Abstract

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Edited by Julia A. Lamm. (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 2013. Pp. xx, 651. $199.95. ISBN 978-14443-3286-5.)Julia Lamm has assembled a valuable collection of forty articles by leading scholars in this treasury of studies of (mainly) Christian mysticism. A lengthy and expert introduction by Lamm leads to the first section: five articles on Themes in Christian Mysticism. These include an exploration of the Song of Songs, gender, Platonism, aesthetics, and heresy, which, although incisive and richly detailed, seem somewhat randomly selected. The more explicitly historical sections include scriptural and early Christian elements, late-ancient Christian (i.e., Patristic) contributions (including Origen, the Cappadocian Fathers, St. Augustine, and St. Benedict), eleven essays on medieval mystics and mysticism (the largest section), and eight on Reformed traditions and modernity (including the twentieth century). The concluding section provides six articles on Critical Perspectives from theology, epistemology, linguistics, and neuroscience, including brief examinations of the social-scientific study of mysticism and interreligious aspects of the comparative study of mysticism, two excellent and heuristic contributions.As with the introductory essays, much more could be said in this section and elsewhere, but at more than 600 pages, much has been. Perhaps unavoidably in so wide-ranging a compendium, some repetitiveness occurs, not least in the medieval section. Topics include St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians; the Victorines; the Byzantine tradition; the principal Franciscans (Ss. Francis, Clare, and Bonaventure) as well as the Spiritual Franciscans; the Nuns of Helfta; the Beguines and the Low Countries (including Ruusbroec); the Rhineland tradition of Meister Eckhart, Henry Suso, and Johannes Tauler; the English mystics of the fourteenth century; Italian women mystics of the later Middle Ages; and Nicholas Cusa and his era. Under the rubric of Reformation and Modernity are found an essay on the Protestant reformers (mainly Martin Luther and John Calvin), the great Spanish mystics (mainly Ss. Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross), the French School, Pietism, Russian mysticism, and five contributions that cover the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Despite its largely sequential organization and the emphasis on historical figures and movements, the volume is a semi-encyclopedic resource, not a history of Christian mysticism on the order of the monumental series by Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God (New York, 1991-), although McGinn's presence is felt throughout. …

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