This fascinating volume explores the mystical strand of thought that exists in the writings of John Calvin. Dennis Tamburello explores in particular the relationship between Calvin's notion of "union with Christ" and notions of the mystical union between believers and Christ that were prominent in the medieval period as explicated in the writings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. The Columbia Series in Reformed Theology represents a joint commitment by Columbia Theological Seminary and Westminster John Knox Press to provide theological resources from the Reformed tradition for the church today. This series examines theological and ethical issues that confront church and society in our own particular time and place.

Edited by Ronald K. Rittgers and Vincent Evener, Protestants and Mysticism in Reformation Europe offers an expansive view of the Protestant reception of medieval mysticism, from the beginnings of the Reformation through the mid-seventeenth century. Providing a foundation and impetus for future research, the chapters in this handbook cover diverse figures from across the Protestant traditions (Lutheran, Reformed, Radical), summarizing existing research, analysing relevant sources, and proposing new directions for study. Each chapter is authored by a leading scholar in the field. Collectively, Protestants and Mysticism in Reformation Europe calls for a comprehensive reassessment of the relationship of Protestantism to its medieval past, to Roman Catholicism, and to the enduring mystical element of Christianity.

In many ways, Meister Eckhart has had to wait seven centuries to be heard. Born in 13th century Germany, much of his life was spent in a monastery; though not all. The 'Meister' in his name means 'Master', and is an academic title from the University of Paris. An admired member of the Dominican Order, he was often sent to reform ailing priories. He was known also as a spiritual counsellor; a safe haven for many who sought God in their life, but found themselves troubled by the dire state of the institutional church. And in a century of flowering female spirituality, he was a supportive figure for many Dominican nuns and women in the burgeoning lay communities which arose. He was best known, however, as a preacher - an original preacher who used his native German language to startling effect. Eckhart preached a spiritual vision which distrusted the artifice of both ritual and church dogma. Instead, he aimed at nothing less than the spiritual and psychological transformation of those given to his care. To this end, Eckhart made the disposition of the human heart the key to all things. 'Conversations with Meister Eckhart' is an imagined conversation with this 13th century mystic, around such themes as detachment, which he famously placed above love; spirituality, God, the soul and suffering. But while the conversation is imagined, Eckhart's words are not; they are authentically his own. One of his controversial claims was that God cannot be described. Indeed, in one sermon, he went so far as to say 'We must take leave of God.' 'The church became very hostile towards him,' says Simon Parke, 'accusing him of heresy; and he spent his last days on trial before the pope. They also tried to ensure he'd be forgotten when he died, and nearly succeeded. But he's more popular now than ever.' Eckhart's teaching is an adventure, not a system; a call, not a creed. The depth and universality of his work means it can be contained by no established religion, but draws to itself seekers of truth from all backgrounds. 'Here we have a teaching open to all, but possessed by none,' says Parke. 'And therefore free like a butterfly, in the garden of the soul. Its perhaps my most challenging and rewarding conversation.'

"Margaret Cropper was the first to capture Evelyn Underhill s] life, which now in this new century can continue to inspire, challenge and point the way for those on the ancient quest for the holy." from the Foreword by Dana Greene, dean of Oxford College of Emory University

SkyLight Lives reintroduces the lives and works of key spiritual figures of our time people who by their teaching or example have challenged our assumptions about spirituality and have caused us to look at it in new ways.

Evelyn Underhill (1875 1941) was one of the most highly acclaimed spiritual thinkers of her day. Her fresh approach to mysticism provided one of the first invitations to modern seekers to realize that not only saints or great holy men could experience the love of God but that all people contain within them a capacity for the Divine.

This intimate biography, written by one of Underhill s closest friends, allows us to appreciate this revolutionary woman as both a charming, down-to-earth friend and a groundbreaking spiritual seeker and guide.

Through letters, personal reminiscences, and excerpts from Underhill s much-loved published writings including her definitive Mysticism, published in 1911 and continuously in print since then Margaret Cropper captures the spirit, journey, and wisdom of one of the most influential women of the early twentieth century.

Updated with a new foreword by Dana Greene, dean of Oxford College of Emory University, this intriguing spiritual portrait includes a brief memoir of Lucy Menzies, one of Underhill s closest confidants, highlighting their remarkable relationship.

