[BBC List] Mysticism and Christianity

[Mike Abendroth]

Mysticism and Christianity


Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield


Reprinted from The Biblical Review, ii. 1917, pp. 169-191 (published by The
Biblical Seminary in New York; copyrighted).

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scanned, proof-read, and marked-up by Lance George Marshall

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Religion is, shortly, the reaction of the human soul in the presence of God.
As God is as much a part of the environment of man as the earth on which he
stands, no man can escape from religion any more than he can escape from
gravitation. But though every man necessarily reacts to God, men react of
course diversely, each according to his nature, or perhaps we would better
say, each according to his temperament. Thus, broadly speaking, three main
types of religion arise, corresponding to the three main varieties of the
activity of the human spirit, intellectual, emotional, and voluntary.
According as the intellect, sensibility, or will is dominant in him, each
man produces for himself a religion prevailingly of the intellect,
sensibility, or active will; and all the religions which men have made for
themselves find places somewhere among these three types, as they produce
themselves more or less purely, or variously intermingle with one another. 

We say advisedly, all the religions which men have made for themselves. For
there is an even more fundamental division among religions than that which
is supplied by these varieties. This is the division between man-made and
God-made religions. Besides the religions which man has made for himself,
God has made a religion for man. We call this revealed religion; and the
most fundamental division which separates between religions is that which
divides revealed religion from unrevealed religions. Of course, we do not
mean to deny that there is an element of revelation in all religions. God is
a person, and persons are known only as they make themselves known - reveal
themselves. The term revelation is used in this distinction, therefore, in a
pregnant sense. In the unrevealed religions God is known only as He has
revealed Himself in His acts of the creation and government of the world, as
every person must reveal himself in his acts if he acts at all. In the one
revealed religion God has revealed Himself also in acts of special grace,
among which is included the open Word. 

There is an element in revealed religion, therefore, which is not found in
any unrevealed religion. This is the element of authority. Revealed religion
comes to man from without; it is imposed upon him from a source superior to
his own spirit. The unrevealed religions, on the other hand, flow from no
higher source than the human spirit itself. However much they may differ
among themselves in the relative prominence given in each to the functioning
of the intellect, sensibility, or will, they have this fundamental thing in
common. They are all, in other words, natural religions in contradistinction
to the one supernatural religion which God has made. 

There is a true sense, then, in which it may be said that the unrevealed
religions are "religions of the spirit" and revealed religion is the
"religion of authority." Authority is the correlate of revelation, and
wherever revelation is - and only where revelation is - is there authority.
Just because we do not see in revelation man reaching up lame hands toward
God and feeling fumblingly after Him if haply he may find Him, but God
graciously reaching strong hands down to man, bringing him help in his need,
we see in it a gift from God, not a creation of man's. On the other hand,
the characteristic of all unrevealed religions is that they are distinctly
man-made. They have no authority to appeal to, they rest solely on the
deliverances of the human spirit. As Rudyard Kipling shrewdly makes his
"Tommy" declare: 

The 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood and stone, 
'E don't obey no orders unless they is 'is own. 

Naturally it makes no difference in this respect whether it is the rational,
emotional, or volitional element in the activities of the human spirit to
which appeal is chiefly made. In no case are the foundations sunk deeper
than the human spirit itself, and nothing appears in the structure that is
raised which the human spirit does not supply. The preponderance of one or
another of these activities in the structure does, however, make an immense
difference in the aspect of that structure. Mysticism is the name which is
given to the particular one of these structures, the predominant place in
which is taken by the sensibility. It is characteristic of mysticism that it
makes its appeal to the feelings as the sole, or at least as the normative,
source of knowledge of divine things. That is to say, it is the religious
sentiment which constitutes for it the source of religious knowledge. Of
course mystics differ with one another in the consistency with which they
apply their principle. And of course they differ with one another in the
account they give of this religious sentiment to which they make their
appeal. There are, therefore, many varieties of mystics, pure and impure,
consistent and inconsistent, naturalistic and supernaturalistic, pantheistic
and theistic - even Christian. What is common to them all, and what makes
them all mystics, is that they all rest on the religious sentiment as the
source of knowledge of divine things. 

