THE THREE MEN I ADMIRE THE MOST THE FATHER, SON AND HOLY GHOST: THE MIND, BODY AND SOUL OF MYSTICAL CHRISTIANITY BY JAMES MADISON
INTRODUCTION
As one might notice, I have used the lines of a famous folk tune from the 1970s as an opening to this paper. One could guess that many would recognize the ending words to Don McLean’s “American Pie” but more than that one would assume that Christians would recognize the Trinity doctrine in the title. This doctrine of three persons in one God has a rich history in the early church culminating in the finalization of terms at the Council of Calchedon in 451 C.E. This paper will not give you this rich history nor discuss the debates and views of heretics and Church fathers on the subject but will offer the reader something much more, that few if any care to hear about much less wish to delve into. This is the tradition of Christian mysticism and how it has brought something more to the table in light of the Trinitarian God. This tradition of which little is commonly known spans the centuries from the beginning of Christianity to contemporary times. It is little discussed and usually feared. Mystics, although generally not taken seriously keep the doctrine of the trinity alive for Christianity. Not alive in the sense of long boring theological treatises written by theologians with too much time on their hands, but alive in the Mind, Body and Soul of the religion-alive in experience. As Kallistos Ware says:
St. John Climacus, like St. Symeon the New Theologian and St. Gregory Palamas at a later date, lays heavy emphasis upon the need for personal experience. Christianity, as he sees it, is much more than the exterior acceptance of doctrines and rules. No one can be a true Christian at second hand; there must be a personal encounter, in which each knows, sees, tastes and touches for himself.
Here we will examine the visions and experiences of a few Christian mystics throughout the ages. We shall begin with two men, St. John Climacus and St. Gregory Palamas, proceed to the ecstatic experiences of the Beguines and of the middle ages and finish with the contemporary charismatic movements of the mystical tradition. My hope here is to establish a pattern or circle, of what the tradition of mysticism means to Christianity and how it truly drives the religion beyond static theological boundaries and keeps it genuinely mystical and genuinely Trinitarian.
THE MIND
St. John Climacus:
Concerning “visions and revelations” Saint Paul says: I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven, whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows, was caught up into paradise and heard things that are not to be told that no mortal is permitted to repeat.
This experience St. Paul tells us of, although certainly not the beginning of Christian esoterica, displays the propensity and acceptance of early Christianity to the mystical side.
John Climacus (“ladder” in Greek) known for his work The Ladder of Divine Descent was apparently well educated for he is also referred to as John Scholasticus. It is commonly accepted that he was born near 579 C.E. and died around 649 C.E. The Ladder is written for ascetic monks at the monastery of Raithu who asked St. John to, “tell us of our ignorance” while he was the Abbot at the monastery of Mt. Sinai.
St. John begins The ladder of Divine Descent as such: "When writing to the servants of God, one should begin with our God and King Himself, the good, the supremely good, the all-good. One may notice immediately St. John’s emphasis on the neo-platonic notion of God as “the good, the supremely good, the all-good.” For St. John, man is “rational” and “endowed” with free will. In other words the mind and the mind’s concept of God is his point of departure. God is transcendent and beyond. God is the “outpouring of light” the “life of all free beings”, the glimpse of the sun, or the changes in weather” an “everlasting creator” who dispenses a “divine law”. After he establishes what God is and before turning to the life of a monk he supplies one line to mention this: “A Christian is an imitator of Christ in thought, word and deed, as far as this is humanly possible, and he believes rightly and blamelessly in the Holy Trinity.”
As one can see, Christ and the Holy Trinity are but a passing note. By my count, St. John mentions Christ only 32 times, Jesus only 6, the spirit 6, the Holy Spirit 4, the Spirit of the Lord once, the Paraclete once, the Word once, and the Trinity only 6 times. The focus is entirely on God in the abstract, demons and virtues. For a 218 page, tract on the life of obtaining virtue to please God and gain salvation for ascetic monks, I find the lack of focus on Christianity’s most mystical doctrine to be interesting.
When St. John uses the term Trinity he uses it doctrinally in every passage except one: “Purity makes of a disciple someone who can speak of God, and he can move on to a knowledge of the Trinity”. This line comes on the page before last of the ladder. It is preceded by these lines:
The growth of fear is the starting point of love and total purity is the foundation for theology. When a man is perfectly united to God, then what God has said is somehow mysteriously clarified. But where there is no union of this kind, then it is extremely difficult to speak about God. “The consubstantial Word brings purity to completion, and His presence destroys death, and when death is done away with, the disciple of sacred knowledge is illuminated. The Word of the Lord, being from the Lord, remains eternally pure.
