Christian Mysticism Part 12

[Footnote 221: Similar teaching from the sacred books of the East is quoted by E. Caird, _Evolution of Religion_, vol. i. p. 355.]

[Footnote 222: This is the accepted phrase for the work of the twelfth and thirteenth century theologians. We might also say that they modified uncompromising Platonic Realism by Aristotelian science. Cf.

Harnack, _History of Dogma_, vol. vi. p. 43 (English translation): "Under what other auspices could this great structure be erected than under those of that Aristotelian Realism, which was at bottom a dialectic between the Platonic Realism and Nominalism; and which was represented as capable of uniting immanence and transcendence, history and miracle, the immutability of G.o.d and mutability, Idealism and Realism, reason and authority."]

[Footnote 223: The great importance of Bernard in the history of Mysticism does not lie in the speculative side of his teaching, in which he depends almost entirely upon Augustine. His great achievement was to recall devout and loving contemplation to the image of the crucified Christ, and to found that worship of our Saviour as the "Bridegroom of the Soul," which in the next centuries inspired so much fervid devotion and lyrical sacred poetry. The romantic side of Mysticism, for good and for evil, received its greatest stimulus in Bernard's Poems and in his Sermons on the Canticles. This subject is dealt with in Appendix E.]

[Footnote 224: Stockl says of Hugo that the course of development of mediaeval Mysticism cannot be understood without a knowledge of his writings. Stockl's own account is very full and clear.]

[Footnote 225: The "eye of contemplation" was given us "to see G.o.d within ourselves"; this eye has been blinded by sin. The "eye of reason" was given us "to see ourselves"; this has been injured by sin.

Only the "eye flesh" remains in its pristine clearness. In things "above reason" we must trust to faith, "quae non adiuvatur ratione ulla, quoniam non capit ea ratio."]

[Footnote 226: Richard, who is more ecstatic than Hugo, gives the following account of this state: "Per mentis excessum extra semetipsum ductus h.o.m.o ... lumen non per speculum in aenigmate sed in simplici veritate contemplatur." In this state "we forget all that is without and all that is within us." Reason and all other faculties are obscured. What then is our security against delusions? "The transfigured Christ," he says, "must be accompanied by Moses and Elias"; that is to say, visions must not be believed which conflict with the authority of Scripture.]

[Footnote 227: See, especially, Stockl, _Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters_, vol. i. pp. 382-384.]

[Footnote 228: It is hardly necessary to point out that St. Paul's distinction between natural and spiritual (see esp. 1 Cor. ii.) is wholly different.]

[Footnote 229: Contrast the Plotinian doctrine of ecstasy with the following: "Dieu eleve a son gre aux plus hauts sommets, sans aucun merite prealable. Osanne de Mantoue recoit le don de la contemplation a peine agee de six ans. Christine est fiancee a dix ans, pendant une extase de trois jours; Marie d'Agreda recut des illuminations des sa premiere enfance" (Ribet). Since Divine favours are believed to be bestowed in a purely arbitrary manner, the fancies of a child left alone in the dark are as good as the deepest intuitions of saint, poet, or philosopher. Moreover, G.o.d sometimes "a.s.serts His liberty" by "elevating souls suddenly and without transition from the abyss of sin to the highest summits of perfection, just as in nature He a.s.serts it by miracles" (Ribet). Such teaching is interesting as showing how the admission of caprice in the world of phenomena reacts upon the moral sense and depraves our conception of G.o.d and salvation. The faculty of contemplation, according to Roman Catholic teaching, is acquired "_either_ by virtue _or_ by gratuitous favour." The dualism of natural and supernatural thus allows men to claim independent merit, while the interventions of G.o.d are arbitrary and unaccountable.]

[Footnote 230: Those who are interested to see how utterly defenceless this theory leaves us against the silliest delusions, may consult with advantage the _Dictionary of Mysticism_, by the Abbe Migne (_pa.s.sim_), or, if they wish to ascend nearer to the fountain-head of these legends, there are the sixty folio volumes of _Acta Sanctorum_, compiled by the Bollandists. Gorres and Ribet are also very full of these stories.]

[Footnote 231: See Appendix C.]

[Footnote 232: The difference between contemplation and meditation is explained by all the mediaeval mystics. Meditation is "discursive,"

contemplation is "mentis in Deum suspensae elevatio." Richard of St.

Victor states the distinction epigrammatically--"per meditationem rimamur, per contemplationem miramur." ("Admiratio est actus consequens contemplationem sublimis veritatis."--Thomas Aquinas.)]

[Footnote 233: This arbitrary schematism is very characteristic of this type of Mysticism, and shows its affinity to Indian philosophy.

