Christian Mysticism and Incarnational Theology: Between Transcendence and Immanence. Edited by Louise Nelstrop and Simon D. Podmore.

Abstract

This remarkable collection of essays is one of a pair that opens a potentially very fruitful series; with its companion volume Exploring Lost Dimensions in Christian Mysticism: Opening to the Mystical it contains presentations given at Keble College, Oxford, in 2011 which inaugurated an ongoing rapprochement between the study of mysticism and that of theology, philosophy, history, and the social sciences. The series, which has now reached seven volumes, is one of the most important academic efforts to address the problem of treating mysticism as just ‘personal experience’ without relevance to the wider disciplines of academic study. It bridges the gap between mysticism and multidisciplinary research. This volume is of a very high quality, bringing together the work of leading English scholars in the field of mysticism. The essays broadly address the theology of incarnation. Mysticism has at times been regarded as a Platonic, world-eschewing deviation from biblical faith, but this volume shows that many mystics were deeply concerned to relate their vision of God to this world, to the body, and to society around them. The issue of Platonism is addressed straight on in the first essay by Mark Edwards on ‘Plotinus: Monist, Theist or Atheist?’ From there patristic and medieval mystics are assessed in relation to anthropology (‘Seeing One’s Own Face in the Face of God: The Doctirine of the Divine Ideas in the Mystical Theologies of Dionysius the Areopagite and Nicholas of Cusa’ by Benjamin DeSapin), spatial aesthetics (‘The Visibility of the Invisible: From Nicholas of Cusa to Late Modernity and Beyond’ by Johannes Hoff), and Christology (in a masterful essay by Philip McCosker on the relations of the natures of Christ from the viewpoint of key mystical writers). There follow a couple of focused studies (by Ben Morgan and Markus Vinzent) of Meister Eckhart, always a controversial mystic in theological circles, both of which show Eckhart’s ‘universalizing’ of the incarnation in such a way that we are all the unique Son of God—the parallels here with McCosker’s elucidation, that for many of the mystics God took on human nature generally rather than a human nature, are fascinating. Duane Williams takes the debate from theology into philosophy with his essay on Heidegger’s use of language in relation to what can and cannot be said about universal truths.