Together with her contemporary and friend, John of the Cross Teresa of Avila represents the highest point of Catholic spiritual writing in the troubled age of the Reformation and Courner-Reformation. She is also one of the founding figures of modern Spanish literature. The vivid legacy she left of her experiences in prayer has made her an object of intense interest to psychologists of religion.

Williams uses the most recent historical research on Teresa and her society to provide a full introduction to all her major works. Teresa is revealed as more than just a chronicler of paranormal states of consciousness. She emerges as a genuine theologian in her own right with a powerful contribution to make to contemporary understanding.

Above all, Teresa is chiefly concerned with developing a model of Christian life as friendship with God -- a God who abandons status and dignity for the sake of human beings. In this book, Rowan Williams also shows how all of Teresa's major writings concentrate on this incarnational theme -- arguing that Christian mysticism is itself deeply misunderstood unless it is seen within an incarnational framework.