Anatomy of Transcendence

[your copy will be signed by the author before shipment] Man is created by God for an eternal glory that surpasses his nature, and he is called even now to a graced participation in divine life that draws him above and beyond himself, conforming him to the one in whose image he is made. In his theological writings, Thomas Aquinas explored this “order of excess” that characterizes God’s elevation of the rational creature, discerning in its most extreme instances—mystical transport, ecstasy, and rapture—the essential contours of the ordering of Christian life to the transcendent union of beatific vision. This same ordering is witnessed in Aquinas’s own experience, where toward the end of his life he was raised to a contemplative vision surpassing all language and further study. In Anatomy of Transcendence, Peter A. Kwasniewski examines the intersection of Aquinas’s theological writings and mysticism, establishing a vocabulary and topography for the Angelic Doctor’s study and experience o