The Metaphysics
of Mysticsm
a Commentary on the Mystical
Philosophy of St. John of the Cross
By
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Dedicated to Mary, Mother of God
© Copyright 2011-2018 by Geoffrey K. Mondello. All rights reserved
author@johnofthecross.com
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 who
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 rigorous focus of a clearly defined
examination – must inevitably decide upon one or the other.
I have opted for the latter. But I also recognize the necessity of some
perspective from the former. As E. Allison Peers had correctly pointed
out, in the works of St. John we find ourselves at the confluence of
a great mystical tradition to which many prior writers had contributed
– each uniquely, but only in part – to the culmination of that unified
and disciplined whole systematically, and for the first time coherently,
articulated in the thought of one writer: St. John of the Cross.
But St. John
is no mere synthesizer. His unique and profound contribution, not merely
to the literature, but to the theology of mysticism, is unparalleled,
and unrivaled by any of his predecessors, many of whom unquestionably
contributed to the development of his thought. But one would not, for
that reason, hold the creative genius of, say, Heisenberg, to be diminished
simply because prior physicists had made separate and distinct contributions
which the creative genius of Heisenberg – grasping in toto
what each had only succeeded in articulating in part – molded into a
successful physics no less original for these prior contributions, than
it was creative in articulating the whole. Our notion of creativity
as such quite often and unconsciously appears to derive its
paradigm from God understood as having literally created ex nihilo.
But in man, in any man, creativity is not something that suddenly emerges
quite spontaneously and in isolation. There are always antecedents from
which creative genius springs, distilling something pure from the brackish
tributaries upon which it draws. Within the Christian tradition this
was certainly so of St. Thomas Aquinas. It is no less true of St. John
of the Cross.
Mystical theology,
we might say, appropriately begins, as it ends – in a paradox. The most
direct, and certainly the most widely accepted interpretation of the
development of the tradition of Western Christian Mysticism traces its
origins back to Plotinus in the third century
1 But where Plato had endeavored to
preserve the fluid dialogical nature of what was essentially philosophic
inquiry, the Neoplatonists in general, and particularly Proclus
in his tremendously influential Elements of Theology, strove
toward a rigorously architectonic form, a form through which they sought
to elaborate not so much a synoptic philosophy, but a coherent and essentially
reactionary doctrine. This doctrine, only casually derived
from Platonism, emerged from what essentially began as dialogues between
Plotinus and Ammonius Saccas – a long-standing oral tradition to which
Plotinus himself adhered until he was fifty and had begun making notes
of his lectures. It was these notes which his pupil Porphyry subsequently
edited and organized into the
Enneads
2 –
and the reason this was done at all is the whole point of the paradox
to which we had adverted at the beginning.
The Bursting Chrysalis:
Antagonism, Assimilation and Articulation
While
Plotinus himself makes no reference whatever to Christianity, confining
his criticisms specifically to Gnosticism, it nevertheless remains that
the mystical doctrine of Plotinus that had been subsequently developed
by Porphyry and Iamblichus 3
– and especially as it had been systematically articulated by Proclus
– cannot be understood apart from, because in fact it was in
large measure a calculated response to, the burgeoning threat
of the still nascent Christianity. Not only was Christianity winning
converts to the cause, but more importantly, it was simultaneously encroaching
upon the state religion – and with it, making decided inroads against
what the Neoplatonists saw as the last vestiges of classical culture.
Neoplatonism was, in this very clear sense, a reactionary philosophy
– it was articulated in response to, and essentially to compete with,
the new religion of Christianity which was sweeping the Empire, and
along with it, the Hellenic tradition that had become a part of the
unraveling fabric of post-classical society. And this is to say that
even the systematic origin of the phenomenon of mysticism has its historical
roots in antithesis.