The great variety of the accounts which mystics give of the feeling to which
they make their appeal arises from the very nature of the case. There is a
deeper reason for a mystic being "mute" - that is what the name imports -
than that he wishes to make a mystery of his discoveries. He is "mute"
because, as a mystic, he has nothing to say. When he sinks within himself he
finds feelings, not conceptions; his is an emotional, not a conceptional,
religion; and feelings, emotions, though not inaudible, are not articulate.
As a mystic, he has no conceptional language in which to express what he
feels. If he attempts to describe it he must make use of terms derived from
the religious or philosophical thought in vogue about him, that is to say,
of non-mystical language. His hands may be the hands of Esau, but his voice
is the voice of Jacob. The language in which he describes the reality which
he finds within him does not in the least indicate, then, what it is; it is
merely a concession to the necessity of communicating with the external
world or with his own more external self. What he finds within him is just
to his apprehension an "unutterable abyss." And Synesius does himself and
his fellow mystics no injustice when he declares that "the mystic mind says
this and that, gyrating around the unutterable abyss." 

On the brink of this abyss the mystic may stand in awe, and, standing in awe
upon its brink, he may deify it. Then he calls it indifferently Brahm or
Zeus, Allah or the Holy Spirit, according as men about him speak of God. He
explains its meaning, in other words, in terms of the conception of the
universe which he has brought with him, or, as it is more fashionable now to
phrase it, each in accordance with his own world-view. Those who are held in
the grasp of a naturalistic conception of the world will naturally speak of
the religious feeling of which they have become acutely conscious as only
one of the multitudinous natural movements of the human soul, and will seek
merely, by a logical analysis of its presuppositions and implications, to
draw out its full meaning. Those who are sunk in a pantheistic world-view
will speak of its movements as motions of the subliminal consciousness, and
will interpret them as the surgings within us of the divine ground of all
things, in listening to which they conceive themselves to be sinking beneath
the waves that fret the surface of the ocean of being and penetrating to its
profounder depths. If, on the other hand, the mystic chances to be a theist,
he may look upon the movements of his religious feelings as effects in his
soul wrought by the voluntary actions of the God whom he acknowledges; and
if he should happen to be a Christian, he may interpret these movements, in
accordance with the teachings of the Scriptures, as the leadings of the Holy
Spirit or as the manifestations within him of the Christ within us the hope
of glory. 

This Christian mysticism, now, obviously differs in no essential respect
from the parallel phenomena which are observable in other religions. It is
only general mysticism manifesting itself on Christian ground and
interpreting itself accordingly in the forms of Christian thought. It is
mysticism which has learned to speak in Christian language. The phenomena
themselves are universal. There has never been an age of the world, or a
form of religion, in which they have not been in evidence. There are always
everywhere some men who stand out among their fellows as listeners to the
inner voice, and who, refusing the warning which Thoas gives to Iphigenia in
Goethe's play, "There speaks no God: thy heart alone 'tis speaks," respond
like Iphigenia with passionate conviction, "'Tis only through our hearts the
gods e'er speak." But these common phenomena are, naturally, interpreted in
each instance, according to the general presuppositions of each several
subject or observer of them. Thus, for example, they are treated as the
intrusion of God into the soul (Ribet), or as the involuntary intrusion of
the unconscious into consciousness (Hartmann), or as the intrusion of the
subconscious into the consciousness (Du Prel), or as the intrusion of
feeling, strong and overmastering, into the operations of the intellect
(Goethe). 

