Christian Mysticism Part 7

Beginning with the Trinity, he identifies G.o.d the Father with the Neoplatonic Monad, and describes Him as "superessential Indetermination," "super-rational Unity," "the Unity which unifies every unity," "superessential Essence," "irrational Mind," "unspoken Word," "the absolute No-thing which is above all existence.[161]"

Even now he is not satisfied with the tortures to which he has subjected the Greek language. "No monad or triad," he says, "can express the all-transcending hiddenness of the all-transcending super-essentially super-existing super-Deity.[162]" But even in the midst of this barbarous jargon he does not quite forget his Plato.

"The Good and Beautiful," he says, "are the cause of all things that are; and all things love and aspire to the Good and Beautiful, which are, indeed, the sole objects of their desire." "Since, then, the Absolute Good and Beautiful is honoured by eliminating all qualities from it, the non-existent also ([Greek: to me on]) must partic.i.p.ate in the Good and Beautiful." This pathetic absurdity shows what we are driven to if we try to graft Indian nihilism upon the Platonic doctrine of ideas. Plotinus tried hard to show that his First Person was very different from his lowest category--non-existent "matter"; but if we once allow ourselves to define the Infinite as the Indefinite, the conclusion which he deprecated cannot long be averted.

"G.o.d is the Being of all that is." Since, then, Being is identical with G.o.d or Goodness, evil, as such, does not exist; it only exists by its partic.i.p.ation in good. Evil, he says, is not in things which exist; a good tree cannot bear evil fruit; it must, therefore, have another origin. But this is dualism, and must be rejected.[163] Nor is evil in G.o.d, nor of G.o.d; nor in the angels; nor in the human soul; nor in the brutes; nor in inanimate nature; nor in matter. Having thus hunted evil out of every corner of the universe, he asks--Is evil, then, simply privation of good? But privation is not evil in itself.

No; evil must arise from "disorderly and inharmonious motion." As dirt has been defined as matter in the wrong place, so evil is good in the wrong place. It arises by a kind of accident; "all evil is done with the object of gaining some good; no one does evil as evil." Evil in itself is that which is "nohow, nowhere, and no thing"; "G.o.d sees evil as good." Students of modern philosophy will recognise a theory which has found influential advocates in our own day: that evil needs only to be supplemented, rearranged, and trans.m.u.ted, in order to take its place in the universal harmony.[164]

All things flow out from G.o.d, and all will ultimately return to Him. The first emanation is the Thing in itself ([Greek: auto to einai]), which corresponds to the Plotinian [Greek: Nous], and to the Johannine Logos.

He also calls it "Life in itself" and "Wisdom in itself" ([Greek: autozoe, autosophia]). Of this he says, "So then the Divine Wisdom in knowing itself will know all things. It will know the material immaterially, and the divided inseparably, and the many as one ([Greek: heniaios]), knowing all things by the standard of absolute unity." These important speculations are left undeveloped by Dionysius, who merely states them dogmatically. The universe is evolved from the Son, whom he identifies with the "Thing in itself," "Wisdom," or "Life in itself." In creation "the One is said to become multiform." The world is a necessary process of G.o.d's being. He created it "as the sun shines," "without premeditation or purpose." The Father is simply One; the Son has also plurality, namely, the words (or reasons) which make existence ([Greek: tous ousiopoious logous]), which theology calls fore-ordinations ([Greek: proorismous]). But he does not teach that all separate existences will ultimately be merged in the One. The highest Unity gives to all the power of striving, on the one hand, to share in the One; on the other, to persist in their own individuality. And in more than one pa.s.sage he speaks of G.o.d as a Unity comprehending, not abolishing differences.[165] "G.o.d is before all things"; "Being is in Him, and He is not in Being." Thus Dionysius tries to safeguard the transcendence of G.o.d, and to escape Pantheism. The outflowing process is appropriated by the mind by the _positive_ method--the downward path through finite existences: its conclusion is, "G.o.d is All." The return journey is by the _negative_ road, that of ascent to G.o.d by abstraction and a.n.a.lysis: its conclusion is, "All is not G.o.d.[166]" The negative path is the high road of a large school of mystics; I will say more about it presently.

The mystic, says Dionysius, "must leave behind all things both in the sensible and in the intelligible worlds, till he enters into the darkness of nescience that is truly mystical." This "Divine darkness,"

he says elsewhere, "is the light unapproachable" mentioned by St. Paul, "a deep but dazzling darkness," as Henry Vaughan calls it. It is dark through excess of light[167]. This doctrine really renders nugatory what he has said about the persistence of distinctions after the rest.i.tution of all things; for as "all colours agree in the dark," so, for us, in proportion as we attain to true knowledge, all distinctions are lost in the absolute.