It is
important to understand in this connection that early Christianity,
imbued as it was with the anticipation of the imminent Parousia, or
Second Coming of Christ, had more urgent, and certainly more practical
objectives in light of its impending redemption, and, consequently,
little interest in speculation. With the passage of time, this sense
of imminence, of impendence, while not entirely lost, inevitably receded
before the more immediate demands thrust upon it by an antagonistic
culture. The early Christian community soon came to the realization
that it had to cogently evaluate its own doctrines
in the very terms of its antagonists; to
coherently interpret their deepest convictions in light of the increasingly
critical and hostile position of the Neoplatonists. While it is true
that the Neoplatonists could claim an historical continuity with classical
antiquity through the fusion of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical
concepts, it is also true that Neoplatonism had effectively exceeded
the legitimate bounds of classical philosophy. In fact, Neoplatonism
had radically redefined philosophy by no longer understanding
its objective to lay simply in the attainment of truth, but by transforming
truth into religious insight through a specifically epistemological
enterprise in which philosophic knowledge culminated in the knowledge
of God, or better yet, in God as the culmination of philosophical knowledge.
Through this transformation it successfully, if superficially, combined
the official gods of the Empire reinterpreted through Plotinus, with
the prestige that classical philosophy enjoyed at large. It was, after
all, a doctrine clearly more congenial to, because it more closely accorded
with, the prevailing Hellenistic tradition through its unique interpretation
of Plato, and had, moreover, the distinct advantage of preserving important
and popular elements of pagan religion. The official polytheism of the
state, now reinterpreted in pseudo-Platonic terms – however tentative
– in turn lent philosophical legitimacy to Neoplatonism, a legitimacy
it would not have otherwise enjoyed apart from the prevailing cultural
affinity for Plato.
Neoplatonism,
then, effectively forced Christianity out of the slumber of its own
critical naiveté. In a larger sense, the conflict which had long existed
between Rome and Galilee had now emerged from the narrow and patently
futile gauntlet of the Roman arena, where even blood had failed to attenuate
the conflict, into the decisive arena of the mind. Faith would wither
under the light of unrelenting reason – and reason would succeed where
duress not only had miserably failed, but had served to fuel the fervor
of this growing, unreasoned, and recalcitrant sect. Another approach
was clearly necessary to preserve what was left of the respectability
of Hellenism in a declining empire, and Plotinus found
in Platonism the most effective
instrument to this end. This is not to say that the essentially reactionary
impulse of Plotinus was exercised, or even conceived, in the interests
of the state, at least in a way that we would understand in contemporary
terms; still less that he did not have a genuine philosophical commitment
to, if coupled with a defective understanding of, the tradition of Platonism
– but the fact remains that the doctrine itself unquestionably evolved
as a response to both cultural and contemporary considerations.
Inevitably, however, even this perspective
is too myopic. Very clearly, systematic mysticism cannot be discussed
apart from Plotinus, Porphyry, and especially Proclus – who first made
the distinction between the via affirmativa and the via
negativa in the epistemological approach to God – and whose synthesis
of Neoplatonic concepts through Aristotelian logic was to prove so influential
in later Scholastic thought. But the mystical enterprise must be understood
within a much larger historical context. The bankrupt philosophies of
the classical era, Eclecticism, Epicureanism, Skepticism and Stoicism,
all of which had promised – and failed – to deliver happiness, resulted
in a general disillusion with philosophy as a viable means of rescuing
post-classical society from its impending dissolution. And while it
is true that Neoplatonism attempted to provide that alternative by vying
with Christianity, it is no less true that the mystical impulse itself
clearly predated the advent of Neoplatonism as the first systematic
formulation of the basic mystical thesis; an impulse which cuts across
all traditions and cultures and has been universal in every age. It
is fundamentally a human response that is as ancient as the Divine invitation
echoed in the cool of the evening in the garden of the first paradise:
“Vocavitque Dominus Deus Adam, et dixit ei: ‘Ubi es?’
“
4 The Divine solicitation to union
with God, then, is as ancient as the creation of the heart of man. The
human susceptibility to God cannot be confined to a culture, a tradition,
a doctrine, or even any one religion. This is no invitation to indifferentism;
it is merely a realization, a
recognition, that this susceptibility is
rooted in the ontology of the soul itself, and is therefore universal
to all men, in all ages, in every culture. It is obviously another case
altogether how each culture has interpreted this invitation and responded
to it. For the Christian mystic, however, this invitation takes the
decisive and definitive form of God Incarnate in the Person of Jesus
Christ, a point to which we alluded earlier, and for which reason we
needn’t reexamine now.
