Exploring Lost Dimensions in Christian Mysticism PDF Download

Author: Louise Nelstrop
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317137345
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
’Mystical theology’ has developed through a range of meanings, from the hidden dimensions of divine significance in the community’s interpretation of its scriptures to the much later ’science’ of the soul’s ascent into communion with God. The thinkers and questions addressed in this book draws us into the heart of a complicated, beautiful, and often tantalisingly unfinished conversation, continuing over centuries and often brushing allusively into parallel concerns in other religions. Raising fundamental matters of epistemology, representation, metaphysics, and divine reality, contributors approach the mystical from postmodern, feminist, sociological and historical perspectives through thinkers such as Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas, Catherine of Siena, Ignatius of Loyola, William James, Evelyn Underhill, Ernst Troeltsch, Rudolf Otto, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-Louis Chrétien. Medieval and early modern radical prophetic approaches are also explored. This book includes new essays by Sarah Apetrei, Tina Beattie, Raphel Cadenhead, Oliver Davies, Philip Endean, Brian FitzGerald, Ann Loades, George Pattison, Simon D. Podmore, Joel D.S. Rasmussen, and Johannes Zachhuber.

Author: Louise Nelstrop
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317137353
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
’Mystical theology’ has developed through a range of meanings, from the hidden dimensions of divine significance in the community’s interpretation of its scriptures to the much later ’science’ of the soul’s ascent into communion with God. The thinkers and questions addressed in this book draws us into the heart of a complicated, beautiful, and often tantalisingly unfinished conversation, continuing over centuries and often brushing allusively into parallel concerns in other religions. Raising fundamental matters of epistemology, representation, metaphysics, and divine reality, contributors approach the mystical from postmodern, feminist, sociological and historical perspectives through thinkers such as Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas, Catherine of Siena, Ignatius of Loyola, William James, Evelyn Underhill, Ernst Troeltsch, Rudolf Otto, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-Louis Chrétien. Medieval and early modern radical prophetic approaches are also explored. This book includes new essays by Sarah Apetrei, Tina Beattie, Raphel Cadenhead, Oliver Davies, Philip Endean, Brian FitzGerald, Ann Loades, George Pattison, Simon D. Podmore, Joel D.S. Rasmussen, and Johannes Zachhuber.

Author: Jason M. Baxter
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 1493429086
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This brief, accessibly written volume introduces key figures, texts, and themes of the mystical tradition and shows how and why the mystics can speak to the church today. Jason Baxter, an expert educator and storyteller, explains that the mystical tradition offers a more robust understanding of God than our current shallow conceptions. Featuring engagement with primary sources and suitable for use in a variety of courses, this book argues that the mystics have much to say to contemporary Christians searching for authentic modes of spirituality.

Author: Mark G. Boyer
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532642237
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Christ Our Passover Has Been Sacrificed examines the paschal mystery as it is presented throughout the liturgical year in The Roman Missal. After offering an in-depth definition of the paschal mystery the author guides the reader through Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost, and more, mining the riches of paschal mystery spirituality. Biblical accounts interpret the death and resurrection of Jesus; liturgical texts in The Roman Missal present a rich seam of spiritual truth for the reader to apply to his or her life. By remembering Jesus' death and resurrection, Roman Catholics celebrate daily dying and rising to new life. The author serves as a guide through paschal mystery spirituality, while also noting the mystical theology--reflections on experiences of God--represented by the prayers in The Roman Missal, particularly those dealing with Jesus' suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, and gift of the Spirit. Through reflections and meditation questions, readers are invited to name their own personally transforming mystical experiences, which connect them to God in deep levels and move them outward into the community to share spirituality.

Author: Louise Nelstrop
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317166663
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This book examines the relationship between transcendence and immanence within Christian mystical and apophatic writings. Original essays from a range of leading, established, and emerging scholars in the field focus on the roles of language, signs, and images, and consider how mystical theology might contribute to contemporary reflection on the Word incarnate. This collection of essays re-examines works from such canonical figures as Eckhart, Augustine, Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius, Nicolas of Cusa, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, along with the philosophical thought of Iris Murdoch, Jacques Lacan, and Martin Heidegger, and the contemporary phenomena of the Emerging Church. Presenting new readings of key ideas in mystical theology, and renewed engagement with the visionary and the everyday, the therapeutic and the transformative, these essays question how we might think about what may lie between transcendence and immanence.

