The Fourth Dimension: Christian Spiritual Experience and the Relationship with Space
In the age that has known Flatland, the movement of the Flat Earth Society, to whom the third dimension looks already excessive, seems to be gradually losing the memory of introspection that had characterized Christian spirituality from the beginnings. This field of knowledge, while not attaching an...
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
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Published: |
[publisher not identified]
2023
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In: |
Annali di studi religiosi
Year: 2023, Volume: 24, Pages: 29-38 |
Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
Summary: | In the age that has known Flatland, the movement of the Flat Earth Society, to whom the third dimension looks already excessive, seems to be gradually losing the memory of introspection that had characterized Christian spirituality from the beginnings. This field of knowledge, while not attaching any importance to the physical extent that allows us to consider the volumes of things, had offered human existence a further dimension, intimate but real and tangible. Precisely because the human body is elected to be the seat of experience, just as one would for the observation of a constellation in a distant galaxy or of an infinitesimal physical particle, the laboratory in which the experiment takes place needs the appropriate instruments and its structure acquires absolute importance. For this reason, some mystics have sought the means appropriate to their personality to pursue the objective. They have sometimes enclosed themselves amid small spaces, walled themselves up alive, withdrawn into a cave or a forest to experiment in solitary places, far from human society, the search for the spiritual dimension. Others, however, have preferred to display their spiritual quest for all to see, hoisting themselves up on a column, stylites for example, or using the various forms of asceticism as a means of persuasive communication, see manipulation, with the aim more of appearing than of being. This paper proposes a semiotic investigation of the four spatial dimensions convened by some representative examples from the history of Christian spirituality and the perspectives more or less in keeping with the evangelical message they are supposed to be inspired by. |
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ISSN: | 2284-3892 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Annali di studi religiosi
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.14598/Annali_studi_relig_24202303 |