According to the translator Norman Russell, when St. John uses the term “theology” he means, “The knowledge of God from experience rather than from study”. The last two pages are spent exhorting love as the ultimate virtue and plainly stating that, “for indeed, God is love”. This returns us to experience of God as the starting place of being Christian. It is further interesting to note that of St. John’s five mentions of theologians, three of them are referring to Gregory of Nazianzus one of the Cappadocian fathers.
Let us recall that St. John is speaking to ascetic monks. These monks are known as Hesychasts (hermits). These mystics or “warriors and athletes of Christ” are seeking a direct experience of God and St. John is instructing them on how to attain such. “Those with a mind accustomed to true prayer talk directly to the Lord…Now if you have learned the technique of prayer systematically, then you will certainly grasp what I am saying”. According to Evagrius Ponticus, one of the first Christian monastics of the 4th century who inspired Hesychasts for centuries to come, prayer is “the highest activity of the mind” an “accent of the mind to God”, this “prayer of the mind” is the ultimate goal of a Hesychast. It is “natural” to the mind and establishes the natural relationship with God.
The prayer St. John refers to is known as The Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, have mercy on me”. As we shall see in our next section this particular prayer becomes established in Christian mystical circles.
St. Gregory Palamas:
The views of Evagrius on prayer, which so influenced the Hesychast movement, were based in neo-Platonism that conceived the mind as existing without matter and naturally divine. Mainstream Eastern Spiritual tradition of which Gregory Palamas belongs to understood and practiced Evagrius’ “mental prayers” in a Christocentric light whereas the mind was not opposed to matter. This “mental prayer” became the Jesus Prayer. A prayer which brought about a “personal experience of God”, without which according to St. Symeon, there is no true Christianity.
St. Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), in his work the Triads, defends the Hesychast monks against a certain Barlaam the Calabrian who felt that secular education was the path to wisdom and therefore the only path to God, whereas the Hesychasts profess to have attained through the Jesus Prayer a spiritual knowledge of the Deity. While both parties agree to the transcendence of God, St. Gregory’s theology provides a means to experience, participate in and know God through his divine energies. These energies are not identical with the divine hypostasis but are possessed and exercised in a commonality of the Three Divine Persons of the Trinity. Participation in these energies allow one to “share the life of God and be deified” letting God reveal himself “positively” to the spiritual senses without loosing transcendence.
For Barlaam, using an Aristotelian approach, human knowledge can only be based on the senses. He admits the possibility of an illumination of the mind that transcends the senses but this illumination must remain within the mind’s nature. Knowledge of God can only be symbolic or relative. For St. Gregory this is a confrontation of the nature of Christian experience itself. Although both combatants agree on the via negative or apophatic theology in regards to experience of God, St. Gregory sees it as only signifying the inability to know God without a transfiguration of the spirit. One can transcend his nature and experience directly the energies of God. In other words since one is created in the divine image, he possesses an “organ of vision” that is neither the senses or the intellect. Therefore the Hesychasts, through the use of the Jesus Prayer do actually and directly experience the energies, but not the essence of God.
St. Gregory’s theology brings the experience of God and the concept of God out of and away from the mental constructs of static theologies like Barlaam’s. As St. John Climacus begins The Ladder with a mental concept of God and finishes with a mystical experience of Love which is God himself, St. Gregory moves us further into an immanent Trinity that can be directly experienced through its energies and not only with the mind or by naturalistic means.
These two mystical theologians that we have seen so far have attempted to retain or even placate the theologies that hold God as some sort of Greek philosophical construct while not denying a direct experience of the divine. Although St. John seems to hold that this experience can only be gained through virtue and then prayer, St. Gregory leans more towards the mystical experience being delivered through the Jesus Prayer itself first and virtue second, which shows more of a Christological focus. The point here of course is that neither of these men, although supporting the current conceptual and static theologies, will deny a mystical and direct experience of God. Therefore they push theology, the Church and Christianity beyond any static position.
THE BODY
According to Rowan Williams, early Christian spirituality was shaped by two convictions, 1. “that Christian identity was a matter of coming to share by God’s gift the relation that eternally subsists between the Logos and the divine source” (Climacus) and 2. “what we encounter in prayer is never capable of being reduced to a finished conceptual scheme” (Palamas). These convictions are concerns about the relationship between God and being in general or between God and mind.
