Not of This World : A Treasury of Christian Mysticism

National Book Network, April 2003. Paper Back. New. Following the early church's tradition of monastic ascent -- <i>Praktikos, Theoretikos and Gnostikos</i> (here translated Purification, Illumination and Union) -- this compilation gathers an ecumenical host of sources with the intention of supplying a devotional map of Christian mystical teaching. This is not simply a sampling of literature or a survey text introducing the history of Christian mysticism. In fact, if we have a complaint about the book it's that the two to three page excerpts leave us wanting more from the works from which they were extracted. However, James Cutsinger, a theology and philosophy professor at the University of South Carolina, makes no apologies. His pursuit is patently clear: deification and union with Christ. Even the book's internal structure testifies to his aim, symbolically representing the three persons of the Holy Trinity, the nine ranks of angels, the Eighth Day of the Resurrection, the twelve elders of the Old Testament and twelve apostles of the New, and the seventy-two hours that comprise the three days of Christ's passion. We'll let you discover how he figures the math, but needless to say, there's seventy-two readings in all. To borrow from Cutsinger, ''variety is a keynote of this collection.'' So here's our attempt at a representative list: Boethius, Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Charles Williams, Evagrius, Anselm, Dante, Coleridge, Origen, Nicholas of Cusa, Brother Lawrence, Philip Sherrard, Gregory of Nyssa, Seraphim of Sarov, Symeon the New Theologian, Augustine, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Therese of Liseaux, Thomas Traherne, Hierotheos Vlachos of Nafpaktos, Gregory Palamas, John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, Maximus the Confessor... 279 pp.