Christian
mysticism refers to the human being's direct experience or consciousness of
ultimate reality, understood as God within the context of Christian faith. The
essence of mysticism is the sense of some form of contact with the divine or
transcendent, frequently understood in its higher forms as involving union with
God. Mysticism has played an important role in the history of Christian
religion, and it has once again become a noticeably living influence in recent
times.
In
the modern period mysticism has been studied from many perspectives:
psychological, comparativist, philosophical, and theological, to name only the
most vital. The mystical text has been the subject of new attention sparked by
hermeneutical and deconstructionist philosophies. Among the theoretical
questions that have been much debated are such issues as whether mysticism
constitutes the core or essence of personal religion or whether it is better
viewed as one element interacting with others in the formation of concrete
religions. Those who emphasize a strong distinction between mystical experience
and subsequent interpretation tend to search for a common core of all mysticism;
others insist that experience and interpretation cannot be so easily sundered
and that mysticism is in most cases tied to a specific religion and contingent
upon its teachings. Both those who search for the common core, such as the
British philosopher Walter T. Stace, and those who emphasize the differences
among forms of mysticism, such as the British historian of religion Robert C.
Zaehner, have made use of typologies of mysticism, often based on the contrast
between introvertive and extrovertive mysticism developed by the comparativist
Rudolf Otto. Studies have criticized the typological approach, but many scholars
still find it useful.
The
cognitive status of mystical knowing and its clash with the mystics' claims
about the ineffability of their experiences have also been topics of interest
for modern students of mysticism. Among the most important investigations of
mystical knowing are those of the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal and the
French philosophers Henri Bergson and Jacques Maritain.
The
relation between mysticism and morality has been a topic of scholarly debate
since the time of William James, but certain questions have concerned Christian
mystics for centuries. Does mystical experience always confirm traditional
religious ideas about right and wrong, or is mysticism totally independent of
moral issues? The problems regarding mysticism are fairly easy to identify;
definitive solutions seem far off.
The
role of mysticism in Christianity has been variously evaluated by modern
theologians. Many Protestant thinkers, from Albrecht Ritschl and Adolf von
Harnack through Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, have denied mysticism an
integral role in the Christian religion, claiming that mystical union was a
Greek import incompatible with saving faith in the Gospel word. Other Protestant
theologians, such as Ernst Troeltsch in The
Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (trans. 1931) and Albert
Schweitzer in The Mysticism of Paul the
Apostle (trans. 1931), were more sympathetic. Anglican thinkers, especially
William R. Inge, Evelyn Underhill, and Kenneth E. Kirk, championed the
importance of mysticism in Christian history. Orthodox Christianity has given
mysticism so central a role in Christian life that all theology in the Christian
East by definition is mystical theology, as the Russian emigré thinker
Vladimir Lossky showed in The Mystical
Theology of the Eastern Church (trans. 1957). (see also Index:
Protestantism, Eastern
Orthodoxy)
The
most extensive theological discussions of mysticism in Christianity have been
found in modern Roman Catholicism.
In the first half of the 20th century Neoscholastic authors--invoking the
authority of Thomas Aquinas and the Spanish mystics Teresa of Ávila and
John of the Cross--debated whether mystical contemplation was the goal of all
Christians or a special grace offered only to a few. The discrimination of the
various forms of prayer and the distinction between acquired contemplation, for
which the believer could strive with the help of grace, and infused
contemplation, which was a pure and unmerited gift, framed much of this
discussion. Other Roman Catholic theologians, such as Cuthbert Butler in Western
Mysticism (1922) and Anselm Stolz in Theologie
der Mystik (1936), broke with the narrow framework of Neoscholasticism to
consider the wider scriptural and patristic tradition. In the second half of the
century Roman Catholic theologians including Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von
Balthasar addressed key theological issues in mysticism, such as the relation of
mystical experience to the universal offer of grace and the status of
non-Christian mysticism.
Although
the essence of mysticism is the sense of contact with the transcendent,
mysticism in the history of Christianity should not be understood merely in
terms of special ecstatic experiences but as part of a religious process lived
out within the context of the Christian community. From this perspective
mysticism played a vital part in the early
church. Early Christianity was a religion of the spirit that expressed
itself in the heightening and enlargement of human consciousness. It is clear
from the Synoptic Gospels (e.g.,
Matthew 11:25-27) that Jesus
was thought to have enjoyed a sense of special contact with God. In the
primitive church an active part was played by prophets, who were believed to be
recipients of a revelation coming directly from the Holy
Spirit.
The
mystical aspect of early Christianity finds its fullest expression in the
letters of Paul and the Gospel
According to John. For Paul and John mystical experience and aspiration
are always for union with Christ. It was Paul's supreme desire to know Christ
and to be united with him. The recurring phrase, "in Christ," implies
personal union, a participation in Christ's death and Resurrection. The Christ
with whom Paul is united is not the man Jesus who is known "after the
flesh." He has been exalted and glorified, so that he is one with the
Spirit.
Christ-mysticism
finds renewed embodiment in the Gospel According to John, particularly in the
farewell discourse (chapters 14-16), where Jesus speaks of his impending death
and of his return in the Spirit to unite himself with his followers. In the
prayer of Jesus in chapter 17 there is a vision of an interpenetrating union of
souls in which all who are one with Christ share his perfect union with the
Father.
In
the early Christian centuries the mystical trend found expression not only in
the stream of Pauline and Johannine Christianity (as in the writings of Ignatius
of Antioch and Irenaeus of Lyon) but also in the Gnostics
(early Christian heretics who viewed matter as evil and the spirit as good).
Scholars still debate the origins of Gnosticism, but most Gnostics thought of
themselves as followers of Christ, albeit a Christ who was pure spirit. The
mysticism of the Gnostics can be seen in the religion of Valentinus,
who was excommunicated in about AD 150. He believed that human beings are
alienated from God because of their spiritual ignorance; Christ brings them into
the gnosis (esoteric revelatory knowledge) that is union with God. Valentinus
held that all human beings come from God and that all will in the end return to
God. Other Gnostic groups held that there were three types of
people--"spiritual," "psychic," and
"material"--and that only the first two can be saved. The Pistis
Sophia(3rd century)
is preoccupied with the question of who finally will be saved. Those who are
saved must renounce the world completely and follow the pure ethic of love and
compassion. They will then be identified with Jesus and become rays of the
divine Light. (see also Index: salvation)
The
classic forms of Eastern Christian mysticism appeared toward the end of the 2nd
century, when the mysticism of the early church began to be expressed in
categories of thought explicitly dependent on the Greek
philosophical tradition of Plato and his followers. This intermingling of
primitive Christian themes with Greek speculative thought has been variously
judged by later Christians, but contemporaries had no difficulty in seeing it as
proof of the new religion's ability to adapt and transform all that was good in
the world. The philosophical emphasis on the unknowability of God found an echo
in many texts of the Old and New Testaments, affirming that the God of Abraham
and the Father of Jesus could never be fully known. The understanding of the
role of the preexistent Logos, or Word, of the Gospel According to John in the
creation and restoration of the universe was clarified by locating the Platonic
conception of Ideas in the Logos. Greek emphasis on the vision or contemplation
(theoria) of God as the goal of human
blessedness found a scriptural warrant in the sixth Beatitude: "Blessed are
the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8). The notion of
deification (theiosis) fit with the
New Testament emphasis on becoming sons of God and such texts as 2 Peter 1:4,
which talked about sharing in the divine nature. These ecumenical adaptations
later provided an entry for the language of union with God, especially after the
notion of union became more explicit in Neoplatonism, the last great pagan form
of philosophical mysticism. Many of these themes are already present in germ in
the works of Clement of Alexandria, written in about 200. They are richly
developed in the thought of Origen,
the greatest Christian writer of the pre-Constantinian period and the earliest
major speculative mystic in Christian history.
Origen's
mystical theology, however, required a social matrix in which it could take on
life as formative and expressive of Christian ideals. This was the achievement
of early Christian monasticism,
the movement into the desert that began to transform ideals of Christian
perfection at the beginning of the 4th century. The combination of the religious
experience of the desert Christians and the generally Origenist theology that
helped shape their views created the first great strand of Christian mysticism,
one that remains central to the East and that was to dominate in the West until
the end of the 12th century. Though not all the Eastern Christian mystical texts
were deeply imbued with Platonism, all were marked by the monastic experience.
