Christian Mysticism

An Introduction to Contemporary Theoretical Approaches

Louise Nelstrop, Kevin Magill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317166689
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book introduces students to Christian mysticism and modern critical responses to it. Christianity has a rich tradition of mystical theology that first emerged in the writings of the early church fathers, and flourished during the Middle Ages. Today Christian mysticism is increasingly recognised as an important Christian heritage relevant to today's spiritual seekers. The book sets out to provide students and other interested readers with access to the main theoretical approaches to Christian mysticism - including those propounded by William James, Steven Katz, Bernard McGinn, Michael Sells, Denys Turner and Caroline Walker-Bynum. It also explores postmodern re-readings of Christian mysticism by authors such as Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-François Lyotard. The book first introduces students to the main themes that underpin Christian mysticism. It then reflects on how modern critics have understood each of them, demonstrating that stark delineation between the different theoretical approaches eventually collapses under the weight of the complex interaction between experience and knowledge that lies at the heart of Christian mysticism. In doing so, the book presents a deliberate challenge to a strictly perennialist reading of Christian mysticism. Anyone even remotely familiar with Christian mysticism will know that renewed interest in Christian mystical writers has created a huge array of scholarship with which students of mysticism need to familiarise themselves. This book outlines the various modern theoretical approaches in a manner easily accessible to a reader with little or no previous knowledge of this area, and offers a philosophical/theological introduction to Christian mystical writers beyond the patristic period important for the Latin Western Tradition.

Part I
Key Themes and Motifs

The six chapters in this section of the book look at themes and motifs that are often considered definitive of Christian mysticism. They explore the relationship between Christianity and various forms of Platonism, the use of negative statements about God and of erotic imagery, the idea that the spiritual journey is a movement within the soul, the role performed by hierarchy and the connection between symbolism and the mystical interpretation of scripture. Through our discussion of these themes we aim to reflect on the various theoretical approaches to Christian mysticism outlined in the introductory chapter.

Chapter 1
Platonism and Christian Mysticism

It is widely recognised that there is a relationship between Platonism in its various forms and the Christian mystical tradition.¹ The chapter begins with an introduction to Plato and two ideas which had important implications for Christian mysticism: his theory of knowledge as exemplified in his famous cave analogy and his theory of the love of beauty. It then considers how Plato’s ideas were developed by three Neoplatonists: Plotinus, Iamblichus and Proclus.

Platonism

Platonism is a philosophical system attributed to Plato (428–347 BC), who is perhaps the best known of the ancient Greek philosophers, and arguably the most important philosopher of all time. He was the first Western philosopher to put his thinking into writing, and much, if not all, of his output has survived. He presented his thought in the form of philosophical dialogues between his teacher Socrates and various other parties. He also established his Academy (so called because of its location at a site sacred to the hero Academus) in Athens, the place of his birth.

Plato’s Theory of Knowledge

Plato’s early dialogues focus on the Socratic method of revealing moral insights through a process of self-discovery. Being virtuous was not a question of finding a missing piece of information. Rather it is about coming to understand that we already possess knowledge of virtue. In Andrew Louth’s words, our understanding needs to be ‘awakened’.² This principle of knowledge, that we already possess but have managed to obscure, is central to Plato’s philosophy. Even more important is Plato’s belief that the soul, or inner part of a person, is more important and more real that the outer physical part.

According to Plato, the soul originally contemplated the truth or true reality, that is the ‘Forms’ or ‘Ideas’. Access to true reality was, however, obscured when the soul was born into a body. The embodied soul forgot its vision of Truth and Beauty and instead accepted the changeable world of the senses – a world of illusion in which nothing stays the same – as the only reality there is. The world we experience on a day-to-day basis is, according to Plato, a world in which real knowledge is impossible since real knowledge cannot be based on that which is changeable and corruptible. For knowledge to be certain it must be based on that which is eternal and unchangeable. To reacquire such knowledge the soul – the eternal and unchangeable element in the human being – must leave this world and remember what it once knew. According to Plato, this act of remembering or awakening is the object of philosophy. At the end of Book 5 of The Republic, Plato discusses perception, distinguishing between knowledge, ignorance and an intermediate state called ‘opinion’. He refers to these ‘states’ as forms of awareness or acquaintance. Knowledge, he says, is awareness of that which has being; ignorance is awareness of that which does not have being; and opinion is awareness of something that is between being and non-being. Knowledge or apprehension of the Good is free from error, whereas opinion is prone to error. These distinctions have a specific function in Plato’s famous cave analogy, through which he tries to explain his theory of knowledge.

Plato’s Cave Analogy Plato discusses the cave analogy in Book 7 of The Republic. He describes a cave that is connected to the outside world by a long passage. Sitting deep in the passage are a row of prisoners facing the cave’s end wall. There is no natural light where they sit, they are chained to the spot and their necks are clamped to prevent them seeing anyone else – all they can do is look forward at the cave wall. Plato’s asks us to imagine that this has always been the case for these prisoners; their reality is the reality of the cave.

Unknown to the prisoners, behind them a fire burns and their captors use the firelight to cast the shadows of objects onto the cave wall. Having no experiences to the contrary, the prisoners accept these shadows to be all the reality there is. But what would happen if a prisoner wrestled free from his chains, turned around and started to walk towards the cave’s entrance? The experience would surely be physically painful, at first sight the fire would be dazzling and the experiences beyond the shadows would be incomprehensible. There would be a strong temptation, Plato thinks, for the prisoner to return to the comforting deception of the shadow world. Outside the cave, Plato says, the experience would be totally blinding. As the prisoner became accustomed to natural sunlight, he would begin to make out those objects he had previously experienced only as shadows. Eventually, Plato thinks, the prisoner would become accustomed to the brilliance of the sun and the ‘truth’ of its revealing rays.