In this section we will attempt to display the experiences of the Beguines as a concentration on the mystical experience as manifested in and of the body. These experiences go once again beyond the mental concepts of orthodox theologies and surpass the previously mentioned convictions of early Christianity. In other words these experiences are immanent in the body of these mystics and not just in the mind.
In those days God made manifest his power through the frail sex, in these handmaidens he filled with the prophetic spirit.
The Beguines:
According to Emilie Zum Brunn and Georgette Epiney-Burgard, the Beguines are marked by the distinctions between the philosophical, theological and mystical perspectives that are common today. They are “specialists” in the mystical tradition and have an ultimate aim to transcend themselves and be “melted into God”. The virtues become an “imperfect” and “preliminary stage” with no need to recourse to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. A freed soul can take leave of these without formality, even surpassing the need for God (duality) to become God himself.
Mechthild the author of The Flowing Light of the Godhead, tells us "I neither wish nor am able to write anything, unless I see it with the eyes of my soul and hear it with the ears of my eternal spirit, feeling in all the parts of my body the strength of the Holy Spirit" She is serious when she mentions “all the parts of my body” for she actually makes love to God.
When the poor soul comes to court, she is wise and courtly, and so she looks upon her God with joy. Ah, with what great love she is received there. She is silent, intensely longing that He should praise her. Then with great desire He shows her His divine heart: it is like reddish gold, burning in a large charcoal fire. Then He places her in His ardent heart so that the Noble Prince and the little servant girl embrace and are united, as water and wine. Then she is brought to nought and abandons herself, as if she had no strength left, while He is sick with love for her, as He has always been, for (in this desire) there can be neither growth nor lessening. Thus she speaks: "Lord, You are my consolation, my desire, my flowing fountain, my sun, and I am your mirror." Such is the journey to court of the loving soul, who cannot be without God… Then the Most Beloved goes toward the Most Beautiful in the hidden chambers of the invisible Deity. There she finds the couch and the pleasure of Love, and God awaiting her in a superhuman fashion. This is what Our Lord says:- Stay, Lady Soul.--What is your wish, Lord?--That you should be naked.--Lord, how can this happen to me?--Lady Soul, you are so "co-natured" in Me that nothing can be interposed between you and Me. Never for one single hour was any angel given the honor that is bestowed on you for all Eternity.
I know of no other way to display this bodily experience of the divine that the mystic Mechthild experiences except through her own words. She refers to herself as God’s fiancée and speaks to each member of the trinity. As she grows old God finally “withdraws” from her and, as Brunn and Epiney-Burgard have it, Mechthild corrects the traditional Platonic formula of the purgative, illuminative, and unitive ways, when she says: 'It is the nature of Love to flow first in sweetness, then She becomes rich in knowledge, and thirdly She demands and desires to be rejected'.
Beatrice of Nazareth (1200-1268) the author of The Seven Manners Of Love, slept on thorns, scourged herself and fasted due to the belief that one is incapable by one’s own efforts of attaining union with the supremely Good—God. Feeling the attraction of God gives the mystic a desire to follow Christ resulting in an almost “unbearable tension of will.” This desire leads to these violent exterior manifestations. The ecstatic Beatrice’s aim is to “reform her nature that has been wounded by sin and return to the purity of the state in which she was created”.
At Christmas mass Beatrice has a vision of God as the source of a river. The river is Christ and all who drink from it are graced. After she retains her senses, she realizes through prayer that she should devote her life to charity, the service of others. At some time later she has another vision of being above the world where she sees that she remains “inseparably united to the Divine Essence by the embraces of charity.” After this experience “she became aware that she loved herself perfectly for Christ's sake.”
At this point Beatrice begins in the Seventh Manner of Holy Love to write about her relationship to God as if it were a relationship to a husband or lover.
The Betrothed knows still one more manner of sublime Love which submits her to a hard inward toil: attracted by a Love which is above her humanity, above human reason and intelligence, above all the heart's operations, drawn exclusively by Eternal Love in the eternity of love, in the incomprehensibility, in the inaccessible breadth and height, in the profound abyss of the Divinity Who is "all in all things" and Who remains unknowable above all things, unchangeable, the plenitude of Being Who embraces all in His power, intelligence and sovereign work. The blessed soul is so tenderly engulfed in love, so strongly drawn by desire, that her tormented heart is gnawed with impatience and her infatuated mind is overwhelmed by the strength of these desires.
She goes on to call God “spouse” and to speak of being away from him as “exile” of which “she cannot be, nor wishes to be, consoled”.