The
first great mystical writer of the desert was Evagrius
Ponticus (346-399), whose works were influenced by Origen. His writings
show a clear distinction between the ascetic, or "practical," life and
the contemplative, or "theoretical," life, a distinction that was to
become classic in Christian history. His disciple, John Cassian, conveyed Evagrian mysticism to the
monks of western Europe, especially in the exposition of the "degrees of
prayer" in his Collations of the
Fathers, or Conferences. Gregory
of Nyssa, the younger brother of Basil, sketched out a model for progress in the
mystical path in his Life of Moses
and, following the example of Origen, devoted a number of homilies to a mystical
interpretation of the Song of Solomon, showing how the book speaks both of
Christ's love for the church and of the love between the soul and the Divine
Bridegroom.
Perhaps
the most influential of all Eastern Christian mystics wrote in the 5th or 6th
century in the name of Dionysius the
Areopagite, Paul's convert at Athens. He was probably a Syrian monk. In
the chief works of this Pseudo-Dionysius, Mystical
Theology and On the
Divine Names, the main emphasis was on the ineffability of God ("the
Divine Dark") and hence on the "apophatic" or
"negative" approach to God. Through a gradual process of ascension
from material things to spiritual realities and an eventual stripping away of
all created beings in "unknowing," the soul arrives at "union
with Him who transcends all being and all knowledge" (Mystical
Theology, chapter 1). The writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius also popularized
the threefold division of the mystical life into purgative, illuminative, and
unitive stages. Later Eastern mystical theologians, especially Maximus the
Confessor in the 7th century, adopted much of this thought but corrected it with
greater Christological emphasis, showing that union with God is possible only
through the action of the God-man. (see also Index:
apophatic theology, via
negativa)
Eastern
mystics distinguish between the essence of God and divine attributes, which they
regard as energies that penetrate the universe. Creation is a process of
emanation, whereby the divine Being is "transported outside of Himself . .
. to dwell within the heart of all things . . . " (Pseudo-Dionysius the
Areopagite, On the Divine Names, iv.
13). The divinization of humanity is fundamental to Eastern mysticism.
Divinization
comes through contemplative prayer, and especially through the method of Hesychasm
(from hesychia, "stillness")
adopted widely by the Eastern monks. The method consisted in the concentration
of the mind on the divine Presence, induced by the repetition of the "Jesus-prayer"
(later formalized as "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a
sinner"). This culminated in the ecstatic vision of the divine Light and
was held to divinize the soul through the divine energy implicit in the name of
Jesus. Much of this program can already be found in the writings of Symeon
the New Theologian (c.
949-1022), a monk of Constantinople. It reached its theologically most evolved
form in Gregory Palamas
(1296-1359), who defended the Hesychast tradition against its opponents. This
rich form of Christian mysticism found a new centre in the Slavic lands after
the conquest of the Greek East by the Turks. It experienced a flowering in Russia,
beginning with the Philokalia an anthology of ascetical and mystical texts first published in
1782, and continuing to the Revolution of 1917. Eastern Christian mysticism is
best known in the West through translations of the anonymous 19th-century
Russian text The Way of the Pilgrim,
but noted Russian mystics, such as Seraphimof Sarov (1759-1833) and John of
Kronshtadt (1829-1909), are gradually becoming better known in the West.
In
the Eastern as in the Western Church mystical religion received at times
heretical expressions. These trends begin with the Messalians (Syriac for
"praying people") of the 4th century, who were accused of neglecting
the sacraments for ceaseless prayer and of teaching a materialistic vision of
God. Later mystics, both orthodox and suspect, have been accused of
Messalianism. Other mystic sects grew up in Russia. The Dukhobors,
who originated in the 18th century among the peasants, resemble the Quakers in
their indifference to outer forms, standing for the final authority of the Inner
Light. They were severely persecuted in Russia and migrated to Canada
early in the 20th century. ( S.Sp./B.J.McG.)
(see also Index: heresy)
The
founder of Latin Christian mysticism is Augustine,
bishop of Hippo (354-430). In his Confessions
Augustine mentions two experiences of "touching" or
"attaining" God. Later, in the Literal
Commentary on Genesis, he introduced a triple classification of visions--corporeal,
spiritual (i.e., imaginative), and
intellectual--that influenced later mystics for centuries. Although he was
influenced by Neoplatonist philosophers such as Plotinus, Augustine did not
speak of personal union with God in this life. His teaching, like that of the
Eastern Fathers, emphasized the ecclesial context of Christian mysticism and the
role of Christ as mediator in attaining deification, or the restoration of the
image of the Trinity in the depths of the soul. The basic elements of
Augustine's teaching on the vision of God, the relation of the active and
contemplative lives, and the sacramental dimension of Christian mysticism were
summarized by Pope Gregory I
the Great in the 6th century and conveyed to the medieval West by many monastic
authors. (see also Index: Roman
Catholicism)
Two
factors were important in the development of this classic Augustinian form of
Western mysticism. The first was the translation of the writings of
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and other Eastern mystics by the 9th-century
thinker Johannes Scotus Erigena.
In combining the Eastern and Western mystical traditions, Erigena created the
earliest version of a highly speculative negative mysticism that was later often
revived. The other new moment began in the 12th century when new forms of
religious life burst on the scene, especially among monks and those priests who
endeavoured to live like monks (the canons).
The major schools of 12th-century mysticism were inspired by new trends in
monastic piety, especially those introduced by Anselm of Canterbury, but they
developed these in a systematic fashion unknown to previous centuries. The great
figures of the era, especially Bernard
of Clairvaux among the Cistercians and Richard
of Saint-Victor among the canons, have remained the supreme teachers of
mystical theology in Catholic Christianity, along with the Spanish mystics of
the 16th century. (see also Index: mysticism)
What
the Cistercian and Victorine authors contributed to the development of Catholic
mysticism was, first, a detailed study of the stages of the ascent of the soul
to God on the basis of a profound understanding of the human being as the image
and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26) and, second, a new emphasis on the role of love
as the power that unites the soul to God. Building on both Origen and Augustine,
Bernard and his contemporaries made affective, or marital, union with God in
oneness of spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17) a central theme in Western mysticism,
though along with Gregory the Great they insisted that "love itself is a
form of knowing," that is, of vision or contemplation of God.
The
great mystics of the 12th century contributed to an important expansion of
mysticism in the following century. For the first time mysticism passed beyond
the confines of the monastic life, male writers, and the Latin language. This
major shift is evident not only in the life of Francis
of Assisi, who emphasized the practical following of Jesus and came to be
identified with him in a new form of Christ-mysticism, manifested in his
reception of the stigmata, or wounds of the crucified Christ, but also in the
remarkable proliferation of new forms of religious life and mystical writing in
the vernacular on the part of women.
Though female mystics such as Hildegard von Bingen were not unknown in the 12th
century, the 13th century witnessed a flowering of interest in mysticism among
women, evident in the Flemish Hadewijch of Brabant, the German Mechthild von
Magdeburg, the French Marguerite Porete, and the Italians Clare of Assisi and
Àngela da Foligno.
Among
the important themes of the new mysticism of the 13th century was a form of
Dionysian theology in which the stage of divine darkness surpassing all
understanding was given a strong affective emphasis, as well as the emergence of
an understanding of union with God that insisted upon a union of indistinction
in which God and the soul become one without any medium. The first of these
tendencies is evident in the writings of Bonaventure,
the supreme master of Franciscan mysticism; the second is present in some of the
women mystics but finds its greatest proponent in the Dominican Meister
Eckhart, who was condemned for heresy in 1329.
Eckhart
taught that "God's ground and the soul's ground is one ground," and
the way to the realization of the soul's identity with God lay less in the
customary practices of the religious life than in a new state of awareness
achieved through radical detachment from all created things and a breakthrough
to the God beyond God. Though Eckhart's thought remained Christological in its
emphasis on the necessity for the "birth of Son in the soul," his
expressions of the identity between the soul that had undergone this birth and
the Son of God seemed heretical to many. Without denying the importance of the
basic structures of the Christian religion, and while insisting that his radical
preaching to the laity was capable of an orthodox interpretation, Eckhart and
the new mystics of the 13th century were a real challenge to traditional Western
ideas of mysticism. Their teaching seemed to imply an autotheism in which the
soul became identical with God, and many feared that this might lead to a
disregard of the structures and sacraments of the church as the means to
salvation and even to an antinomianism that would view the mystic as exempt from
the moral law. The Council of Vienne
condemned such errors in 1311, shortly after Marguerite
Porete was burned as a heretic for continuing to disseminate her book, The
Mirror of Simple Souls. The council associated these views with the
Beguines, groups of religious women who did not live in cloister or follow a
recognized rule of life. In the centuries that followed, some mystics were
condemned and others executed on this basis, though evidence for a widespread
"mystical heresy" is lacking.
