Hostname: page-component-669899f699-ggqkh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-28T23:35:33.843Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Confidence regained: Providence and prayer in the works of Catherine of Siena, Anne Conway and Simone Weil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2024

Katrin Koenig Open the ORCID record for Katrin Koenig [Opens in a new window]
Katrin Koenig*
Affiliation:
University of Heidelberg Ecumenical Institute, Heidelberg, Germany
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article I explore three ways of reflecting on faith in God's providence and correlative understandings of prayer. My study suggests a praxeological understanding of the doctrine of providence as tacit knowledge. First, I present the soteriological dialogical approach of Catherine of Siena, from her late medieval Dialogue on providence. Secondly, I analyse the quietist vitalist approach of the early modern English philosopher Anne Conway in her Principles of Philosophy. Thirdly, I reflect on the critical, non-interventionist approach of the French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil. I conclude by discussing the interrelation between providence and prayer.

Keywords

Anne ConwayCatherine of SienaprayerprovidenceSimone Weil
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 77 , Issue 4 , November 2024 , pp. 346 - 361
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

1 This paper was originally written for the Christian Theology Seminar at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, in the Lent Term of 2024. I would like to thank the Cambridge University Faculty of Divinity and Magdalene College, Cambridge, and all the people there, especially Professor David Fergusson with his ‘polyphonic approach towards the providence of God’, for the opportunity to join the Cambridge Faculty and Magdalene College as research scholar, for the rich research opportunities, and for the inspiring questions and conversations. Many thanks also to the Global Network for Theology and Religion for granting me the Karl Schlecht Stipend. I am especially grateful to Isabel Jahnke for her thorough proofreading and profound suggestions for the improvement of this article.

2 Wilder, Thornton, The Bridge of San Louis Rey (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 12Google Scholar.

3 Fergusson, David, The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach (Cambridge: CUP, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John Swinton, ‘Patience and Lament: Living Faithfully in the Presence of Suffering’, in The Providence of God pp. 275–90; Stump, Eleonore, Wandering in the Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: OUP, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Katherine Sonderegger, ‘The Doctrine of Providence’, in The Providence of God, pp. 144–57; Gössel, Johannes, ‘Schöpfungsrisiko oder Erlösungsgewissheit. Theologische Herausforderungen analytischer Vorsehungskonzeptionen’, in Kopf, Simon Maria and Essen, Georg (eds), Vorsehung und Handeln Gottes: analytische und kontinentale Perspektiven im Dialog, Bd. 331 (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 2023), pp. 149–66Google Scholar.

4 Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, trans. Noffke, Suzanne (New York: Paulist Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

5 Conway, Anne, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, eds Coudert, Allison P. and Corse, Taylor (Cambridge: CUP, 1999)Google Scholar.

6 Weil, Simone, The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind (London: Routledge, 2002)Google Scholar; Weil, Simone, Waiting for God (London: Routledge, 2021)CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

7 Cavalli, Giuliana, Catherine of Siena (New York/London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1998), pp. 89–150CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Noffke, Suzanne, Catherine of Siena. Vision Through a Distant Eye (New York: Authors Choice Press, 2006), pp. 87–105, 154–232Google Scholar.

8 Wild, Cornelia, Göttliche Stimme, Irdische Schrift: Dante, Petrarca und Caterina da Siena (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2016), pp. 96–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Cavallini, Catherine of Siena, pp.17–18.

10 Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, pp. 277–326. See also Tylus, Jane, ‘Mystical Literacy: Writing and Religious Women in Late Medieval Italy’, in Muessig, Carolyn, Ferzoco, George and Kienzle, Beverly M. (eds), A Companion to Catherine of Siena (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2012), pp. 155–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Noffke, Catherine of Siena, pp. 11–22.

12 Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, p. 277.

13 Cavallini, Catherine of Siena, pp. 23–5; cf. pp. 43–5, where she points out: ‘Knowledge of truth is then, the result of both knowledge of God and knowledge of self: the two are complementary and never to be separated.’

14 Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, p. 277; Cavallini, Catherine of Siena, pp. 34–50.

15 Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, p. 278. Cavallini, Catherine of Siena, pp. 5–7, 24–7.

