A Commentary on the Mystical Philosophy
of
St. John of the
Cross
By
Geoffrey K. Mondello
© Copyright 2000 - 2003
by Geoffrey K. Mondello. All rights reserved.
“In finem nostrae cognitionis Deum
tamquam ignotum cognoscimus” *
St. Thomas Aquinas
Dedication: to Mary, Mother of God
Mysticism is a phenomenon fraught
with nuances, both linguistic and metaphysical. The Metaphysics,
consequently, as a philosophic work, presumes to address issues of a
nature less than congenial to the universe of ordinary discourse. Philosophy, to
be sure, demands a rigorous language, a syntax, if you will, that is subtly
antagonistic to the fluid and sometimes extremely volatile concepts intrinsic to
the phenomenon of the mystical experience.
The austere language that philosophy arrogates to itself is sometimes too
rigid a probe to uncover, reveal, the subtle and often delicate complexities
that inevitably arise in a careful examination of mysticism; hence a
sometimes involuted terminology will be encountered in our fragile attempt to
render
linguistic
what merely verges on becoming intelligible. I have, to the best
of my ability, limited this proliferation of abstruse language applied to an
already abstruse subject. I have attempted to keep neologisms to a minimal, but
have not blenched from employing them when my own linguistic resources are
exhausted. Notwithstanding the difficulties inevitably encountered in language,
I have endeavored in this work not simply to clarify what is obscure, but to
address what is unique and compelling in this type of experience, an experience
that has challenged philosophy for something more than a paranthetical account,
an account, more often than not, much too eager to either dismiss this
phenomenon, or to relegate it to psychology through its own failure to provide
it with an adequate epistemological framework. Philosophy, in a word, has not
yet coherently responded to this challenge. I am not satisfied that I have done
so to the extent required, and many readers will no doubt concur with my
assessment. Nevertheless it is a beginning of sorts, and if it provokes more questions than it answers it will at
least have served to rehabilitate the philosophical arrogance that has been too
ready to dismiss what it finds uncongenial. Hence
the impetus of this work.
WHAT THIS BOOK IS, AND WHAT IT IS
NOT
Although this book is
subtitled a “Commentary on the Mystical Philosophy of St. John of the
Cross” it will become immediately evident to the reader that, both in scope and
purpose, it is a commentary structured around some very specific epistemological
issues. In particular, it is concerned with exploring the possibility of
articulating a coherent theory of knowledge that is implicit, or perhaps
better yet, latent, in the writings of St. John. I say latent because the
theory itself is really rather an aside to the very practical issues raised by
St. John in the writing of his several treatises on mystical experience. Anyone
who has read St. John will undoubtedly agree that his approach to the subject is
more programmatic than analytical, at least in any contemporary sense. As such,
the aperture, if you will, of our focus must go beyond the hard and fast
boundaries that might otherwise define our expectations of a commentary dealing
strictly with the theological complexities that inevitably arise upon a close
reading of St. John of the Cross.
In
one sense, of course, the works of St. John are a commentary unto themselves,
and while this may simplify matters in one respect, it considerably complicates
them in another. The verse by verse interpretation which St. John himself offers
is, obviously, the first and most apparent level, a level where St. John
provides us with an often detailed explication of the meaning behind his
extremely subtle poetic utterances. This meaning, both in scope and intention,
is purely theological. Our own purposes within this book, however, are not: they
are, by and large, epistemological. And this is where the issue becomes a
bit more complex.
A commentary of the type
proposed, it seemed to me, must take this first level of meaning fundamentally
rooted in theology, to the next and less apparent level of meaning
radicated in epistemology; in other words, one that specifically emerges
from an epistemological criticism of the first level. In this sense it is a
striving for what might be called hyper-textual meaning, a meaning always latent
within, but often suppressed by, the complexities of the text itself. At the
same time it is also a striving for contextual coherence. In any critical
encounter between mysticism and epistemology, it is the demand for coherence,
and not credence, which inevitably predominates. The often attenuated and
sometimes conflicting principles that have largely become part and parcel of
mystical theology remain no more than mere speculations until coherence is
demonstrated to obtain not merely between the principles themselves within their
own legitimate province (theology), but more importantly, between these
principles and the canons of reason to which epistemology presumes to hold them
accountable. Questions likely to emerge from such an encounter are of the
following sort: “Do the implications of St. John’s often abstruse statements
actually hold up under epistemological criticism?” “Does a fully explicated
meaning which accords with accepted theological principles, also accord
with accepted epistemological principles?” In a word, do the theological
principles have adequate epistemological credentials?
For
this reason, and others, I thought it best to entitle this work a commentary
dealing with St. John’s mystical “philosophy”, and not his “theology” as
such, for a much broader range of issues, especially epistemological issues, are
clearly necessary to the scope of this type of endeavor, issues which a purely
theological analysis would otherwise, and legitimately, exclude. The reason I
have done so will, I think, become apparent early on. I have essentially
attempted to bring three related issues into focus within the present work: the
phenomenon that we have come to understand as the “mystical experience”, the
metaphysics ostensibly underlying it, and the consonance, if any, obtaining
between the two when viewed under the objective lens of epistemology. The real
question of the work, then, can be summarized simply as this: “Is the
mystical experience epistemologically coherent?” There are, of course,
inevitably a subset of questions latent within this: “Are the conclusions drawn
from St. John’s arguments consistent with the premises implied?” “Do the
premises and conclusions themselves coherently accord with the metaphysics?” In
short, is the mystical experience described by St. John of the Cross at the very
least epistemologically credible?
But
why St. John of the Cross? Why not Eckhardt, Gerson, or Tauler? Even the
briefest historical survey of the great Western Christian Mystics offers,
especially in the way of speculative mysticism, a wide variety of other and
perhaps better known candidates. The reason that I have chosen St. John is
simply this: the works of St. John of the Cross, particularly the Ascent of
Mount Carmel and The Dark Night of the Soul, stand, I think, as the
culmination of the Western tradition of mysticism. Every other representative of
this tradition is either in some way defective or deficient in articulating what
has come to be accepted as orthodox doctrine in mystical theology.
It is, in retrospect, no small token to the depth and scope of his writings that
St. John was declared the first “Doctor of Mystical Theology” within the Roman
Catholic Church. Much of this remains to be discussed later.
As a
final note in the way of explaining what this book is, or at least
endeavors to be, I think it necessary to say something briefly about the term
“mysticism” itself. It has always appeared to me somewhat regrettable that the
term “mysticism” is used to define what would really be more accurately
described as “contemplative theology”. With the term “mystical” we are likely to
conjure up a good deal that is either unrelated, or deeply inimical to the
contemplative theology that comes to us in the writings of the great Christian
mystics. Mystical theology, in one of its typical paradoxes, is essentially a
rational enterprise despite the fact that the mystical experience itself
is not. While basically a practical undertaking, in presuming to set forth
reasons for this practical task, it is at least implicitly a rational
justification as well. And it is precisely this rational aspect of the mystical
experience that is the focus of this book.
On the other hand, it is
equally important to the reader to understand what this book is not. This
book is not a compendium. While it carefully attempts to chronologically
accompany the text where possible, it does not blench from a departure where an
examination of concurrent issues is warranted. Some will undoubtedly find this
vexing. And while it adverts to the Mystical Tradition in general, a tradition
out of which the thought of St. John very clearly emerges, it does not presume
to exhaustively treat of the many notable figures who have contributed to this
long-standing tradition. Deidre Carabine’s “The Unknown God: Negative
Theology in the Platonic Tradition: Plato to Eriugena”
1, I suggest, would be much more suitable to this purpose.
The goal of this book is unabashedly epistemological. Neither do I presume the
reader to be intimately acquainted with Thomism as such, from which many of the
metaphysical doctrines articulated by St. John unquestionably derive. For the
sake of clarity, and the convenience of the reader, I have endeavored to
reiterate them when necessary, providing pertinent documentation should the
reader wish to explore the issue further. As dearly as I wish this work to be
all things to all people, I have settled for the more modest goal of providing
epistemological perspective on the sometimes fluid, sometimes volatile, but
always paradoxical issues that mysticism perpetually engenders.
* (In Boetium de Trinitate, q. 1, a.
2, ad 1um)
1 Peeters Press,
Louvain (W.B. Eerdmans) 1995
Preface to the Philosophy of St. John of
the Cross
The Search for Coherence
If there is one unifying feature that appears to bind the
great diversity of philosophic thought as it has occurred throughout history, it
may well be found in the search for coherence. While the passionate and
resolute pursuit of truth is certainly more exalted, it has for some time
suffered rather badly, and for good reason has been denigrated as the pure
impulse behind every philosophical system. The dispassionate search for
coherence, on the other hand, has been, and is likely to remain, fundamental to
all good philosophy. It is no less the driving force behind the great
Platonic Dialogues, or Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, than
Kant’s abstruse Critique of Pure Reason or Hegel’s involuted
Logic. On every philosophical frontier we essentially encounter
problematics that demand explanation because they confront us as facts.
What is more, these intractable, often vexing elements of experience do not
always readily lend themselves to understanding, or if they do, it is sometimes
upon terms not entirely of our own making. Such occurrences invite inquiry,
challenge us to coherently respond to them, and even in the face of indifference
resolutely refuse to be turned aside. They defy us, and therefore
challenge us. By their persistent recurrence, they effectively demand of
us accountability; demand, in fact, to be coherently incorporated
into that philosophic purview toward which all inquiry inexorably moves as
toward a universal comprehending every fact.
However elusive this
pursuit may be, the impulse which motivates us to exact from experience
the epistemological tribute which coherence demands, remains the same always and
everywhere: the pursuit of understanding. To leave unexplained --- or
worse yet --- to ignore any recurrent element in experience simply
because it proves either inconvenient or recalcitrant, is not merely bad
philosophy; it is contradictory to the philosophic impulse itself, an impulse
which not merely derives from, but thrives within, the fertile matrix of
inquiry.
If this indeed is so, it
is particularly apropos of a study of arguably the single greatest --- certainly
the most voluble and articulate --- figure in the Western tradition of
mysticism, St. John of the Cross (1542-1591). Mystical experience, despite its
many cultural and often conflicting interpretations, remains undeniably a fact
of experience. This alone is sufficient warrant for examination. Its
credentials lie in the repeated, which is to say, the historical
experiences of men and women, and philosophy essentially demands no more of the
subject of its review.
It is, however, equally
clear that such an investigation suffers a regrettably persistent, if popular
handicap: the general consensus seems to be, prior to any real critical
reflection on the matter, that in and of itself mysticism is something entirely
and irredeemably irrational, and inasmuch as it is beyond reason it is
beyond the legitimate scope of rational inquiry altogether. Indeed, apart from
the possibility of what appear to be otherwise solipsistic utterances meaningful
only among the mystics themselves, it really has nothing to recommend itself to
the type of inquiry to which other and decidedly less refractory experiences
legitimately lend themselves. This is to be much mistaken. It is precisely this
fundamental and pervasive misconception about mysticism that remains, I
think, the chief obstacle
to a study of mystical philosophy in its own right, the credibility of which, as
a consequence, has suffered unnecessarily.
But there is more to the
problem we confront at the outset than simply this. Semantics has played no
small part in contributing to the confusion that surrounds the very term itself.
As William James astutely observed:
“The words
“mysticism” and “mystical” are often used as terms of mere reproach, to throw at
any opinion which we regard as vague and vast and sentimental, and without a
base in either facts or logic. For some writers a “mystic” is any person who
believes in thought-transference, or spirit return. Employed in this way the
word has little value.”1
As a consequence, the
term “mysticism” has come to acquire a kind of pseudo-metaphysical connotation,
or perhaps better yet, an esoteric pathos of the most reprehensible sort
--- evoking, as it does, a type of vague intellectual empathy to which nothing
in any sense coherent and meaningful corresponds. This essential
misunderstanding of mysticism, however, is quickly dispelled upon a close
examination of the works of St. John of the Cross: immediately we confront
facticity and discern logic; facticity and logic so compelling, in fact, that a
philosophy of mysticism may well offer a unique contribution to
epistemology itself. To wit, In Part II of our commentary we shall
examine, among other things, the possibility of a type of experience in which
the redoubtable Problem of Induction --- first introduced by the
18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume --- and a thorn in the
side of philosophy ever since --- fails to obtain. This of itself would be no
small recompense for our efforts given the magnitude of this problem to which
philosophy, in one form or another, has attempted to respond since the
publication of Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding in 1740. In
short, we find reason in the mystical philosophy of St. John of the Cross,
coherence and logic. Indeed, we find that, externally considered, the mystical
experience is a profoundly rational experience --- and it is this
discovery, sweeping aside many long-borne misconceptions about mysticism which,
if justification at all is required, suffices to justify an epistemology of
mysticism.
To be sure, there are
central elements in the mystical experience essentially inaccessible to reason.
St. Thomas Aquinas perhaps summed it up best in the terse statement, “In
finem nostrae cognitionis Deum tamquam ignotum cognoscimus.” 2
It is this
unknowing, this first and most fundamental principle of the metaphysics
of mysticism which, in our examination, we shall find to assume profoundly
rational dimensions in the mystical philosophy of St. John of the
Cross.
Geoffrey K.
Mondello
1 Varieties of Religious Experience, Lect.
16
2 In the end, we know God as unknown
Foreword
In this short commentary on the two principle works of St.
John of the Cross --- the Ascent of Mount Carmel and the Dark Night of
the Soul --- we will, as I stated earlier, be primarily concerned with
examining the possibilities of developing a coherent mystical epistemology, that
is to say, a theory of knowledge relative to the mystical experience in
which the rational elements of this unique experience will become explicit to
us, and so enable us to usher at least some very crucial aspects of this
phenomenon into the arena of rational discourse. Certainly, this will not make
mystics of us. Indeed, this understanding itself is by no means propadeutic to
the mystical experience, as we shall later see; that is to say, an understanding
of the metaphysical principles underlying the mystical experience is not
requisite in the way that, say, an understanding of the relation between
rational numbers is presupposed in the exercise of pure mathematics. The mystic,
unlike the mathematician, may in fact dispense with such an understanding
altogether.
This type of
understanding, however, is requisite to the inquiring mind, which is to
say, to those of us standing, as it were, outside, peering in through the
sometimes-obfuscated lens of rational inquiry. We can, however, only achieve
this through carefully examining the various and sometimes involuted arguments
which St. John articulates in the development of what must be understood as his
mystical philosophy; a philosophy which only gradually, even reluctantly,
emerges from the text. Our inquiry, then, essentially boils down to an
examination of certain rational features of the mystical experience which lend
themselves to the possibility of being so organized as to constitute something
systematic enough to be incorporated into what we have come to understand as
epistemology. And this, of course, presumes order, sense, meaning and logic. One
surprising consequence of our analysis, in short, will be the disclosure of the
mystical experience not as antipodal to reason (as some have supposed), but as
profoundly consonant with it. However, this reason we seek in St. John’s
account is, we hasten to add, and for reasons that we shall later explain,
implicit only; from the outset it often requires patient analysis, but
the results will be no less, --- in fact, all the more--- compelling for the
effort.
Given the broad and
inevitable complexity of the issues involved, it appeared to me that the best
way to proceed in this type of examination would be through an analysis of the
central moments in the movement to mystical union as they logically occur
in the two texts. Where there is logical or chronological order to begin with,
it seemed to me best to construct an analysis parallel to the already existing
continuum. Not only should this help us in a comparative analysis of the text,
but it serves to constrain us to the text as well --- while at the same time
allowing us the necessary latitude to extrapolate from it in an attempt to
construct an epistemological analysis of our own. In doing so we will find
ourselves moving from an examination of those factors external to the mystical
experience and generally spoken of in terms of predisposition, to those
elements more or less explicitly involved in the actual mystical experience
itself and in turn generally spoken of in terms of union. Our purpose,
then, is to examine the normative, as well as the descriptive elements in St.
John’s account. To do this, it is vital for us to provide the often-isolated
elements which occur in the text with a coherent epistemological framework. This
in turn requires us to draw out the logical implications of his statements,
examine their premises, however suppressed, elicit their conclusions, however
latent, and in the end attempt to demonstrate the coherence, if any, which
obtains between them.
A certain antagonism with
the text is inevitable. These are fertile but not necessarily congenial grounds
for purely philosophical inquiry. There are, for example, certain tacit
assumptions, both theological and philosophical in nature, to which St. John
often adverts; assumptions, more often than not, in the form of suppressed
theses which, if we are at all to succeed in our examination, must be
lifted from the text as so many copulas to the intelligibility or our
account. We must endeavor, then, to show not merely that certain
experiences or consequences follow any given moment in the account, but
why they follow logically (that is to say, deductively, or necessarily)
from the given moments. As we examine St. John’s arguments in greater detail, we
come to realize that it is not so much an antagonism that we contend with in the
account as it is a recalcitrance encountered within the text itself: that
certain later statements and arguments essentially derive from earlier
statements and arguments is not always clear in the writings of St. John. It
remains for us to attempt to render these connections explicit, to endeavor to
demonstrate their logical coherence, and to organize them into something
systematic if we hope to succeed in articulating an epistemology of mysticism
--- at least St. John’s mysticism. The ultimate aim of this commentary, in the
end, is to give philosophic form to St. John’s arguments, in effect to develop a
coherent philosophy of mysticism, especially in light of the
epistemological dimensions suggested within it.
St. John’s works can be
divided into three logical moments: Predisposition, Transition,
and Union. Part I of the Commentary, which I have entitled the
Presuppositions is principally concerned with the moment of
predisposition, that is to say, with the merely mechanical features of
mysticism which the latter two moments presuppose. It forms the foundation upon
which the mystical momentum builds and in virtue of which much of the subsequent
mystical experience is explainable. Its principal feature, we will find, is the
apophatic way, better known as the Via Negativa (the Way of Negation, or
the Negative Way) in all its mechanical aspects upon which the entire
metaphysical infrastructure of mysticism depends. Detailed discussion of this
central feature in mystical philosophy is dealt with in Part II of this
commentary where it will be examined in detail.
Working from the various
principles elicited from St. John’s foundational work, the Ascent of Mount
Carmel, Part II, entitled the Metaphysics, is an attempt to
relate the evolving mystical experiences to these principles (the via
negativa, notions of participation, proximity, proportion, contrariety,
etc.) in order to demonstrate the latter to be, in fact, the logical
consequences of the former. It is an attempt to show that, given certain
statements concerning the function of these principles, other statements about
certain unique types of experience (essentially states-of-being) not just
follow, but necessarily, that is to say, deductively, follow. But
at the same time we must also come to terms with the limitations inherent in the
kind of books St. John was writing; books addressing issues vital to a
distinct group of readers (issues that we shall discuss later in Part II
). As a result, deductive relations which do in fact obtain between the
various elements in his philosophy are often obscure to the casual reader.
Suffice it to say at this point that St. John did not understand himself to be
writing an enchiridion on mystical theology replete with deductive schematics to
be later analyzed by, and subsequently vex, systematic theologians. Deductive
relations do in fact exist, but because of this literary limitation, they must
be elicited through careful reading if we are to arrive at that philosophic
coherence we strive for in the works of St. John; a coherence that, in fact, is
always latent, even in his most abstruse writings.
In the way of
explanation, I should like to point out that I have omitted treatment of St.
John’s last two works --- the Spiritual Canticle and the Living Flame
of Love --- not as an oversight, but simply because, for our own purposes,
the pertinent material found in these two treatises derives from, and are
largely more elaborate iterations of, the first two principal works in which
all the elements in his philosophy are contained in much greater detail.
As a final note, an addendum in the form of a prolepsis follows the commentary
proper. Within it, various objections posed by skepticism, psychology, and
orthodoxy, are briefly considered and answered in light of our examination.
This, in turn, is followed by a brief biographical sketch, and an overview of
the mystical tradition culminating in the thought of St.
John.
The abbreviations used in
this commentary are as follows:
AMC : Ascent of Mount Carmel
DNS : Dark Night of the Soul
SC : Spiritual Canticle
LFL : Living Flame of Love
ST : Summa Theologica (St. Thomas
Aquinas)
Documentary references
are based upon the translation of St. John’s works by E. Allison Peers:
Ascent of Mount Carmel, Dark Night of the Soul, Living Flame of
Love, and Spiritual Canticle, Image Books, Doubleday & Co.,
Garden City, NY, 1958, 1959, 1961, and 1962.
Scriptural references
are, unless noted otherwise, taken from The Jerusalem Bible, Doubleday
& Co., Garden City, New York, Copyright 1966
An Introduction to the Philosophy of St.
John of the Cross
The Epistemological Paradox: the Knower, Unknowing, and the
Unknown
Any study of St. John’s mystical philosophy must first
come to terms with the nature of mystical theology itself; what its object is,
what its limits are: in short, what particular universe of discourse we are
addressing in our attempt to understand the mystical experience described by St.
John of the Cross. A good definition, it appears to me, must be broad enough to
subsume the many interpretations we encounter outside any specific tradition.
The advantages of this are at once obvious, for such an approach, broadly
chronological in its purview, provides us with a much needed sense of historical
continuity inasmuch as many of the doctrines found in the writings of St. John
have very clear historical antecedents that are not, in fact, rooted in
Christianity at all. Some precede it. Indeed, some are deeply inimical to it. On
the other hand, it is equally clear that our definition must be sufficiently
specific to the tradition to which St. John so clearly belongs and in light of
which alone his mystical doctrine becomes coherent. One extremely useful
definition, a definition embracing what is both specific and general, would
construe mystical theology as essentially the consummate theology. Why
consummate? Because it is the cognitive apex of an otherwise largely
speculative theological enterprise. Mystical theology, in short, is concerned
with the direct intuition –
-- experience, if you
will --- of God 1; the immediate and unmodified apprehension of the
Absolute through what has come to be understood as ‘unio mystica’, or
mystical union.
Perhaps the clearest,
certainly the most concise, definition offered is, I think, summarized in the
words of the great fourteenth century theologian and mystic, Jean
Gerson:
“Theologia
mystica est experimentalis cognitio habita de Deo per amoris unitivi complexum”
2
Natural Theology, by
contrast, concerns itself exclusively with the knowledge of God arrived at
through natural, or discursive reason: that is to say, in Natural Theology an
understanding of God is abstractly achieved through a rational process much in
the way that a logical argument is constructed through a sorites. St. Anselm’s
famous ‘Ontological Argument’ is a fine example of this type of
theological reasoning. The God it broaches upon, however, remains as abstract as
the syllogistic reasoning that deduced him, and, practically speaking, few
people undergo conversion experiences as a result of this line of reasoning,
however impeccable.
Dogmatic Theology, on the
other hand, takes a somewhat different tack: it is primarily concerned with the
knowledge of God obtained through divine revelation principally embodied in
Sacred Scripture, and has come to assume a rather monolithic architectonic
through a long-standing and erudite tradition of Patristic exegesis. The force
of reason and the appeal to authority (Scriptural, patristic, and philosophical)
which typically characterizes dogmatic theology is a powerful combination, a
combination so effective, in fact, that it is arguably the single most vital
element in any individual’s --- including the mystic’s --- orthodox religious
formation. It is, in a sense, the springboard off which the mystic leaps into
less certain waters. St. Thomas Aquinas is an eminent example of
both disciplines,
artfully incorporating elements of the Natural and the Dogmatic into that
remarkable synthesis culminating in his Summa Theologica, considered by
many to be the greatest theological treatise ever
written.
Reason as Propadeutic:
the Ex Hypothesi
Mystical theology
approaches God quite differently. Its path lies neither through the narrow
corridors of reason, nor through the rigid architectonics of dogmatic exegesis.
It either leaps off at the point where the scholar is left stammering, or may
prescind altogether from the cumbersome intellectual impedimenta that becomes
effectively superfluous in the ecstatic momentum that impels the soul to union
with God. This, of course, is to disparage neither reason nor dogma. Each in
measure is an indispensable tributary to the depth of that inexorable movement
toward God, as we shall later see. It remains, nevertheless, that even a scholar
of the caliber of St. Thomas Aquinas had subsequently come to view all that he
had written, and this was considerable to say the least, as “so much straw” in
light of the direct experience of God which he briefly encountered
in a moment of ecstatic union. So overwhelming, so all embracing, so utterly
definitive was this experience that St. Thomas immediately ceased
writing.
Shall we then toss aside
the Summa? It is clear that St. John did not. Neither, in fact, did
Tauler, Suso, or Eckhardt. And for good reason: Mystical Theology, properly
understood, neither compromises nor invalidates its Rational and Dogmatic
counterparts. Rather, it surpasses them in the way that the act of
seeing surpasses the most definitive description of sight. The
description itself remains true; it is entirely accurate inasmuch as words
signify, and in signifying attempt to communicate, what is essentially an
experience. But the disproportion between the experience itself
and any description subsequent to it remains nearly irreconcilable. To one who
is color-deficient (to carry the analogy a little further) and who has never
seen the color purple, the most precise and detailed description of this
absolutely unique chromatic phenomenon called purple, even when coupled with
appeals to extrapolate from colors with which one is familiar, yields at
best only a vague conception, and in the end brings that person no closer to the
experience of the color itself. In short, we must come to terms with
limitations inherent in language, especially descriptive language; limitations
that are radicated in shared experiences outside of which the power of
language reaches a cognitive terminus. No more can meaningfully be said. And
this is precisely the plight of the mystic, and, therefore, that of mystical
theology itself.
But let us take this a
little further. While each of the several branches of theology take God as their
cognitive object, something of a sense of theological fragmentation inevitably
occurs. Somehow a universal and unitary comprehension of God is not so much
lost, as never quite achieved. If a synthesis is obtained, however comprehensive
and integrated, it only leaves us in the vestibule of the Divine, and the
antechamber is yet obscure and unoccupied. Each discipline within theology, in
other words, is possessed of quite definite and intrinsic limitations in
addressing the Absolute; insuperable limitations, we shall find, that derive
from a metaphysical finitude inextricably bound up with nature as
subsuming under itself everything created in opposition to the Uncreated
Absolute. Each approach to God is irremediably limited; hence the extent of the
possibility of its cognition of God is determined a priori. In other
words, the knowledge of God we acquire through Natural Theology is mediated, and
therefore limited, by reason. It addresses the inexhaustible Absolute
strictly as the object of rational inquiry. On the other hand, the knowledge
acquired through Dogmatic Theology, while not prescinding from reason, is
nevertheless itself equally mediated, and therefore limited, by
revelation, pertaining to the infinite God only insofar as he has
revealed some aspect of his infinite being in finite human history. Our
acquaintance, our cognition of God through reason and revelation, then, is
necessarily incomplete. The contributions of traditional theological disciplines
are not, for that reason, understood to be irrelevant. To the contrary, St. John
was well schooled in scholasticism at the University of Salamanca and relies a
great deal on Dogmatic Theology as a propadeutic to the mystical journey. As a
journey of faith, it is Dogmatic Theology which enables us to the reach the
vestibule safely; it is the compass whose unchanging ordinals, divinely
illumined, give us bearing in the dark night of the soul. Constituting, as it
does, an index of truth in the form of dogmatic certainties, it provides
essential definition in the face of gathering obscurity, and so disabuses us of
error, which St. John sees as constituting one of the principal
impediments to the soul in its journey to union with God.
This is not to say, as we
suggested earlier, that the mystic must first thoroughly acquaint himself with
Dogmatic Theology if he hopes to arrive at union with God. God of his own
predilection brings whom he wills to this exalted state, and makes no inquiries
into the mystic’s theological credentials. However, the likelihood of
achieving this state, given the many obstacles likely to be encountered on the
journey, will in some measure be commensurable with the mystic’s certain
grounding in fundamental dogmatic issues. One’s prospect of attaining to
ecstatic union with the One, Most Holy, and Uncreated Absolute is considerably
diminished if ones conception of God is grossly and fundamentally divergent from
the Divine reality toward which one aspires. It is not unlike one attempting to
find the solution to some complex algorithm by sorting out the entrails of owls.
Some measure of correspondence is presumed between the objective and the means,
and it is Dogmatic Theology which ensures this, not by delimiting the
inexhaustible Absolute, but in defining certain irrefragable aspects of it.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, the egalitarianism so dear to the human heart is
shattered as much on the frontiers of heaven as it is on the formulas of
mathematics. However dearly we would that two and two equal five, we strive for
it in vain, or hold to a fiction, but never quite achieve true mathematics. This
would appear to be no less true of the quest for God. However dearly we would
that God conform his being to our wishes, our sensitivities, our inclinations,
even our mistaken beliefs, the invincible reality will continue to elude us
until we are prepared to settle upon terms not entirely of our own making and
more in accord with the reality we pursue. Dogmatic Theology simply makes some
of these terms clear.
A good deal more,
however, must be said about reason. To begin with, inasmuch as reason
mediates our approach to God, in so doing, it simultaneously
modifies our perception of the Absolute; our apprehension of God is not,
without stringent qualification, entirely veridical. Certainly it is not a
perception of God in the plenitude of his being. Rather, it is a perception
modified by, in being accommodated to, reason and revelation. God is essentially
construed as a being upon whom rational categories are imposed, and who in
himself, defined as infinite, transcends these intrinsically limiting and
modifying categories. The nature of God, in other words, infinitely exceeds the
narrow architectonics of reason, and while it is clearly arguable that the
intelligibility of God requires at least a minimal availability to reason, it is
no less clear that the divine essence is incapable of being exhausted by reason
alone, for the rational availability of God is only, merely, one dimension of
God’s infinite being. And this is really to say that we understand by God
something more than the merely rational.
Transcendence through Immanence?
What emerges from all
this is perhaps the most interesting question of all: is there in fact, beside
reason, perhaps even above reason, some alternative mode of cognition which must
be admitted into our epistemological account? One which, while not abrogating
reason, somehow surpasses reason, much in the way that, to advert to our
earlier analogy, seeing infinitely exceeds the description of
sight --- while in no way invalidating the description
itself?
At the same time it is
important to recognize that the deliverances of reason, however limited,
nevertheless remain authentic. What reason predicates of God is not abolished in
mystical experiences; such experiences, rather, are found to corroborate them.
It is vitally important for us to understand this, for it means that those of us
who stand outside this unique experience nevertheless have an understanding of
God that is not in the end merely one of so many superlative fictions. In some
albeit limited way our conception of God actually corresponds to the reality of
the Absolute. Were this not so, the Christian understanding of salvific history
would otherwise be emptied of meaning and our relationship to God would not so
much be a matter of disproportion as one of utter incommensurability. In
other words, if God cannot be known, in some sense meaningfully understood,
then, practically speaking, he simply does not exist for us; no more so than we
may hold anything to exist in any meaningful way about which we know
nothing.
Nevertheless, it is
precisely this genuine perceptual capacity within the mystic which undergoes a
profound transformation in ecstatic union; a transformation in which the
encounter with God is more accurately described as an intuition, that is,
an immediate experience, one unconditioned by reason and sensibility ---
and if unconditioned, then totally unmodified. It is, for the mystic, a
supernatural apprehension of God as he is in
himself.
This claim, perhaps the
most controversial, certainly the most central aspect of mystical experience,
inevitably invites contradiction, and for good reason. Since Immanuel Kant, the
notion of a perception of anything in itself (an sich) --- the
noumenal insight into unmodified being --- has become epistemologically
problematic. According to this line of reasoning, the presumably pristine data
presented us in any possible encounter is modified in the very act of perceiving
it: our perception, in other words, invests data with logical and aesthetic
qualities that do not inhere in the data themselves, but which are present as a
condition to the very possibility of their being perceived at all. And
these qualities themselves are present as a result of our own epistemological
activity which first conditions data in order to accommodate it. We can,
therefore, never know anything in and of itself. We are acquainted merely
with the phenomenal appearance, but never the noumenal substance, the unmodified
reality forever concealed beneath a phenomenal framework of our own
epistemological making.3
Reason and sensibility,
then, having largely defined the terms (and subsequently the limits) of any
epistemological analysis since Kant, must in some way be cogently accounted for
in mystical theology as well. At the same time, by its very nature mystical
theology cannot be arbitrarily constrained to the scope limiting other types of
epistemological pursuits since its objective is understood at the outset to
transcend the phenomena legitimate to them. This, however, is latitude, not
license; a latitude which must nevertheless hold to terms mutually recognized in
any competent epistemological endeavor whatever. The problem is that the terms
themselves become much more fluid precisely at the point where epistemology and
mystical theology converge. Consequently, there is perpetual tension in this
convergence, a tension fraught with misunderstanding. What is vitally needed
from the outset, then, is a clarification of terms. And what I am suggesting is
that much of the confusion surrounding mysticism itself results from the fact
that mystical theology has, at this point, essentially redefined the
terms.
It is equally important
to understand that it has done so not by abolishing these terms, but by
prescinding from them. Mystical theology does not contradict the terms which
largely define other types of epistemological pursuits. It recognizes that they
are, in fact, entirely valid within their own legitimate province. But while it
does not contradict these terms, it is nevertheless ineluctably
constrained to negate them. And this is quite another matter altogether.
Recognizing that an epistemological analysis defined solely in terms of reason
and sensibility is inherently inadequate to its own unique enterprise,
mystical theology has not abrogated the terms --- it has simply redefined
them. And this is really the critical point of our departure. In
redefining the terms it redefines the epistemological enterprise itself which is
no longer understood so much as attaining to knowledge as attaining to
being. Its objective is not the acquisition of an end, but a
participating in it. Participation, in a word, becomes not simply
an alternative to knowledge --- it altogether supersedes it. At best, “knowing”,
to the mystic, is penultimate to “being”. In a larger sense, within the concept
of participation the implicit distinction between the “knower” and the “known”,
a distinction otherwise constituting one of the most fundamental epistemological
premises 4, becomes effectively superfluous. In the state of ecstatic
union, the “knower” and the “known” are ultimately understood, in a carefully
qualified sense, to in fact be one.
So crucial is the concept
of participation, in fact, that it is fundamental to understanding the very
possibility itself of the type of absolutely unconditioned and therefore
veridical perception which the mystics claim to possess in ecstatic union. The
epistemological margin between subject and object, the knower and the known,
which gradually evanesces until it is totally transcended in the moment of the
mystic’s apotheosis in God, only becomes coherent through an understanding of a
metaphysics radicated in the notion of participation.
The Doctrine of Original Sin as an Epistemological
Tangent
But we are getting ahead
of ourselves. At this point it is probably best to address some of the other
fundamental issues that inevitably influence our understanding of mysticism
before venturing further into our account. One such issue concerns the doctrine
of Original Sin. According to this doctrine, mankind in its first state of
innocence (moral impeccability) enjoyed familiarity with God. This innocence,
however, is held to have been lost, together with the intuitive apprehension of
God which attended it, through an act of Original Sin. The consequences of this
breach not only profoundly altered and vitiated our relationship with God, but
our very cognition of the Divinity is held to have been subsequently impaired as
well. From this perspective the task of mystical theology, at least implicitly,
must be understood as restorative: somehow man must once again be
reconciled to that state
of innocence in which his relationship to God is once again consonant and,
consequently, his apprehension of God immediate.
The return, so to speak,
to this original state can only be achieved, or perhaps better yet, approximated
by the mystic through what is essentially a purgative process in which the
mystic strives to center consciousness entirely and exclusively upon God. This
process, we will later see, basically consists in the categorical negation of
all that is not God, both externally according to the senses, and
internally according to the spirit. Mystical theology therefore employs a
negative epistemology, proceeding through what is known as the via
negativa (or the negative way) to arrive at a veridical cognition of
God.
At the same time, we
observe in the mystic an epistemological striving for centricity: as a result of
our fallen state, our relationship to God has become, as it were, eccentric.
That is to say, God is no longer central to ordinary consciousness, but rather
exists on its periphery as only one of a multiplicity of notions competing to
varying degrees for primacy in consciousness, and often entertained
simultaneously --- if indeed God occupies a place in consciousness at all. As
long as a plurality of necessarily discrete, and often competing notions
alternately occupy consciousness, just so long is man’s relationship to God
eccentric. And it is precisely this type of epistemological diffusion which, for
St. John, engenders what he calls “contrariety” to God in the soul. It is
essentially a diffusion among incommensurable categories. If the soul, then, is
to reestablish itself in its original state of consonance with God, it must in
some way succeed in negating this plurality.
Let us attempt to sort
this out for a moment. Assuming the intentionality of consciousness, that is to
say, that consciousness itself presupposes as a condition of consciousness, an
object or notion of which it is conscious --- the soul in having but
one item of consciousness is exclusively united with this object as the
sole condition of its epistemological activity. We do not “know”
in vacuo: the act of knowing, however vigorously abstracted and
reduced, presupposes something being concurrently known, even if only the
knower himself. Indeed, we understand the state of not knowing anything at all
as unconsciousness. Consciousness, then, is not some dogmatically
independent noesis apart from the data through which it is actualized. In this
rigorously exclusive state of focused awareness, consciousness is contingent
upon its solitary object --- it is, in fact, united with this object as a
consciousness this object. And it is one hand, and the activity of God on
the other. Given this dialectic, the soul appears to be --- despite the fall ---
yet latently disposed to that authentic cognition of God which marked the
ordinary awareness of man prior to his fall from the state of original justice.