According to these varying interpretations we get different types of
mysticism, differing from one another not in intrinsic character so much as
in the explanations given of the common phenomena. Many attempts have been
made to arrange these types in logical schemes which shall embrace all
varieties and present them in an intelligible order. Thus, for example, from
the point of view of the ends sought, R. A. Vaughan distinguishes between
theopathic, theosophic, and theurgic mysticism, the first of which is
content with feeling, while the second aspires to knowledge, and the third
seeks power. The same classes may perhaps be called more simply emotional,
intellectual, and thelematic mysticism. From the point of view of the
inquiry into the sources of religious knowledge four well-marked varieties
present themselves, which have been given the names of naturalistic,
supernaturalistic, theosophical, and pantheistic mysticism. 

The common element in all these varieties of mysticism is that they all seek
all, or most, or the normative or at least a substantial part, of the
knowledge of God in human feelings, which they look upon as the sole or at
least the most trustworthy or the most direct source of the knowledge of
God. The differences between them turn on the diverging conceptions which
they entertain of the origin of the religious feelings thus appealed to.
Naturalistic mysticism conceives them as merely "the natural religious
consciousness of men, as excited and influenced by the circumstances of the
individual." Supernaturalistic, as the effects of operations of the divine
Spirit in the heart, the human spirit moving only as it is moved upon by the
divine. Theosophical mysticism goes a step further and regards the religious
feelings as the footprints of Deity moving in the soul, and as, therefore,
immediate sources of knowledge of God, which is to be obtained by simple
quiescence and rapt contemplation of these His movements. Pantheistic
mysticism advances to the complete identification of the soul with God, who
is therefore to be known by applying oneself to the simple axiom: "Know
thyself." 

Clearly it is the type which has been called supernaturalistic that has the
closest affinity with Christianity. Christian mysticism accordingly, at its
best, takes this form and passes insensibly from it into evangelical
Christianity, to which the indwelling of the Holy Ghost - the Christ within
- is fundamental, and which rejoices in such spiritual experiences as are
summed up in the old categories of regeneration and sanctification - the
rebegetting of the soul into newness of life and the leading of the
new-created soul along the pathway of holy living. From these experiences,
of course, much may be inferred not only of the modes of God's working in
the salvation of men but also of the nature and character of God the worker.


The distinction between mysticism of this type and evangelical Christianity,
from the point of view which is now occupying our attention, is nevertheless
clear. Evangelical Christianity interprets all religious experience by the
normative revelation of God recorded for us in the Holy Scriptures, and
guides, directs, and corrects it from these Scriptures, and thus molds it
into harmony with what God in His revealed Word lays down as the normal
Christian life. The mystic, on the other hand, tends to substitute his
religious experience for the objective revelation of God recorded in the
written Word, as the source from which he derives his knowledge of God, or
at least to subordinate the expressly revealed Word as the less direct and
convincing source of knowledge of God to his own religious experience. The
result is that the external revelation is relatively depressed in value, if
not totally set aside. 

In the history of Christian thought mysticism appears accordingly as that
tendency among professing Christians which looks within, that is, to the
religious feelings, in its search for God. It supposes itself to contemplate
within the soul the movements of the divine Spirit, and finds in them either
the sole sources of trustworthy knowledge of God, or the most immediate and
convincing sources of that knowledge, or, at least, a coordinate source of
it alongside of the written Word. The characteristic of Christian mysticism,
from the point of view of religious knowledge, is therefore its appeal to
the "inner light," or "the internal word," either to the exclusion of the
external or written Word, or as superior to it and normative for its
interpretation, or at least as coordinate authority with it, this "inner
light" or "internal word" being conceived not as the rational understanding
but as the immediate deliverance of the religious sentiment. As a mere
matter of fact, now, we lack all criteria, apart from the written Word, to
distinguish between those motions of the heart which are created within us
by the Spirit of God and those which arise out of the natural functioning of
the religious consciousness. This substitution of our religious experience -
or "Christian consciousness," as it is sometimes called - for the objective
Word as the proper source of our religious knowledge ends therefore either
in betraying us into purely rationalistic mysticism, or is rescued from that
by the postulation of a relation of the soul to God which strongly tends
toward pantheizing mysticism. 