16 Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, p. 278. Cf. Cavallini, Catherine of Siena, pp. 4–5; Noffke, Catherine of Siena, pp. 38–53.

17 Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, p. 279; Cavallini, Catherine of Siena, pp. 67–88.

18 Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, p. 292; Noffke, Catherine of Siena, pp. 23–30.

19 Noffke, Catherine of Siena: An Anthology Vol. 2, p. 672. Letter T369, to Stefano di Corrado Maconi, late December 1379. In this letter she writes that ‘God's love for us was so unspeakably crazy that, when we had become enemies because of our sin, God wanted to make us friends.’

20 Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, p. 279.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid.

26 Noffke, Catherine of Siena: An Anthology Vol. 1, p. 22, Letter T335, to Christofano, Cartusian, October or November 1377.

27 Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, p. 297.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid., p. 299.

31 Cavallini, Catherine of Siena, p. 37–8.

32 Noffke, Catherine of Siena: An Anthology Vol. 2, pp. 683–4, 689.

33 Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, p. 120.

34 Noffke, Catherine of Siena, pp. 65–73.

35 Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, p. 310; Cavallini, Catherine of Siena, p. 28.

36 Cavallini, Catherine of Siena, pp. 6–8; Noffke, Catherine of Siena, pp. 74–105.

37 Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, 25–27; cf. Cavallini, Catherine of Siena, p. 3, 131–2.

38 Cavallini, Catherine of Siena, p. 16.

39 Noffke, Catherine of Siena: An Anthology Vol. 2, pp. 672–3.

40 Ibid., p. 670 (Letter T301).

41 Ibid., p. 669.

42 Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, pp. 122–4; Noffke, Catherine of Siena: An Anthology Vol. 2, pp. 691–4.

43 Noffke, Catherine of Siena: An Anthology Vol. 2, p. 671. Noffke quotes Letter T91, to Agnesa di Francesco Pipino, written circa February 1379.

44 See Fergusson, The Providence of God, pp. 13–19.

45 Anne Conway, et al., The Conway Letters, p. 17; Douglas Hedley, David Leech (eds.), Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy (Cham: Springer, 2019), pp. 1–11; Douglas Hedley, and Christian Hengstermann (eds.), An Anthology of the Cambridge Platonists: Sources and Commentary (New York: Routledge, 2024).

46 Fergusson, The Providence of God, p. 114.

47 Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy.

48 See also Carol Wayne White, The Legacy of Anne Conway (1631–1679): Reverberations from a Mystical Naturalism (New York: State University of New York Press, 2008), pp. 4–9, 25–6.

49 See Sarah Hutton, Anne Conway: A Woman Philosopher (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), pp. 156–76.

50 Anne Conway, et al., The Conway Letters the Correspondence of Anne Viscountess Conway, Henry More, and Their Friends, 1642–1684, ed. Sarah Hutton (Oxford/New York: Clarendon Press, 2004), p. viii; White, The Legacy of Anne Conway (1631–1679), p. 22; Jonathan Head, ‘Anne Conway and George Keith on the “Christ within”’, Quaker Studies 23/2 (2018), pp. 161–77.

51 Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, p. 9.

52 Ibid., 10.

53 Ibid., 18.

54 Ibid., 25.

55 Ibid., 18.

56 Jaqueline Broad, ed., Women Philosophers of Seventeenth-Century England: Selected Correspondence (Oxford: OUP, 2019), pp. 86–8.

57 Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, p. 16.

58 Ibid., 10. Since she is mindful of Jewish and Islamic faith traditions as well, Conway prefers to speak about the Word and Spirit in God, rather than about ‘persons’. For a further investigation about her complex, unorthodox trinitarian theology, see Jonathan Head, The Philosophy of Anne Conway: God, Creation and the Nature of Time (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), pp. 115–28.

59 Compare Gottfried W. Leibniz, Confessio philosophi. Das Glaubensbekenntnis des Philosophen (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1994), pp. 41–4.

60 Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, p. 25.

61 Ibid., p. 26.

62 See Broad, Women Philosophers of Seventeenth-Century England, pp. 70–2.

63 Ibid., p. 85.

64 Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, p. 35.

65 Ibid., p. 27.

66 Broad, Women Philosophers of Seventeenth-Century England, p. 89; Head, The Philosophy of Anne Conway, pp. 133–50.

67 Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, p. 17.

