The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition

The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys
New Edition
By Andrew Louth
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007
Review by Carl McColman

Andrew Louth, Professor of Theology at Durham University in the UK, is that rarest of literary treasures: an academic writer whose prose is engaging and delightful to read. A survey like this one, covering the key philosophers and theologians whose work comprise the headwaters of the “Christian mystical tradition” could easily sink under the weight of its topical dullness, especially given how old the source material is (the youngest figure Louth treats in this book, Denys — more commonly known as Pseudo-Dionysius — flourished some 1500 years ago). The dramatic and colorful figures of the golden age of mysticism, from Meister Eckhart to Julian of Norwich and Teresa of Avila, all lived centuries to a millennium after the period Louth is covering in this book; which means that he has to argue for the importance and relevance of writers whose ideas and arguments all too often seem so abstractly foreign to the twenty-first century as to be virtually meaningless. But Louth’s style is nimble and expository, he not only surveys the key ideas of the earliest writers in the mystical canon, but explains what makes them innovative or significant to the later tradition.