A Short History of Christian Spirituality

What is `spirituality'? For some people today it means a search for relationship with `the divine'. For others, it signifies an existential journey into the deepest reaches of the self. As Edward Howells reveals, in his engaging new survey of mystical belief, Christian spirituality was once understood to be quite distinct from individual experience, whether inward or outward looking. But more often it now points to something experiential, albeit with Christian trappings, and focused on personal `development'. The author here explains the great age of Christian mysticism as an activity concerned, not with transcendent self-understanding, but above all with seeking a presence of God in the world. Tracing the history of spirituality from Augustine to modernity, Howells carefully explains the thought of key figures like Dionysius the Areopagite, Origen of Alexandria, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hadewicjh, Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross. He shows that, in Christian history, spirituality was never some rarefied, esoteric activity but something workaday: about putting an idea of God at the centre of all reality.