[1] 书籍信息

Jason M. Baxter, An Introduction to Christian Mysticism: Recovering the Wildness of Spiritual Life, Baker Academic, 2021.

[2] 作者简介

Jason M. Baxter (PhD, University of Notre Dame), an expert in medieval Catholic thought, is associate professor of fine arts and humanities at Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyoming, where he worked with the Distance Learning Program to produce an eighteen-part introduction to the Divine Comedy. He also codirected the college’s Rome Immersion Experience, designed to introduce students to the highlights of Roman art, architecture, history, and culture. He speaks at universities across the country and is the author of several books, including A Beginner’s Guide to Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” Visit his website at JasonMBaxter.com.

[3] 内容简介

This brief, accessibly written volume introduces key figures, texts, and themes of the mystical tradition and shows how and why the mystics can speak to the church today. Jason Baxter, an expert educator and storyteller, explains that the mystical tradition offers a more robust understanding of God than our current shallow conceptions. Featuring engagement with primary sources and suitable for use in a variety of courses, this book argues that the mystics have much to say to contemporary Christians searching for authentic modes of spirituality.

[4] 名家推荐

“In reassuring prose, Jason Baxter gives us Christian mysticism undomesticated—bold, inflamed, insistent, pushing to the very boundaries of speech, and communing with God beyond every merely human mode of communication. Baxter is one to watch—will he too be among the mystics? May it be so!”

—Matthew Levering, Mundelein Seminary

“Jason Baxter begins his story in the wasteland that is our culture. An Introduction to Christian Mysticism shows how the dark night of the soul has extended across society. For Christians who desire the light, Baxter argues, we must become mystics or die. Yet the light that draws us out of darkness will be blinding, painful, and shocking. Tracing the mystic experiences of God from the pagans to Julian of Norwich and Nicholas of Cusa, Baxter reorients us to the tradition that we lost after the Reformation and the Enlightenment. To ignore this book is to succumb to a weak, domesticated version of our faith. To read this book is to be lit up again by our bright, burning, wild, and unfathomable God.”

—Jessica Hooten Wilson, University of Dallas

[5] 书籍目录

Introduction: The Soul from Whom God Hides Nothing

1. The Christian of the Future in the Desert of Modernity: The Twentieth-Century Rediscovery of Ancient Mysticism

2. Pagans Grope toward God: Piety and Prayer in Antiquity        

3. The Inward Turn: What Augustine Learned from the Pagans     

4. The Darkness of God: Dionysius the Areopagite, Gregory of Nyssa, and Meister Eckhart

5. Praying with the Whole World: Natural Contemplation and the Legacy of the Desert Fathers

6. How to Perform Scripture: Lectio Divina and the Renewal of the Heart 

Conclusion: The Wildness of the Spiritual Life

Notes

Index