Mystical theology
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Christian mysticism |
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Esotericism |
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Mystical theology is the branch of
It can be contrasted to an extent with propositional theology e.g.,
Early Christianity
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Eastern Orthodox Church |
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Overview |
Early Alexandrian tradition
According to
St. Macarius of Egypt
In the theological tradition of Macarius of Egypt (ca. 300–391AD) and Pseudo-Macarius, theoria is the point of interaction between God and the human in the heart of the person, manifesting spiritual gifts to the human heart.
The highest form of contemplation originates in the heart (see
Cappadocian tradition
In the
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's apophaticism
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (5th to early 6th century; writing before 532), himself influenced by the Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus, had a strong impact on Christian thought and practice, both east and west. Theoria is the main theme of Dionysius’ work called "The Mystical Theology".[15] In chapter 1, Dionysius says that God dwells in divine darkness i.e. God is unknowable through sense and reason. Therefore, a person must leave behind the activity of sense and reason and enter into spiritual union with God. Through spiritual union with God (theosis), the mystic is granted theoria and through this vision is ultimately given knowledge of God. In the tradition of Dionysus the Areopagite, theoria is the lifting up of the individual out of time, space and created being, while the Triune God reaches down, or descends, to the hesychast. This process is also known as ekstasis ("mystical ecstasy").
While theoria is possible through prayer, it is attained in a perfect way through the Eucharist. Perfect vision of the deity, perceptible in its uncreated light, is the "mystery of the eighth day".[16] The eighth day is the day of the Eucharist but it also has an eschatological dimension as it is the day outside of the week i.e. beyond time. It is the start of a new eon in human history. Through the Eucharist people experience the eternity of God who transcends time and space.
The Dionysian writings and their mystical teaching were universally accepted throughout
In western Christianity Dionysius's
Eastern Orthodox Church
Symeon the New Theologian
Symeon the New Theologian (sometimes spelled "Simeon") (
Symeon repeatedly describes the experience of
A central theme throughout Symeon's teachings and writings is that all Christians should aspire to have actual direct experience of God in deep contemplation, or theoria. Regarding his own mystical experiences, he presented them not as unique to himself, but as the norm for all Christians. He taught that the experience came after purification through prayer, repentance, and asceticism. He especially called on his monks to take on the traditional charismatic and prophetic role in the Church.[19]
In his writings, Symeon emphasized the power of the Holy Spirit to transform, and the profound mystical union with God that is the result of a holy life. Symeon referred to this as the
Palamism and the Hesychast controversy
Under St.
Gregory was initially asked by his fellow monks on
The only true way to experience Christ, according to Palamas, was the
John Romanides
John Romanides (1927-2001) was an Orthodox Christian priest, author and professor. According to Kalaitzidis, Romanides had a strong influence on contemporary Greek Orthodoxy, to such an extent that some speak about "pre- and post-Romanidian theology."[26]
According to Romanides, Eastern and Western Christianity diverged due to the influences of the Franks, who were culturally very different from the Romans.[27][note 2] Romanides belonged to the "theological generation of the 1960s," which pleaded for a "return to the Fathers," and led to "the acute polarization of the East-West divide and the cultivation of an anti-Western, anti-eucumenical sentiment."[28]
His theological works emphasize the empirical (experiential)
Roman Catholic Church
Possibility of contemplation
According to Saint Gregory the Great there are people by whom, "while still living in this corruptible flesh, yet growing in incalculable power by a certain piercingness of contemplation, the Eternal Brightness is able to be seen."[31]
While the direct vision of God (the Beatific Vision) can be reached only in the next life, God does give to some a very special grace, by which he becomes intimately present to the created mind even before death, enabling it to contemplate him with ineffable joy and be mystically united with him even while still alive, true mystical contemplation.[32] Saint Augustine said that, in contemplation, man meets God face-to-face.[33]
Inasmuch as the goal of the Christian life is the vision of God in heaven, Augustine and others maintain that the "contemplative life" is the eschatological goal of all Christians, the fruit and reward of the entire Christian life. "Contemplation" on earth can thus be seen as a foretaste of heaven.[34]
Contemplative prayer is not the reserve of some elite: "rather it is that interior intimacy with God which is intended for all baptized people, to which Jesus wants to lead all his disciples, because it is his own intimacy with the Father".[35]
The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes contemplation as "a gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus. 'I look at him and he looks at me': this is what a certain peasant of Ars used to say to his holy curé about his prayer before the tabernacle. This focus on Jesus is a renunciation of self. His gaze purifies our heart; the light of the countenance of Jesus illumines the eyes of our heart and teaches us to see everything in the light of his truth and his compassion for all men. Contemplation also turns its gaze on the mysteries of the life of Christ. Thus it learns the 'interior knowledge of our Lord', the more to love him and follow him."[36]
Contemplative prayer is "a communion in which the Holy Trinity conforms man, the image of God, 'to his likeness'" and in it "the Father strengthens our inner being with power through his Spirit 'that Christ may dwell in (our) hearts through faith' and we may be 'grounded in love' (Ephesians 3:16–17)."[37]
Saint John Cassian the Roman, whose writings influenced the whole of Western monasticism,[38] interpreted the Gospel episode of Martha and Mary as indicating that Jesus declared "the chief good to reside in theoria alone – that is, in divine contemplation", which is initiated by reflecting on a few holy persons and advances to being fed on the beauty and knowledge of God alone.[39]
Saint Augustine has been cited as proving magnificently that man can only find God in the depths of his own soul: "Too late loved I Thee, O Beauty so old, yet ever new! Too late loved I Thee. And behold, Thou wert within, and I abroad, and there I searched for Thee. Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee."[40] The Dismissal Hymn sung in the Byzantine Rite feast of Saint Augustine, 15 June, describes him as "a wise hierarch who has received God":
O blessed Augustine, you have been proved to be a bright vessel of the divine Spirit and revealer of the city of God; you have also righteously served the Saviour as a wise hierarch who has received God. O righteous father, pray to Christ God that he may grant to us great mercy.[41]
He is celebrated not only as a contemplative but also as a theologian and
Contemplation may sometimes reach a level that has been described as religious ecstasy, and non-essential phenomena, such as visions and stigmata, may sometimes though very rarely accompany it.
