THEOSIS;  TRANSFIG.  CONTEMPL.;  MEDIT'.;  HESYCH.;  PRI. REVEL;   APOKAT.;  ESCHAT.;  SPIR-PRACT;  APOPHAT-KAT.;  LIT. PRAYER;  PRE-CHRISTIAN;  PATRISTIC;   MEDIEVAL;  SPIRITUALISM

IN the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church Elizabeth Livingstone offers the following definition:

In modern usage “mysticism” generally refers to claims of immediate knowledge of Ultimate Reality (whether or not this is called “God”) by direct personal experience; “mystical theology” is used to mean the study of mystical phenomena or the science of the mystical life.

WHILE the term “mysticism” is both variously-defined and controversial, the term “mystical theology” has been used in Christian theology since the time of the sixth-century, pseudonymous author, Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite.  A definition of mystical theology suggested by bishop Kallistos Ware is based on a much repeated phrase by Athanasius:

Bishop Ware suggests that the first part of the saying is the matter of systematic or dogmatic theology, while the second concerns mystical theology

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