Christian Mysticism. William Ralph Inge

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СКАЧАТЬ idea of man as a microcosm was developed in two ways. Plotinus said that "every man is double," meaning that one side of his soul is in contact with the intelligible, the other with the sensible world. He is careful to explain that the doctrine of Divine Immanence does not mean that God divides Himself among the many individuals, but that they partake of Him according to their degrees of receptivity, so that each one is potentially in possession of all the fulness of God. Proclus tries to explain how this can be. "There are three sorts of Wholes—the first, anterior to the parts; the second, composed of the parts; the third, knitting into one stuff the parts and the whole.[54]" In this third sense the whole resides in the parts, as well as the parts in the whole. St. Augustine states the same doctrine in clearer language.[55] It will be seen at once how this doctrine encourages that class of Mysticism which bids us "sink into the depths of our own souls" in order to find God.

      The other development of the theory that man is a microcosm is not less important and interesting. It is a favourite doctrine of the mystics that man, in his individual life, recapitulates the spiritual history of the race, in much the same way in which embryologists tell us that the unborn infant recapitulates the whole process of physical evolution. It follows that the Incarnation, the central fact of human history, must have its analogue in the experience of the individual. We shall find that this doctrine of the birth of an infant Christ in the soul is one of immense importance in the systems of Eckhart, Tauler, and our Cambridge Platonists. It is a somewhat perilous doctrine, as we shall see; but it is one which, I venture to think, has a future as well as a past, for the progress of modern science has greatly strengthened the analogies on which it rests. I shall show in my next Lecture how strongly St. Paul felt its value.

      This brief introduction will, I hope, have indicated the main characteristics of mystical theology and religion. It is a type which is as repulsive to some minds as it is attractive to others. Coleridge has said that everyone is born a Platonist or an Aristotelian, and one might perhaps adapt the epigram by saying that everyone is naturally either a mystic or a legalist. The classification does, indeed, seem to correspond to a deep difference in human characters; it is doubtful whether a man could be found anywhere whom one could trust to hold the scales evenly between—let us say—Fénelon and Bossuet. The cleavage is much the same as that which causes the eternal strife between tradition and illumination, between priest and prophet, which has produced the deepest tragedies in human history, and will probably continue to do so while the world lasts. The legalist—with his conception of God as the righteous Judge dispensing rewards and punishments, the "Great Taskmaster" in whose vineyard we are ordered to labour; of the Gospel as "the new law," and of the sanction of duty as a "categorical imperative"—will never find it easy to sympathise with those whose favourite words are St. John's triad—light, life, and love, and who 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 СКАЧАТЬ