MYSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY: An exchange between me and Brink Lindsey.

It all started with this post of his. Then this one from me. Then him. Then three emails, reprinted here.

HIM: Allow me to elaborate on my contention that mysticism has been peripheral to orthodox Christianity after the Gnostic heresy was suppressed — a contention you characterized as “a bit odd,” and that your reader Christopher Jones slammed as “preposterous” in that intemperate, puerile tone so distressingly common in e-mail prose.

Tallying up mystic saints, in either the Roman or the Eastern Orthodox traditions, doesn’t really get to my point. The bottom line is that orthodox Christianity is all about an alleged historical fact – the divine incarnation – and the redemptive consequences it supposedly holds for humanity. If Jesus wasn’t divine, if he didn’t die to redeem mankind and then rise from the dead, then Christianity is flatly untrue – plain and simple. Christian faith is thus fundamentally a propositional faith: It is faith that this alleged historical fact actually happened. Mystic communion with the divine is at best icing on the cake; you can be a perfectly good Christian without ever going down that path, and exploring that path is perfectly worthless if you don’t first accept the truth of the incarnation.

In Gnosticism or Buddhism, on the other hand, the achievement of enlightenment is the whole ballgame – it is the very core of religiosity. No event that happened on the temporal plane is of any overriding significance; the temporal plane is ultimately illusory, after all.

Accordingly, Christian mysticism, as long as it remains orthodox Christian, must pull up short: It must hold to the belief that earthly, historical reality is absolutely real and that a particular event that supposedly happened at a particular time and place in that earthly, historical reality is of overriding significance. Gnosticism broke from that constraint; it moved away from historical Jesus and toward a “living Jesus” that was a guide to personal enlightenment. And it was condemned as heresy and hounded out of existence.

So, I’ll stick to my characterization of mysticism as peripheral to orthodox Christianity. Mystic experience is not at the core of orthodox Christianity; propositional faith is. In my book, if something’s not at the core, it’s at the periphery. And while some strains of orthodox Christian thought over the centuries have indeed flirted with mystic experience, that experience is always tethered to and held down by the core propositional faith – or else it crosses the line into heresy.

ME: “Tallying up mystic saints, in either the Roman or the Eastern Orthodox traditions, doesn’t really get to my point.”

Preliminary clearing-away-of-underbrush: 1) I took Jones’s point to be that Eastern Orthodoxy has been widely renowned for its emphasis on mysticism–he was citing saints only as illustrations, I thought, not as his main argument.

2) Perhaps I read his comments that way because that’s why I was citing saints–not as isolated data-points, but as exemplars of a major theme throughout “orthodox” Christianity.

But 3) thinking it over more, I’m not sure I can even imagine what a saint would look like without a strong mystical emphasis. I certainly can’t think of any canonized saints who lack such an emphasis. Thomas Aquinas would make a great example here–everyone thinks of him as the intellectual saint par excellance, but he also experienced mystical ecstasy quite frequently, he wrote terrific mystical hymns, etc.

“The bottom line is that orthodox Christianity is all about an alleged historical fact – the divine incarnation – and the redemptive consequences it supposedly holds for humanity. If Jesus wasn’t divine, if he didn’t die to redeem mankind and then rise from the dead, then Christianity is flatly untrue – plain and simple. Christian faith is thus

fundamentally a propositional faith: It is faith that this alleged historical fact actually happened.”

I would say, rather, that it’s a response to this proposition. James writes, “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble” (Jas. 2:19). To be a Christian is to respond to the Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection with love; to accept Christ as Lord. It’s a relationship, not solely an affirmation of certain historical oddities connected with the person Jesus of Nazareth. That affirmation is necessary but not sufficient; a devil could acknowledge that Christ rose from the dead, but since he would not love Christ, he would not be a Christian. (Neat expression of this point: CS Lewis’s Screwtape Letters.)

“Mystic communion with the divine is at best icing on the cake; you can be a perfectly good Christian without ever going down that path, and exploring that path is perfectly worthless if you don’t first accept the truth of the incarnation.”

Maybe it would help here to cash out what each of us means by “mysticism.” I mean, “a non-rational (either pre- or supra-rational) practice characterized by contemplation/meditation and an experience of supernatural union with the Divine (either dissolving into the Divine, as in Gnosticism, or achieving a love relationship with God Who is ‘other,’ as in Catholicism).” If only seeking knowledge of God (or “the Divine,” a non-personal God) is mysticism, then yeah, much of what Catholics would call mysticism is defined out of the term. I was sloppy before in not making clear what I think mysticism is; I think I was muddleheadedly switching back and forth from the definition above to a much more restricted definition, hence some confusion. So: I believe that both seeking and expressing love for God are mystical acts.

