Christian Mysticism. William Ralph Inge

find these the most suitable names to express what they know of the nature of God. But those to whom the Fourth Gospel is the brightest jewel in the Bible, and who can enter into the real spirit of St. Paul's teaching, will, I hope, be able to take some interest in the historical development of ideas which in their Christian form are certainly built upon those parts of the New Testament.

      FOOTNOTES:

      [Footnote 2: See Appendix A for definitions of Mysticism and Mystical

       Theology.]

      [Footnote 3: See Appendix B for a discussion of the influence of the

       Greek mysteries upon Christian Mysticism.]

      [Footnote 4: Tholuck accepts the former derivation (cf. Suidas, [Greek: mystêria eklêthêsan para to tous akouontas myein to stoma kai mêdeni tauta exêgeisthai]); Petersen, the latter. There is no doubt that [Greek: myêsis] was opposed to [Greek: epopteia], and in this sense denoted incomplete initiation; but it was also made to include the whole process. The prevailing use of the adjective [Greek: mystikos] is of something seen "through a glass darkly," some knowledge purposely wrapped up in symbols.]

      [Footnote 5: So Hesychius says, [Greek: Mystai, apo myô, myontes gar tas aisthêseis kai exô tôn sarkikôn phrontidôn genomenoi, outô tas theias analampseis edechonto.] Plotinus and Proclus both use [Greek: myô] of the "closed eye" of rapt contemplation.]

      [Footnote 6: I cannot agree with Lasson (in his book on Meister Eckhart) that "the connexion with the Greek mysteries throws no light on the subject." No writer had more influence upon the growth of Mysticism in the Church than Dionysius the Areopagite, whose main object is to present Christianity in the light of a Platonic mysteriosophy. The same purpose is evident in Clement, and in other Christian Platonists between Clement and Dionysius. See Appendix B.]

      [Footnote 7: It should also be borne in mind that every historical example of a mystical movement may be expected to exhibit characteristics which are determined by the particular forms of religious deadness in opposition to which it arises. I think that it is generally easy to separate these secondary, accidental characteristics from those which are primary and integral, and that we shall then find that the underlying substance, which may be regarded as the essence of Mysticism as a type of religion, is strikingly uniform.]

      [Footnote 8: The analogy used by Plotinus (Ennead i. 6. 9) was often quoted and imitated: "Even as the eye could not behold the sun unless it were itself sunlike, so neither could the soul behold God if it were not Godlike." Lotze (Microcosmus, and cf. Metaphysics, 1st ed., p. 109) falls foul of Plotinus for this argument. "The reality of the external world is utterly severed from our senses. It is vain to call the eye sunlike, as if it needed a special occult power to copy what it has itself produced: fruitless are all mystic efforts to restore to the intuitions of sense, by means of a secret identity of mind with things, a reality outside ourselves." Whether the subjective idealism of this sentence is consistent with the subsequent dogmatic assertion that "nature is animated throughout," it is not my province to determine. The latter doctrine is held by a large school of mystics: the acosmistic tendency of the former has had only too much attraction for mystics of another school.]

      [Footnote 9: This distinction is drawn by Origen, and accepted by all the mystical writers.]

      [Footnote 10: Faith goes so closely hand in hand with love that the mystics seldom try to separate them, and indeed they need not be separated. William Law's account of their operation is characteristic. "When the seed of the new birth, called the inward man, has faith awakened in it, its faith is not a notion, but a real strong essential hunger, an attracting or magnetic desire of Christ, which as it proceeds from a seed of the Divine nature in us, so it attracts and unites with its like: it lays hold on Christ, puts on the Divine nature, and in a living and real manner grows powerful over all our sins, and effectually works out our salvation" (Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration).]

      [Footnote 11: R.L. Nettleship, Remains.]

      [Footnote 12: "Nescio si a quoquam homine quartus (gradus) in hac vita perfecte apprehenditur, ut se scilicet diligat homo tantum propter Deum. Asserant hoc si qui experti sunt: mihi (fateor) impossibile videtur" (De diligendo Deo, xv.; Epist. xi. 8).]