So we find that the very possibility of mystical experience presupposes the soul
to be at least implicitly disposed to a veridical cognition of God. When
actualized, when rendered explicit in the mystical experience, this cognition
is, as it were, a dimension of the state of innocence re-achieved. This does
not, however, mean that man is therefore rendered impeccable, as the Illuminists
believed: while epistemological consonance may be reestablished precisely this
type of epistemological centricity toward which the via negativa moves.
The via negativa, then, must be viewed not simply as inseparable from,
but as intrinsic to the epistemological predisposition to mystical union,
for it ultimately enables an epistemological union of the soul as the
possibility, and God as the condition of any subsequent state of
consciousness.
In the state of mystical
union, however, we may be surprised to find that cognitive agency is not
ascribable to the contemplative himself except insofar as he is engaged in the
purely negative, if you will, the purgative process of eradicating within
himself all that is not God preparatory to receiving the divine infusion. In the
mystical experience of St. John, the notion of agency is directly ascribable to
God only: the contemplative merely disposes himself to receive this infusion
which God alone initiates and consummates, both according to his will, and that
degree to which the soul has succeeded in eliminating within itself all the
epistemological debris which effectively obstructs the clear and immediate
vision of God. Mystical experience, then, is seen to consist in a dialectic
between the passivity of the soul on the in mystical union, the contemplative is
not for that reason abstracted from the penalty of original sin and therefore
incapable of subsequently sinning. His nature, radicated in genealogy and
inherited from Adam, remains intact --- despite God’s predilection --- and the
invitation to union is apt to be viewed by the mystic not as a violation of
nature, but as extraordinary testimony to the ability of God to work
supernaturally in the soul.
The Problem with Language: the Limitations of the
Intelligible
One of the most
challenging issue to be addressed, and fundamental no less to the philosophy
than the theology of mysticism, concerns the role of language in the mystical
experience. It is a linguistic tradition --- and problematic --- the antecedents
of which, at least for our purposes, go as far back as the Neoplatonists in the
third century, and, arguably, earlier, to St. Paul himself. Within the tradition
from which St. John writes, the works of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite,
particularly his treatise entitled De Divinis Nominibus (Concerning the
Divine Names), are an eminent example of the difficulties language encounters in
addressing the Absolute. This problem becomes critical in the often attenuated
discourses of the mystic, so let us look at this issue a little more closely.
For the contemplative, words characteristically fail to adequately
express or convey his experience of the Absolute, and any linguistic description
drawing its categories from experience is found to be inadequate to, and
radically distinct from, that unique experience of God in mystical union.
So entirely dissimilar is this experience to all others, that the mystic
typically finds it difficult to establish any commensurability at all.
At best, God may only be
spoken of analogically. But even this becomes problematic in St. John’s
exposition, for any analogy at all presupposes at least some common
categories between the analogized. To wit, in the first book of the Ascent of
Mount Carmel, St. John outlines a cosmological relationship characterized by
opposition between the created order and God. Each is possessed of
ontological categories radically dissimilar in nature. How then, we must ask, is
the role of analogy, which figures as largely in St. John’s poetry as in his
philosophy, possible? For the answer, I think, we must look to the nature of St.
John’s two principal analogies: the relationship of the Lover to the beloved,
and that of the Bridegroom to the bride. Quite obviously, it is the notion of
love that is fundamental to and essentially characterizes each
relationship. And it is precisely this notion that, for St. John, becomes the
common denominator between the contemplative and the Absolute. The analogy, we
will find, is adequate precisely because commensurability is possible through
man’s basic ontological status as the image of God. And this image of God
in man is, for St. John, love, for God Himself is love.5
And yet the very nature
of love itself is incapable of being adequately expressed. Words, however well
chosen, and descriptions, however articulate and exhaustive, are found in the
end to be profoundly impoverished. The essence remains ineffable, to be
experienced immediately, intuitively. And so the analogy itself breaks
down linguistically: our experience of God can only be analogized to our
experience of love --- and our experience of love is essentially recalcitrant to
language. The experience of God in mystical union, like the experience of love
between the bride and the bridegroom, remains intuitive and essentially
unavailable to language. The experiences are comparable because they share
common intuitions, and while certain subjective states attendant upon, and, as
it were, accidental to, such experiences may in fact be vaguely described, the
intuitive affinity itself evidently derives from some source in itself
spontaneous, ever-immediate, and self-creating.
This serves to underscore
yet another dimension of the persistent problem with language. Descriptive
language purports to convey to us, or to signify, some aspect of reality
typically not immediately available to us; it serves, then, to mediate or
to approximate the reality. But it is only able to do so by presupposing
an entire spectrum of shared experience necessary to
intelligibility in any particular universe of discourse. In this sense, language
may be viewed as an expedient in lieu of direct experience. And yet we have
found that the nature of the mystical experience is essentially intuitive,
immediate, direct. It is, in short, an experience --- and any language
endeavoring to describe this experience necessarily presupposes this
experience as a condition to the intelligibility of the account it would render.
Let us suppose an individual with a rare sensory dysfunction who has never
experienced the sensation “hot”. No matter what linguistic categories we invoke,
from the cup of hot tea to the arcana of thermodynamics, our attempts to
communicate this sensation to that individual will be in vain until he has
shared that experience with us, and only in light of that experience will
the word “hot”, and all that attends our understanding of it, become
intelligible, meaningful, to him. In other words, our admission into any
meaningful universe of discourse presumes shared experiences upon which
it is grounded. Apart from this essential condition, any description of mystical
experience, however detailed and definitive, is necessarily emptied of
intelligibility. Mystical union, then, or infused contemplation as it is often
called, remains to be experienced, and when spoken of is only done so
analogically. Coupled with the problem of absolute incommensurability
deriving from any attempt to relate the finite to the Infinite, the created
conditional to the Uncreated Absolute, the mystic who would attempt to relate
his experience faces a redoubtable challenge indeed.
Perhaps in some small way
we have already succeeded in understanding some of the very fundamental issues
involved in the Western tradition of mysticism. It by now be reasonably clear,
for example, that the relatively esoteric nature of mysticism, coupled with the
mystic’s insistence upon the ineffability of the experience itself, derives from
two closely related factors: the relatively small number of shared experiences
upon which this tradition rests, and, of course, the limitations inherent in
language itself. Experience,we find, inevitably outstrips language --- it is the
antecedent which language presupposes as a condition to the intelligibility of
language at all. An alternative, then, must be sought beyond purely descriptive
language. And while language clearly cannot be abandoned in any attempt to at
least approximate meaning in the mystic’s account, it can, nevertheless be
modified, articulated, inflected, to form a linguistic tangent on the Absolute
--- and this, I think, is what St. John strives to achieve in his poetry. It
seems to me very significant that St. John treats of the mystical experience in
poetic form, and then proceeds to comment on each line and stanza with an often
involuted exposition on its theological or philosophic import. It appears to be
of the very essence of poetry that the words of themselves are merely vehicles,
often to non-verbalizable meanings. The meanings arise, hover as it were,
enigmatically above the hard and fast signification of the words and often defy
our most persistent efforts to impose some determinate form upon them. That one
line of St. John’s verse may be followed by ten paragraphs of closely reasoned,
discursive analysis merely brings to relief the fact that poetic form contains
within itself a near infinitude of meaning which transcends the finite words. In
short, the enigmatically communicative form of poetry demonstrates itself to be
the only proximate means of communicating the mystical experience ---
while at once underscoring the inadequacy of words to describe
it.
Why indeed, we must ask,
given these extraordinary obstacles, does St. John, or any mystic, for that
matter, endeavor to write of these experiences at all? The answer, I think ---
at least for St. John --- is that while this experience is extraordinary and
seldom encountered, it is not for a lack of predilection on the part of God.
Indeed, St. John insists that ecstatic union in this life is merely the prelude
to that everlasting and ecstatic union with God that is inaugurated in heaven as
the culmination of our life on earth --- and that it is God who ceaselessly
calls us to this union. And while many, called to perfection, turn aside like
the rich young man of the Gospels, either through an arrogance as ancient as the
angels, or simply through a lack of perspicacity, there will always be generous
souls quick to answer, and it is to these that St. John addresses his works.
What remains obscure in the text will become at once luminously clear in the
experience.
1 Although we
shall eventually find that the notion of experience itself is inadequate
to our understanding of the mystical experience.
2
Mystical
theology is knowledge of God by experience arrived at through the embrace of
unifying love. ( De Mystica Theologia Speculativa ).
3
cf. Critique of
Pure Reason (Immanuel Kant), Transcendental Doctrine of Elements, I, A20/B34 -
A46/B73
4
This,
incidentally, is no less true of Solipsism, or the epistemological theory which
holds that we know only ourselves and modifications of that self. Every
modification eventually constitutes a known datum contributing to, but no
longer concurrent with, the personal continuity (identity) that remains (as the
present knower) throughout these modifications.
5
1. Jn.
4.
The Mystical Tradition and St. John of
the Cross
Confluence, Divergence, and Coherence
From the outset, as it must be clear by now, it will not be
our purpose, nor does it lie within the scope of this book to seek
parallels between the doctrine of St. John of the Cross and the many mystics
which preceded him within the tradition to which he very clearly belongs. It is,
rather, my express wish to examine the philosophy of St. John upon its own
terms, in and of itself, without cluttering the text or confusing an
already difficult issue with a plethora of distracting references and historical
asides that, while providing a broader overview, inevitably vex us by pulling us
away from the focus required to grasp this profound work. Historical perspective
is very valuable; indeed, indispensable to an understanding of mysticism at
large, and while clear parallels do in fact exist between the doctrine of St.
John and the doctrines of earlier mystics, the reader who would have both ---
the breadth of historical perspective and the intensity of focused examination
--- must inevitably decide upon one or the other. I have opted for the
latter. But I also recognize the necessity of some perspective from the former.
As E. Allison Peers had correctly pointed out, in the works of St. John we find
ourselves at the confluence of a great mystical tradition to which many prior
writers had contributed --- each uniquely, but only in part --- to the
culmination of that unified and disciplined whole systematically, and for the
first time coherently, articulated in the thought of one writer: St. John of the
Cross.
But St. John is no mere
synthesizer. His unique and profound contribution, not merely to the literature,
but to the theology of mysticism, is unparalleled, and unrivaled by any of his
predecessors, many of whom unquestionably contributed to the development of his
thought. But one would not, for that reason, hold the creative genius of, say,
Heisenberg, to be diminished simply because prior physicists had made separate
and distinct contributions which the creative genius of Heisenberg --- grasping
in toto what each had only succeeded in articulating in part --- molded
into a successful physics no less original for these prior contributions, than
it was creative in articulating the whole. Our notion of creativity as such
quite often and unconsciously appears to derive its paradigm from God
understood as having literally created ex nihilo. But in man, in any man,
creativity is not something that suddenly emerges quite spontaneously and in
isolation. There are always antecedents from which creative genius springs,
distilling something pure from the brackish tributaries upon which it draws.
Within the Christian tradition this was certainly so of St. Thomas Aquinas. It
is no less true of St. John of the Cross.
Mystical theology, we
might say, appropriately begins, as it ends --- in a paradox. The most direct,
and certainly the most widely accepted interpretation of the development of the
tradition of Western Christian Mysticism traces its origins back to Plotinus in
the third century 1 But where Plato had endeavored to preserve
the fluid dialogical nature of what was essentially philosophic inquiry,
the Neoplatonists in general, and particularly Proclus in his tremendously
influential Elements of Theology, strove toward a rigorously
architectonic form, a form through which they sought to elaborate not so much a
synoptic philosophy, but a coherent and essentially reactionary doctrine.
This doctrine, only casually derived from Platonism, emerged from what
essentially began as dialogues between Plotinus and Ammonius Saccas --- a
long-standing oral tradition to which Plotinus himself adhered until he was
fifty and had begun making notes of his lectures. It was these notes which his
pupil Porphyry subsequently edited and organized into the Enneads
2
--- and the reason this was done at all is the whole point of the paradox to
which we had adverted at the beginning.
The Bursting Chrysalis: Antagonism, Assimilation and
Articulation
While Plotinus himself
makes no reference whatever to Christianity, confining his criticisms
specifically to Gnosticism, it nevertheless remains that the mystical doctrine
of Plotinus that had been subsequently developed by Porphyry and Iamblichus
3 --- and especially as it had been systematically
articulated by Proclus --- cannot be understood apart from, because in
fact it was in large measure a calculated response to, the burgeoning
threat of the still nascent Christianity. Not only was Christianity winning
converts to the cause, but more importantly, it was simultaneously encroaching
upon the state religion --- and with it, making decided inroads against what the
Neoplatonists saw as the last vestiges of classical culture. Neoplatonism was,
in this very clear sense, a reactionary philosophy --- it was articulated in
response to, and essentially to compete with, the new religion of Christianity
which was sweeping the Empire, and along with it, the Hellenic tradition that
had become a part of the unraveling fabric of post-classical society. And this
is to say that even the systematic origin of the phenomenon of mysticism has its
historical roots in antithesis.
It is important to
understand in this connection that early Christianity, imbued as it was with the
anticipation of the imminent parousia, or Second Coming of Christ, had more
urgent, and certainly more practical objectives in light of its impending
redemption, and, consequently, little interest in speculation. With the passage
of time, this sense of imminence, of impendence, while not entirely lost,
inevitably receded before the more immediate demands thrust upon it by an
antagonistic culture. The early Christian community soon came to the realization
that it had to cogently evaluate its own doctrines in the very terms of its
antagonists; to coherently interpret their deepest convictions in light of the
increasingly critical and hostile position of the Neoplatonists. While it is
true that the Neoplatonists could claim an historical continuity with classical
antiquity through the fusion of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical
concepts, it is also true that Neoplatonism had effectively exceeded the
legitimate bounds of classical philosophy. In fact, Neoplatonism had radically
redefined philosophy by no longer understanding its objective to lay
simply in the attainment of truth, but by transforming truth into religious
insight through a specifically epistemological enterprise in which philosophic
knowledge culminated in the knowledge of God, or better yet, in God as the
culmination of philosophical knowledge. Through this transformation it
successfully, if superficially, combined the official gods of the Empire
reinterpreted through Plotinus, with the prestige that classical philosophy
enjoyed at large. It was, after all, a doctrine clearly more congenial to,
because it more closely accorded with, the prevailing Hellenistic tradition
through its unique interpretation of Plato, and had, moreover, the distinct
advantage of preserving important and popular elements of pagan religion. The
official polytheism of the state, now reinterpreted in pseudo-Platonic terms ---
however tentative --- in turn lent philosophical legitimacy to Neoplatonism, a
legitimacy it would not have otherwise enjoyed apart from the prevailing
cultural affinity for Plato.
Neoplatonism, then,
effectively forced Christianity out of the slumber of its own critical naiveté.
In a larger sense, the conflict which had long existed between Rome and Galilee
had now emerged from the narrow and patently futile gauntlet of the Roman arena,
where even blood had failed to attenuate the conflict, into the decisive arena
of the mind. Faith would wither under the light of unrelenting reason --- and
reason would succeed where duress not only had miserably failed, but had served
to fuel the fervor of this growing, unreasoned, and recalcitrant sect. Another
approach was clearly necessary to preserve what was left of the respectability
of Hellenism in a declining empire, and Plotinus found in Platonism the most
effective instrument to this end. This is not to say that the essentially
reactionary impulse of Plotinus was exercised, or even conceived, in the
interests of the state, at least in a way that we would understand in
contemporary terms; still less that he did not have a genuine philosophical
commitment to, if coupled with a defective understanding of, the tradition of
Platonism --- but the fact remains that the doctrine itself unquestionably
evolved as a response to both cultural and contemporary
considerations.
Inevitably, however, even
this perspective is too myopic. Very clearly, systematic mysticism cannot be
discussed apart from Plotinus, Porphyry, and especially Proclus --- who first
made the distinction between the via affirmativa and the via
negativa in the epistemological approach to God --- and whose synthesis of
Neoplatonic concepts through Aristotelian logic was to prove so influential in
later Scholastic thought. But the mystical enterprise must be understood within
a much larger historical context. The bankrupt philosophies of the classical
era, Eclecticism, Epicureanism, Skepticism and Stoicism, all of which had
promised --- and failed --- to deliver happiness, resulted in a general
disillusion with philosophy as a viable means of rescuing post-classical society
from its impending dissolution. And while it is true that Neoplatonism attempted
to provide that alternative by vying with Christianity, it is no less true that
the mystical impulse itself clearly predated the advent of Neoplatonism as the
first systematic formulation of the basic mystical thesis; an impulse which cuts
across all traditions and cultures and has been universal in every age. It is
fundamentally a human response that is as ancient as the Divine invitation
echoed in the cool of the evening in the garden of the first paradise:
“Vocavitque Dominus Deus Adam, et dixit ei: ‘Ubi es?’
“
4 The Divine solicitation to union with
God, then, is as ancient as the creation of the heart of man. The human
susceptibility to God cannot be confined to a culture, a tradition, a doctrine,
or even any one religion. This is no invitation to indifferentism; it is merely
a realization, a recognition, that this susceptibility is rooted in the ontology
of the soul itself, and is therefore universal to all men, in all ages, in every
culture. It is obviously another case altogether how each culture has
interpreted this invitation and responded to it. For the Christian mystic,
however, this invitation takes the decisive and definitive form of God Incarnate
in the Person of Jesus Christ, a point to which we alluded earlier, and for
which reason we needn’t reexamine now.
The concatenation of
persons and ideas which had culminated in the lucid exposition of St. John is
more or less clearly defined along an historical continuum that is nevertheless
worth exploring, for the thought of St. John cannot be exscinded from the
tradition out of which alone it coherently arises. We had already briefly
adverted to Plotinus, Porphyry, and Proclus as the systematic progenitors of the
mystical doctrine that had come to be subsequently elaborated within Christian
metaphysics. There are many intermediary figures, to be sure: Iamblichus, the
Syrian pupil of Porphyry; Marinus, the disciple of Proclus; and commentators
like John Philoponus who subsequently converted to Christianity, among a host of
other less significant figures after whom Neoplatonism, as a viable philosophy
in its own right, had effectively come to a conclusion, having been supplanted
by the decidedly more cogent and closely reasoned Christian interpretation.
Christian thought, in the end, did not abolish Neoplatonism, as Neoplatonism had
been intended to abolish Christianity, but rather reinterpreted it, and in the
process had not so much adopted, as assimilated significant features of
Neoplatonism, and incorporated them, with some residual tension, within the
philosophic body of Christian doctrine.
The Neoplatonic emphasis
on the dialectic approach to God is a good illustration. For the Neoplatonist
there are essentially three dialectical moments culminating in the knowledge of
God. These may broadly be summarized as the predicative, in which we affirm
something about God; the dispredicative, in which, paradoxically, we deny what
we have affirmed, at least in a univocal sense; and finally the
superlative, in which we reaffirm what we had denied, but in an equivocal
sense; this latter finally achieving the most adequate approximation not simply
linguistically available, but epistemologically possible. An example will prove
helpful. For the Neoplatonist, the only ascriptions proper to God are the
One and the Good. The most fundamental concept of being, however, is not
predicated of God except equivocally, or analogically: it is not predicated of
the One or the Good --- because it is absolutely transcendent --- in the way
that it is predicated of other things in the universe of experience. So much had
at least been suggested by Plato in his Republic and Symposium,
although with a good deal of vacillation and, we might add, with sufficient
enough ambiguity, if not ambivalence, to provide stable enough a platform for
Plotinus to make his leap to super-reality where Aristotle through that same
ambiguity stepped down to the world of experience. The fact remains, however,
that every instantiation of being in the world of ordinary events is, without
exception, determinate, limited, and therefore finite. In other words, each is
possessed of being in a way that is not just different from, but radically
dissimilar to, the completely transcendent Being of God. We cannot, as a
consequence, univocally ascribe being to God --- who is without limitation,
determination, and finitude --- in the way that we ascribe being to a man or,
for that matter, to a tree. In this sense, then, God is not being; at
least not being ordinarily understood. To arrive at an adequate understanding of
the nature of God, then, we must effectively dispredicate him of being in the
way that being is understood of everything else apart from God. God, as a
result, must essentially be understood neither as being, nor as not-being. His
being is, in the terminology of the Neoplatonists, above
being.
A good deal more, of
course, is involved in this dialectic which is extrapolated to every other
possible predicate of God with essentially the same result: the thesis, having
been established, is at once abrogated through its antithesis, and the erstwhile
contradiction is sublated into a synthesis reconciling this apparent opposition.
The synthesis itself, however, is at best only tentative, resting as it does
upon a precarious balance between the univocal and the equivocal use of language
--- and the problems this inevitably creates for language, together with the
paradoxes it subsequently engenders, are by now obvious and have become
intrinsic to mystical discourse ever since. In other words, what has become
conceptually synthetized through language does not translate into an
ontological opposition that in the end is understood as apparent only.
The ontological opposition remains unmitigated and intact. What has been
conceptually reconciled are merely the terms of opposition applied to the
Absolute --- an opposition which, in any event, is entirely extraneous to the
One in virtue of its utter transcendence --- a synthesis which the Neoplatonist
tentatively achieves through the use of the superlative. And this, of course, is
simply another way of saying that the Absolute is only susceptible of being
addressed analogically.
As we may well
anticipate, such an analysis --- at least relative to the paramount concept of
being --- was fraught with problems upon its own terms, and, as it stood, was
not entirely amenable to thinkers struggling to articulate a Christian
philosophy within an otherwise useful Neoplatonic framework. Systematically
sound, the metaphysical architecture around which Plotinus constructed his
doctrine stood largely in need of rehabilitation only --- specifically along the
lines of its cosmological and ontological interpretations. And it is precisely
on this point, in one of the first crucial breaks with unchristened
Neoplatonism, that the 4th century Marius Victorinus, considered by
some to be the first Christian Neoplatonist in the Western tradition, took
exception. Significantly, Victorinus held being or esse to be, if
not the most appropriate, at least the most accurate name for God in one of the
earliest, if only inchoate, formulations of Christian philosophical thought. A
tension, then --- one never entirely resolved --- ineluctably emerges from the
Christianizing of Neoplatonism; a tension, we can see, essentially
resulting from the
incorporation of significant features of Neoplatonism, both metaphysically and
cosmologically, together with the repudiation of one of its most basic tenets
concerning the fundamental concept of being.
In other words, while
much of the metaphysical infrastructure of Neoplatonism remained intact
despite its adaptation to specifically Christian concepts; ontologically,
the abstract, superessential being of, say, Proclus, is clearly not
identical, nor can it be equated, with the personal Being of the
Christian Neoplatonists. Although the One identified by Plotinus is indeed, and
almost parenthetically described as “the paternal divinity,” 5 the god of Plotinus, Porphyry, and Proclus is, in a manner
of speaking, not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To begin with, it is not
a personal being to whom, for example, prayers are addressed; a being understood
as intimately involved in the lives and the affairs of men. For the
Neoplatonist, there is no predilection for man in the abstract being of the
Absolute. The whole point, however, is that not just the Being, but the
personal Being of God, is unquestionably the most fundamental
tenet of Christianity; in fact, it is unquestionably the first principle of any
specifically Christian metaphysics.
As a consequence, the
categorical transcendence of the Absolute of Plotinus --- a transcendence so
complete that it does not so much as admit of the predication of “being” to a
proper conception of the Absolute except by way of pure analogy --- becomes an
immediate point of contention in the adaptation of Neoplatonism to Christianity.
This, paradoxically, but no less obviously, is not to say that the Christian
philosopher does not attribute transcendence to God; he merely interprets this
transcendence, not in less categorical, but in less stringently ontological
terms; terms which, in the end, find their most coherent definition in a
metaphysics involving the notion of participation.
The Areopagitica
Certainly in terms of the
influence exercised by any one Neoplatonist, the most central figure, and
unquestionably the most instrumental in this transformative assimilation is
Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, or as he is often simply called, the
Pseudo-Dionysius, the fifth century Christian philosopher (probably a disciple
of Proclus) whose actual identity remains unknown, although largely conjectured
upon. He is generally believed to have been an ecclesiastic of some sort whose
pseudonymous authorship of this body of writings that has come to be known as
the Areopagitica, is ostensibly attributed to one of the judges of the
Areopagus, or the supreme tribunal in Athens, before which St. Paul had stood to
defend his evangel, and subsequent to whose eloquent defense, converted to
Christianity 6.
We now know this not to be the case, and the reasons put forth for this
pseudonymity are many and varied, but few of them seriously suggest anything
more than the type of pious literary imposture that appears to have been
commonly practiced at the time. In any event, the authorship of these works is
largely beside the point considering the systematic coherence achieved in which
Neoplatonic concepts were successfully synthesized with accepted Christian
doctrine. These treatises, which were to have an impact well into the middle
ages and beyond, and which in toto constitute the Areopagitica, are four: De
Divinis Nominibus (a paradigm of the via affirmativa), Caelestis
Hierarchia, Ecclesiastica Hierarchia, and Theologia Mystica
(an even more celebrated paradigm of the via negativa)
7 The latter, though extremely brief --- having only five
chapters --- distills elements essentially derived from the other three
treatises which then form the basic principles to mystical union with God.
Anyone who has read anything of the medieval mystics will be immediately
acquainted with much of the imagery and many of the analogies, to say nothing of
the method, in this work. And while we do not intend to go into a detailed
analysis of the Christianized Neoplatonism of the Pseudo-Dionysius, it is
sufficient for this brief summary to note that the Areopagitica is the locus
classicus not only of the linguistics of mysticism, together with the
inchoate development of a distinctive mystical epistemology, but of the via
negativa, or the negative way, the concept perhaps most central to the later
metaphysical thought of the medieval mystics in particular, and Christian
mysticism in general.
It is very clear from the
outset that the author of the Areopagitica was profoundly influenced by Proclus,
the last and arguably the most systematic thinker of the Neoplatonic school, who
was deeply antagonistic to Christianity. Despite this marked influence, however,
the synthesis which the Pseudo-Dionysius had effected between Neoplatonism and
Christianity was so successful that the Areopagitica very early on were invoked
as competent documents on both sides of the Monophysite controversies in the
6th century, and in the dispute over Monothelism in the
7th. Within the latter part of that same century we find St. John
Damascene, the last of the Greek Fathers, appealing to the Pseudo-Areopagite in
discussing the limitations of language in addressing the Absolute, particularly
in his references to the essential incomprehensibility of God.
8 Widespread as his influence had been, however, it was St.
Maximus Confessor, the 7th century theologian who, by successfully
integrating dogmatics into the Pseudo-Dionysian schema through his lucid
commentaries on all four treatises, had provided the necessary theological
glosses to obvious ambiguities in the texts, bringing the works of the
Pseudo-Dionysius into closer alignment with orthodox doctrine and thus
effectively preparing them for, and greatly contributing toward, their general
recognition in the later Middle Ages.
Ironically, the profound
influence that the Pseudo-Dionysius was to exercise upon the later development
of medieval mystical thought was nearly lost to the West together with the
knowledge of classical Greek that had all but vanished in the four hundred years
preceding the Carolingian reforms and the subsequent revival of letters,
culture, and learning. Greek at this time, indeed, the pursuit of learning in
general, appears to have been preserved exclusively in the monasteries of
Ireland, which alone had been spared the barbarian incursions that had ravaged
the Continent and extended as far as Britain. Fortunately, however, they had
failed to press farther west, and at the behest of Charles the Bald, it was the
Irish philosopher and theologian, Johannes Scotus Erigena, one of a handful of
theologians in the West who had acquired facility in classical Greek, who was
largely responsible for bringing the Areopagitica 9 (together with St. Maximus Confessor’s Ambigua) into
the mainstream of medieval theological thought through his translation in 858 of
the works from their original Greek into Latin. At the same time, he
incorporated significant features of these works into his own speculative
theology that itself had become prominent in his most celebrated, if
controversial work, De Divisione Naturae 10, otherwise known as the Periphyseon, which was
widely read by mystical theologians in the 13th century and exerted
considerable influence upon such later figures as Johann Eckhart. With the
isolated exception of Johannes Scotus Erigena, however, a significant hiatus
occurred in the development of mystical-theological thought between the
9th and the 11th centuries that coincided with the greater
gap in continuity that had occurred within philosophy itself apart from a few
notable exceptions such as Boethius in the early 6th century ---
considered by some the last of the Romans --- whose De Consolatione
Philosophiae (a philosophical and not an explicitly Christian work per se)
bears the unmistakable stamp of Proclus, and possibly St. Isadore of Seville in
the 7th century, more properly an encyclopedist in his attempt to
compile a sort of summa of universal knowledge, parts of which, incidentally,
preserved important fragments of classical learning that would otherwise have
been lost altogether.
Revival, Reason and Revelation: the Middle Ages and the
Mystical Tradition
Not until the revival of
letters and learning in general under the auspices of Charlemagne (principally
through Alcuin, the great architect of the Carolingian renaissance) will we find
the literature of mysticism reintroduced through the reintroduction of classical
learning itself. This, as we have seen, was the impetus that brought the
Pseudo-Dionysius to Johannes Scotus Erigena in the first place. While the
assimilative process, as we may expect, was gradual, so effective was the reform
in education and learning that had been brought about largely through the
efforts of Alcuin that the educational system it produced survived the collapse
of the Carolingian Empire, which had effectively ended with the death of Charles
the Fat in 888. However, the wealth of classical learning it had succeeded in
acquiring was preserved in the Cathedral schools and monasteries through which
it subsequently became available to the mystics who would later flourish in the
12th century
It would seem to appear
that these two distinct repositories of classical literature were largely
responsible for the two equally distinct approaches to mysticism that we find
emerging in the 12th century. While clearly not separate traditions,
the divergent interpretations found their clearest expressions respectively in
the Cistercian monasteries, most notably at Clairvaux and Signy, under the
auspices of St. Bernard --- widely regarded as the first medieval mystic --- and
at the Abbey School of St. Victor in Paris founded in 1108 by William of
Champeaux, but which really came to renown under the leadership of Hugh of St.
Victor, one of the foremost theologians of the 12th century and one
of the principal architects of scholasticism. In many respects it was St.
Bernard, however, who, in his “homilies on the Canticle”, and elsewhere, put the
indelible stamp of Christianity upon the Neoplatonic mysticism of the
Pseudo-Areopagite by contending that grace, and not simply the
abstracting process of contemplation, was essential, indeed, indispensable to
the knowledge of God that culminates in mystical union; a union, moreover,
achieved not through the intellect, but through the will; not through reason,
but essentially through love, and for whom the very possibility of union at all
presumed the imago Dei in the soul.
William of St. Thierry, a
close friend and colleague of St. Bernard, provided perhaps the clearest
expression of the Cistercian emphasis upon the role of the will in the
realization of union:
“When the object of thought is God, and the
will reaches the stage at which it becomes love, the Holy Spirit at once infuses
Himself by way of love [ such that ] the understanding of the one thinking
becomes the contemplation of the one loving” 11
In this respect it would
appear that St. John of the Cross is much closer to St. Bernard and William of
St. Thierry than to Hugh of St. Victor to whom he is in other respects
nevertheless indebted. While not prescinding from the necessity of revelation,
and always within the bounds of orthodoxy, Hugh of St. Victor nevertheless
strongly emphasizes the role of reason in attaining to the knowledge of
God. His contribution to the literature of mysticism, principally in the form of
his five mystical works, De Arca Noe Morali et Mystica; De Vanitate
Mundi; De Arrha Animae; and De Contemplatione et eius speciebus
was significant and the Neoplatonic influence upon his thought
unquestionable as we see in his Commentariorum in Hierarchiam Caelestem
Sancte Dionysii Areopagitae secundum interpretationem Joannnis Scoti libri
x. The emphasis upon reason, which characterized the Victorines in general,
is particularly evident in the mystical works Beniamin maior and
Beniamin minor by Richard of St. Victor for whom contemplation formed the
terminus of a progression of knowledge to the point of pure reason beyond which
--- and only with divine assistance --- the soul attains to union. In an
interesting aside nevertheless apropos of St. John, Richard invokes a
particularly useful analogy in the way of underscoring the importance of dogma
and Scripture to the mystical experience by seeing in the Mount of the
Transfiguration a prototype of certain “visions” accompanying this experience,
and claiming that such essentially peripheral phenomena, if they are in fact
genuinely divine in origin, must be corroborated by Moses and Elijah, who for
Richard symbolize the Church and Sacred Scripture. If they accord with neither,
they are to be rejected. Certainly the tradition that culminates in the thought
of St. John owes a considerable debt to the Victorine School in further
elaborating the Christian synthesis that derived its impulse from the
Pseudo-Areopagite. The extent to which St. John of the Cross was influenced by
this important school of thought is, I think, most clearly evidenced in his use
of the allegorical interpretation of Scripture, certainly not in the Victorine
emphasis upon reason. It would also seem probable that St. John’s metaphysics of
participation through love owes at least an historical debt to Richard of St.
Victor in whose De Trinitate God is emphasized as love itself, as the
Evangelist John had beautifully summarized, and not merely as a perfectly loving
being.
This tradition continues
to be developed in the writings of the13th century Franciscan mystic Giovanni
Fidanza, better known as St. Bonaventure, a contemporary and close friend of St.
Thomas Aquinas, whose Itinerarium mentis in Deum, or Journey of the Mind
to God, and De Triplici Via, or the Three-fold Way --- essentially a
compendium of the mystical theology of the Victorine School --- were widely read
by such diverse later 14th century mystics as Blessed Henry Suso and
Jean Gerson. It is really in the 14th century, however, that we come
the flowering of mysticism, and more specifically, to the apex of speculative
mysticism. The various earlier systems, both rational and affective --- that is
to say, emphasizing either reason or the will respectively --- converge at that
academic crossroads where the increasingly abstract, dry, and often contentious
schools encountered a popular yearning for depth and renewal in the most basic
spiritual aspirations of which the academics had seemingly lost sight in the
pursuit of matters abstruse and trivial by comparison. Here we find such
familiar and notable figures as Eckhart, Ruysbroeck, Suso, Tauler, and Gerson,
all of whom, directly or indirectly, to some extent influenced St. John of the
Cross. Within the limited scope of this book we cannot possibly attempt to
detail the individual contribution to the thought of St. John of each of these
figures who were, at least chronologically, his most immediate predecessors; it
is nevertheless clear, however, that the most direct sources to which St. John
had access were in any event themselves indebted to the contributions of
previous figures within the same tradition. And while we may safely advert to
the earliest systematic formulations of this doctrine in the Neoplatonists in
general and the Pseudo-Dionysius in particular, and see every subsequent
development essentially in light of this basic metaphysical doctrine, we cannot,
and quite obviously, for that reason prescind from those unique contributions
that were instrumental in articulating this early and largely inchoate doctrine
in a way that progressively succeeded in making it consistent with both
Christianity and reason.
To a large degree, each
figure in the mystical tradition owes a greater debt to the influence of another
and preceding figure in a way that is more clearly recognized than his debt to
the rest. But we must equally recognize that every mystic is essentially
eclectic in drawing upon the distinct universe of ideas that constitute the
tradition out of which his own thought emerges, sometimes subscribing to certain
aspects of one doctrine while largely rejecting the rest, as in the case of
Blessed Henri Suso’s rehabilitation of some of the faulty doctrines of Johann
Eckhart. In a sense, to say that St. John owes his most immediate debt to
Ruysbroeck, as some maintain, even if true in a purely chronological or
immediate sense, is to fail to see in Ruysbroeck the myriad other mystics,
indeed, the entire mystical continuum to which the doctrine of Ruysbroeck or any
other mystic is indebted. Every mystic, then, incorporates something of the
thought of not merely one particular mystic preceding him, but of the entire
tradition implicitly comprehended within the doctrine of that mystical figure to
whom he himself is most immediately indebted. And distinct elements within this
tradition extend back well beyond the Pseudo-Areopagite himself; in fact, at
least as far back as the 3rd century AD, some two hundred years prior
to the appearance of the Areopagitica. And the whole point is this: whether or
not say, Maximus Confessor in the 9th century had read St.
Athanasius’s Life of Antony written around 357 AD or the Spiritual
Homilies of the 5th century Pseudo-Macarius, and whether or not
Maximus’s Ambigua itself was the subject of study of say, Johann Tauler,
may be impossible to ascertain. What is certain, however, is that an entire
tradition consisting of a wide variety of writings by a great many different
writers is brought to bear on the doctrines that later became articulated in the
speculative systems of the great 14th and 15th century
mystics.