This biography of Evelyn Underhill, one of the greatest spiritual thinkers of the early twentieth century, guides readers on a voyage through her life and a survey of her spiritual classics that would forever bring the Divine into the everyday for countless people.

A passionate writer and teacher who wrote elegantly on mysticism, worship, and devotional life, Evelyn Underhill urged the integration of personal spirituality and worldly action. This is the moving story of how she made her way toward spiritual maturity, from her early days of agnosticism to the years when her influence was felt throughout the world.

An early believer that contemplative prayer is not just for monks and nuns but for anyone willing to undertake it, Underhill considered the study of modern science not as a threat to contemplation but rather an enhancement of it. Her many lectures and writings on mysticism and spirituality, including her classic "Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man s Spiritual Consciousness, "inspired the many people touched by her unique passion to take on a spiritual life.

Jacob Boehme was born in 1575. He received little if any formal education and was apprenticed to a shoemaker at Goerlitz in Saxony. From an early age he seems to have been devoted to the study of the Bible as well as to have had a growing, inner, sense of the reality of God. Walking one day in the fields, when he was twenty-five years old, the mystery of creation was suddenly opened to him, of which he later said that "in one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years at the university . . . and thereupon I turned my heart to praise God for it." As experiences of this kind came more frequently, he puzzled much as to why such knowledge should be given to him, of all men, who sought only the love of God and was quite unlearned in the ordinary sense. Some ten years later he began to record what he received, as a help to his own memory, and thus was born The Aurora, his first book, finished in 1612. From then on he found both friends and enemies of his work. Due to persecution in his hometown, Boehme later settled in Dresden, where he died in 1624. Mysterium Magnum, written by Boehme the year before he died and at a time when his powers of expression had developed to their full, is perhaps central to his work in some thirty-one or thirty-two original volumes. Taking the general form of an interpretation of Genesis, it far outstrips such apparent confines, touching among other matters upon the meaning of the New Testament and, from the first sentence, leading to the heart of the universal experience of all mystics: When we consider the visible world with its essence, and consider the life of the creatures, then we find therein the likeness of the invisible, spiritual world, which is hidden in the visible world as the soul in the body; and we see thereby that the hidden God is nigh unto all and through all, and yet wholly hidden to the visible essence. Among those who have acknowledged the spiritual stature of Boehme are Hegel, William Law, St. Martin (le Philosophe Inconnu), Dean Inge, and Nicolas Berdyaev.

Enemies of the Cross examines how suffering and truth were aligned in the divisive debates of the early Reformation. Vincent Evener explores how Martin Luther, along with his first intra-Reformation critics, offered "true" suffering as a crucible that would allow believers to distinguish the truth or falsehood of doctrine, teachers, and their own experiences. To use suffering in this way, however, reformers also needed to teach Christians to recognize false suffering and the false teachers who hid under its mantle. This book contends that these arguments, which became an enduring part of the Lutheran and radical traditions, were nourished by the reception of a daring late-medieval mystical tradition - the post-Eckhartian - which depicted annihilation of the self as the way to union with God. The first intra-Reformation dissenters, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt and Thomas Muntzer, have frequently been depicted as champions of medieval mystical views over and against the non-mystical Luther. Evener counters this depiction by showing how Luther, Karlstadt, and Muntzer developed their shared mystical tradition in diverse directions, while remaining united in the conviction that sinful self-assertion prevented human beings from receiving truth and living in union with God. He argues that Luther, Karlstadt, and Muntzer each represented a different form of ecclesial-political dissent shaped by a mystical understanding of how Christians were united to God through the destruction of self-assertion. Enemies of the Cross draws on seldom-used sources and proposes new concepts of "revaluation" and "relocation" to describe how Protestants and radicals brought medieval mystical teachings into new frameworks that rejected spiritual hierarchy.

Ursula King's Christian Mystics tells the story of sixty men and women whose mystical devotion to God transformed the times in which they lived and still affects our present-day search for spiritual meaning. Moving from key figures of the early Christian age to the great mystics of modern times, special emphasis is given to the great high points of mysticism in the medieval, early modern and Eastern Orthodox traditions. The lives of visionaries, including Clement of Alexandria, Saint Bonaventure, Blaise Pascal and Simone Weil are studied in detail. It reveals the richly diverse expressions that mystical experience has found during two thousand years of Christian history and shows how it underpins Christian ritual and doctrine as a source of spiritual inspiration for all believers. Beautifully illustrated and written by a prominent name in the British academic world, this significant text has received high acclaim and is the only book to feature biographies of key mystics.

