Book description
For the medieval mystical tradition, the Christian soul meets God in a 'cloud of unknowing', a divine darkness of ignorance. This meeting with God is beyond all knowing and beyond all experiencing. Mysticisms of the modern period, on the contrary, place 'mystical experience' at the centre, and contemporary readers are…
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Why read it?
1 author picked The Darkness of God as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This is a genuine classic. Denys Turner almost single-handedly made us re-evaluate the nature of ‘mysticism’ and spirituality. More in particular, he distances himself from typically modern interpretations of mysticism in terms of an immediate experience of God: given the traditional emphasis upon the unknowability of God, Turner argues that mysticism is not about an experience of God, but it offers ‘categories of experience’: the mystic, transformed by faith, hope, and love, relates to the world, others, and self in a radically different way.
Eckhart’s notion of detachment, involving a letting go or renunciation of the possessiveness that characterizes our…
From Rik's list on The best books on medieval theology and spirituality.
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