Mystical Theology

16 July 2014

Review of Last Class

• Mysticism is a way of knowing that is beyond thinking and reasoning that awakens a unitive consciousness wherein one rests silently in the presence of God

• All Christians are called to mysticism in baptism, but becoming a mystic takes a conscious engagement with grace.

• Following the guidance of the living Tradition of the Church is very important, lest we be beguiled by the world, the flesh and the devil.

Review (continued)

• The cataphatic/apophatic distinction• How are we made for the Holy Trinity (in our

body and soul)?• What are some important passages in the Old

Testament that treat mysticism? In Jesus’ life? In the New Testament Church?

• What was Hellenic inculturation and why do some Christians object to it?

Still more review…

• What role does Christian monasticism play in the development of mysticism?

• How did it get from Egypt to western Europe?• Why is Saint Augustine important to the study of

Mystical Theology?• What was the prominent spirituality of the

Middle Ages and of what did it consist?• How was mendicant spirituality a development

from this medieval spirituality?

Sharing on homework

• Hesychastic prayer for 30 to 60 minutes• Are there any experiences that students would

like to share?• Can we formulate theological reflections on

these experiences?• Are there any questions for the upcoming

week?

Mysticism and Scholasticism

• Scholasticism refers to the use of dialetic reason in theology that traces its roots to St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109).

• The tension between the old approach and the new approach can be seen in Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) and Peter Abelard (1079-1142).

• Saint Thomas Aquinas sought to reconcile these two approaches.

Saint Thomas Aquinas (sources)

• Scripture• Tradition (Ecumenical Councils and Fathers of

the Church)• Pseudo-Dionsyius• Aristotle• Discursive reasoning• Canon Law• Liturgical texts

Saint Thomas Aquinas (on God)

• The essence/existence distinction• An analogical understanding of the relation

between necessary and contingent being• Moses and the burning bush• God’s essence and existence are the same.• Conclusion: God is utterly simple

Saint Thomas Aquinas (on spiritual knowledge)

• Knowledge through reason• Knowledge through co-naturalilty• Co-natural knowledge is knowledge that

comes through love.• Illustration from the Summa: a dull, chaste

person knows more about chastity than a brilliant, lustful person.

Saint Thomas Aquinas (spiritual doctrine, cont’d)

• A key to understanding co-naturality comes from the Aristotle’s description of the intellect/will dynamism.

• Quasi ignotus cognositur – The unknown is as known

• We pass through Jesus’ human nature into His divinity.

• Scholasticism fell into decadence after Thomas

Saint Thomas the Augustinian

• Distinction between acquired and infused prayer.

• Acquired prayer is closely yoked to the use of reason.

• Infused prayer is the gift of God and give co-natural knowledge.

• 1 John 4:19, “We love because He first loved us.”

Eastern Christianity

• There were three great initial inculturations of the faith in the first thousand years of Christianity: Greek, Latin and Syriac.

• Latin and Greek Christianity slowly drifted apart.• In 1054 relations between the Latin West and

Greek East began to break down.• Scholasticism, the Catholic Reformation and the

Ottoman occupation deepened the estrangement.

Hesychastic Prayer

• Eastern Orthodox theology remained deeply rooted in the Fathers, the Liturgy, experience and the Bible.

• Saint John Climacus (525-606) is the first clear witness to the Jesus prayer.

• Another great witness to eastern Christian Mystical Theology is Saint Maximus the Confessor (580-662)

• The practice of hesychasm thrived on Mount Athos and was a leaven in Eastern Church

Saint Gregory Palamas (1296-1359)

• In the 14th century a controversy over hesychasm erupted.

• Palamas, a monk on Mount Athos, defended the practice

• His arguments focused the mystical experience as an experience of divine light, the light of Tabor.

• Most importantly, he defended the distinction between the divine energies and the divine essence.

Palamas and Aquinas• This distinction runs afoul with Thomas’ theology of God, which

stressed God’s utter simplicity.• The fundamental insight that Palamas was defending was theosis or

divinization.• We should not reject Palamas out of hand because his fundamental

insight is complimentary rather than contradictory to Thomas’ theology of God (cf. lumen gloriae, beatific vision).

• “The light of glory, by which a created mind is enabled to experience for eternity the immediate vision of God. It is a supernatural operative habit bestowed on the intellect to replace and perfect the virtue of faith. Thus, it confers in heaven the power of seeing God even as faith on earth gives the power of believing in God.” (Fr. Hardon)

East and West

• Western saints like Augustine, Hildegard and Teresa speak of divine grace touching the soul with vocabulary that is very similar to Palamas.

• In western Christianity during the last last six centuries there has been a focus on justification; in the east it has been on theosis (cf. 2 Peter 1:4)

• Theophan the Recluse (1815-1894) spoke of the energies of God as kindling the soul as fire does a wet log, like Saint John of the Cross.