Our last Beguine, Marguerite Porete was burned at the stake on June 1, 1310 for refusing to answer to the inquisition about her work, The Mirror of Simple Shattered Souls. Her work was referred to as “a source of dangerous illusions to those who do not possess an adequate spiritual preparation.” The aim of the mirror is to teach a “super-rational” truth that will render the soul simple. Therefore “annihilating oneself in God through love” she melts into him. Transformed through contemplation we resemble or mirror what we contemplate. Presented in the form of a play with the allegorical character of Soul being transformed and led to Lady Love, who represents God in his essence, The Mirror describes a spiritual combat that leads to the abandonment of reason, will and virtue, resulting in peace. Having abandoned her own being, her own identity, the mystic becomes or is transformed into the being of God. Ontologically she does not exist. Only God exists.
The Mirror creates a Trinitarian mysticism of Lover, Beloved and Love, which results in Marguerite’s view that “If nobody had sinned except myself alone, You would nevertheless have redeemed my soul, turned from Your love, by being nailed naked to the Cross for me and by using Your well-ordained power to destroy sin. Thus, Lord, all You have suffered in Your sweet humanity You have suffered for me, as if nobody else had sinned, but myself alone.”
We see that these women experience God directly in his essence. Heresy to the early and middle Church Fathers, virtue, will, reason, the Church and even God and the Trinity are surpassed in these experiences of total negation of the ontological self to literally melt into God. The orthodox theologies of the mind and the abstract deity are abandoned by the Beguines. Although there is some sense of seeking to placate the ecclesial powers, these women experience the Trinitarian God literally in the Body through courtly love. Although St. John Climacus and St. Gregory Palamas also hold to an experience of God albeit through love in the mind, the Beguines take the further step of making the totally transcendent God the participating Trinity. To be blunt, the Beguines have what I would call a human experience of God that beats back static theology.
THE SOUL
Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Mothe-Guyon:
As we have moved from the ascetic monks (Climacus) to the monastic and orthodox monks (Palamas) to the mystical Beguines, we require one further link that displays the movement of the soul or Spirit of Christianity before entering our contemporary world. This link is Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Mothe-Guyon ( 1648-1717). Making no claim to learning, but being divinely inspired, Guyon held that she too held an apostolic mission in the vein of Marguerite Porete. She refused to answer to ecclesial authorities and denied the “pre-existing model of a female Sainthood.”
Indeed, because she lived at the end of the seventeenth century, Guyon, in many ways, is different from mystics of the tradition, whether they be thought orthodox or heretical. In previous centuries, women whose apostolic missions and charismatic dispositions could not be muted were nevertheless forced into convents, put under strict clerical supervision, or simply eliminated. In any case, they had to considerably tone down any claim to apostleship. By contrast, Guyon, who claimed to be divinely called to apostolic work outside the convent and even the hierarchy of the church, managed to outsmart the clerics who pressed her to enter a convent or some other religious congregation by invoking the very principles of the Council of Trent.
Guyon preached the spiritual practice of the simple presence of God, losing the self in God without the use of images. This form of detachment or pure love was the ultimate union with God and could be achieved now. Her teachings led to condemnation by the Church and as Bruneau has it “Catholicism evacuated its own mystical tradition.” Nevertheless, the “negative mysticism” of Guyon “found a viable philosophy for this time of transition”, that created new claims for the individual. These ideas that centered on the conscience of the individual and personal experience of the modernist period used Guyon’s work as support (Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard ). “The difference between Guyon and earlier advocates of religious freedom is that, unlike many schismatics who demanded the respect of their individual conscience but did not extend the same respect to others, Guyon did both. She is known to have professed that she ‘would rather die than to distance herself in the least from the Spirit of the Church.”
As we move on into the contemporary period, Guyon’s attachment to the “Spirit of the Church” becomes our starting point for displaying the next generation of mystics. These women also will abandon traditional roles and assume their apostolic mission to the world and the Church. Let us proceed.
Rebecca Cox Jackson:
“There was no mortal that I told go to and gain instruction, so it pleased God in His love and mercy to teach me in dreams and visions and revelation and gifts.”
Becoming a “new creature” at the age of 35 in 1830 Rebecca Cox Jackson (1795-1871), began a 40 year career as a preacher and founder of the Black Shaker community in Philadelphia. As a “chosen instrument of the will of God” she recorded her manifestations “of a sacred force that came to her from outside.” Looking beyond sanctification she searched for a holiness, “embodied in communal relationships and institutions”.