Any brief survey, for
example, must certainly include Origen, the 3rd century scholar and
Church Father who stands not only as one of the most creative minds in the
history of the Church, but as one of its earliest mystical teachers. Indeed, not
only was Origen a contemporary of Plotinus, but he studied under the very same
Ammonius Saccas from whom Plotinus derived his own mystical doctrine. In Origen,
among other things, we find one of the earliest examples of the systematic use
of allegory in the interpretation of Scripture 12, a literary device exercised no less by St. John of the
Cross than it was by the Victorines some four centuries before him. Among the
mystical doctrines to be found in his Commentary on the Song of Songs is
a conception of union framed around the notion of the imago Dei and his
writings clearly adumbrate the celebrated three-fold way of purgation,
illumination, and union,13 which had subsequently come to typify the mystical path to
God. But there are other aspects of mysticism to be considered as well. The
4th century St. Antony, for example, is widely acknowledged as having
contributed indispensable elements to the development of the ascetic aspects of
Western mysticism, which find their clearest expression in the form of what are
basically the ascetical prescriptions mandated by the via negativa. The
conception of a rehabilitation of man’s nature to its original state of
consonance with God, which had been forfeited as a result of the Fall, is
equally addressed by St. Anthony, and in the context of a conception of union
with God. His skeptical regard of supernatural phenomena and his admonitions
concerning them (to be reiterated by Maximus later, and St. Bernard later
still), his stress on the necessity of withdrawal from the world, together with
his counsels concerning impediments likely to be encountered as a result of
diabolical interference, are very familiar to us by now from a much later
historical context.
More influential still
upon the thought of the medieval mystics was the 4th century Desert
Father St. Gregory of Nyssa to whom the mysticism of St. John is, directly or
indirectly, indebted. In contradistinction to earlier (and some later) mystics,
but very much like the Pseudo-Dionysius (whose writings were unquestionably
influenced by St. Gregory of Nyssa) ecstatic union is to be attained through
darkness, not light. Not surprisingly, in his Life of Moses (as St. John
will much later describe it in his Ascent of Mount Carmel) we find that
the journey to “… the knowledge of God … is a steep mountain difficult to ascend
…”, and in this ascent itself, moreover, the imago Dei figures largely in
the mystical experience that follows. The Incarnation is, for St. Gregory, as it
is for St. John, and for Maximus Confessor before either of them, absolutely
essential to the very possibility itself of mystical union. The necessity of
abstraction from sensibility, and the imperative of faith as the only proximate
means to this union --- this is no less the currency of the mysticism of St.
Gregory than it is of St. John of the Cross.
In the writings of these
early Fathers, particularly Origen and St. Gregory, we also find some of the
earliest references to Divine love inflicting a wound whose pain is
longing for union; a sentiment echoed only less eloquently but no less
passionately by St. Bernard than by St. John of the Cross. Like St. Antony
before him, and St. John after him, St. Gregory understood mystical union as
essentially culminating in the restoration of the imago Dei obscured by
sin. But our striving after parallels for their own sake, should we care to
pursue them further, may well continue indefinitely, and in the end be quite
pointless; the recognition of such antecedents itself suffices to our present
purpose. For what I am suggesting in all this is merely what I had attempted to
state with a good deal more brevity earlier: All the coherent, but fragmented
elements of an entire historical tradition, dating at least as far back as the
3rd century, come into brilliant focus in the thought of St. John of
the Cross some thirteen hundred years later. Perhaps, in closing, an analogy of
our own will be useful. This tradition comes to us more or less like the
fragments of a mirror shattered at the dawn of time, each piece of which, in
some diminished form, in and of itself reflects something authentic of the one
same sun whose light is brought to bear upon it --- but these scattered pieces
are finally brought into proper orientation, aligned, reintegrated, and
seamlessly conjoined only through a creative insight so flawless in perspective
that the whole is for the first time reflected as unfragmented in all its parts,
revealing a brilliance far greater in its unity than the sum of each distinct
light reflecting in only the totality of its parts. Where each previous
mystic, through the indomitable prompting of Unspeakable Love, had succeeded
merely in hurling a star into the darkness, St. John, peering into that same
night, grasped the divine dialectic of darkness and light --- and with the
finger of God traced the constellation that revealed, in the closing words of
Dante’s Paradiso, “the love that moves the sun and every
star.”
1 or literally,
‘sets of nine’ essays divided rather arbitrarily by Porphyry in his penchant for
numerology into six groups.
2 Apart from the
Enneads, Porphyry himself had written several influential treatises, the most
notable being his Sentences, essentially an exposition of the philosophy
of Plotinus, and the Isagoge (or introduction to Aristotle’s categories)
which figured largely in later medieval thought especially in the controversy
over universals in the 11th and 12th
centuries.
3 His principal
works, broadly organized as the Summary of Pythagorean Doctrines, while
less celebrated than those of Porphyry, were more speculative still, and
contributed significantly to the modification of the basic metaphysical tenets
of Neoplatonism, elements of which Proclus would subsequently take up in his
final systematic synthesis.
4 “… the Lord
God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” Gen. 3.9
(Vulgate)
5 Ennead
5.1
6 Acts
17.34
7 Not including
ten letters, apart from these treatises, attributed to the Pseudo-Dionysius as
well. These were addressed severally to ecclesiastics of ranks ranging from the
monk, Caius, to the Bishop of Titus, and one ostensibly to the Apostle John
himself.
8
De Fide
Orthodoxa
I.12
9 The text of
which, in the original Greek, had been archived by Pope Paul I in the Abbey of
St. Denis just north of Paris in 757 where it had remained unread for the better
part of a hundred years.
10
A boldly
speculative but unsuccessful attempt to synthesize the emanationisn, pantheism,
and mysticism of the Neoplatonic schema with the empirical elements of
Aristotle, Christian theism, and the doctrine on creation.
11 Golden
Epistle, 249-250
12
Philocalia, chapters
1-15
13 intimated
earlier still by St. Clement of Alexandria in his Stromateis in the
3rd century.
(Continued below)
PART 1
ASCENT of MOUNT
CARMEL
Beyond
Innocence
One of the fundamental principles of mystical theology,
briefly touched upon in our introduction, is that the relation between the
contemplative and God is marked by profound incommensurability in every
category. Ontologically, this incommensurability derives from the relationship
between two radically distinct natures: God, on the one hand, considered
ontologically, is uncreated, infinite, eternal, immutable, autonomous, and
self-sufficient. The ontological attributes of man, on the other hand, are
diametrically opposite. While procreative, his nature itself remains created. He
is finite in knowledge and power. His being exists, is enacted, radicated
within, the distinct and limited physical locus circumscribed by his body. He is
temporal, having historical antecedents in time: a beginning before which he was
not, and an end toward which he ineluctably moves. He is mutable, inconstant,
changing, evolving, maturing --- not only physically, but intellectually and
spiritually. He is altogether heteronymous. Subject to circumstances, forces,
and occurrences quite often beyond his control --- despite the most
assiduous application of his will --- he lacks complete self-determination.
Finally, he is utterly contingent. His being, in every way, relies, depends,
upon, requires, re sources beyond itself. Ultimately, the ontic reality of man
is understood to be conditioned by the divine existence itself: his being,
metaphysically considered, is ultimately dependent upon the being of God. The
divine existence, however, is absolutely unconditioned, being completely
sufficient unto itself.
Furthermore, this
incommensurability between God and man in the realm of the ontological, is
compounded by moral alienation in the universe of ethics. Prior to Adamic sin,
or the fall, the gulf between God and man is held to have been mediated by grace
which, according to Christian doctrine, is understood to be the created
participation in the life of God --- a life which, significantly, consisted in
familiar commune with God. By some primordial act of sin, however, man
fell from this state of grace; his communion with God was sundered and his
nature, once consonant and harmonious with God, became corrupt, divided,
disordered. He is yet possessed of an immortal soul in essential
communication with God inasmuch as God continues to communicate being to
the soul, but as a result of the fall and his subsequent alienation from God,
his cognition of this fundamental source of his being --- in a very real sense,
his vision of God --- has become inadequate and obscure. He is
essentially communicated with, but noetically excommunicated from, God. In the
state of innocence, the noetic apprehension of God is held to have been
connatural to man --- but this is no longer the case. In his fallen state, man
is deprived of this simple, immediate apprehension of God in which his
original felicity consisted.
Thus divided, man, once
empirically acquainted with the eternal --- and now in isolation from it --- is
a being whose cognitive acquaintance is now limited to one dimension only, the
temporal: and this really is the beginning of the mystical problematic, for it
is precisely temporal categories that are incompatible with the eternal, and
incommensurable with the infinite. It is the task of the contemplative, then, to
somehow reintegrate these bifurcated dimensions, in fact, to pass beyond them by
gathering the temporal into the eternal, and in so doing strive to attain
that epistemological integrity which existed in the state of innocence ---
indeed, to go beyond innocence by achieving not simply communion with God, as
Adam enjoyed prior to the fall --- but union with God. To do so, the
mystic must first abstract himself from that manifold of temporal categories
which are metaphysically irreconcilable with the two basic ontological
attributes of the Absolute: infinity and eternity. His quest for union with God
must be negatively achieved through a series of purgations which
will first attenuate, and then effectively abolish his metaphysical contrariety
to God.
It is within this context
that we first discern the first epistemological principle of the via
negativa: in order to achieve that union with God which constitutes the
soul’s consummate perfection, it is necessary to undergo two distinct negative
processes, or purgations, corresponding to what St. John calls the
sensuous and spiritual parts of the soul. 1 The purgation of each part, moreover, is to proceed
according to the three faculties of the soul --- will, understanding, and
memory --- each in relation to its sensuous and spiritual parts. In a
sense, St. John states his methodology early on and rather clearly in the
Ascent and we are tempted to extrapolate prematurely if not hastily in
light of it. This would be to err seriously. And perhaps we ourselves have begun
too abruptly, for it is not only the method, but also the means with which we
must first come to terms if we are to avoid confusion at the outset. It is
extremely important for us to understand that the movement to mystical union is
a cooperative enterprise throughout. The soul responds to, and passively
cooperates with, that initiative which rests with God alone 2.
Perhaps we can render
this in other terms nevertheless compatible with the thought of St. John; terms
that may more clearly establish the dialectical relationship that exists between
the soul of the contemplative and God. The activity of the soul of which
St. John speaks in his opening discourse in the Ascent, while not of
itself capable of inaugurating the union sought after, may nevertheless be
regarded as predispositional to that union which God alone effects, and
to which the soul is entirely passive. In an epistemological context, this state
of negativity that the soul strives to achieve may be viewed as the
condition of the
possibility of a direct intuition of God. Understood in this sense, the
dialectic between the soul and God becomes somewhat clearer. As the mere
condition of the possibility of the direct apprehension of God, this negation at
once presupposes passivity on the part of the soul, and activity on the part of
God --- an activity capable of actualizing this possibility through what St.
John terms the divine infusion.
This, however, must be
achieved systematically, or perhaps better yet, methodologically, and in keeping
with the empirical foundations of knowledge articulated by his Scholastic
predecessors, St. John begins this redoubtable task on the purely human level of
sensibility. The first step, then, that we encounter in the Ascent of Mount
Carmel (or the step toward the epistemological predisposition to mystical
union) is the negativity of sense. And this, St. John maintains, consists
in depriving the soul of distinct conceptions according to the
understanding, alien desires and affections according to the will,
and various images and representations according to the memory.
3 In other words, it calls for a centripetal movement toward
the axis of the soul’s being --- a rigorous integrating and coordinating of the
faculties in the intensely focused love of God alone, as the first prerequisite
to infused contemplation. And so we find St. John stating in Book I of
the Ascent that:
“…the soul [ in this state of negation ]
is, as it were, in the darkness of night, which is naught else than an emptiness
within itself of all things.” 4
The emptiness of which he
speaks in fact constitutes the state of sheer passive receptivity; a receptivity
toward which the soul is constrained to move preparatory to its union with God.
In this night of sense the pleasures and desires of the soul preeminently
involving the will are not so much systematically abolished, as
rigorously suspended, so that the soul contains nothing appropriated through the
will, in the way of created nature that would engender contrariety with the
Uncreated God. The precise metaphysical nature of this opposition between the
created order and God, which figures so largely in the philosophy of St. John,
remains to be addressed in greater detail later; for the moment, let us examine
some of the more salient implications involved in what we have considered so
far.
The Problem of Union vs. Identity
We have already touched
upon several notions that are indispensable to a clear understanding of
mysticism, and our discussion up to this point has briefly focused upon
predisposition, passivity, activity, and receptivity as central in the movement
toward mystical union. But even at this early point in our account a closer
examination of these central features brings us into an arena of considerably
greater complexity than any clarity it has afforded us thus far. Ineluctably,
even a preliminary analysis brings us, in fact, face to face with perhaps the
single greatest problem confronted in mystical phenomenologies in general, and
St. John’s works in particular, and this is the problem of union versus
identity. It is an unavoidable problem that becomes at times critical in
some later passages that we will examine in which St. John appears to equate
personal annihilation 5 with the virtual assimilation of the soul into the identity
of God 6 To St. John’s credit, however, it is equally important to
note that in other passages he is quite careful in keeping the two natures
distinct.7
What then is this
problem? And no less importantly, what is the provenance of this confusion? In
effect, the problem has always been latent in the account, for that attitude
which is conducive, or better yet, predispositional, to union, consists
precisely in the absolute passivity which follows the sensuous night of
the soul. In every faculty, according to St. John, the soul is rendered empty,
unoccupied. It is the sheer possibility of conscious actualization, but
is not of itself in any epistemological sense actual --- for its ordinary
consciousness, we have seen, consisted in precisely those elements which had
been systematically purged through the via negativa. In this state of
epistemological suspension --- completely void relative to nature broadly
understood as the sum of all possible natural conditions of conscious
actualization --- the soul is then receptive only to God as outside
nature, and who, as such, alone is capable of actualizing this mere
possibility through the divine infusion. Consciousness is thus contingent
upon God, is actualized by God, and is a consciousness of
God. In other words, it is an apotheosized state of consciousness, a
unitary and exclusive awareness of God. However, it is crucial for us to
remember that prior to this infusion, the soul of itself possessed nothing but
the possibility of conscious actualization, and that subsequent to union
its sole epistemological datum --- that in virtue of which alone it has been
actualized --- is God. And this is to say that only insofar as God communicates
himself the soul --- is the soul actual, in any consciously noetic sense. And
this, rather succinctly, is the problem of identity. It appears to be not so
much a union of distinct natures, as an identity resulting from the
apotheosizing of the one through its noetic assimilation into the
other.
But we also mentioned
that St. John was careful in keeping the two natures distinct, for he quite
clearly states that:
“In thus allowing God to work in it, the
soul is at once illumined and transformed in God, and God communicates to it His
supernatural Being, in such wise that it appears to be God Himself, and has all
that God has. And this union comes to pass when God grants the soul this
supernatural favor, that all the things of God and the soul are one in
participant transformation; and the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and
is indeed God by participation; although it is true that its natural being,
though thus transformed, is as distinct from the Being of God as it was before”
8
What, then, in St. John’s
account may be invoked as the distinguishing feature between the notion of
union on the one hand, and that of identity on the other --- when
the two quite often appear to be conflated? Until we arrive at a concept that
will enable us to discriminate between the two, we can penetrate no further into
St. John’s mystical account, or, for that matter, effectively differentiate it
from other competing accounts entirely outside the Christian tradition. This
crucial concept --- the sine qua non to the very intelligibility of
Christian Mysticism --- is to be found in the notion of participation; a
notion that, while not prescinding entirely from a conception of
identity, more clearly implies the idea of union. Perhaps it can
better be explained this way: we understand by that which participates,
something clearly distinct from that in which it participates. That is to
say, while the notion of participation clearly implies unity between the
participant and that in which it participates, we at once understand that it is
a unity into which disparate elements enter. In a similar manner, we understand
by the notion of union, a conjunction of two in which the individual
natures entering into the union are preserved, rather than abolished; we should
otherwise find it very difficult to understand the sense in which we speak of it
as a union, rather than as a unity. Unlike identity which implies the reduction
of a merely apparent plurality to an ultimate unity, the notion of
participation is understood to involve the preservation of two authentically
distinct elements entering into --- while not simultaneously being abolished by
--- a union.
We should, moreover, find
it largely problematic, and entirely incompatible with the doctrines that St.
John later develops to view the type of infused contemplation that St. John
describes as resulting in an identity, rather than a union. It is, I think,
extremely important to the integrity of St. John’s thought to emphasize this
point, so let us take our previous discussion just a little further. The two
elements entering into identity, we had said, are in fact seen to be one. We do
not speak of one participating in the other, for there is no other,
strictly speaking: the merely-apparent two are in fact identical, understood to
be one and the same. We discover nothing of the sense of subordination or
contingency implied in the idea of identity, for the very simple reason that the
one is the other. The distinction, in other words, is essentially
spurious. Most often it is rendered in purely temporal, although sometimes
spatial, terms: it is, in fact, the one thing understood at different points in
time or space, or both.
Something quite different
emerges, however in our understanding of union through participation; something
which clearly suggests the contingent character of the participant relative to
that in which it is understood to participate. The latter, it becomes clear, is
presupposed as the condition of the possibility of a participant. Simply
put, what participates already presupposes that in which it is participating.
And this, needless to say, very clearly accords with St. John’s
understanding of the soul’s relationship to God subsequent to the state of
negation; a primarily noetic, but also an ontological relationship
in which the soul is contingent upon, presupposes, that divine initiative in
which alone it is actualized. While it is undeniably an apotheosized state of
consciousness, it is nevertheless a consciousness contingent upon, subordinate
to, and metaphysically distinct from, the divine agency through which alone it
becomes actualized. So vital is an understanding of this crucial distinction to
an understanding of St. John’s works at large, that unless we now grasp it
fully, any further attempt at understanding his sometimes involuted expositories
will be either entirely remiss or completely in vain. The notion of
participation is, as it were, the first premise in a mystico-logical sorites
upon which the coherency of the epistemology of mysticism rests. Once we have
succeeded in understanding this, we can begin to address the role that the
faculties play in the movement toward mystical
union.
1 AMC
1.1.1-2
2
AMC 1.1.5;
2.5.4
3 AMC 1.4.1-5;
1.9.6; 2.6.1-6
4 AMC
1.3.2
5 AMC
2.7.1
6 AMC
2.5.4
7 AMC 2.5.6-7 +
2.21.1 Also cf. ST I 3 Q.2 art.1
8 AMC 2.5.7 also
cf. STQ.3 art.4
(Continued below)
I
The Notion of the
WILL in the Philosophy of St. John of the Cross
We had briefly mentioned that in the state of negation the
soul is emptied of all desires and pleasures according to the will
1 and that in such a state the soul contains nothing in the
way of created nature which is contrary to God. But a good deal more needs to be
said about the metaphysical nature of this contrariety before we can go further.
Let us take, for example, the contrariety which St. John perceives to exist
between the finite and the infinite. First of all, it is important
to understand that while there appears to be logical polarity between the two,
they are not, in a metaphysical sense, mutually contrary. It is not so
much a matter of contrariety that is eventually seen to exist, as of an
insuperable disproportion in magnitude; a disproportion which so closely
approximates categorical opposition that it qualifies, in a practical sense, as
contrariety. It is magnitude, then, that is the essence of the finite and
the infinite, as duration is the essence of the temporal and the eternal. So
understood, the finite not only can be, but as a matter of course is
accommodated to the infinite without engendering any contradiction whatever.
The infinite divisibility of matter is one example that readily comes to mind in
the way of illustrating something finite incorporating the infinite within
itself while losing nothing of the nature of its own finitude. Everyone,
I think, will agree that we can, at least conceptually, continue dividing matter
ad infinitum. It is simply a matter of applied mathematics. However tedious we
should find this to be, it serves to demonstrate that the infinite so
incorporated really turns out to be pseudo-infinite after all. Starting with a
discrete whole, we are at least conceptually capable of subjecting it to
infinite reduction.
However, we should find
that at any given point in the reductive process (which may continue
indefinitely, that is to say, infinitely), a reversal toward integration will
eventually go no further than the discrete whole from which we started. In other
words, it is only a disintegratively infinite process. It is only infinite, so
to speak, from the top down. And this, obviously, is equally true of time
vis-a-vis eternity. While of itself infinitely reductive, divisible into
days, hours, minutes, seconds, etc., an abrupt reversal of this process will
never bring us beyond the present.
What is the point of this
aside? In each instance we find that the finite, while unable to comprehend the
infinite, is at least metaphysically susceptible to it. We have seen, through
two rather pedestrian examples, that the infinite may, in principle, be
accommodated to the finite without contradiction. But it does so dis-unitively,
by division, reduction, disintegration. It is, paradoxically, a unilateral
infinity coextensive with the finite: it is infinitely retrogressive, but only
finitely progressive. It will always have its terminus in the unity from which
it began. But the fact nevertheless remains that the matrix of the infinite is
at least implicit in the finite. A latent, if limited correspondence
does in fact exist, and it is in virtue of this fact alone that any
correlation between the two becomes possible --- and only on terms which
abrogate the metaphysical nature of neither. It is only when we try to pass
beyond the finite to the infinite that we encounter difficulties. Whereas
the infinite is capable of instantiating itself within the finite by
subsuming the finite under itself while yet remaining infinite, the finite on
the other hand is incapable of extrapolating itself into the infinite, of
passing beyond itself without at once ceasing to be finite. The bearing this has
on our understanding of the metaphysics underlying mystical union should be
fairly evident by now. It is simply this: In mystical union, it is not a matter
of the finite being poured, as it were, into the infinite --- the finite can
never comprehend, fill, be coextensive with, the infinite; rather it is a matter
of the infinite instantiating itself within, as it were, being poured into, the
finite. And this is precisely why it is termed the divine infusion; an
infusion that can only be effected through an approximation of the
infinite through the negation of all that is finite in the soul. That is to say,
the soul, created in imago Dei, is the approximation of the infinite in
its fundamental ontological nature. The infinite, as we had said earlier,
clearly cannot exhaust itself in the finite, but it can fill the finite
--- to the extent that the finite has abolished every limiting category possible
to its being, leaving only the image, the ontic nucleus of its being --- a being
which, for St. John, together with a great many mystics within the Christian
tradition --- is being an image.
The Via Negativa: Notions of Contrariety and
Co-existence
As we had begun to say in
opening our discussion on the role of the will, in the state of negation
occasioned by the via negativa the soul contains nothing in the way of
created nature which is contrary to God. Inasmuch as God is ontologically
other to created nature, he is essentially contrary to nature as
Not-nature, and inasmuch as nature is ontologically other to God, it is
essentially contrary to God as not-God---and this, fundamentally, is the basis
for the categorical opposition found between the created order and God, a point
upon which St. John is clear in a number of passages:
“All the affections which [ the soul ] has
for creatures are pure darkness in the eyes of God 2 [and] all the being of creation compared
with the infinite being of God, is nothing 3 How great a distance
there is between all that the creatures are in themselves and that which God is
in Himself 4 for there
is the greatest possible distance between these things and that which comes to
pass in this estate which is naught else than transformation in God 5
Thus, he that will love some other thing together with God of a certainty makes
little account of God, for he weighs in the balance against God that which, as
we have said, is at the greatest possible distance from God 6 the
soul, then, must be stripped of all things created
7”
The soul, then, aspiring
to transformation in God through mystical union is only receptive to God insofar
as it has succeeded in negating within itself all that is other to God in the
way of created nature, until at last only that divine speculum remains in
the form of the image of God which mirrors, reflects, only God, and is so
utterly consonant with God as to effectively be in union with him. But even in
stating this, we’ve anticipated a good deal too much, for our most elementary
understanding is as yet far from complete. What are we to say, for example, of
the following principle upon which the argument rests that St. John has just
articulated above, and which is the sine qua non of every instance of the
via negativa:
“Two contraries cannot co-exist in one
person.”
8
Indeed, if one principle
is held to summarize the most basic metaphysical contention of the mystic, of
any mystic, in any tradition, it is this. But a clear understanding of this
principle is particularly critical --- indeed, it is indispensable, to an
understanding not simply of the thought of St. John as a mystic, but of the
entire metaphysics underlying the phenomenon of mysticism itself. How are we to
understand this principle? Is St. John simply, merely, invoking the law of the
excluded middle? And more importantly, precisely how are we to construe this
principle relative to the mystical experience? For the moment it must suffice to
say that the application of this principle to the mystical experience
presupposes the entire mystical thesis that consciousness is unified in
God thorough the direct and intuitive participation in the divine
existence.
As it is formulated by
St. John, the principle itself, that two contraries cannot coexist in one
person, certainly admits of some very pedestrian exceptions. In our ordinary
states of consciousness, for example, we regularly entertain, indeed, cannot
dispense with, a wide variety of opposites in the routine exercise of the
dialectic of reason. St. John, however, is not concerned with ordinary
states of consciousness except insofar as they stand in need of remediation
through the via negativa. This having been achieved (and here St. John is
really anticipating the full development of his doctrine), we must advert to the
mystical thesis itself, which we briefly touched upon above, and which, we
suggested, is concerned with the exclusive and singular occupation of
consciousness with God. And this is quite another thing. Ordinary consciousness
is always diffuse, always engaging a multiplicity. In the state of mystical
awareness, on the other hand, consciousness is actualized by, and unified in,
its singular object, God, --- or lacking that object, exists in a
terrible night in abstraction from everything else. Clearly, then, the
principle, as it stands, is in need of some qualification. Perhaps we can
restate it more consistently in the following way:
The coexistence of two contraries
within unified consciousness is impossible.
At first there appears to
be something subreptive about this. A consciousness, after all, unified
in being rigorously focused --- either upon nothing (the dark night of the soul)
in anticipation of the divine infusion, or upon God (in ecstatic union) --- by
definition would seem to exclude the notion of any coexistence whatever,
contrary or otherwise. Consciousness totally unified in a single apprehension
exclusive of all else, by definition precludes the possibility of
coexistence relative to other apprehensions--- but it does not, by definition,
necessarily entail contrariety. The notion of contrariety, in other words,
appears to be superfluous and the principle could as well be applied to any
state of affairs. But a closer reading of the mystical thesis reveals otherwise.
Since it is God who occupies (or would occupy) consciousness, everything
else that could possibly coexist with God would be other to God
--- it would, in fact, be nature, and thus involve contrariety with God.
In short, within the limitations of space and time, there is a mutual
ontological tolerance, often a complementarity, in nature among things
created.
This rather congenial
arrangement, however, does not extend to nature vis-à-vis God. As a
sui generis, God is forever opaque to nature. Metaphysically, the being
of God stands diametrically against nature, not in the way of opposition
suggestive of antagonism but in the way of contrariety suggesting
incompatibility. And it is this to which I think St. John alludes when he
adverts to this Principle of Non-Contrariety --- a principle which, in
the logic of mysticism, is not simply equivalent to, but is identical with, the
Principle of the Excluded Middle or the Law of Non-Contradiction within formal
logic. But it is applied logic, a logic rigorously applied not to
concepts but to existential categories through the agency of the via
negativa. A clearly discernible connection, then, is seen to exist between
the principle of non-contrariety (the coexistence of two contraries within
unified consciousness is impossible ), and the mystical thesis (that
consciousness is unified in God thorough the direct and intuitive participation
in the divine existence).
But something more must
be said about this pervasive principle of non-contrariety which figures so
largely in the thought of St. John; a principle which, in the logic of
mysticism, effectively constitutes the antecedent to nearly every subsequent
premise. So far, we have merely succeeded in establishing the relation of this
principle to the mystical thesis, and while this is clearly indispensable to the
task we have put before us, the more important question to be asked, I think, is
simply this: precisely what role does this principle play in the opposition that
we find between God and created nature --- in both articulating the opposition
occasioned by the encounter between God and nature --- and at once bridging that
ontological gulf; translating that opposition into union? Well, to begin with,
the principle of non-contrariety may in fact be seen as the nexus between
the via negativa and the mystical thesis. It is presupposed by both: by
the via negativa as the principle upon which it functions in negating all
contrariety to God --- and by the mystical thesis in rigorously defining
the parameters around which alone the possibility of ecstatic union may occur.
Moreover, it relates the one to the other: the via negativa as the means,
and the mystical thesis as the end. The role, then, of the principle of
non-contrariety is twofold: it functions in the via negativa to mediate
the opposition between God and nature, and it is the conditional upon which the
realization of the mystical thesis rests. That is to say, it acts through the
via negativa to actualize the mystical thesis.
In the Ascent of Mount
Carmel, we first see this principle at work in the relationship that obtains
between what St. John calls the created will, and God --- a relationship that,
in turn, can only be understood in light of the opposition existing between the
created order and the Absolute. And while it is an opposition primarily
radicated in ontology (finite versus infinite, etc.), it inevitably reflects
itself epistemologically in man’s inability to adequately comprehend God. And
the mystic, of course, cannot hope to achieve union with that of which he knows
nothing, or to perfect union with that of which his knowledge is defective. The
mystic must first know God if he wishes to embrace him, and this
knowledge must be relative to what is authentic, and not a mere fiction. The
mystic who would aspire to union with God conceived of as golden calf would
aspire toward a fiction, and all his misdirected efforts would bring him no
closer to union with the calf than to the real God of whom he knows nothing. But
in St. John’s epistemology there is an antecedent to knowledge, an indispensable
faculty presupposed by knowledge and constituted as the
will:
“Two contraries cannot coexist in one
person and darkness, which is affection set upon the creatures, and light, which
is God, are contrary to each other, and have no likeness or accord between one
another” 9
It is through the will
(affection), then, that contrariety is first acquired by the soul; the will as
the affective faculty for appropriating anything within the created order
10. But, we are inclined to ask, is it not the case that we
must first know what we will to possess? For St. John, I think,
the answer must be, emphatically, no. First we must will to know --- and
then will to possess what we have willed to know. And this is to say that the
Thomistic apothegm, “Deum tamquam ignotum cognoscimus”--- “We know God as
unknown”--- essentially constitutes the first epistemological principle in
mystical theology: that we know God paradoxically --- as unknown. To wit, every
category in human experience that we have appealed to in our quest to know God
has left us empty-handed. Each category has either proven itself to be contrary
to, or incommensurable with, the inexhaustible Absolute. Our epistemological
approach to God has been, at its best, merely analogical. It is not that the
mystic’s plight is so abysmal that he has no inkling whatever of God.
Some acquaintance, however inadequate, however primordial clearly must
exist: we do not seek what we utterly do not know. Rather, we seek what we know
in part, or as St. Paul had eloquently put it, what we see “through a glass
darkly.” 11 And it is this impoverished perception, this only dim
acquaintance with the Absolute perceived, experienced, as the Good and the Holy
--- this only marginal acquaintance with what is invincibly loving --- so
loving, in fact, that it compels our love --- that appears to be the germ
of mysticism. At its most fundamental level, it is the experience of
love, then, that is the impetus to know. And because we
desire what we will to acquire, St. John quite appropriately
speaks of the will in terms of “affection”.
An understanding of the
difference between knowledge and casual acquaintance --- both empirical
and rational --- we must, regrettably, but of necessity, presume at this point
in our account. It is a topic that simply cannot be adequately addressed without
involving us in too lengthy an aside. Knowledge for St. John, we must simply say
for now, constitutes a good deal more than casual acquaintance, and, relative to
God, a good deal less than perfect understanding. The issue of interest to us
here involves not so much the concept of knowledge as that of opposition. The
matrix of contrariety --- not a problematic of itself --- we have said,
is found in ontology. But it is the will which is the locus of
contrariety: the will as the agency through which the soul then appropriates
created things
to itself --- and in so
doing engendering actual, if you will, existential, contrariety in its
attempt to come to union with the Uncreated Absolute. The incompatibility is no
longer merely conceptual --- it becomes actual, concrete in terms of existential
impediments to union. The soul, possessed of God’s contrary in nature through
the appropriation of the will, is incapable of realizing union with God,
inasmuch as two contraries are incapable of being reconciled without abrogating
one. So let us look a little further into the nature of this opposition
itself.
The will, St. John is
clear, must be rendered passive through its subjection to the via
negativa, desiring nothing and finding pleasure in nothing.12 It must remain empty and receptive to God alone,
appropriating nothing to itself which may be antagonistic to union. The reason
for this passivity on the part of the will should be relatively clear by now:
any activity of the will entails that preoccupation of the will which
precludes its being occupied by God. But, we are compelled to ask, does not the
will, in willing nothing, still will? Yes. But willing nothing is quite
different from willing anything --- for literally nothing is appropriated
through the will willing nothing. Nothing in the way of contrariety, and
therefore nothing that constitutes an impediment to union.
Contrariety, then ---
while always metaphysically latent --- is first introduced, acquired, through
the will. How then, we ask, does the soul as the image of God in a
fundamental metaphysical sense (as we shall later see) come to be characterized
by that contrariety which we have found to be otherwise universal throughout
nature. Before we can begin to answer this, however, I think it is extremely
important for us to be clear about what St. John understands by the concept of
nature. For St. John, nature quite simply constitutes all that exists
outside of (and in this sense, other to) the Divine Simplicity --- a
universe created ex nihilo and characterized by multiplicity and finitude
--- that is to say, in a real metaphysical sense, entirely distinct from God. On
the one hand, St. John seems to understand by nature simply the material
universe, the universe of experience ordinarily understood, contributing, for
example, data to the understanding, or things appropriable through the will,
susceptible to the senses.13 But in a broader sense, St. John clearly includes in this
understanding of nature, the non-material universe as well, generally spoken of
in terms of spirit 14: angelic and demonic agencies, the human soul. However
understood, the outstanding feature of nature is its categorical contrariety to
God. It is the finite, the temporal, conceived not simply as distinct from the
infinite and the eternal but as metaphysically diametric to
them.
The IMAGO DEI: The Concept of Participation and the Notion of
Mitigated Contrariety
But while all created
natures exhibit contrariety to God, we shall later find that some measure of
commensurability does in fact exist and is seen to obtain between creatures and
God through a metaphysics essentially constructed around the central notion of
participation. And this is to say that the contrariety, the opposition if
you will, found in nature somehow falls short of being absolute --- that there
is, despite real opposition, a latent commensurability to be elicited from
nature in varying degrees according to its participative relation to God ---
some more, some less. And this, we will find, is why the soul, albeit a created
nature, is capable of realizing union with God. Ultimately, through the soul’s
ontological status as the imago Dei, the categories of opposition are
realized to be tentative, superficial aspects of a more fundamental
participative being. But between this unique human nature, itself only
intermediate between the highest hierarchies of being and the lowest
15 --- a familiar medieval schema --- that is to say, above
human nature and below it on this ontological gradient, the entire spectrum of
being ranges from that which exhibits the greatest contrariety to and the least
commensurability with God, to the greatest commensurability and the least
contrariety. All this, however, remains to be examined in greater detail later
on.
Now that we have a
clearer understanding of what St. John means whenever he invokes the concept of
nature --- broad as this articulation may be --- we can return to our original
question: how does the soul, as the image of God, come to acquire
contrariety through nature? Perhaps we can put the question another way. How can
the soul, which is essentially, that is to say, metaphysically,
constituted as the image or reflection of God 16, be contrary to that of which it is constituted an image?
This is a central paradox among the many that abound in the literature of
mysticism. The soul is held to have been created as the image of the Absolute
--- and nevertheless assumes real metaphysical polarity to God. How does St.
John answer this? As we already have seen, the opposition between God and nature
poses no special problematic in and of itself. The two quite simply are
categorically distinct. It only becomes problematic when the soul aspires not
simply to a vis-à-vis encounter with God, that is to say, toward apposition with
God --- but to union with God. Some connection, therefore, must exist
between the soul as the imago Dei, and nature as instantiating within
itself opposition to God, such that the direct relation of the soul to God
becomes problematic by virtue of nature. A sort of inverse participation must
somehow occur by which the soul comes to share in that character of opposition
to God which is fundamentally a hallmark of nature. We must then look to the
will if we are to understand the provenance of this contrariety, for it
is the will which had been found to be the faculty through which contrariety is
first appropriated by the soul. But how, precisely, is this contrariety
acquired? St. John’s answer ultimately is formulated around what must be
regarded as one of the most important metaphysical principles he invokes
throughout his four treatises relative to union, and which, for our purposes we
will simply call the Principle of Similitude. Quite simply, for St. John,
the will in its love for anything is, by virtue of that love, somehow rendered
similar and equal to its object. This is the reason that the soul is
placed in an attitude of opposition to God through the exercise of the will upon
created objects of nature. The relation of the soul to God at once becomes
problematic because it is a relation essentially characterized by
opposition:
“... the affection and attachment which the
soul has for creatures renders the soul like to these creatures; and the greater
is its affection, the closer is the equality and likeness between them; for love
creates likeness between that which loves and that which is loved he that loves
a creature becomes as low as that creature, and in some ways lower, for love not
only makes the lover equal to the object of his love, but even subjects him to
it love makes equality and similitude” 17
This principle --- in
fact, this passage --- adumbrates a significant feature about what, for St.
