copyright 2001
Jason Heath
Of Medieval Mystics,
Mad Monks, and Modern Men
In
the world of the late middle ages, a groundswell of desire for reform and
renewal of the Church was building. There
was a crisis of spiritual authority as the papacy waned in its credibility.
Following the Great Western Schism, the Avignon papacy, the
tug-of-war between two and sometimes three Popes, where was the church to
look for renewal? While several
alternatives were sought, one of the most interesting was mysticism.
Late
Medieval Mysticism
Mystical
experience, the direct and intuitive communication of an individual’s
spirit with God, has been a part of Christian spirituality from the very
beginning. Mystical piety seems
to have especially flourished in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
following the teachings of spiritual mentors such as John Eckhart and his
disciples Johannes Tauler and Heinrich Suso.
Eckhart at times seems to advocate a sort of monism or pantheism:
through the process of letting go of oneself, we can experience union
with, or perhaps absorption into, God.
This type of mysticism has been called ontological mysticism.
More
typical of the era is voluntarist mysticism, as illustrated in Thomas à
Kempis’ Imitation of Christ. The
voluntarist strain emphasized communion with God through the successive
stages of purification, illumination, and contemplation, resulting in
mystical spiritual union with Christ. This
was a life of discipline lived within a monastic community, as a person
sought to conform his will to God’s.
The
Influence on the Reformation
The
medieval mystics had provided by their pious lives an illustration of living
a life of devotion to and communion with God without the aid of the
institution of the church. Communication
between an individual and God was achieved directly rather than through the
sacraments and the mediation of the church hierarchy.
In this way, the mystics left a legacy to Luther (a “mad monk”
according to his opponents) and others of the possibility of leaving behind
the corrupt institutions, which had already become marginal in the lives of
the mystics. The possibility of
personal communion with God also influenced Luther’s thoughts on
justification. The church had
taught that salvation was something that it alone mediated: the sacraments dispensed grace ex opere operato, and
therefore “there is no salvation outside of the church.”
Luther’s theology opened the way to receiving salvation personally,
individually from God, without the need of mediating sacraments,
indulgences, relics, and priests.
Unfortunately,
the mystic alternative led down a path where, since the individual
communicates directly and intuitively with God, the traditional means of
grace were dispensed with, including preaching and Scripture.
Eckhart taught that true knowledge of God is not rational, but
intuitive, and so mysticism tended to locate authority for the believer
purely in the subjective realm.
Popular
Mysticism Today
This
rejection of objective authority in favor of subjective experience is the
basis of modern popular mysticism. While the vast majority of people today would freely identify
themselves as “spiritual”, very few would identify themselves with a
specific religious group or consider the Bible authoritative. There is however an opportunity here: our experience of
Christian mysticism and communion with God can be a powerful connection
point with those who seek mystical experience.
It can also be something that powerfully shows the attractiveness of
the Christian life to those who grew up in the institutional church and went
through the motions without ever coming to know Christ.
A life of regular experience with God can make these dry bones yearn
to live!
However,
when the wonder of personal communication of God is not balanced with a
healthy fear of our own subjectivity, we tend to see little need for outside
leadership: the Bible, the community of believers.
Christian mysticism must never been allowed to be without an anchor.
Individuals need to have a clear understanding of the objective
authority of the Bible in their lives, and learn how to feed themselves from
it.
Modern
mysticism has combined with modern individualism to create “me and
Jesus” spirituality. Healthy
experience of God is cut loose from its moorings in community experience and
the mandate of serving love. Individual
mystical experience with God must not be prized over other expressions of
spirituality: seeing lives changed, the experience of being used by God to
love others within a community, the experience of God’s power working
through us to reach out to someone who does not know him.
Though deficient in other areas, medieval mysticism was at least
integrated with the need for sanctification and moral change.
Many
groups within the church have also turned various kinds of mystical
experience into a “litmus test” for spirituality (especially charismatic
phenomena). When this is the
case, several things happen. First,
the “mystical” nature of experience as true connection with God becomes
dubious. It is much more likely
that a pressure-induced psychological phenomenon is the cause of such
“experience”. Second, those
who have not had the kind of experience demanded are looked upon as
second-rate believers. No kind
of experience is used as a test of spirituality in the bible. Christians may even apply these tests to themselves in an
introspective and legalistic way, “Why don’t I have the same experiences
of closeness to God as so-and-so?”
Having
raised reasons for caution, we must be careful not to overreact to the
dangers of mysticism. It would
be an impoverished and unbiblical Christianity that frowned upon rapturous
experience of communion with God. We must ask: Do we have regular and healthy personal
experiences of God? Do the
people we lead? Is our
framework for healthy Christian experience broad enough to include the more
emotional or do we instinctively raise a skeptical eyebrow at stories of
others’ experience of this type? The
goal is not to receive raw experience as a junkie demands a “fix” but
simply to have an openness to walking with God as a fully integrated person
– mind, will, and emotions attuned to him.
We must make sure that our model of Christian spirituality includes a
biblical picture of mysticism – that as we follow God and walk with him,
we increasingly are able to experience him personally and directly.