Under that definition, there are huge swathes of Catholicism (the form of Christianity I know best) that are inherently mystical: contemplative and/or meditative prayers like the rosary; the sacrifice of the Mass (the wedding feast of the Lamb); the attainment of transcendence through submission; the longing for a love-union with God (“As the deer longs for the running stream, my soul longs for you, my Lord”); the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in each believer. The fact that some people hide the mystical elements of these practices out of embarrassment/conformity/confusion/shyness/humility, and others go through the motions but in fact are not seeking mystical union, doesn’t change the inherently mystical nature of the practices themselves, IMO.

I wonder if there is some lack of awareness of mystical elements in Catholicism (which I displayed in my earlier posts on this subject…) because many of the practices and language de-emphasized by misguided “spirit of Vatican II” types were more obviously mystical: traditional devotions like the rosary, an understanding of the Mass and transubstantiation, talk of submission in Christ, talk of God’s otherness. But a lot of that stuff is being revived, thank God!

“In Gnosticism or Buddhism, on the other hand, the achievement of enlightenment is the whole ballgame – it is the very core of religiosity. No event that happened on the temporal plane is of any overriding significance; the temporal plane is ultimately illusory, after all.

“Accordingly, Christian mysticism, as long as it remains orthodox Christian, must pull up short: It must hold to the belief that earthly, historical reality is absolutely real and that a particular event that supposedly happened at a particular time and place in that earthly, historical reality is of overriding significance.”

I’m not sure why you view belief in the importance of earthly, historical reality as a barrier toward mysticism–possibly, as I suggested, we’re using different definitions/understandings of “mysticism.”

“condemned as heresy and hounded out of existence.”

Well, I’d say Gnosticism is all around us, cf. Harold Bloom’s intriguing studies of “the American religion,” but hey.

HIM: Yes, our differing perspectives on mysticism and Christianity are at least partially due to differing definitions of mysticism. As I have been using the term, mysticism consists of the quest for knowledge of the ultimate reality that exists beyond all contradictions and dichotomies. The essential mystical insight, then, is that all is one: I and thou, good and evil, freedom and causation, space and time are all, ultimately, mere shadows on the wall of the cave. Mysticism strives to see the light that

casts those shadows.

From this perspective, Christian mysticism must always either stop short or venture into heresy. For in the Christian scheme, all contradictions are most certainly not resolved: The distinctions between the divine and the temporal, between good and evil, between now (i.e., post-incarnation) and then (i.e., pre-incaranation), are absolutely fundamental and irreducible.

In particular, Christianity’s claimed historicity (its insistence on belief in the historical fact of Christ’s resurrection as the key to salvation) limits whatever mystical tendencies arise within it. Allow me here to quote from Aldous Huxley’s survey of mystical thought, “The Perennial Philosophy” (p. 52): “In the West, the mystics went some way toward liberating Christianity from its unfortunate servitude to historical fact…. In spite of them, Christianity has remained a religion in which the pure Perennial

Philosophy has been overlaid, now more, now less, by an idolatrous preoccupation with events and things in time—events and things regarded not merely as useful means, but as ends, intrinsically sacred and indeed divine.”

So when I was talking about mysticism, I had in mind a particular conception of the divine—a pantheist or immanent (i.e., non-supernatural) conception, to be specific. But let me put aside that narrower definition for now and use yours: “a non-rational practice characterized by contemplation/meditation and an experience of union with the Divine,” however that Divine may be understood. Even under that broader definition, I would argue that mysticism is not central to Christian faith (and therefore it’s peripheral).

No doubt my position is shaped strongly by my Protestant upbringing—and, in particular, by my experiences with family and friends whose Christianity is fundamentalist and literalist. In the Bible Belt, rosaries and chants and the sacrament of the Eucharist are all dismissed as a bunch of superstitious mumbo jumbo. Christ’s divinity and resurrection are understood as plain historical facts, and God’s accessibility through prayer is as straightforward as a long-distance phone call or a child’s letter to Santa. There’s no need, in that version of Christianity, to achieve non-rational states of mind to “get saved” or to have communion with God. (Of course I recognize that there are more mystical strains of Protestantism—namely, Pentacostalism. But mainstream Southern Baptist fundamentalists regard that speaking-in-tongues stuff as wacko.)

Now, of course literalist Protestantism is only one flavor of Christianity—and a schismatic one, no doubt, in your view. But I think their “no-nonsense” understanding of faith corresponds rather well with orthodox Christianity’s original understanding of itself. Christianity as an organized religion was launched by eyewitnesses of the risen Christ.

No need for gnosis or mystic contemplation: The evidence of the senses was all Thomas needed to resolve his doubts. And when the apostles began to spread their message, how did they do it? In the miracle of the Pentacost, they were able to preach the Gospel to the Jews of Jerusalem in all their native tongues. The Christian message is at bottom propositional, verbal, exoteric—not experiential, contemplative, esoteric. In Buddhism or Gnosticism, the highest truths are incapable of expression in words; in Christianity, they can be translated into any language. Thus orthodox Christianity’s conception of a catholic or universal church—one that offers salvation to all believers, not enlightenment to a small group of the spiritually gifted.

ME FINAL: If you’re following this discussion with interest, I highly recommend Denis de Rougemont’s Love in the Western World.