John, constitutes man’s essentially reflective ontology, a
topic which shall be the subject of some rather detailed discussion in Part
II of our commentary. Here it is only important to note that man’s nature as
such is closely connected with, and in an important sense, realized in, its
relation to the universe of experience --- even, as we have already seen, in the
presuppositions of consciousness. Ultimately, we shall find that, for St. John,
man is not a being-in-himself, or being autonomously considered, due precisely
to his ontology as image of the Absolute.
The Principle of Similitude: Conformity and
Contrariety
Much, unfortunately, is
left unsaid by St. John about the Principle of Similitude that is so central to
his thought and so crucial to our understanding of his discussion of mysticism.
He does not, for example, extrapolate upon the mechanics of this principle, and
while this is regrettable, it is also clearly understandable given the nature of
the task he took to himself. We must bear in mind that virtually all his major
works were, despite their exegetical format, written not as speculative
treatises concerned with exploring theoretical principles in mystical theology,
but rather, each of these works must be understood as eminently practical
in both intention and scope; they were written more in the way of enchiridions
for contemplatives in general --- and the Reformed Discalced Carmelite Nuns in
particular --- not as a kind of “Summa Mystica Theolgiae” compiled for scholars,
theologians, and philosophers. This in no way denigrates the meticulous,
forceful and incisive reasoning that is evident in every page of his works ---
and for which, in large part, he would later be acclaimed Doctor of the Church
Universal --- rather, it serves only to delimit the scope of his work, which in
turn enables us to understand why many speculative elements implicit within them
are not subject to the otherwise rigorous examination that the more practical
issues are.
Without an understanding
of the metaphysics implied in the Principle of Similitude, however, we will be
unable to arrive at an understanding of the epistemology involved. So what are
we to make of this rather recondite principle? What basis has this principle in
a coherent metaphysics? Indeed, is there one at all? It certainly sounds
very mystical --- in Lovejoy’s pejorative sense --- that “love makes likeness.”
But how? Since St. John does not elaborate upon this in any strictly analytical
sense, we must look for the answer ourselves. And here, I think, our earlier
discussion will prove helpful to us in avoiding an otherwise purely conjectural
analysis, for the answer, I suggest, is at least implicit in metaphysics we have
already briefly addressed. For St. John of the Cross, man’s fundamental
ontological nature, we had found, is essentially reflective,
consisting as it does in the imago Dei. We had further suggested earlier
that consciousness cannot be understood apart from the data essentially
constituting it a consciousness of. Consciousness and data, empirical or
rational, are always understood copulatively. To speak of someone who is
conscious, but is conscious of nothing, is to utter a contradiction.
Consciousness always implies a consciousness of. And this is another way
of saying that consciousness not simply presupposes data of which it can
subsequently become conscious, but that consciousness is actualized
by data. Apart from data, it remains only, merely, the possibility
of consciousness. It has, as it were, no autonomous being, no actuality apart
from the data in virtue of which it becomes actualized. And this is further to
say that consciousness is essentially a reflective faculty, a faculty
that becomes actualized only upon its imaging data in becoming a consciousness
of that data. A union, we might say, is seen to exist between
consciousness and its data in its becoming a consciousness of that data. The
data, St. John’s argument would seem to suggest, become not merely the condition
of our being conscious, but in fact an integral part of our being conscious.
Man’s reflective ontology, then, is clearly evidenced, at least implicitly for
St. John, in the way in which he is constituted epistemologically --- indeed, in
the most fundamental presuppositions of consciousness
itself.
How is this related to
the problem at hand? How does this bring us any closer to understanding how love
makes likeness as St. John asserts? Well, first of all we have established
something fundamental about man’s epistemology in general: that not merely a
nexus, but a union obtains in the actualization of consciousness by data. But if
consciousness is a consciousness of data, our consciousness is
characterized by that data of which it is conscious --- and this is to
say that a likeness occurs or results between the data and our consciousness of
that data. But we had also said earlier that consciousness characteristically
engages a multiplicity. The intentionality of consciousness is typically diffuse
among a manifold, whether this manifold is yielded through sensory experience or
engaged in the manipulation of rational concepts--- wherein no particular aspect
of that manifold assumes a preponderance exclusive of the
rest.
The Preliminary Role of the Will
But here the role of the
will enters. Seizing upon several aspects of that multiplicity it focuses
consciousness on the few to the exclusion of the many. That is to say, the
scope of consciousness is correspondingly diminished as the will
exercises increasing discrimination in its selection of the data which it in
turn submits to consciousness. As the data diminishes, the focus increases.
Consciousness becomes less and less diffuse among fewer and fewer data; data
which are, we will remember, appropriated to consciousness through the
will. This increasingly discriminatory process may conceivably
continue until the will eventually appropriates only one datum to the exclusion
of the rest. This one datum, then, as the sole object of the will, becomes the
sole focus of consciousness --- which reflects the datum as a consciousness
of that datum. It is not at all inappropriate, then, to say that a
likeness is engendered between the two, between data and consciousness of
the data. Consciousness becomes, in effect, the image of the datum. So
understood, St. John’s thesis suddenly begins to seem a good deal more
creditable than we were initially disposed to view it. But we must carry our
explanation one step further in order to synthesize the
whole.
What, we must ask, first
disposes the will to seize upon one aspect of the manifold of experience to the
exclusion of the rest? St. John is quite unequivocal about this, and the answer
lies in his understanding of the nature of love. It is love, which St. John
variously renders in terms of “affection”, “attachment”, and “desire”, which
first moves the will to appropriate the object
desired.18 But just a moment. Did we not say earlier that the soul
must first will to know and then will to possess what we have willed to
know? Yes, but we also said that acquaintance ( which is quite different
from knowledge ) of necessity preceded the movement of the will. St. John
is very clear upon this:
“... although it is true that the soul
cannot help hearing and seeing and smelling and tasting and touching, this is of
no great import ... for we are not here treating of the lack of things, since
this implies no detachment on the part of the soul if it has a desire for them;
but we are treating of the detachment from them of the taste and desire, for it
is this that leaves the soul free and void of them, although it may have them;
for it is not the things of this world that either occupy the soul or cause it
harm, since they enter it not, but rather the will and desire for them, for it
is these that dwell within it.” 19
St. John is no pure
theorist. He does not deal with man as though abstracted from the world of
common experience. The mystic does not prescind from his surroundings. >From
the phenomena that constitute man’s environment --- objects with which man has
either empirical or rational acquaintance --- the will, in virtue of this
acquaintance, and through desire, that is to say, motivated by
desire, appropriates the object to consciousness. We have already seen that a
kind of union is engendered by the application of consciousness to data in
general, as a consciousness of that data. When, however, the purely
noetic apprehension of an object is augmented by the catalyst of desire,
(attachment, affection), the will inaugurates a process of discrimination in
what it tenders to consciousness, and the exclusionary process, the increased
focus to the exclusion of other data, is directly proportional to the intensity
of the desire. The result is consciousness more or less unified in the object
appropriated by the will --- according to the degree of its desire. A
relatively common experience may suffice to illustrate the point: Our experience
of romantic love is typically one characterized by a desire for, a preoccupation
with, someone --- in a real sense an intensified consciousness of someone that
so completely occupies our awareness that we effectively become the
beloved in the sense that the beloved is comprehensively within us, filling our
thoughts, our awareness, our consciousness --- even to the forgetfulness
of ourselves in our preoccupation with the beloved. We identify with the
beloved, see ourselves in the beloved just as surely as we see them within us.
We may, in a sense, be said to participate in the beloved --- precisely
to the measure or degree of our affection or love for them. St. John therefore
argues that any degree of affection that thus unites us with what we love in the
created order makes us, according to the degree of our desire, affection, or
attachment, more or less contrary to God in our assuming the created character
of what we love in nature and have appropriated to ourselves through the
will.
We can now see more
clearly why a relation of opposition is held by St. John to exist prior to the
soul’s subjection to the rigors of the via negativa. The exercise of the
will, motivated by desire, engenders contrariety through the Principle of
Similitude: the soul is rendered equal and similar to the opposite of God in
nature. In light of this, the problematic of participation becomes increasingly
clear:
“... affection for God and affection for
creatures are contraries, there cannot be contained within one will affection
for creatures and affection for God. For what has the creature to do with the
Creator? What has the sensual to do with the spiritual? Visible with invisible?
Temporal with eternal? ... Wherefore ... no form can be introduced unless the
preceding contrary form is first expelled from the subject, which form while
present is an impediment to the other by reason of the contrariety which the two
have between each other.”
.20
Sensuous negation, or
what St. John calls the “night of the senses”, is therefore absolutely necessary
to that union in which the soul becomes one with God --- not, as we shall see,
through identity, but rather, through created participation. 21 Certainly a good deal more is involved in a adequate
understanding of this concept than we are prepared to set forth and discuss at
this point, but unless we have at the very least a basic understanding of what
is directly involved in the notion of participation we will be unable to
understand much of what will follow in our account. In a noteworthy break from
the scholastic tradition to which St. John is otherwise and fundamentally
faithful, he departs from the prevailing theology which saw the intellect
or reason as the image of God in man.
22 Although he never explicitly formulates it as such, it is
extremely clear from his arguments, especially relative to the Principle of
Similitude, that for St. John the image of God in man lies not in his intellect,
but in his love --- even as the Apostle John tells us that “God is love.”
23 And since God created man in his image 24, love, for St. John, is the created participation of
man in God. This is not to say that reason, or the intellect, does not
in some measure reflect, as the scholastics had maintained, the mind of God and
so constitute an aspect of that image in which man was created. As the image of
God, it would seem that certain --- by no means, all --- aspects of the Absolute
are reflected, however imperfectly, in the ontological composition of man. But
only one, love, is capable of effecting a more than epistemological union of
merely the knower to the Known --- a union fundamentally ontological in the
soul’s not merely knowing, but participating in God. And love, for
St. John, is the only principle capable of attaining to this type of union
which, embracing the soul in its entirety, is ecstatic.
A number of further
implications remain to be drawn from St. John’s treatment of the will as the
seat of love and all the affections, especially in its relation to the Mystical
Thesis and the Principle of Similitude. We find, for example, that while the
will, as the seat of love, is an active principle of union relative to
the created order (as we have seen), it is on the other hand a passive
principle of union in its relation to God. And it is rendered passive by
its subjection to the via negativa according to the demands of the
Mystical Thesis: that is to say, if consciousness is to be unified in God, the
will must cease appropriating contrariety to itself through the exercise of the
will --- whose sole activity subsequent to its purgation through the via
negativa is itself rendered entirely negative in willing not to will. The
Principle of Similitude coupled with the Mystical Thesis, therefore, figures
largely in the transition to union and serves to underscore the
cooperative effort necessary to the realization of that union, for
although it is ultimately God alone who both initiates and consummates this
union, the soul nevertheless cooperates toward this “union of likeness”
25, as St. John sometimes calls it, by passing through the
crucible of the via negativa and removing every impediment to union by
eliminating every contrariety to God. Having done so, the soul remains passively
disposed to the divine initiative and through the exclusive love which the it
bears toward God alone --- the love which is the image become explicit --- the
soul, St. John contends, will become equal and similar to God. This rather
startling conclusion, however, remains to be properly explained later in our
examination of the Night of the Spirit.
The Two-Edged WILL: Propadeutic or
Impediment?
The contemplative, then,
in his quest for union must first strive to empty his will relative to the
created order. Exercised only in the love of God, and detached in the way of its
love, desires, and affections from the order of nature, the created will is thus
prepared to become transformed into the will of God 26 both through the absence of contrariety to God in the form
of nature --- that is, through transformation negatively considered ---
and through that similitude and equality generated through its singular love of
God, or transformation positively considered. The created will, assimilated into
the will of God in the state of infused contemplation, is then indistinguishable
from God’s own will, for in and of itself it is totally passive, having become,
as it were, a created expression of the uncreated will of the
Absolute:
“ [ the soul ] must cast away all strange
gods --- namely, all strange affections and attachments it must purify itself of
the remnants which the desires aforementioned have left in the soul in order to
reach the summit of this high mount, it must have changed its garments which God
will change for it, from old to new, by giving it a new love of God in God, the
will being now stripped of all its old desires and human pleasures ... So that
its operation, which before was human, has become divine, which is that is
attained in the state of union ... “ 27
Possessing nothing of
itself in the way of desires and affections, the will remains passive and
totally receptive to the will of God which, as other to the negated in nature
--- a nature no longer appropriated through the will --- is that alone in which
it is possible for the created will to be subsequently
exercised.
But does this mean, then,
that the soul in ecstasy is incapable of sin? This would appear to be the
logical conclusion if the will is rendered completely passive. Are we to
understand, in other words, that, given no act directly attributable to the
created will, the soul is therefore no longer liable to sin? Is any subsequent
act, then, deserving of approbation? Indeed, is it still free, with all
the moral and deontological considerations that the notion of a free will
entails? In regard to the second question, --- concerning the soul’s liability
to sin --- a careful reading of the text would reveal that St. John’s answer
would most emphatically be, no. And for this reason: the soul in the state of
infused contemplation becomes, as we have said, a created expression of the
uncreated will of God. In its total passivity, every movement of the will is
directly ascribable to God. And since God is incapable of peccancy, the soul so
moved by God --- and, it is important to emphasize, only in the state of
ecstatic union--- is, likewise, incapable of sin. This obviously does not
mean that the mystic who has attained to sporadic union can no longer sin, for
it is also the case that the state of ecstasy in this life is characteristically
brief, and upon his return from ecstasy the contemplative, despite the obvious
predilection of God, nevertheless remains in his created humanity liable to sin
through the penalty that inescapably accrues to mankind at large through the sin
of Adam; a penalty from which none, even the most holy, are held to be exempt.
Only when that state of ecstasy --- which the mystic now only intermittently
realizes --- becomes indefectible before the beatific vision acquired after
death, will the soul no longer be susceptible to sin. Mystical union is, after
all, as St. John repeatedly states, a foretaste of heaven, and not an
indefectible state on earth.
Bi-Dimensionality, Free Will and Impeccancy: The Mystic as
Man
In reply to the remaining
questions --- to wit, is the soul yet free in the state of ecstasy, and are its
acts within that state deserving of approbation --- St. John’s answer must be
yes, and for the following reasons. In acceding to the will of God, which the
soul recognizes as the sovereign good , and that in which the good universally
consists, the soul freely consents to the exercise not only of that will
but of every good in which that will consists. Among these are the good
of the soul, which preeminently lies in its conformity to the will of God. But
the notion of the good as it relates to the created will specifically, cannot
prescind from the notion of freedom, both as a good in itself, and as a
necessary condition of the moral soul. In choosing perfect conformity to the
will of God, then, the soul simultaneously chooses that freedom apart from which
the soul is neither good nor moral. The created will, then, being subsumed into
the divine will, nevertheless remains distinct and free. Furthermore, it is not
so much that the passive will ceases to will, as that it ceases to will what is
contrary to God --- its will is, in its created nature,
both parallel to and identical with, the will of God. That
is to say, it wills not merely that God should move it, but that its will should
freely coincide with the will of God. The volition of the soul, then, remains
intact --- for the created will so exercised in choosing to coincide with the
will of God is in itself a free act of ratification, appropriating as its own
the will of God to which it perfectly corresponds through an act of free will.
And this is simply another way of saying that the created will
participates in the uncreated will of God. And since the appropriation of
the divine will is a free act of the created will, it may indeed be recognized
as meritorious, as is every act ascribable to the free will which wills the
good.
The precise mechanics
involved in this transition are, regrettably, left obscure by St. John --- but
not so obscure that some very clear inferences are not available to us. It is a
basic Christian premise that man as essentially bidimensional. He is
possessed of a body and a soul. He is composed of matter and spirit. By and
large rational, he is also sensuous. As intrinsic a component to his being as
natural, is the supernatural. His existence is enacted in time but consummated
in eternity. Nature, in short, subsuming under itself body, matter, and time,
constitutes only one dimension of bidimensional man. An inverse metaphysical
relation exists between the natural and the supernatural such that the more
attenuated the natural dimension of his being, the more amplified the
supernatural dimension; as the one recedes the other becomes increasingly
manifest. Any categorical negation of this nature, then, would
effectively result in a unilateral suspension of the corresponding natural
dimension of man. And this means that the soul in having been negated to the
natural dimension of its being relative to the will, becomes, with
respect to this particular faculty, necessarily supra-natural; that is to
say, it is reduced exclusively to the remaining supernatural dimension of this
bidimensional faculty in having passed beyond nature. But to pass beyond nature
is also to pass into the other of nature --- which, on the one hand is
spirit. Thus we find that the will, as described by St. John, is transformed
from what he calls the sensuous into the spiritual; this erstwhile suppressed
dimension of man’s spiritual being now gradually emerging into existential
relief. On the other hand, however, the other to nature, considered absolutely,
was seen to be God. Thus in passing beyond nature the will, while yet remaining
distinct from, is equally and simultaneously transformed into, the will of God.
This admittedly requires some sorting out. The first level of negation we had
seen to consist in the negation of nature according to the will in which
the soul ceases to appropriate anything in the created order according to its
desires and affections. We had already briefly touched upon this. The
second level of negation, however, implicitly follows from the first, and
this is the negation of the will according to nature in which the will in
the state of negativity is effectively suspended relative to its natural
function, thus becoming the functional expression of another in its subsequent
activity --- and that agency, St. John is clear, of which the will becomes the
functional expression is God:
“... this Divine union consists in the
soul’s total transformation, according to the will, in the will of God, so that
there may be naught in the soul that is contrary to the will of God, but that in
all and through all, its movement may be that of the will of God
alone.” 28
We can now more clearly
see that in negating the contrary to God in nature, the will becomes
preeminently, if only passively, predisposed to the divine infusion. In being
transformed from the sensuous into the spiritual, the will is rendered more
proximate to God --- and in the state of passivity (presuming, of course,
that divine election that results in the actuality of union) subsequent movement
of the will proceeds from God. As we shall later see, this entire process
ultimately presupposes the transformation of the will into its corresponding
theological virtue in the unified and integrated love of
God.29 In this state of transformation, the created will
consummately participates in the uncreated will of God. This transition,
however, is not accomplished without penalty. Very clearly, a transformation of
this sort entails a privation of man’s being --- which, in its divinely
constituted nature, is a being bidimensional --- and every privation of being,
of that perfection connatural to any being, will, despite its divine provenance,
and its movement to greater perfection still, be experienced as an evil, as
surely the pain of this transition, often described at length by St. John, is
experienced by the mystic. It is, however, a redemptive suffering in a darkness
about to broach upon light. But this is only realized in the very last stages of
mystical union and already presumes the complete integration of the faculties in
the love of God, which we shall examine at length in subsequent
chapters.
1 AMC
1.5.2
2 AMC
1.4.1
3
AMC
1.4.4
4 AMC
1.5.1
5 AMC
1.5.2
6
AMC
1.5.4
7 AMC
2.5.4
8 AMC
1.4.2
9 AMC 1.4.2; cf.
ST Ques. 48 Art.3, also St. Augustine, Enchiridion, 14 (Patrologiae
Latinae, 32, 1347)
10 AMC
1.5.2
11 1 Cor.
13.12
12 AMC
1.5.2
13 cf. AMC
2.8.4-5; 1.4.1-4 etc.
14 cf. AMC
3.4.1-2; 2.12.3-4
15 AMC
2.12.3-4
16 AMC
1.9.1
17 AMC 1.4.3-4;
also cf. 2.18.5; SC 15.4, 21.5, + 23.5. Emphasis added. This, of course, is
essentially a reformulation of the doctrine articulated much earlier by the
Pseudo-Dionysius that “it is of the nature of love to change a man into that
which he loves.”
18 cf. ST Q.20
art.1
19
AMC
1.3.4
20 AMC
1.6.1-2
21 AMC 2.5.4+7;
2.20.5; SC 11.6+7; LFL 2.30
22
cf. ST Q.93
art.2 In this respect, St. John of the Cross is much more in line with St.
Bernard than, say, the great mystical writers of the School of St.
Victor.
23 1 Jn
4.8
24
Gen.
1.27
25
AMC
2.5.3
26
AMC 1.11.2+3;
2.5.3+4
27 AMC
1.5.7
28
AMC 1.11.2+3,
also cf. 2.5.3+4
29 cf.
II
The Role
of UNDERSTANDING in the Philosophy of St. John of the
Cross
The Via Negativa
Book The Second of the Ascent of Mount Carmel is of
particular importance to us in our exploring the possibilities of developing a
coherent mystical epistemology. While, until now, we have tried to avoid some of
the tedium inevitably involved in a commentary of this sort, the demand for
accountability --- within the greater demand for coherence --- will sometimes
require a somewhat detailed analysis of certain features of mystical doctrine.
But this type of patient analysis will, in the long run, serve to illuminate a
sometimes obscure and often abstruse metaphysics, enabling us to answer some
very fundamental objections which we are likely to encounter further on. It is
the fundamentals of St. John’s metaphysics which we seek after here. And these
in turn will lead us on to examine some of the more explicit epistemological
features of St. John’s account.
The profound disparity
between created nature and God which was seen to characterize the relation
between the unnegated will --- the will prior to its subjection to the via
negativa --- and God, is brought to critical relief in St. John’s extensive
treatment of the second faculty of the soul, understanding. This is not
to say that the same imperatives do not apply equally to each faculty, for the
via negativa is a universal feature throughout the various movements
toward mystical union. In St. John’s analysis of the understanding, however, we
have much clearer insight into some of the metaphysical difficulties to be
overcome in a coherent account of mysticism. As the extraordinary object of
ordinary understanding, God is essentially opaque to the natural intellect for
reasons which by now may already be anticipated: God and the created intellect
inform radically different and incommensurable categories --- the nature, if you
will, of the one is antipodal to the other. All, then, which the understanding
can think, all that it is capable of conceiving in its natural capacity, is
categorically, diametrically, opposed to the reality of God as He is in himself
apart from the mediating and modifying categories of
understanding:
“... all that the imagination can imagine
and the understanding can receive and understand in this life is not, nor can it
be, a proximate means of union with God. For if we speak of natural things,
since understanding can understand naught save that which is contained within,
and comes under the category of, forms and imaginings of things that are
received through the senses, the which things, we have said, cannot serve as
means, it can make no use of natural intelligence 1 ... all that can be understood by the
understanding, that can be tasted by the will, and that can be invented by the
imagination is most unlike to God and bears no proportion to Him ... 2
And thus a soul
is greatly impeded from reaching this high estate of union with God, when it
clings to any understanding or feeling or imagination or appearance or will or
manner of its own ... For as we say, the goal which it seeks lies beyond all
this, yea, even beyond the highest thing that can be known or experienced, and
thus a soul must pass beyond everything to unknowing.” 3
Since all that the
faculty of understanding can conceivably think, or through its purely synthetic
activity possibly imagine, is, eo ipso, not God, the soul aspiring to
knowledge of the Absolute must proceed paradoxically --- through a
process of unknowing --- a process, we shall find, that will ultimately
translate the natural faculty of understanding into its corresponding
theological virtue of faith. The epistemological doctrine of unknowing
is, of course, but one of the many iridescent aspects of the via negativa
which finds its clearest expression in Book One of the
Ascent:
“In order to arrive at pleasure in
everything
Desire to have pleasure
in nothing.
In order to arrive at
possessing everything,
Desire to possess
nothing.
In order to arrive at
being everything
Desire to be
nothing.
In order to arrive at
knowing everything,
Desire to know
nothing.
In order to arrive at
that wherein thou hast no pleasure,
Thou must go by a way
wherein thou hast no pleasure.
In order to arrive at
that which thou knowest not
Thou must go by a way
thou knowest not.
In order to arrive at
that which thou possest not,
Thou must go by a way
that thou possesst not.
In order to arrive at
that which thou art not,
Thou must go through
that which thou art not.
When thy mind dwells
upon anything,
Thou art ceasing to cast
thyself upon the All.
For in order to pass
from the all to the All,
Thou hast to deny
thyself wholly in all.
And when thou comest to
possess it wholly,
Thou must possess it
without desiring anything.
For, if thou wilt have
anything in having all,
Thou hast not thy
treasure purely in God.” 4
Despite its largely
negative format, clearly illustrated above, the via negativa nevertheless
remains not only a viable, but indeed the only, “way” of arriving at the
Absolute. And if it is a difficult way for the contemplative to travel, it is no
less a difficult route for the epistemologist to map, for all its signs, every
cue, each marker, is negative. It is not unlike a series of signs that might
say, not “Paris this way”, but rather, “Paris not this way.” That is well
and good, but the traveler will most assuredly at once ask, “Well, then, if not
this way, which way?” To which every sign he subsequently encounters
simply answers, “not this way” .The via negativa is much like this. It
may be seen as a kind of epistemological compass that indicates not where
to go, but where not to go; it is the negative of a map outlining the
mystical terrain that tells you not so much how to get to the Absolute
azimuth, but, rather, how not to get there. In essence, it is a
cartographical paradox. It is clear, then, and most expedient that some other
principle of direction must be invoked. Some principle that will provide us with
a measure of certitude, not necessarily apart from the negative prescripts we
have acquired thus far --- which of themselves are extremely useful to us in
disabusing us of error in finding our way --- but which, while according with
them, is more precise, or perhaps better yet, affirmative in
direction.
A brief glance in
retrospect may prove helpful. In the opening sequences of Book One of the
Ascent, St. John discussed the night of the senses relative to the will.
There we found that the disparity between God and created nature emphasized the
lack of proportion, of commensurability, between God and the soul in its
relation to God through created nature, and in so doing demonstrated the
inherent impossibility of a sensuous apprehension of God. And the conclusion, of
course, was that if God is to be apprehended at all, he must be apprehended
extra-naturally; not through a sensuous manifold accessible to the will
--- nor, as St. John will now argue, through any conceptualization
available through ordinary understanding. And much as we had found in the case
of the will, a transition is required which will inevitably result in the
positing of a theological correlate in which the function of understanding is
explicitly suppressed through what St. John sees as the epistemological
negativity of faith. Negativity, as we had seen, implies the absence of
contrariety; so in stating that the three theological virtues --- faith, hope,
and love --- render the soul “proximate” to God, St. John is actually saying
that each of these virtues are essentially characterized by negativity --- a
negativity essentially signifying the absence of contrariety to God.
Proximity and non-contrariety, then, are interchangeable terms in
the mystical vocabulary of St. John.
For St. John, faith
explicitly transcends the limitations of sense and understanding, and in so
doing simultaneously transcends the inherent limitations of nature and
reason.
5 The limitations implicit in
nature are, by now, quite obvious: in every respect it is finite. As
such, not only is nature ontologically distinct from God, but in its very
finitude and limitation it can never yield veridical knowledge of God who is
infinite and unlimited. But the limitations of reason are less clear. In our
introduction we suggested that God, and indeed the universe of experience
itself, is not exhaustively considered in its intelligible dimensions alone;
that any given item in experience affords something more in the amplitude of its
being than the merely rational dimensions to be elicited from it. Within reason
itself, however, we discern even more fundamental limitations, and it is these
that are of particular interest to us. For the most part, the mechanics involved
in the limitations of reason are left unaddressed by St. John. Certainly is not
the case that he was unable to articulate these limitations in greater detail,
for St. John was, we had noted earlier, extremely well versed in scholastic
philosophy. Still less warrant do we have to believe that he presumed them known
in the mind of his readers who were, by and large, professed religious, and not
necessarily scholars. In reading St. John, and I shall emphasize this point time
and again, it is essential to bear in mind that he did not understand himself to
be writing a philosophic treatise, still less a systematic organon in
speculative mysticism, but rather an enchiridion for contemplatives, a fact we
had pointed out earlier and will, no doubt, find it necessary to point out
again. One goal, and one goal only, lay incessantly before St. John and
everything else palled in significance before it: union with God. His own, and
that of others. His readers did not need to know the law of the excluded middle
in order to make a practical choice between mutually exclusive moral or
spiritual ends. Less abstruse and far more effective means were available to
them. These mechanics are, however, of interest to us --- indeed, vital to us if
we are to understand the epistemological dimensions of the mystical
experience.
So what can we infer from
St. John’s discussion of the faculty of understanding, especially as it pertains
to reason? It is, first of all, I think, fairly clear from his own exposition,
that reason essentially functions upon, is limited to, and therefore requires a
manifold --- a manifold which is ontologically possible only in the
universe of created nature, 6 for God of himself is one and simple. In requiring a
manifold, reason is limited in three ways: first, and most obviously, by its
limitation to a manifold itself --- that is to say, by its inability to function
apart from a matrix of sheer multiplicity. The second limitation discernible in
reason, concerns its scope. The manifold which reason addresses is comprised of
the universe of finite entities broadly called nature, and both objects and
concepts (the mind no less than matter) finite in nature, can never yield
infinite, that is to say, unlimited information. Simply put, the synthetic and
analytic activities of reason are incapable of eliciting more than is
ontologically available in the finite data of experience. Reason, then, unable
to transcend, is therefore limited to, an inherently exhaustible (finite)
dimension of being. The last, but not the least, limitation of reason lies in
the fact that it is ineluctably temporal --- the discursions of reason are
thoroughly conditioned by time which is presupposed and implicit in all its
functions and activities. Time is the underlying medium through which the
successive movements of discursive reason are enabled, enacted; and it is
time which constrains reason from apprehending the simple simultaneity of
existence. However comprehensive its purview, reason is limited by time to
discrete and successive moments in all its analytic and synthetic
activity.
We have established,
then, that reason requires a manifold which by definition consists of a
plurality --- plurality of necessarily finite entities, each limited and
distinguishable one from another. Without plurality and differentiation, then,
reason could not be discursive, that is, passing from one aspect under rational
consideration to another in the dialectic we understand to be reason ---
it would, in fact, altogether and at once cease to be discursive. Which is to
say that reason in its discursive capabilities would effectively be not so much
abolished, as suspended. And this, in St. John’s account, is precisely what
occurs to reason in relation to God in the mystical experience. It
remains inoperative, suspended, as it were, blindly staring into the Absolute,
simply for the fact that God is One and simple, unchanging and eternal. Not
reason, but the utility of reason, then, is, for St. John, forever abolished in
the transcendence of plurality.
The Notion of “Proximate” Union
In transcending the
limitations of nature and reason, St. John further argues, the soul then enters
the state of what he calls proximate union with God
7 through having negated within itself the other to God in
nature and reason. Considered carefully, this state of proximate union may be
seen to follow for two reasons, although St. John only adverts to one. First of
all, in passing beyond the finite, the soul quite logically --- that is
to say, necessarily --- passes into the not-finite, or the infinite, and,
according to the same logic,
in passing beyond
limitation, the soul passes into the unlimited. And in so doing --- in passing
into the infinite and the unlimited --- the soul enters a state that is
proximate to God inasmuch as God in himself is infinite and unlimited.
This is not to say that the soul itself becomes infinite and unlimited in
this transition --- in a Christian metaphysics it can never become so: it’s
created nature remains unviolated and unchanged despite the transition. What
has changed, however, is the nature of the experience encountered
by the mystic, one now characterized not by the familiar plurality, finitude,
limitation and differentiation that are typical components in the experience of
the created order. The mystic now, for the first time, encounters,
experiences the infinite and the unlimited. Let us look at this more
closely, and for the sake of clarity segregate the following line of reasoning
for a more detailed examination:
We had said that in
passing beyond the finite, the soul necessarily passes into the not-finite. Now
that which is not-finite is either nothing or infinite. It is nothing if
it is not-finite and not-infinite. It is infinite if it is not-finite and
not-nothing. But the soul is not-infinite and not-nothing---which is to say that
the soul is finite. Moreover, that which is not-limited is either nothing or
unlimited. It is nothing if it is not-limited and not-unlimited. It is unlimited
if it is not-limited and not-nothing. But the soul is not-unlimited and
not-nothing --- which is to say the soul is limited. We have, then, the created
soul which is finite and limited. In passing beyond the finite and the limited
in created nature, the soul must encounter either nothing or the infinite. In
either event, it will be the not-finite.
Further elaboration will,
I think, make this rather concise formulation more readily understood. Whatever
is, is either finite or infinite. If it is neither, it is nothing, for
everything that is, or can conceivably be, is either finite or infinite. There
is no conceivable third alternative. Obviously, then, the concept “nothing”
pertains neither to the finite or the infinite. Were nothing infinite
then there would be absolutely nothing, either finite or infinite --- for the
term infinite would be predicated of nothing. Conversely, were we to say that
the infinite is nothing, we would involve ourselves in a hopeless tautology. We
cannot, therefore, coherently speak of nothing as infinite. Our difficulty in
apprehending this stems, I suggest, from our inclination to render the concept
nothing spatially: we tend to conceptualize it not as nothing, but as
empty space, a kind of amorphous negative configuration coterminous
with and indefinitely configured by something, relative
to which it is nothing; we are inclined to see it as the possible place
of something else; in effect, something devoid of something else, when in
fact it remains the absence of everything --- which is another way of saying
nothing. If, on the other hand, what we are considering is infinite, it clearly
is not finite, for we mean by the infinite that which is not finite; nor
can it be nothing, as we have just seen. The soul, on the other hand, is
something, and not nothing, and it very clearly is finite in every aspect, and
not infinite.
Now, if what we have
argued in fact is the case, then a good deal more about the nature of the
contemplative’s experience prior to union becomes somewhat clearer. The
natural or created soul is, as we have seen, finite and limited; and as
we had further seen, no commensurability obtains between the finite and the
infinite, the limited and the unlimited. The natural or created soul, then, has
no epistemological capacity for the infinite as the not-finite that is
not-nothing; it is incapable --- qua created --- of
experiencing the infinite, (except under the species of the
pseudo-infinite in number, etc., which we addressed earlier). But the created
soul does have a capacity for experiencing the infinite as the
not-finite that is not-infinite, that is to say, of experiencing the
infinite as nothing --- and it is this experience which, for the mystic,
constitutes the dark night of the soul: not only is the soul in utterly
unfamiliar metaphysical terrain, but the topography itself has metamorphosed
into utter nothingness. Moreover, even were the
natural soul capable of experiencing or epistemologically
addressing the infinite, the experience of the oneness of the infinite, the
unlimited, the undifferentiated --- is no less effectively the experience of
nothingness. The senses coupled with reason would falter and ultimately fail in
their inability to grasp what cannot, by virtue of infinite magnitude, be
grasped, apprehended, understood. The very mechanisms of reason and sense,
relying upon limitation, finitude, and differentiation as the very tangents to
comprehension --- individuating characteristics now no longer available ---
would default into suspension. Natural faculties no longer suffice, for nature
finds itself at the bourne between created and Uncreated being, at the outermost
margin, the ontological periphery of creation where the gulf between man
and God is sheer infinity, and as such, an ontic chasm, the primeval nothingness
out of which man and the cosmos was created ex nihilo. St. John speaks of
this experience as a terrible one, unparalleled by any other. We might say that
in some small measure it may be likened to the experience of a man who, awaking
from a dream filled with familiar images, finds himself not only in total
darkness, but amidst incomprehensible emptiness, possessing no frame of
reference whatever, nothing to see, nothing to touch, no sound, no smell, no
sense of direction, no orientation. His experience is essentially one of
complete sensory abstraction and total noetic suspension, of absolute
undifferentiation. The extreme consternation, even terror, that such an
experience is likely to provoke may, to some degree, resemble the plight of the
mystic who has entered the antechamber of the Absolute. In this sense, darkness
is a metaphor for infinity; and the awakening, the inauguration of the dark
night of the soul.
Proximity vs.
Union
Up to this point we had
seen that the soul, as a consequence of having transcended the limitations of
nature and reason, occupies a state proximate to God inasmuch as God in himself
is infinite and unlimited. While the soul in this state of proximity possesses
no contrariety to God, this state of itself, St. John is clear, does not suffice
to bring it to union. Rather, it makes the soul merely receptive to the
divine infusion; metaphysically disposed to the possibility of infused
contemplation. At this stage, the soul is brought to the extremity of its being,
to the irreducible, the most fundamental dimension of its ontology --- beyond
which lies only extinction. While it is indefectibly the image of God, at this
point it neither reflects God whom it only anticipates, nor created nature which
it has transcended. It is the possibility of both and the actuality of neither.
In its sheer reflective ontology, it is like the image in a mirror possessing no
actuality in itself apart from being the possibility of the reflection of
something else; a mirror before which no image passes except the infinite toward
which it is poised and which it apprehends as nothing. In this state, in
reflecting nothing, it has no contrariety whatever to God, and inasmuch as it
possesses nothing in the way of contrariety, it is understood as being proximate
to God. So much is clear from our previous discussion.