Contemplation and rational knowledge
The writings attributed to Saint
Theoria or contemplation of God is of far higher value than reasoning about God or speculative theology,[45] its illumination prized much more than the intellectual capacity of a theologian.[46] "Prayer cannot be reduced to the level of a means to improved understanding".[47] Instead, contemplation is "the normal perfection of theology".[46]
The rational exposition and explanation of Christian doctrine is the humbler task of the theologian, while the experience of contemplatives is often of a more lofty level, beyond the power of human words to express,[48] so that "they have had to resort to metaphors, similes, and symbols to convey the inexpressible."[49]
According to Aquinas, there are some properties of God that theology can only focus on by dealing with what God is not: immutability, timelessness, simple. Pseudo-Dionysias recommends a kind of mysticism which, instead of trying to comprehend what God is, is able to intuit it: for both Aquinas and Pseudo-Dionysius, there is another class of statement about God, the analogical, which focuses on characteristics that can be said of both humans and God: good, powerful, loving, etc. [50] (indeed over-good, pre-being, etc.)[51]
Notes
- ^ Ecstasy comes when, in prayer, the nous abandons every connection with created things: first "with everything evil and bad, then with neutral things" (2,3,35;CWS p.65). Ecstasy is mainly withdrawal from the opinion of the world and the flesh. With sincere prayer the nous "abandons all created things" (2,3,35;CWS p.65). This ecstasy is higher than abstract theology, that is, than rational theology, and it belongs only to those who have attained dispassion. It is not yet union; the ecstasy which is unceasing prayer of the nous, in which one's nous has continuous remembrance of God and has no relation with the `world of sin', is not yet union with God. This union comes about when the Paraclete "...illuminates from on high the man who attains in prayer the stage which is superior to the highest natural possibilities and who is awaiting the promise of the Father, and by His revelation ravishes him to the contemplation of the light" (2,3,35;CWS p.65). Illumination by God is what shows His union with man. (GK: apathea) and clarity of vision. Vision here refers to the vision of the nous that has been purified by ascetic practice.[25]
- ^ See also: Ramonides, FRANKS, ROMANS, FEUDALISM, AND DOCTRINE.
- ^ Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos: "The vision of the uncreated light, which offers knowledge of God to man, is sensory and supra-sensory. The bodily eyes are reshaped, so they see the uncreated light, "this mysterious light, inaccessible, immaterial, uncreated, deifying, eternal", this "radiance of the Divine Nature, this glory of the divinity, this beauty of the heavenly kingdom" (3,1,22;CWS p.80). Palamas asks: "Do you see that light is inaccessible to senses which are not transformed by the Spirit?" (2,3,22). St. Maximus, whose teaching is cited by St. Gregory, says that the Apostles saw the uncreated Light "by a transformation of the activity of their senses, produced in them by the Spirit" (2.3.22).[29]
- Subnotes
References
- .
- .
- ^ "The influence of Greek philosophy on the Christian religion, though always active, reached its height the moment the latter entered the stage of its history at which it developed its own theology. This happened in the school of Alexandria. But it may well be said that Christianity came to develop a theology and to feel the urgent need of it because Greek philosophy had always insisted on a rational approach to the problem with which religion is concerned and thereby had set an example" (Werner Jaeger, Two Rediscovered Works of Ancient Christian Literature: Gregory of Nyssa and Macarius (Brill, Leiden 1954), p. 22).
