The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
David Albertson
14 citations
Cataphatic mystical theology, often dismissed through medieval binaries of power, gender, and literacy, should be re-examined as a practice of active spatial projection, navigation, and annotation. Drawing on pre-modern Christianity and modern space theories, mystical theologies can be understood as fundamentally spatial or geometrical phenomena. Applying this model to Hildegard of Bingen's major works, Scivias and Liber divinorum operum, reveals that her images construct complex spaces of enclosure—from Mary's womb to the cosmic egg to God's Wisdom. While these images remain static allegories in the earlier work, they gain mobility and depth in the later, demanding a more spatialized hermeneutics. Space thus proves a useful category for understanding cataphasis and the limits of apophasis today.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Cyril O'Regan
3 citations
Mystical theology is not a search for extraordinary experiences but a disciplined formation of language and subjectivity. Examining intellectualist thinkers from Pseudo-Dionysius to Meister Eckhart and affective theologians from Bernard of Clairvaux to Bonaventure, the chapter shows how both traditions require protocols for speaking of God as both beyond naming and genuinely experienceable. These epistemological disciplines—regimes of discourse and practice—shape a self capable of a more intense relation with God, distinguishing mystical theology from William James's concept of 'peak' experiences.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer
2 citations
In today's secularized and pluralistic world, spiritual and mystical experiences remain visible and significant. The current historical moment challenges the socio-political and cultural context of contemporary mystical life and thought. This examination traces the contours of present-day mystical experience in the southern hemisphere, where the experience of the Spirit is uniquely intertwined with secular politics, interreligious dialogue, and the rise of intra-ecclesial spiritualism. These developments pose new challenges for Christian theology and its discourse about humanity.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Rowan Williams
2 citations
Early Christian theology emerged from the conviction that through Jesus's death and resurrection, humans gained unprecedented access to God, entering the heavenly sanctuary as priests and becoming children of God. This prompted new doctrinal statements about God while also intensifying the sense of what cannot be said about God—that God cannot be treated as an object among others. This tension between speaking and silence about God became central to mystical writing. The encounter between finite and infinite action in Christ and his people, in both individual and corporate prayer, is understood as a present anticipation of eternal relationship, making the mystical essentially an eschatological category.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
David Tracy
1 citation
The chapter examines how the concept of the infinite has shaped the relationship between theology, metaphysics, and mysticism across Western thought, from Plato to Jeanne Guyon. It argues that the Christian God is both infinite-incomprehensible and radically hidden, and that each naming of God should receive its own Christological emphasis—incarnation for incomprehensibility, cross for hiddenness. Both are genuine Christian options suited to different cultures and temperaments. The work contends that Western religious thought would be impoverished if either ethics or aesthetics, prophecy or mysticism, were eliminated from its canon.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Bernard Mcginn
1 citation
Three main models of Christian mystical union evolved from biblical foundations to the late 1600s crisis of mysticism. The first, unitas spiritus (union of spirit), rooted in 1 Corinthians 6:17, describes God and a person uniting in spirit through shared will, often expressed erotically. The second, Trinitarian union, involves a human sharing in the inner life of the Trinity's three Persons. The third, union of indistinction, entails merging with God beyond all distinction. The technical term 'mystical union' was rarely used for most of this period, yet many Christian thinkers discussed becoming one with God through grace.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Charlotte Radler
Christian mystics use the topographical metaphors of depth, ground, and abyss to describe the continuity between God and creation. This chapter surveys biblical and early Christian uses of these metaphors, then explores them in the writings of Meister Eckhart (c.1260-1328), Thomas Merton (1915–68), and Dorothee Sölle (1929–2003). In their work, these metaphors depict an ever-expanding continuum of God and human, time and eternity, immanence and transcendence, challenging static identities and relationships. The spiritual and political implications of Eckhart's conceptual expansion continue to be appropriated and reworked in contemporary mysticism, as illustrated by Merton and Sölle.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Jean-Luc Marion