In point of fact, mysticism in the Church is found to gravitate, with pretty
general regularity, either toward rationalism or toward pantheism. In
effect, indeed, it appears to differ from rationalism chiefly in
temperament, if we may not even say in temperature. The two have it in
common that they appeal for knowledge of God only to what is internal to
man; and to what, internal to man, men make their actual appeal, seems to be
determined very much by their temperaments, or, as has been said, by their
temperatures. The human soul is a small thing at best; it is not divided
into water-tight compartments; the streams of feeling which are flowing up
and down in it and the judgments of the understanding which are incessantly
being framed in it are constantly acting and reacting on one another. It is
not always easy for it to be perfectly clear, as it turns within itself and
gazes upon its complex movements, of the real source, rational or emotional,
of the impressions which it observes to be crystallizing within it into
convictions. It has often been observed in the progress of history,
accordingly, that men who have deserted the guidance of external revelation
have become mystics or rationalists largely according as their religious
life was warm or cold. In periods of religious fervor or in periods of
fervid religious reactions they are mystics; in periods of religious decline
they are rationalists. The same person, indeed, sometimes vibrates between
the two points of view with the utmost facility. 

It is, however, with pantheism that mysticism stands in the closest
association. It would not be untrue, in fact, to say that as a historical
phenomenon mysticism is just pantheism reduced to a religion, that is to
say, with its postulates transformed into ends. Defenses of mysticism
against the inevitable (and true) charge of pantheizing usually, indeed,
stop with the announcement of this damaging fact. "Lasson," remarks Dean
Inge as if that were the conclusion of the matter instead of, as it is, the
confession of judgment, "says well, in his book on Meister Eckhart,
'Mysticism views everything from the standpoint of teleology, while
pantheism generally stops at causality."' What it is of importance to
observe is that it is precisely what pantheism, being a philosophy,
postulates as conditions of being that mysticism, being a religion, proposes
as objects of attainment. Mysticism is simply, therefore, pantheism
expressed in the terms of religious aspiration. 

This is as true within the Christian Church as without it. All forms of
mysticism have no doubt from time to time found a place for themselves
within the Church. Or perhaps we should rather say that they have always
existed in it, and have from time to time manifested their presence there.
This must be said even of naturalistic mysticism. There are those who call
themselves Christians who yet conceive of Christianity as merely the natural
religious sentiment excited into action by contact with the religious
impulse set in motion by Jesus Christ and transmitted down the ages by the
natural laws of motion, as motion is transmitted, say, through a row of
billiard balls in contact with one another. Yet it would only be true to say
that mysticism as a phenomenon in the history of the Church has commonly
arisen in the wake of the dominating influence in the contemporary world of
a pantheizing philosophy. It is the product of a pantheizing manner of
thinking impinging on the religious nature, or, if we prefer to phrase it
from the opposite point of view, of religious thought seeking to assimilate
and to express itself in terms of a pantheizing philosophy. 

The fullest stream of mystical thought which has entered the Church finds
its origin in the Neoplatonic philosophy. It is to the writings of the
Pseudo-Dionysius that its naturalization in the Eastern Church is usually
broadly ascribed. The sluice-gates of the Western Church were opened for it,
in the same broad sense, by John Scotus Erigena. It has flowed strongly down
through all the subsequent centuries, widening here and there into lakelets.
The form of mysticism which is most widely disturbing the modern Protestant
churches comes, however, from a different source. It takes its origin from
the movement inaugurated in the first third of the nineteenth century by
Friedrich Schleiermacher, with the ostensible purpose of rescuing
Christianity from the assaults of rationalism by vindicating for religion
its own independent right of existence, in a region "beyond reason." The
result of this attempt to separate religion from reason has been, of course,
merely to render religion unreasonable; even Plotinus warned us long ago
that "he who would rise above reason falls outside of it." But what we are
immediately concerned to observe is the very widespread rejection of all
"external authority," which has been one of the results of this movement,
and the consequent casting of men back upon their "religious experience,"
corporate or individual, as their sole trustworthy ground of religious
convictions. This is, of course, only "the inner light" of an earlier form
of mysticism under a new and (so it has been hoped) more inoffensive name;
and it is naturally, therefore, burdened with all the evils which inhere in
the mystical attitude. These evils do not affect extreme forms of mysticism
only; they are intrinsic in the two common principles which give to all its
forms their fundamental character - the misprision of "external authority,"
and the attempt to discover in the movements of the sensibilities the ground
or norm of all the religious truth which will be acknowledged. 

