The darkness of God: negativity in Christian mysticism

Abstract

Acknowledgements Introduction Part I. Two Sources and a Synthesis: 1. The allegory and Exodus 2. Cataphatic and the apophatic in Denys the Areopagite 3. The God within: Augustine's Confessions 4. Interiority and ascent: Augustine's De Trinitate 5. Hierarchy interiorised: Bonaventure's Itinerarium Mentis in Deum Part II. Developments: 6. Eckhart: God and the self 7. Eckhart: detachment and the critique of desire 8. The Cloud of Unknowing and the critique of interiority 9. Denys the Carthusian and the problem of experience 10. John of the Cross: the dark nights and depression 11. From mystical theology to mysticism Further reading Index.