The concatenation of persons and ideas
which had culminated in the lucid exposition of St. John is more or
less clearly defined along an historical continuum that is nevertheless
worth exploring, for the thought of St. John cannot be exscinded from
the tradition out of which alone it coherently arises. We had already
briefly adverted to Plotinus, Porphyry, and Proclus as the systematic
progenitors of the mystical doctrine that had come to be subsequently
elaborated within Christian metaphysics. There are many intermediary
figures, to be sure: Iamblichus, the Syrian pupil of Porphyry; Marinus,
the disciple of Proclus; and commentators like John Philoponus who subsequently
converted to Christianity, among a host of other less significant figures
after whom Neoplatonism, as a viable philosophy in its own right, had
effectively come to a conclusion, having been supplanted by the decidedly
more cogent and closely reasoned Christian interpretation. Christian
thought, in the end, did not abolish Neoplatonism, as Neoplatonism had
been intended to abolish Christianity, but rather reinterpreted it,
and in the process had not so much adopted, as assimilated significant
features of Neoplatonism, and incorporated them, with some residual
tension, within the philosophic body of Christian doctrine.
The
Neoplatonic emphasis on the dialectic approach to God is a good illustration.
For the Neoplatonist there are essentially three dialectical moments
culminating in the knowledge of God. These may broadly be summarized
as the predicative, in which we affirm something about God; the dispredicative,
in which, paradoxically, we deny what we have
affirmed, at least in a univocal
sense; and finally the superlative, in which we reaffirm what we had
denied, but in an equivocal sense; this latter finally achieving
the most adequate approximation not simply linguistically available,
but epistemologically possible. An example will prove helpful. For the
Neoplatonist, the only ascriptions proper to God are the One
and the Good. The most fundamental concept of being, however,
is not predicated of God except equivocally, or analogically: it is
not predicated of the One or the Good – because it is absolutely transcendent
– in the way that it is predicated of other things in the universe of
experience. So much had at least been suggested by Plato in his
Republic and Symposium, although with a good deal of vacillation
and, we might add, with sufficient enough ambiguity, if not ambivalence,
to provide stable enough a platform for Plotinus to make his leap to
super-reality where Aristotle through that same ambiguity stepped down
to the world of experience. The fact remains, however, that every instantiation
of being in the world of ordinary events is, without exception, determinate,
limited, and therefore finite. In other words, each is possessed of
being in a way that is not just different from, but radically dissimilar
to, the completely transcendent Being of God. We cannot, as a consequence,
univocally ascribe being to God – who is without limitation, determination,
and finitude – in the way that we ascribe being to a man or, for that
matter, to a tree. In this sense, then, God is not being; at
least not being ordinarily understood. To arrive at an adequate understanding
of the nature of God, then, we must effectively dispredicate him of
being in the way that being is understood of everything else apart from
God. God, as a result, must essentially be understood neither as being,
nor as not-being. His being is, in the terminology of the Neoplatonists,
above being.
A good
deal more, of course, is involved in this dialectic which is extrapolated
to every other possible predicate of God with essentially the same result:
the thesis, having been established, is at once abrogated through its
antithesis, and the erstwhile contradiction is
sublated into a synthesis reconciling this
apparent opposition. The synthesis itself, however, is at best only
tentative, resting as it does upon a precarious balance between the
univocal and the equivocal use of language – and the problems this inevitably
creates for language, together with the paradoxes it subsequently engenders,
are by now obvious and have become intrinsic to mystical discourse ever
since. In other words, what has become conceptually synthetized through
language does not translate into an ontological opposition
that in the end is understood as apparent only. The ontological opposition
remains unmitigated and intact. What has been conceptually
reconciled are merely the terms of opposition applied to the
Absolute – an opposition which, in any event, is entirely extraneous
to the One in virtue of its utter transcendence – a synthesis which
the Neoplatonist tentatively achieves through the use of the superlative.
And this, of course, is simply another way of saying that the Absolute
is only susceptible of being addressed analogically.
As we
may well anticipate, such an analysis – at least relative to the paramount
concept of being – was fraught with problems upon its own terms, and,
as it stood, was not entirely amenable to thinkers struggling to articulate
a Christian philosophy within an otherwise useful Neoplatonic framework.
Systematically sound, the metaphysical architecture around which Plotinus
constructed his doctrine stood largely in need of rehabilitation only
– specifically along the lines of its cosmological and ontological interpretations.