Further reading on Eastern spirituality

• Other important classical sources in Eastern spirituality are The Way of the Pilgrim and The Philokalia.

• Archbishop K. Ware has two excellent contemporary books, The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way.

• Another key component of experiencing Eastern spirituality is through the liturgy.

The Spanish Carmelite School

• Teresa of Jesus (1515-1582) was the driving force in the reform of the Carmelites during the 16th century.

• Around the age of 40 she began to take her spiritual life much more seriously and began to experience infused prayer as well as extraordinary mystical graces.

• Her reform focused on returning to ancient Carmelite observance, with a stress on poverty, silence and prayer

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa

The Saint’s Description of the Event• I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point

there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God... (El libro de mi vida, Cap. XXIX, 17)

Key insights from Saint Teresa of Jesus

• Christ as bridegroom • Prayer of quiet• The reality of vivid mystical experience• Renewal of prayer should be based on a more

perfect observance of the evangelical counsels.• Theologically speaking, she presented a way of

rebalancing the apophatic and cataphatic ways of knowing God.

Saint John of the Cross

• John was fundamentally faithful to Teresa’s vision, but was more systematic in his theological reflection because he was trained in Scholastic Theology.

• His point of departure for Mystical Theology is the secret wisdom that comes through love.

• He places particular focus on the Song of Songs as paradigmatic of the spiritual life.

Saint John of the Cross (cont.)

• In this spousal mystery, God comes into the soul as the divine Lover.

• For John, God is a consuming fire (cf. Heb 12:29); experiencing this flame of love is not always pleasant.

• Experiencing God is an awakening that changes everything in the life of the one experiencing Him.

John and Mystical wisdom

• “Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age… (1 Cor 2:6)

• We meet God as love crucified. • “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human

wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (1 Cor 1:25)

Dialogue with Science

• Modern science, beginning with Bacon (1561-1626) and coming to full flower with Newton (1642-1727), looked at the natural world as dead.

• This was not in keeping with the pre-modern worldview.

• There is a strong linkage between these natural sciences and the developments in Modern Philosophy with Rene Descartes (1596-1650).

• Descartes had a vision of the person that was largely disembodied, “the ghost in the machine.”

Dialogue with Science (cont.)

• More recent scientists indicate that there is a certain enchantedness to creation (Heisenberg, Einstein)

• There is openness among some scientists to recognize the limits of the discipline.

• Traditionally, Catholics see faith and science as independent, while complimentary, ways of knowing.

• Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) tried to reconcile these two ways of knowing.

Dialogue with Far Eastern Religions

• After Vatican II, established approaches to spirituality disintegrated.

• This move is concurrent with a mammoth cultural realignment that took place in the later half of 1960s.

• The rise of psychology as an overarching universal philosophy of life began to supplant Christianity in the West.

Difficulties with pre-conciliar spirituality

• Too focused on cataphatic knowledge• A negative view of the body• Too focused on sin, not focused enough on

grace• “Real spirituality” was for celibates.• There was a lack of focus on the social

element of religion.

Points of contact between Zen and Christian spirituality

• The center of energy around the navel.• Relativity of head knowledge when measured

against heart wisdom• Mindfulness of breathing• Use of a mantra• Nirvana and apophatic knowledge• Importance of silence

What would Far Eastern inculturation look like?

• Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) provides a tantalizing vision of it.• Ricci sought to present a Chinese Christianity, much like the

Fathers of the Church presented a Hellenized Christianity• He condemned what needed to be condemned (e.g.,

widespread practice of prostitution).• But he tried to baptize whatever could be, including

veneration of ancestors. Dominicans and Franciscans got this practice condemned.

• The result was that the Chinese Emperor banished Catholic missionaries.

• Pius XII vindicated Ricci’s position in 1939.

Mysticism and Vital Energy

• In Christianity, we recognize the reality that spiritual energy manifests itself physically.

• The sacraments are a great example.• We also recognize the existence of an evil spirit that

can do something similar. • Things like a the placebo effect or certain marital arts

also give witness to a kind of innate human vital energy

• Certain Far Eastern religions focus on the body as a way of rebalancing imbalanced vital energies.

Extraordinary Spiritual phenomena

• The state we know as ecstasy is thought to be a consequence of the body’s inability to process the fullness of the divine presence.

• The action of grace on the body can be likened to the action of fire on wood.

• There is great interest in these things in the world in which we live (Satanism, New Age, occult, etc.)

• We stress that extraordinary spiritual phenomena are the by-product of mystical experience, not the experience itself.

Discernment

• 1 Jn 4:2, “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.”

• Mt 7:16, “By their fruits you will know them.”• Not everything spiritual is from the good spirit

(e.g. Disraeli)• “An evil and adulterous generation looks for a

sign, but no sign will be given it expect the sign of Jonah.” (Mt 16:4)

• The brothers of Dives (Lk 16:31)