Sitting still enabled her to listen and discern the inner voice that paralyzed her and gave her seizures. Practicing self-mortification and celibacy forced her to leave her husband for, "My dreams became a burden to my family." She received gifts of “foresight” and “power” from which she even was able to stop a thunderstorm. In a series of visions in 1843 she experienced God appearing as a woman, Holy Mother Wisdom who had a face, "like a full moon, with the glory of the sun reflecting from Her head," protecting the congregation. In 1862, she would see this:
Thursday morning, November 20, 1862, I received this gift. A knowledge of the Holy Spirit, as proceeding from the Four-in-One Union, with all the work of God, both in time and in eternity. Here I saw how it was that nothing was made without the Son. I also saw that Holy Mother Wisdom was one with the Father, and Her Daughter was one with Her. Thus I saw that the Bridegroom and the Bride was before the world was. I then began to understand the number four, as often spoken of--the one river that divided into four, the four-horned altar, the four foundations, the four winds to blow from the four corners of the heavens. I also saw the four quarters of the earth, which represents the spirit world. I then understood the sin against the Holy Ghost, for that is to sin against the gift of God, which is faith, to sin against the gift of Wisdom, which is charity, without which we are nothing, and to sin against the gift of the Son, which is mercy, without which no soul can be saved; and to sin against the gift of the Bride, which is peace--and without peace, no soul can find a heavenly rest. Here is the gift of the Four Spirits in One Union, to save that which was lost.
We can notice that Rebecca Jackson, an uneducated Black woman of the 19th century follows the usual pattern of the mystical tradition of Christianity. She finishes her career by writing a theology of the Holy Spirit while founding a religious community. Although this theology is far from orthodox it suffices to display the trend towards the Spirit in contemporary mysticism and how this movement challenges static theologies. One could say that her Trinity was immanent in the sense of the ontological dynamics of Gift, Giver and Gifting, since in a Gift economy the Gifted is obligated. Rebecca Jackson never dropped her obligation.
Kathryn Kuhlman:
The red-haired lady evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman (1907-1975), often experienced terrible fright before her miracle services. Her fear of not having the Holy Spirit upon her when literally thousands came to be healed racked her with anxiety. Referred to as a “handmaiden of God” and “America’s greatest lady preacher” she led the “most prominent healing ministries of the entire twentieth century.”
Born-again at the age of fourteen in Concordia Missouri, Kathryn became an evangelist at sixteen, preaching at seventeen and began her own ministry at twenty- eight. Married once, but feeling the “weight of God's call upon her”, she divorced and returned to ministry. While she preached on the power of the Holy Spirit, the first miracle occurred in April of 1947. The following year she began her miracle services. Before her death her ministry was carried on 50 radio stations and 60 television stations.
Her ability to heal she professed was not her own but came directly from the Holy Spirit. Her ministry attracted followers from all walks of life and had an ecumenical spirit that “bridged the gap between Protestants and Catholics.” Uneducated and from humble upbringings, she once reasoned with God that “if you can take nothing and use it then here is nothing.” With, “the most unorthodox ministry in the world” she healed literally thousands of people of which she herself was one of the most surprised. With a constant emphasis on the “baptism of the Holy Spirit”, her ministry prompted Jamie Buckingham to say, "On a planet ravaged by disease and spiritual darkness she represented that one ingredient without which mankind is doomed--hope".
Here we can see, in this section the liberationist and ecumenical force of The Spirit, the soul of Christianity and how this movement inspires, rather divinely inspires the church (small c) to surpass any urge to halt or hinder these realized eschatologies, that I believe these mystics we have observed here put forth. The Kingdom is upon them through the Holy Spirit, and no static theology can stop it.
CONCLUSION
In this work we have examined Christian mysticism from the viewpoint of the Trinity doctrine. The static theology of Climacus and Palamas’ time felt that God was so transcendent that he (the Father) could not be reached, whereas in our second section the Beguines displayed a centering on melting into God or literally making love to God, which connotes a human or Christocentric view of the Deity. In our final section the emphasis is entirely upon the Holy Spirit or the soul of Christianity. Each of our mystics drove the current theologies to move, to change, to shake if you will out of a view of God that rested or centered on one point of the Trinity, usually the philosophical God or the transcendent Father. We can now see that mysticism is inclusive, it takes in the whole Trinity, The Father, Son and Holy Ghost, The Mind, Body and Soul of Christianity.
Let it never be said:
I went down to the sacred store where I'd heard the music years before but the man there said the music wouldn't play and in the streets the children screamed, the lovers cried, and the poets dreamed but not a word was spoken, the church bells all were broken and the three men I admire most, the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast, the day, the music, died
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