Using the pluriform concept of the infinite to investigate the evolving relationships between theology, metaphysics, and mysticism, the chapter creates a heuristic conversation between crucial representative thinkers, among them: Plato, Plotinus, Gregory of Nyssa, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Descartes, Pascal, Fénelon, and Jeanne Guyon. In doing so, the chapter asserts that the Christian God is both...
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...
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...
This collection provides a guide to the mystical element of Christianity as a theological phenomenon. It differs not only from psychological and anthropological studies of mysticism, but from other theological studies, such as more practical or pastorally oriented works that examine the patterns of spiritual progress and offer counsel for deeper understanding and spiritual development. It also...
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...
Access to the ‘notion’ of ‘the mystical’ is treated by many as problematic in an age of scepticism. For a tradition that reverences sacred mystery, and for a discipline like theology—that processes both from and toward this mystery—this scepticism issues an epistemological challenge to the credibility, even the possibility of the discipline itself. In a manner not unlike phenomenology, while...
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...
Human experience is central to mystical theology but it cannot define it, because, according to mystical theology, the experience is not merely human but divine. After an orientation in the current debate on mystical experience, the puzzling quality of the experience, as both fully human and more than anything human, is elaborated through an exposition of three historical examples, Augustine,...
Although many researchers in psychology, religious studies, and psychiatry recognize that there is overlap in the experiences their subjects recount, disciplinary silos and challenges involved in comparing reported experiences have left us with little understanding of the mechanisms, whether biological, psychological, and/or sociocultural, through which these experiences are represented and...
Studies combining psychotherapy with psychedelic drugs (PsiDs) have demonstrated positive outcomes that are often associated with PsiDs' ability to induce 'mystical-type' experiences (MTEs) - i.e., subjective experiences whose characteristics include a sense of connectedness, transcendence, and ineffability. We suggest that both PsiDs and virtual reality can be situated on a broader spectrum of...