The Geometry of Christian Contemplation: Measure without Measure

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David Albertson (Associate Professor of Religion, School of Religion, Associate Professor of Religion, School of Religion, University of Southern California)

The Geometry of Christian Contemplation

Name: The Geometry of Christian Contemplation
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ISBN: 9780198946977

Measure without Measure

David Albertson (Associate Professor of Religion, School of Religion, Associate Professor of Religion, School of Religion, University of Southern California)

$234.95

Hardback

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English

Oxford University Press
18 September 2025

Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500; Western philosophy: Medieval & Renaissance, c 500 to c 1600; Christianity; Christian theology; Christian mysticism

The writings of ancient and medieval Christian mystics were rediscovered in the twentieth century, and today they are read more widely than ever before. But do modern assumptions about religious experience influence how we hear those premodern voices? Do we do them justice by thinking of mysticism as interior and ineffable? Or can mystical experience intersect with the natural environment, and indeed the cosmos, which science calculates with precise quantities? David Albertson's The Geometry of Christian Contemplation: Measure without Measure suggests a fresh approach to the history of mystical theology that is oriented toward exteriority more than interiority, and toward the measurable world outside more than the invisible world within. The ancient Greek philosopher Plotinus had taught contemplatives to close their eyes and withdraw into the soul. Most Christians followed his directions, but others dissented. In three critical episodes, an alternative model of Christian contemplation began to emerge: from Dionysius the Areopagite, to the Byzantine monks John of Damascus and Theodore the Studite, to eccentric humanists in medieval Paris. Together these episodes add up to a very different theological aesthetics, one that can enliven the modern study of mysticism and correct some of its imbalances. For in the centuries before the scientific revolution and the secularization of nature, Christians still saw God in the exterior world, not only the interior soul. God was not an ineffable and formless Absolute, immeasurable as the soul, but an infinite Measure who leaves behind geometrical traces in the figures of the world. The God who became a human body in the Incarnation not only entered time and matter, but also spatial extension, and with it the conditions of measure: points, lines, curves, shapes, planes, dimensions, and magnitudes. Today the wisdom of this counter-tradition can strengthen the study of mysticism, not only by supplementing our contemporary fascination with negative theology by redefining what it means to name God positively, but by suggesting a new connection between Christian mysticism and the hyper-measured, hyper-technologized world that surrounds us.

By: David Albertson (Associate Professor of Religion School of Religion Associate Professor of Religion School of Religion University of Southern California)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 165mm, Spine: 24mm
Weight: 635g
ISBN: 9780198946977
ISBN 10: 019894697X
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 18 September 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction Part I. An Archaeology of the Formless Chapter 1: The Silence of the World Chapter 2: Guarding the One Chapter 3: The Aneidetic Condition Part II. A Genealogy of Form Chapter 4: The Limits of Negation Chapter 5: The Extension of Desire Chapter 6: Kenosis into Magnitude Chapter 7: The Icon as Figure Chapter 8: Trinity and Form Chapter 9: The Figure as Icon Epilogue

David Albertson is Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he studies medieval Christianity and philosophy of religion and serves as Executive Director of the Nova Forum for Catholic Thought. He is the author of Cusanus Today: Thinking with Nicholas of Cusa Between Philosophy and Theology (CUA, 2024), Mathematical Theologies: Nicholas of Cusa and the Legacy of Thierry of Chartres (Oxford, 2014), and Without Nature? A New Condition for Theology (Fordham, 2009). His research is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.