"Mystics," says George Tyrrell, "think they touch the divine when they have
only blurred the human form with a cloud of words." The astonishing thing
about this judgment is not the judgment itself but the source from which it
comes. For Tyrrell himself as a "Modernist" held with our
"experientialists," and when he cast his eye into the future could see
nothing but mysticism as the last refuge for religion. "Houtin and Loisy are
right," he writes; "the Christianity of the future will consist of mysticism
and charity, and possibly the eucharist in its primitive form as the outward
bond. I desire no more." The plain fact is that this "religious experience,"
to which we are referred for our religious knowledge, can speak to us only
in the language of religious thought; and where there is no religious
thought to give it a tongue it is dumb. And above all, it must be punctually
noted, it cannot speak to us in a Christian tongue unless that Christian
tongue is lent it by the Christian revelation. The rejection of "external
authority" and our relegation to "religious experience" for our religious
knowledge is nothing more nor less, then, than the definitive abolition of
Christianity and the substitution for it of natural religion. Tyrrell
perfectly understood this, and that is what he means when he speaks of the
Christianity of the future as reduced to "mysticism and charity." All the
puzzling facts of Christianity (this is his view) - the incarnation and
resurrection of the Son of God and all the puzzling doctrines of
Christianity - the atonement in Christ's blood, the renewal through the
Spirit, the resurrection of the body - all, all will be gone. For all this
rests on "external authority." And men will content themselves, will be
compelled to content themselves, with the motions of their own religious
sensibilities - and (let us hope) with charity. 

There is nothing more important in the age in which we live than to bear
constantly in mind that all the Christianity of Christianity rests precisely
on "external authority." Religion, of course, we can have without "external
authority," for man is a religious animal and will function religiously
always and everywhere. But Christianity, no. Christianity rests on "external
authority," and that for the very good reason that it is not the product of
man's religious sentiment but is a gift from God. To ask us to set aside
"external authority" and throw ourselves back on what we can find within us
alone - call it by whatever name you choose, "religious experience," "the
Christian consciousness," "the inner light," "the immanent Divine" - is to
ask us to discard Christianity and revert to natural religion. Natural
religion is of course good - in its own proper place and for its own proper
purposes. Nobody doubts - or nobody ought to doubt - that men are by nature
religious and will have a religion in any event. The sensus divinitatis
implanted in us - to employ Calvin's phrases - functions inevitably as a
semen religionis. 

Of course Christianity does not abolish or supersede this natural religion;
it vitalizes it, and confirms it, and fills it with richer content. But it
does so much more than this that, great as this is, it is pardonable that it
should now and then be overlooked. It supplements it, and, in supplementing
it, it transforms it, and makes it, with its supplements, a religion fitted
for and adequate to the needs of sinful man. There is nothing
"soteriological" in natural religion. It grows out of the recognized
relations of creature and Maker; it is the creature's response to the
perception of its Lord, in feelings of dependence and responsibility. It
knows nothing of salvation. When the creature has become a sinner, and the
relations proper to it as creature to its Lord have been superseded by
relations proper to the criminal to its judge, natural religion is dumb. It
fails just because it is natural religion and is unequal to unnatural
conditions. Of course we do not say that it is suspended; we say only that
it has become inadequate. It requires to be supplemented by elements which
are proper to the relation of the offending creature to the offended Lord.
This is what Christianity brings, and it is because this is what
Christianity brings that it so supplements and transforms natural religion
as to make it a religion for sinners. It does not supersede natural
religion; it takes it up in its entirety unto itself, expanding it and
developing it on new sides to meet new needs and supplementing it where it
is insufficient for these new needs. 

