Abstract

As the author explains, this work began as an attempt to answer the question: "Is there such a thing as mystical experience?" Deciding that the question, loaded with unexamined presuppositions, was perhaps not a good one to begin with, Turner redirected his investigation to the use of some key metaphors in the Christian neoplatonic tradition--light, darkness, inwardness, ascent, and union. The result is a carefully crafted and illuminating essay in medieval apophatic theology and apophatic anthropology.