The soul is bipart.i.te. The higher portion sees the "Divine images"

directly, the lower by means of symbols. The latter are not to be despised, for they are "true impressions of the Divine characters,"

and necessary steps, which enable us to "mount to the one undivided truth by a.n.a.logy." This is the way in which we should use the Scriptures. They have a symbolic truth and beauty, which is intelligible only to those who can free themselves from the "puerile myths[168]" (the language is startling in a saint of the Church!) in which they are sometimes embedded.

Dionysius has much to say about love[169], but he uses the word [Greek: eros], which is carefully avoided in the New Testament. He admits that the Scriptures "often use" [Greek: agape], but justifies his preference for the other word by quoting St. Ignatius, who says of Christ, "My Love [Greek: eros] is crucified.[170]" Divine Love, he finely says, is "an eternal circle, from goodness, through goodness, and to goodness."

The mediaeval mystics were steeped in Dionysius, though his system received from them certain modifications under the influence of Aristotelianism. He is therefore, for us, a very important figure; and there are two parts of his scheme which, I think, require fuller consideration than has been given them in this very slight sketch. I mean the "negative road" to G.o.d, and the pantheistic tendency.

The theory that we can approach G.o.d only by a.n.a.lysis or abstraction has already been briefly commented on. It is no invention of Dionysius.

Plotinus uses similar language, though his view of G.o.d as the fulness of all _life_ prevented him from following the negative path with thoroughness. But in Proclus we find the phrases, afterwards so common, about "sinking into the Divine Ground," "forsaking the manifold for the One," and so forth. Basilides, long before, evidently carried the doctrine to its extremity: "We must not even call G.o.d ineffable," he says, "since this is to make an a.s.sertion about Him; He is above every name that is named.[171]" It was a commonplace of Christian instruction to say that "in Divine matters there is great wisdom in confessing our ignorance"--this phrase occurs in Cyril's catechism.[172] But confessing our ignorance is a very different thing from refusing to make any positive statements about G.o.d. It is true that all our language about G.o.d must be inadequate and symbolic; but that is no reason for discarding all symbols, as if we could in that way know G.o.d as He knows Himself. At the bottom, the doctrine that G.o.d can be described only by negatives is neither Christian nor Greek, but belongs to the old religion of India. Let me try to state the argument and its consequence in a clear form. Since G.o.d is the Infinite, and the Infinite is the ant.i.thesis of the finite, every attribute which can be affirmed of a finite being may be safely denied of G.o.d. Hence G.o.d can only be _described_ by negatives; He can only be _discovered_ by stripping off all the qualities and attributes which veil Him; He can only be _reached_ by divesting ourselves of all the distinctions of personality, and sinking or rising into our "uncreated nothingness"; and He can only be _imitated_ by aiming at an abstract spirituality, the pa.s.sionless "apathy" of an universal which is nothing in particular. Thus we see that the whole of those developments of Mysticism which despise symbols, and hope to see G.o.d by shutting the eye of sense, hang together. They all follow from the false notion of G.o.d as the abstract Unity transcending, or rather excluding, all distinctions. Of course, it is not intended to _exclude_ distinctions, but to rise above them; but the process of abstraction, or subtraction, as it really is, can never lead us to "the One.[173]" The only possible unification with such an Infinite is the [Greek: atermon negretos hupnos] of Nirvana.[174] Nearly all that repels us in mediaeval religious life--its "other-worldliness"

and pa.s.sive hostility to civilisation--the emptiness of its ideal life--its maltreatment of the body--its disparagement of family life--the respect which it paid to indolent contemplation--springs from this one root. But since no one who remains a Christian can exhibit the results of this theory in their purest form, I shall take the liberty of quoting a few sentences from a pamphlet written by a native Indian judge who I believe is still living. His object is to explain and commend to Western readers the mystical philosophy of his own country:[175]--"He who in perfect rest rises from the body and attains the highest light, comes forth in his own proper form. This is the immortal soul. The ascent is by the ladder of one's thoughts. To know G.o.d, one must first know one's own spirit in its purity, unspotted by thought. The soul is hidden behind the veil of thought, and only when thought is worn off, becomes visible to itself. This stage is called knowledge of the soul.