The
great mystical writers of the late Middle Ages, however, took pains to prove
their orthodoxy. Eckhart's followers among the Rhineland mystics, especially
Heinrich Suso and Johann Tauler, defended his memory but qualified his daring
language. Texts such as the anonymous Theologia Germanica of the
late 14th century, which reflects the ideas of the loose groups of mystics who
called themselves the Friends of God,
conveyed this German mysticism to the Reformers. In the Low Countries, the rich
mystical literature that developed reached its culmination in writings of Jan
van Ruysbroeck (1293-1381). In Italy two remarkable women, Catherine
of Siena in the 14th century and Catherine
of Genoa in the 15th, made important contributions to the theory and
practice of mysticism. The 14th century also saw the "Golden Age" of English
mysticism, as conveyed in the writings of the hermit Richard
Rolle; the canon Walter
Hilton, who wrote The Scale (or
Ladder) of Perfection; the anonymous author of The
Cloud of Unknowing
and his contemporary, the visionary recluse Mother Julian
of Norwich, whose Revelations of Divine Love is unsurpassed in English mystical
literature. Julian's meditations on the inner meaning of her revelations of the
crucified Christ express the mystical solidarity of all humanity in the
Redeemer, who is conceived of as a nurturing mother.
In
the 16th century the centre of Roman Catholic mysticism shifted to Spain,
the great Roman Catholic power at the time of the Reformation. Important mystics
came both from the traditional religious orders, such as Francis de Osuna among
the Franciscans, Luis de León among the Augustinians, and Luis de Grenada
among the Dominicans, and from the new orders, as with Ignatius of Loyola, the
founder of the Jesuits. The two pillars of Spanish mysticism, however, were Teresa
of Ávila (1515-82) and her friend John
of the Cross (1542-91), both members of the reform movement in the
Carmelite order. Teresa's Life is one
of the richest and most convincing accounts of visionary and unitive experiences
in Christian mystical literature; her subsequent synthesis of the seven stages
on the mystical path, The Interior Castle,
has been used for centuries as a basic handbook. John of the Cross was perhaps
the most profound and systematic of all Roman Catholic mystical thinkers. His
four major works, The Dark Night of the Soul, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Spiritual
Canticle, and The Living Flame of
Love, constitute a full theological treatment of the active and passive
purgations of the sense and the spirit, the role of illumination, and the
unification of the soul with God in spiritual marriage.
In
the 17th century France took
the lead with figures such as Francis of Sales, Pierre de Bérulle,
Brother Lawrence (the author of The
Practice of the Presence of God), and Marie Guyard. At this time
concentration on the personal experience of the mystic as the source for
"mystical theology" (as against the common scriptural faith and
sacramental life of the church) led to the creation of mysticism as a category
and the description of its adherents as mystics. This century also saw renewed
conflict over mysticism with the rise of the Quietist controversy. A Spaniard
resident in Rome, Miguel de Molinos,
author of the popular Spiritual Guide (1675), was
condemned for his doctrine of the "One Act," that is, the teaching
that the will, once fixed on God in contemplative prayer, cannot lose its union
with the divine. In France Mme Guyon
and her adviser, François Fénelon,
archbishop of Cambrai, were also condemned for Quietist tendencies emphasizing
the role of pure love to the detriment of ecclesiastical practice. These debates
cast a pall over the role of mysticism in Roman Catholicism into the 20th
century, though important mystics continued to be found. (
B.J.McG.) (see also Index: Quietism)
The
chief representatives of Protestant mysticism are the continental
"Spirituals," among whom Sebastian Franck (c. 1499-c. 1542), Valentin
Weigel (1533-88), and Jakob Böhme
(1575-1624) are especially noteworthy. Among traditional Lutherans Johann
Arndt (1555-1621) in his Four Books
on True Christianity took up many of the themes of medieval mysticism in the
context of Reformation theology and prepared the way for the spiritual revival
known as Pietism, within
which such mystics as Count von Zinzendorf flourished. In England the Anglican
divines known as the Cambridge Platonists, the Quakers headed by George Fox
(1624-91), and William Law
(1686-1761) were important. In Holland a mystical group known as Collegiants,
similar to the Quakers, broke away from the Remonstrant (Calvinist) Church.
Other mystical bodies were the Schwenckfeldians, founded by Kaspar
Schwenckfeld, and the Family
of Love, founded in Holland by Hendrik
Niclaes early in the 16th century before moving to England about 1550.
The religion of the Ranters and other radical Puritans in 17th-century England
had mystical aspects. (see also Index:
Protestantism)
The
cardinal feature of Protestant mysticism is the emphasis laid on the divine
element in humanity variously known as the "spark" or
"ground" of the soul, the "divine image" or "holy
self," the "Inner
Light," or the "Christ within." This was one of the
essential elements of Rhineland
mysticism and shows the connection between medieval and Reformation mysticism.
For Böhme and the Spirituals, essential reality lies in the ideal world,
which Böhme described as "the uncreated Heaven." Böhme took
over the Gnostic belief that the physical world arose from a primeval fall,
renewed with the Fall of Adam. His teaching was the main formative influence on
the developed outlook of William Law and William
Blake (1757-1827).
For
Protestant as well as for Roman Catholic mystics, sin
is essentially the assertion of the self in its separation from God. The divine
life is embodied in "the true holy self that lies within the other" (Böhme,
First Epistle). When that self is manifested, there is a birth of
God (or of Christ) in the soul. Protestant mystics rejected the Lutheran and
Calvinist doctrine of the total corruption of human nature. William Law
remarked: "the eternal Word of God lies hid in thee, as a spark of the
divine nature" (The Spirit of Prayer,
I.2.). "The eternal Word of God" is the inner Christ, incarnate
whenever people rise into union with God. By the Spirituals Christ was viewed as
the ideal humanity born in God from all eternity. This conception received its
greatest emphasis with Kaspar Schwenckfeld, who, unlike Protestant mystics
generally, taught that humans as created beings are totally corrupt; salvation
means deliverance from the creaturely nature and union with the heavenly Christ.
Protestant
mystics explicitly recognize that the divine Light or Spark is a universal
principle. Hans Denck in the early 16th century spoke of the witness of the
Spirit in "heathens and Jews." Sebastian
Franck, like the Cambridge Platonists, found divine revelation in the
work of the sages of Greece and Rome. George
Fox appealed to the conscience of the American Indians as a proof of the
universality of the Inner Light. William Law described non-Christian saints as
"apostles of a Christ within." Protestant mystics stated plainly that,
for the mystic, supreme authority lies of necessity not in the written word of
Scripture but in the Word of God in the self. Fox said: "I saw, in that
Light and Spirit that was before the Scriptures were given forth" (Journal,
chapter 2). It was especially on this ground that the mystics came into
conflict with the established church, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant.
The
Ranters provide a good
example of the conflict between mysticism and established religion. They held,
with Fox and Hendrik Niclaes, that perfection is possible in this life. Puritan
leaders under the Commonwealth denounced them for their "blasphemous and
execrable opinions," and there was, no doubt, an antinomian tendency among
them that rejected the principle of moral law. Some rejected the very notion of
sin and believed in the universal restoration of all things in God. (see also Index:
antinomianism)
Christian
mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety
of ways. Following the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, it can be
suggested that Christian mysticism includes three broadly defined stages: (1)
the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a personal
God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent
revelation of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union,
frequently with a suspension of the faculties, and (3) "a kind of
readjustment of the soul's faculties" by which it regains contact with
creatures "under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and
acting in the soul" (Maréchal, Studies
in the Psychology of the Mystics). It is this final stage, which almost all
of the greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, that belies the usual
claim that mysticism is a selfish flight from the world and an avoidance of
moral responsibility.
The
mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by
forgetfulness of God. In order to attain the goal, it is necessary to follow the
way of purgation: the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and
attitudes that separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the "dark
night of the soul" in which God gradually and sometimes painfully
purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation. (see also Index:
death)
Christian
mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model
for this process. According to the Theologia
Germanica, "Christ's human nature was so utterly bereft of self, and
apart from all creatures, as no man's ever was, and was nothing but a 'house and
habitation of God' " (chapter 15). The following of Christ involves a dying
to self, a giving up of oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by
the divine Love. Such detachment and purgation were frequently expressed in
extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human ties. Paradoxically,
those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that purifying
the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and
external penance. In the words of William Law: "The one true way of dying
to self wants no cells, monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience,
humility and resignation to God" (The Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The
practice of meditation and
contemplative prayer, leading
to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a
process of introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be
set aside so that the eye of inner vision may be opened and readied for the
appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which "the mind is
ravished into the abyss of divine Light" (Richard of Saint-Victor, The
Four Grades of Violent Love). Illumination
may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon
the New Theologian speaks of himself as a young man who saw "a
brilliant divine Radiance" filling the room. In the path to union many of
the Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic
phenomena--visions, locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The
majority of mystics have insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true
essence of mysticism and can even be dangerous. "We must never rely on them
or accept them," as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
Christian
mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is in some way merged in the being of God and loses the sense
of any separate existence. Jan van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of
union "we can nevermore find any distinction between ourselves and
God" (The Sparkling Stone,
chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth of the Son in the soul in which God
"makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference" (German Sermons,
6). These strong expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous
to many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they
were quite orthodox. Bernard of
Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human
"substance remains though under another form" (On
Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who wrote "the soul
seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation" (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving
union. (see also Index: divine
union)
The
goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of
being in which the person's nature is transformed or deified. This state is
frequently spoken of as a spiritual marriage that weds God and the soul. This
unitive life has two main aspects. First, while the consciousness of self and
the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a continuous sense of
union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the
seventh mansion in The Interior Castle.
Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen he possessed God
"in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed
Sacrament" (The Practice of the
Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In
the unitive life Mme Guyon says that the soul "no longer lives or works of
herself, but God lives, acts and works in her." In this state the mystic is
able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of union. In the
words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is "contemplative in action."
Christian
mysticism has expressed itself in many forms during the last two millennia.
Three broad types characterize much of Christian mysticism, though these should
not be seen as mutually exclusive. Some mystics tend to emphasize one form over
the others, while others make use of all three.
Christianity
The
earliest form of Christian mysticism was the Christ-mysticism of Paul and John.
Although Christian mysticism in its traditional expression has centred on
aspiration for union with God, Christ-mysticism has always been present in the
church. In the Eastern Church emphasis was placed on the divine Light that
appeared to the disciples at the Transfiguration, and mystics sought to identify
with this light of Christ in his divine glory. Symeon says of a certain mystic
that "he possessed Christ wholly. . . . He was, in fact entirely
Christ." In the Catholic West, with reference to the founding figure of Augustine,
it is evident that it is in and through the one Christ, the union of Head and
body that is the church, that humans come to experience God. For Augustine the
mystical life is Christ "transforming us into himself" (Homily
on Psalm, 32.2.2). In the medieval period some of the most profound
expressions of Christ-mysticism are found in the women mystics, such as
Catherine of Siena and Julian of Norwich. Luis
de León spoke of the theopathic life in terms of Christ-mysticism:
"The very Spirit of Christ comes and is united with the soul--nay, is
infused throughout its being, as though he were soul of its soul indeed."
With
Protestants the attempt to return to primitive Christianity has led to strong
affirmations of Christ-mysticism. The early Quaker George Keith wrote that
Christ is born spiritually in humanity when "his life and spirit are united
unto the soul." The chief representative of Christ-mysticism among the
early Protestants was Kaspar
Schwenckfeld. For him Christ was from all eternity the God-man, and as
such he possessed a body of spiritual flesh in which he lived on Earth and which
he now possesses in heaven. In his exalted life Christ unites himself inwardly
with human souls and imparts to them his own divinity.
Pure
God-mysticism is rare in Christianity, though not unknown, as Catherine of Genoa
shows. Christ as God incarnate is the Word, the second Person of the Trinity,
and Christian mysticism has, from an early era, exhibited a strong Trinitarian
dimension, though this has been understood in different ways. What ties the
diverse forms of Trinitarian mysticism together is the insistence that through
Christ the Christian comes to partake of the inner life of the Trinity. The
mysticism of Origen, for example, emphasizes the marriage of the Word and the
soul within the union of Christ and the church but holds out the promise that
through this action souls will be made capable of receiving the Father (First Principles, 3.6.9). The mystical thought of Augustine and of
such medieval followers as Richard of Saint-Victor, William of Saint-Thierry,
and Bonaventure is deeply Trinitarian. Meister Eckhart taught that the soul's
indistinction from God meant that it was to be identified with the inner life of
the Trinity--that is, with the Father giving birth to the Son, the Son being
born, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from both. A similar teaching is found in
Ruysbroeck. John of the Cross wrote of mystical union that "it would not be
a true and total transformation if the soul were not transformed into the three
Persons of the Most Holy Trinity" (Spiritual Canticle, stanza 39.3). Such strong Trinitarian emphasis
is rarer, but not absent from Protestant mysticism.
The
most daring forms of Christian mysticism have emphasized the absolute
unknowability of God. They suggest that true contact with the transcendent
involves going beyond all that we speak of as God--even the Trinity--to an inner
"God beyond God," a divine Darkness or Desert in which all distinction
is lost. This form of "mystical atheism" has seemed suspicious to
established religion; its adherents have usually tried to calm the suspicions of
the orthodox by an insistence on the necessity, though incompleteness, of the
affirmative ways to God. The main exponent of this teaching in the early
centuries was the Pseudo-Dionysius,
who distinguished "the super-essential Godhead"
from all positive terms ascribed to God, even the Trinity (The
Divine Names, chapter 13). In the West this tradition is first found in
Erigena and is especially evident in the Rhineland school. According to Eckhart,
even being and goodness are "garments" or "veils" under
which God is hidden. In inviting his hearers to "break through" to the
hidden Godhead, he daringly exclaimed, "let us pray to God that we may be
free of 'God,' and that we may apprehend and rejoice in that everlasting truth
in which the highest angel and the fly and the soul are equal" (German Sermons,
52). The notion of the hidden Godhead was renewed in the teaching of Jakob Böhme,
who spoke of it as the Ungrund--"the
great Mystery," "the Abyss," "the eternal Stillness."
He stressed the fact of divine becoming (in a nontemporal sense): God is
eternally the dark mystery of which nothing can be said but ever puts on the
nature of light, love, and goodness wherein the divine is revealed to human
beings. (see also Index: via
negativa)
The
study of Christian mysticism presents both the unity of mysticism as an aspect
of religion and the diversity of expression that it has received in the history
of Christian faith. The mystic claims contact with an order of reality
transcending the world of the senses and the ordinary forms of discursive
intellectual knowing. Christian mystics affirm that this contact is with God the
Trinity and can take place only through the mediation of Christ and the church,
whether explicitly or implicitly at work. The claim is all the more significant
in that Eastern Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, and Protestants are here
in agreement.
Without
in any way affirming that all mysticism is everywhere one and the same, it can
be said that the Christian mystics take their stand with the mystics of other
traditions in pointing to "the Beyond that is within." In an age when
the claims of established religion are so widely questioned, the witness of the
mystics is of particular appeal; but it should be remembered that most mystics
have not been rebels against their respective religious confessions. Another
great question that confronts the present age is the relation of Christianity to
other world religions. If Christianity is to embark upon truly cooperative
relations with other religions, it must be deeply imbued with the insight and
experience of the mystics. Even if it is to attempt to plumb the depths of its
own history, it cannot neglect its mystical dimensions. (S.Sp.
/B.J.McG.)
Christianity
Myths
and legends number among the most creative and abundant contributions of
Christianity to the history of human culture. They inspire artists, dramatists,
clerics, and others to contemplate the wondrous effects of Christian salvation
on the cosmos and its inhabitants. They conjoin diverse cultural horizons,
taking those worldviews bounded by Christian revelation and fusing them
creatively with the religious histories that exist prior to and alongside the
orthodox Christian world. Even for the less pious and the nonbelievers, the
distinctive visions of reality presented in Christian legend or myth and the
symbolic actions based upon them have helped to form the fundaments of Western
civilization. Pilgrimage to the shrines of legendary saints, to mention but one
example, touches economic and political life, military history, visual and
musical arts, popular devotion, and the exchange of scientific information.
Moreover, the content of the legends and myths themselves has contributed
directly to theories about religion, society, politics, art, astronomy,
economics, music, and history.
An
appreciation of the positive role of myth and legend in culture has been long in
coming. Christian theology, taking its lead from Greek philosophy, at first
denigrated the value of myth. In constructing the Christian canon and in
choosing authoritative interpretations of it, the early church suppressed or
excluded myth and legend in favour of the genres of philosophy, history, and
law. The opinion expressed in the First Letter of Paul to Timothy only echoes
the prevalent Hellenistic view of myth: "Have nothing to do with godless
and silly myths" (1 Timothy 4:7). In spite of that, a number of important
mythical themes remain central to the New
Testament--e.g., Christ as the
second Adam (Romans 5:12-14), the heavenly spheres (2 Corinthians 12:2-4), and
the celestial battle between angels and demons. Still visible, but barely so, in
the writings of Paul (Galatians 3:28) is the early Christian theme of the
androgyny of Christ and of his spiritually accomplished disciples.
