Abstract

The category of divine pathos had got its strongest expression in Abraham J. Heschel. The prophet has no ideas and concepts about God, the prophet is one who undergoes a transitive action of God. It is not a fusion with God, it is about being affected by the pathos of God. For Heschel the mystical experience is an ecstasy of human being; revelation is an ecstasy of God. It is not God that is an experience of human being; human being is an experience of God. It derives from this not proper an unitive mystic, but a sympathetic mystic, which translates as a human response to the pains of God in the pains of the world. What the prophets testify is not the essence of the divine, but his pathos, his concern with human misery. The divine pathos is like a bridge thrown over the abyss that separates the human being from God.