We have touched here the elements of truth in George Tyrrell's contention,
otherwise bizarre enough, that Christianity builds not on Judaism but on
paganism. The antithesis is unfortunate. Although in very different senses,
Christianity builds both on Judaism and on paganism; it is the completion of
the supernatural religion begun in Judaism, and it is the supernatural
supplement to the natural religion which lies beneath all the horrible
perversions of paganism. Tyrrell, viewing everything from the point of view
of his Catholicism and dealing in historical as much as in theological
judgments, puts his contention in this form: "That Catholicism is
Christianized paganism or world-religion and not the Christianized Judaism
of the New Testament." The idea he wishes to express is that Catholicism is
the only tenable form of Christianity because it alone is founded, not on
Judaism, but on "world-religion." What is worthy of our notice is that he
says "world-religion," not "world-religions." He is thinking not of the
infinite variety of pagan religions - many of them gross enough, none of
them worthy of humanity ("man's worst crimes are his religions," says Dr.
Faunce somewhere, most strikingly) - but of the underlying religion which
sustains and gives whatever value they possess to them all. 

Now mysticism is just this world-religion; that is to say, it is the
expression of the ineradicable religiosity of the human race. So far as it
is this, and nothing but this, it is valid religion, and eternal religion.
No man can do without it, not even the Christian man. But it is not adequate
religion for sinners. And when it pushes itself forward as an adequate
religion for sinners it presses beyond its mark and becomes, in the poet's
phrase, "procuress to the lords of hell." As vitalized and informed,
supplemented and transformed by Christianity, as supplying to Christianity
the natural foundation for its supernatural structure, it is valid religion.
As a substitute for Christianity it is not merely a return to the beggarly
elements of the world, but inevitably rots down to something far worse.
Confining himself to what he can find in himself, man naturally cannot rise
above himself, and unfortunately the self above which he cannot rise is a
sinful self. 

The pride which is inherent in the self-poised, self-contained attitude
which will acknowledge no truth that is not found within oneself is already
an unlovely trait, and a dangerous one as well, since pride is unhappily a
thing which grows by what it feeds on. The history of mysticism only too
clearly shows that he who begins by seeking God within himself may end by
confusing himself with God. We may conceivably think that Mr. G. K.
Chesterton might have chosen his language with a little more delicacy of
feeling, but what he says in the following telling way much needs to be said
in this generation in words which will command a hearing. He had seen some
such observation as that which we have quoted from Tyrrell, to the effect
that the Christianity of the future is to be a mere mysticism. This is the
way he deals with it: 

Only the other day I saw in an excellent weekly paper of Puritan tone this
remark, that Christianity when stripped of its armor of dogma (as who should
speak of a man stripped of his armor of bones) turned out to be nothing but
the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light. Now, if I were to say that
Christianity came into the world specially to destroy the doctrine of the
Inner Light, that would be an exaggeration. But it would be very much nearer
the truth. . . . Of all the conceivable forms of enlightenment, the worst is
what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most
horrible is the worship of the God within. Anyone who knows anybody knows
how it would work; anyone who knows anyone from thc Higher Thought Center
knows how it does work. That Jones should worship the God within him turns
out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the
sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or
crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the God within.
Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence
that a man had not only to look inward, but to look outward, to behold with
astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only
fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner
Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as
the moon, terrible as an army with banners. 