The
Apologists from the 2nd to
the 5th centuries used legend and myth. Clement
of Alexandria employed them as allegories to make Christian concepts
intelligible to Greek converts. But Clement (e.g.,
in his Protreptikos
["Exhortation"]) and other Church Fathers roundly condemned the belief
that Greek myths might be autonomous sources of truth. In spite of its ambiguous
use of mythic symbols and themes, the history of Christian doctrine testifies to
the systematic excision of legendary and mythical elements from Christian
orthodoxy. Even folk practices, based on legend, were policed and suppressed. In
692, for example, the Quinisext
Council (also known as the Trullan Synod), a precedent-setting episcopal
council convoked by the Byzantine emperor Justinian II, prohibited baking bread
in the form of the Virgin Mary's placenta, as was the custom on the afterbirth
day (that is, the day after Christ's birth). This ambiguous, but ultimately
negative, evaluation of Christian myth and legend lingers to this day.
A
second cause for the delay in evaluating the positive contributions of myth and
legend to religious life is the theories of religion that have flourished since
the time of the European Enlightenment.
These theories treated myths as infantile projections of the prerational
childhood of the human race (projections surpassed by the mature rationalism of
the Enlightenment). More intimate knowledge of mythic traditions in Africa,
India, Oceania, and the Americas, however, has disclosed the important role myth
plays in culture and highlighted the coherence and sophisticated order of myth.
Myths
narrate the sacred events that unfolded in the first time, the epoch of creative
beginnings. In that primordial period supernatural beings brought reality--in
part or in whole--into existence. In that sense, myth relates only those things
that have really occurred--that is, those realities that have revealed
themselves completely. These realities become the foundation of the world,
society, and human destiny. Myths manifest the acts and beings that are sacred,
that are completely other than the world encountered in day-to-day experience.
Myths are always paradoxical because realities that are other than those of this
world have nonetheless established it. The intervention of sacred and
supernatural beings accounts for the conditions of the world and humanity today.
Myth describes the acts and beings whose appearance shaped material existence in
all its concrete specificity.
Legends
are episodic continuations of mythic narratives, for they describe the effects
of primordial events on history--a history revealed through the imagination and
one as fabulous as the primordial mysteries that brought that history into
being. Legends must describe history in fantastic terms in order to clarify the
significance of the powers that underlie it. The repetitiveness and redundancy
of legends emphasize the fact that many different legends spring from the same
mythic sources--that is, from the same primordial events and creative powers.
But variants of legend are reminders that myths and their outcomes are
historically conditioned and questioned. Christian legend contends with the
question of what the Christian mystery means here and now, in these particular,
everyday circumstances. Because of their local frame of reference, legends vary
incessantly, and widely different accounts emerge from diverse locales and
periods. Favourite legendary themes are the struggles and miraculous adventures
of heroes in the faith. Such accounts edify the faith and bolster the courage of
the listener.
There
is no complete account of Christian legend and myth, nor is there a full outline
of the mythic world engendered by the economy of salvation set in motion with
the life of Christ and his disciples. Above all, the theologies of rural
populations and oral traditions have been slighted in the study of Christian
thought. A historical interpretation of the full mythical and legendary
expression of Christianity would probably reveal a surprising adherence to
tradition even while it uncovered startling reinterpretations of the Christian
message over time. Christian myths and legends exuberantly express the truths of
Christian existence, viewed as a religious situation in the social and physical
world. The mystery of salvation unfolds when the eternal God dramatically enters
the created universe in the form of an incarnate, mortal creature. "Like us
in all things but sin," God's presence among human beings is mysterious,
and the meaning of this mystery risks remaining hidden and undeciphered. Legends
and myths spell out the effects of these salvific secrets not only for human
individuals but also for all realms of reality--animal, vegetal, astral,
material, corporeal, social, and intellectual. By quickening the listeners'
religious awareness of the salvation unfolding around them, the symbols of
legend and myth often aimed to further the redemptive effects of the mysteries
and wonders they describe. (L.E.S.)
Early
Christianity appropriated mythological motifs and genres from the Greek and
Middle Eastern cultures that dominated the Hellenistic Age (c.
300 BC-c. AD 300). Among them was the miraculous birth of a deity; the virgin
birth of a god or goddess was a theme common in the mythology of the
Hellenistic world. Aphrodite (Venus), the goddess of sexual love, for example,
emerged from sea foam. Athena sprang, in full battle array, from the head of
Zeus, her father. The legend of the virgin birth of Alexander
the Great (4th century BC) from his mother, Olympias, whose reputation
was not that of a virgin, demonstrated Alexander's divinity. Mithra,
the Iranian god of light and of sacred contracts, is described as a divine child
of radiant heavenly beams. Mithra was born from the rock of a cave, the birth
witnessed by shepherds on a day (December 25) that was later claimed by
Christians as the Nativity of Christ. (see also Index:
Greek mythology)
Hellenistic
Judaism had already
reinterpreted many Gentile motifs and set them within a biblical context. From
Greek and Jewish sources Christians adopted and adapted some favourite mythical
themes: the creation of the world, the end of the paradisal condition and the
fall of humankind, the assumption of human form by a god, the saved saviour, the
cataclysm at the end of time, and the final judgment. Christians reframed these
motifs within their new images of history and their doctrines concerning the
nature of God, sin, and redemption. As it spread beyond Palestine and the
Hellenistic world over the course of time, Christianity continued to develop
mythical themes important to the religious consciousness of converted peoples.
One
fascinating mythical theme in the New Testament is that time consists of a
series of ages. Each age of the world (or kingdom) is dominated by a powerful
force or figure. This motif exists throughout the globe with a range of specific
cultural meanings. In the 8th century BC in Greece, the poet Hesiod described
the ages of the world as four in number and symbolized by gold, silver, bronze,
and iron, each age successively declining in morality. In India the four yugas
(Sanskrit: "world ages"), symbolized by the four throws of a dice
game, also are viewed as descending--though in repetitive cycles--from
perfection to moral chaos. Other original schematizations of this theme can be
found in the mythologies of Chinese, Polynesian, and American Indian cultures.
By
the time the New Testament was written, Jewish apocalyptic writings (symbolic or
cryptographic literature portraying God's dramatic intervention in history and
catastrophic dramas at the end of a cosmic epoch) had already produced theories
of history that reworked Indo-Iranian notions about the ages of the world.
Iranian concepts most influenced Christian views of time, history, and ultimate
human destiny. The prophet Zoroaster (c.
7th century BC) and his followers in Iran taught a doctrine of the four ages of
the world in which each age was a different phase in the struggle between two
kinds of powers--light and darkness, goodness and evil, spirit and matter,
infinity and finitude, health and sickness, time and eternity. The forces of
good and evil battled for the allegiance and the souls of human beings. In the
last days a promised saviour (Saoshyant) would pronounce final judgment and
announce the coming of a new world without end in which truth, immortality, and
righteousness would have everlasting reign. (see also Index: apocalyptic
literature, history,
philosophy of, Iranian
religion, Zoroastrianism)
Drawing
on Jewish apocalyptic literature (exemplified in the Book of Daniel), early
Christian apocalypse (exemplified in the Book of Revelation) elaborated the
theme of the ages of the world as a series of historical periods in which good
struggles against evil: (1) from the creation of the world and of humanity to
the Fall into sin and out of Eden; (2) from the Fall to the first coming of
Christ; (3) from the first to the second advent of Christ, which includes the
1,000-year reign of Christ and his saints and the Last Judgment; and (4) the
creation of a new heaven and a new earth in which those who have chosen the good
(i.e., Christ) will live in eternity.
Within this framework of the mythical history of the ages of the world,
Christian apocalyptic re-envisions a number of themes important to Jewish apocalypticism:
the Son of man and the great tribulation prior to the judgment of the world; the
battle between Christ and the Antichrist,
a false messiah or "great liar" who denies that Jesus is the Christ
and who pitches the world into moral confusion and physical chaos; and the
ultimate triumph over Satan, who appears as a dragon but who no longer deceives
the nations of the world.
The
theme of the several ages of the world has a long and fruitful life in Christian
thought and undergirds many Western concepts of progress toward a better state
of existence or of decline toward extinction. Montanus, a heretical Christian prophet of the
early 2nd century, claimed that history progressed from an age of the Father to
an age of the Son to an age of the Holy Spirit, of whom Montanus was the
manifestation. One could fruitfully explore the degree to which such apocalyptic
myths underlie not only the religious theories of a multistage history, as
propagated by Martin Luther, the early Jesuits, Christopher Columbus (in his Book
of Prophecies), and Giambattista Vico, but also the more secular
philosophies of history developed by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the comte de
Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, G.W.F. Hegel, Friedrich
Schelling, and Karl Marx.
New
Testament references to the "mysteries of the kingdom of heaven" (for
example, Matthew 13:11; Mark 4:11; Luke 8:10) generated myth and legend. The New
Testament emphasis on secrecy and on the mysteries of salvation
became fertile ground for the exfoliations of myth and legend. Things hidden
from the beginning of the world now blossomed in the signs of the new messianic
age. These truths, now come to light, should be proclaimed to the whole world.
