Introduction to Christian Mysticism

M. Baxter Jason

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.

Sujets

• Christian mysticism

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 16 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493429080
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Endorsements
“In reassuring prose, Jason Baxter gives us Christian mysticism undomesticated —bold, inflamed, insistent, pushing to the very boundaries of speech, and communing with God beyond every merely human mode of communication. Baxter is one to watch—will he too be among the mystics? May it be so!”
— Matthew Levering , Mundelein Seminary
“Jason Baxter begins his story in the wasteland that is our culture. An Introduction to Christian Mysticism shows how the dark night of the soul has extended across society. For Christians who desire the light, Baxter argues, we must become mystics or die. Yet the light that draws us out of darkness will be blinding, painful, and shocking. Tracing the mystic experiences of God from the pagans to Julian of Norwich and Nicholas of Cusa, Baxter reorients us to the tradition that we lost after the Reformation and the Enlightenment. To ignore this book is to succumb to a weak, domesticated version of our faith. To read this book is to be lit up again by our bright, burning, wild, and unfathomable God.”
— Jessica Hooten Wilson , University of Dallas
“The word ‘mysticism’ is often loaded with misunderstandings and underlying assumptions that are not clearly understood, so much so that one wonders if the word has lost its currency, specifically in the discipline of Christian theology. It may still have a home in anthropology or comparative religions, but not theology. Jason Baxter, however, competently and convincingly shows in An Introduction to Christian Mysticism that such is not the case. In fact, he shows that mysticism is not only a viable and venerable Christian concept but one that needs to be recovered in the contemporary church. With ease he introduces his readers to the ‘greatest hits’ of the early and medieval Christian mystical tradition, revealing their own systems of thought while also connecting them thematically to one another.”
— Greg Peters , Biola University and Nashotah House Theological Seminary
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2021 by Jason M. Baxter
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakeracademic.com
Ebook edition created 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Control Number: 2020051910
ISBN 978-1-5409-6122-8 (paper)
ISBN 978-1-5409-6439-7 (casebound)
ISBN 978-1-4934-2908-0 (ebook)
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations labeled NIV are from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Contents
Cover i
Endorsements ii
Title Page iii
Copyright Page iv
Acknowledgments vii
Abbreviations ix
Introduction: The Soul from Whom God Hides Nothing 1
1. The Christian of the Future in the Desert of Modernity: The Twentieth-Century Rediscovery of Ancient Mysticism 25
2. Pagans Grope toward God: Piety and Prayer in Antiquity 45
3. The Inward Turn: What Augustine Learned from the Pagans 59
4. The Darkness of God: Dionysius the Areopagite, Gregory of Nyssa, and Meister Eckhart 75
5. Praying with the Whole World: Natural Contemplation and the Legacy of the Desert Fathers 103
6. How to Perform Scripture: Lectio Divina and the Renewal of the Heart 135
Conclusion: The Wildness of the Spiritual Life 153
Notes 173
Index 191
Back Cover 193
Acknowledgments
T hanks to my colleague Kyle Washut for answering all my questions about Neoplatonic ontology. He made me wish that there was a hotline for burning questions about Byzantine metaphysics. I thank my friends Glenn and Virginia Arbery for their unflagging encouragement. Special thanks to Colum Dever, who reminded me that Jesus, the God who became a helpless baby, needs to feature in any discussion of Christian mysticism. The conclusion is for you. And warm thanks to my editor, Dave Nelson, whose energy and kindness drew out my best.
I’d like to thank my wonderful students for listening to drafts of the chapters that follow and responding with such overwhelming goodness, especially Cami Callaway, Louisa Whitmore, Emily Mistaleski, Ana and Sophie Kozinski, Rinju Chenet, Tommy Urgo, Zach Lee, Parker Eidle, Anna Snell, Rocco De Felice, Evelyn Grimm, Brendan Floody, Carlos Solis, Eastlyn Ullman, Joseph Maxwell, and Iza Zagorksi.
I dedicate this book to my beloved wife and children: Jodi, Pia, Eve-Marie, John-Marie, Alma, and Jude. With more love than you could know.
