...obsessio is the Question of your existence, theologically speaking. What's the location of brokenness in the world or in your life?I think the interest for me lies in its resonance with my own experience and as a result a sense that this is theology for spiritual directors and accompaniers.
The epiphania, by contrast, is the experience (or hope) of an Answer to the obsessio: Experimental Theology: Search Term Friday: Theological Worlds
In my own experience and observation of what I see in others, it seems to me that the obsessio that we have is different one to another. Some people are all about guilt and dealing with it. They often gravitate to theologies where guilt is explicitly in focus. Arguably western Catholicism and classical Evangelicalism are likely destinations for the 'guilt obsessio'. It's not my obsessio, and although I am some variety of Evangelical, it has tended to leave me cold. For me the obsessio has been meaning of life; facing down the despair of a god-absent universe. To be sure sin finds a place within that, but it's not my starting place.
In the case of the guilt-haunted, the epiphania is about amazing grace and the great Transaction. For the meaning-hungry, the epiphania is about the God who is there and calls us in Christ.
Obviously, I'll have to read the book to see whether I'm correctly guessing the kind of thing that is meant. But even if I've misconstrued the basic idea, it seems to me that what I've just described has resonance. I'm starting to wonder what the other obsessios might be. Search for Truth? Knowing what is Good? Finding harmony? Some of this begins to seem like it might fit with the enneagram which identifies or at least tries to help a person to identify a core prone-ness to sin and its flip-side a core value set.
If any readers have any further insight or knowledge about these things, do comment or be in touch in other ways.
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