And it is precisely on this point, in one of the first crucial breaks
with unchristened Neoplatonism, that the 4th century Marius
Victorinus, considered by some to be the first Christian Neoplatonist
in the Western tradition, took exception. Significantly, Victorinus
held being or esse to be, if not the most appropriate,
at least the most accurate name for God in one of the earliest, if only
inchoate, formulations of Christian philosophical thought. A tension,
then – one never entirely resolved – ineluctably emerges from the Christianizing
of Neoplatonism; a tension, we can see, essentially
resulting from the incorporation
of significant features of Neoplatonism, both metaphysically and cosmologically,
together with the repudiation of one of its most basic tenets concerning
the fundamental concept of being.
In other words, while much of the metaphysical
infrastructure of Neoplatonism remained intact despite its adaptation
to specifically Christian concepts; ontologically, the abstract,
superessential being of, say, Proclus, is clearly not identical,
nor can it be equated, with the personal Being of the Christian
Neoplatonists. Although the One identified by Plotinus is indeed, and
almost parenthetically described as “the paternal divinity,”
5
the god of Plotinus, Porphyry, and Proclus is, in a manner of speaking,
not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To begin with, it is not a
personal being to whom, for example, prayers are addressed; a being
understood as intimately involved in the lives and the affairs of men.
For the Neoplatonist, there is no predilection for man in the abstract
being of the Absolute. The whole point, however, is that not just the
Being, but the personal Being of God, is unquestionably
the most fundamental tenet of Christianity; in fact, it is unquestionably
the first principle of any specifically Christian metaphysics.
As a consequence, the categorical transcendence
of the Absolute of Plotinus – a transcendence so complete that it does
not so much as admit of the predication of “being” to a proper conception
of the Absolute except by way of pure analogy – becomes an immediate
point of contention in the adaptation of Neoplatonism to Christianity.
This, paradoxically, but no less obviously, is not to say that the Christian
philosopher does not attribute transcendence to God; he merely interprets
this transcendence, not in less categorical, but in less stringently
ontological terms; terms which, in the end, find their most coherent
definition in a metaphysics involving the notion of participation.
The Areopagitica
Certainly
in terms of the influence exercised by any one Neoplatonist, the most
central figure, and unquestionably the most instrumental in this transformative
assimilation is Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, or as he is often simply
called, the Pseudo-Dionysius, the fifth century Christian philosopher
(probably a disciple of Proclus) whose actual identity remains unknown,
although largely conjectured upon. He is generally believed to have
been an ecclesiastic of some sort whose pseudonymous authorship of this
body of writings that has come to be known as the Areopagitica, is ostensibly
attributed to one of the judges of the Areopagus, or the supreme tribunal
in Athens, before which St. Paul had stood to defend his evangel, and
subsequent to whose eloquent defense, converted to Christianity
6.
We now know this not to be the case, and the reasons put forth for this
pseudonymity are many and varied, but few of them seriously suggest
anything more than the type of pious literary imposture that appears
to have been commonly practiced at the time. In any event, the authorship
of these works is largely beside the point considering the systematic
coherence achieved in which Neoplatonic concepts were successfully synthesized
with accepted Christian doctrine. These treatises, which were to have
an impact well into the middle ages and beyond, and which in toto
constitute the Areopagitica, are four: De Divinis Nominibus
(a paradigm of the via affirmativa), Caelestis Hierarchia,
Ecclesiastica Hierarchia, and Theologia Mystica (an
even more celebrated paradigm of the via negativa)
7
The latter, though extremely brief – having only five chapters – distills
elements essentially derived from the other three treatises which then
form the basic principles to mystical union with God. Anyone who has
read anything of the medieval mystics will be immediately acquainted
with much of the imagery and many of the analogies, to say nothing of
the method, in this work. And while we do not intend to go into a detailed
analysis of the Christianized Neoplatonism of the Pseudo-Dionysius,
it is sufficient for this brief summary to note that the Areopagitica
is
the locus classicus not
only of the linguistics of mysticism, together with the inchoate development
of a distinctive mystical epistemology, but of the via negativa,
or the negative way, the concept perhaps most central to the later metaphysical
thought of the medieval mystics in particular, and Christian mysticism
in general.