The ontological
implications of this argument, however, are two-fold and reciprocal: on the
purely metaphysical level, the soul, St. John has argued, upon
transcending the finite and the limited becomes proximate to God. So much is
clear. In this moment of transcendence, however, it appears that something
doxastic emerges, not simply concomitantly, but logically, which is to
say, necessarily, from this metaphysical transition.
St. John, we have seen,
very clearly maintains that the soul achieves proximate union with God
following the negation of nature and reason. He does not state why it
follows, merely that it does in fact follow. A closer examination, however,
suggests that the utility of reason and sense --- relative to objects of created
nature apprehensible through the will and understanding --- have already been
abolished through transcendence, or negation, and appear to be, as a
consequence of this transition, now supplanted by the theological virtue of
faith --- which St. John argues, is also the state of proximate
union with God.
The problem we now
confront, however, is that if we hold faith to be contingent upon this
essentially metaphysical transition --- as the argument might appear to
suggest --- we divest faith of its supernatural character: it loses its
provenance in God and becomes immediately subsumed under nature. It is a
logical, and therefore necessary moment in a concatenation of events
occurring within a clearly defined and purely metaphysical matrix. Faith, so
understood, is not concomitant with transition, but is the
terminus of the transition itself. It is not concurrent with the negation
of nature and reason, it is indistinguishable from it; it is, in fact,
synonymous with it. It becomes, in a word, metaphysically legislated ---
apart from any divine and free dispensation. As an erstwhile theological virtue,
it immediately ceases as both theological and a virtue.
How can this be? The line
of reasoning strikes us as sound, but is nevertheless deeply disconsonant with
the most profound theological principles from which the impetus to ecstatic
union emerges. Compelling as this argument may appear, it is nonetheless
subreptive as we will soon see. It is, however, also extremely instructive, for
it serves to underscore the complexities, as well as the tensions, that have
often subverted many efforts to articulate a coherent mystical doctrine that is
both consistent with the canons of reason and consonant with accepted
theological tenets. The question, no less, still stands. Let us examine it more
closely.
Transition or Translation?
We had stated earlier
that we have observed something of the nature of reciprocity in this
moment of transition, two distinct levels of proximity that, I will now suggest,
converge --- rather than
conflate. The distinction is critical, for it is precisely at this
juncture that much of the confusion and misconception surrounding so many
attempts at explicating the notion of mystical union occurs. The metaphysical
momentum that has culminated at this crucial ontological point subreptively
lends itself to a spurious interpretation of what is a
transition in being as a translation
of being; as a continuum of something metaphysically legislated, and not
as a breach in that continuum through an autonomous leap of faith. Even while
concurrent with it, faith entirely prescinds from this metaphysical momentum as
a leap from the natural to the supernatural, from what is inherent in nature to
what is inherent in faith.
At this point we stand,
as it were, before the ontological chasm to which metaphysics has brought us and
past which it can offer us nothing more legitimate, and we instinctively blench
before what metaphysics legislates as the terminus of being. Metaphysics, we
recognize, cannot make the transition to nothing, it has reached a point in
extremis from which alone the
soul cannot leap off to extinction. But in offering us translation, the
translation of being, instead of its transition, it is offering us something
counterfeit: it is offering us the nothing from which it shrinks, the nothing in
which the translation of being is no more than the termination of
being, the very point beyond which it cannot pass without abandoning the
ontological infrastructure upon which it stands. Only faith can make that leap.
And the supreme irony is that each essentially ratifies the other and both equally culminate in what appears
to be the terminus of being. The Dark Night.
So what, precisely is
occurring here? On the one hand, the state of proximity to God is achieved
through transcendence (of the finite) on a purely metaphysical level. On the
other hand, it is, as we have said, equally attained through the theological
virtue of faith. Something more than mere congruity, or even concomitance,
appears to occur; something deeply implicative of both mutuality and
complementarity. It would appear that either faith corroborates the metaphysics,
or that the metaphysics corroborates faith. The answer, I suggest, is both,
inasmuch as faith implicitly accords with what metaphysics explicity states.
It is not merely of the
nature of faith, but of the essence of faith to assent to the very same
propositions we find emerging from the metaphysics, not, however, as demanded by
metaphysics, but as demanded by faith. In other words, this is not to understand
faith as proceeding from metaphysics, any more than it is to understand
the metaphysics proceeding from faith. At the point of convergence, however, it
is imperative to understand that the deliverances of each are indistinguishable,
for both arrive at the same impenetrable epicenter that is infinite, unlimited,
and absolute. Nor is it simply coincidental that at precisely this point of
convergence we arrive at the opacity of reason.
We are now, I think, in a
position to understand that this reciprocity which we observe does not in any
way abrogate or violate the unique integrity of what is either ontological or
doxastic --- a superficial bifurcation to the mystic at this point--- but
rather, is axiomatic of the traditional concept of nature cooperating with
grace. What we find, in the end, is not the one through the abrogation of the
other, but instead, a mutual corroboration of each at that critical point of
convergence that St. John understands as the state of proximity to the Absolute,
To God.
The Role of Faith and Reason in the Transition to Proximity
and Union
But how do we understand
faith to be an implicit consequence of this transition? To answer this,
let us look for a moment more carefully at the nature of faith. By faith we
generally understand that theological virtue, divinely infused, which is
cognitive in nature, and which expresses itself in the terms of clearly
defined articles of belief --- not knowledge --- independent of any
empirical acquaintance with the object in which belief is invested ---
specifically, God. The cognitive dimension of faith, in other words, is
doxastic rather than
noetic. Faith makes no appeal to reason. The object, or articles of faith
may be entirely consonant with reason. On the other hand, they may
completely transcend, not simply the canons, but the very capabilities of
reason --- and yet do so without abrogating them, since grace either perfects or
exceeds, but never violates nature. While faith is essentially cognitive in
nature relative to these articles of belief, the articles themselves are
supernatural in character. And the legitimate province of reason, we had
argued earlier, lies not in the supernatural, but in the matrix of nature,
specifically created nature experienced in terms of plurality and finitude. The
faculty of reason, then, has only limited access to the articles of faith, and
only inasmuch as these articles, among themselves --- prescinding
entirely from the question of their authenticity, that is to say, considered
formally, and not materially--- demonstrate a coherence that accords with the
canons of logic, of reason. Insofar as logical coherence is discernible among
the relation of ideas that constitute the articles of belief around which the
notion of faith revolves, reason formally ratifies faith, finds the
relation of the ideas of faith to be consistent with reason, although it makes
no pronouncement on the authenticity of the articles themselves. And to this
limited extent, faith is found to be consonant with reason, or perhaps better
yet, reason is found to be consonant with faith.
But faith also
transcends reason, as we had said. In passing from that realm of finitude
and plurality in which alone reason is capable of being discursively exercised,
the only cognitive capacity remaining to the soul --- with no data available to
sense or reason --- pertains to these articles of belief --- in other words,
faith --- which the soul maintains despite empirical evidence to the contrary:
the nothingness which the soul encounters on the brink of infinity. That some
form of cognition remains is indisputable, otherwise we should hold the
soul to be incognitive, which is to say unconscious, and this very clearly is
not the case with the mystic. If anything, what we find is an intensified state
of consciousness. It is, moreover, equally clear from our previous discussion
that this form of cognition cannot be reason. So what alternative remains?
Confronted with that before which reason defaults into suspension, faith
--- independent of reason and uninformed by the senses --- remains cognitive in
the form of articles of belief which, themselves supernatural in character, were
never dependent upon reason or sense to begin with --- and thus remains fully as
cognitive as it was prior to the transcendence of nature and reason. In this
sense, then, faith is seen to follow the negation of nature and reason. But that
faith transcends nature, as St. John further implies, seems at first a
rather odd notion, and yet it nevertheless follows from and is consistent with
the overall logic of St. John’s account. Faith, we might say, transcends nature
through reason as that plurality of finite entities which the exercise of
discursive reason requires and therefore presumes. In transcending reason, then,
faith has already transcended nature as implicit within
reason.
As we may anticipate, the
imperative of faith will continue to be not only a significant, but a
multifaceted feature of the mystical doctrine which meticulously unfolds before
us in the opening chapters of the Ascent. Nor can we prescind entirely
from all the concomitant issues which faith touches upon if our epistemological
account is to be complete. For example, St. John argues that the soul not only
transcends time, finitude, and reason through its subjection to the via
negativa and the subsequent positing of faith; but through this same faith
the soul equally circumvents diabolical impediments to union as
well.8 While this issue may at first appear to be only incidental
to any strictly epistemological analysis, a closer examination reveals
otherwise, for we find that St. John’s treatment of diabolical deception
effectively serves to underscore a very fundamental epistemological issue
concerning the notion of error --- which is by no means incidental to any
examination of the notion of understanding.
Let us pursue the point.
Through faith, St. John has argued, the soul has passed beyond understanding. So
much at least is immediately clear from St. John’s account. However, as a
consequence of this transition, that is to say, in passing beyond
understanding, the soul has simultaneously, and for two reasons, passed beyond
--- is no longer subject to --- the possibility of error. And for the
following reasons: first of all, the notion of error exclusively, if obviously,
pertains to the faculty of understanding: it is, fundamentally, a consequence of
misunderstanding, consisting in the intellectual assent to defective
propositions delivered by, or illegitimate conclusions drawn from, discursive
reasoning. But reason has been transcended --- and along with it, the errors to
which defective reasoning is liable. That is to say, the possibility of error as
a consequence of misunderstanding has been abolished as implicit within
the utility of understanding itself which has already been
negated.
Inerrancy and Impedimence
It is important to
further understand that the second reason that faith, for St. John, is not held
to be liable to error rests upon the source itself of the infused
theological virtue of faith, which is God. The articles of belief constituting
the virtue of faith have, for the mystic, no less a guarantor than God who, as
both object and author of the articles of faith, is understood to be not simply
the source of truth, but Truth itself. 9 So much, I think, is immediately clear from a cursory
rendering of St. John’s understanding of faith. But the question nevertheless
remains, why in fact is it so pressing, so vitally important for the mystic to
be free of error? Or more precisely, how is error to be understood as
constituting an impediment to union? The answer for St. John, of course, is
already implicit in an adequate understanding of the Divine nature itself. Aside
from the simple misdirection --- which is of no small consequence to the mystic
--- which liability to error affords, error is, quite simply, a form of
contrariety to God who is Truth. While the mystic clearly has, in the form of
the infused virtues, the assistance of God who invites the soul to the ecstatic
state of union as a foretaste of the eternal felicity awaiting the faithful in
heaven --- it is also the case that the contemplative confronts an ancient
antagonist who wishes to frustrate, confuse, and deceive the soul in its efforts
to achieve union with God. And this, of course, is the devil who, within the
Christian tradition, is preeminently understood as a liar and the father of
lies.10 St. John argues, however --- and this is the critical issue
--- that diabolical artifice can only be exercised over the soul through its
attachment to created things.11 In transcending created nature, in having extinguished all
attachment to the created order, the soul is then effectively brought beyond the
pale of diabolical influence --- and is therefore no longer subject to error
instigated by the devil.
If this concern strikes
the contemporary mind as quaint, it is, I suggest, only symptomatic of a more
prevailing contemporary defection from the supernatural at large, and apart from
which not only mysticism, but Christianity itself remains, in its most
fundamental essence, incomprehensible. The two components of every error, then,
either defective reasoning or diabolical malice, cease to be impediments to
union in the soul’s having transcended created nature and reason. Quite
practically, moreover, any journey --- especially the journey of the soul to God
--- whose course and direction, compass and map, are not free of error, will
not, cannot, bring the traveler home. However he would that his bearings were
correct, without truth as the declination to compass and map, the mystical
terrain remains unrecognizable, and the wayfarer remains lost and without hope
of achieving his end.
Truth, Faith, and Dogma: Triad or
Trilogy?
Truth for the mystic,
however, is inseparable from, and inextricably bound up with, faith --- and
faith, in turn, is ultimately informed by dogmatics. The point is worth
pursuing. Despite the negation of sense and understanding, the soul nevertheless
remains cognitive through the infused theological virtue of faith which, at
least from an epistemological point of view, constitutes a cognitive function,
albeit an obscure one. 12 Faith, in other words, is at least implicitly
cognitive of its object --- and it is here that the doctrinal and mystical
elements in St. John’s philosophy converge. As we had noted earlier, the mystic
of necessity adverts to certain clearly defined dogmatic tenets as
propadeutic to his quest for union with God. Reason alone, as we had seen,
defaults into suspension in the face of the Absolute. To a certain limited
extent, reason may retrospectively ratify the dictates of faith --- but never
inform them. When we speak of faith as an infused theological virtue,
however, we certainly do not mean that the articles of faith are supernaturally
articulated in the soul independent of the avenues of nature. On the contrary,
no less an authority than St. Paul tells us that faith originates in the
hearing. 13 But hearing alone, quite obviously, does not necessarily
translate into faith; it does not involve that consent implicit in faith which
not simply understands these articles, but understands them to be
true; holds these articles to communicate factual information about
certain aspects of reality, supernatural in character, which are unavailable to,
and therefore cannot be authenticated by, sense and reason. This ability to
posit what reason cannot corroborate, what sense cannot confirm, comes from God.
In this sense it is understood as being divinely infused.
This a rather roundabout
way of saying that the mystic’s faith, if it is to be inerrant, must coincide
precisely with the articles of faith tendered him by dogmatic theology which
affirms certain things about God through the indefeasible guarantee of God’s
self revelation in Sacred Scripture in general, and in the person of
Jesus Christ in particular. These, together with that deposit of faith which the
Church understands as Sacred Tradition, form for the mystic the repository of,
while by no means exhaustive, nevertheless inviolable truth; they effectively
define his objective, provide him with the compass, the map, and the lay of the
metaphysical terrain, and detail the perils to which he will be exposed in the
dark night of the soul --- all indispensable elements to the soul’s journey to
that Absolute which is Truth and admits of no error. These dogmatic canons, in
fact, logically precede faith in determining the object of faith. And
while faith as such is ultimately abolished in the moment of ecstatic union when
what has only been implicit in faith yields to the actuality of the Absolute, it
nevertheless is indispensable not merely toward proximating, but in fact
identifying the Absolute. Hence, St. John argues that faith induces our
assent to divinely revealed truths which, though not necessarily in conflict
with understanding and reason, nevertheless inexorably transcend
them:
“... faith ... makes us believe truths
revealed by God Himself, which transcend all natural light, and exceed all human
understanding, beyond all proportion ... Hence it follows that, for the soul,
this excessive light of faith blinds it and deprives it of the sight that has
been given to it, inasmuch as its light is great beyond all proportion and
transcends the faculty of vision ... The light of faith, by its excessive
greatness oppresses and disables that of the understanding, for the latter of
its own power, extends only to natural knowledge ... “ 14
The disproportion between
faith and knowledge, St. John argues, becomes somewhat clearer by way of
analogy. The analogy, I think, is particularly interesting, for it is frequently
surprising to contemporary but ill-informed critics of medieval thought that the
natural epistemology articulated in scholasticism --- an epistemology by and
large derived from Aristotle --- is thoroughly empirical in nature as the
following excerpt demonstrates relative to the inquiry at
hand:
“... the soul, as soon as God infuses it
into the body, is like a smooth, blank board upon which nothing is painted; and,
save for that which it experiences through the senses, nothing is communicated
to it, in the course of nature, from any other source... 15 Wherefore, if one should speak to a man of
things which he has never been able to understand, and whose likeness he has
never seen, he would have no more illumination from them whatever than if aught
had been said of them to him ... If one should describe to a man that was born
blind, and has never seen any
color, what is meant by a white color or by a yellow, he would understand it but
indifferently, however fully one might describe it to him, as he has never seen
such colors or anything like them by which he may judge of them, only their
names would remain to him ... Even so is this faith with respect to the soul; it
tells us of things which we have never seen or understood, nor have we seen or
understood aught that resembles them at all. And thus we have no light of
natural knowledge concerning them, since that which we are told of them bears no
relation to any sense of ours; we know it by ear alone, believing that which we
are taught” 16
Common categories, St.
John argues, are essential to the transmission, the communication, of knowledge
--- and any description, however exhaustive, however carefully nuanced, that
cannot appeal to categories commonly shared, will avail nothing to
understanding. And this, of course, is precisely the difficulty the mystic
encounters in any effort to convey his experience of the Absolute. Since
knowledge necessarily appeals to experience to meaningfully inform
understanding, and the experience of the Absolute in the person of God is
unavailable outside of ecstatic union, the cognitive faculty of understanding is
not merely inadequate to, but is altogether incapable of addressing the
Absolute. Understanding, then, must be not merely suppressed, but entirely
superseded by a cognitive faculty that does not rely upon, derive its
information from, the reports of the senses gathered through the medium of
experience. And this cognitive faculty, of course, is the infused theological
virtue of faith. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews summarizes it this way:
“… faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things
not seen.”17 It is faith, then, that informs us, albeit obscurely, of
things of which we have had no experience whatever; things so radically
dissimilar to all other experiences that no adequate parallels, no analogies,
will descriptively suffice. It is, in fact, very much along the lines of what
St. Paul attempted to describe to the Corinthians:
“... no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor
the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love
him”.18
Faith, then, is quite
different from understanding. Each addresses entirely different spheres, and
each are informed by radically different categories. Understanding is
determinate, clearly articulating and comprehending its object and verifying the
data submitted to it by reports of the senses. Faith has far less specificity.
While apodictically certain, it is indeterminate. It verges upon but does not
clearly comprehend its object; it requires no corroboration, no authentication
by sense, deferring instead to the veracity of the Author from whom it holds its
articles to have been delivered. And it is only implicitly cognitive of these
revealed articles as inarticulate expressions of the Absolute which itself is
incapable of being exhausted by any and every expression of its being.
Indispensable as they are, these articles of faith are only impoverished media
of a true understanding which abolishes itself in the experience of, the
immediate confrontation with, the Absolute. And this means that for St. John,
faith, in transcending the canons of ordinary understanding, remains necessarily
and eternally unavailable to it. The elements of dogma, the articles of faith
--- these self-expressions of the Absolute --- ultimately involve, for St. John,
the post-rational assent to the very doctrines held to be infallibly taught
through the magisterium of the Church concerning the revelation of God through
Scripture and sacred tradition.19 Unlike understanding
which is proactive in acquiring knowledge, the object of faith, St. John
insists, is passively received --- either through revelation preceding
union, or through the divine infusion in the state of
ecstasy.
The Three Theological Virtues and the Impetus to
Union
Our understanding of
faith relative to the mystical experience now becomes somewhat clearer. Faith,
to recapitulate, is the ill-defined and tenuous apprehension of something only
implicitly understood. In transcending what is explicitly, determinately
cognitive, faith passes from all the limiting frames of ordinary reference into
that state of unknowing which is the explicit negation of all the
contradictions to, and the contrarieties of, God in the created and finite
spheres of understanding and sensibility. The soul, St. John argues, is then
rendered more proximate to God in having been negated to the other --- the
contraries --- of God in nature and reason. Although in this state of simple
proximity the soul is not yet what God is, it is not what God is not. And
for this reason it is preeminently disposed to receiving God in mystical
union.
By now it is probably
clear, although somewhat prematurely, that the union of the soul with God is
not, cannot be, achieved through the three natural faculties of the soul: will,
understanding, and memory. 20 While much remains to be addressed especially in regard to
the faculty of understanding, it is perhaps best that we pause at this point to
better gain perspective of the whole. Mystical union, as we may already
anticipate, is rather to be achieved through the three theological virtues
corresponding to these three faculties:
“... the soul is not united with God in
this life through the understanding, nor through enjoyment, nor through
imagination, nor through any sense whatsoever; but only through faith, according
to the understanding; and through hope according to the memory; and through love
according to the will. These three virtues ... all cause emptiness in the
faculties: faith in the understanding, causes emptiness and darkness with
respect to the understanding; hope, in the memory, causes emptiness of all
possessions; and charity causes emptiness in the will and detachment from all
affection and from rejoicing in all that is not God.” 21
Each infused theological
virtue, we can see, is the negation of its corresponding natural faculty, and
insofar as these virtues succeed in their negative functions, just so is the
soul disposed, or receptive, to the state of infused contemplation. These
virtues, like many elements of the mystical experience that are steeped in
polarity, are in fact double-sided. On the one hand they are seen to be
negative, disabling the faculties which they supersede even as they are enacted
within them. On the other hand, they are seen to be positive, informing the soul
even as they displace the natural faculties they have negated. At this point,
however, St. John considers them largely in their negative aspect. Faith is the
explicit negation of understanding: it abolishes the mediatory function of
reason in apprehending its object intuitively. The object of faith is
transcendent, and therefore inaccessible, to the rigorously defined and
therefore limited architectonics of the categories of understanding. While these
are sufficient to addressing finite objects in the created order, they do not,
cannot, suffice in addressing the Absolute. Consequently, they are abolished in
the enactment of faith.
Hope, on the other hand,
is equally the negation of its own corresponding faculty in the memory which,
for St. John, is really a kind of residual faculty of understanding. Unlike
understanding itself which is actively engaged in acquiring, coordinating, and,
through the dialectic of reason, synthesizing the data delivered it by the
senses, memory --- strictly speaking --- is a passive repository of either the
synthetic fabrications of reason or of impressions acquired through the senses.
And I say strictly speaking for this reason: memory of itself essentially
consists in mere recollection; the recollection of things and concepts no longer
contemporaneous with that exercise of reason or the immediate sense experience
by which they were initially acquired. Once acquired, of course, these initial
acquaintances --- until repeated, in the case of sense experience ---
immediately devolve to memory. There they passively form the repository of
acquired knowledge to which reason or understanding subsequently appeals, and
consequently amplifies, when synthesizing or analyzing new data submitted by the
senses or acquired through the activity of reason. Imagination, however, which
for St. John is a sub-faculty of memory --- that in turn is subsumed beneath
understanding --- acts to creatively synthesize and manipulate the data
deposited in memory in much the same way that understanding does --- with two
important exceptions. The exercise of the imagination, while not antithetical
to, or even necessarily exclusive of, reason, is nevertheless unconstrained by
the canons of syllogistic reasoning that apply to understanding. It quite
freely, and quite often prescinds entirely from the protocols of logic.
Both analytic and synthetic, imagination systematically analyzes the part
from the coherent whole and is quite capable of synthesizing incongruent and
illogical fictions from essentially unrelated data. No laws, in other words, are
discoverable in the exercise of the imagination apart from the route the data
take to inform it. But more importantly, imagination is remote from
immediacy: while initially informed by the senses, it subsequently acts
independently of them. It may take its clues from the senses, but the products
of the imagination have no correlate in reality. In short, they are not factual
reports, but elaborate fictions. Fictions which, in the end, are composites of
created things initially derived from the senses and ultimately sharing, with
all other things in memory whose provenance lays in sense, in that contrariety
to God which is preclusive of union. As faith was seen to abolish understanding,
so now hope in supplanting memory abolishes it, for the theological virtue of
hope, St. John tells us, is by definition, directed to that which is not yet
possessed.
22
But, we are likely to
object, are not faith, hope, and love resident in memory as well? In that state
of negativity preparatory to union, may not the contemplative be said to
recollect, to remember the articles of faith, which in turn inform hope
and articulate the object loved? After all, these were, St. John had argued
earlier --- and prior to being assented to --- first learned, acquired through
the hearing, and, we presume, deposited into memory. Is not the mystic, then,
appealing to elements within the very deposit of data (memory) which we had
understood to have been abolished by hope? St. John, unfortunately, is not at
all clear on this point. But there is, I think, a semantic issue involved here
concerning the notion of recollection which does not readily lend itself to the
categorical opposition St. John seems to place between memory as a natural
faculty and hope as an implicitly mnemonic virtue. We are, however, clear on one
point, and that is that the memory as a natural faculty is in fact negated ---
effectively abolished --- relative to things created. In being supplanted
by hope, it is expropriated of every datum corresponding to the created
order.23 But the soul does not then possess no at least implicitly
mnemonic faculty whatever. Hope, which has replaced memory, materially possesses
nothing, but rather, formally anticipates the possession of
something. Of what? It anticipates the possession of the object which the
articles of faith address, the object of which faith is cognizant, God --- which
the soul does not yet possess, but only hopes to possess. That is to say, hope
anticipates, since it does not possess, what faith recognizes but does not
clearly know. Faith is the reservoir of hope which appeals to things uncreated,
and unlike memory, unpossessed. Hope then is seen as the antithesis of
memory in possessing nothing, and as the supernatural counterpart to
memory in anticipating what it does not possess, but what it nevertheless
latently recognizes through faith.
There are, moreover,
distinct differences discernible between the way in which data are preserved in
memory, and the way that the articles of faith are preserved in the latently
mnemonic theological virtue of hope. To begin with, we do not possess the
articles of faith in the way we possess the impressions of the senses, or, say,
the theorems of Euclidean geometry. Geometric theorems, for example, are
rationally, and even empirically demonstrable; they are characterized by
a deductive certainty deriving from analytical principles so clearly
defined, so self-evident as to be unequivocal and incontrovertible. The inherent
specificity of geometry as the paradigm of purely deductive reasoning, and
therefore the paradigm of deductive certainty--- of incontestable knowledge for
philosophers from Plato onward --- stands in stark contrast to the obscure and
indeterminate articles of faith which very clearly are not the conclusions of
syllogistic reasoning, possess nothing in the way of deductive certainty, and
are by nature not susceptible to being demonstrated either rationally or
empirically --- although, as we have said, they may not of themselves
necessarily be in conflict with reason. In short, the articles of faith do not
qualify as knowledge --- certainly not along the lines that would fit a purely
rational paradigm. And knowledge, either derived analytically from the exercise
of reason, or acquired through the reports of the senses, or indeed as the
synthesis of both, is, after all, what we understand to be passively archived in
memory.
But we might further
object that this deposit of data in which memory consists typically comprehends
a vast number of concepts which do not share, are not characterized by, the
rigorous deductive certainty of the geometric model we have invoked. In fact,
much of that deposit of knowledge that we call memory is really inchoate, and
quite nearly as vague as the articles of faith themselves. However this may be,
it nevertheless remains that they are also susceptible of being fully
articulated by subsequent reasoning; or, more apropos of our argument, since we
understand these incompletely articulated concepts to be merely deficient
in formation, it is entirely possible for them to be fully informed by
subsequent experience. Such concepts deriving from, and constructed around,
empirical acquaintance, or the impressions of the senses, are, therefore,
verifiable through, and capable of being augmented by, further experience. And
this is to say that the object of faith implicit in hope does not constitute
data in precisely the same way that rational concepts or sense impressions
do.
To summarize, then, our
understanding of the differences that obtain between hope and memory, we may say
that memory, unlike hope, is characterized by specificity, and the data resident
in memory are susceptible of further elaboration subsequent to further
investigation. The corresponding faculty of hope, on the other hand, is
radicated in faith --- not reason or sense --- and its object, unlike memory,
only vaguely, indeterminately, imprecisely, corresponds to a reality that was
not empirically acquired, is not empirically available, and is, therefore, not
verifiable. Memory and hope, then, while yet sharing parallel mnemonic
functions, effectively qualify as contrarieties in the epistemological account
of St. John.
This regrettably
involuted account, necessary to distinguishing memory from hope, finally puts us
in a position to understand why St. John will later argue that the soul is
unified through the three theological virtues 24, why this unity results in the soul’s singular
intentionality in God (its being exclusively, absolutely centered upon God), and
how this facilitates the soul in its movement toward God in the soul’s
possessing within itself no contrary to God. Let us look at this more closely.
Since the soul’s faculties are no longer diffused among a multiplicity of
objects, but are, rather, in a common state of negativity (or proximity) ---
each characterized by its respective theological virtue --- the soul is unified
both in this negativity, or night of the soul, common to each faculty,
and by intentionality, in that each of these virtues are theological in
nature, or exclusively directed to the one, singular object in God. Simply put,
all the faculties have entered the one same night: negation. And all the
theological virtues address the one same object: God. This translation of the
natural faculties into their corresponding theological virtues constitutes what
St. John will henceforth refer to as spiritual negation, or the
spiritual night of the soul 25 which is a pivotal point in the movement to mystical union
as we shall later find in Part 2.
Whereas we had found the
night of the senses to consist in the detachment from the created
external order in nature according to each faculty, so now the night of
the spirit will be found to consist in a similar detachment from the created
internal order of spirit. And once spiritual negation has been achieved,
the soul will have entered into a state of absolute negativity, for it is
the bilateral, absolute, and unqualified negation of the two created aspects of
bidimensional man: the natural dimension relative to nature, and the spiritual
dimension relative to spirit. This state of absolute negativity, in fact,
corresponds
to what St. John
otherwise calls “annihilation” 26, for it is, as it were, the annihilation of the soul’s
natural existence:
“... the soul must not only be
disencumbered from that which belongs to creatures, but likewise, as it travels,
must be annihilated and detached from all that belongs to its spirit ... This
... is death to the natural self, a death attained through the detachment and
annihilation of that self, in order that the soul may travel by this narrow
path, with respect to all its connections with sense, as we have said, and
according to the spirit as we shall now say ...” 27
Epistemology or Heterodoxy? The Annihilation of the Soul
This is the inauguration
of that “terrible night” of which St. John so often speaks, the night which must
be traversed in faith alone. 28 Here every other standard of reference to the world of
experience ordinarily understood, fails, evanesces, before the negativity of
night. And here it becomes absolutely critical to the purpose of our
commentary that we correctly understand what St. John refers to in speaking of
the concept of “annihilation”. The various phenomenologies that have
historically evolved around the concept of mysticism are almost universal in
incorporating this mercurial and extremely fragile term, and there is far from
unanimity among them concerning its significance. This is particularly true for
the Christian mystic. First of all, it is not, we must hasten to add, a type of
nirvanic annihilation of the self much as we understand in certain Vedantic
phenomenologies broadly construed as mystical, for in St. John’s account the
self, however attenuated through the process of negation, is nevertheless
understood to be preserved in super-natural existence. Not, to be sure,
in the exercise of its natural faculties ordinarily understood --- but rather
through the theological virtues which at once annihilate (negate) the self
relative to the natural faculties, and preserve the self as the
presupposition of that personal and residual consciousness within which the
theological virtues are enacted, exercised.
Annihilation, because it
is so easily misconstrued, is one of those volatile concepts within Christian
mysticism that readily lends itself to charges of heterodoxy, the sanctions
against which, at the height of the Counter-Reformation (1560-1648), were
stringently applied. Despite this fact, it is not the case that St. John, as a
contemporary figure in this tumultuous period, simply deferred to orthodoxy out
of expedience as some may suppose, or worse yet, deliberately couched his terms
in equivocal language to conceal a covert agendum antagonistic to accepted
doctrine or ecclesiastical authority. There is not a shred of evidence to
support this contention. St. John was unwavering in orthodoxy, and would
undoubtedly have answered that, if his mystical doctrine was entirely consonant
with the deposit of faith articulated by the Magisterium of the Church, it was
not, for that reason, a procrustean accomplishment; a matter of merely
accommodating his doctrine to the formal requirements of faith --- but rather
that the articles of faith must be seen as having informed his doctrine --- as
indeed they had --- which in turn was a vindication of that dogma whose elements
were subsequently authenticated in the mystical experience
itself.
Identity and Individuation: Noesis or
Nuance?
But to return to our
point, the annihilation of which St. John speaks appears to be essentially the
radical reduction of the self to an irreducible state of consciousness. This
consciousness, we have already said, necessarily presupposes something of
which it is conscious. To restate our point succinctly, our consciousness is
always a consciousness of. Of what? Well, certainly of something.
And this something, of course, can no longer be the deliverance of sense and
reason already transcended. It is, rather, an anticipatory consciousness
informed by the articles of faith alone, and exclusively directed toward God
apart from any other object of intention. In essence, it is a state of pure
intentionality. The self has completely receded from all relativity to
everything outside itself: it is perfectly receded from, and therefore utterly
without reference to, the non-self, both in nature, as negated, and in God, as
yet revealed. In this state of absolute recession, the soul has only the dim,
merely formal cognition of God --- unaccompanied as yet by any empirical
acquaintance --- provided it through the three theological virtues which are at
once, paradoxically, the very principles behind this annihilation, and
simultaneously the means of the preservation of the self subsequent to it. While
much of this remains to be discussed in greater depth in Part II, it is
nevertheless important to an understanding of St. John’s thought at this point
to recognize that the self --- that is to say, personal consciousness --- in
fact survives the annihilation of which St. John speaks in his account. And it
is precisely this residual self-consciousness, this implicit but nevertheless
distinguishable apperception in the face of the Absolute which preserves a
distinction in identity even as this union abolishes contrariety in
nature.
The implications that
evolve from this are worth considering further. We had, for example, spoken of
the self earlier as having been brought to an irreducible state of consciousness
epistemologically poised in an act of pure intentionality. But what, we must now
ask, is the self so understood? Our very notion of identity, of our self,
would seem to be bound up with a great many material and historical antecedents
which must then necessarily be borne along with our identity beyond negativity.
Our individual identity --- who we are --- defined, by and large, by our unique
historical antecedents would appear to be a necessary component of a coherent
conception of the self. But let us look at this anew from the phenomenological
perspective of the mystic. We are accustomed to being individuated by precisely
those elements which, through the via negativa, have been negated and
transcended: namely finitude and temporality. We perceive ourselves to be such
and such an individual apart from other individuals by virtue of certain clearly
defined material limits --- our bodies, for example, describe a finite area that
is discrete from the bodies of others; our minds, while similar to others in
their cognitive faculties, are unlike others in that our thoughts are not
identical to the thoughts of others; my experiences in all their subtleties, and
the arrangement and chronological order of these experiences, are not identical
with those of others, having been acquired, enacted, if not in different frames
of time then in different locations in space; still yet, my parents are not your
parents, or if they are, my birth was not precisely coincidental with yours, and
I never had myself as my brother. In short, there are a thousand ways in which
we individuate ourselves from others and acquire a sense of identity that is
essentially composed differentially.
And so our question is:
Can we in fact possess an identity apart from these individuating elements or
circumstances? And if so, in what does that identity consist? Indeed, does one
lose one’s individual identity altogether in mystical experience, and
does this consequently entail some absurd and essentially meaningless form of
cosmic consciousness? These, and other questions like them, some rather
frivolous, others quite serious, enable us to see why mysticism is often the
breeding ground of redoubtable epistemological difficulties --- as well as a
good deal of nonsense. Within each of these instances or circumstances we find
time or finitude or both as the individuating principle behind the conception of
identity. But it is equally clear that the radically reduced notion of the self
consequent to the mystic’s subjection to the via negativa entirely
prescinds from the self as historically articulated. The mystic in essence
acquires a new identity, not that of the self reflexively identified ---
that is to say the self historically identified with the utterly personal
existential enactment of its own being chronologically considered at a
different, elapsed, point in time --- rather, the mystic’s identity now refers,
not back to himself, reflexively --- but to God. And this new identity, in fact,
is merely the re-appropriation of the soul’s primal identity as the
imago Dei, the image of God. This notion of identity, which is always and
essentially reciprocal in nature with an other relative to which it is
the same, remains to be discussed more fully later on. We only touch upon it
here to further illustrate the point that the annihilation of the soul in no way
compromises, but rather attenuates the identity of the soul which nevertheless
remains intact beyond absolute negation.
Faith as Negativity: The Knower and the Unknown
God
Returning once again to
our discussion of the relation that obtains between faith and understanding, we
had found that no proportion, or as St. John puts it, similitude, exists between
the understanding and God for reasons already discussed and principally
involving the notion of incommensurability:
“... all that the imagination can imagine
and the understanding can receive and understand in this life is not, nor can it
be, a proximate means of union with God ... [ for ] all that can be understood
by the understanding, that can be tasted by the will, and that can be invented
by the imagination is most unlike God and bears no proportion to Him
...” 29
In the face of this
incommensurability, a requisite to union must consist in a transformation that
will bridge this gap which is infinite; that will, in effect, restore a measure
of commensurability between the means and the end, cognition and God. This
transformation, however, cannot be effected by, since it is clearly beyond the
natural ability of, the created and finite soul. It can only, therefore, be
divinely initiated. And this, we have seen, occurs when God leads the
soul, through faith, into the state of negation. But how are we to understand
faith --- which up to this point has largely been a negative factor in
St. John’s account in the way of abolishing understanding --- as now capable of
restoring this commensurability? Well, to begin with we had already seen that,
for all its obscurity, faith nevertheless entails certain positive elements in
the form of implicitly understood articles ultimately derived from the
self-revelation of God to man; articles which, for St. John, are to be received
in that simplicity which is consonant with faith:
“ ... the understanding, profoundly
hushed and put to silence ... leans upon faith which alone is the proximate
means whereby the soul is united with God; for such is the likeness between
itself and God that there is no other difference, save that which exists between
seeing God and believing in Him. For even as God is infinite, so faith sets Him
before us as infinite; and as he is Three and One, it sets Him before us as
Three and One; and as God is darkness to our understanding, even so does faith
likewise blind and dazzle our understanding. And thus, by this means alone, God
manifests Himself to the soul in Divine light, which passes all
understanding.” 30
Faith, in other words,
transcends the limitations of understanding in affirming of God those attributes
which the understanding in its limitations, and without involving itself in
contradiction, could not possibly affirm. And so in transcending understanding,
faith simultaneously transcends limitation implicit within understanding --- and
in doing so simultaneously establishes commensurability with the infinite and
the unlimited. Such a transcendence will inevitably entail a cognitive
transformation as well. Determinate understanding with all its limitations is no
longer sufficient. In fact, it has already been abolished in the negativity of
faith. Abolished --- but also superseded, as we had already seen, by a
faculty quite different, a faculty which, as the negative of understanding with
its distinct concepts and determinate categories, will necessarily be indistinct
and indeterminate.31 And this type of cognition, not radicated in an
acquaintance with its object either empirically acquired through sense or
rationally acquired through the analytic or synthetic activity of reason ---
that is to say, which does not acquire its object mediatively --- is
essentially intuitive in nature.
