The Letters of an Unexpected Mystic

Really innovative theological writing is rare. But Robert Flanagan has managed a remarkable tour de force. Mysticism meets the biblical experience meets the remarkable frame of Romano Guardini. Reading out of Scripture the mystical experience of Peter has been brilliantly executed. The result is a moving, compelling, and beautiful book. This is a book that stays with you. --Ian S. Markham, Virginia Theological Seminary Flanagan's book newly apprehends Peter's letters, advocating a new way of seeing God's word in the Epistles. The word resists dispassionate observers, instead beckoning a transforming relationship with God and the biblical text, a heightened communion with the Creator and the word. I highly recommend this new vision. It reveals the potency and sublimity of First and Second Peter and thereby has invigorated my relationship with Christ. --Stephen Cook, Virginia Theological Seminary Both rigorous and accessible, Flanagan's work models a creative and deeply enriching approach to reading Scripture, centered on Saint Peter's life and attributed writings. With Guardini, Flanagan demonstrates how the biblical text can be opened to a new range of fresh meanings . . . . The book is full of personal anecdotes which invite us to follow in Peter's (and Flanagan's) footsteps, as we learn to hear God's voice afresh in our lives. --Michael W. DeLashmutt, The General Theological Seminary Using the tools of biblical exegesis and artistic analysis, Flanagan considers evidence found in the Gospels (including Acts) and the Petrine letters to posit a portrait of Peter as much more than an illiterate fisherman. Rather, he discovers the complex character of the apostle whose inward transformation manifests itself in a call to moral action in the life of Peter and the reader. --Lloyd Alexander Lewis Jr., Virginia Theological Seminary, emeritus