Compare "the eightfold path of Buddha," and a hundred other similar cla.s.sifications in the sacred books of the East.]

[Footnote 234: The date usually given, 1260, is probably too late; but the exact year cannot be determined.]

[Footnote 235: Prof. Karl Pearson (_Mina_, 1886) says, "The Mysticism of Eckhart owes its leading ideas to Averroes." He traces the doctrine of the [Greek: Nous poietikos] from Aristotle, _de Anima_, through the Arabs to Eckhart, and finds a close resemblance between the "prototypes" or "ideas" of Eckhart and the "Dinge an sich" of Kant.

But Eckhart's affinities with Plotinus and Hegel seem to me to be closer than those which he shows with Aristotle and Kant. On the connexion with Averroes, La.s.son says that while there is a close resemblance between the Eckhartian doctrine of the "Seelengrund" and Averroes' _Intellectus Agens_ as the universal principle of reason in all men (monopsychism), they differ in this--that with Averroes personality is a phase or accident, but with Eckhart the eternal is immanent in the personality in such a way that the personality itself has a part in eternity (_Meister Eckhart der Mystiker_, pp. 348, 349).

Personality is for Eckhart the eternal ground-form of all true being, and the notion of Person is the centre-point of his system. He says, "The word _I am_ none can truly speak but G.o.d alone." The individual must try to become a person, as the Son of G.o.d is a Person.]

[Footnote 236: Denifle has devoted great pains to proving that Eckhart in his Latin works is very largely dependent upon Aquinas. His conclusions are welcomed and gladly adopted by Harnack, who, like Ritschl, has little sympathy with the German mystics, and considers that Christian Mysticism is really "Catholic piety." "It will never be possible," he says, "to make Mysticism Protestant without flying in the face of history and Catholicism." No one certainly would be guilty of the absurdity of "making Mysticism Protestant"; but it is, I think, even more absurd to "make it (Roman) Catholic," though such a view may unite the suffrages of Romanists and Neo-Kantians. See Appendix A, p.

346.]

[Footnote 237: Preger (vol. iii. p. 140) says that Eckhart did _not_ try to be popular. But it is clear, I think, that he did try to make his philosophy intelligible to the average educated man, though his teaching is less ethical and more speculative than that of Tauler.]

[Footnote 238: Sometimes he speaks of the G.o.dhead as above the opposition of being and not being; but at other times he regards the G.o.dhead as the universal Ground or Substance of the ideal world. "All things in G.o.d are one thing." "G.o.d is neither this nor that." Compare, too, the following pa.s.sage: "(Gottes) einfeltige natur ist von formen formlos, von werden werdelos, von wesen wesenlos, und von sachen sachelos, und darum entgeht sie in allen werdenden dingen, und die endliche dinge mussen da enden."]

[Footnote 239: I here agree with Preger against La.s.son. It seems to me to be one of the most important and characteristic parts of Eckhart's system, that the Trinity is _not_ for him (as it was for Hierotheus) an emanation or appearance of the Absolute. But it is not to be denied that there are pa.s.sages in Eckhart which support the other view.]

[Footnote 240: Compare Spinoza's "natura naturata."]

[Footnote 241: The ideas are "uncreated creatures"; they are "creatures in G.o.d but not in themselves." Preger states Eckhart's doctrine thus: "Gott denkt sein Wesen in untergeordnete Weise nachahmbar, und der Reflex dieses Denkens in dem gottlichen Bewusstsein, die Vorstellungen hievon, sind die Ideen." But in what sense is the ideal world "subordinate"? The Son in Eckhart holds quite a different relation to the Father from that which the [Greek: Nous] holds to "the One" in Plotinus, as the following sentence will show: "G.o.d is for ever working in one eternal Now; this working of His is giving birth to His Son; He bears Him at every moment. From this birth proceed all things. G.o.d has such delight therein that _He uses up all His power in the process_. He bears Himself out of Himself into Himself. He bears Himself continually in the Son; in Him He speaks all things." The following pa.s.sage from Ruysbroek is an attempt to define more precisely the nature of the Eckhartian Ideas: Before the temporal creation G.o.d saw the creatures, "et agnovit distincte in seipso in alteritate quadam--non tamen omnimoda alteritate; quidquid enim in Deo est Deus est." Our eternal life remains "perpetuo in divina essentia sine discretione," but continually flows out "per aeternam Verbi generationem." Ruysbroek also says clearly that creation is the embodiment of the _whole_ mind of G.o.d: "Whatever lives in the Father hidden in the unity, lives in the Son 'in emanatione manifesta.'"]

