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