It is very clear from the outset that the
author of the Areopagitica was profoundly influenced by Proclus, the
last and arguably the most systematic thinker of the Neoplatonic school,
who was deeply antagonistic to Christianity. Despite this marked influence,
however, the synthesis which the Pseudo-Dionysius had effected between
Neoplatonism and Christianity was so successful that the Areopagitica
very early on were invoked as competent documents on both sides of the
Monophysite controversies in the 6th century, and in the
dispute over Monothelism in the 7th. Within the latter part
of that same century we find St. John Damascene, the last of the Greek
Fathers, appealing to the Pseudo-Areopagite in discussing the limitations
of language in addressing the Absolute, particularly in his references
to the essential incomprehensibility of God.
8
Widespread as his influence had
been, however, it was St. Maximus Confessor, the 7th century
theologian who, by successfully integrating dogmatics into the Pseudo-Dionysian
schema through his lucid commentaries on all four treatises, had provided
the necessary theological glosses to obvious ambiguities in the texts,
bringing the works of the Pseudo-Dionysius into closer alignment with
orthodox doctrine and thus effectively preparing them for, and greatly
contributing toward, their general recognition in the later Middle Ages.
Ironically,
the profound influence that the Pseudo-Dionysius was to exercise upon
the later development of medieval mystical thought was nearly lost to
the West together with the knowledge of classical Greek that had all
but vanished in the four hundred years preceding the Carolingian reforms
and the subsequent revival of letters, culture, and
learning. Greek at this time,
indeed, the pursuit of learning in general, appears to have been preserved
exclusively in the monasteries of Ireland, which alone had been spared
the barbarian incursions that had ravaged the Continent and extended
as far as Britain. Fortunately, however, they had failed to press farther
west, and at the behest of Charles the Bald, it was the Irish philosopher
and theologian, Johannes Scotus Erigena, one of a handful of theologians
in the West who had acquired facility in classical Greek, who was largely
responsible for bringing the Areopagitica
9
(together with St. Maximus Confessor’s Ambigua) into the mainstream
of medieval theological thought through his translation in 858 of the
works from their original Greek into Latin. At the same time, he incorporated
significant features of these works into his own speculative theology
that itself had become prominent in his most celebrated, if controversial
work, De Divisione Naturae
10,
otherwise known as the Periphyseon, which was widely read by
mystical theologians in the 13th century and exerted considerable
influence upon such later figures as Johann Eckhart. With the isolated
exception of Johannes Scotus Erigena, however, a significant hiatus
occurred in the development of mystical-theological thought between
the 9th and the 11th centuries that coincided
with the greater gap in continuity that had occurred within philosophy
itself apart from a few notable exceptions such as Boethius in the early
6th century – considered by some the last of the Romans –
whose De Consolatione Philosophiae (a philosophical and not
an explicitly Christian work per se) bears the unmistakable stamp of
Proclus, and possibly St. Isadore of Seville in the 7th century,
more properly an encyclopedist in his attempt to compile a sort of summa
of universal knowledge, parts of which, incidentally, preserved important
fragments of classical learning that would otherwise have been lost
altogether.
Revival, Reason and Revelation:
the Middle Ages and the Mystical Tradition
Not
until the revival of letters and learning in general under the auspices
of Charlemagne (principally through Alcuin, the great architect of the
Carolingian renaissance) will we find the literature of mysticism reintroduced
through the reintroduction of classical learning itself. This, as we
have seen, was the impetus that brought the Pseudo-Dionysius to Johannes
Scotus Erigena in the first place. While the assimilative process, as
we may expect, was gradual, so effective was the reform in education
and learning that had been brought about largely through the efforts
of Alcuin that the educational system it produced survived the collapse
of the Carolingian Empire, which had effectively ended with the death
of Charles the Fat in 888. However, the wealth of classical learning
it had succeeded in acquiring was preserved in the Cathedral schools
and monasteries through which it subsequently became available to the
mystics who would later flourish in the 12th century
It would
seem to appear that these two distinct repositories of classical literature
were largely responsible for the two equally distinct approaches to
mysticism that we find emerging in the 12th century. While
clearly not separate traditions, the divergent interpretations found
their clearest expressions respectively in the Cistercian monasteries,
most notably at Clairvaux and Signy, under the auspices of St. Bernard
– widely regarded as the first medieval mystic – and at the Abbey School
of St. Victor in Paris founded in 1108 by William of Champeaux, but
which really came to renown under the leadership of Hugh of St. Victor,
one of the foremost theologians of the 12th century and one
of the principal architects of scholasticism. In many respects it was
St. Bernard, however, who, in his “homilies on the Canticle”, and elsewhere,
put the indelible stamp
of Christianity upon the Neoplatonic
mysticism of the Pseudo-Areopagite by contending that grace,
and not simply the abstracting process of contemplation, was essential,
indeed, indispensable to the knowledge of God that culminates in mystical
union; a union, moreover, achieved not through the intellect, but through
the will; not through reason, but essentially through love, and for
whom the very possibility of union at all presumed the imago Dei
in the soul.