The cave analogy illustrates the progress of the soul, drawn up by its schooling in philosophy, to knowledge of reality, ‘the Good’, which is free from opinion. Plato is clear that contemplation of the Good is not a static goal. The progress of the soul, as an education from opinion to knowledge, must be made available to those still living amongst the cave’s shadows. In this relation it is important to recognise that Plato’s Republic is a treatise concerning, amongst other things, who or what a philosopher ruler should be. According to Plato, a philosopher ruler is one who has been educated in the philosophical method that his cave analogy outlines. He will therefore judge by what is ultimately good and true, and not rely on mere opinion. However, the philosopher ruler must not only become accustomed to the light of the Good, he must reacquaint himself with the darkness of the cave. He must be aware of the deceptions of those only acquainted with shadows. In Plato’s words, addressing would-be philosopher rulers:

You must therefore each descend in turn and live with your fellows in the cave and get used to seeing in the dark; once you get used to it you will see a thousand times better than they do and will distinguish the various shadows, and know what they are shadows of, because you have seen the truth about things admirable and just and good.³

This idea of a second descent after ascent is also found in Christian mysticism.⁴

Plato’s Theory of the Love of Beauty

True knowledge in a Platonic sense also means union with and participation in the objects of true knowledge: Truth, Beauty and Goodness. How such participation works is clearly illustrated by Plato’s theory of Beauty. Plato outlines his understanding of Beauty most clearly in The Symposium. The setting for the dialogue is a banquet at which certain guests make speeches in praise of the god of love, Eros. Socrates makes a speech in which he sets out a progressive ascent to the love of beauty. Socrates asks his audience to consider concrete manifestations of beauty. He moves them beyond these to beauty in its universal form as illustrated in these many objects. Finally he leads them to Beauty itself. Andrew Louth has described this process of ascent as the soul’s ‘intellectual purification’, since it is a movement away from the senses.⁵ Yet all things are beautiful through participation in Beauty itself. Diotima’s speech makes this clear: ‘When anyone, ascending from a correct system of Love, begins to contemplate this supreme beauty, he already touches the consummation of his labour.’⁶ The Form of Beauty is the spark perceived in a beautiful face but it can never be limited to a corruptible material object.

Love (Eros) intensifies as the soul approaches the final rapturous vision of Beauty. Contemplating Beauty, like the contemplation of the Good in the cave analogy, transcends all that the soul previously remembers understanding and knowing. Love also becomes purified as it moves away from carnal attachments. What is revealed is eternal, it cannot be defined nor can it be represented in an image – it is unique. Here knowledge is not so much ‘knowing’ in a human sense, ‘participation’. Everything that the soul previously thought it knew and all embodied means of knowing are transcended. To know what is unknowable the soul must transcend the normal limits of knowledge and encounter it in ecstasy – literally ekstasis: ‘out of one’s senses’.

All of these ideas were important for later medieval writers. As we will see in subsequent chapters, the idea that one is both ascending but also journeying within becomes a central theme in Christian mysticism. The relation of image to eternal knowledge and the relatively lowly status of imagination are also important features, as is the idea of not-knowing and ecstasy. Many of these ideas are passed to later Christian mystics through the writings of Augustine and Pseudo-Denys. Rather than being influenced by Plato directly, these two authors were influenced by the writings of two important NeoPlatonists: Plotinus and Proclus.

Neoplatonism

After Plato’s death, the Academy was headed by a series of distinguished pupils, each of whom claimed to be preserving the authentic teaching of Plato. A variety of slightly divergent schools of thought emerged. The result is what experts now identify as ‘Middle Platonism’ and ‘Neoplatonism’. The greatest Middle Platonists lived in Alexandria in Egypt: Philo (25 BC–AD 50) who synthesised Judaism with Platonism; and Clement (150–215) and Origen (185–254) who combined Christianity with Platonic concepts. Neoplatonists who headed the Academy and were particularly important for Christian mysticism were Plotinus (c.204–270) whose ideas influenced Augustine, and Iamblichus (c.240–325). The most famous proponent of Iamblichus’s approach was Proclus, who was a major influence on Pseudo-Denys.⁷

Plotinus and the Theory of Emanation

At the core of his philosophical system, Plotinus describes different levels of being, of which the head is the One. The One is not simply numerical unity, it is an all-embracing unity in which everything is related to everything else. But just as the One is not to be thought of exclusively as numerically one, so it is not simply the unity of all things. The One is the author of all things, not as a creator external to creation, but in the sense that all that exists has emanated from the One and therefore shares its substance with the author of creation. Emanation is the One’s simplicity unfolding into what we understand as reality.

As well as emanation out from the One there is a process of return. For Plotinus, emanation and return establish a perfect balance in the cosmos. E.R. Dodds explains this dual movement through the analogy of the ripples caused by a stone breaking the calm surface of water. He writes:

We may think of the continuously expanding and continuously weakening circle of ripples that you get when you throw a stone into still water – save that here there is no stone-thrower and no water either: reality is the ripples and there is nothing else.⁸

The overflowing of the One into diversity is counterbalanced by the One’s longing to return to perfect simplicity by drawing everything back to itself. There is the corresponding desire of multiplicity to become simple again. However, care must be taken when using a word like ‘longing’ in reference to the One. The One is a generative unity that has no ti...