The Letters of an Unexpected Mystic - by Robert D Flanagan (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The apostle Peter is a pillar of the church whose writing has been overlooked until recently when scholarship remedied this gap, significantly elevating Peter's letters. However, one critical area has been omitted. Within the Petrine writing is a robust, empowered, and beautiful mystical theology, which makes Peter an unexpected but vital Christian mystic. In exploring his love of artwork, German theologian and priest Romano Guardini developed the Threefold Seeing, which has been brought to light by Yvonne Dohna Schlobitten of the Pontificate Gregorian University. His unique method of viewing the artist, artwork, and observer develops a way of encountering the world and word. Instead of looking at the world or the biblical text through separate vantage points, the Threefold Seeing integrates all disciplines under greater view of God, the artist of all creation. The Letters of an Unexpected Mystic employs Guardini's Threefold Seeing to encounter the mystic Peter and the Petrine mystical theology. The result is a book that provides its readers with a means to become the Christian Karl Rahner wrote about in 1971: ""The devout Christian of the future will either be a 'mystic, ' one who has 'experienced' something, or he will cease to be anything at all.""

Review Quotes

"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

About the Author

Robert D. Flanagan is an adjunct faculty member at General Theological Seminary and dean's advisor at Virginia Theological Seminary. He is the author of Courage to Thrive: Finding Joy and Hope in the Midst of Mental Health Struggles (2020). He received his MDiv and DMin at Virginia Theological Seminary and is an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of New York.