Customer Reviews

Christian Mystics: Their Lives and Legacies Throughout the Ages

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I liken this book to having dinner with the mystics. Ursula King gives a concise, but short history - sort of an appetizer - before she writes about the mystics. King weaves a story of each, carefully following who they learned from and what their life and times were like. It is a terrific and easy read. I actually read it in one day. Recently, I taught this book at my chapel. Everyone loved it as well.I highly recommend it for anyone interested in another's spiritual journey.

This was the first book that I read on the topic of Mysticism.

Ursula King did a great job:
a) making the chapters and sections an easy read (explaining terms, providing further research information, providing a comprehensive look at each mystic, and talking about various movements and schools of thought within Christianity and Christian mysticism).
b) compiling the lives of 60 men and women of God from ancient Antiquity 'till modern times.
c) not making this book be partisan to any particular Christian faith (she analyses the lives and influence of Catholic as well as Protestant and Eastern Orthodox mystics).

At its core, Christian mysticism is defined as Contemplation: contemplations on Christ's life & sacrifice, and of God's love towards humanity. As such this book has had a refreshing spiritual benefit in my life.

A few months ago I became interested in the lives of the saints, and anyone else who shares a curiosity of them finds out fairly quickly that many of the more famous ones were mystics. I was pretty much an amateur in my knowledge of the topic and asked people who knew more about it than I did what *exactly* mysticism is, and very few people could give me a good definition---then I came across this book, and it did exactly that. But the great thing about Ursula King's "Christian Mystics" is that anyone could get use out of and learn from this book.

King starts by giving a foundation of how mysticism developed---starting at the very beginnings of Christianity as we know it, the political background of what caused the very first mystics to withdraw from society, and the proverbial "fathers" of mysticism. She follows in chronological order with the mystics of the early Christian church, then on into the medieval period, following a style of giving a concise and extremely informative biography of each specific mystic, and then smoothely making a connection to the next mystic, often a student or contemporary of the former. A lot of the most famous mystics are covered, as well as many of those of Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Although the title is "Christian Mysticism," you'll be getting much more out of the book than just that---a great basic history of Christianity and the world as it develops with each person, relevant devotional quotes and references to other works of the mystics that can further your studies into them and their writings, and a great and entertaining read all at the same time.

I've highlited the heck out of this book and come back to it for information on the people found inside it many times---it's an indispensable resource for the amateur and expert a like, you won't be disappointed having it in your library. The fun part is...finding out which of the many deserving categories you can put it under. Good luck.

A stunning, beautiful compilation of all the lives of those Saints who have inspired millions for centuries! I was simply going to refer to one or two chapters in the book; I ended up reading the entire text! A gem in the world of Christian History and literature. Should be read by everyone interested in the life of faith and love of Jesus Christ.

Technology offers the attraction for hot new inventions, and these can even seduce our nature into accepting change for changes's sake. And confronted with secular pretense and it is easy to miss the subtleness of mystical experience altogether. Ursula King's "The Christian Mystics" provides an account of this other activity that is possible to miss. The alternative activity cannot be dismissed easily seeing that King catalogues the life of numerous mystics, from early Christians (e.g., Clement of Alexandria, Origen) to those contemporary mystics (e.g., Simone Weil, Thomas Merton).

King (page 15) writes: "All mysticism is characterized by a passion for unity. To the mystic, true Being and Ultimate Reality are One. This can be experienced as both impersonal and personal, as Ground of Being, Ultimate Source, Perfect Goodness, Eternal Wisdom, Devine Love, God, or the Godhead. This Reality contains, yet transcends, everything there is. It is the One whom all is lost and all is found." Mystics share the same experiences, and as these experiences are common they provide a level of validity that is not so easily ignored.

I must comment here. God is not found separate from God's creation, God is with us. The dualism that finds God apart from our world, either coming from theists or atheists, does not find support coming from mystical experience. I need only point to King. The situation is reversed from dualistic constraints, it is mysticism that is open to scientific investigation of a kind proposed by Wallace in "The Taboo of Subjectivity".

King (page 19) writes: "Of Great importance also is the concept of God who is not simply One, Ultimate Reality or the Absolute, but a personal Being who yet transcends all notions of personhood found among human beings by forming a community of persons with the mystery of the Trinity."

