Ysabel of Andia: the mystical experience

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleYsabel de Andia: experienţa mistică
3. Language term Romanian
4. lemma category Orthodox theological tradition and practice > Patristic studies - Scientific theories and disciplines > Religious studies - Key thinkers - Concepts of knowledge and modes of reasoning > Mysticism and Orthodox spiritual experience
5. lemma work Bădiliţă, Cristian [Author]. Ysabel of Andia: the mystical experience
6. lemma manifestations Stiinta dragoste credinta. Convorbiri cu patrologi europeni. [Science faith love. Conversations with European patrologists]
7. Keywords Early Church Fathers - Occidental mysticism - Oriental mysticism - Dionysius the Areopagite - Evagrius Ponticus
8. Citations
   1. 176-202
9. Lemma body

   1. This chapter reproduces a dialogue between the author, Cristian Badilita and the Spanish theologian Ysabel de Andia. De Andia is Chargée de recherches at CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) and Professor of patristics at the seminar in Issy-les-Moulineaux. She studied philosophy and, after a thesis on Heidegger, whose student she had been for a while, she moved from phenomenology to the study of the Fathers of the Church. She became an expert in both Eastern and Western patristic tradition; she attends the meetings in Bosé in northern Italy and holds in Vienna scientific and religious seminars, with an underlying ecumenical spirit. She also paints Orthodox icons, following the authentic Eastern iconographic tradition.

      The conversation between her and Badilita revolved around Christian mysticism, focusing on the pseudo-Dionysian corpus.

      She also recalls other "Eastern” experiences that she had in the French secular environment. She has often pointed out the schizoid image of the mystical phenomenon. Indeed, opinio communis is that Eastern mysticism is bright and Western mysticism is rather dark. In this dialogue, she clarifies this misunderstanding, after which she goes on to talk about theology in Dionysius. According to her, his merit is to have established the three distinctions: cataphatic or affirmative, apophatic or negative, and par éminence.

      De Andia also comments on the Christian "neoplatonism”, as well as on Andrew Louth’s book on the origin of Christian mysticism. She points out the importance of having brought up the dramatic rupture between theology and mysticism. She also shows how theology can be developed outside the mystical experience. According to her, it was Maximus the Confessor the first to feel the need to reconcile dogmatic and mystical theology. She also analyses the influence of Dyonisius, and especially of Evagrius, on Eastern spirituality. She then talks about the causes and consequences of the divorce between mysticism and dogmaticism in the West, about the Aufklärung's lights as opposed to the "darkness" of mystical theology, about objective versus subjective mysticism, about the role of Dionysius in the Western Christian tradition, and finally about Heidegger and Edith Stein.