William of St. Thierry, a close friend
and colleague of St. Bernard, provided perhaps the clearest expression
of the Cistercian emphasis upon the role of the will in the realization
of union:
“When the object of thought is God, and the
will reaches the stage at which it becomes love, the Holy
Spirit at once infuses Himself by way of love [such that] the
understanding of the one thinking becomes the contemplation
of the one loving”
11
In this
respect it would appear that St. John of the Cross is much closer to
St. Bernard and William of St. Thierry than to Hugh of St. Victor to
whom he is in other respects nevertheless indebted. While not prescinding
from the necessity of revelation, and always within the bounds of orthodoxy,
Hugh of St. Victor nevertheless strongly emphasizes the role of
reason in attaining to the knowledge of God. His contribution to
the literature of mysticism, principally in the form of his five mystical
works, De Arca Noe Morali et Mystica; De Vanitate Mundi;
De Arrha Animae; and De Contemplatione et eius speciebus
was significant and the Neoplatonic influence upon his thought
unquestionable as we see in his Commentariorum in Hierarchiam Caelestem
Sancte Dionysii Areopagitae secundum interpretationem Joannnis Scoti
libri x. The emphasis upon reason, which characterized the Victorines
in general, is particularly evident in the mystical works Beniamin
maior and Beniamin minor by Richard of St. Victor for
whom contemplation formed the terminus of a progression of knowledge
to the point of pure reason beyond
which – and only with divine assistance
– the soul attains to union. In an interesting aside nevertheless apropos
of St. John, Richard invokes a particularly useful analogy in the way
of underscoring the importance of dogma and Scripture to the mystical
experience by seeing in the Mount of the Transfiguration a prototype
of certain “visions” accompanying this experience, and claiming that
such essentially peripheral phenomena, if they are in fact genuinely
divine in origin, must be corroborated by Moses and Elijah, who for
Richard symbolize the Church and Sacred Scripture. If they accord with
neither, they are to be rejected. Certainly the tradition that culminates
in the thought of St. John owes a considerable debt to the Victorine
School in further elaborating the Christian synthesis that derived its
impulse from the Pseudo-Areopagite. The extent to which St. John of
the Cross was influenced by this important school of thought is, I think,
most clearly evidenced in his use of the allegorical interpretation
of Scripture, certainly not in the Victorine emphasis upon reason. It
would also seem probable that St. John’s metaphysics of participation
through love owes at least an historical debt to Richard of St. Victor
in whose De Trinitate God is emphasized as love itself, as
the Evangelist John had beautifully summarized, and not merely as a
perfectly loving being.
This
tradition continues to be developed in the writings of the13th century
Franciscan mystic Giovanni Fidanza, better known as St. Bonaventure,
a contemporary and close friend of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose Itinerarium
mentis in Deum, or Journey of the Mind to God, and De Triplici
Via, or the Three-fold Way – essentially a compendium of the mystical
theology of the Victorine School – were widely read by such diverse
later 14th century mystics as Blessed Henry Suso and Jean
Gerson. It is really in the 14th century, however, that we
come the flowering of mysticism, and more specifically, to the apex
of speculative mysticism. The various earlier systems, both rational
and affective – that is to say, emphasizing either reason or the will
respectively – converge at that academic crossroads where the increasingly
abstract, dry, and often contentious schools
encountered a popular yearning for depth
and renewal in the most basic spiritual aspirations of which the academics
had seemingly lost sight in the pursuit of matters abstruse and trivial
by comparison. Here we find such familiar and notable figures as Eckhart,
Ruysbroeck, Suso, Tauler, and Gerson, all of whom, directly or indirectly,
to some extent influenced St. John of the Cross. Within the limited
scope of this book we cannot possibly attempt to detail the individual
contribution to the thought of St. John of each of these figures who
were, at least chronologically, his most immediate predecessors; it
is nevertheless clear, however, that the most direct sources to which
St. John had access were in any event themselves indebted to the contributions
of previous figures within the same tradition. And while we may safely
advert to the earliest systematic formulations of this doctrine in the
Neoplatonists in general and the Pseudo-Dionysius in particular, and
see every subsequent development essentially in light of this basic
metaphysical doctrine, we cannot, and quite obviously, for that reason
prescind from those unique contributions that were instrumental in articulating
this early and largely inchoate doctrine in a way that progressively
succeeded in making it consistent with both Christianity and reason.