King (page 80) writes of Hildegard of Bingen: "She describes her visions in terms of light, speaks of mystical rapture and prophecies, and expresses her passionate desire for God with great intensity. Her visions are marked by brilliant colors, her descriptions by apophatic negations."

King (page 109) quotes Meister Eckhart: "The union of God with the soul is so great that it is scarcely to believe. And God is in himself so far above that no form of knowledge or desire can ever reach him... Desire is deep, immeasurably so. But nothing that the intellect can grasp and nothing that desire can desire is God. Where understanding and desire end, there is darkness and there God's radiance begins."

King (pages 152-153) writes on St. Teresa of Avila: "For Teresa, mental prayer was the beginning of the path to new ways of understanding, to the tasting of deep mysteries of faith, which included the indwelling presence of the Trinity and of Jesus Christ in his humanity and divinity, as well as insights into sin and grace, the Church and the sacraments. Her visions were both spiritual and physical, and she eventually experienced the grace of perfect union with Christ so that she became inseparable from him `as when a little stream enters the sea'."

King (page 235) writes on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: "As a child he had experienced a deep sense of oneness with nature, later followed by mystical experiences linked to `vast open spaces' of sea and desert, to the riches of fossil life and the vibrant energy of cosmic evolution. All these made him ecstatically perceive `that through all of nature I was immersed in God.' For him Jesus `comes to us clothed in the glory of the world.' "

Trinity finds agreement with the Advaitic experience. King (page 241) writes: "Swami Abhishiktananda's experience included the belief that there is an Advaitic dimension, an experience of deep, underlying unity, in Christianity itself which must be recovered." On page (242): "He realized a profoundly personal synthesis of Hindu-Christian spirituality in his own life."

King (page 247) writes: "Reading the stories of past Christian mystics, it is remarkable how often mystical experiences of union and communion occur through intimate contact with nature, with the haunting beauty of its myriad forms of life. Hildegard of Bingen saw God's fiery essence in the beautiful meadows and waters, the blossoms, fruits and breeze, but also the sun, moon and starts, whereas Fracis of Assis spoke to the animals and praised Brother Sun."

King (page 248) writes on the basic message of all mystics: "Divine radiance, light and life suffuse all there is. It is for us to accept this, and just let be or, in the words of the Christian mystics, to conform our will to God's will."

Disclosure: My agenda is declared in my profile.

Ursula King is a professor of theology at the University of Bristol in England. She is the right person to tell the story of Christian mysticism. Ms. King writes with great clarity and the way she chooses to tell her tale is by giving us brief biographies of sixty mystics from the earliest centuries of Christianity down to the modern period.The list includes Origen, Hildegard of Bingen, St. Francis of Assisi,Theresa of Avila, Francis de Sales and Thomas Merton.

The biographies describe unique individuals who in most cases led extraordinary lives.Their experiences, however, can hardly be called uniform since there are so many different paths to mysticism.I recommend CHRISTIAN MYSTICS highly to anyone who enjoys inspirational reading.

This book describes groups of saints, according to their time lived, along with descriptions of their early years. Informative and a must have for anyone who wants to learn more about saints in a non-religious way.

Writing a book on the history of Christian mysticism would be a daunting task for any historian, because everyone is looking for something different. This book delivers neat, concise and well written mini biographies of the famous and infamous mystics of ancient, Western, Eastern and modern Christianity. Each installment gives you enough information to get you interested to study further, but not too much to make you bored. I recommend this book for all levels of mature readers.

This book is pretty bare bones. It's mostly made up of light historical accounts of great mystics of the past. I found it very dry. Not much of the mystic's actual teachings are covered. It all feels more like a term paper than a rich compilation. I recommend this instead if mysticism is what you're into:

An Anthology of Christian Mysticism by Harvey Egan

http://www.amazon.com/Anthology-Christian-Mysticism-Pueblo-Books/dp/0814660126/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297659973&sr=8-1

I am glad this book gives tribute to people who knew Christ.

In honour of unspoken mystics (persons in whom Christ has revealed mysteries above human understanding) throughout the ages,I would like to add that the world at the present time knows very little about millions of mystics who existed through the centuries and the ones that exist today. We will all be suprised when we find out the stories and beliefs of the millions upon millions who were touched by Christ in this world.