[Footnote 242: It is true that Eckhart was censured for teaching "Deum sine ipso nihil facere posse"; but the notion of a real _becoming_ of G.o.d in the human mind, and the attempt to solve the problem of evil on the theory of evolutionary optimism, are, I am convinced, alien to his philosophy. See, however, on the other side, Carriere, _Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit_, pp. 152-157.]

[Footnote 243: See La.s.son, _Meister Eckhart_, p. 351. Eckhart protests vigorously against the misrepresentation that he made the phenomenal world the _Wesen_ of G.o.d, and uses strongly acosmistic language in self-defence. But there seems to be a real inconsistency in this side of his philosophy.]

[Footnote 244: I mean that a pantheist may with equal consistency call himself an optimist or a pessimist, or both alternately.]

[Footnote 245: As when he says, "In G.o.d all things are one, from angel to spider." The inquisitors were not slow to lay hold of this error.

Among the twenty-six articles of the gravamen against Eckhart we find, "Item, in omni opere, etiam malo, manifestatur et relucet _aequaliter_ gloria Dei." The word _aequaliter_ the stamp of true pantheism.

Eckhart, however, whether consistently or not, frequently a.s.serts the transcendence of G.o.d. "G.o.d is in the creatures, but above them." "He is above all nature, and is not Himself nature," etc. In dealing with _sin_, he is confronted with the obvious difficulty that if it is the nature of all phenomenal things to return to G.o.d, from whom they proceeded, the process which he calls the birth of the Son ought logically to occur in every conscious individual, for all have a like phenomenal existence. He attempts to solve this puzzle by the hypothesis of a double aspect of the new birth (see below). But I fear there is some justice in Professor Pearson's comment, "Thus his phenomenology is shattered upon his practical theology."]

[Footnote 246: Other scholastics and mystics had taught that there is a _residue_ of the G.o.dlike in man. The idea of a central point of the soul appears in Plotinus and Augustine, and the word _scintilla_ had been used of this faculty before Eckhart. The "synteresis" of Alexander of Hales, Bonaventura, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas, was substantially the same. But there is this difference, that while the earlier writers regard this resemblance to G.o.d as only a _residue_, Eckhart regards it as the true _Wesen_ of the soul, into which all its faculties may be transformed.]

[Footnote 247: The following pa.s.sage from Amiel (p. 44 of English edition) is an admirable commentary on the mystical doctrine of immanence:--"The centre of life is neither in thought nor in feeling nor in will, nor even in consciousness, so far as it thinks, feels, or wishes. For moral truth may have been penetrated and possessed in all these ways, and escape us still. Deeper even than consciousness, there is our being itself, our very substance, our nature. Only those truths which have entered into this last region, which have become ourselves, become spontaneous and involuntary, instinctive and unconscious, are really our life--that is to say, something more than our property. So long as we are able to distinguish any s.p.a.ce whatever between the truth and us, we remain outside it. The thought, the feeling, the desire, the consciousness of life, are not yet quite life. But peace and repose can nowhere be found except in life and in eternal life, and the eternal life is the Divine life, is G.o.d. To become Divine is, then, the aim of life: then only can truth be said to be ours beyond the possibility of loss, because it is no longer outside of us, nor even in us, but we are it, and it is we; we ourselves are a truth, a will, a work of G.o.d. Liberty has become nature; the creature is one with its Creator--one through love."]

[Footnote 248: No better exposition of the religious aspect of Eckhart's doctrine of immanence can be found than in Princ.i.p.al Caird's _Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion_, pp. 244, 245, as the following extract will show: "There is therefore a sense in which we can say that the world of finite intelligence, though distinct from G.o.d, is still, in its ideal nature, one with Him. That which G.o.d creates, and by which He reveals the hidden treasures of His wisdom and love, is still not foreign to His own infinite life, but one with it. In the knowledge of the minds that know Him, in the self-surrender of the hearts that love Him, it is no paradox to affirm that He knows and loves Himself. As He is the origin and inspiration of every true thought and pure affection, of every experience in which we forget and rise above ourselves, so is He also of all these the end. If in one point of view religion is the work of man, in another it is the work of G.o.d. Its true significance is not apprehended till we pa.s.s beyond its origin in time and in the experience of a finite spirit, to see in it the revelation of the mind of G.o.d Himself. In the language of Scripture, 'It is G.o.d that worketh in us to will and to do of His good pleasure: all things are of G.o.d, who hath reconciled us to Himself.'"]