In an age of skepticism, the concept of 'the mystical' is often seen as problematic, challenging the credibility of theology as a discipline that deals with sacred mystery. Like phenomenology, theology can reveal what shows itself while remaining unsayable, though the two disciplines cannot be collapsed into one. A mutual relationship between phenomenology and mystical theology can open both to the phenomenality of the mystical, potentially redefining our notions of mystery.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Philip Sheldrake
Theological anthropology examines Christian views of human identity, and in mystical theology it takes three forms. Kataphatic anthropology affirms positive dimensions of human identity, illustrated by Julian of Norwich. Apophatic anthropology holds that the human self, like God, is ultimately beyond definition, referencing Julian, Meister Eckhart, and The Cloud of Unknowing. Liberationist anthropology, emerging in the late twentieth century, draws on Christian mysticism and emphasizes a collective understanding of human identity, along with a socially critical approach to how dominant cultural or political forces shape human existence.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Rik Van Nieuwenhove, William Crozier
Mystical theology offers resources for contemporary Trinitarian theology. Drawing on Bonaventure, participation in the Trinity is necessary for doing Trinitarian theology, as vision requires participation. The writings of Hadewijch and Ruusbroec can help solve systematic problems: Ruusbroec's concept of regyratio—the Holy Spirit as the principle of the divine Persons' return to shared unity—can circumvent the problem of Trinitarian inversion, the tension between accounts of immanent processions and the sequence of historical missions of the Son and Holy Spirit in the economic Trinity.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Douglas E. Christie
The Christian mystical tradition holds a complex and shifting view of creation, caught between two poles. On one side, mystics affirm creation as a sacrament that reveals God, especially through the logos, the principle of creation that enables spiritual experience. On the other, they emphasize the limits of knowledge, respecting what remains hidden, particularly in suffering and loss. The image of Christ crucified and dead in the tomb calls for humility before the unknowable aspects of God. Thus, creation both reveals and conceals the divine.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Rob Faesen
The study of mysticism and mystical theology requires analyzing texts with standard scientific literary analysis, but mystical literature has distinctive features. First, its language has a unique referent, meaning the connection between signifier and signified is exceptional. Second, mystical literature spans many literary genres, shaped by authors' motives, writing circumstances, and intended readers. Third, these texts often arose in difficult historical and theological contexts, which strongly influences their intertextuality and reception history.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Joanne Maguire
Mystics who write and speak for others act as teachers, challenging the common view that mystical quests are purely individual and idiosyncratic. Teaching implies recipients and superior knowledge based on divine inspiration rather than personal experience alone. In Christian traditions, no single mystical curriculum exists, but many mystics rely on traditional doctrines and practices. This chapter examines mystics as teachers through sources, authority, and methods, all understood as derived from God and mediated through a teacher.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Edward Howells
Mystical theology holds that human experience is central but not defining, because the experience is considered divine rather than merely human. After surveying current debates on mystical experience, the puzzling dual quality of the experience—fully human yet more than human—is explored through three historical figures: Augustine, Meister Eckhart, and Teresa of Avila. This dual, expansive character fosters growth into an enlarged capacity for seeing God as both immediately present and wholly other. The transformative process integrates key tensions between divine presence and absence, inner and outer knowing, spirit and body, and contemplative and active life. The perspective is reviewed with reference to the tradition of the 'spiritual senses'.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Peter Tyler
Christian mystical prayer, as described by St Teresa of Avila, is an intimate sharing between friends, rooted in two major theological traditions. The Neoplatonic tradition, derived from Platonic ideas of divinization (theosis), survived in Dionysian and monastic streams despite early church condemnation. The Augustinian tradition emphasizes the fallen soul's dependence on God's grace. These perspectives shaped later mystics like Teresa of Avila and continued into the twentieth century through Edith Stein and Thomas Merton, who brought key aspects of mystical prayer to modern times.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Brandon Gallaher