“Natural” and “Supernatural” Modes of
Understanding
So we find that, despite
the negativity of faith, it is, after all, not the case that all
understanding categorically ceases, but merely a particular kind of
understanding, for within the comprehensive faculty of understanding itself, St.
John distinguishes two quite different modes: the natural and the
supernatural. The former refers to the distinct and determinate mode of
ordinary cognition both appropriate and sufficient to addressing the world of
ordinary experience, and consisting in finite concepts actively applied to
finite data. The latter corresponds to that intuitive mode of cognition
subsequent to the state of negation in which faith has superseded natural
understanding. The former we have already examined. It is the latter with which
we are now concerned. This supernatural knowledge, as St. John calls it, is, to
additionally complicate matters, then further subdivided into corporeal
and spiritual modes through which knowledge is communicated to, and
passively received by, the soul.
32 Understanding at this point becomes,
as it were, rarefied in that epistemological margin between nature and spirit.
It is at the outermost extremity of both, while completely sharing in the unique
character of neither. Let us, then, look at each mode as it informs
understanding and see what further conclusions remain to be
drawn.
The “Corporeal” Mode of Understanding
The corporeal mode
of supernatural understanding, St. John tells us, consists in those
communications to the soul which proceed either through the external sensuous by
way of the bodily senses, or through the internal sensuous according to the
imagination. At this point we can safely say that St. John has already
demonstrated 33 that the imagination is dependent upon empirical data
acquired through experience, and that, therefore, no proportion whatever can
possibly exist between God and the synthetic constructs of imagination.
Incapable of proximating God, imagination is summarily disqualified as a
proximate means to union with God. The very specific and determinate nature
common to every product of the imagination is profoundly incommensurable with
the infinite reality of God. Consequently, the internal sensuous according to
the imagination must be negated of all the various forms and images which are
either the products of its own synthetic activity, or which derive from a
supernatural agency communicating these forms and images to it,
34 for without exception they entail contrariety to God. That
this applies with equal and greater force to those supernatural phenomena
sensuously embodied in the external order is already clear. Our treatment, then,
of imagination, in an effort to leave no element unaddressed in our account, is
really parenthetical to our articulating an epistemology of mysticism. By and
large the constituent elements of imagination may be subsumed under the broader
category of sense, and stand merely to be abolished in the movement toward
contemplation.
The “Supernatural” Mode of Understanding
On the other hand, St.
John’s discussion of the supernatural mode of understanding is a good
deal more illuminating. Even a casual reading of St. John reveals that, in an
effort to be as precise as possible, his systematic treatment, especially in
regard to the faculty understanding, becomes increasingly schematized. The
category of understanding, for example, is further divided into sub-categories
of natural and supernatural modes of understanding. The supernatural mode, to
take just one element in this bifurcation, is then further analyzed into
corporeal and spiritual modes, and the spiritual mode, in turn, further
subdivided into distinct and special and confused and general
modes. 35 This is no gratuitous exercise in speculative analysis. St.
John’s objective, we must remember, is always practical. In taking such a
rigorous and systematic inventory of understanding, St. John effectively
attempts to address an issue involving the single greatest liability to which
not only the mystic, but the entire mystical enterprise itself, is exposed: the
problem of error. Although we had briefly examined this problem earlier, let us
look at it once again in light of the present context. Supernatural
understanding, as St. John calls it, is either communicated distinctly and
specially through visions, revelations, locutions, and the like --- or generally
and obscurely, that is to say, in a manner lacking both in specificity and
clarity. In essence, however, St. John’s entire discussion of knowledge
supernaturally communicated to --- not actively acquired by --- the soul, is at
least implicitly his treatment of the impediment of error, both here and
elsewhere.
Consequently it is, at
one and the same time, an ad hoc critique of human understanding
confronted with the supernatural --- to the end of establishing a canon of
authenticity to which the mystic may ultimately appeal with unquestionable
certainty. And it is precisely this type of critical analysis --- to which the
Christian tradition of mysticism owes a great debt to St. John --- that is
central to our accreditation of the mystical experience as in fact veridical.
For unless quite definite criteria are established concerning the authenticity
of the contemplatives mystical experience --- that it is a unique
experience corresponding to, not simply a solipsistic or reflexively interpreted
reality , but to a reality independent of the mind of the mystic ---
Christian mysticism will fail to exempt itself from the most remarkable and
bizarre array of pseudo-mystical states, including delusional psychoses, which
are often otherwise broadly, and erroneously, characterized as “mystical” .This
problem, worthy of a chapter in itself, will be examined more extensively later
on. For the moment it is sufficient to note that St. John is acutely aware of
some of the problems created by this type of confusion. For example, he insists
that,
“... he that esteems such things
errs greatly and exposes himself to the peril of being deceived
36 ... [ for ] a readiness to accept them
opens the door to the devil that he may deceive the soul by other things like to
them, which he very well knows how to dissimulate and disguise, so that they may
appear to be good; for, as the Apostle says, he can transform himself into an
angel of light.” 37
This premature and
clearly parenthetical treatment of the problem of error equally serves to
underscore the imperative of faith in the soul’s journey to union with God, for
it is faith, as we will come to understand, which constitutes the one
epistemological constant to which the several modes of understanding are
subordinated throughout.
Dealing first with the
distinct and special mode of supernatural understanding, St. John tells
us that these very specialized apprehensions are, to begin with, sensuously
communicated to the soul --- understanding does not play an active, or
intentional role in acquiring them much in the way that it does in its
interpretive interaction with data delivered by the senses subsequent to being
actively addressed by understanding. The notion of intentionality relative to
the understanding is entirely absent in the case of these apprehensions as they
come to the soul --- which at this point, we will remember, is passive ---
through the five bodily senses. It is most urgent, St. John argues, that the
soul maintain an attitude completely skeptical to these apprehensions; in fact,
if at all possible, to entirely disregard them.38
A Dark Impedimence: Diabolical Deception
Given the disproportion
and contrariety which we have seen to exist between God and the created order
(all that is not God), St. John further argues that the greater the apparent
corporeity and exteriority of the apprehension, the less warrant we have to
presume its origin to be in God. The possibility, if not the likelihood, both of
human error and diabolical deception relative to these sensuously embodied
communications is, for St. John, far greater than in communications to the
spirit; and for this principal reason: our judgment, accustomed as it is to
defer to the superficial reports of the senses --- not just as an ordinarily
reliable index of a reality, but characteristically of a reality presumed to in
fact correspond to its appearance --- is accurate only to the extent to
which appearances actually coincide with the reality they ostensibly signify.
And this is simply another way of saying that we characteristically, even
necessarily, judge only on the basis of appearances. And while, on the one hand,
real correspondence often exists --- our interaction with the world around us
would be impossible or chaotic otherwise --- on the other hand disqualifying
instances clearly abound: most often as a matter of mistaking appearances to
authentically represent realities to which they actually do not conform, or less
often but equally real, by subreption through diabolical malice --- in either
case the resulting misjudgment is what we call error. And what this
effectively means is that sense experience does not necessarily constitute a
confirmation of reality. And this is St. John’s whole point. This is why
the contemplative must not defer to the senses, however credible their reports
may appear.
Moreover, St. John
argues, in their tangible dimensions, these sensuous communications cannot in
reality bear any proportion to, and are in fact the ontological opposite of, the
spiritual reality which they purport to convey. 39 Even were such communications divine in origin, these
supernatural reports would serve merely as the vehicle, the character of which
invariably, ineluctably, colors our interpretation of the actual significance.
Invested as they are with clarity and distinctness, the forms of these
apprehensions further tend to overshadow the implicit spiritual significance
they are intended to communicate independent of their sensuous expedient. It is,
then, crucial for the mystic to act in utter disregard of any such
communications, and in so doing avoiding the occasion of the two principle
possibilities of error. However, it now becomes problematic as to how one thing
(the sensuous) contrary to another (the spiritual) --- as clearly they have been
throughout our account so far --- can be the vehicle of its antithesis, that is
to say, how the spiritual can be sensuously embodied at all. St. John provides
us with no clear answer to the problem. In a sense it stands clearly aside from
his practical intent. But not from ours. I think, however, that one solution is
suggested by the logic of the argument itself.
Any supernatural
manifestation of necessity introduces itself within the natural order.
This having occurred, a radical duality is subsequently generated, the two
distinct components of which are nature and spirit On the one hand we have what
we might call unqualified nature in the simple material sense, and for
lack of a better term, qualified spirit. What we have called qualified
spirit, we might say, is super-existent in nature. Although subsisting
independently of the material order, it is nevertheless capable of assuming
additional, if fundamentally extraneous, ontological characteristics essential
to its introduction to, or appearance within, the material order. But it does so
only under some clearly defined conditions ontologically dictated by the nature
it assumes. Being in nature and assuming quasi-natural dimensions, it
must conform to the two ultimate constituents of nature as the very ontological
frames --- the very matrices of finitude --- presupposed in every conception of
nature as such, namely, time and space. Simply put, any
supernatural manifestations must occur somewhere and sometime.
However these manifestations may be able to contravene every other protocol of
nature through their yet undiminished supernatural character, as manifestations
in nature, they are necessarily subject to these two laws
governing all appearances in nature whatever. In other words, they must
share definite characteristics common to, if in fact they are to occur as
appearances within, the material order.
Despite this
incorporation, however, this spirit-in-nature---which every supernatural
manifestation essentially is --- yet remains other to nature as spirit. That is
to say, it nevertheless remains unqualified spirit, spirit unmodified or
unconditioned by nature; spirit merely introduced within and only
physically --- not essentially --- constrained by the laws of appearance,
the two laws alone which it cannot contravene, but to which, as we have said, it
must submit as a condition of any appearance whatever. Assuming physical
specificity as a condition of its appearance --- not as essential
to its nature --- it becomes qualified, subject to laws from which it is
characteristically, essentially immune, and to which it submits itself merely as
an expedient to its appearance in nature. But if this, in fact, is how
spirit is capable of being sensuously embodied, it does not answer why
they are embodied at all. This question is answered by St.
John.
More on “Spiritual Communications”
Before going further we
must point out that at this stage in the Ascent, St. John is treating of
the mystical experience as it pertains to the beginner who is just being
brought into the first stages of mystical union and who is not yet completely
withdrawn from the senses.40 As a result, these spiritual communications are given
sensuous form in order to be rendered proximate to ordinary, sensuous
understanding. In fact, as we have already seen, they are merely an expedient
--- addressed as it were to the determinate mode of ordinary understanding in
order to lead it the further on in its desire for union with
God.41 The form which this communication takes is, to sensuous
understanding, merely the necessary vehicle of the spiritual reality behind it
which transcends the sensuous form, even as this reality is eclipsed by it in
the immediacy of sense. But the nature of this super-existent reality concealed
beneath the superficies of form is nevertheless such that it succeeds withal in
producing its effect independently of the form. The noetic realization is
obscured by, because the soul at this point is merely attentive to, the
form of the communication. In the words of St. John, it is “secretly”
communicated to the soul.
Now we must admit that
this strikes us as rather odd. If these communications are capable of producing
their effects independently of the sensuous form in which they are embodied; and
if, furthermore, the phenomenal features which such communications assume by way
of mere expediency are to be ignored altogether as a likely source of error ---
then why are these communications not effected in the soul without the
appearance of the sensuous form that is both unnecessary to their producing
their effects and, at the very least, the likely occasion of misjudgment and
error? I think that this is a serious question that requires an answer. And the
answer, I suggest, is offered within the context out of which the problem
arises. It is unquestionably within the power of God to produce effects within
the soul of which the soul is not cognizant. Or even to produce effects within
the soul which the soul acknowledges but does not apprehend in either an
experiential or noetic sense. A few instances which immediately come to mind
concern the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders, each of which
are held to impress certain indelible characters upon the soul --- as well as
supernatural capabilities --- only the external significance of
which is recognized and acknowledged. The actual character, seal, or impress of
God upon the soul is neither cognitively accessible nor subject to empirical
verification. In the case of Baptism, it is entirely possible for a child to be
baptized and subsequently mature in complete ignorance of his faith and his own
baptism --- all the while possessing the baptismal seal, and all that it
signifies, without recognizing it.
The power conferred in
these instances, as well as the effect itself --- not, of course, the ritual
signifying the effect --- may be said to have been secretly
communicated to the soul. Now this analogy that we have chosen is not at all
inappropriate to our purpose. We must recall, once again, that the present
discussion revolves around the contemplative who is not yet totally withdrawn
from the senses. While the effect of the communication is in fact wrought
independently of the form, the sensuous form serves to signify the
reality being enacted completely supernaturally, secretly, invisibly, within the
soul. It is a sign to the soul --- which is still sensuously oriented ---
of something being enacted supernaturally. And as a sign, it points to,
signifies, something beyond itself of which the sign constitutes no
material element. Moreover, as a sign, it is an indication of the proximity and
presence of something else of which it is merely a sign. And this is
precisely the manner in which God first moves the soul to greater desire for
union with Himself. So in answer to our question, can God produce effects within
the soul without adverting to sensuous phenomena, we must unequivocally state,
yes. But his doing so with a soul still primarily oriented to the senses would
effectively move the soul no closer to God, and so be apart from his
purpose.
... And More on the Notion of the Impedimence of
Error
Let us look a little
closer now at the nature of the error to which the soul is liable in adverting
to the sensuous form of the these supernatural communications. First of all, St.
John argues, the soul errs in judging these apprehensions to be as they
sensuously appear. In pronouncing judgments that appeal to the sheer phenomenal
features of such occurrences, the soul illegitimately insinuates a spurious
commensurability between nature and spirit which does not, and cannot,
metaphysically obtain. And it is precisely because of the disproportion that
exists between spirit and nature that any such embodiments of spirit are pure
contingencies, exigencies in which no necessary connection is discernible
between the appearances and the realties ostensibly signified by them. The soul,
in order to avoid error then, must not only prescind from the sheer phenomenal
dimensions of such appearances, but suspend its judgment concerning them
altogether. 42
There is, moreover, a
second and potentially greater danger involved in giving credence to these
communications and what they purport to convey, and this, for St. John, lies in
the very real possibility of diabolical deception. The dysteleological presence
of personified evil on the ontological fringe of spirit toward which the
contemplative moves is of genuine concern to St. John. It is the perfectly
disvaluable presence whom, as we had seen earlier, Jesus describes in no unclear
terms as “... a liar and the father of lies.” 43 and whom St. Peter calls “[the] adversary, the devil, [who]
as a roaring lion, walks about seeking whom he may devour.” 44 The mystic, then, in addition to the liability to error
connatural with judgment, confronts the possibility of supernatural error
foisted upon the soul by no less than an agency metaphysically diabolical in
nature and historically inimical to the ultimate interests of man --- which, not
simply for the mystic but for every Christian as well, preeminently lies in
union with God. Confronted with so redoubtable a foe, far more powerful,
tremendously more resourceful, vastly more intelligent, and invincibly evil, the
soul, for St. John, has but one recourse --- and that is to advert once again to
the methodological suspension of judgment. St. John maintains that since God is
more disposed to communicate with the soul through the spirit, rather than
through sense, all such sensuous communications should be least methodologically
--- to proceed, not from God, but rather, from the devil. St. John is clear on
this point: the realm of matter and sense is particularly susceptible to the
artifice of the devil who, through exercising his influence over the sensuous
and material, actively endeavors to deceive the soul and to frustrate it in its
efforts to achieve union with God.45 All judgment, then, must be categorically suspended and the
ordinary canons of interpretation which the mystic invokes before the world of
appearances must be entirely relinquished as inadequate before such
extraordinary occurrences if the soul is at all to succeed in avoiding the
impediment constituted by error, and so achieve union with
God.
For St. John the chief
danger, however, in submitting to such communications --- and ultimately, the
diabolical stratagem is directed to this end --- lies in the soul’s subsequently
abandoning the principal means of union with God which we have found to be
faith. In failing to disregard these communications, the soul consequently
abandons that faith which takes for its object the unrevealed --- and in
so doing proceeds, not according to the only proximate means of union with God
--- which is faith --- but according to the understanding in relation to
its proper object which is revealed, and which St. John has already
demonstrated at length to have no proportion whatever to God. But what if this
supernatural communication does in fact proceed from God --- as very well it
may? Does the soul not err in withholding its assent? This would appear to be a
very cogent objection, for it would seem that by withholding its consent, the
soul would then be subjecting itself to the very liability it is expressly
committed to avoiding: error.
But this is not the case,
St. John answers. If a given communication does in fact proceed from God, then
it produces its effect on the soul independently of the soul’s judgment and
assent:
“... if [ any communication ] be of God, [
it ] produces its effect upon the soul at the very moment when it appears or is
felt, without giving the soul time or opportunity to deliberate whether it will
accept or reject it. For, even as God gives these things supernaturally, without
effort on the part of the soul, and independently of its capacity, even so,
likewise, without respect to its effort or capacity, God produces within it the
effect that He desires by means of such things, for this is a thing that is
wrought and brought to pass in the spirit passively ...” 46
But why, we must now ask,
would God continue in such supernatural communications if they are likely to be
the occasion of error, or worse yet, a defection from faith? Considered more
carefully, however, there is something subreptive in this objection that makes
it spurious, for if we look closely we find that it is really anachronistic. We
must answer that, essentially, God does not so continue. Through these
communications, we have seen, God is leading the beginner into the state
of contemplation, and in so doing, God initially cooperates with the limited
nature of the soul by introducing sensuous forms and images to the understanding
--- principally, St. John tells us, in the act of meditation. Gradually,
however, God leads the soul from the active state of meditation
together with its various forms and images, into the passive state of
contemplation in which the limited nature of sense in transcended
through, and in fact supplanted by, the simple assent of
faith.
To further emphasize the
point, St. John uses an interesting analogy to demonstrate the necessity of the
soul’s remaining passive and exercising no judgment whatever relative to such
apprehensions. We have, St. John argues, no less a paradigm than Scripture
itself:
“... although sayings and revelations may
be of God, we cannot always be sure of their meaning; for we can very easily be
greatly deceived by them because of our manner of understanding them. For they
are an abyss and a depth of the spirit, and to try to limit them to what we can
understand [would be in vain ] 47 ... let it be realized, therefore, that
there is no complete understanding of the sayings and things of God
...
48
[ whereas in themselves
they ] are always certain, they are not always so with respect to ourselves ...
One reason is the defective way in which we understand them ... To many of the
ancients many of the prophesies and locutions from God came not to pass as they
expected because they understood them after their own manner ... “
49
These communications, he
continues, are equally capable of being apprehended by the understanding without
the active mediation of either inner or outer sense, without corresponding
phenomena in the external order, and, moreover, without the active engagement of
the imagination:
“[ These ] four apprehensions of the
understanding ... we call purely spiritual, for they do not (as do those that
are corporeal and imaginary) communicate themselves to the understanding by way
of the corporeal sense; but, without the intervention of any inward or outward
corporeal sense, they present themselves to the understanding, clearly and
distinctly, by supernatural means, passively --- that is to say, without the
performance of any act or operation on the part of the soul itself ... “
50
Those apprehensions,
then, that were previously invested with qualities distinctly accessible to the
senses, are now received by the understanding with an intelligible
clarity and distinctness which parallels in the intellect the definition with
which these apprehensions were invested in order to be first accommodated to the
senses. It is, however, an intelligible definition, a definition no
longer concealed, as it were inchoate, within distinctly sensuous perimeters. In
a word, it is completely unconditioned by corporeity and exteriority. But how
can visions, locutions and the like can be rendered non-sensuous at all? Not
only non-sensuous, but purely intelligible? It would seem, at first glance, as
though St. John had inadvertently overstepped every criteria of meaning in his
pursuit of ultimate realities --- but a closer look reveals otherwise. The
solution to this enigma, we find, is suggested in certain terminological
transitions that occur within the text. To wit, at one point St. John describes
these four apprehensions --- including locutions and spiritual feelings
--- as “visions of the soul”, and “intellectual visions” respectively.
51 It would appear, then, that the terms “revelations,
“locutions”, etc., as we find them variously applied to these supernatural
apprehensions, are essentially employed analogically. 52 While some correlation, however attenuated, undeniably
obtains between the terms in the analogy --- otherwise it would be altogether
useless ---the complete amplitude of what is signified characteristically, even
essentially, exceeds an inflexible criterion of meaning. And this, after all, is
the whole purpose of adopting an analogy --- to verge upon an amplitude of
meaning accessible through no other means; by approximating --- not by achieving
--- a satisfactory meaning. And, to enunciate the obvious, a totally
satisfactory meaning would not require the use of analogy. So understood, the
terms “visions”, “locutions”, etc., to which St. John adverts, are intended to
approximate by way of analogy an aspect of reality that only remotely
corresponds to the meanings imbedded in a language that is not, and cannot be,
sufficient to the descriptive task. Language, predicated as it is upon shared
experiences, is simply too impoverished to accommodate the amplitude, the
infinite amplitude of the Absolute. Even the peripheral, the most marginal and
obscure experience of the Absolute, in some sense, for St. John, analogically
approximates a vision, or a locution, in its intelligible
clarity:
“... all these four apprehensions may be
called visions of the soul; for we term the understanding of the soul also its
sight. And since all these apprehensions are intelligible to the understanding,
they are described, in a spiritual sense, as ‘visible’. And thus the kinds of
intelligence that are formed in the understanding may be called intellectual
visions. 53 From all these the soul derives spiritual
vision or intelligence without any kind of apprehension concerning form, image,
or figure.” 54
But something more
remains to be said about the nature of these four apprehensions that figure so
largely and are treated so extensively in Book II of the Ascent. All of
them, we have found, are equally subsumed under the comprehensive term “vision”,
and this would seem to effectively attenuate any radical distinction between
them. There must, then, be a single characteristic universally shared among them
such that either the mode of reception or the mode of communication is the same
in all relative cases. And since a distinction, however tenuous, nevertheless
remains between these several communications --- in that they are clearly and
consistently differentiated within the schema St. John has developed --- this
unitary characteristic cannot be in the mode of communication; it must therefore
be found in a certain mode of reception. And this receptive mode, we have seen,
is described as a “vision” by St. John; a vision which may more properly be
designated an intuition since it is explicitly unmediated in nature. As
an intuition, then, this communication is non-sensuous; it is merely intuited
without mediation of any type, rational or sensory. Moreover, the clarity and
distinctness with which it is invested must not be mistaken as referring to the
content of the communication --- this still remains concealed from the
understanding --- rather, it is to be understood as referring to the
experience itself which is clearly and distinctly perceived, not
clearly and distinctly understood. This interpretation, I think, is clearly
borne out in the following passages:
“... although these visions ... cannot be
unveiled and be clearly seen in this life by the understanding, they can
nevertheless be felt in the substance of the soul ...
55 And although at times, when such knowledge
is given to the soul, words are used, the soul is well aware that it has
expressed no part of what it has felt; for it knows that there is no fit
name by which it can name it ...” 56
This very complex notion
of intelligible apprehensions or visions, then, is more readily understood as,
in clearly evidencing the characteristics of, an intuition: they are immediately
apprehended, perceived as pure experiences communicated to the soul
spiritually, and without any mediation whatever.
The Spurious and the Counterfeit: The Imperative of
Faith
But it is no less clear,
as St. John once again points out, that these four apprehensions are equally
susceptible to being contrived, or perhaps better yet, counterfeited,
diabolically. It is of the first order of importance, then, that some very clear
criteria be established to distinguish between the diabolical and the divine
relative to these apprehensions. Although St. John fails to provide us with a
clear answer on this subject, our most immediate question, I think, will
inevitably be --- why? Why indeed go to the trouble of establishing criteria to
distinguish between what is authentically divine, and what is spuriously
diabolical in origin? After all, St. John has forcefully argued that when
confronted with such supernatural apprehensions, the contemplative must
disregard them totally, both as inimical to faith which alone is the
proximate means to union, and as the possible occasion of error. If in fact,
then, the disregard is to be total, the source, or origin of such communications
would seem to be entirely irrelevant. One and all they are to be dismissed. The
mystic, in any event, is to act in disregard of them; however, St. John
proceeds to argue, the subjective effects of these apprehensions ---
independent of the resolute disregard of the mystic --- are to the soul who
is not yet totally withdrawn from the senses, that is to say, to the soul
who is just being brought into the preliminary stages of mystical union,
indications of the predilection of God who, through the accidental
qualities of these subjective effects, stirs the soul to a greater desire for
union. In a sense, then, God is understood as permitting these accidental
qualities, ex mero motu, to attend the effects being secretly wrought in
the soul. They are essentially signs to which invisible realities, in the way of
actual effects occurring in the soul, correspond. On the other hand, those
apprehensions effected diabolically, St. John contends, are in every sense
entirely fraudulent. That is to say, there is no authentic correspondence
between the sign and the reality it spuriously signifies: no effect
whatever is wrought in the soul --- no effect, that is, apart from the
soul’s subjective response to the sign. And this is worth
examining further.
For St. John, the only
criteria to which the contemplative can appeal in attempting to discern the
authenticity of what is perceived to be the divine invitation to mystical union
consists, at this early stage --- a stage, we will remember, in which the mystic
is yet susceptible to the senses --- largely in the subjective effects
produced in the soul by the respective apprehensions. Diabolical communications,
St. John argues, typically render the soul apathetic toward God; they
characteristically foster inordinate pride, a pride in which the soul sees these
communications as signal tokens of God’s unique predilection for it, and
consequently dispose the soul to be inclined toward precisely these types of
phenomena which, in effect, are so many inducements to abandon pure faith. The
soul must, then, and for this crucial reason, proceed in absolute detachment
from them, irrespective of its judgment concerning their source, and continue in
the darkness of faith alone. 57 But does this
really answer our question? In other words, if the soul is to prescind entirely
from, not only the apprehension, but its accidental and subjective effects as
well, how are we to reconcile this with the soul’s acceptance of God’s
invitation through the very effects he is committed to disregarding? The answer,
I suggest, is to be found in the very detachment that the soul is consistently
exhorted to exercise. Perhaps we can put it another way. The mystic, through the
accidental qualities that attend these phenomena, is, despite his intentional
disregard, nevertheless perceptibly influenced by them --- because they
actually and simultaneously produce a real effect in his soul. They are,
after all, and as we had said, authentic signs of invisible realities. On the
other hand, there are no realities whatsoever effected in the soul by the merely
fraudulent signs contrived by a diabolical agency. Both signs, then, may in fact
be safely ignored --- but only one produces an autonomous effect independent of
the of the assent of the will.
But what of the criterion
itself? Just how reliable can criteria be that appeal to what are fundamentally
subjective impressions? Indeed, it is a commonplace in ordinary discourse there
is hardly a less stringent or less qualified standard of discrimination to which
we can appeal than the simplicity of feeling, nothing more naive than the
subjectivity of sense. But the problem at hand is really quite an extraordinary
one, and while this objection may indeed hold true in ordinary states of
affairs, I think we are compelled to look at it more closely, certainly more
critically, relative to the mystic’s own unique predicament, for upon further
consideration, it turns out that what appears to be, on St. John’s part, an
unsophisticated model of judgment, inevitably emerges as the only possible
criterion available through the logic of the account. Our difficulty in
accepting this criterion, I suggest, vanishes when, by simple substitution, we
understand by the ambiguous term “feeling”, the more accurate term “intuition”
.We must bear in mind, even as we had argued earlier, that what we are in fact
dealing with in this type of supernatural apprehension is ultimately a pure,
unmediated experience. Not, of course, relative to the actual
effects being produced in the soul --- since these are accomplished
“secretly”--- but rather, relative to the accidental qualities attending
these undisclosed effects. These accidents, concurrent with, but unessential to,
the effects being actually achieved, are a matter of experience --- and
experience remains the only criteria available to judgment. All the canons of
rational discrimination, we will remember, including every judgment inflected by
reason, have been sublated according to the uncompromising demands of the via
negativa. Reason, then, antecedently abolished, can pronounce no judgment,
for it can apply no logic to elements of experience to which it has no access.
For the soul reduced to
the passive simplicity of experience-only, there remains merely the
intuition, or in the words of St. John, the feeling, in which this
experience consists --- and it is this simple subjective perception which alone
can possibly constitute a criterion by which the soul is capable of evaluating
the several types of experiences or apprehensions to which it is subject in this
obscure night of the spirit. The distinct and special mode of
supernatural understanding which we have discussed above is, as we had suggested
earlier, really a parenthetical treatment of error which St. John addresses to
emphasize the imperative of pure faith in the soul’s journey to union. In a
sense it is propadeutic to better understanding the general and obscure
mode of supernatural understanding which is really the aspect that is of
particular interest to us in developing a mystical epistemology, for here we are
dealing with the direct, if confused, intuition of God. Unlike its distinct and
special counterpart, this general and obscure mode begins, surprisingly enough,
in the soul’s active practice of meditation prior to its being brought
into the advanced state of contemplation. And it is here that the relation
between meditation and contemplation first becomes
clear.
The “General” and the “Obscure” Mode of
Understanding
Where the distinct and
special mode of supernatural communication had its origin solely in the
divine or diabolical initiative independent of the dispositional attitude of the
soul --- which was, in fact, exhorted to be entirely passive to these
communications --- the general and obscure mode, on the other hand,
begins in the discursive act of meditation. Here the mystic endeavors to
achieve, through increasingly articulated acts of reflection, a greater
knowledge, and therefore a greater love of God (the two are clearly equated by
St. John throughout the text). This knowledge and concomitant love of God,
increasingly attending each particular discursive act, and amplified in the
totality of these acts, through repetition ultimately generates what St. John
calls a continuous and habitual knowledge and love of God as its familiar
object:
“... the end of reasoning and meditation on
the things of God is the gaining of some knowledge and love of God, and each
time that the soul gains this through meditation, it is an act; and just as many
acts, of whatever kind, end by forming a habit in the soul, just so, many of
these acts of loving knowledge which the soul has been making one after another
from time to time come through repetition to be so continuous in it that they
become habitual ... And thus that which aforetime the soul was gaining gradually
through its labor of meditation upon particular facts has now through practice
... become converted and changed into a habit and substance of loving knowledge,
of a general kind, and not distinct and particular as before.” 58
What St. John appears to
be saying is that the various discrete acts of meditation, by virtue of
repetition, coalesce into a general sense of the numinous. Although generated
collectively by these individual and discrete repetitive acts, this
comprehensive sense of the numinous appears to transcend each of them in their
particularity. The soul thus comes, through practice and habit, to what St. John
calls a confused and general knowledge of God which may better be described as
an intensely focused attentiveness to --- and consequently a receptivity towards
--- that of which it has yet only obscure knowledge. 59
Once again, and
typically, the precise mechanics involved in this psychological transition
remain unaddressed by --- because in a real sense they are unnecessary to ---
St. John, and remain merely to speculated upon. By now, however, St. John has
provided us with the necessary heuristic concepts to assist us in understanding
this transition more completely. Having transcended the discrete and particular
acts characteristic of meditation, the soul must be understood as having
effectively transcended meditation itself, together with the specific and
determinate forms apprehended within it. In transcending these distinct forms,
then, the soul has transcended the activity itself by which they were
acquired --- and as a result has simultaneously entered into the passive
state of contemplation. In other words, the general and numinous sense that
resulted from a continuous and habitual knowledge and love of God has itself
resulted in an epistemological transformation in which not only is the
particularity of form transcended, but the activity that produced that form as
well. The result, whatever it may be, cannot be an epistemological state
characterized by a type of activity that has already been transcended. It must,
then, as a result of this transition, be passive. And not simply passive,
but as a consequence of the transcendence of distinct and clear form, it must of
necessity be general and confused relative to God. In other words, in
transcending this clearly discursive function which passes from one particular
to another, the soul at once and necessarily undergoes a cognitive
transformation resulting in, and characterized by, indeterminate generality ---
a generality in which the penumbra of hitherto distinct particulars merge into,
effectively become continuous with, others in a way that a discursive faculty is
no longer able to accommodate. And it is precisely this indeterminate type of
cognition, this indistinct epistemological state precursive to contemplation,
which St. John understands as the general and obscure
mode.
But that this mode of
understanding is supernaturally communicated to the soul --- and St. John
maintains that it is --- is not entirely clear in the text, for we have seen it
to essentially result from a process of repetition, practice, and habit, in all
of which the soul itself appears to be the principal agent. But by the same
token it is no less clear that in having transcended meditation the soul has
simultaneously transcended what is fundamentally a formal manifold --- a matrix
of distinct forms --- the features of which, however embellished by the
imagination with supernatural qualities, remain natural objects addressed
in the discursive activity of meditation. That is to say, the object taken in
meditation, however meticulously constructed to represent our conception of a
supernatural reality, is always invested with distinct formal features deriving
from, and only occurring within, nature. They are, one and all, distinct,
finite, temporal, and invariably represented as material. And necessarily so,
otherwise they would be incapable of being apprehended by sensuous imagination
as the synthetic faculty operant in every meditation. Consequently, in
transcending, in going beyond, natural objects properly addressed in the
discursive act of meditation --- regardless of the manner in which this
is accomplished --- the cognitive soul has already, and necessarily,
passed on to supernatural objects of contemplation. Nor can the
soul be the author of these supernatural objects, still less the agent behind
this transition, for as a natural agent it cannot produce supernatural effects,
that is to say, effects which are categorically disproportionate to its nature.
This kind of transition simply does not lie within the natural province of the
soul. It must, therefore, be divinely initiated. And this is precisely
the point argued by St. John who maintains that it is God alone who, from
beginning to end, moves the soul --- which, through the prompting of grace,
cooperates with God --- to union with him through infused contemplation.
60
This is not to say,
paradoxically, that the epistemological transition from meditation to
contemplation is immediately recognized by, even as it is enacted within, the
mystic. It is not, as we may suppose, a sudden quantum leap between utterly
incommensurable categories, but rather a gradual transition from distinct and
clear, to confused and general knowledge:
“... when this condition first begins, the
soul is hardly aware of this knowledge, and that for two reasons. First, this
loving knowledge is apt at the beginning to be very subtle and delicate, and
almost imperceptible to the senses. Secondly, when the soul has been accustomed
to that other exercise of meditation, which is wholly perceptible, it is
unaware, and hardly conscious, of this other new and imperceptible condition,
which is purely spiritual ... 61 This general knowledge is at times so
subtle and delicate, particularly when it is most pure and simple and perfect,
most spiritual and most interior, that although the soul is occupied therein, it
can neither realize it nor perceive it ... [ in fact ] when this knowledge is
purest and simplest and most perfect, the understanding is least conscious of it
and thinks of it as most obscure.” 62
Apparently, then, in the
transition from mediation to contemplation, this general and obscure knowledge
is so subtly introduced, so insusceptible to determinate understanding, that it
often escapes not so much a conscious realization, as understanding altogether.
The soul only implicitly, tentatively, experiences God, understanding
neither that which it only perceptibly experiences, nor how it
experiences this obscure intuition of the Absolute. When this “knowledge”, as
St. John calls this intuitive apprehension, is “purest”, or entirely
imperceptible to sense, the transition from meditation to contemplation is
effectively complete. Cognition transcends the perimeters that circumscribe ---
and in so defining, limit --- the forms, figures and conceptions of natural
understanding to which the experiences in contemplation remain forever and
necessarily opaque. It is the “fleeting touch of union” of which St. John
speaks, the pre-noetic confrontation with the Absolute before which
understanding is abolished to nature.