Abbreviations Conf. Augustine. Confessions . Translated by F. J. Sheed. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006. Ladder Guigo the Carthusian. The Ladder of Monks and Twelve Meditations: A Letter on the Contemplative Life . Translated by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981. Life Gregory of Nyssa. The Life of Moses . Translated by Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson. Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1980. LSF Bonaventure. The Life of St. Francis . In Bonaventure , translated by Ewert Cousins, 177–328. Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978. Mem. Angela of Foligno. Memorial . In Angela of Foligno: Complete Works , translated by Paul Lachance, 123–218. Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1993. MT Pseudo-Dionysius. Mystical Theology . In Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works , translated by Colm Luibheid, 133–42. Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1987. On Loving God Bernard of Clairvaux. On Loving God . In Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works , translated by G. R. Evans, 173–206. Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1987. On Seeking God Nicholas of Cusa. On Seeking God . In Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings , translated by H. Lawrence Bond, 215–32. Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997. On the Vices Evagrius. To Eulogios: On the Vices as Opposed to the Virtues . In Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus , translated by Robert E. Sinkewicz, 60–65. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Praktikos Evagrius. The Monk: A Treatise on the Practical Life . In Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus , translated by Robert E. Sinkewicz, 91–114. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Rule Benedict. RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in English . Edited and translated by Timothy Fry. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1981. Sayings The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection . Translated by Benedicta Ward. New York: Macmillan, 1975. Sermon 12 Meister Eckhart. Sermon 12. In Meister Eckhart: Selected Writings , translated by Oliver Davies, 152–58. London: Penguin, 1994. Showings Julian of Norwich. Julian of Norwich: Showings . Translated by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh. Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978. Sparkling Stone John Ruusbroec. The Sparkling Stone . In John Ruusbroec: “The Spiritual Espousals” and Other Works , translated by James Wiseman, 155–86. Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1985. Three Days Hugh of St. Victor. On the Three Days . In Trinity and Creation , translated by Hugh Feiss, 49–102. Victorine Texts in Translation 1. Edited by Boyd Taylor Coolman and Dale M. Coulter. New York: New City Press, 2011. Zion Hugh of Balma. The Roads to Zion Mourn . In Carthusian Spirituality: The Writings of Hugh of Balma and Guigo de Ponte , translated by Dennis Martin, 67–170. Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997.
Introduction
The Soul from Whom God Hides Nothing
I pray we could come to this darkness so far above light! If only we lacked sight and knowledge so as to see, so as to know, unseeing and unknowing, that which lies beyond all vision and knowledge.
—Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Mystical Theology
A Quick Sketch of Mysticism
Over the past few years, when teaching Dante to college students, I’ve found it necessary to provide a quick outline of mysticism by way of background to Dante’s final canticle, Paradiso . I’ve noticed, though, that as I talk about ineffability and the Platonic tradition of a “God beyond being” and the necessity of waking up a “sense” that is above reason, my students are overcome by a sense of trepidation. On more than one occasion, noticing that my students have stiffened up and have begun to look at me suspiciously, I’ve paused to ask, “Is this stuff making you nervous?” The answer is usually yes, because it seems to them somehow vaguely “Eastern” or associated with New Age spirituality.
Take, for example, Meister Eckhart, the fourteenth-century German Dominican who, along with the sixth-century Byzantine Dionysius the Areopagite (also known as Pseudo-Dionysius), is often thought of as “the mystic’s mystic.” Eckhart was a celebrity professor in his day, a sometime provost at the University of Paris, and a biblical commentator who also undertook the difficult task of preaching in the vernacular (in his case, German). Here’s what he says in one of his German-language sermons:
In created things, as I have often said before, there is no truth. But there is something which is above the created being of the soul and which is untouched by any createdness, by any nothingness. Even the angels do not have this, whose clear being is pure and deep. . . . It is like the divine nature; in itself it is one and has nothing in common with anything. And it is with regard to this that many teachers go wrong. It is a strange land, a wilderness, being more nameless than with name, more unknown than known. If you could do away with yourself