Teachings of the Christian Mystics by Andrew Harvey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Acquired at Blossom Bookhouse

This book gathers a collection of short writings (mostly paragraph to a few page excerpts as well as a few poems) on mystic Christianity from the time of the Gospels through the twentieth century. While the bulk of the pieces are (if not from scriptures) the work of clergymen and / or theologians, there are some by individuals known elsewise (e.g. poets William Blake and Gerard Manley Hopkins.) The book is arranged somewhat, but not perfectly, chronologically — enough that all the Biblical excerpts are lumped together at the beginning to form about the first quarter of the selections. While there are a number of one-off contributors, there are several pieces from each of: Gregory of Nyssa, the Desert Fathers, Saint Symeon the New Theologian, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint Teresa of Avila, and Eckhart von Hochheim.

One nice feature of this book is that it does include selections from a wide range of sources (Roman Catholic, Orthodox Catholic, and Protestant) over a range of time periods, and from scriptures both canonical and “apocryphal.” So, there are many varied ideas of the mystical experience and the path thereto. The flipside of this fact is that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of cohesiveness to the collection. It isn’t always clear why Harvey (the editor) thought a given excerpt was representative of mystic teachings versus of mainstream Christianity. There is a substantial introduction, but otherwise the selections are left to speak for themselves.

Still, it was a quick read, dense with insights, and I found — particularly some of the scriptural selections — to be among the most profound statements of Christian philosophy that I’ve seen.

View all my reviews