Mystical Theology The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology

includes index and biblioraphy

Part I Issues of History and Method 1 1 Spirituality and Theology: The Questions at Issue 3 Some Definitions 5 The Issues at Stake 9 Problems and Possibilities Today 18 The Divine-Human Encounter: Some Heuristic Thoughts 30 2 Mystery and Doctrine: The Historical Intergity of Spirituality and Theology The Growth of Mystical Theology: Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite 44 Mystical Knowledge and the Role of Christ: Maximus the Confessor 56 Discovery of the Inner Self: The Turn to Experience 62 Affectivity and the Degrees of Knowledge 69 Bodily Knowing: Possibilities for Retrieval 75 3 Recovering the Mystical Element of Theology: The Twentieth-Century Examples of Rahner and von Balthasar 90 Karl Rahner``s Mystagogy 91 Von Balthasar and the Trinitarian Encounter 101 Modernity and Mystical Thought 112 4 Theological Hermeneutics and Spiritual Texts 119 Apophasis: Mystical Speech as Superabundance of Meaning 123 The Trinitarian Basis of Mystical Speech 126 Mystical Speech as Event: Texts as Calls to Encounter 130 Experience, Interpretation and Texts 136 Part II Mystical Theology in Practice 149 5 Trinitarian Self-Abandon and the Problem of Divine Suffering 151 Divine Suffering and Mythological Gods 153 The Holy Spirit as Matrix for Trinitarian Thought 155 Some Pneumatological Grammar 158 Persons in Love 164 The Fruition of Trinitarian Life 181 6 The Hiddenness of God and the Self-Understanding of Jesus 187 Objection 1: Divine and Human Existence Are Mutually Exclusive Objection 2: Insufficient Knowledge of Jesus` Self-Understanding 199 Objection 3: Incamational Christologies Are Inevitably Docetic 203 7 Love for the Other and Discovery of the Self 211 Postmodern Anthropology 213 Mystical Anthropology 219