Author: Ulrich Schmiedel
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319408321
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
This study confronts the current crisis of churches. In critical and creative conversation with the German theologian Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923), Ulrich Schmiedel argues that churches need to be “elasticized” in order to engage the “other.” Examining contested concepts of religiosity, community, and identity, Schmiedel explores how the closure of church against the sociological “other” corresponds to the closure of church against the theological “other.” Taking trust as a central category, he advocates for a turn in the interpretation of Christianity—from “propositional possession” to “performative project,” so that the identity of Christianity is “done” rather than “described.” Through explorations of classical and contemporary scholarship in philosophy, sociology, and theology, Schmiedel retrieves Troeltsch’s interdisciplinary thinking for use in relation to the controversies that encircle the construction of community today. The study opens up innovative and instructive approaches to the investigation of the practices of Christianity, past and present. Eventually, church emerges as a “work in movement,” continually constituted through encounters with the sociological and the theological “other.”

Author: Louise Nelstrop
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317090918
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries secular French scholars started re-engaging with religious ideas, particularly mystical ones. Mysticism in the French Tradition introduces key philosophical undercurrents and trajectories in French thought that underpin and arise from this engagement, as well as considering earlier French contributions to the development of mysticism. Filling a gap in the literature, the book offers critical reflections on French scholarship in terms of its engagement with its mystical and apophatic dimensions. A multiplicity of factors converge to shape these encounters with mystical theology: feminist, devotional and philosophical treatments as well as literary, historical, and artistic approaches. The essays draw these into conversation. Bringing together an international and interdisciplinary range of contributions from both new and established scholars, this book provides access to the melting pot out of which the mystical tradition in France erupted in the twenty-first century, and from which it continues to challenge theology today.

Author: David Lewin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317090934
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Exploration of the interface between mystical theology and continental philosophy is a defining feature of the current intellectual and even devotional climate. But to what extent and in what depth are these disciplines actually speaking to one another; or even speaking about the same phenomena? This book draws together original contributions by leading and emerging international scholars, delineating emerging debates in this growing and dynamic field of research, and spanning mystical and philosophical traditions from the ancient, to the medieval, modern, and contemporary. At the heart of which lies Meister Eckhart, perhaps the single most influential Christian mystic for modern times. The book is organised around significant historical and contemporary figures who speak across the intersections of philosophy and theology, offering new insights into key interlocutors such as Pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, Isaac Luria, Eckhart, Hegel, Heidegger, Marion, Kierkegaard, Deleuze, Laruelle, and Žižek. Designed both to contribute to current trends in mystical theology and philosophy, and elicit dialogue and debate from further afield, this book speaks within an emerging space exploring the retrieval of the mystical within a post-secular context.

Author: John Arblaster
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317090969
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
The question of the ‘structure’ of the human person is central to many mystical authors in the Christian tradition. This book focuses on the specific anthropology of a series of key authors in the mystical tradition in the medieval and early modern Low Countries. Their view is fundamentally different from the anthropology that has commonly been accepted since the rise of Modernity. This book explores the most important mystical authors and texts from the Low Countries including: William of Saint-Thierry, Hadewijch, Pseudo-Hadewijch, John of Ruusbroec, Jan van Leeuwen, Hendrik Herp, and the Arnhem Mystical Sermons. The most important aspects of mystical anthropology are discussed: the spiritual nature of the soul, the inner-most being of the soul, the faculties, the senses, and crucial metaphors which were used to explain the relationship of God and the human person. Two contributions explicitly connect the anthropology of the mystics to contemporary thought. This book offers a solid and yet accessible overview for those interested in theology, philosophy, history, and medieval literature.

Author: Christopher C. H. Cook
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317066189
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
In Mystical Theology and Contemporary Spiritual Practice several leading scholars explore key themes within the Christian mystical tradition, contemporary and historical. The overall aim of the book is to demonstrate the relevance of mystical theology to contemporary spiritual practice. Attention is given to the works of Baron von Hugel, Vladimir Lossky, Margery Kempe, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Merton, and Francisco de Osuna, as well as to a wide range of spiritual practices, including pilgrimage, spiritual direction, contemplative prayer and the quotidian spirituality of the New Monasticism. Christian mystical theology is shown to be a living tradition, which has vibrant and creative new expressions in contemporary spiritual practice. It is argued that mystical theology affirms something both ordinary and extraordinary which is fundamental to the Christian experience of prayer.