Next is realised knowledge of G.o.d, who rises from the bosom of the soul.

This is the end of progress; differentiation between self and others has ceased. All the world of thought and senses is melted into an ocean without waves or current. This dissolution of the world is also known as the death of the sinful or worldly 'I,' which veils the true Ego. Then the formless Being of the Deity is seen in the regions of pure consciousness beyond the veil of thought. Consciousness is wholly distinct from thought and senses; it knows them; they do not know it.

The only proof is an appeal to spiritual experience." In the highest stage one is absolutely inert, "knowing nothing in particular.[176]"

Most of this would have been accepted as precious truth by the mediaeval Church mystics.[177] The words nakedness, darkness, nothingness, pa.s.sivity, apathy, and the like, fill their pages. We shall find that this time-honoured phraseology was adhered to long after the grave moral dangers which beset this type of Mysticism had been recognised. Tauler, for instance, who lays the axe to the root of the tree by saying, "Christ never arrived at the emptiness of which these men talk," repeats the old jargon for pages together. German Mysticism really rested on another basis, and when Luther had the courage to break with ecclesiastical tradition, the _via negativa_ rapidly disappeared within the sphere of his influence.

But it held sway for a long time--so long that we cannot complain if many have said, "This is the essence of Mysticism." Mysticism is such a vague word, that one must not quarrel with any "private interpretation" of it; but we must point out that this limitation excludes the whole army of symbolists, a school which, in Europe at least, has shown more vitality than introspective Mysticism. I regard the _via negativa_ in metaphysics, religion, and ethics as the great accident of Christian Mysticism. The break-up of the ancient civilisation, with the losses and miseries which it brought upon humanity, and the chaos of brutal barbarism in which Europe weltered for some centuries, caused a widespread pessimism and world-weariness which is foreign to the temper of Europe, and which gave way to energetic and full-blooded activity in the Renaissance and Reformation. Asiatic Mysticism is the natural refuge of men who have lost faith in civilisation, but will not give up faith in G.o.d. "Let us fly hence to our dear country!" We hear the words already in Plotinus--nay, even in Plato. The sun still shone in heaven, but on earth he was eclipsed. Mysticism cuts too deep to allow us to live comfortably on the surface of life; and so all "the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world" pressed upon men and women till they were fain to throw it off, and seek peace in an invisible world of which they could not see even a shadow round about them.

But I do not think that the negative road is a pure error. There is a negative side in religion, both in thought and practice. We are first impelled to seek the Infinite by the limitations of the finite, which appear to the soul as bonds and prison walls. It is natural first to think of the Infinite as that in which these barriers are done away.

And in practice we must die daily, if our inward man is to be daily renewed. We must die to our lower self, not once only but continually, so that we may rise on stepping stones of many dead selves to higher things.[178] We must die to our first superficial views of the world around us, nay, even to our first views of G.o.d and religion, unless the childlike in our faith is by arrest of growth to become the childish. All the good things of life have first to be renounced, and then given back to us, before they can be really ours. It was necessary that these truths should be not only taught, but lived through. The individual has generally to pa.s.s through the quagmire of the "everlasting No," before he can set his feet on firm ground; and the Christian races, it seems, were obliged to go through the same experience. Moreover, there is a sense in which all moral effort aims at destroying the conditions of its own existence, and so ends logically in self-negation. Our highest aim as regards ourselves is to eradicate, not only sin, but temptation. We do not feel that we have won the victory until we no longer wish to offend. But a being who was entirely free from temptation would be either more or less than a man--"either a beast or a G.o.d," as Aristotle says.[179] There is, therefore, a half truth in the theory that the goal of earthly striving is negation and absorption. But it at once becomes false if we forget that it is a goal which cannot be reached in time, and which is achieved, not by good and evil neutralising each other, but by death being swallowed up in victory. If morality ceases to be moral when it has achieved its goal, it must pa.s.s into something which includes as well as transcends it--a condition which is certainly not fulfilled by contemplative pa.s.sivity.[180]

These thoughts should save us from regarding the saints of the cloister with impatience or contempt. The limitations incidental to their place in history do not prevent them from being glorious pioneers among the high pa.s.ses of the spiritual life, who have scaled heights which those who talk glibly about "the mistake of asceticism"

have seldom even seen afar off.

We must next consider briefly the charge of Pantheism, which has been flung rather indiscriminately at nearly all speculative mystics, from Plotinus to Emerson. Dionysius, naturally enough, has been freely charged with it. The word is so loosely and thoughtlessly used, even by writers of repute, that I hope I may be pardoned if I try to distinguish (so far as can be done in a few words) between the various systems which have been called pantheistic.