- ^ The vision of God
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8091-2112-0
- ISBN 978-0-8146-3034-1
- ^ The vision of God By V Lossky page 106 page 113
- ^
Symeon the New Theologian: the discourses By Saint Symeon (the New Theologian), C. J. De Catanzaro pg 22-23 Symeon the New Theologian: the discourses By Saint Symeon (the New Theologian), C. J. De Catanzaro pg 22-23 ISBN 978-0-8091-2230-1 [1]
- ^ Saint Gregory insists that to theologize "is permitted only to those who have passed examinations and have reached theoria, and who have been previously purified in soul and body, or at least are being purified." [2]
- ISBN 0-19-926779-0)
- ^ The vision of God
- ISBN 978-0-8232-0967-5
- ISBN 978-0-87840-910-5
- ^ Werner Jaeger, "Two Rediscovered Works of Ancient Christian Literature (Brill, Leiden 1954), p. 23
- ^ Dionysius the Areopagite, The Mystical Theology'” in C.E. Rolt (Translator) The Mystical Theology and the Divine Names, Dover Publications, 2004. Pages 191-192
- ^ Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, p. 220.
- ^ Jean LeClercq, 'Influence and noninfluence of Dionysius in the Western Middle Ages', in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid, (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), pp25-33
- ^ Krivocheine 1986, pp. 215–229.
- ^ deCatanzaro 1980, p. 2.
- ^ deCatanzaro 1980, p. 16.
- ^ deCatanzaro 1980, p. xvii. Even though his call to do more than just what was proscribed by the rules was minor in comparison to some of his other teachings, "his challenge to religious conventionality and formalism raised a storm of controversy."
- ^ a b V Lossky Vision of God pg 162-163
- ^ The vision of the uncreated light, which offers knowledge of God to man, is sensory and supra-sensory. The bodily eyes are reshaped so they see the uncreated light, "this mysterious light, inaccessible, immaterial, uncreated, deifying, eternal", this "radiance of the Divine Nature, this glory of the divinity, this beauty of the heavenly kingdom" (3,1,22;CWS p.80). Palamas asks: "Do you see that light is inaccessible to senses which are not transformed by the Spirit?" (2,3,22).
St. Maximus, whose teaching is cited by St, Gregory, says that the Apostles saw the uncreated Light "by a transformation of the activity of their senses, produced in them by the Spirit" (2.3.22). Orthodox Psychotherapy Section The Knowledge of God according to St. Gregory Palamas by Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos published by Birth of Theotokos Monastery,Greece (January 1, 2005) ISBN 978-960-7070-27-2
- ^ History of Russian Philosophy By N.O. Lossky section on V. Lossky, p.400
- ISBN 978-960-7070-27-2
- ^ Kalaitzidis 2013, p. 145.
- ^ Louth 2015, p. 229.
- ^ Kalaitzidis 2013, p. 144.
- ^ Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos 2005.
- ^ Kalaitzidis 2013, p. 147-148.
- ^ Gregory the Great, Moralia, book 18, 89
- ^ a b George M. Sauvage, "Mysticism" in Catholic Encyclopedia Archived 2012-10-19 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Orthodox Prayer life, p. 60
- ISBN 978-0-19-280290-3), article contemplation, contemplative life
- ISBN 9780898709568), chapter 30
- ^ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2715
- ^ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2713-2714
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, Saint John Cassian
- ^ John Cassian, Conferences, I, chapter 8, translation by Boniface Ramsey
- ^ Orthodox Prayer Life, p. 61
- ^ Byzantine Music: Hymnographers
- ^ "We further declare that we hold fast to the decrees of the four Councils, and in every way follow the holy Fathers, Athanasius, Hilary, Basil, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, Theophilus, John (Chrysostom) of Constantinople, Cyril, Augustine, Proclus, Leo and their writings on the true faith" (Extracts from the Acts. Session I).
- ^ The Sentence of the Synod
- ^ Joseph Stiglmayr, "Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite" in Catholic Encyclopedia Archived 2012-10-19 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Merton 2003, p. 2
- ^ ISBN 978-1-59030-049-7), p. 258
- ^ Hans Urs von Balthasar, Contemplation and the Liturgy
- ^ Merton, 2003, p. 13
- ISBN 1-59030-112-9), p. 5
- ISBN 978-1-4051-1873-6), p. 80
- ^ Corrigan, Kevin; Harrington, L. Michael (2023). "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
Sources
- Poulain, Augustin (1912), "Mystical Theology", The Catholic Encyclopedia
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: External link in
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- Kalaitzidis, Pantelis (2013), "The Image of the West in Contemporary Greek Theology", in Demacopoulos, George E.; Papanikolaou, Aristotle (eds.), Orthodox Constructions of the West, Oxford University Press
- Louth, Andrew (2015), Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present, InterVarsity Press
- Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos (2005), "The Knowledge of God according to St. Gregory Palamas", Orthodox Psychotherapy, Birth of Theotokos Monastery, Greece, ISBN 978-960-7070-27-2