Introduction

Abstract

There is an essential link between theology and ethics, metaphysics and spirituality. Throughout all religions, the practice of knowing or loving God is considered to have a direct bearing on self-transformation: an orientation to the divine evinces a reorientation to our neighbors. The divine-human relationship is though more than a means to an end but is an end in itself. But if this divine were considered completely mysterious, an epistemic problem would arise, for how might we say anything about something that is wholly other? Merold West-phal describes the Wholly Other as that which enters my experience on its own terms and not mine, as that which permanently exceeds the forms and categories of my transcendental ego and permanently surprises my horizons of expectations (Westphal 3). “Touching transcendence” takes this as the way to begin a conversation about the relationship between transcendence and immanence or transcendence and embodiment.

In a silence Without any appearing A wonderful touch A kind of river that flows. Intimacy exists beyond nearness, Bodily memory of the contact Engendering a running liquid Cool and continuous. Strange mystery of the living.

—Luce Irigaray, Prières quotidiennes