True Pantheism must mean the identification of G.o.d with the totality of existence, the doctrine that the universe is the complete and only expression of the nature and life of G.o.d, who on this theory is only immanent and not transcendent. On this view, everything in the world belongs to the Being of G.o.d, who is manifested equally in everything.

Whatever is real is perfect; reality and perfection are the same thing. Here again we must go to India for a perfect example. "The learned behold G.o.d alike in the reverend Brahmin, in the ox and in the elephant, in the dog and in him who eateth the flesh of dogs.[181]" So Pope says that G.o.d is "as full, as perfect, in a hair as heart." The Persian Sufis were deeply involved in this error, which leads to all manner of absurdities and even immoralities. It is inconsistent with any belief in _purpose_, either in the whole or in the parts. Evil, therefore, cannot exist for the sake of a higher good: it must be itself good. It is easy to see how this view of the world may pa.s.s into pessimism or nihilism; for if everything is equally real and equally Divine, it makes no difference, except to our tempers, whether we call it everything or nothing, good or bad.

None of the writers with whom we have to deal can fairly be charged with this error, which is subversive of the very foundations of true religion. Eckhart, carried away by his love of paradox, allows himself occasionally to make statements which, if logically developed, would come perilously near to it; and Emerson's philosophy is more seriously compromised in this direction. Dionysius is in no such danger, for the simple reason that he stands too near to Plato. The pantheistic tendency of mediaeval Realism requires a few words of explanation, especially as I have placed the name of Plato at the head of this Lecture. Plato's doctrine of ideas aimed at establishing the transcendence of the highest Idea--that of G.o.d. But the mediaeval doctrine of ideas, as held by the extreme Realists, sought to find room in the _summum genus_ for a harmonious coexistence of all things. It thus tended towards Pantheism;[182] while the Aristotelian Realists maintained the substantial character of individuals outside the Being of G.o.d. "This view," says Eicken, "which quite inverted the historical and logical relation of the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophies, was maintained till the close of the Middle Ages."

We may also call pantheistic any system which regards the cosmic process as a real _becoming_ of G.o.d. According to this theory, G.o.d comes to Himself, attains full self-consciousness, in the highest of His creatures, which are, as it were, the organs of His self-unfolding Personality. This is not a philosophy which commends itself specially to speculative mystics, because it involves the belief that _time_ is an ultimate reality. If in the cosmic process, which takes place in time, G.o.d becomes something which He was not before, it cannot be said that He is exalted above time, or that a thousand years are to Him as one day. I shall say in my fourth Lecture that this view cannot justly be attributed to Eckhart. Students of Hegel are not agreed whether it is or is not part of their master's teaching.[183]

The idea of _will_ as a world-principle--not in Schopenhauer's sense of a blind force impelling from within, but as the determination of a conscious Mind--lifts us at once out of Pantheism.[184] It sets up the distinction between what is and what ought to be, which Pantheism cannot find room for, and at the same time implies that the cosmic process is already complete in the consciousness of G.o.d, which cannot be held if He is subordinated to the category of time.

G.o.d is more than the All, as being the perfect Personality, whose Will is manifested in creation under necessarily imperfect conditions. He is also in a sense less than the All, since pain, weakness, and sin, though known to Him as infinite Mind, can hardly be felt by Him as infinite Perfection. The function of evil in the economy of the universe is an inscrutable mystery, about which speculative Mysticism merely a.s.serts that the solution cannot be that of the Manicheans. It is only the Agnostic[185] who will here offer the dilemma of Dualism or Pantheism, and try to force the mystic to accept the second alternative.

There are two other views of the universe which have been called pantheistic, but incorrectly.

The first is that properly called _Acosmism_, which we have encountered as Orientalised Platonism. Plato's theory of ideas was popularised into a doctrine of two separate worlds, related to each other as shadow and substance. The intelligible world, which is in the mind of G.o.d, alone exists; and thus, by denying reality to the visible world, we get a kind of idealistic Pantheism. But the notion of G.o.d as abstract Unity, which, as we have seen, was held by the later Neoplatonists and their Christian followers, seems to make a real world impossible; for bare Unity cannot create, and the metaphor of the sun shedding his rays explains nothing. Accordingly the "intelligible world," the sphere of reality, drops out, and we are left with only the infra-real world and the supra-real One. So we are landed in nihilism or Asiatic Mysticism[186].