To a
large degree, each figure in the mystical tradition owes a greater debt
to the influence of another and preceding figure in a way that is more
clearly recognized than his debt to the rest. But we must equally recognize
that every mystic is essentially eclectic in drawing upon the distinct
universe of ideas that constitute the tradition out of which his own
thought emerges, sometimes subscribing to certain aspects of one doctrine
while largely rejecting the rest, as in the case of Blessed Henri Suso’s
rehabilitation of some of the faulty doctrines of Johann Eckhart. In
a sense, to say that St. John owes his most immediate debt to Ruysbroeck,
as some maintain, even if true in a purely chronological or immediate
sense, is to fail to see in Ruysbroeck the myriad other mystics, indeed,
the entire mystical continuum to which the doctrine of Ruysbroeck or
any other mystic is indebted.
Every mystic, then, incorporates something of the thought of not merely
one particular mystic preceding him, but of the entire tradition implicitly
comprehended within the doctrine of that mystical figure to whom he
himself is most immediately indebted. And distinct elements within this
tradition extend back well beyond the Pseudo-Areopagite himself; in
fact, at least as far back as the 3rd century AD, some two
hundred years prior to the appearance of the Areopagitica. And the whole
point is this: whether or not say, Maximus Confessor in the 9th
century had read St. Athanasius’s Life of Antony written around
357 AD or the Spiritual Homilies of the 5th century Pseudo-Macarius,
and whether or not Maximus’s Ambigua itself was the subject
of study of say, Johann Tauler, may be impossible to ascertain. What
is certain, however, is that an entire tradition consisting of a wide
variety of writings by a great many different writers is brought to
bear on the doctrines that later became articulated in the speculative
systems of the great 14th and 15th century mystics.
Any brief survey, for example, must certainly
include Origen, the 3rd century scholar and Church Father
who stands not only as one of the most creative minds in the history
of the Church, but as one of its earliest mystical teachers. Indeed,
not only was Origen a contemporary of Plotinus, but he studied under
the very same Ammonius Saccas from whom Plotinus derived his own mystical
doctrine. In Origen, among other things, we find one of the earliest
examples of the systematic use of allegory in the interpretation of
Scripture
12,
a literary device exercised no less by St. John of the Cross than it
was by the Victorines some four centuries before him. Among the mystical
doctrines to be found in his Commentary on the Song of Songs
is a conception of union framed around the notion of the imago Dei
and his writings clearly adumbrate the celebrated three-fold way of
purgation, illumination, and union,13
which had subsequently come to typify the mystical path to God. But
there are other aspects of mysticism to be considered as well. The 4th
century St. Antony, for example, is widely acknowledged as having contributed
indispensable elements to the development
of the ascetic aspects of Western mysticism, which find their clearest
expression in the form of what are basically the ascetical prescriptions
mandated by the via negativa. The conception of a rehabilitation
of man’s nature to its original state of consonance with God, which
had been forfeited as a result of the Fall, is equally addressed by
St. Anthony, and in the context of a conception of union with God. His
skeptical regard of supernatural phenomena and his admonitions concerning
them (to be reiterated by Maximus later, and St. Bernard later still),
his stress on the necessity of withdrawal from the world, together with
his counsels concerning impediments likely to be encountered as a result
of diabolical interference, are very familiar to us by now from a much
later historical context.