      [Footnote 13: From a sermon by Smith, the Cambridge Platonist. Plotinus, too, says well, [Greek: ei tis allo eidos êdonês peri ton spoudaion bion zêtei, ou ton spoudaion bion zêtei] (Ennead i. 4. 12).]

      [Footnote 14: From Smith's sermons.]

      [Footnote 15: Pindar's [Greek: genoio oios essi mathôn] is a fine mystical maxim. (Pyth. 2. 131.)]

      [Footnote 16: Strictly, the unitive road (via) leads to the contemplative life (vita). Cf. Benedict, xiv., De Servorum Dei beatific., iii. 26, "Perfecta hæc mystica unio reperitur regulariter in perfecto contemplativo qui in vita purgativa et illuminativa, id est meditativa, et contemplativa diu versatus, ex speciali Dei favore ad infusam contemplativam evectus est." On the three ways, Suarez says, "Distinguere solent mystici tres vias, purgativam, illuminativam, et unitivam." Molinos was quite a heterodox mystic in teaching that there is but a "unica via, scilicet interna," and this proposition was condemned by a Bull of Innocent XI.]

      [Footnote 17: In Plotinus the civic virtues precede the cathartic; but they are not, as with some perverse mystics, considered to lie outside the path of ascent.]

      [Footnote 18: Tauler is careful to put social service on its true basis. "One can spin," he says, "another can make shoes; and all these are gifts of the Holy Ghost. I tell you, if I were not a priest, I should esteem it a great gift that I was able to make shoes, and would try to make them so well as to be a pattern to all." In a later Lecture I shall revert to the charge of indolent neglect of duties, so often preferred against the mystics.]

      [Footnote 19: R.L. Nettleship, Remains.]

      [Footnote 20: In a Roman Catholic manual I find: "Non raro sub nomine theologiæ mysticæ intelligitur etiam ascesis, sed immerito. Nam ascesis consuetas tantum et tritas perfectionis semitas ostendit, mystica autem adhuc excellentiorem viam demonstrat." This is to identify "mystical theology" with the higher rungs of the ladder. It has been used in this curious manner from the Middle Ages. Ribet says, "La mystique, comme science spéciale, fait partie de la théologie ascétique"; that part, namely, "dans lequel l'homme est réduit à la passivité par l'action souveraine de Dieu." "L'ascèse" is defined as "l'ascension de l'âme vers Dieu."]

      [Footnote 21: Cf. Professor W. Wallace's collected Lectures and Essays, p. 276.]

      [Footnote 22: See Appendix C on the Doctrine of Deification.]

      [Footnote 23: So Fénelon, after asserting the truth of mystical "transformation," adds: "It is false to say that transformation is a deification of the real and natural soul, or a hypostatic union, or an unalterable conformity with God."]

      [Footnote 24: Life of Tennyson, vol. i. p. 320. The curious experience, that the repetition of his own name induced a kind of trance, is used by the poet in his beautiful mystical poem, "The Ancient Sage." It would, indeed, have been equally easy to illustrate this topic from Wordsworth's prose and Tennyson's poetry.]

      [Footnote 25: See the very interesting note in Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. i. p. 53.]

      [Footnote 26: The Abbé Migne says truly, "Ceux qui traitent les mystiques de visionnaires seraient fort étonnés de voir quel peu de cas ils font des visions en elles-mémes." And St. Bonaventura says of visions, "Nec faciunt sanctum nec ostendunt: alioquin Balaam sanctus esset, et asina, quæ vidit Angelum."]

      [Footnote 27: The following passage from St. Francis de Sales is much to the same effect as those referred to in the text: "Les philosophes mesmes ont recogneu certaines espèces d'extases naturelles faictes par la véhémente application de l'esprit à la considération des choses relevées. Une marque de la bonne et sainete extase est qu'elle ne se prend ny attache jamais tant à l'entendement qu'à la volonté, laquelle elle esmeut, eschauffe, et remplit d'une puissante affection