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  • Sacrifice and Delight in the Mystical Theologies of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon by Bo Karen Lee
  • John J. Conley S. J. (bio)
Sacrifice and Delight in the Mystical Theologies of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon. Bo Karen Lee. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014. xiv + 208 pp. $29. ISBN 978-0-268-03391-0.

In her penetrating study of spirituality, Bo Karen Lee rehabilitates two of the era’s theological writers, Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–78) and Jeanne Guyon (1648–1717). At first glance, the two women could not seem more dissimilar. A Calvinist who spent much of her life in Holland, van Schurman gained a reputation as the most erudite woman in Europe. A master of Latin, biblical languages, and theological doctrine, she created a sensation with her admittance to lectures at the University of Utrecht. The mysterious “woman behind the curtain” at Utrecht’s lecture hall, van Schurman became the symbol of the woman scholar who had successfully brooked gender prejudice and proved herself a preeminent theologian. Possessing little formal education, the French Catholic Madame Guyon was a prolific author of religious pamphlets guiding the soul to mystical union through progressive annihilation of the self. Each author found herself punished by her own denomination — van Schurman by the Dutch Calvinist Church when she joined the controversial Labadist religious community in 1669 and Guyon by the Catholic Church when she was condemned for alleged Quietist opinions in 1694 and subsequently imprisoned by Louis XIV. Despite disavowal by their religious communities, van Schurman and Guyon maintained life-long loyalties to Protestant and Catholic doctrine respectively.

Behind these divergent lives and theologies, Lee discovers a common and paradoxical spirituality. Both authors insist on a radical self-denial that can lead to delight and ecstasy: “Guyon and van Schurman’s understanding of desire and delight provides a key insight into their theology of sacrifice. Self-denial — as opposed to self-hatred or self-effacement — is for them ultimately life-giving” (5). This analysis of the paradoxical vision of delight in God as the Christian’s summum bonum and of the self-destruction required for such joyful possession guides Lee’s close readings of the two authors’ texts.

Lee’s careful reading of van Schurman highlights the importance of intima notitia in her account of religious knowledge. In her earlier works, van Schurman had stressed the utility of scientia, scholarly knowledge, in developing an accurate portrait of God. Her erudite mastery of biblical languages and biblical criticism exemplified this academic approach. As she later shifted toward a more pietistic [End Page 208] theology, rooted in the Labadist emphasis on personal religious experience, van Schurman renounced her earlier scholarly approach as sterile. She now insisted that authentic knowledge of God required the Christian to undergo complete self-denial to acquire an intimate knowledge of God. An overthrow of the self was needed to enter into this intimate grasp of God.

In her analysis of the vocabulary used by van Schurman to depict this state of abandonment and unitive knowledge, Lee argues that singleness of heart is the principal trait of this spiritual disposition: “As seen in the frequent appearance of self-encompassing terms such as total, alone, and nothing, it is evident that singleness of heart is of central importance. . . . No other attachments are to have the slightest leverage in the heart. According to this understanding, undivided affection, desire, and attention are prerequisites for attaining the supreme good. This is the precise purpose of self-denial” (31). As Lee astutely points out, van Schurman avoids the language of self-annihilation frequently used by Guyon and other mystical writers in the period. The self-denial here requires the abandonment of personal ambition and desire as one surrenders oneself completely to Christ, who kindles a new joy in the abandoned soul. Lee carefully draws out the restrained Christological basis of van Schurman’s version of spiritual abandonment.

In interpreting Guyon’s spiritual doctrine, Lee admits that the task is more difficult. Guyon’s effusive style, often close to a type of automatic writing, abets numerous contradictions and dense theological arguments. She notes that...

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