Jacob Boehme was born in 1575. He received little if any formal education and was apprenticed to a shoemaker at Goerlitz in Saxony. From an early age he seems to have been devoted to the study of the Bible as well as to have had a growing, inner, sense of the reality of God. Walking one day in the fields, when he was twenty-five years old, the mystery of creation was suddenly opened to him, of which he later said that "in one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years at the university . . . and thereupon I turned my heart to praise God for it." As experiences of this kind came more frequently, he puzzled much as to why such knowledge should be given to him, of all men, who sought only the love of God and was quite unlearned in the ordinary sense. Some ten years later he began to record what he received, as a help to his own memory, and thus was born The Aurora, his first book, finished in 1612. From then on he found both friends and enemies of his work. Due to persecution in his hometown, Boehme later settled in Dresden, where he died in 1624. Mysterium Magnum, written by Boehme the year before he died and at a time when his powers of expression had developed to their full, is perhaps central to his work in some thirty-one or thirty-two original volumes. Taking the general form of an interpretation of Genesis, it far outstrips such apparent confines, touching among other matters upon the meaning of the New Testament and, from the first sentence, leading to the heart of the universal experience of all mystics: When we consider the visible world with its essence, and consider the life of the creatures, then we find therein the likeness of the invisible, spiritual world, which is hidden in the visible world as the soul in the body; and we see thereby that the hidden God is nigh unto all and through all, and yet wholly hidden to the visible essence. Among those who have acknowledged the spiritual stature of Boehme are Hegel, William Law, St. Martin (le Philosophe Inconnu), Dean Inge, and Nicolas Berdyaev.

If the western world knows anything about Zen Buddhism, it is down to the efforts of one remarkable man, D.T. Suzuki. The twenty-seven-year-old Japanese scholar first visited the west in 1897, and over the course of the next seventy years became the world's leading authority on Zen. His radical and penetrating insights earned him many disciples, from Carl Jung to Allen Ginsberg, from Thomas Merton to John Cage. In Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist Suzuki compares the teachings of the great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart with the spiritual wisdom of Shin and Zen Buddhism. By juxtaposing cultures that seem to be radically opposed, Suzuki raises one of the fundamental questions of human experience: at the limits of our understanding is there an experience that is universal to all humanity? Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist is a book that challenges and inspires; it will benefit readers of all religions who seek to understand something of the nature of spiritual life.

Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such asC.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set. A brochure listing each title in the "International Library of Psychology" series is available upon request.

The apparent disappearance of mysticism in the Protestant world after the Reformation used to be taken as an example of the arrival of modernity. However, as recent studies in history and literary history reveal, the "Reformation" was not experienced in such a drastically transformative manner, not least because the later Middle Ages itself was marked by a series of reform movements within the Catholic Church in which mysticism played a central role. In Mysticism and Reform, 1400-1750, contributors show that it is more accurate to characterize the history of early modern mysticism as one in which relationships of continuity within transformations occurred. Rather than focus on the departures of the sixteenth-century Reformation from medieval traditions, the essays in this volume explore one of the most remarkable yet still under-studied chapters in its history: the survival and transformation of mysticism between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. With a focus on central and northern Europe, the essays engage such subjects as the relationship of Luther to mystical writing, the visual representation of mystical experience in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century art, mystical sermons by religious women of the Low Countries, Valentin Weigel's recasting of Eckhartian gelassenheit for a Lutheran audience, and the mysticism of English figures such as Gertrude More, Jane Lead, Elizabeth Hooten, and John Austin, the German Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, and the German American Marie Christine Sauer.

Moments of Our Nights and Days is a companion book to Saying Goodbye, a resource book for funerals, also published by Wild Goose Publications. Ruth Burgess is the author of several other worship resource books for the various seasons and festivals, including Candles and Conifers, Hay and Stardust, Eggs and Ashes, Fire and Bread, Bare Feet and Buttercups and Acorns and Archangels.