Through myth and legend Christians transmitted and explored, with the full force
of the imagination, the wonders revealed in Christ and the secrets of his
salvation.
Esoteric
traditions, especially those based on apocalypses and apocrypha (such as the Apocalypse
of Peter, Gospel of Thomas, Secret Gospel of Mark, and Gospel
of Philip) preserve some legends and myths descending from the early
Christian centres of Edessa, Alexandria, and Asia Minor. The First
Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus (known also as the Arabic Infancy Gospel)
recounts that, one day, Jesus and his playmates were playing on a rooftop and
one fell down and died. The other playmates ran away, leaving Jesus accused of
pushing the dead boy. Jesus, however, went to the dead boy and asked,
"Zeinunus, Zeinunus, who threw you down from the housetop?" The dead
boy answered that Jesus had not done it and named another (I
Infancy 19:4-11). This and other such narratives describe the "hidden
life" of Jesus in the 30 years before his public ministry began. The Acts
of Paul and Thecla narrates the story of a friend of Paul who was thrown to
the lions--one of which defended her in a manner similar to that of the lion in
the story of Androcles, a well-known legend. Other exemplary legends appear in
the Acts of the Martyrs and other histories. After Christian theologians
defined orthodoxies in terms of Greek philosophy or Roman juridical code, these
mythic themes appeared clumsy or tasteless and, in retrospect, heterodox or even
heretical. (see also Index: New
Testament Apocrypha)
Groups
of Gnostics and heretics who
based their ideas on alternative mythologies of the economy of Christian
salvation furnished exotic Christian myths, legends, and practices. In the 2nd
and 3rd centuries these groups often subscribed to theories of dualism: the
world of matter created by an evil god (of the Book of Genesis) and the realm of
the spirit created by a good god (revealed in the New Testament) were
irreconcilably pitted against one another. The many Gnostic sects--among them
the Valentinians, Basilidians, Ophites, and Simonians--developed a variety of
myths. Valentinus lived in Rome and Alexandria in the mid-2nd century.
Valentinian myths describe how the pleroma (spiritual realm) that existed in the
beginning was disrupted by a Fall. The Creator God of Genesis, aborted from the
primordial world, became a Demiurge
and created the material universe. He deliberately created two kinds of human
being and animated them with his breath: the hylics and the psychics. Unknown to
the Demiurge, however, certain remnants of pleromic wisdom contained in his
breath lodged as spiritual particles in matter and produced a third group of
beings called pneumatics. The God of Genesis now tries to prevent Gnostics from
discovering their past origins, present powers, and future destinies. Gnostics
(the pneumatics) contain within themselves divine sparks expelled from the pleroma.
Christ was sent from the pleroma to teach Gnostics the saving knowledge (gnosis)
of their true identities and was crucified when the Demiurge of Genesis
discovered that Christ (the male partner of the feminine Holy Spirit) was in
Jesus. After Christ returned to the pleroma, the Holy Spirit descended.
The
Ophites (from the Greek word ophis,
"serpent") reinterpreted the mythological theme of the Fall
of Man in Genesis. According to the Ophite view, the serpent
of the Garden of Eden wanted Adam
and Eve, the first man and woman, to eat from the tree of knowledge (gnosis)
so that they would know their true identities and "be like God"
(Genesis 3:5). The serpent, thus, is interpreted as a messenger of the spiritual
god, and the one who wanted to prevent Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of the
tree of knowledge is viewed as the Demiurge. In their rejection of the God of
the Old Testament, who gave the Ten Commandments, the Ophites flaunted their
sexual freedom from the law and conventionality by extreme sexual license, a
trait common to other Gnostic groups as well. (see also Index: sexuality)
The
Phibionites in Alexandria were a Gnostic sect described by Epiphanius. They
gathered at banquets that became ecstatic orgies. Married couples changed
partners for dramatic sexual performances. Sperm and menstrual blood were
gathered and offered as a gift to God before being consumed as the Body and
Blood of Christ. By such erotic communions they sought to regather the elements
of the world-soul (psyche) from the
material forms into which it had been dispersed through a cosmic tragedy at the
beginning of time. The regathering amounted to salvation, for all things would
be gathered up into the one glorious body of Christ. (
L.F./L.E.S.)
The
legend of the Magi-Kings was embellished in apocryphal books and Christian
folklore. The Protogospel of James and
the Chronicle of Zuqnin describe the
birth of the Saviour. Like the god Mithra, the divine child is consubstantial
with celestial light and was born in a mountain cave on December 25. Such
imagery of the Nativity of Christ and the symbolism of the royal visitors may
originally have descended from Iranian accounts of the birth of the cosmic
saviour, for the accounts seem to owe a great deal to Iranian theologies of
light. But the themes have been recast in Christian terms. The Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum relates that 12 Magi-Kings lived near
the Mountain of Victories, which they climbed every year in the hope of finding
the messiah in a cave on the mountaintop. Each year they entered the cave and
prayed for three days, waiting for the promised star to appear. Adam had
revealed this location and the secret promises to his son Seth. Seth transmitted
the mysteries to his sons, who passed the information from generation to
generation. Eventually the Magi, sons of kings, entered the cave to find a star
of unspeakable brightness, glowing more than many suns together. The star and
its bright light led to, or became, the Holy Child, the son of the Light, who
redeems the world. (see also Index: Bethlehem,
Star of)
The
cult of saints gained
momentum from the 4th to the 6th century. The bones of martyrs
gave stirring evidence of God's power at work in the world, producing miracles
and spectacles of the effectiveness of faith. The martyrs had imitated Christ
even unto death, and the remains of their holy bodies served as contacts between
earth and heaven. On the model of Christ's Incarnation, the bones of martyred
saints embodied God's salvific power and thus became the centre of active cults.
Relics were installed in special churches called martyria or in basilicas. The
tombs of martyrs, on the margins of cities and towns, attracted pilgrims and
processions. Legends described the prodigious virtues of martyrs and saints, as
well as the dreams or visions that revealed the resting places of still more
powerful relics. Each discovery (inventio)
promised new and effective signs of divine redemption. Returning from distant
places, especially Rome, pilgrims brought relics to their home churches. Thus,
during the 8th century, bones and other relics were moved from southern Europe
to the north and west. During the Middle Ages especially, deities and cultural
heroes became elements of Christian hagiography.
Of
all discovered relics the most impressive was the True
Cross, found in September 335 (or in 326, according to other accounts).
Prompted by a dream, Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine, located the
place where the Cross lay buried and had the wood unearthed. The power of the
Cross, the history of the wood, and the story of its discovery became legendary.
In Christian myth this relic of Christ's death dated back to the mortal origins
of humanity. Innumerable cures attested to the authenticity of the Cross.
Through
the symbolism of the Cross early Christian imagery perpetuated, and at the same
time transformed, the myths of the World
Tree. The sacred drama of Christ's birth, death, and Resurrection
participates in the rejuvenating rhythms of the fecund cosmos. Early Christians
identified the Cross of Christ as the World Tree, which stood at the centre of
cosmic space and stretched from earth to heaven. The Cross was fashioned of wood
from the Tree of Good and Evil, which grew in the Garden of Eden. Below the tree
lies Adam's buried skull, baptized in Christ's blood. The bloodied Cross-Tree
gives forth the oil, wheat, grapes, and herbs used to prepare the materials
administered in the sacraments that revitalize a fallen world. The Italian
Renaissance painter Piero della
Francesca later depicted the myth of the True Cross in his frescoes in
Arezzo, Italy. They portray the death of Adam, fallen at the foot of the Tree
that provides wood for the crucifix on which Jesus is slain. But the wood of the
Cross becomes the instrument of salvation and the holiest matter in Christendom.
Fabulous accounts and fantastic historical episodes surround the Cross. (see
also Index: tree
of knowledge)
Another
4th-century event, the discovery of Christ's tomb, the Holy
Sepulchre in Jerusalem, also became a highlight of Christian legend. Like
the body of the Saviour, the tomb is a "holy of holies." Its discovery
was tantamount to the Resurrection, for its reemergence into the light of day
was seen as a restoration of life where before only darkness reigned. The Cross
and the tomb were woven together in legend. The desire to regain possession of
the True Cross and the Holy Sepulchre eventually fueled the territorial
expansion of Christian empires and spurred Christian knights to crusade. (L.E.S.)
As
Christianity expanded from the cultural milieu of the Mediterranean area to the
north and east, the various converted tribes and peoples did not,
understandably, forget their own religious heritages. Just as attributes of the
Roman god of war, Mars, had been transferred to Michael,
the archangel who is the leader of the heavenly hosts, in the early centuries of
the church, so also the attributes of the gods of the Germanic, Baltic, Slavic,
and other peoples were transferred to angels and saints during the Middle Ages.
