‘Pneumatology’ in The Oxford Handbook to Mystical Theology, eds. E. W. Howells and M. A. McIntosh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 507-528--Gallaher (original) (raw)

The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism

Medieval mystical theology, 2017

View related articles View Crossmark data straightforward for the reader, as one read in the modern masters of doubt, for example, Marx, Freud, Sartre etc. then the intellectual framework Feser builds, while still intellectually and aesthetically pleasing, is unlikely to persuade. If you come to this text looking for an easy way to revise the metaphysical framework behind the world of many of the Mystics our journal is dedicated to studying you may be disappointed. What you will find instead is an attempt to seriously engage anew with a framework they would have recognized but which has become strange to many of us. Feser purposely lays out his wares as a challenge and to respond to that challenge involves a very serious read indeed and a great deal of rigorous thinking.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION OF THE CHURCH

GORGIA PRESS, 2019

This volume presents the work of contemporary Orthodox thinkers who attempt to integrate the theological and the mystical. Exciting and provocative chapters treat a wide variety of mysticism, including early Church accounts, patristics (including the seemingly ever-popular subject of deification), liturgy, iconography, spiritual practice, and contemporary efforts to find mystical sense in cyber-technologies and post-humanism. Table of Contents (v) Preface and Acknowledgements (vii) Abbreviations (ix) Introduction: Mysticism and its Historical Manifestations (1) Sergey Trostyanskiy and Jess Gilbert I. MYSTICAL THEOLOGY AND CHURCH MOTHERS AND FATHERS (9) I.1. The Relation Between the Incomprehensibility of God and the Naming of God in the Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius (11) Theodore Damian I.2. Toward an Understanding of Maximus the Confessor’s Mystical Theology of Deification: The Spiritual Sabbath / Eighth Day Sequence in Two Hundred Chapters on Theology (27) Jess Gilbert I.3. Mystical Theology in the Writings of Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius Areopagite (51) Eirini Artemi and Christos Terezis I.4. Analogy in the Mystical Theology of Gregory of Nyssa: Transcending Negation and Affirmation (69) Robert F. Fortuin I.5. Recapitulative Reversal and the Restoration of Humanity in St. Irenaeus (85) Don Springer I.6. Kindling Divine Fire: The Mystical Sayings of St. Syncletica (99) V.K. McCarty II. LITURGY, SACRAMENTS, AND ICONS (115) II.1. The Kingdom of the Holy Trinity and the Movement of a Community in the Sacrificial Spirit of Christ: The importance of Father Dumitru Stăniloae’s Mystical and Ascetic Vision of the Holy Liturgy (117) Ciprian Streza II.2. The Sacraments of the Church: Basis of Spirituality, Building Blocks of the Kingdom (145) Philip Zymaris II.3. The Mystery of Representation: Theodore the Studite on Seeing the Invisible (169) Sergey Trostyanskiy III. CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE AND APPLICATIONS (191) III.1 Understanding My Avatar: Cyberbeing, Bio-Digital Personhood, and Fictional Transcendences from an Orthodox Perspective (193) Inti Yanes-Fernandez III.2. A Theory of Practice: A Meditation on Practice Itself (217) Mark W. Flory III.3. The Prayer of the Heart as Method of cognitive-behavioural Psychotherapy (237) Cameron McCabe III.4. Orthopraxis and Theosis: The Role of Ritual in the Training of the Mind (249) Anthony Perkins

The Development of the Academic Study of Mysticism in the 20 th Century; or, A Plea for Categories in the Study of Religion

2022

Synopsis: This study has two aims. First, it seeks to satisfy the requirements of my Major Comprehensive. The underlying intent of which has been to trace the development of the academic study of mysticism in the 20 th century. This research serves a larger purpose within my PhD wherein I intend to situate the Continental philosophical tradition within a 'model' or 'category' of analysis as regards its engagement with the Christian mystical tradition. Hence, in this study, I seek to establish the legitimacy, function, and benefit of approaching Christian mysticism via the categorizing frameworks discussed herein. Second, I have situated the thesis of this project against a larger theoretical conversation regarding the status of methodology, the constructed nature of Religious Studies, and the role of the insider and their religious categories within the academy. The outcomes of my research have led me to question the theoretical impulses of important scholars of Religion like Russell McCutcheon and Bruce Lincoln. In this study, against these theorists, I argue for the importance of the sub-category 'mysticism' as a useful hermeneutic in the construction of knowledge for the humanities as regards the category 'Religion.' This assertion is grounded in my historical overview of the development of the study of mysticism. My research shows how early scholars and/or insiders to the Christian tradition helped give shape to the category 'mysticism' as a productive area of disciplinary knowledge in the academy. I show that the consequence of engaging the study of Religion via the boundary imposed by the category 'mysticism' has been the advancement of novel insight and deeper historical understanding as to how religious thought developed in the West.

Christian Mysticism: A Meta-Theoretical Approach – Part I

Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2014

In this paper the work of three outstanding representatives of poetical (type III) mysticism is briefly considered. Although exemplars of speculative and systematic mysticism also engage in quasi-poetical prose in their formulations and sermons, they do not do so in the same highly expressive, direct and emotionally intense manner that is typical of the type III mystic. For this reason Richard Rolle, Henry Suso and Madame Guyon were selected as exemplars of poetical mysticism, and discussed in section 1. The poetically-inclined Christian mystic is not interested in either metaphysical speculation, or in Aristotelian analyses of the nature and elements of the mystic life (see paper 2). It is a deeply personal matter of the heart, of recounting one's experiences on the mystic journey and singing the praises of the divine, rather than merely a matter of the intellect. In section 2 the pragmatic (type IV) theologies of John Tauler, the anonymously authored Cloud of Unknowing, and the work of the Spanish mystic, Miguel de Molinos are reviewed. Their mystical writings and activities have a much stronger practical focus and action-orientation (in the subjectivist-empyrean mode), compared to the other mystics.