Page 221 of 335: studies 2,201 to 2,210 of 3,347, newest first. Back to the mystical experience overview
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology February 25, 2020 Andrew Louth
This chapter argues that the heart of the ‘mystical’ in the Christian faith is inalienably liturgical. Despite the fact that modern use of the ‘mystical’, and especially ‘mysticism’, is concerned wholly with the experience of the individual, whether in the context of the sacramental life or outside it, the root meaning of the mystical in Christian understanding is bound up with the sacraments,...
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology February 25, 2020 Kevin L. Hughes
This chapter traces the pattern of reading and relating to the scriptural that was intimately woven into the fabric of mystical theology for more than a millennium of Christian practice. While the ‘spiritual interpretation of scripture’ is usually considered as a technical method of biblical exegesis, Henri de Lubac argued that it was less a literary technique than a spiritual itinerary. But...
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology February 25, 2020 Douglas E. Christie
The Christian mystical tradition gives expression to a varied, ambiguous, and shifting understanding of creation. The dialectical tension between kataphatic and apophatic mysticism frames this complex attitude towards creation. On the one hand, mystics regularly affirm the sacramental character of the created world, its capacity to reveal and make present the reality of God. Central to this...
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology February 25, 2020 Joanne Maguire
Mystics who speak and write for others act as teachers in various ways. Studies of mysticism and religious experience have tended to consider a mystical quest as a highly individual and idiosyncratic venture, but it is apparent that many mystics wrote and spoke to instruct their followers. Teaching implies recipients of that teaching, both as individuals and in aggregate, and it implies...
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology February 25, 2020 Patricia Zimmerman Beckman
Mystical writers of Lives and Visions employ distinct, explicit strategies to evoke mystical experience in their audiences. Beyond claims of historical meaning and truths, the texts focus on the process of knowing and encounter with the divine. After tracing biblical and early historical resources, three case studies on Hildegard of Bingen, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Annie Dillard elucidate...
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology February 25, 2020 Brandon Gallaher
This chapter seeks to show that mysticism is not about the rarefied experience of certain spiritual athletes but the Holy Spirit’s ordinary or common call to transformation of every Christian into a potentially extraordinary ‘second Christ’. The author contends that in Christian teaching the Spirit hides himself but in this age is made known in the faces of transformed Christians—saints and...
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology February 25, 2020 H. Feiss
Mystical experience is a foretaste of heaven and so eschatology and mysticism are related. Five examples of this relationship are Gregory the Great’s account of Benedict’s final vision of the world in the light of God, the twelfth-century Victorines’ explanation of how mystical union leads to configuration with Christ and so to compassionate care for others, Bernard of Clairvaux’s theory that...
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology February 25, 2020 Cyril O'Regan 3 citations
This chapter examines the epistemology of mystical theology. It begins with the ‘intellectualist’ line of thinking from Pseudo-Dionysius to Meister Eckhart, paying close attention both to the ‘protocols’ which are required to speak of God both as the ground of our language, beyond naming, and as one who can really be experienced. These epistemological protocols can also be identified in...
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology February 25, 2020 Alexander J. B. Hampton
The development of Christian mysticism is deeply bound to poetics. This examination first considers Platonic poetry, Hebrew creation, and Christian kenosis as sources of poetic mysticism, before turning to an elaboration of the role of rhythm, language, and the poetic imagination. The appraisal then considers the historical development of mystical poetry, beginning with early Christian...
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology February 25, 2020 Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer 2 citations
The chapter examines the presence and visibility of spiritual and mystical experience in the secularized and plural contemporary world. Our historical moment puts into question the socio-political and cultural context of contemporary mystical life and thought. This allows us to trace the contours of present-day mystical experience in the southern hemisphere, where the experience of the Spirit...