we claim more than that they're actually what we do is fuel religious wars and they are the most dangerous because they're based on absolute certainty and they're the most dangerous wars of all yes no no no no no it's the Pope sends a commission to investigate it and once that's happened she's yes she can do that we don't know as with all of these things we have her autobiography but we can't put the visions in and things that we haven't got a coherent picture of her oh we haven't got any any I'm not sure that we've gotten many of the texts much really of the sermons and so on so I think we know that she did and we know that that was quite remarkable but we also know that the abysses had the power of bishops really because of course they were all interfacing with the aristocracy of course the bishops and the Abbas's were all you know also holding power in the world and there was that Network and so on operating so they were people of influence and some rich artists of star D&C her close friended in in there was she was a daughter of one of the nobles and she's given a convent you see and that's why she has to leave roofs Berg so I think there but I I think you're absolutely right there was infinitely more powerful women religious women in positions of authority in the church in the Middle Ages and we have got anywhere in the church today and that is that that is the truth of it now we can be very depressed about that and some people are particularly about what's happening around women bishops at the moment but um if you regard and I go back to these linear views of history and certain more circular views of history where all of us have to rework the same issues but usually with just different technology so the internet gives us a different technology to work out the same things that Hill that I was working out there not in a sense that circular view of history and so rather than being depressed what we say is the notion of gender and authority which is what's being played out and I was played out of course by Mary Magdalene's and Peter at the beginning we've got to keep all of those balls in play so we don't just stop tanked and say or give up you know they are wetter off then we've lost the struggle it's where a Darwinian view of evolution in cultural terms is not very helpful it works very well and since the natural world but I'm not sure that cultures evolved in that way they don't probe and I think that's we can't call some cultures primitive I think there's a completeness reading of the evolution if it's circular then we will have the same debate so in a sense she got excommunicated I'm working towards excommunication 80 it seems much since much better than being worked at the back of an old people's home oh he's got at least you're doing something that people noticed get on you're fighting for justice you know you're out there doing it so I think rather than being discouraged one thinks of ways and strategies in which it's more the Buddhist Buddhist wheels and things like this but that's the wisdom theology you know that we're all keep having to work these things out so we must we must be super skillful she was very skillful to get up firmed by the Pope and the Bernard of Clairvaux she wrote to first one is dismissed her was a no she wrote saying please you look at my visions and he wrote back and said you know that's very nice and that was the end of it it was only when the Pope affirmed her that Bernard of Clairvaux started to take some notice so she was skillful I'm a Foucauldian in many ways culturally and I think you know if you are at the bottom of the pile then you must be skillful and the way that you try and do it so you don't opt out it's not a cause for despair or depression it's a course our being skillful in trying to restore right relationship which it seems that that's about so I think you're right but I think it's a cause for being skillful not for despairing toiled always toiling now which means that we have to bring this to a close I personally I'm sure that many others found that both fascinating and very inspiring as well so I'd like to thank you today you

Channel: St Paul's Cathedral

Views: 50,146

Rating: 4.6034188 out of 5

Keywords: Sunday Forum, St Paul's Cathedral, St Paul's London, St Paul's, St Paul, London, Hildegard of Bingen, Theology, Mysticism, God, Christianity

Id: Vm-_cfCvjjc

Length: 55min 37sec (3337 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 22 2012