Mysticism is not reserved for spiritual elites but is the Holy Spirit's ordinary call for every Christian to be transformed into a 'second Christ.' The Spirit remains hidden in this age but is revealed through transformed Christians—saints and mystics—who become little 'christs.' Christians are called to put on Christ, live by the Spirit, and become 'partakers of the divine nature' (2 Pet. 1:4). Examples from Symeon the New Theologian, Seraphim of Sarov, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, baptismal and eucharistic theology, and Augustine's work illustrate this teaching across Christian East and West.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Boyd Taylor Coolman
The Christian view of humanity as 'pilgrim' or 'wayfarer' emerged over the first fifteen centuries from Jewish and Christian ideas about the world's relationship with God combined with Graeco-Roman culture and philosophy. Mystical itinerancy takes one of two aspects (pre- or post-conversion), one of two trajectories (vertical-mystical or horizontal-historical), and one of two modes (personal or communal). These combine into three models: individual ascent to contemplation, individual journey to conversion or sanctification, and communal pilgrimage to the kingdom of God.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Kevin L. Hughes
For over a thousand years of Christian practice, reading scripture was woven into mystical theology as a transformative spiritual journey, not merely a literary technique. Henri de Lubac argued this 'spiritual interpretation' was a spiritual itinerary. However, by the later Middle Ages, the professionalization of scripture in schools separated scriptural understanding from the soul's encounter with God. 'Spiritual exegesis' became narrow doctrinal exposition, 'mystical' referred to subjective experience rather than scriptural wisdom, and 'allegory' turned into literary criticism. The chapter sketches a possible path to retrieve this lost approach.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Andrew Louth
The core of Christian mysticism is inseparable from liturgical practice, especially the Eucharist. While modern usage equates mysticism with individual experience, the original Christian meaning ties it to sacraments, above all the divine liturgy. The Eucharist should be understood not as a text but as an action performed by Christ—on the cross, eternally in heaven, and in the present liturgy. Christ draws the entire cosmos into unity with himself and his self-offering to the Father, an act of reconciliation and love with ascetical, ontological, metaphysical, and cosmic implications.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Alexander J. B. Hampton
Mystical poetry enables an experience of the divine that discursive language cannot achieve. The development of Christian mysticism is deeply bound to poetics, drawing on Platonic poetry, Hebrew creation, and Christian kenosis as sources. Rhythm, language, and the poetic imagination are central to this tradition. The historical development of mystical poetry begins with early Christian reflection on figurative and lyrical uses of scripture to express a personal relationship with God. Vernacular mysticism is explored through four poets: Dante, Jacopone, Hadewijch, and Angelus Silesius. The interaction of poetic form and spiritual content demonstrates how poetics allows the mystical writer to achieve a result for the reader otherwise not possible in discursive forms.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
H. Feiss
Mystical experience offers a foretaste of heaven, linking eschatology and mysticism. Five examples illustrate this: Gregory the Great on Benedict's final vision of the world in God's light; twelfth-century Victorines on mystical union leading to configuration with Christ and compassionate care; Bernard of Clairvaux on the blessed awaiting full union with God until bodily resurrection; Julian of Norwich on reconciling sin with the belief that all is well; and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on divine presence in matter and humanity's evolution toward Christ. Jean-Yves Lacoste's phenomenology of prayer clarifies these intersections.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Bernard Mcginn
Christian mystical theology developed through several historically coherent traditions from the patristic period through the medieval era and into early modernity, until the Quietist Controversy at the end of the seventeenth century and the triumph of the Enlightenment, which took a generally negative attitude toward the mystical element in Christianity. The chapter traces main genealogies of mystical theology, including eastern and western patristic traditions, medieval monastic, Franciscan, German, Flemish, French, Italian, and English traditions, and early modern Protestant and Reformed Catholic genealogies, especially from Spain and France.
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology
February 25, 2020
Patricia Zimmerman Beckman
Mystical writers of Lives and Visions use specific, explicit strategies to evoke mystical experience in readers. The texts prioritize the process of knowing and encountering the divine over claims of historical truth. Three case studies on Hildegard of Bingen, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Annie Dillard demonstrate techniques such as visionary exegesis, narrative protagonist flexibility, and creative generative prose. The chapter examines how form authorizes claims, shapes theological anthropology, and influences understanding of divine essence and encounter. It also invites contemporary practitioners to continue this artful work of mystical theology.