The posts in this category provide an overview of Christian mysticism, including its relationship to Christianity at large and to world mysticism.
Mysticism crosses all religious and spiritual boundaries. In other words, mysticism — like prayer or meditation or worship or sacrifice — is a universal spiritual/religious concept, not something that is limited to just one religious or wisdom tradition. What Baron Friedrich von Hugel called “the mystical element of religion” can be found in all the world’s great traditions...
The best way to understand Christian mysticism (if "understanding" is even a possibility, given the mysterious nature of mysticism) is to approach it as a process: a developmental journey of how one relates to God.
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I cannot nail down a Christian understanding of mysticism in a single session of a class (or in a simple blog post), but hopefully I can offer some lines of thinking that can help readers and students to think about Christian mysticism in a manner that is consistent with how mysticism has been understood by Christian theologians, contemplatives and visionaries.
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Anyone interested in the beliefs of Christian mystics will naturally be curious to know, "do Christian mystics believe the same things as other Christians?" It's an almost impossible question to answer...
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I often get asked, "What is mysticism?" In other words, how can we define this word?
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Since mysticism cannot be put into words, and contemplation likewise involves a wordless gaze of love, silence is the essential nutrient for anyone seeking to walk the path of mystical or contemplative prayer.
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Not only can Christianity be a mystical faith, but in fact a mystical element of Christianity has existed since the time of Jesus. But for a variety of historical, social and political reasons, Christian mysticism has always existed on the margins of the church.
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