Abstracts and Book Reviews

Review: John of the Cross: Desire, Transformation, and Selfhood

Sam Hole’s impressive monograph John of the Cross: Desire, Transformation, and Selfhood, published in 2020, offers a learned reflection on the concept of desire across the totality of St. John of the Cross’ written works, emphasizing the distinctiveness of sanjuanist thought surrounding the issue and how it figures into his account of the structure of spiritual ascent. Many scholars focus on the apophatic/negative dimensions of John’s thought, which makes sense in light of common readings of sanjuanist concepts like the “dark night” of the soul and spiritual aridity. That said, Hole’s book does well to demonstrate that there are positive/structured aspects in his theology as well, especially in his poetry. The author aptly describes St. John’s theological and philosophical influences, but he does so in a way that helps to draw out what is unique and particular in John. Though the content of the book and its sources are at times complex, Hole writes lucidly and the book should be of interest to anyone who wishes to engage a serious study that pertains to mysticism and theological anthropology in the thought of St. John of the Cross. That said, prior exposure to some of John’s own written works is certainly helpful and can only increase the reader’s appreciation of the book’s argument.

After a comprehensive outline of his forthcoming argument in the book’s introduction, Chapter 1 constitutes Hole’s summary of the way John’s thought has been received generally, but it is by no means an exhaustive survey. He notes importantly that in studies of John, scholars tend to focus on either his treatises at the expense of his poetry or vice versa. Thus, he also asserts his own desire to view John’s work, both his poetry and his more strictly theological writings, as a cohesive whole. Likewise, he indicates that both sides of St. John’s literary corpus inform one another and should be seen as intrinsically linked if we wish to understand John’s broader theological vision. 

Chapter 2 begins with a brief biography of John followed by a helpful comparison of John and Aquinas as far as their views on desire, making helpful notes such as that John emphasizes more than Aquinas “the desiring nature of divine love itself.” (63). Hole seeks to contextualize St. John’s thought so as to draw out what is distinct within it. While indebted to Thomas Aquinas on questions such as how we ought to understand cognition and anthropology, John is distinct with respect to other things such as contemplation, as well as the characteristically Carmelite emphasis on Elijah and Mary pervasive throughout his literary corpus. Likewise, Hole notes the role of Augustinian interiority on John’s view of the soul and John’s “elevation of the memory to the status of spiritual faculty alongside the intellect and the will” (78). Hole insists that while one can readily recognize Augustinian, Thomistic, and Dionysian lines of thought, as well as the influence of such traditions of Italian Renaissance poetry and allegorical readings of the Song of Songs, in his writings, it is still better to acknowledge John’s system of thought concerning desire as something distinctly sanjuanist. That said, a fuller argument for this chapter could be made by way of more extensive textual engagement with all of the pertinent authors.

Chapter 3 is Hole’s account of John’s reworking of the various influences described in Chapter 2 with a turn to language, form, and imagery in John’s poetry. He discusses the biblically framed Romances, a series of nine poems, with an eye to how they are themselves critical articulations of John’s theological doctrines of subjects like the Trinity, for which the element of “communicativity” is crucial to understanding the intrinsic relationality of it (105). He emphasizes that the poetic mode allows John to rely not on merely propositional statements to expound his theology, but also on dimensions such as narrative, linguistic form, and the like to communicate his ideas more fully and aesthetically. Additionally, Hole makes a strong case for the way in which St. John’s reliance on the opening of John’s Gospel, known as the Johannine Prologue (John 1:1-18), for his outworking of his conception of creation and its relationship to the mystery of the Incarnation helps to paradoxically highlight the “tensions surrounding the use of language” and its limits in describing the nature of the divine life of the Trinity (111). Hole sees this notion upheld across the glosa and copla poems as well.

Hole then explores the Dark Night, LLama de amor viva, and Spiritual Canticles poems as critical to understanding John’s conception of desire. With respect to the Dark Night, he indicates that the “Noche” is, on the one hand, a poem rife with erotic imagery and structured by the lover-beloved dynamic, which is of course not without biblical precedent in the Song of Songs. However, on the other, it also serves to portray the limits of language in expressing loving desire, noting that the lovers “never speak directly to one another” (119). Thus, the poem’s mysterious poetic imagery, as well as disjointed language and syntax, allow it to privilege the dynamics of desire and mystery over a particular narrative.

The LLama, known in English as the Living Flame of Love, expresses even more direct sensual/sexual images, which focus on symbols like fire, cautery, and light, as opposed to the darkness of the night. In Hole’s estimation, these images aid in John’s demonstration of how desire can be transformative as far as how one perceives the created order. Lastly, Hole addresses the Spiritual Canticle, with attention to problems in its manuscript tradition and its reliance on other commentaries on the Song of Songs as source material. In keeping with this tradition, the Cántico explores themes such as the Bride-Bridegroom dynamic of the Song, marriage, gaze, and so forth. Moreover, Hole’s examination of St. John’s poetic works set him up to expound upon the theme of desire in John’s treatises as well in keeping with his central proposition that understanding desire on John requires the reception of his whole literary corpus.