Integrating patristics and early Jewish mysticism, this book examines Gregory of Nyssa's tabernacle imagery, as found in Life of Moses 2. 170-201. Previous scholarship has often focused on Gregory's interpretation of the darkness on Mount Sinai as divine incomprehensibility. However, true to Exodus, Gregory continues with Moses's vision of the tabernacle 'not made with hands' received within that darkness. This innovative methodology of heuristic comparison doesn't strive to prove influence, but to use heavenly ascent texts as a foil, in order to shed new light on Gregory's imagery. Ann Conway-Jones presents a well-rounded, nuanced understanding of Gregory's exegesis, in which mysticism, theology, and politics are intertwined. Heavenly ascent texts use descriptions of religious experience to claim authoritative knowledge. For Gregory, the high point of Moses's ascent into the darkness of Mount Sinai is the mystery of Christian doctrine. The heavenly tabernacle is a type of the heavenly Christ. This mystery is beyond intellectual comprehension, it can only be grasped by faith; and only the select few, destined for positions of responsibility, should even attempt to do so.

The call to repentance is central to the message of early Christianity. While this is undeniable, the precise meaning of the concept of repentance for early Christians has rarely been investigated to any great extent, beyond studies of the rise of penitential discipline. In this study, the rich variety of meanings and applications of the concept of repentance are examined, with a particular focus on the writings of several ascetic theologians of the fifth to seventh centuries: SS Mark the Monk, Barsanuphius and John of Gaza, and John Climacus. These theologians provide some of the most sustained and detailed elaborations of the concept of repentance in late antiquity. They predominantly see repentance as a positive, comprehensive idea that serves to frame the whole of Christian life, not simply one or more of its parts. While the modern dominant understanding of repentance as a moment of sorrowful regret over past misdeeds, or as equivalent to penitential discipline, is present to a degree, such definitions by no means exhaust the concept for them. The path of repentance is depicted as stretching from an initial about-face completed in baptism, through the living out of the baptismal gift by keeping the Gospel commandments, culminating in the idea of intercessory repentance for others, after the likeness of Christ's innocent suffering for the world. While this overarching role for repentance in Christian life is clearest in ascetic works, these are not explored in isolation, and attention is also paid to the concept of repentance in Scripture, the early church, apocalyptic texts, and canonical material. This not only permits the elaboration of the views of the ascetics in their larger context, but further allows for an overall re-assessment of the often misunderstood, if not overlooked, place of repentance in early Christian theology.

This innovative critical volume brings the study of Margery Kempe into the twenty-first century. Structured around four categories of 'encounter' - textual, internal, external and performative - the volume offers a capacious exploration of The Book of Margery Kempe, characterised by multiple complementary and dissonant approaches. It employs a multiplicity of scholarly and critical lenses, including the intertextual history of medieval women's literary culture, medical humanities, history of science, digital humanities, literary criticism, oral history, the global Middle Ages, archival research and creative re-imagining. Revealing several new discoveries about Margery Kempe and her Book in its global contexts, and offering multiple ways of reading the Book in the modern world, it will be an essential companion for years to come. -- .

"The fiery life of divine wisdom" captured in the writings of this twelfth-century Christian mystic, visionary and healer can be a companion on your own spiritual journey.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098 1179) was a Christian mystic, visionary, abbess, composer, dramatist, poet and healer. The brilliance and passion of her writings including inscriptions of her visions, letters, liturgical antiphons, hymns, a morality play and medical and scientific works speak to readers within the church as well as those who are not formally religious but have an interest in mysticism, the spiritual life, the relationship between spirituality and creativity, feminist and eco-spiritualities and the arts. Though considered a controversial figure in her day, she was recently canonized and proclaimed a doctor of the church, an honor extended to only three other women saints in Christian history.

This groundbreaking introduction to her rich and varied writings presents a wide range of Hildegard's works grouped by theme, providing a deeper understanding of this influential spiritual figure than single-themed collections can. Insightful and instructive annotations provide the reader with suggestions for how to read or listen to medieval mystical texts as well as how to engage fully with Latin chants, allowing readers to effectually begin a dialogue between the world of this twelfth-century mystic and our own."