68 White, The Legacy of Anne Conway (1631–1679), p. 23.

69 Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, p. 27. See also Head, ‘Anne Conway and George Keith’, pp. 161–3; Hutton, Anne Conway, pp. 177–219; Head, The Philosophy of Anne Conway, pp. 21–44, 115–23.

70 Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, p. 27.

71 White, The Legacy of Anne Conway (1631–1679), pp. 29, 20.

72 Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, trans. Ros Schwartz (Dublin: Penguin, 2023), pp. 200–35.

73 David Tracy, Filaments: Theological Profiles, vol. 2 of Selected Essays (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2020), p. 376.

74 Weil, The Need for Roots, pp. 216–8.

75 Ibid., p. 201.

76 Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 1–3.

77 Simone Weil, ‘The Love of God and Affliction’, in Malcolm Muggeridge (ed.), Simone Weil, Waiting for God (London/New York: Routledge, 2021), pp. 71–88.

78 Simone Weil, ‘Forms of the Implicit Love of God’, in Simone Weil, Waiting for God, pp. 89–155.

79 Simone Weil, ‘Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God’, in Simone Weil, Waiting for God, pp. 61–70.

80 Simone Weil, ‘Spiritual Autobiography’, in Simone Weil, Waiting for God, pp. 29–30; Simone Weil, ‘Concerning the “Our Father”’, in Simone Weil, Waiting for God, pp. 156–66.

81 Weil, The Need for Roots, p. 216; Gustave Thibon, ‘Introduction’, in Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr (London/New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. xxi, xxxiv–xxxv.

82 Weil, The Need for Roots, p. 218.

83 Ibid., pp. 216–8.

84 Ibid., p. 219.

85 Ibid., pp. 219–20.

86 Ibid., p. 22.

87 Weil, ‘Spiritual Autobiography’, p. 27.

88 Weil, The Need for Roots, pp. 221–3.

89 Ibid., p. 209.

90 Ibid., pp. 222–5.

91 Ibid., p. 203 (cf. Mark 4.26–29); Thibon, ‘Introduction’, p. xxii.

92 Weil, The Need for Roots, p. 209.

93 Simone Weil, ‘The love of God and affliction’, in Simone Weil, Waiting for God, p. 78–87. I am especially grateful to George Newlands for hinting at the relevance of the theologia crucis for providential thought.

94 Weil, ‘Spiritual Autobiography’, p. 31.

95 David Pollard, The Continuing Legacy of Simone Weil (Lanham: Hamilton Books, 2015), p. 27.

96 Weil, ‘Spiritual Autobiography’, p. 32.

97 Pollard, The Continuing Legacy of Simone Weil, p. 40: ‘Repeatedly Weil insisted that the action involved in prayer was attention and attention was waiting. At the heart of the love of God was this attention and waiting and it was the quality which was also at the heart of the love of neighbor.’

98 Weil, ‘Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies’, p. 61.

99 Ibid., p. 67.

100 Weil, ‘Spiritual Autobiography’, p. 31.

101 Weil, ‘Concerning the “Our Father”’, pp. 156–7.

102 Ibid., pp. 165–6.

103 Fergusson, The Providence of God, pp. 11–12, 297–305.

104 Ernst, Christoph, and Paul, Heike (eds.), Präsenz und implizites Wissen. Zur Interdependenz zweier Schlüsselbegriffe der Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2013), pp. 9–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

105 Fergusson, The Providence of God, pp. 322–30.

106 Sonderegger, ‘The Doctrine of Providence’, pp. 144–57.

107 Stump, Wandering in the Darkness; Swinton, ‘Patience and Lament’, pp. 275–90; Peng-Keller, Simon, Geistbestimmtes Leben. Spiritualität (3. Aufl.) (Zürich: TVZ, 2018)Google Scholar; Peng-Keller, Simon, Überhelle Präsenz, Kontemplation als Gabe, Praxis und Lebensform (2. Aufl.) (Würzburg: Echter, 2021)Google Scholar.

108 Swinton, ‘Patience and Lament’, pp. 275–80.

109 Peng-Keller, Überhelle Präsenz, pp. 47ff.