[Footnote 249: Eckhart sees this (cf. Preger, vol. i. p. 421): "Personality in Eckhart is neither the faculties, nor the form (_Bild_), nor the essence, nor the nature of the G.o.dhead, but it is rather the spirit which rises out of the essence, and is born by the irradiation of the form in the essence, which mingles itself with our nature and works by its means." The obscurity of this conception is not made any less by the distinction which Eckhart draws between the outer and inner consciousness in the personality. The outer consciousness is bound up with the earthly life; to it all images must come through sense; but in this way it can have no image of itself.

But the higher consciousness is supra-temporal. The potential ground of the soul is and remains sinless; but the personality is also united to the bodily nature; its guilt is that it inclines to its sinful nature instead of to G.o.d.]

[Footnote 250: Eckhart distinguishes the _intellectus agens_ (_diu wirkende Vernunft_) from the pa.s.sive (_lidende_) intellect. The office of the former is to present perceptions to the latter, set out under the forms of time and s.p.a.ce. In his Stra.s.sburg period, the spark or _Ganster_, the _intellectus agens, diu oberste Vernunft_, and _synteresis_, seem to be identical; but later he says, "The active intellect cannot give what it has not got. It cannot see two ideas together, but only one after another. But if G.o.d works in the place of the active intellect, He begets (in the mind) many ideas in one point." Thus the "spark" becomes supra-rational and uncreated--the Divine essence itself.]

[Footnote 251: The following sentence, for instance, is in the worst manner of Dionysius: "Thou shalt love G.o.d as He is, a non-G.o.d, a non-Spirit, a non-Person, a non-Form: He is absolute bare Unity." This is Eckhart's theory of the Absolute ("the G.o.dhead") as distinguished from G.o.d. In these moods he wishes, like the Asiatic mystics, to sink in the bottomless sea of the Infinite. He also aspires to absolute [Greek: apatheia] (_Abgeschiedenheit_). "Is he sick? He is as fain to be sick as well. If a friend should die--in the name of G.o.d. If an eye should be knocked out--in the name of G.o.d." The soul has returned to its pre-natal condition, having rid itself of all "creatureliness."]

[Footnote 252: Many pa.s.sages might be quoted. The ordinary conclusion is that Mary chose the better part, because activity is confined to this life, while contemplation lasts for ever. Augustine treats the story of Leah and Rachel in the same way (_Contra Faust. Manich_.

xxii. 52): "Lia interpretatur Laborans, Rachel autem Visum principium, sive Verb.u.m ex quo videtur principium. Actio ergo humanae mortalisque vitae ... ipsa est Lia prior uxor Jacob; ac per hoc et infirmis oculis fuisse commemoratur. Spes vero aeternae contemplationis Dei, habens certam et delectabilem intelligentiam veritatis, ipsa est Rachel, unde etiam dicitur bona facie et pulcra specie," etc.]

[Footnote 253: Moreover, he is never tired of insisting that the _Will_ is everything. "If your will is right, you cannot go wrong," he says. "With the will I can do everything." "Love resides in the will--the more will, the more love." "There is nothing evil but the evil will, of which sin is the appearance." "The value of human life depends entirely on the aim which it sets before itself." This over-insistence on purity of intention as the end, as well as the beginning, of virtue, is no doubt connected with Eckhart's denial of reality and importance to the world of time; he tries to show that it does not logically lead to Antinomianism. His doctrine that good works have no value in themselves differs from those of Abelard and Bernard, which have a superficial resemblance to it. Eckhart really regards the Catholic doctrine of good works much as St. Paul treated the Pharisaic legalism; but he is as unconscious of the widening gulf which had already opened between Teutonic and Latin Christianity, as of the discredit which his own writings were to help to bring upon the monkish view of life.]

[Footnote 254: As an example of his free handling of the Old Testament, I may quote, "Do not suppose that when G.o.d made heaven and earth and all things, He made one thing to-day and another to-morrow.

Moses says so, of course, but he knew better; he only wrote that for the sake of the populace, who could not have understood otherwise. G.o.d merely _willed_ and the world _was_."]

[Footnote 255: E.g. "Da der vatter seynen sun in mir gebirt, da byn ich der selb sun und nitt eyn ander."]

[Footnote 256: So Hermann of Fritslar says that the soul has two faces, the one turned towards this world, the other immediately to G.o.d. In the latter G.o.d flows and shines eternally, whether man is conscious of it or not. It is therefore according to man's nature as possessed of this Divine ground, to seek G.o.d, his original; and even in h.e.l.l the suffering there has its source in hopeless contradiction of this indestructible tendency. See Vaughan, vol. i. p. 256; and the same teaching in Tauler, p. 185.]

LECTURE V

[Greek: "Ho thronos tes theiotetos ho nous estin emon."]

MACARIUS.

"Thou comest not, thou goest not; Thou wert not, wilt not be; Eternity is but a thought By which we think of Thee."

FABER.