Francis of Assisi's reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is often considered to be the first account of an individual receiving the five wounds of Christ. The thirteenth-century appearance of this miracle, however, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17-I bear the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body-had been circulating in biblical commentaries since late antiquity. These works explained stigmata as wounds that martyrs, like the apostle Paul, received in their attempt to spread Christianity in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, stigmata were described as marks of Christ that priests received invisibly at their ordination. In the eleventh century, monks and nuns were perceived as bearing the stigmata in so far as they lived a life of renunciation out of love for Christ. By the later Middle Ages, women (such as Catherine of Siena) were described as having stigmata more frequently than were men. With the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century, the way stigmata were defined reflected the diverse perceptions of Christianity held by Catholics and Protestants.

In this book, Conrad Rudolph studies and reconstructs Hugh of St. Victor's forty-two-page written work, The Mystic Ark, which describes the medieval painting of the same name. In medieval written sources, works of art are not often referred to, let alone described in any detail. Almost completely ignored by art historians because of the immense difficulty of its text, Hugh of Saint Victor's Mystic Ark (c. 1125 1130) is among the most unusual sources we have for an understanding of medieval artistic culture. Depicting all time, all space, all matter, all human history, and all spiritual striving, this highly polemical painting deals with a series of cultural issues crucial in the education of society's elite during one of the great periods of intellectual change in Western history."

The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism is a multi-authored interdisciplinary guide to the study of Christian mysticism, with an emphasis on the third through the seventeenth centuries. The book is thematically organized in terms of the central contexts, practices and concepts associated with the mystical life in early, medieval and early modern Christianity. This book looks beyond the term 'mysticism', which was an early modern invention, to explore the ways in which the ancient terms 'mystic' and 'mystical' were used in the Christian tradition: what kinds of practices, modes of life and experiences were described as 'mystical'? What understanding of Christianity and of the life of Christian perfection is articulated through mystical interpretations of scripture, mystical contemplation, mystical vision, mystical theology or mystical union? This volume both provides a clear introduction to the Christian mystical life and articulates a bold new approach to the study of mysticism.

This book examines the nearly 400-year tradition of Quaker engagements with mystical ideas and sources. It provides a fresh assessment of the way tradition and social context can shape a religious community while interplaying with historical and theological antecedents within the tradition. Quaker concepts such as "Meeting," the "Light," and embodied spirituality, have led Friends to develop an interior spirituality that intersects with extra-Quaker sources, such as those found in Jakob Boehme, Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl, the Continental Quietists, Kabbalah, Buddhist thought, and Luyia indigenous religion. Through time and across cultures, these and other conversations have shaped Quaker self-understanding and, so, expanded previous models of how religious ideas take root within a tradition. The thinkers engaged in this globally-focused, interdisciplinary volume include George Fox, James Nayler, Robert Barclay, Elizabeth Ashbridge, John Woolman, Hannah Whitall Smith, Rufus Jones, Inazo Nitobe, Howard Thurman, and Gideon W. H. Mweresa, among others.

This book represents a study of Evelyn Underhill's premier work on mysticism, using Hegel's dialectics and Kant's theory of the sublime as interpretive tools. It especially focuses on two prominent features of Underhill's text: the description of the mystical life as one permeated by an intense love between the mystic and infinite reality, and the detailed delineation of stages of mystical development. Given these two features, the text lends itself to a construction of a valuable discourse predicated on dialecticism, sublimity, and mysticism. The book also articulates a number of insights into the content and nature of the writings of Christian mystics.

Translation and facing text of an important female-authored work from the late middle ages. A Revelation of Purgatory was written by an unnamed woman, almost certainly an anchoress, in Winchester in 1422. It details from a first-person perspective a series of terrifying visions experienced by the author in which she witnesses the purgatorial sufferings of a former friend named Margaret who makes her way through the blazing fires of purgatory tormented by devils, the "worm of conscience", and - uniquely - her two former pets, a fierce little cat and dog. Through her prayer and the prayers she elicits from her own circle of influential priests, the anchoress is eventually able to deliver Margaret to the doors of the heavenly Jerusalem. Made available here in accessible parallel-text format with extended introduction and annotation, the Revelation is an important text: not only does it testify to popular and religious concerns with the afterlife in the late Middle Ages but also underscores the significant role played by women in mitigating the suffering of souls in purgatory by means of their personal interventions. The text also bears witness to female friendship, effective intergender dialogue, and the central role played by an anchoress in those communities with which she interacted, be they spiritual, institutional or personal. Liz Herbert McAvoy is Professor of Medieval Literature at Swansea University.