Christian Spirituality: God's Presence Through the Ages
"Spirituality," the buzzwords of the '90s, is a term begging definition and roots. Woods offers both in this succinct but extensive survey. Christian spirituality, he says, is the recognition of God's presence. Rooted in the incarnation of Christ?God made flesh?it is holistic, affecting body as well as soul, the community as well as the individual. God's presence breaks into human experience as God wills, not as any institution decrees. Woods, a Dominican professor of psychiatry and spiritual theology, traces spiritual theology and practice from the apostolic era through the 1990s, lingering lovingly in the thousand years of medieval monasticism and racing breathlessly through the modern and postmodern world. The survey is complete enough to use as a textbook and graceful enough to attract the general reader. Though most attention is paid to the Western Catholic tradition, Orthodox monks and mystics appear throughout, and the chapter on the Protestant Reformation is a small gem.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.