불완전의 영성을 향한 제언

Abstract

Despite the today’s development of academic research and the growing interest of the public in the field of spirituality, a tendency can still be found, in which the term spirituality is largely identified with such phenomena as the perfect integration of the personality through the process of transcendental experiences, the complete control of human desires and passions, or simply the mystical awakening. This tendency is related, I suppose, to the insufficient understanding of the concept of ‘perfection,’ one of the concepts that indicates the praxis of spirituality. This essay aims at making a modest proposal for a spirituality of imperfection as an effective response to the aforementioned, distorted view of spirituality. It is the spirituality, in which with the epistemological presupposition of the impossibility of achieving perfection, one is enabled to recognize and accept his/her imperfections and failures, grows in the awareness of the dynamics of his/her authentic desires, and lives the life of ‘the mystic wanderer.’ What is to be done in the main body of this essay for this proposal is in the first place to investigate Gregory of Nyssa’s understanding of perfection as shown in his later treatise on the spiritual life, The Life of Moses. In Gregory’s view, achieving the perfection in virtue is an impossible reality. Related to the unlimited nature of perfection, this impossibility derives fundamentally from the infinity of God. For him, thus, Christian perfection is the process, called “eternal progress,” whereby one continues to walk into the ‘darkness’ of the divine reality and so due to the ardent desire of God. It is not so much, as he puts it, seeing God in the face as following the back of God. In the following chapter we will explore Philip Sheldrake’s understanding of spirituality, in which the notion of perfection itself is problamatized. According to Sheldrake, spirituality has much to do with the continuous recognition and acceptance of one’s imperfections and of the necessity of ongoing conversion and also the perpetual movement toward God. In what he calls the “spirituality of desire,” desire is the locus where the reality of God is present and the “essential self” resides. Human desires and the desire for God are not the two different realities but one in their deepest level. The mystic wanderer, who is obsessed with desire, lives the life of crossing the boundaries. In the conclusion, the spiritual theological implications of the spirituality of imperfection are briefly provided in the context both of the definition of spirituality and of the practice of prayer.