Certainly, valuable as the inner light is - adequate as it might be for men
who were not sinners - there is no fate which could be more terrible for a
sinner than to be left alone with it. And we must not blink the fact that it
is just that, in the full terribleness of its meaning, which mysticism
means. Above all other elements of Christianity, Christ and what Christ
stands for, with the cross at the center, come to us solely by "external
authority." No "external authority," no Christ, and no cross of Christ. For
Christ is history, and Christ's cross is history, and mysticism which lives
solely on what is within can have nothing to do with history; mysticism
which seeks solely eternal verities can have nothing to do with time and
that which has occurred in time. Accordingly a whole series of recent
mystical devotional writers sublimate the entire body of those historical
facts, which we do not say merely lie at the basis of Christianity - we say
rather, which constitute the very substance of Christianity - into a mere
set of symbols, a dramatization of psychological experiences succeeding one
another in the soul. Christ Himself becomes but an external sign of an
inward grace. Read but the writings of John Cordelier. Not even the most
reluctant mystic, however, can altogether escape some such process of
elimination of the external Christ; by virtue of the very fact that he will
not have anything in his religion which he does not find within himself he
must sooner or later "pass beyond Christ." 

We do not like Wilhelm Herrmann's rationalism any better than we like
mysticism, and we would as soon have no Christ at all as the Christ Herrmann
gives us. But Herrmann tells the exact truth when he explains in well-chosen
words that "the piety of the mystic is such that at the highest point to
which it leads Christ must vanish from the soul along with all else that is
external." "When he has found God," he explains again, "the mystic has left
Christ behind." At the best, Christ can be to the mystic but the model
mystic, not Himself the Way as He declared of Himself, but only a traveler
along with us upon the common way. So Miss Underhill elaborately depicts
Him, but not she alone. Soderblom says of von Hugel that Jesus is to him
"merely a high point in the religious development to which man must aspire."
"He has no eye," he adds, "for the unique personal power which His figure
exercises on man." This applies to the whole class. But much more than this
needs to be said. Christ may be the mystic's brother. He may possibly even
be his exemplar and leader, although He is not always recognized as such.
What He cannot by any possibility be is his Saviour. Is not God within him?
And has he not merely to sink within himself to sink himself into God? He
has no need of "salvation" and allows no place for it. 

We hear much of the revolt of mysticism against the forensic theory of the
atonement and imputed righteousness. This is a mere euphemism for its revolt
against all "atonement" and all "justification." The whole external side of
the Christian salvation simply falls away. In the same euphemistic language
Miss Underhill declares that "nothing done for us, or exhibited to us, can
have the significance of that which is done in us." She means that it has no
significance for us at all. Even a William Law can say: "Christ given for us
is neither more nor less than Christ given into us. He is in no other sense
our full, perfect, and sufficient Atonement, than as His nature and spirit
are born and formed in us." The cross and all that the cross stands for are
abolished; it becomes at best but a symbol of a general law - per aspera ad
astra. "There is but one salvation for all mankind," says Law, "and the way
to it is one; and that is the desire of the soul turned to God. This desire
brings the soul to God and God into the soul: it unites with God, it
cooperates with God, and is one life with God." If Christ is still spoken
of, and His death and resurrection and ascension, and all the currents of
religious feeling still turn to Him, that is because Christians must so
speak and feel. The same experiences may be had under other skies and will
under them express themselves in other terms appropriate to the traditions
of those other times and places. That Christian mysticism is Christ
mysticism, seeking and finding Christ within and referring all its ecstasies
to Him, is thus only an accident. And even the functions of this Christ
within us, which alone it knows, are degraded far below those of the Christ
within us of the Christian revelation. 