            Chapter 4 discusses the necessity for the purification of desire in John’s thought through the Ascent to Mount Carmel and the Dark Night, as well as how this relates to a transformation of selfhood. Hole points out that one tricky aspect in John is working out the chronological relationship between the active and passive phases of the night, but Hole suggests that the active is prior to the passive. He then notes that for John, our appetites must be purified and transformed so as to draw the will away from the created order and towards God. Beginning with the night of sense in the Ascent, St. John believes we begin the admittedly sometimes “painful” process of negation and letting go of the things to which our souls have previously clung, like memories and appetites, in pursuit of Christlikeness (139). Likewise, Hole points out the importance of nada/“nothingness” as a key dimension of the path of ascent. Thus, he turns to the passive night, which entails a movement from meditation to contemplation, no longer relying on sensory images and steadily increasing in one’s “loving awareness” of God (146).

This transformative turning inward should result in greater self-knowledge and love for others, but there is still further development in the night of spirit. The active night of spirit is that which asks the soul, with its “spiritual faculties of intellect, memory, and will,” to proceed “by the ‘dark’ means of faith, hope, and love” (148). Here, the intellect is understood in terms of faith and a form of knowing that takes place by unknowing and the “deliberate dismantling of all ideas about God,” along with assumptions about the created world around us (151). This is the means by which true union with the incomprehensible God can take root. Memory, understood in terms of hope, is also purified during this stage insofar as it must let go of recollections of past events, which helps to free the intellect from fantasy. The will, associated with charity, also undergoes a transformation on the level of removing passions and purifying appetites so as to unite the will to God’s. Finally, the passive night of spirit involves the transformation of the entire soul, in which God instructs the soul secretly in the perfection of love without the individual being consciously aware of what is happening (158). Though this is a period of affliction, it is something that generates profound and fiery love for God. Moreover, this chapter provides a concise overview of the progressive transformation of the soul that takes place within the stages of night.

            Chapter 5 addresses the theme of union in the Canticle and the Living Flame of Love, which describe the final stages of spiritual ascent for St. John. These works stand apart from the Dark Night and Ascent with respect to John’s use of imagery, metaphor, and poetic form. After exploring how longing for a vision of divine beauty is worked out in John’s commentary on his own poetry on the Song of Songs, Hole explains how the Holy Spirit is involved in the soul’s spiritual betrothal/marriage to God. Hole argues that in the Cántico, through heavy use of sensory metaphors, John is able to depict “the Spirit’s progressive incorporation of the soul into the inner life of the Trinity” (171). This notion again emphasizes how contemplation is less about knowledge than it is about something relational, namely love.

In the Flame, the concept of union in John is brought into further relief with stronger imagery and even clearer pneumatological and trinitarian elements. It describes the Spirit as the touch of a flame and of love so consuming that it transforms the soul itself into a “cautery of blazing fire” (179). Hole argues that John’s description of how the Spirit draws the soul into an intimate union with God reflects God’s own desire for union with the soul, as well as the love between the persons of the Trinity. Turning to the question of anthropology, the author notes that in these texts, there is less emphasis on the transformation of memory, along with discussion of the “substance” of the soul as that which represents “the unity of the soul across time,” as well as how it is not always a highly technical term in John, such as when referring to the touching of substances as an allusion to the soul’s being incorporated into God (187). To summarize, the Canticle and Flame express the way in which after the dark night, the purified soul can begin to apprehend that it has always been the object of God’s desire, the same desire which is communicated between the persons of the Trinity.

            Overall, Sam Hole’s stimulating book John of the Cross: Desire, Transformation, and Selfhood is a worthwhile read for anyone who wishes to understand the concept of desire in St. John, as well as in the history of mystical thought in general and how it might speak to theology in the present age. The book is an important contribution insofar as it helps to elucidate the ways in which the mystical tradition offers an antidote to phenomena such as hyper-rationalism, which has obvious influence today in fields such as psychology, but sometimes even reduces the Church’s theological imagination. Hole suggests in his conclusion that St. John’s conception of desire is also relevant today insofar as he understands it as something that can be transformed and is not “static” (195). In other words, John’s thought on desire amounts to a real affirmation that people are capable of change, that dedicated prayer and openness to God’s grace are genuinely efficacious.

The book also opens up space for further interdisciplinary studies that seek to understand certain terms such as “fantasy” and “sign” and themes including speech and communication in dialogue with the psychoanalytic tradition, as thinkers like Freud and Lacan are mentioned only in passing in the text. Likewise, Hole makes the suggestion that John’s view of desire is of importance with respect to how it stands against twentieth century secular readings of desire in the vein of Marx, Nietzsche, and others. Though some readers may struggle to make sense of the tension between the apophaticism in John alongside Hole’s argument, which posits a strong conception of desire as a defining feature of John, on the whole the book is compelling and intellectually generative.