When Mystic Masters Meet

This book is a study of the role mystical discourse and experience can play in Christian-Muslim dialogue as a subset of interfaith dialogue in general. It concentrates on the work of two great medieval mystic masters, one Muslim, the other Christian. The Muslim is the Sufi teacher known to centuries of admirers as al-shaykh al-akbar or "The Greatest Master" -- Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-'Arabi. The Christian is the great German Dominican mystic and philosophical theologian whose status as "master" has become a part of his name -- Meister Eckhart. The book places the mystical discourse of these two masters in conversation with one another for the purposes of articulating "conversation points" between the two discourses which might serve as "nodes" for a possible new matrix for Christian-Muslim dialogue.