Roots of Western Mysticism

Week 3

READING: NET: Augustine, Confessions (html, pdf), On the Trinity (html, pdf); Dionysus, The Mystical Theology

Early Christian Theology

• Early Greek Christianity
  • Clement of Alexandria
  • Origen
  • Cappadocian Fathers (Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great)
• Early Latin Christianity
  • The Council of Nicea
    • Nicene Creed
    • Arius
  • Augustine, Confessions (html, pdf), On the Trinity (html, pdf)
    • Confessions 9 & 10 discussions
    • On the Trinity
    • Questions for Augustine

Dionysius the Areopagite

• Celestial & Ecclesiastical Hierarchy
• Divine Names
• Mystical Theology
  • Dionysus, The Mystical Theology
• Cataphatic and Apophatic Theology

John Scotus Eriugena

• Four Divisions of Nature
• Five Kinds of Non-Being
• Eriugena on Human Nature

Non-Being, Nothingness, Negation

• Imagining Non-Being
• A Taxonomy of Non-Being
• Non-Being - Short Notes
• Consequences of the Senses of Non-Being
• Existential Non-Being
• Non-Being - So What?