More influential still upon the thought
of the medieval mystics was the 4th century Desert Father
St. Gregory of Nyssa to whom the mysticism of St. John is, directly
or indirectly, indebted. In contradistinction to earlier (and some later)
mystics, but very much like the Pseudo-Dionysius (whose writings were
unquestionably influenced by St. Gregory of Nyssa) ecstatic union is
to be attained through darkness, not light. Not surprisingly, in his
Life of Moses (as St. John will much later describe it in his
Ascent of Mount Carmel) we find that the journey to “… the
knowledge of God … is a steep mountain difficult to ascend …”, and in
this ascent itself, moreover, the imago Dei figures largely
in the mystical experience that follows. The Incarnation is, for St.
Gregory, as it is for St. John, and for Maximus Confessor before either
of them, absolutely essential to the very possibility itself of mystical
union. The necessity of abstraction from sensibility, and the imperative
of faith as the only proximate means to this union – this is no less
the currency of the mysticism of St. Gregory than it is of St. John
of the Cross.
In the
writings of these early Fathers, particularly Origen and St. Gregory,
we also find some of the earliest references to Divine love inflicting
a wound whose pain is longing
for union; a sentiment echoed
only less eloquently but no less passionately by St. Bernard than by
St. John of the Cross. Like St. Antony before him, and St. John after
him, St. Gregory understood mystical union as essentially culminating
in the restoration of the imago Dei obscured by sin. But our
striving after parallels for their own sake, should we care to pursue
them further, may well continue indefinitely, and in the end be quite
pointless; the recognition of such antecedents itself suffices to our
present purpose. For what I am suggesting in all this is merely what
I had attempted to state with a good deal more brevity earlier: All
the coherent, but fragmented elements of an entire historical tradition,
dating at least as far back as the 3rd century, come into
brilliant focus in the thought of St. John of the Cross some thirteen
hundred years later. Perhaps, in closing, an analogy of our own will
be useful. This tradition comes to us more or less like the fragments
of a mirror shattered at the dawn of time, each piece of which, in some
diminished form, in and of itself reflects something authentic of the
one same sun whose light is brought to bear upon it – but these scattered
pieces are finally brought into proper orientation, aligned, reintegrated,
and seamlessly conjoined only through a creative insight so flawless
in perspective that the whole is for the first time reflected as unfragmented
in all its parts, revealing a brilliance far greater in its unity than
the sum of each distinct light reflecting in only the totality of its
parts. Where each previous mystic, through the indomitable
prompting of Unspeakable Love, had succeeded merely in hurling a star
into the darkness, St. John, peering into that same night, grasped the
divine dialectic of darkness and light – and with the finger of God
traced the constellation that revealed, in the closing words of Dante’s
Paradiso, “the love that moves the sun and every star.”
___________________________________
1
or literally, ‘sets of nine’ essays divided rather arbitrarily by Porphyry
in his penchant for numerology into six groups.
2
Apart from the Enneads, Porphyry himself had written several influential
treatises, the most notable being his Sentences, essentially
an exposition of the philosophy of Plotinus, and the Isagoge
(or introduction to Aristotle’s categories) which figured largely in
later medieval thought especially in the controversy over universals
in the 11th and 12th centuries.
3
His principal works, broadly organized as the Summary of Pythagorean
Doctrines, while less celebrated than those of Porphyry, were more
speculative still, and contributed significantly to the modification
of the basic metaphysical tenets of Neoplatonism, elements of which
Proclus would subsequently take up in his final systematic synthesis.
4
“… the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”
Gen. 3.9 (Vulgate)
5
Ennead 5.1
6
Acts 17.34
7
Not including ten letters, apart from these treatises, attributed to
the Pseudo-Dionysius as well. These were addressed severally to ecclesiastics
of ranks ranging from the monk, Caius, to the Bishop of Titus, and one
ostensibly to the Apostle John himself.
8
De Fide Orthodoxa
I.12
9
The text of which, in the original Greek, had been archived by Pope
Paul I in the Abbey of St. Denis just north of Paris in 757 where it
had remained unread for the better part of a hundred years.
10
A boldly speculative
but unsuccessful attempt to synthesize the emanationisn, pantheism,
and mysticism of the Neoplatonic schema with the empirical elements
of Aristotle, Christian theism, and the doctrine on creation.
11
Golden Epistle, 249-250
12
Philocalia,
chapters 1-15
13
intimated earlier still by St. Clement of Alexandria in his Stromateis
in the 3rd century.
The Presuppositions
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