For example, St. George, who
rescued a maiden after slaying a dragon, became the patron saint of England and
one of the most popular saints among the Balts (among whom St. George replaced
the god Kalvis, the heavenly
smith and dragon slayer).
Nor
were saints the only legendary figures important to Christendom. Prester
(Presbyter) John, a fabled Christian priest-king of the Orient, became so
believable a figure in the Middle Ages that Pope Alexander III dispatched a
letter to him in 1177. Similarly, the legend of the wandering
Jew, who had taunted Jesus on his way to be crucified, was popular in the
13th century and again, from the 17th century on, in the stories about the
wanderer Ahasuerus.
For
the Christian medieval world the Holy
Grail (the chalice used by Jesus at the Last Supper) symbolized the truth
and knowledge needed to achieve the experience of salvation. Led in search of
the Grail by divine grace, the naive hero Perceval
inquired directly about the Grail, a question other knights had failed to ask.
His simplistic question, put to the ailing Fisher King, revitalized not only the
royal body but the entire drooping cosmos. The human condition is rejuvenated by
the graceful quest for the truth of salvation. Perceval was superseded by Galahad
as the winner of the Holy Grail in later variations, Galahad being viewed as a
descendant of Joseph of Arimathea (the member of the Jerusalem council in whose
tomb the body of Jesus was laid), who was believed to have gone to Glastonbury,
Eng., with the Holy Grail. (L.F.
/L.E.S.)
Probably
under the influence of Bogomil and Cathar heretical tendencies toward dualism,
apocryphal books of Christian legends (such as The Wood of the Cross, Gospel of Nicodemus, How Christ Became a Priest,
Adam and Eve, and Interrogatio
Iohannis) circulated in both eastern and western Europe. They usually
stressed the role of Satan as
co-creator of the world or as a being whose fall is responsible for the evil
world that exists. The devil plays a major role in legend, and his activity
usually exhausts the creative energies of the good God, who falls into
passivity.
A
number of Christian myths, legends, and works of art were aimed at awakening
religious capacities, turning the viewer or listener against repulsive forms of
evil, and hastening the effects of the salvation achieved in Christ. Nowhere is
this better illustrated than in the bestiaries, fables, and cosmic dramas
sculpted into Romanesque cathedrals. Christ, the glorious King, and his saintly
cohorts confront armies of monsters and demons. Together the two sides show
forth the full spectrum of the imaginary world of Christian legend and myth of
the day. (see also Index: sculpture,
Romanesque art)
Christian
legends and myths were also woven into long-lived literary creations: the late
medieval chansons de geste
yielded to the epic tales, lyric poetry, and songs that conducted audiences into
an enchanted symbolic world that paralleled their mundane one. Such are the
enigmatic poems of the 12th-century Court of Love and the literature patronized
by Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter, Marie, countess of Champagne.
Similarly the troubadours of
12th-century Provence creatively refashioned, in Christian terms, the
inspirations they received from the Arabic poetry of Spain and the influences of
Celtic, Gnostic, and Oriental themes in circulation at the time. These
tendencies toward the fantastic in Christian expression reached their literary
peak in the works of Dante (1265-1321), whose Divine
Comedy depicts the terrifying and attractive visions of
Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell in such a way as to quicken the ultimate powers of
the imagination and thereby draw the reader toward the effective images of the
mystery of their own salvation.
In
the place of Charlemagne, a favourite hero of the old chansons de geste, the
legendary cycles of the 12th century spawned a new generation of romantic
heroes--King Arthur and the knights of his Round Table. Marie, countess of
Champagne, sponsored Chrétien
de Troyes, the poet who composed five long romances that became the
mythic foundation for chivalry. These cycles interweave Christian, Muslim, and
Gnostic elements into a singular cosmic vision. Suffering ordeals during their
adventures, the knights of the Arthurian cycle (Arthur, the Fisher King,
Perceval, and Lancelot) journey through the Wasteland on their heroic quests for
the Holy Grail and for the cure that will revitalize king and cosmos. Wolfram
von Eschenbach offers the most coherent mythology of the Grail in his Parzival
a refinement of Christian legends that draws on the worlds visited by the
crusaders and by Italian merchants--Syria, Persia, India, and China. At the
conclusion of many of these cycles, the Holy Grail, often in the image of the
chalice of salvation in Christ, is transported to a fabulous mythical location
in the Orient.
The
12th century also witnessed the rise of a new mythology of Christian history. Joachim
of Fiore (1130/35-1201/02) was an abbot of the Calabrian monastery of
Fiore and was well-known in the Christian world of his day. On the vigil of
Easter and on Pentecost Sunday, God infused him with special knowledge, which
enabled him to decode history as a series of divine signs. According to Joachim,
universal history has three stages, each age (status)
corresponding to a person of the Holy Trinity. The first age, presided over by
God the Father, was ruled by married men and propelled by their labour. Jesus
Christ presided over the age of the New Testament, an epoch ruled by the clergy
and driven forward by the power of science and discipline. The two testamental
periods featured the two kinds of people chosen in each, the Jews and the
Gentiles. Joachim fascinated the faithful of his day with a prediction that the
second age, the age of the New Testament presided over by Jesus Christ, would
end in 1260. Then would dawn a new epoch, the third age, presided over by the
Holy Spirit, guided by monks and fueled by their contemplation. It was to be an
epoch of total love, joy, and freedom. But three and one-half years of cataclysm
ruled by the Antichrist would precede entrance to this bliss. (see also Index:
history, philosophy of)
Joachim
promised that God's mysterious saving power would burst fully into history in
the immediate future and would change forever the fundamental structures of the
cosmos as well as the social and ecclesiastical world. Joachim's new vision of
history generated critiques of the 13th-century church and society. His doctrine
of the Trinity was condemned at the fourth Lateran Council in 1215. In 1255 Pope
Alexander IV suppressed a collection of his written works, and in 1263 the
regional Council of Arles condemned many of Joachim's most stirring ideas. His
notions of an impending third epoch, in which history would come to complete
fulfillment, lived on.
Christian
legend and myth also found fertile ground in the practices of alchemy.
Through the perfection of metals the alchemists sought their own perfection and,
indeed, the salvation of all matter. Through the mysterious and great work
(magnum opus) of alchemy the alchemist dissolved, then fused, his own physical
matter and spirit with the prime matter of the universe. These initiatory
experiences of reduction into prime matter made possible the re-creation of
individual and cosmos as a single, pure element. Even the philosopher's
stone or elixir was reinterpreted so that Christ appeared as the perfect
matter produced by the alchemical process--that is, Christ was the stone of all
wisdom and knowledge. In the alchemist's spiritual forge, the Stone reemerged
from the Matrix, the crucible containing the so-called Bath of Mary, whose
amniotic fluids dissolved all impurities. This dissolution prepared one for
rebirth as a perfect being. All matter was redeemed by immersion in the fluids
of the womb where Jesus took flesh. Mystical union with Christ's death and
physical regression to that same uterus where God became matter empowered the
Christian alchemist to effect a new fusion of redeemed realities, freed of all
impure dross. Scientists secretly continued the alchemical tradition. Among them
numbered the foremost pioneers of modern physics and chemistry: Robert Fludd,
Robert Boyle, and Sir Isaac Newton.
Legends
also found their place in the growing science of astronomy. In the Middle Ages
it was learned that conjunctions
of planets occur every 20 years on a minor scale and every 960 years on a major
scale. This theory, described in the Liber
magnarum coniunctionum, was advocated by Albumazar
(787-886), a disciple of al-Kindi (?-c.
870), a Muslim philosopher who assimilated Greek philosophy to Islam. Roger
Bacon used this theory to work out the chronology of great personalities
in history and to map the chronological relationship of true prophets (Alexander
the Great, Jesus Christ, Mani, and Muhammad), one for every 320 years.
Based on observations of a supernova in 1604, Johannes
Kepler calculated the "true date" of the birth of Jesus. These
calculations revitalized an interest in the legendary Magi, who had followed the
great star. Kepler believed that the conjunctions were unnatural events brought
about by the miraculous acts of God, who had decided to lodge the birth of his
son between the significant zodiacal signs of the Fish (Pisces) and the Ram
(Aries).
Rosicrucian announcements of the imminent coming of a new
world also propagated the theory that great celestial conjunctions appeared at
the births of prophets and saviours. The scientific achievements of Kepler
became a foundation for the new secret order reputedly founded by Christian
Rosenkreuz, for it confirmed their hopes. The editors of Rosicrucian
publications dated the death of their founder to 1484 and fixed the time of the
discovery of his tomb as 1604 in order to coordinate the events with the last
two great conjunctions of stars.