The great thing about the indwelling Christ of the Christian revelation is
that He comes to us in His Spirit with creative power. Veni, creator
Spiritus, we sing, and we look to be new creatures, created in Christ Jesus
into newness of life. The mystic will allow, not a resurrection from the
dead, but only an awakening from sleep. Christ enters the heart not to
produce something new but to arouse what was dormant, what has belonged to
man as man from the beginning and only needs to be set to work. "If Christ
was to raise a new life like His own in every man," writes Law, "then every
man must have had originally in the inmost spirit of his life a seed of
Christ, or Christ as a seed of heaven, lying there in a state of
insensibility, out of which it could not arise but by the mediatorial power
of Christ." He cannot conceive of Christ bringing anything new; what Christ
seems to bring he really finds already there. "The Word of God," he says,
"is the hidden treasure of every human soul, immured under flesh and blood,
till as a day-star it arises in our hearts and changes the son of an earthly
Adam into a son of God." Nothing is brought to us; what is already in us is
only "brought out," and what is already in us - in every man - is "the Word
of God." This is Christ mysticism; that is to say, it is the mysticism in
which the divinity which is in every man by nature is called Christ - rather
than, say, Brahm or Allah, or what not. 

Even in such a movement as that represented by Bishop Chandler's Cult of the
Passing Moment, the disintegrating operation of mysticism on historical
Christianity - which is all the Christianity there is - is seen at work.
Bishop Chandler himself, we are thankful to say, exalts the cross and thinks
of it as a creative influence in the lives of men. But this only exemplifies
the want of logical consistency, which indeed is the boast of the school
which he represents. If our one rule of life is to be the spiritual
improvement of the impressions of the moment, and we are to follow these
blindly whithersoever they lead with no steadying, not to say guidance,
derived from the great Revelation of the past, there can be but one issue.
We are simply substituting our own passing impulses, interpreted as
inspirations, for the one final revelation of God as the guide of life; that
God has spoken once for all for the guidance of His people is forgotten; His
great corporate provision for His people is cast aside; and we are adrift
upon the billows of merely subjective feeling. 

We see that it is not merely Christ and His cross, then, which may be
neglected, as external things belonging to time and space. God Himself,
speaking in His Word, may be forgotten - in "the cult of the passing
moment." We are reminded that there have been mystics who have not scrupled
openly to contrast even the God without them with the God within, and to
speak in such fashion as to be understood (or misunderstood) as counseling
divesting ourselves of God Himself and turning only to the inwardly shining
light. No doubt they did not mean all that their words may be pressed into
seeming to say. Nevertheless, their words may stand for us as a kind of
symbol of the whole mystical conception, with the exaggerated value which it
sets upon the personal feelings and its contempt for all that is external to
the individual's spirit, even though it must be allowed that this excludes
all that makes Christianity the religion of salvation for a lost world - the
cross, Christ Himself, and the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ who in His love gave His Son to die for sinners. 

The issue which mysticism creates is thus just the issue of Christianity.
The question which it raises is, whether we need, whether we have, a
provision in the blood of Christ for our sins; or whether we, each of us,
possess within ourselves all that can be required for time and for eternity.
Both of these things cannot be true, and obviously tertium non datur. We may
be mystics, or we may be Christians. We cannot be both. And the pretension
of being both usually merely veils defection from Christianity. Mysticism
baptized with the name of Christianity is not thereby made Christianity. A
rose by any other name will smell as sweet. But it does not follow that
whatever we choose to call a rose will possess the rose's fragrance. 

 

 

Charis, 
  
Mike Abendroth 
  

'God rides forth conquering in the chariot of His Gospel. . . He conquers
the pride of the heart, and makes the will which stood out as a Fort Royal
against Him, to yield and stoop to His grace; He makes the stony heart
bleed. Oh! it is a mighty call! Why then do some men seem to speak of a
moral persuasion? That God in the conversion of a sinner only morally
persuades and no more? If God in conversion should only morally persuade and
no more, then He does not put forth so much power in saving men as the Devil
does in destroying them.'   Thomas Watson

HYPERLINK "http://www.bbcchurch.org"www.bbcchurch.org 
  

 


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