1 AMC
2.8.4
2 AMC 2.8.5 cf.
1.4.4-7
3 AMC 2.4.4 also
cf. 2.26.18
4 AMC 1.13.11+12
also cf. 1 Cor. 2.9 & 2 Cor. 6.10
5 AMC
2.1.1
6 Understood as
encompassing the world of men and matter, as well as the celestial hierarchy of
created spirits ( cf. AMC 2.12.3+4 ).
7 see page ___
of this commentary
8 AMC 2.1.1 ,
DNS 2.23.2
9 Jn.
14.6
10 Jn. 8.44, Gen
3.1-15
11 AMC
2.11.3
12 AMC
2.10.4
13 Rom.
10.14-17
14
AMC 2.3.1 also
cf. 2.9.1
15
This
surprisingly modern epistemological analysis, by the way, precedes the great
17th century empiricists by more than a century, and is treated in
much greater detail by Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 AD) some four hundred
years prior to Locke and Hume. Cf. S.T. I Q.84 Art. 1-8, Q.85 Art. 1-3 and in
passim. Also, De Potent. Dei Q.3 Art. 5.
16 AMC
2.3.2+3
17
Heb.11.1
18
1 Cor.
2.9
19 cf. AMC
2.22.11, 2.27.1+4, 2.29.12
20 Books I, II,
& III of AMC respectively
21 AMC 2.6.1+2;
cf. DNS 2.21.11
22 AMC
2.6.1-4
23 AMC
3.2.4
24
AMC
3.16.2
25 AMC
2.6.6
26 AMC
2.7.4,7,+11; cf. DNS 2.4.2 & SC 17.11+12
27 AMC
2.7.4+7
28 AMC
2.2.1
29 AMC
2.8.4-5
30
AMC
2.9.1
31 AMC
2.10.2-4
32
AMC
2.10.2
33 e.g. AMC
2.8.4-5, 1.3.3, & 2.3.2+3
34 AMC
2.12.2-3
35 AMC
2.10.4
36 AMC 2.11.3
emphasis added
37 AMC 2.11.7 cf.
2 Cor. 11.14
38 AMC 2.11.2,5,7
& ff.
39 AMC 2.11.2
& 2.19.5+11
40
AMC 2.12.5
& 2.17.3
41 AMC
2.11.9
42 AMC 2.11.2
& 2.26.18
43 Jn.
8.44
44
1 Pet.
5.8
45 AMC
2.11.3
46 AMC
2.11.6
47 AMC
2.19.10
48 AMC
2.20.6
49 AMC
2.19.1
50 AMC
2.23.1
51 AMC
2.23.2&3
52
AMC
2.23.3
53
AMC
2.23.2
54 AMC
2.23.3
55
AMC
2.24.4
56 AMC 2.26.4
emphases added
57 AMC
2.24.8
58 AMC
2.14.2
59 AMC
2.15.2-5
60 AMC 1.1.5
etc.
61 AMC
2.14.7
62 AMC
2.14.8
(Continued below)
III
The last faculty remaining to be discussed is memory. It is
the subject of the third and final book of the Ascent and with it we will
effectively conclude our examination of the fundamental principles presupposed
in our analysis of St. John's metaphysics in Part II of our commentary.
Our approach, to be sure, in dealing with memory, will be much the same as in
our treatment of the will and understanding, and for this reason we shall be
spared much unnecessary detail. But first, let us be clear about what St. John
understands by memory, and in answering this, we shall at once discover
the reason for the brevity of our account. For St. John, memory is simply the
repository of forms received through the five senses 1 and in its
subordinate capacity as imagination, it is capable of variously
synthesizing these forms and producing still other forms with which the soul had
hitherto been unacquainted, at least in their synthetic unity. In effect, then,
memory is the subsumption of nature under the synthetic activity of imagination.
All the imperatives, then, that apply to nature, and all the principles involved
in its negation prior to union, equally apply to nature as internalized in
memory and synthesized in imagination. Very briefly, then, since the memory is
principally occupied with retaining and synthesizing various sensuous forms
ultimately deriving from nature, we can succinctly state that, as Spirit, God is
contrary to nature, and conversely, as subsumed under nature, form --- delimited
and finite --- is contrary to God. 2 The soul, then, is once again constrained to subject itself
--- this time relative to the faculty of memory --- to the rigors of the via
negativa. just as it had done relative to the will and understanding, in
order to eliminate
within itself that
contrariety to God which is preclusive of union. It must become transformed,
together with the will and the understanding, into that otherness of God to
nature, and as a consequence, rendered other to its own natural
economy.
Once more we find that
two levels of negation are discernible in this transformation: the negation
of nature according to memory, in which the soul ceases to appropriate and
synthesize forms variously derived from the senses, thus negating nature. And,
implicitly following from this first order of negation, the negation of
memory according to nature in which the memory, having ceased from
appropriating and synthesizing these sensuously derived forms, has effectively
ceased in its natural function qua mnemonic. This resulting state of absolute
negativity --- the categorical negation of nature and memory --- is, for St.
John, simultaneously the transformation of the memory into the negativity of
hope, its corresponding theological virtue which is understood by St. John to
essentially constitute a state of radical dispossession.
3
There is, interestingly
enough, one notable exception --- and this only occurs in the Alcalà edition of
1618 --- to the rule which requires the memory to be completely emptied of all
forms and images: and this is the Sacred Humanity of Christ who, as both True
God and True Man, remains, for St. John, the most proper object of both
meditation and contemplation.4 However true this may be, to leave our answer simply at this
is to gloss over some very real difficulties that arise as a result of this
exception, for a good deal more than the simple humanity of Christ is insinuated
into our account through it; indeed, through a broader consideration, it
implicitly involves elements which have been found to be antagonistic to union
elsewhere in the account. This type of incongruity occurs once again in the
Dark Night of the Soul, and while I think these are significant features
that must be dealt with, the broader issues from which they arise must be
addressed more in terms of St. John’s own historical context than from any
strictly epistemological consideration. Our discussion of this apparent
inconsistency, inviting though it may be at the present, must wait until our
examination of the Dark Night of the Soul where the opportunity will
better present itself within another context altogether.
We have already found,
much in line with our previous analyses, that the memory must be negated of all
knowledge, form, and figure in order to be transformed into its corresponding
theological virtue of hope which is explicitly negative:
“For all possession is contrary to hope,
which, as St. Paul says, belongs to that which is not possessed. 5 Wherefore, the more the memory
dispossesses itself, the greater is its hope, and the more it has of hope, the
more it has of union with God ... and it hopes most when it is most completely
dispossessed, and when it shall be perfectly dispossessed, it will remain with
the perfect possession of God in Divine union.” 6
This is a somewhat
misleading passage, for one gets the impression that when the negative moment is
actualized in perfect hope, this alone is sufficient to effect union with God.
But we have clearly seen that this is not the case. There is no ‘causal’
connection between attaining the state of negation and the realization of union,
still less a necessary transition logically implied, as we shall later
see. For the moment let us simply say that in achieving the state of perfect
dispossession which St. John calls hope, the soul is not for that reason, and at
once, brought to union with God. Rather, as we had seen in the case of love
(will) and faith (understanding), it is only brought into a state of
proximity to God --- the state of absolute negativity not only relative
to nature, but to itself as well.
This persistent emphasis
on the negative dimensions of experience within the several ‘nights’ that we
have examined is, in this concluding chapter of the Ascent, clearly
explained as ultimately having one purpose:
“... all means must be proportioned to
the end; that is to say, they must have some connection and resemblance with the
end, such as is enough and sufficient for the desired end to be attained through
them.” 7
Now, we have seen that no
positive commensurability is capable of being established between metaphysically
incommensurable categories, between the means and the end --- how then, we must
ask, is this statement to be understood? This passage, I think, is extremely
interesting in several respects, and before passing on to a consideration
of our own immediate question, I think it would be worthwhile for us to consider
another issue, not entirely tangential from our present purpose; an issue that
really ought to be addressed, if only briefly, in light of what St. John has
said above. Understanding this first will provide us with a broader perspective
of the constant dialectic that occurs throughout the text. And it is this: a
kind of teleology is suggested in the account which, positively considered,
ultimately finds its ground in what, for St. John, is man’s essentially
reflective ontology in relation to the Absolute, as image of the Absolute
--- an Absolute itself understood in terms of love. We had addressed this point
briefly earlier. While some degree of commensurability is capable of being
established between man and God through love, love itself --- through which
alone this commensurability is possible --- is not an inherent metaphysical
feature of man’s essential ontology independent of the Absolute. Love in fact
is the essential ontological feature of man qua image of
God, but for St. John, as we shall later see, man’s essential ontology is of
itself the mere possibility of reflection --- given the
Reflected. And this is to say that the soul is, substantivally considered, not
in itself an autonomous being, but rather, being-contingent-upon-the-Absolute
--- that is to say, being heteronymously derived, and not self-subsistent
apart from the Absolute. And this, of course, is not merely entirely consistent
with a traditional theological understanding of the nature of the soul --- but
in fact is an expression of it. In other words, it is not the case that the soul
of itself is understood to be commensurable with God, but that the soul
as the image actively reflecting God is, and it is seen to be
commensurable only insofar as it does in fact reflect the Absolute. And this, in
turn, is essentially to say that man’s being, fundamentally considered, cannot,
for St. John, be established independently of God. Consequently, the authentic
nature of man’s being is only teleologically actualized through his
participation in God --- and this direct participation is what St. John
ultimately understands in the notion of union. We will discuss this in much
greater detail the second part of our commentary.
Means and Ends
Returning once again to
the point from which we departed, we had said that since no positive
commensurability can be established between metaphysically incommensurable
categories, between the means and the end, how are we to understand St. John
when he insists that the “means must be proportioned to the end”, and sufficient
for the desired end to be attained through them? It would appear that the
‘means’ of which St. John is speaking are, after careful examination, the three
theological virtues that we have been addressing in one form or another all
along. And St. John has been unequivocally clear about the negative nature of
these virtues. The sort of proportion, then, that St. John appears to be calling
for might well be more appositely described as negative commensurability;
a commensurability achieved through abolishing all contrariety to God in the
via negativa, and simultaneously positing at each successive moment in
the account a theological virtue, explicitly negative in nature, through which
alone, he has repeatedly insisted, the soul attains to a state of
proximity to God. And this is further to say that what we confront here,
in effect, is a kind of teleological negativity; a movement toward establishing
commensurability negatively; not so much, as St. John inadvertently
misleads us here, in the form of resemblance, as in the absence of
contrariety.
Let us take a different
tack. Through these various negative moments, or ‘nights’, the soul only becomes
commensurable with the Absolute inasmuch as it is no longer
incommensurable with it. It is not so much commensurability understood as
rendering the soul to be what God is --- this is not possible, for God is
infinitely inexhaustible --- but not to be what God is not. In other
words, the soul achieves proximity to God negatively. It proximates, is
commensurable with God, not in that it possesses characteristics in common with
God, but in that it does not possess certain characteristics that God
also does not possess --- and this essentially is the concept of negative
commensurability. Implicit, of course, in the concept of negative
commensurability is the logic of negative predication. According to this logic,
we are unable to derive logical warrant for ascribing a community of properties
or attributes, positively considered, to intrinsically different things simply
because they share identical predicates negatively considered. Not-red can be
yellow or blue. Given something characterized as Not-red, we have no
logical warrant whatever to understand this as indicating blue rather
than yellow, or any other color in the spectrum for that matter. In fact, we
have no warrant whatever of predicating anything at all of it, outside of the
fact that it is Not-Red. Negative predicates, in other words, provide us with no
information whatever about being positively considered.
Perhaps we can shed more
light on this fundamental feature of mysticism by considering another dimension
to the problem. It is very difficult to see how hope as a virtual state of
negativity on the one hand, can be proportioned to God who, on the other, is the
plenitude of being. To attempt to answer this in terms of negative
commensurability is not to establish proportion or resemblance, as we have just
seen, but merely, and at best, non-contrariety. How then is ‘proportion’ or
‘resemblance’ effected? To answer this we must return for a moment to our
previous understanding of the virtue of hope. As the opposite of possession ---
which for the memory consists in the retention of created (natural) knowledge,
form, and figure --- hope may equally be seen to be the implicit opposite of
nature. And as we had seen earlier, the opposite of nature in the metaphysical
understanding of St. John is spirit --- which is both proximate
and similar, and therefore, proportioned to God. This very clearly follows if by
spirit we understand not-nature as synonymous with spirit --- and
this synonymy is unmistakably implied throughout the account. Whatever
not-nature understood as spirit is, it is something positively predicated of
God. St. John, then, argues consistently when he maintains that the three
theologicalvirtues are in fact proportionate to God, and therefore the only
proximate means to mystical union with him.
A Matter of Form
At this point, the memory
has been negated of all created knowledge, form, and figure; it no longer
archives, reproduces, or synthesizes the store of data it initially acquired
through the senses, but rather assumes an attitude of totally passive
receptivity. But what, precisely, is the memory receptive to in this
state of negation? On the one hand it cannot be phenomena delivered by reason or
sense, both having been antecedently abolished. And yet, on the other hand, what
are we left with if all figure and form have been categorically abolished along
with reason and sense? But, St. John argues, they have not been so ---
except relative to matter and reason.. It is not the case that the concept
of form itself has been
abolished --- indeed, it is a fundamental principle of the scholastic reasoning
with which St. John was so well acquainted that God himself is, in the words of
St. Thomas Aquinas, “of His essence a form, and not composed of matter
and form.”
8 What has been abolished, rather,
is form as limitation --- a limitation specific to nature and coterminous
with matter or co-conceptual within reason. It is, to extrapolate upon Aquinas’s
own argument, form that is not self-subsisting, but dependent upon matter as the
individuating principle of the form.
But the notion itself of
form, as preeminently exemplified in God, is not limited to matter and reason.
And it is this type of form which, St. John argues, is passively received either
as purely spiritual intuitions, or, in the case of those mediated by sensuous
form and figure, received not according to their various sensuous
configurations, but rather, according to the spiritual
form
9 latent in these impressions. The soul, St. John tells us,
remains indifferent to the accidents, or accidental qualities if you will, that
attend these essentially spiritual perceptions, for the memory has been
effectively negated to all capacity for (natural) form and figure.
Regrettably, St. John does not ---
perhaps by the very nature of the experience, cannot --- elaborate on the nature
of these spiritual forms. I think that the latter case is most likely, for in
themselves they appear to be, from the general drift of his argument, absolutely
pure intuitions, immediate experiences that, as such, are essentially
recalcitrant to language --- which, we had said earlier, presumes shared
experiences to its intelligibility. I also think it unlikely that the term
form relative to spirit, in the way St. John conjoins the two,
denotes the type of specificity and distinctness we ordinarily associate with
our sensible apprehension of material compositions. It is, I think, much more
likely that the term form, at least in the present context, denotes
something a good deal more ambiguous, something more in the way of a ‘distinct
spiritual impression’ or a distinct intuition entailing nothing more in the way
of perceptible phenomena.
This interpretation seems
to be borne out by St. John’s insistence that the memory in the state of
negation is nevertheless capable of recollecting these spiritual forms of
uncreated knowledge as simple noetic intuitions:
“Now, after the soul has experienced one of
these apprehensions, it can recall it whenever it will; and this not by the
effigy and image that the apprehension has left in the bodily sense, for, since
this is of bodily form, as we say, it has no capacity for spiritual forms; but
because it recalls it intellectually and spiritually, by means of that form
which it has left impressed upon the soul which is likewise a formal or
spiritual form ...”
10
These forms, then, of
which St. John speaks, appear to be sheer noetic intuitions containing
nothing analogous to the clear, distinct, and determinate phenomena apprehended
by the senses and which we characteristically understand as instantiating form.
The intuitive character of these specialized forms is most clearly expressed in
the element of experience necessary to their being
recollected:
“... by no form, image, or figure which can
be impressed upon the soul does the memory recall these [spiritual forms], for
these touches and impressions of union with the Creator have no
form, but only by the effects which they have produced upon it of light,
love, joy, and spiritual renewal, and so forth ...” 11
That St. John has, in
this passage, encountered some terminological difficulties as a consequence of
his attempt to inflect the rigorous and basically inflexible limitations in
language, is obvious, for in attempting to describe these essentially
indescribable (intuitive) spiritual forms --- that is to say, in an effort to
accommodate them, to make them accessible, to reason --- he simultaneously and
paradoxically describes them as having no form at all. This apparent
contradiction seems to result from his having failed to clearly articulate the
meaning of “spiritual form” in and of itself; especially as it is to be
distinguished from our understanding of the word “form” in ordinary discourse.
In fact, the term form in the second sense (“... have no form ...”)
refers to our understanding of the word as it applies to distinct, clear, and
sensuously embodied apprehensions --- and not to the noetic intuitions
themselves. This contention, I think, is particularly borne out by St. John’s
insistence that the memory recalls these spiritual forms “only by the
effects which they have produced upon it”, which he then goes on to
enumerate them as light, love, joy, renewal, etc.
Now, implied in all this
is a latent connection between recollection, or memory, and knowledge --- and
not just knowledge, but a particular kind of knowledge: uncreated
knowledge. And this
connection clearly implicates the element of experience. This uncreated
knowledge communicated to the soul and subsequently archived in memory is not
retrieved abstractly in the way that, say, geometric theorems are, nor in the
remote way that empirically acquired knowledge (which is no longer concurrent
with the experience through which it was initially acquired) is. While the
form of each of these types remains, in a manner of speaking, resident in
memory, the matter to which the form corresponds clearly does not:
neither the line which in essence we spatially conceptualize, and
from which we extrapolate a purely rational geometric definition, nor yet
impressions of sensible objects with which we once had immediate,
empirical acquaintance and now retrieve as remote from the material
objects themselves. What we recall is the form of the object, and not,
obviously, the object itself which is no longer concurrent with the
form.
This, however, is not to
say that the form and the object can no longer coincide. Clearly they can ---
but only upon a renewed experience of the object. And this coincidence,
or concurrence remains only as long as the experience itself remains. For St.
John, however, the recollection of these forms is independent of a concurrent
experience of the matter from which these mere forms are derived. In
other words, the object is only formally retained in the
soul.
On the other hand, the
spiritual forms of which St. John speaks appear to essentially produce an
effect on the soul, the matter of which is the experience of the
effect, which to recall, in turn, is to renew the experience in which the effect
consists. And this --- a recollection concurrent with the experience from which
it evolved --- is only possible because it is neither abstractly, nor remotely
retrieved from memory; rather, the recollection entails an immediate experience
because it is essentially the soul’s experience of itself, or more
precisely, the self modified by the effects of grace introduced by these
spiritual forms which now inhere subsistently in the soul and as such are
always concurrent with it as intuitions of itself.
As we now clearly see, it
is not the case that will, understanding, and memory are categorically
abolished: that the soul no longer wills, or has cognitive activity, or has
remembrance (as much of the language we have used thus far appears to imply).
The soul in fact is annihilated --- but not unto itself; rather it
is annihilated relative to the natural exercise of these faculties;
faculties which, in the end, are not categorically abolished in and of
themselves. Rather, the annihilation of which St. John speaks consists in the
transformation of these natural faculties into their corresponding
theological virtues which, utilizing the epistemological structures framed by
nature, 12 supplants the natural activity (unable to accommodate
supernatural phenomena) with supernatural activity which alone is sufficient to
it.
An Explication of the Notion of the
“Faculties”
Now that we have arrived
at a rudimentary understanding of the faculties involved, it is equally
important to examine the relation between them. To begin with, understanding and
memory, as St. John points out, both in their natural capacities, and in the
state of negation, are not of themselves autonomous; rather, he seems to imply,
they appear to be unified in their subordination to the will.13 Here, in this last division of the Ascent, St. John
finally concludes his treatment of the soul in its sensuous economy with some
closing remarks on that faculty through which the soul, as an organic unity,
attains to the consummate state of perfection, or beatitude in God. It remains
only to be demonstrated that the three faculties of the soul --- will,
understanding, and memory --- are in fact integrated, unified, in the will’s
transformation into the cardinal theological virtue of love. In treating of the
relation of the four passions --- joy, hope, grief, and fear --- to the three
theological virtues, St. John argues the following:
“... these four passions of the soul are so
closely and intimately united to one another that the actual direction of one is
the virtual direction of the others; and if one be actually recollected the
other three will virtually and proportionately be recollected likewise. For if
the will rejoice in anything, it will as a result hope for the same thing ...
Wherefore ... wheresoever one of these passions is, thither will go likewise the
whole soul and the will and the other faculties ...” 14
Although at this point he
is arguably dealing only with the passions, a broader understanding of the
dialectic involved is clearly warranted, for according to the gist of this
argument, the nature of the will is such that the remaining faculties are
unified through the intentionality of the will, and it is precisely this
facultative union through intentionality which we must now attempt to grasp
before venturing any further. What St. John appears to be implying at this point
is simply this: in the state of negation into which the contemplative has
entered, we are unable to understand either the aspirations of hope or the
convictions of faith apart from the object of intention first appropriated
through the will. Through an irreducible act of will (love), an act divinely
inspired, the soul appropriates to the understanding the articles of faith
relating to the object of its love, and these articles of faith, in turn, are
archived in memory to inform hope. And this is simply to say that understanding
and memory, faith and hope, acquire a facultative union through the
intentionality of the will, relative both to the exercise of each faculty in
accordance with the intentionality of the will, and in the object
respectively acquired by each faculty subsequent to this exercise. In other
words, the soul hopes only for what it loves, and the object of hope is only
accessible through faith which is fundamentally appropriated through an act of
will. Delete any element and the dialectic is incomplete, the intelligibility of
each virtue vanishes. In short, we cannot understand hope apart from love, nor
faith apart from hope.
But let us carry this a
step further; in fact, to its logical conclusion. God, as we have seen, has
clearly been equated with love by St. John throughout the account: man is made
in the image of God, and this image of God in man is love. These faculties,
then, so unified in love, are at least implicitly unified in God. But
there are, in fact, two levels of unity corresponding, respectively, to the
unity in God only implicit in the state of nature, and the unity in God rendered
explicit in what St. John calls supernatural
transformation.
Perhaps we can best
summarize his line of reasoning this way: As latent in the state of nature,
any love is an implicit unity in God through the created participation of
the soul in God as the imago Dei. The soul’s ability to love derives
from, is radicated in, its created nature as the image of God who is
love; consequently the unity of the faculties in any love implicitly owes this
unity to God. In other words, the unifying nature of love is only latently
discernible within and remotely ascribable to, God. The soul, in fact, is
unified in its love for anything. That this unifying agency of love
derives essentially from the soul’s ontological status as the image of God, is only implicit in its
nature.
As explicit in
transformation, however, love is that reflective resonance become explicit
between the Imaged and the image --- the unifying nature of love is seen to
derive immediately, essentially, from God in the soul’s noetic realization of
itself as image of the Absolute. In this state of transformation, the soul’s
unifying capacity qua image, and that in which it is unified, are explicitly one
and the same --- and this sameness is nothing less than union in God. The soul
is no longer unified in its love for the other of God in nature, a love
metaphysically constrained from union by the ontological disparity between the
lover and the loved, in the absence of that reflection in which the lover
realizes his being to be one with the Beloved, a reflective existence
inseparably bound to the Reflected. Rather, it has realized itself as the
reflection-of-God into God, and it is in dealing with this divine
reflexivity to which St. John, on increasingly explicit levels, devotes the rest
of his treatises, all of which fundamentally derive from the mystical doctrines
and presuppositions which we have examined in the Ascent of Mount Carmel.
It is, in effect, the soul’s ascent to the mount of the transfiguration; the
realization of the reflection of divinity lying deeply, profoundly, in the soul
of every man and woman. The nature of this union, this reflexivity or resonance
that is the apotheosis of the soul in God, now remains to be examined in Part
II.
1 AMC
3.2.4
2 We must not
conclude, however, that the notion of form does not apply to God. Indeed,
it does not apply to God as limitative. But as Self-subsisting and
unindividuated by matter, form is, for St. John, as well as for his predecessors
in the Scholastic tradition, clearly ascribable to God. Cf. ST Q.3
art.2
3
AMC 3.7.2 &
3.11.2
4 AMC 3.2.14
(Editio Princeps, Alcala, 1618)
5
Heb.
11.1
6 AMC
3.7.2
7
AMC
2.8.2
8
cf. ST Q.3
art.2
9 AMC 3.14.1
& 2. This rather perplexing notion reappears in Part II where it
becomes somewhat clearer.
10
AMC
3.14.1
11 AMC 3.14.2,
emphasis added
12
Which is simply
another way of saying that grace builds upon nature.
13 AMC
3.16.2
14 AMC 3.16.5
& 6
(continued below)
PART II
THE METAPHYSICS
An Enchiridion to Reality
It should be reasonably clear by now that the Ascent of
Mount Carmel --- and, for that matter, a significant part of the Dark
Night of the Soul --- is not, nor was it intended to be, a theoretical
treatise in speculative mysticism. It is, as we had insisted from the beginning,
first and foremost an enchiridion, a practical guide for the contemplative. Each
of these complimentary treatises were, in fact, written largely upon the
insistence of St. John’s notable contemporary, St. Teresa of Avila, and were
primarily intended for the use of the contemplative nuns of the newly reformed
Order of Discalced Carmelites. Hence, St. John’s almost inordinate preoccupation
with the relevance of such practical issues as the via negativa, the
relation of the theological virtues to mystical experience, natural and
supernatural modes of understanding, diabolical deception, and the notions of
judgment and error.
I think it is very
clearly the case that St. John could have written otherwise and dealt
cogently with issues of speculative interest to theologians and philosophers
alike, but in a greater sense I think he would have viewed this as an altogether
gratuitous exercise. The speculative aspects of mysticism --- while of the
greatest interest to the epistemologist --- are entirely aside from the point.
They are, in a very real sense, superfluous to the mystic who has not merely
speculated upon, but experienced the Absolute and who, in light of this
experience, has consequently been completely reoriented to the priorities
pertaining to his existence. Speculation is well and fine inasmuch as reason is
held --- among the tenets of Christian doctrine --- to pervade the universe.
This type of speculative enterprise may indeed result in a legitimate, if
limited and remote, understanding of the correspondence between constituent
aspects of the Absolute --- but this type of speculation is essentially
pointless, in a larger sense even meaningless, before the actual experience
itself. To wit: it may be of the greatest interest to me to endeavor to explore
and synthesize physics, chromatics, and ophthalmology in order to arrive at an
understanding of the experience of the color purple which --- being
color-deficient --- I have never seen, and am unable to see. But were I suddenly
to acquire adequate color perception, I would, I think, dispense with this
exercise altogether in favor of the experience itself beside which the analysis
is only, merely, academic to my purpose, and in any event would yield nothing of
that unique chromatic perception to me. Nothing, in other words, short of the
experience itself, would suffice. Now, while my sudden experience of the color
purple will not radically reorient my life, the direct experience of God, I
suggest, will. For it involves a good deal more than the
characteristically brief experience itself described by the mystics. It
effectively serves to validate, to authenticate, everything which faith binds to
the existence of God. And this in turn will decisively reorient my priorities
subsequent to this experience --- a reorientation that will result in an
entirely new and different perspective corresponding to no longer a perceived,
but an experienced Reality. To the mystic, then, the emphasis is
inexorably practical, for it is not merely theory, but reality --- in fact the
ens realissimum that he has encountered vis-à-vis God. Does this, then,
abrogate faith? Not in the least. Indeed, for St. John faith has been the
indispensable means to this realization.
But St. John’s treatise,
we must equally insist, is not simply a practical guide to mystical union
--- although it was written as such. For us, as we had stated in the beginning,
it is also a propadeutic to the possibility of articulating a mystical
epistemology. And while St. John clearly did not understand himself to be
formulating an epistemological doctrine in the writing of his several treatises,
there are, nevertheless --- and quite necessarily --- clear epistemological
elements, assumptions, and presuppositions implicit within the texts which lend
themselves to the development a coherent mystical epistemology. That they do so
at all is no small tribute to the profound insight, the keen intellect and
precise reasoning of their author. In fairness we must say that St. John clearly
understood his task as being descriptive, and not primarily analytical. He was
concerned with describing --- as much as inherently is possible --- the mystical
experience in all its myriad and luminous facets; and when, periodically, he
does undertake to analyze the concepts involved, it is done of expedience, and
only to supplement the account, to substantiate the description, and to
demonstrate both its logical nature and its clear correspondence with orthodox
doctrine. And this is to say that since the epistemological elements in St.
John’s doctrine are implicit only, it is the task of the reader to elicit form
from --- indeed, occasionally to impose form upon --- the various arguments as
they occur throughout the treatises if he hopes to arrive at that implicit
synthesis which binds the whole of his account into a coherent epistemological
doctrine.
The Spriritual Night of Negation
The Ascent of Mount
Carmel, it will be remembered, dealt principally with the ‘night of sense’
or sensuous negation, and this was seen to necessarily precede the possibility
of mystical union --- once again, we say ‘possibility’ because sensuous negation
of itself, as we had found earlier, is no guarantee that mystical union will
then follow, in the sense that it should causally necessitate it --- and
this theme is not immediately abandoned in the Dark Night of the Soul. In
fact, it necessarily precedes the ‘night of the spirit’ or spiritual negation as
one of the antecedents or premises in the logic of mysticism. Nevertheless it is
only addressed transitionally as that residual sensibility prior to the negation
of spirit which itself is the complete subjection of sense. As a stage of
transition, however, the eradication of sense is not something abruptly
achieved; it is more a gradual and centripetal movement away from the
superficies of sensibility --- toward the metaphysical subsistence of
spirit. Moreover, very definite subjective indications accompany this
transition: for example, meditation and sensible imagination --- which hitherto
provided the soul with a framework of orientation relative to God --- no longer
serve as reliable criteria of the soul’s spiritual progress to
union.1 In other words, that residual sensibility to both
subjective and objective phenomena, both of which are other to God ---
and this shall be extremely important later on --- which formerly provided the
soul with a frame of reference in its relation to God, suddenly and inexplicable
fails:
“When they are going about these spiritual
exercises with the greatest delight and pleasure, and when they believe that the
sun of divine favor is shining most brightly upon them, God turns all this light
of theirs into darkness ... and leaves them ... completely in the dark.”
2
This failure of
sensibility to orient the soul to God effectively brings to completion the night
of sense and inaugurates the night of the spirit. Sensibility, as an
epistemological factor, is thus abolished relative to God.
This may strike us, at
first, as a rather dramatic conclusion; one which we are initially inclined to
see as essentially both radical and readily contestable. After all, we well may
argue, the very notion of mystical union essentially --- indeed, by definition
---consists in
the experience of
God. And does not the very notion of experience itself presuppose sensibility?
This is quite a paradox. How shall we answer it? To what can we appeal that will
not at once involve us in a contradiction? If mystical union is essentially an
experience, and if, furthermore, the very notion of experience is
radicated in sensibility, how are we to understand the experience, not simply as
subsequent to, but as necessarily preceded by, the abolishing of the very
sensibility which the experience itself appears to presume? We must, I suggest,
look for our answer in a more comprehensive understanding of the key notion of
participation, and while we had addressed this notion briefly within the
context of several previous discussions, it now becomes critical to examine this
concept more closely. To begin with, in the state of infused contemplation, were
the soul’s relation to God characterized by a rigorously explicit
individuation--- that is to say, one in a which a clearly perceived and
reciprocal relation of disparity existed --- then the notion of union
would be meaningless. There would be, not merely an implied, but an explicit
distinction between that which experienced, and that which was experienced; in
fact, the type of relationship generally understood in terms of the distinction
between a subject and an object --- that is to say, the subject which
experiences, and the object experienced. But it is precisely this type of
distinction which the mystic’s notion of union cannot admit of. We are faced,
then, with an apparent dilemma: on the one hand there can be no union, and on
the other, no experience. No union because of the inherent bifurcation of
subject and object; and, in the abrogation of sensibility, no experience
possible of the one by the other. To further complicate matters, were the notion
of union unqualified and absolute --- presuming, of course, the possibility of
union at all, given this dilemma --- it would appear to involve, at the very
least, the annihilation of the distinct identity of the one or, subsequent to
what amounts to a substantival union, a modification in the identity of the
other.
Both alternatives are
equally unacceptable to St. John. And not merely because they are alien to the
mind of the Church, but simply because they are not consonant with the
metaphysics underlying his mystical doctrine. In fact, the apparent dilemma is,
upon a closer examination of this metaphysics, found to be essentially spurious,
resulting not so much from defective, as from incomplete reasoning, for yet a
third concept remains to be addressed; a concept in virtue of which issues
involving our dilemma, together with the problem of identity, are ultimately
seen to be unrelated to our account --- and this is the notion of
participatory union. St. John had argued the point earlier, and we will
restate it once again: Sensibility can, and must, be abolished in a notion of
union through participation. As long as sensibility is retained, then the
inherent subject/object distinction is retained as well.
The Central Notion of Participation
As we have suggested,
however, an examination of the notion of mystical union as it evolves in the
account of St. John reveals that this union is not characterized by the
subject/object distinction at all --- which is an external distinction,
one to which the notion of sensibility applies. Rather, we find, it is
characterized by the participant / participated-in distinction --- which
is an internal distinction, one to which an attenuated notion of
identity applies. Subject is eternally other to object in their purely
external relation. However, the distinction that obtains between the participant
and that-participated-in cannot so readily be rendered into terms that lend
themselves to this type of complementary antithesis. It is not a relation
characterized by inherent and reciprocal otherness, but rather, by inherent
sameness --- by an attenuated notion of identity implicit within the
concept of participation itself. Let us put this more clearly to our purpose.
The very notion of participation itself implies a logical antecedent in the form
of an existential proposition in virtue of which alone the notion becomes
meaningful: the logically prior element --- the participated-in, or
unparticipated being --- is that in virtue of which the latter --- the
participating-in, or participated being --- assumes certain definite predicates
deriving from, and in fact identical with, the former..3 We find, however, that the notion of participation is
generally spoken of in reference not to some form of being, but to some form of
activity. We do not participate in “beings” ordinarily understood as
discrete ontic existents, but rather, in activities predicated of being. But if
this in fact is the case, it is not so much a relation of identity which obtains
between the two things to which the predicate activity is attached, as a
sharing in identical activities, and this is quite another thing. “Activity”
clearly is not in itself a substantival existent; there is nothing apart from
the activity which itself is merely a predicate of being, and not in
itself a being. Activity, then, is not a being, but something predicated of
being. What, then, can the nature of this logically prior element be, such that
it admits of the notion of identity --- especially inasmuch as it may possibly
apply through the concept of participation? In the logic of mysticism there
must be an essence which coincides with activity, otherwise
participation in this activity would never result in an identity between the two
elements involved, merely a sharing in identical activities. In God, however ---
and here is the crux of the matter --- being and activity are held to
coincide.4
In the Book of Exodus ---
which is really the locus classicus of the conception itself within
mystical theology at large --- God reveals himself to Moses as the “Ego sum qui
sum”, or “He who is” .God is a being who is active being, that is
to say, being understood not simply as static ontology, but as dynamic activity.
In the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, he is the “quod est esse
simpliciter”, or that which is absolutely. In other words, God is an
activity whose essence coincides with his activity --- or conversely, God is an
essence whose activity coincides with his essence.5 However one looks at it, since God is the esse ipsum,
the Being-in-Itself, his activity is, as such, quintessentially substantival,
identical and coincidental with his being. So understood, it is not merely the
case that we achieve a more adequate ontological perspective of God, but at one
and the same time we finally arrive at a coherent understanding of the dynamics
of union itself. We had stated earlier that our understanding of the notion of
participation was invariably tied up with a conception of activity; that we do
not characteristically understand ourselves as able to participate in beings as
such, but rather, in activities predicated of being, in which case we may be
said to share in identical activities, and not in the being itself in which
these activities are enacted. But since God is a Being whose essence is
activity --- to participate in this activity is to participate in a
Being, to participate in God; in fact, it is to assume, participatorily,
those very predicates which attach to this Activity which is God --- and
as a participatory relation, to assume, not the identity of God, but
an identity with God. In this state of consummate or perfect
participation which we call ecstatic union, the notion of otherness, then, does
not, indeed, cannot, coherently apply. It is fundamentally, if only temporarily,
abolished in what has become effectively an apotheosized
identity.