The
20th century continues to generate important Christian myths and legend-based
practices, including pilgrimages made on Marian feast days to holy wells and
fairy rings outside the Irish town of Sneem and devotions at the tomb of Christ
in Japan, where, according to local legend, Christ ended the long life of
missionary travels he began after his mock death in Jerusalem. These acts and
the legendary explanations that accompany them detail the impact of Christian
salvation on present-day reality. In all the cultures where Christianity has
been propagated, myth and legend express the fulfillment of the religious
desires and hopes that constituted the religious traditions before contact with
Christian revelation. The following examples suggest their variety and vitality.
The
healing of sickness is, as it was in the time of the New Testament, a sign of
the coming of the Kingdom of Christ in its fullness. In Africa, for example,
many so-called Independent Churches creatively reinterpret disease and rites of
cure along Christian lines. In Douala,
Cameroon, during the 1980s, two healing prophets named Mallah and Marie-Lumière
divided their disciples, whom they called the "sick ones of the
Father," into groups named for the important categories of illness
described in the Gospels: the Blind, the Halt, the Lame, the Deaf, the
Epileptic, the Dumb, and the Paralyzed. The disciples evidenced none of these
physical symptoms, but they were asked to identify deep within themselves with
the affliction described in the Gospel, so that salvation might touch them in
their inner being. By becoming sick, they could be healed and thus join the
elect. In lengthy sermons the healing prophets reimagined traditional African
religious imagery and refashioned it in the light of Christian belief. The
experience of their peculiar mystical disorders afforded a basis for social
regrouping and for rethinking the past and present. (see also Index:
healing cult)
The
Christian expression of sacred music and trance is often grounded in legend or
myth. In Brazil, for example,
Macumba, Candomblé, and other Afro-Brazilian cults have roots sunk deep
into the religions of African slaves transplanted to the New World.
Afro-Brazilian rites often centre on possession by a supernatural being, called
an orixá. The innumerable orixás
are ranked in hierarchies modeled on the pantheons of the Yoruba people of West
Africa, among others. In Brazil (and in much of Afro-American religious life of
the Americas), each orixá is
identified with a specific Christian saint.
In the Umbanda cult of
Brazil, altars hold small plaster images of the Christian saints associated with
the orixás. Each one of the
saints presides over a domain of human activity or over a disease, social group,
geographic area, or craft. For example, Omolú, the god of smallpox, is
identified with St. Lazarus, whose body, in Christian legend, is pocked with
sores and who heals diseases of the skin. Oxossi, the Yoruba god of hunting, is
associated with the bellicose St. George or St. Michael, the slayers of dragons
and other demonic monsters. Yansan, who ate the "magic" of her husband
and now spits up lightning, is associated with St. Barbara, whose father was
struck by lightning when he tried to force her to give up her Christian faith.
In the worship site each orixá has its own stone, which is peculiarly shaped,
coloured, or textured; arranged in a distinctive position on the altar; and
identified as the Cross of Christ. A single saint may be identified with several
orixás or vice-versa. Regions
vary the saintly identifications and some designations shift over time. Each orixá
has its own musical rhythms and sounds. When called by drums, dance, and music,
the supernatural being may take over the possessed medium, reveal valued
information, and carry out effective symbolic acts on behalf of the community.
European
communities continue to be fascinated with the rigorous asceticism of St.
Anthony of Egypt, who repulsed wild beasts, reptiles, and other assaults
and remained steadfast in the faith. He is considered the patron of domestic
animals, and in many parts of Italy,
the drama of the feast of St. Anthony, historically associated with the winter
solstice, rivals any other feast day of the Christian calendar. To celebrate
that festival in Fara Filiorum Petri, a town in the Abruzzi region of Italy, the
townspeople ignite enormous bonfires on the night of January 16. Each of the 12
outlying hamlets brings into the main town's square a bundle (farchia)
of long poles. Set on end, the bundles are lashed together to form a single tall
mass, an act that commemorates the historical union of the mountain settlements
as one bonded community. Then the bundles of farchie,
15 or more feet high, are set ablaze. The fire cleanses the community and holds
at bay the evil forces of sickness and death. As the fire dies down, young men
jump through the purifying flames. Spectators carry remnants of the blessed fire
back to their homes, spreading the ashes in their stalls and on their fields.
The
birth of Christ is still a focus for traditions of legends and myths that
maintain their autonomous existence outside of ecclesiastical institutions. In
rural Romania, for instance,
on Christmas Eve groups of young carolers (colindatori)
proceed from house to house in the village, singing and collecting gifts of
food. Often these carolers impersonate the saints, especially John, Peter,
George, and Nicholas. The words of their songs (colinde) describe legendary heroes who carry the sun and wear the
moon on their clothes. They live in paradisal worlds and subdue monstrous
animals in order to leave the world free from harm and ready to renew itself in
the fertile acts of spring.
The
symbolic reenactments of legend often experiment with alternative social orders
and criticize or reverse existing divisions of labour and prestige. In
Sicilian-American communities of Texas, Louisiana, California, and elsewhere,
the female head of the household dedicates and displays an altar to St. Joseph
and thus fulfills a promise made in a moment of need. Normally, in Roman
Catholicism, a priest who is a celibate male presides at the liturgy and at
devotional services. In this case, however, a woman presides, together with
other women who assist her. She prepares fruit, hard-boiled eggs, cakes,
fig-filled pastries, pies, and special breads and uses them to decorate a series
of tiers stretching from floor to ceiling. She also arranges on this festival
altar the figurines of saints, the Virgin Mary, and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
The construction of this panorama of fruitfulness takes nine days, a period that
constitutes a ritual novena of prayer and devout action. Representatives who act
in the accompanying ceremony play the roles of the Holy Family and other saints
important to the altar display. Re-creating the Holy Family's search for room in
a Bethlehem inn on the night of the Nativity, the ritual drama builds toward the
moment when the altar-giver opens her home to Joseph and Mary. As Mother Mary
prepares to give birth to Jesus, the hostess readies her home, heart, and
community so that they may become fit dwelling places for the sacred being. The
presiding women play the roles of Magi-Kings bearing gifts of food and
hospitality to the Holy Family and their entourage, which includes most of the
neighbouring community. A single family can host from 500 to 1,000 people in the
feast that terminates the celebration.
Sometimes
the new Christian mythologies function as counter-theologies or theologies of
resistance to the impositions of Christian culture. They criticize the Christian
missionary enterprise even while they embrace aspects of the new religion. For
instance, biblical and Christian themes now occupy a large part of the mythology
of the Makiritare Indians in
the upper Orinoco River region of Venezuela. For them, Wanadi is the Supreme
Being of great light and, although one being, he exists in three distinct
persons (damodede,
"spirit-doubles"). Over the course of creation and human history,
Wanadi has sent his three incarnations to earth in order to create human beings
and redeem them from the darkness into which they have fallen. In the end,
Wanadi, the god incarnate who comes to save humankind, is crucified by mythical
monsters called Fañuru (from the Spanish españoles:
"Spaniards"), at the instigation of an evil being called Fadre (from
the Spanish padre: "father"
or "priest"). To all appearances, Wanadi was slain by the Fañurus,
but, in fact, he cut his own insides out and allowed his inner spirit (akato)
to dance free of his dead, cast-off body. Before Wanadi's spirit ascends into
heaven, he gathers his 12 disciples about him and promises that he will return
in a new and glorious body to destroy the evil world and create a new earth.
Unlike
the orthodox canon of Christian scripture, which was inscribed and closed in the
first centuries, authentic Christian myth and legend have arisen anew in all the
centuries of the Christian Era. The course of Christian myth and legend can be
traced through the whole of Christian history. It offers a record of the spread
of Christianity--through the Mediterranean, eastern and western Europe, Asia,
Africa, Oceania, and the Americas--and highlights the diversity of cultures
brought into contact with the Christian message of salvation. The diverse
religious hopes, heroes, and rites of these cultures continue to shape
reinterpretations of the life of Christ and his saintly followers.
Legend
and myth constitute a record of critical reflection on Christian reality in all
its dimensions--social, political, economic, doctrinal, and scriptural. No
social class or geographic region can lay exclusive claim to Christian myth and
legend; they fill the stanzas of royally sponsored poets, the visions of utopian
philosophers, and the folklore of rural populations. Indeed, many ideas widely
held about the workings of salvation (especially regarding the saints, angels,
the devil, and the powers of nature) find their origin in legendary episodes
rather than biblical text. Through myth and legend, diverse local communities
across the globe have creatively absorbed into their rich religious histories
the message of Christian salvation and, through the same fabulous means, they
have evaluated the impact of Christian temporal power on their world.
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