The second is the belief in the _immanence_ of a G.o.d who is also transcendent. This should be called _Panentheism_, a useful word coined by Krause, and not Pantheism. In its true form it is an integral part of Christian philosophy, and, indeed, of all rational theology. But in proportion as the indwelling of G.o.d, or of Christ, or the Holy Spirit in the heart of man, is regarded as an _opus operatum_, or as complete _subst.i.tution_ of the Divine for the human, we are in danger of a self-deification which resembles the maddest phase of Pantheism[187].

Pantheism, as I understand the word, is a pitfall for Mysticism to avoid, not an error involved in its first principles. But we need not quarrel with those who have said that speculative Mysticism is the Christian form of Pantheism. For there is much truth in Amiel's dictum, that "Christianity, if it is to triumph over Pantheism, must absorb it." Those are no true friends to the cause of religion who would base it entirely upon dogmatic supernaturalism. The pa.s.sion for facts which are objective, isolated, and past, often prevents us from seeing facts which are eternal and spiritual. We cry, "Lo here," and "Lo there," and forget that the kingdom of G.o.d is within us and amongst us. The great service rendered by the speculative mystics to the Christian Church lies in their recognition of those truths which Pantheism grasps only to destroy.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 107: The mention of Herac.l.i.tus is very interesting. It shows that the Christians had already recognised their affinity with the great speculative mystic of Ephesus, whose fragments supply many mottoes for essays on Mysticism. The identification of the Herac.l.i.tean [Greek: nous-logos] with the Johannine Logos appears also in Euseb.

_Praep. Ev_. xi. 19, quoted above.]

[Footnote 108: [Greek: ho panta aristos Platon--oion pheothoroumenos], he calls him.]

[Footnote 109: "Mysticism finds in Plato all its texts," says Emerson truly.]

[Footnote 110: The doctrine of reserve in religious teaching, which some have thought dishonest, rests on the self-evident proposition that it takes two to tell the truth--one to speak, and one to hear.]

[Footnote 111: "Man kann den Gnosticismus des zweiten Jahrhunderts als theologisch-transcendente Mystik, und die eigentliche Mystik als substantiell-immanente Gnosis bezeichnen" (Noack).]

[Footnote 112: See Conybeare's interesting account of the Therapeutae in his edition of Philo, _On the Contemplative Life_, and his refutation of the theory of Lucius, Zeller, etc., that the Therapeutae belong to the end of the third century.]

[Footnote 113: _Stoical_ influence is also strong in Philo.]

[Footnote 114: The Jewish writer Aristobulus (about 160 B.C.) is said to have used the same argument in an exposition of the Pentateuch addressed to Ptolemy Philometor.]

[Footnote 115: Compare Philo's own account (_in Flaceum_) of the anti-Semitic outrages at Alexandria.]

[Footnote 116: There is a very explicit identification of Christ with [Greek: Nous] in the second book of the _Miscellanies_: "He says, Whoso hath ears to hear, let him hear. And who is 'He'? Let Epicharmus answer: [Greek: Nous hora]," etc.]

[Footnote 117: See Bigg, _Christian Platonists of Alexandria_, especially pp. 92, 93.]

[Footnote 118: [Greek: Pistis] is here used in the familiar sense (which falls far short of the Johannine) of a.s.sent to particular dogmas. [Greek: Gnosis] welds these together into a consistent whole, and at the same time confers a more immediate apprehension of truth.]

[Footnote 119: [Greek: askesis] or [Greek: praxis].]

[Footnote 120: _Strom_, v. 10. 63.]

[Footnote 121: See, further, Appendices B and C.]

[Footnote 122: In Origen, [Greek: sophia] is a higher term than [Greek: gnosis].]

[Footnote 123: The Greek word is [Greek: ainigmata] "riddles." On the whole subject see Harnack, _History of Dogma_, vol. ii. p. 342.]

[Footnote 124: G.o.d, he says (_Tom. in Matth_. xiii. 569), is not the absolutely unlimited; for then He could not have self-consciousness: His omnipotence is limited by His goodness and wisdom (cf. _Cels_. iii.

493).]

[Footnote 125: I hope it is not necessary to apologise for devoting a few pages to Plotinus in a work on Christian Mysticism. Every treatise on religious thought in the early centuries of our era must take account of the parallel developments of religious philosophy in the old and the new religions, which ill.u.s.trate and explain each other.]