Participation and the Problem of
Identity
Paradoxically, however,
this is not to say that a distinction does not yet persist, or is no longer
discernible between the soul and God. Unlike the Neoplatonists and other
pre-Christian, and for that matter, post-Christian, and Vedantic phenomenologies
in which the distinct identity of the soul is held to be categorically
annihilated in its union with the Absolute --- leaving no vestige of personal
identity and, subsequently, no latent notion of individuation --- the Christian
mystic understands himself to be, even in the most sublime, the most intimate
moment of ecstatic union, at least implicitly cognizant of his unique
ontological status as a participant in the being of God, and not as
constituting the Unparticipated Being Itself. The distinction which remains,
however --- unlike that which preceded union, and which, we will remember, was
characterized by an irreconcilable ontological polarity --- is now an
internal distinction; it is a distinction ultimately sublated in what is
essentially a notion of participated identity. What we mean is this: the
soul in the state of ecstatic union essentially possesses an identity that is
ultimately seen to be at once both inherent and acquired: it is inherent
in that the soul is implicitly constituted as the imago Dei, and this
fundamentally reflective ontology presumes the Absolute as reflected. In other
words, the Absolute as the imaged is presumed in the identity of the
image. On the other hand, it is no less acquired in that this
image becomes explicit --- informed, actual --- only through, and subsequent to
--- in other words, in virtue of --- union with the Absolute; it is acquired in
that its identity as image can only perfectly coincide with the Absolute --- and
so be totally, authentically, enacted, realized --- given the Absolute in
that unobstructed encounter we call mystical union in which the Imaged is
brought perfectly to bear upon the image. Its identity as the imago Dei
is no longer implicit in the state of union, and that identity, reflecting the
Absolute, now of necessity perfectly coincides with it.
If the distinction
between the soul and God so understood, however, still strikes us as tentative,
it does so because it is essentially incomplete. Indeed, a casual analysis of
this metaphysically nuanced distinction in and of itself is likely to
precipitate several problems involving semantic issues that must be clarified
first if the distinction we have made is not to be found ultimately spurious.
Our most important question, then, is this: Has an adequate notion of
distinction really been achieved after all? And while we should find it tiresome
to ferret out every possible point of contention --- and I am certain there are
many in this commentary that I have not begun to anticipate --- this particular
issue at hand cannot be turned aside without our account suffering needlessly,
so let us look at our argument once again. In effect we have said that the soul
is the image of God and that its identity as such is most authentically acquired
and subsequently enacted when it encounters, in that unobstructed moment of
union, God whom it then faithfully images. But here is the problem. If the
identity of the soul is exclusively defined by, and is essentially coterminous
with, the identity of God, it is very difficult to distinguish any individuating
factor through which the unique personality of the soul is preserved subsequent
to this union of identities. The ontological distinction we have examined so far
yields only an abstract notion of differentiation; one which does not seem to
culminate in a preservation of unique and separate identities. The image
still appears undifferentiated from the Imaged. It is well to say
the two in fact are distinct, but upon what is this notion of distinction
predicated if the one is held to be indiscernible from the other; if the
identity of the one is equally ascribable to the other? How are we to respond to
this? Are we then, by the logic of our own argument constrained to say that the
soul, in virtue of the ontological parameters defining its being solely in terms
of its reflective nature qua image, loses its unique identity in its union with
the Absolute? If so, then we have arrived at a conclusion essentially no
different from that of the Neoplatonists. And this is clearly not what St. John
intends to argue, nor, in fact, do his metaphysics lend themselves to this
essentially abbreviated conclusion. For our answer, I suggest, we must look
closely at what St. John says relative to the identity of the soul in
this state of union.
In an extremely important
passage previously cited, St. John tells us that the soul in the state of
ecstatic union “appears” to be God Himself 6, and I think that a
closer look at what is actually involved in this notion will prove useful.
This apparent identity authentically corresponds to the identity of
God inasmuch as it is God’s image; it is the perfect, unblemished reflection of
God much in the way that a flawless mirror perfectly reflects the object held up
before it. The resulting correspondence, we might say, is such that the one is
indistinguishable from the other. But while there is no perceived
difference, the actual distinction between the two is of the greatest importance
--- for it is precisely upon this distinction that the difference rests between
St. John’s account and non-Christian or heterodox interpretations. But let us
carry this analogy --- which is fairly common in the literature of mysticism ---
one step further. The mirror --- or the soul as the Divine speculum ---
is essentially incapable of reflecting the totality of the imaged, and
while this holds true of a material mirror reflecting finite matter, it is truer
still of the finite soul reflecting the infinite God. The frame, if you will, of
the image can only to a finite extent circumscribe the infinite aspects of God.
This does not make the correspondence in which the reflection consists less
authentic, only incomplete. And this is to say that, despite actual union, there
is nevertheless an ontological discontinuity inherent in that union --- a
discontinuity deriving from, and radicated in, the metaphysical inability of the
finite to exhaustively comprehend, and therefore to comprehensively reflect, the
totality of the infinite --- even as it participates within it. And this
is to say that the distinction which obtains between the two --- between the
finite soul, albeit participating in God, and the infinite God --- is already
ontologically explicit.
Let us now return to our
earlier question, our problem, really: if the two in fact are distinct, to what,
in our attempt to establish unique identities, can we appeal in distinguishing
between them if the one is effectively the undistorted image of the other? Well,
to begin with, I think it is clearly arguable that the unique constitutional
characteristics of the soul are no more abolished in union with God than the
constituent elements entering into the composition of a mirror are abolished in
the mirror’s being actualized before an object. Nothing in the way of the
unique nature of the soul or, for that matter, the mirror, is abrogated
as a result of its actualization before its proper object. The soul remains no
less a particular soul, and the mirror no less a particular mirror. In acquiring
an identity with God, nothing in the way of the unique constitutional identity
of the soul is lost --- quite to the contrary, it is enhanced in the
actualization of its created nature, a nature that was created to
be the image of God. It is, in other words, essentially a restatement of
the axiom that grace does not destroy, but perfects nature. And this is to say
that the unique identity of the soul, however modified subsequent to union, is
nevertheless preserved within it. It is not the case that the
nature of the soul is transformed --- still less abolished --- but
rather, that the identity of the soul is enhanced; in a manner of
speaking, transformed, in that apotheosized realization of its nature as image
of the Absolute. The complementary notions of reflection and participation are,
then, mutually implicated in the moment of union: the soul’s essentially
reflective ontology constitutes its inherent identity, an identity that
is subsequently enhanced and therefore acquired through participation in
God in the state of mystical union.
Participated and UnParticipated Being
Something more, however,
remains to said about the notion of participation which figures so
largely in St. John’s account. The concept itself is found to embody an implicit
ontological distinction that is not simply central, but crucial to the
metaphysics of mysticism. Participation is essentially a concept applied to two
very different types of being relatively considered: participated being,
or that which participates, and, by implication, unparticipated being, or
that-participated-in. And I think that we must be clear at the outset that while
the relationship between these two types of being, considered as such, is
necessarily mutual, it is not ontologically reciprocal, and what I mean is this:
participated being necessarily implies unparticipated being as that in which it
is said to participate, and unparticipated being, as a being that is
participated-in but itself unparticipating in any other being, necessarily
implies participated being --- given a participated being --- as that
which participates in itself. Perhaps a different tack will illustrate the point
better. Participated being cannot be said to participate in another
participated being. This would be tantamount to saying that it participates in
participation, which is absurd. It can only participate in being that itself is
unparticipated. But this is not to say that this relationship is ontologically
reciprocal. Unparticipated being in and of itself subsists independently of
participated being as that through which, that in virtue of which,
the being of the latter is derived through participation. Of itself it does not
presuppose as a condition to its existence, the existence of participated being.
Participated being, in other words, is derived being, while
unparticipated being, as totally underived, is totally self-subsistent.
Participated being, on the other hand, is not of itself independently
subsistent, that is to say, separable, from the being in which it participates
and through which its own being derives. And this is simply a rather complex way
of saying that the soul presupposes God to its own existence, and that God is
under no such ontological constraint relative to the soul.
Being, Becoming, and the Paradox of
Partcipation
Deeper implications of a profound ontological nature, however, soon emerge from this reflexive relation between participated-being and unparticipated-being, between the created soul and the Uncreated Absolute, for upon closer examination we find that the indispensable notion of participation itself cannot be abstracted from, because in some way it is fundamentally radicated in, the notion of becoming. Our focus up to this point has been upon Being and the aspectual negation of being through the via negativa. Notably absent has been a discussion of the role of becoming in the translation of being. Contemplative union (unio mystica) is, if nothing else, a becoming --- a becoming one with God, however attenuate the union. Through participation the mystic becomes one with the Absolute conceived as God. All this is well and good … until we are prompted to question two subtle, but deeply profound, ontological assumptions in earnest. What, we must now ask, precisely is the nature of this relationship which so rigorously obtains between the mutually implicative notions of participation in being, and becoming. Is not the inception of the first the cessation of the second? In attaining to being, albeit
participatorily, do we not eo ipso relinquish becoming? If we have arrived, has not all that was itinerant ceased? In short, is becoming abolished in being?
If this is so, however,it is fraught with perilous implications, not the least of which is profoundly inimical to the doctrine of St. John who is quite clear that despite the soul’s union with God, its being is nevertheless distinguishable from the Being of God in the way that the most perfect reflection in a mirror is ontologically distinct from that which is reflected in it. In other words, were the soul to transcend becoming and attain to unqualified being, it would be indistinguishable from God … it would be God. It would also be contra fide. How, then, do we respond to this enigma? How do we reconcile becoming with being without conflating the two in an ecstatic subreption? St. John regrettably, does not provide us with this answer … but his metaphysical infrastructure, I suggest, does. Let us look more carefully, then, into the notion of becoming in its relation to participatory being in God. Vital issues are at stake here, issues of such metaphysical proportion that our answer will either repudiate or substantiate the metaphysical doctrine of St. John.
To wit: is becoming an inflection of being, other than an inflection of being, or is it coterminous with being? Unless we can cogently respond to this question, the metaphysics of participation itself --- a notion central to understanding the phenomenon of ecstatic union --- is deeply compromised, and what we have arrived at is merely a metaphysical synthesis on purely speculative ontological grounds. Fortunately, the general metaphysical schema to which St. John adverts elsewhere in passim provides us with an answer I deem to be at least implicit within the text and standing simply in need of further articulation. We must, then, speculate further upon the notion of becoming
within the general context St. John has provided --- becoming verging on being. The bourne at the edge of the Dark Night.
The most summary purview of the Western Mystical Tradition reveals, at least implicitly and with few exceptions, that for the mystic becoming is the created articulation of the uncreated eternal. There is no terminus to becoming vis-à-vis the Absolute, the Infinite, the Eternal, and in this sense it is perpetually parallel to it and only in virtue of it. Even while we may speculate that at any given point of becoming, the soul in conspectu aeternitatis subsumes as present all the permutations of its being, in all that has been, and to this extent incorporates being even in the indesinence of becoming; that is to say, if we presume that the soul incorporates as present all that has been up to any given point in the continuum of becoming, we still have not arrived at the soul as being --- only as a being-such-that-is-perpetually-a-becoming-of. From this perspective, the soul is indeed the imago Dei inasmuch as it embraces as eternally present all that it has been … up to this point in its becoming; however, what lies before it is not yet present, nor can the soul incorporate what it is not yet, into what it has been, into what it is has enacted, up to this point of its becoming. The soul may in fact be understood to exist in a quasi-eternal present --- but it is a present that has not yet, and never will, culminate in a terminus of its becoming such that it is a being whose being has been totally and completely enacted and can become no more than it is. But to attain to nothing more, to culminate in nothing more, to become no more than what the soul is, is to understand the soul not simply as having attained to being, but having become distinguishable from it. It would be a being whose essence has culminated in being. But only God’s Being is His essence, and only God’s Essence is His Being.
Rather than having understood the soul as having spuriously assumed unqualified being, we see the soul as the speculum of this Esse Ipsum, this Being Itself, as the finite image of what is absolute --- understanding at the same time that the Infinite and Absolute as imaged eternally exceed the boundaries of the finite image. However clear and authentic
the image, it is only an image in part, an incomplete instantiation --- not only of the Absolute, but of its very own being which is perpetually becoming, and is not yet what it will be, and when it is what it will be, it will still not yet be what it will be, for it remains to be more … to become more than it is, to perpetually verge on the Infinite and the Absolute … but never embrace it in its totality. Since human nature can never attain to the ontological status of Being Itself inasmuch as it can never assume the divine nature (even while participating in it), the perpetuity of its becoming-that-always-verges-on-being remains an indefeasible aspect of its created nature (or its nature qua created) --- and therefore remains unchanged --- even in eternity. What is more, that is the splendor and the happiness, the felicity enjoyed by the soul in what we understand to be the beatific vision. In a word, Becoming is inexhaustible --- because Being Itself is inexhaustible in God; becoming, as such, is a tangent to, because it is enacted in, eternity.
The souls’s participatory being in God does not, then, abolish its becoming. The ramifications of this understanding are many, not the least of which is a clarification of the state of the soul before the beatific vision. It is no more static than the vision it beholds; even as God is understood as a Being whose essence coincides with his activity, or alternately, as a Being whose activity coincides with his essence (as we had stated earlier), just so the state of the soul in conspectu Dei is dynamic, perpetually becoming in perpetually verging on inexhaustible being; perpetually reflecting, participating in, the consummate being of God which is quintessentially a perpetual enactment.
Identity: Abrogation or
Heteronymy?
This further underscores
the fact that the relationship of identity which obtains between God and the
soul is not one in which all explicit distinction is sublated in the dialectic
of participation: a residual distinction nevertheless clearly remains which is
fundamentally an ontological distinction. It is, in fact, a distinction between
Being-Absolute, and being-contingent-upon-the-Absolute. And this
is precisely the distinction between the Imaged and the image, the latter being
understood as heteronymously deriving its being from the former. This
distinction, however, does not diminish the fact that the inherent identity of
the soul as the imago Dei is, subsequent to union, radically enhanced to
such a degree that what can only be called a transformation occurs within it in
which the soul explicitly acquires through participation what it only latently
possessed through nature. It is, in fact, very much along the lines of what the
Apostle St. John wrote concerning the identity of the soul before the beatific
vision of God:
“Beloved, we are God’s children now; it
does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall
be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” 7
In other words, as a
consequence of seeing God, the soul shall be rendered like unto him. And this is
the metaphysics of participation.
As is often the case in a
critical analysis of any aspect of St. John’s account, just when we think that
we have succeeded in putting a particular issue to rest, another facet of that
same issue emerges later on in another and entirely different context, and this
is particularly true of St. John’s treatment of the notion of sensibility which
recurs in the opening Book of the Dark Night of the Soul. In a larger
sense, this is due, I think, once again to the kind of treatise he writes, the
protocols and limitations of which are less clearly defined than had he taken to
his purpose the type of examination we have presumed to undertake. And yet we
ourselves are constrained to follow the itinerary of this development in his
account if our commentary hopes to achieve the coherence toward which we have
endeavored from the outset. We had stated earlier that St. John had ascribed the
gradual failure of sensibility, which he describes as “... this blessed night of
sense...”,8 to the inexorable transition from the sensuous to the
spiritual, a transition in which the soul cooperates but which is, withal and
principally, effected by God:
“... the cause of this aridity [that
accompanies the inception of this dark night] is that God transfers to the
spirit the good things and the strength of the senses ... [ but ] the sensual
part of man has no capacity for that which is pure spirit, and thus, when it is
the spirit that receives the pleasure, the flesh is left without savor ... but
the spirit, which all the time is being fed, goes forward in strength ...
[although] it is not immediately conscious of spiritual sweetness and delight
... 9
Here, as we can see, we
are once again thrown back on the problem of sensibility. It can hardly be
disputed that the terms “pleasure”, “sweetness”, and “delight” which occur in
the above excerpt are explicitly sensuous terms, and it appears to be an
unpardonable solecism on the part of St. John to have adopted terminology
fraught with the very contradictions they appear to engender. But what
can be disputed, however, is the interpretation, the meaning which we
assign to these terms in light of the gradually unfolding logic of mysticism. In
effect, to accept these terms at face value, and not as analogical equivalents,
is to accuse St. John of violating the very principles from which he argues, a
position very difficult to maintain given the type of close reasoning that we
have seen and have come to expect throughout his works. So what in fact
does St. John mean by admitting of the possibility of what appear to be
sensuous experiences in the state of sensuous negation?
Perhaps this question can
be answered by way of analogy and in terms that lend themselves less readily to
a sensuous interpretation of the type St. John appears to imply. Clearly there
are different kinds of pleasures subsequent to different kinds of
activities. The delight, for example, which a mathematician might experience in
resolving a complicated differential equation is clearly of another kind to that
experienced by a child savoring sweets. The one pleasure derives from the
abstract contemplation of an intellectual good, the other from the sensory
experience of a perceived physical good. These pleasures are clearly of a
different kind; that is to say, the difference is not one susceptible to being
quantified --- it is not the case that the mathematician derives greater
pleasure than the child, but a different type of pleasure altogether. What is
more --- and apropos of the issue at hand --- in not having been initiated into
those goods which we have characterized as intellectual, the child is unable to
recognize the good otherwise implicit within certain other types of activity. In
effect, his inability to participate within activities to which certain goods
are intrinsic that are non-sensuous in nature, precludes the possibility of his
deriving pleasure from any good not sensuously derived, which alone is the good
to which he has been accustomed and to which alone he remains receptive. He is,
in a manner of speaking, conditioned to the good (for the moment, the
pleasurable) as deriving from the senses, and in order for him to experience the
good as intellectual, the physical senses must be held in abeyance as the sole
criterion of the good or the pleasurable. And this is very much like saying that
the experience of this latter type of good requires a kind of negation of the
sensuous. In fact, this understanding of the problem very closely corresponds to
St. John’s subsequent account of this transitional phase:
“If [ the soul in this state of transition
] is not conscious of spiritual sweetness and delight, but only of aridity, or
lack of sweetness, the reason for this is the strangeness of the exchange, for
its palate has been accustomed to those other sensual pleasures upon which its
eyes are still fixed. Since the spiritual palate is not made ready or purged
from such subtle pleasure, until it finds itself becoming prepared for it by
means of this arid and dark night, it cannot experience spiritual pleasure and
good, but only aridity and lack of sweetness.” 10
Sensibility vis-a-vis Experience: The
Problematic
More importantly, what
may be said of these pleasures and goods that the soul is capable of
experiencing and which St. John briefly describes above? In what, precisely, do
these pleasures consist, and why are they experienced? In short, what are
they? St. John is very clear in the passage above that such pleasures may be
legitimately anticipated subsequent to, though not necessarily as a consequence
of, a clearly defined preparatory process --- and what is particularly
noteworthy is that the requisite preparation consists, paradoxically, in
sensuous negation. In other words, the pleasures that the mystic may anticipate
are not merely inaccessible, but essentially unavailable until the manifold of
sensibility has been effectively abolished. And unless we are able to make a
distinction between sensibility and experience, the notion of pleasure
abstracted from sensibility will be a very odd notion indeed. After all,
sensibility --- or the ability to be sensibly affected --- is, by and large, not
simply a component, but a presupposition, of experience. It goes without saying
that the notion of sensation presupposes the notion of sensibility. And the
notion of sensation, in turn, while not strictly tautological with, is more
often than not defined in terms of, experience; to such an extent, in fact, that
we should find it very difficult to understand an individual, for example, who
claims to have had the sensation of “hot” apart from any
experience of it. Our question then is, while we cannot understand the
notion of sensibility apart from experience, can we understand the notion of
experience apart from the notion of sensibility? This, however, is not to say,
as I suggested a moment ago, that the two notions are therefore effectively
tautologous, or interchangeable. We can be said to experience the sensation of
heat, but we cannot be said to have a sensation of the experience of heat. We do
not sense experiences. We experience the senses, or more accurately, reports of
phenomena delivered by the senses.
There is, then, a very
clear distinction to be made between sensibility and experience. Moreover,
despite the relationship between sensibility and experience that is, by and
large, perceived as being mutual, even this mutuality itself can only be
predicated of certain kinds of experience that are explicitly sensuous in
nature to begin with. What is more, there are many other types of
experiences to which nothing physically sensible corresponds. For
example, our experience of delight in being given, say, a relic --- is a type of
experience that is independent of the tactile, sensible phenomena associated
with the relic. It may be said to derive from the relic, but the experience
itself is not one of the relic; rather, it is one that arises from our
possession of the relic in a sense that is not strictly tactile. That is to say,
our experience of the delight of possession is different from our
experience of the tactile quality of the relic. Nor is the experience of
the one, simply because it is tactile, more real or specific than the experience
of the other. And the upshot of our entire argument is simply this: the apparent
contradiction engendered by St. John’s use of the terms delight, sweetness, and
pleasure --- terms typically understood in a context of sensibility ---
subsequent to the soul’s induction into sensuous negation, is now
seen to be no contradiction at all. But more importantly it means that the
notion of experience extricated from a rigorous association with sensibility is
in fact a coherent notion relative to the purely spiritual intuition of God
subsequent to the abolishing of sensibility.
But let us say something
more of the nature of these experiences themselves. It might be argued that
these experiences, in and of themselves, appear to be extrinsic to that direct
experience of God in which union consists; indeed, that such experiences are
fundamentally subjective in nature and as such are merely accidental in a causal
way to God’s presence. That, in fact, as purely subjective experiences they do
not essentially pertain to that direct experience of union which is the
participatory assimilation of the soul into God in which nothing explicitly
other to God remains. In light of all this, are we really prepared to argue that
these experiences, experiences that are apparently radicated in the subjectivity
of the soul, constitute an essential feature of the mystical experience,
and not, after all, one merely accidental to it? For unless we can come to terms
with this objection, it becomes extremely unclear why St. John would advert to
these experiences at all --- and in so doing occasion this apparent
contradiction.
When we consider this
objection closely, however, we find that it fails either to discern or to
adequately explore two indispensable factors entering into any coherent
understanding of the mystical experience: the notion of participation and the
nature of God. It is indeed arguable, in fact I shall proceed to argue as much,
that these experiences are, in the logic of mysticism, not merely
accidental to God’s presence, as we might have mistakenly supposed, but
rather are logically consequent to a fully articulated understanding of
participation --- in which the soul’s experiences are in fact the
experiences of God. Moreover, they are fully experiences of God in a twofold
sense: they are the experience of God himself --- which is at one and
the same time a participation in God’s experience of Himself. Now, we
hasten to add that this is not to deny the subjectivity of such
experiences, for such a denial is clearly impossible --- there is no such thing
as an “objective” experience, of an experience not related to a subject. But it
is a shared subjectivity implicit within, and deriving from, the soul’s
mystical and participative union with God in which the experience of joy,
sweetness, etc., is that felicity which God experiences within himself,
and which --- as essential to the nature of God --- is that in which the soul is
understood to be participating through its union with him. The soul, in other
words, experiences the felicity of God by virtue of its participating in
God --- and because it is participatory, this experience is also
subjective.
While such an
understanding goes a long way in clarifying this particular, if only apparent
inconsistency in St. John’s doctrine, it hardly serves to exhaust our
understanding of this transitional phase to which St. John devotes fully one
half of the Dark Night of the Soul. It is extremely important to
understand that, as phase of transition in an otherwise dynamic
development, it is bound to suffer from that characteristic indeterminacy that
is always latent in any notion of becoming. Anything on the verge of
becoming is neither totally what is was, nor what it shall be. And it is
precisely this intermediate penumbra, vacillating between the superficies of
sense and spirit in which the soul is at once both and neither, which poses
perhaps the single greatest challenge to an understanding of mysticism. Not
infrequently, problems encountered in an approach from one of the two
perspectives result from suppressed theses answerable only in terms of their
alternatives, much as we had found to be the case with the apparently
inconsistent notion of the pleasurable relative to union. These apparent
inconsistencies --- and there are many --- demand a place in our account. Some
of them, like beads of mercury, may at first elude our grasp until in
frustration we hammer them with analysis against the anvil of the text and find,
after sorting out the pieces, that when brought together once again the whole is
coherent in a way we had not first fully understood. And very much like the bead
of mercury, in the end we shall find that reason, after all, may merely touch
upon, but never enter into that divine circle penetrable only through
faith.
The Imperative of Passivity
St. John, we will
remember, has been unmistakably clear that this transition from the sensuous to
the spiritual presupposes; indeed, requires, a disposition of total passivity on
the part of the soul. In fact, that cooperation with the Divine initiative which
throughout has characterized the soul’s movement toward union is, from the very
beginning, directed precisely toward attaining this state of passivity that is
both consequent to, and is now seen to have been the principal goal of, the
via negativa in each of its multifaceted aspects. And what this
essentially means is that all the contradiction and contrariety which has been
an impediment to the soul in its quest for union is, in one form or another,
ultimately seen to be occasioned by activity on the part of the soul,
activity that effectively precludes the activity of God within
it:
“... the beginning of contemplation ... is
secret and hidden from the very person that experiences it; ...[ and ] the souls
to whom this comes to pass [ must be ] troubled not about performing any kind of
action, whether inward or outward ... It does its work when the soul is most at
ease and freest from care ... For in such a way does God bring the soul into
this state, and by so different a path does He lead it that, if it desires to
work with its faculties, it hinders the work which God is doing in it ...”
11
But let us at once clear
up what is really a non-issue before it culminates in absurdity, and allow St.
John the author a certain latitude that would permit the type of inexactitude
that we should find inexcusable in St. John the theologian. He clearly is both,
and for the most part integrates the two admirably. An exegesis, however, of the
type we have undertaken must be as flexible as the text itself and where it must
be unsparing in the criticism of concepts, it must equally submit to the
occasional ambiguity in literary form. And all this, of course, is apropos of
the opening lines in the passage quoted above. In effect, St. John appears to be
saying that we can have experiences of which we are unaware --- and since every
experience presumes cognition of some sort, this strikes us as patently
absurd. And so understood it is. But to succumb to this overly rigorous
interpretation is really a failure to come to terms with the limitations of the
text which had already been set out beforehand. Yes, we can press the point and
accuse St. John of carelessness, but I really think it is unnecessarily
punitive, and in the end, quite trivial. St. John simply means that the
beginning of contemplation occurs in the soul “secretly”, as he would say, or in
such a way that the soul is unaware of what God is effecting within it; a point
we had addressed earlier in another context. This small matter having been
clarified, we can now pass on to what is actually significant in the
text.
While it is true that the
soul cooperates with God in order to arrive at the passive state of
negativity, it is equally and paradoxically true that its achieving this state
is not the result of the efforts of its own will --- except negatively
considered. Were it in fact the case that the soul attained this passive state
by its own efforts, then in effect the soul would be subject to no limitations
that had not been voluntarily appropriated in the first place, and the
subsequent exercise of its will would alone determine the extent to which these
limitations were in fact actual constraints. Rather simply put, limitations not
independent of volition are really no constraining limitations at all. And it is
clearly St. John’s argument that it is ultimately God who is leading the
soul into these various nights, the conditions of which, once entered into, are
no longer subject to the soul’s volition. And this is further to say that the
notion of volition apparently extends no further than the soul’s implicit
accession to be subject to new limitations, an assent --- already presumed in
the soul’s ascetical activity described in the Ascent of Mount Carmel ---
to limitations imposed no longer by nature, but by spirit.
Let us sort this out a
bit more. In having left the limitations --- generally construed in terms of
physical laws --- imposed on the will by the order of nature (our will, for
example, is constrained by laws which prevent us from passing through walls,
should we will to do so), the soul has, upon the inauguration of the night of
the spirit, simultaneously subjected itself to other limitations
constraining the will in the order of the spirit. We have seen, by way of
illustration, that the will is unable to engage discursive reason --- it is
effectively constrained from doing so by the principles of the via
negativa through which alone the soul gained access to the spiritual order
in the first place. It is not the case, then, that limitation is abolished. In
one form or another it is metaphysically inherent in the very ontological
structure of the soul. But while it is not abolished, the parameters defining
the concept of limitation are translated, redefined, to accord with a different
metaphysical environment into which the concept itself has been brought. It is a
limitation of mind or spirit analogous to the former physical limitations
experienced in the order of nature. This seems to be clearly maintained by St.
John when he makes such statements as the following:
“The soul can no longer meditate or
reflect in the imaginative sphere of sense ...12... its inability to reflect with
the faculties grows ever greater ... and brings the ... and brings the workings
of the sense to an end …”
13
But we must be careful,
on the other hand, not to construe this development as depriving the will of its
freedom. In every event, in every movement, the soul remains free by an act of
will to spurn the divine embrace and to disengage itself from these new
constraints simply by rejecting the via negativa --- and all the
limitations subsequent to it --- by the same formal act of the will through
which it first submitted to them. It is not that freedom of the will has been
relinquished, but rather, that freedom has been redefined in light of newly
acquired limitations.
Consent, Constraint, and the Paradox of
Freedom
But what precisely are
these limitations to which the soul has consented, and by what is it
constrained? St. John, regrettably, is not clear on this point, but then again,
neither should we expect him to be. It is undoubtedly and unavoidably a
shortcoming in any type of exegesis that attempts to extrapolate concepts only
latent in a text, that the systematic schema toward which it strives as an end,
and around which the coherence of its own account evolves, tends to unfairly
indict its source as defaulting in a systematic obligation that was never its
intended purpose to begin with. In very deed, were this the case our own present
study would be altogether superfluous. While it is true that St. John does not
elucidate on the nature of these limitations, they nevertheless compel our
interest as vital components to our understanding the complexity of the
transition in which they occur
and the effect on the
will as a consequence of it. These limitations, let us say, first of all appear
to be relative to the order of nature. From the entire line of argument that St.
John has pursued up to this point we may say that these limitations are subsumed
under a more comprehensive relation of opposition existing between spirit and
nature which we had earlier discussed at length. These limitations, in fact, are
readily translated into functions of opposition in which the corresponding and
diametrical attributes of each order (finite/ infinite, temporal/eternal, etc.)
delimit the possible functions of the soul within each respective order.
That is to say, the limitations which the soul experiences in either sphere
function in accordance with the broader ontological demands of each order. Once
introduced into the spiritual order --- the demands of which, it will be
remembered, required the negation of nature --- the soul has necessarily
been inducted into that otherness of spirit to nature --- an otherness to which
the order of nature, apart from divine intervention, effectively forms the
limitation to the order of spirit. As such, a phenomenal inversion occurs
relative to the will; for in the order of nature the soul was constrained by
inherent limitations in the exercise of its will over the order of spirit ---
limitations clearly defined by, and coterminous with, supernatural realities
which were typically unavailable and therefore inaccessible to the exercise of
the will. In other words, the spiritual, broadly understood, did not constitute
the immediate context in which the will was characteristically exercised; rather
the will was seen to have been limited, confined, in its activity to the natural
order --- and as such to have shared in that otherness of nature to
spirit.
This situation, however,
is inverted through sensuous negation, or the negation of nature. First
of all, we have seen that the spiritual order is achieved explicitly, solely,
through the negation of nature. This in itself would suffice to explain new
limitations on the will. But what is more, as other to nature through its
subsumption under spirit, the will no longer functions in that context which
would admit of its exercise over nature. And what this means is that nature
forms the will’s absolute limitation once the will is subsumed under spirit.
This, however, is not to say that the will shall be exercised, merely
that such exercise must be subject to implied limitations; limitations which, in
this period of transition, the soul experiences relative to meditations,
reasoning, and the like. And yet ultimately, as we shall see, the exercise of
the will subsequent to negation is understood in terms of the will’s
identification with the will of God, and the limitations which it presently
experiences relative to nature are in the end overcome, St. John argues, when
the soul becomes God-by-participation. 14
Transcendence through Negativity
As we had seen in other
and earlier contexts, the notion of the bidimensionality of man figures largely
throughout the works of St. John. But we must be extremely clear from the outset
that this notion in no way implies a dualism of the type we find, for example,
in the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster or in the eclectic and largely Gnostic doctrines
of Manichaeism. It is, I think, necessary to emphasize this point simply because
St. John’s often graphic illustrations, not so much of the incommensurability,
but of the contrariety that exists between God and nature, and nature and
spirit, at least superficially lend themselves to this sort of misunderstanding.
But to misunderstand St. John in this regard is to misunderstand him completely.
It is to fail to grasp an entire tradition that coherently spans from early
patristic thought to late Scholastic reasoning; a tradition out of which his own
philosophy emerges and to which St. John is intensely faithful. The polarity we
find alternately between God and nature, and nature and spirit is, in the
philosophy of St. John, a metaphysical distinction rooted in ontology,
not a dualistic antithesis radicated in cosmology. It is not that matter, the
body, finitude, space and time are evil. Quite to the contrary, it is a basic
tenet of Christian theology that God --- ex nihilo --- created matter,
and the phenomenal framework in which it exists, as good. We do indeed discern
metaphysical incommensurability, perceive ontological contrariety, but within
the theological tradition to which St. John vigorously ascribes neither is
extrapolated to signify an inherent distinction interpretable in terms of a
perceived antagonism between the intrinsically good and the irremediably evil.
This is entirely outside the perspective from which St. John writes, for in the
end, the distinction to be made is fundamentally one not between good and evil,
but between Being-Absolute, and every other kind of being, which is
being-contingent-upon-the-Absolute.
Since the bidimensional
nature of man which figures so largely in the thought of St. John is central to
the development of our epistemological account, let us look at it a little more
closely in the present context. It should be reasonably clear to us by now that
the transitional phase that we are currently examining constitutes both a
negating and a positing --- in fact, it is a negating of the
sensuous which is simultaneously a positing of the spiritual; or,
conversely, a positing of the spiritual which is a negating of the sensuous. In
other words, to transcend the senses is eo ipso to enter spirit as the
other of sense, an implied other, latent in that very bidimensional
conception of man around which the entire phenomenology of Western mysticism is
essentially constructed. But what is important for us to note here is that such
a transition relative to a bidimensional nature effectively results in a
unilateral negation --- a negation of only one of the two dimensions in
which the being of man is simultaneously enacted.15 And while the positing of the one is the negating of the
other, it is, for this reason, not the case that the personality of the soul in
either event is extinguished in the transition; rather, it is very clearly
understood to be preserved within it. Were this transition, on the other hand,
understood to entail a bilateral negation, the result, very obviously,
would be quite otherwise --- it would not be a transition at all, but
annihilation. And this is really another way of restating one of the obvious and
irreconcilable differences that exists between competing traditions of
mysticism: to the Christian mystic, the soul, or the personality, is preserved
through what is understood to be essentially a transition; it attains to
union with the Absolute, where other and conflicting interpretations see
this not so much as a transition, but as an existential terminus in which
the soul is effectively annihilated in its absorption into the Absolute.
What is of vital interest to us, however, is the fact that the dimension negated
subsequent to this transition is precisely the dimension inextricably bound up
with time, space, and matter --- such that, to pass into its other, is
consequently to pass into a dimension that is necessarily atemporal,
non-spatial, and immaterial. And it is precisely these categories which are
critically important, in fact absolutely indispensable, to the intelligibility
of the mystical experience. They form, as it were, the complementary keys to a
mystical epistemology.
Of themselves these
negative categories merely serve to underscore, to emphasize, those overwhelming
aspects of a perceived reality that cannot be comprehended under the positive
and limiting categories of space, time, and matter. But what is really of the
greatest interest to us is what follows from this negative positing relative to
the inherent possibilities of experience. As transcendent to time (atemporal),
such experiences are necessarily transcendent to reason
16 inasmuch as a
temporal element is implicit within, in being presupposed by, that passing from
one concept to another which cognitively characterizes the exercise of
discursive reason. Simply put, reason addresses concepts one or a few at a time
and moves sequentially, syllogistically through premises to conclusions, the
conclusions always being posterior to the premises --- all of which, of course,
presumes time. Exscind the notion of time from the notion of reason and reason
at once and necessarily ceases being discursive --- and cognition simultaneously
defaults to simple sensibility, or the sheer, intuitive, immediacy of
experience; experience from which reason can no longer syllogize nor upon
which reason may subsequently comment.
This, I suggest, holds
equally true of space. As transcendent to space (non-spatial), such experiences
are altogether transcendent to mediation, for mediation is implicitly a spatial
conception, inasmuch as it presumes space as the matrix within which the subject
is mediated to its experiences --- and this, of course, simultaneously and
equally implies the notion of otherness and externality. Subsequent to the
negation of space, then, any experience whatever will be necessarily divested of
otherness, of externality, of distance; which is another way of saying that the
experience will be immediate, as it were, perfectly subjectivized through having
transcended the medium of otherness in the form of space. And finally, though no
less significantly, as transcendent to space, such experiences are necessarily
transcendent to matter (immaterial) which itself presupposes space as that in
which alone matter is susceptible to configuration. Given this overwhelming
transcendence through negativity, all subsequent experience is, in a sense,
translated into self-experience since there is no longer an explicit other to
the self beyond the post-negative transition.
Epistemological Monism?
Thus the logic of St. John’s mysticism inexorably moves toward a kind of epistemological monism characterized by sheer immediacy and self-experience. But does this mean that the negation of sense results in what must then be interpreted as mere solipsism? It would seem, after all, that to pass beyond space, time, and matter is to pass at once and altogether beyond the phenomenal frames of individuation, and therefore beyond plurality into an inevitable monism. For St. John, however, this is not the case, for just as we had found that the soul’s induction into the spiritua