ELM 405J Mystical Theology

1. ELM 405JMystical Theology Father Christopher Roberts, STB, MA

2. Overview of Requirements for Credit • 30 minutes (preferably an hour) daily of hesychastic prayer • Read text: Johnston, The Science of Love • Hard copies of reflection papers turned in on assigned dates (no more than two pages) • Class participation and attendance

3. What you will learn • How to practice contemplative prayer according to the mind of the Catholic Church • How to begin to reflect on your own and others’ mystical experience objectively • How prayer relates to the mundane details of daily life

4. What is mysticism? • A way of knowing that is beyond thinking and reasoning that awakens a unitive consciousness wherein one rests silently in the presence of God • Question: Is reaching mystical experience difficult? • Answer: Yes and no

5. Mysticism is difficult • Mystical experience is rare and difficult to obtain because it requires that we learn how to tune-in to Divine speech • In a noisy, post-modern world the sheer number of distractions make listening to any voices other than the ones we control hard to do. • Sin is also a major barrier to mystical experience.

6. Mysticism is easy • All encounters with God result from the movement of divine grace • All Christians are called to deep prayer lives • The most we can do is learn to be receptive to grace • When a Christian fails to attain mystical prayer, it is the result of not corresponding to the invitation to it, which is given every Christian at baptism (the universal call to holiness)

7. How do we navigate the mystical path? • Under the guidance of the Church (1 John 4:1) • “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” • We have many guides along the way

8. Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

9. Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591)

10. Saint Gregory Palamas (1296-1359)

11. Important preliminary notes • Cataphatic/Apophatic distinction • Apophatic knowledge of God comes from negation • Cataphatic knowledge of God comes from affirmation (propositional, creedal affirmations)

12. More on Apophatic knowledge • Lateran IV (1215), “Between creator and creature no similarity can be noted without a greater dissimilarity being noted.” • Vatican I (1869-1870), “The divine mysteries so exceed the created intellect that, even when given in revelation and received by faith, they remain covered over by the veil of faith itself.”

13. Man as capax Dei (capable of God) • Genesis 1:26-27, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image,in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” • Relating to God as Father • Adopted as sons and daughters in Jesus our Brother • The indwelling of the Holy Spirit • Saint Augustine and the vestigiaTrinitatis (the traces of the Trinity) • And…the spousal mystery as the sacrament of Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:21-33)

14. Mysticism in the Old Testament • The Psalms, especially 2, 22, 45, 51, 110, 139 • The Song of Songs • Moses’ encounters with the Lord at the burning bush and on Mount Sinai (Ex. 3 and 19) • Elijah and the great silence (1 Kings 19) • The liturgical worship in the temple (e.g., Ps. 27, 42 and 43)

15. Mysticism and Jesus • Baptism in the Jordan • Fast and temptation in the desert • Solitary prayer (abba/Our Father) • Transfiguration • Last Supper • Agony in the garden • Crucifixion

16. Mysticism and the post-Ascension New Testament Church Eucharist (1 Cor. 11, Acts 2:42) Reading Scripture (1 Tim 4:13, 2 Tim 3:16) Singing (Col. 3:16, Eph. 5:19) Prayer (Gal. 1:17-18, Acts 3:1) Fasting (Acts 14:23, Acts 13:2-3) Marriage (Eph 5:21-33) Abstinence (1 Cor. 7)

17. Other key NT Scriptures on Mysticism • Magdalene at the feet of Jesus • 1 John 4:19, “We love because he first loved us” • 2 Peter 1:3-4a, “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature…” • Gal. 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

18. Inculturation of the Gospel in Hellenic Culture • Protestants tend to be suspicious of borrowing from pagan thinking or religiosity • Luther (16th c.) and Harnack (19th c. -20th c.) are two examples • Such thinking is contrary to the best of Catholicism (e.g. Gregory the Great and the English mission)

19. Hellenic Inculturation • Paul as an example of inculturation (Roman, Greek, Jew) • Platonism (Justin Martyr, Origen) • Mystery religions (Pseudo Dionysius) • The early Ecumenical Councils illustrate the fruitfulness of inculturation (Nicaea I to Nicaea II) • Good inculturation is always discerning

20. Monasticism and Christian Mysticism • Saint Anthony the Great (251-356) is usually seen as the Father of Christian Monasticism • Evagrius of Pontus (345-399), “A theologian is one who prays and one who prays is a theologian.” • Evagriusstressed the repetition of Scripture verses as a type of mantra and the cultivation of apatheia.

21. Monasticism (continued) • Saint John Cassian (365-435) brought the Egyptian tradition to the West through his Conferences and Institutes • Where Evagrius stressed apatheia, Cassian stressed purity of heart. • Like Evagrius, he recommended the use of a prayer word. His favorite was “O God, come to my assistance…”

22. Monasticism (continued) • From St. John Cassian, the seven deadly sins enter the Western spiritual tradition. • Cassian was a major influence on the Rule of Saint Benedict (480-543) . • We also receive from Cassian the Egyptian monastic division of three ages in the spiritual life: purgative, illuminative and unitive. • Through the Rule of Saint Benedict, Cassian influenced St. Gregory the Great (540-604) and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153).

23. Saint Augustine (354-430) • His great contribution to mystical theology is his teaching on grace. • His Confessions treat contemplation, conversion and prayer. • “Give what you command, command what you give.” • It is important to distinguish between Pelagianism, semi-Pelagianism and the orthodox Catholicism on the doctrine of grace. • He is also important in ecumenical dialogue with Protestants because Luther and Calvin drew their theology heavily from Augustine’s writings.

24. Medieval Mysticism • The Rule of Saint Benedict shaped Western Christian spirituality almost exclusively until the rise of the mendicant orders (Franciscans and Dominicans) • Benedictine monasticism was: liturgical, scriptural, practical (ora ET labora), ascetical (silence and fasting)

25. Mendicant Spirituality • Detachment from material goods, wealth and land • Focus on the human nature of Christ and communion with creation (Franciscan) • Concern for inculcation of right teaching (Dominican)

26. Mysticism and Scholasticism • Scholasticism refers to the use of dialetic reason in theology that traces its roots to St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109). • The tension between the old approach and the new approach can be seen in Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) and Peter Abelard (1079-1142). • Saint Thomas Aquinas sought to reconcile these two approaches.

27. Saint Thomas Aquinas (sources) • Scripture • Tradition (Ecumenical Councils and Fathers of the Church) • Pseudo-Dionsyius • Aristotle • Discursive reasoning • Canon Law • Liturgical texts

28. Saint Thomas Aquinas (on God) • The essence/existence distinction • An analogical understanding of the relation between necessary and contingent being • Moses and the burning bush • God’s essence and existence are the same. • Conclusion: God is utterly simple

29. Saint Thomas Aquinas (on spiritual knowledge) • Knowledge through reason • Knowledge through co-naturalilty • Co-natural knowledge is knowledge that comes through love. • Illustration from the Summa: a dull, chaste person knows more about chastity than a brilliant, lustful person.

30. Saint Thomas Aquinas (spiritual doctrine, cont’d) • A key to understanding co-naturality comes from the Aristotle’s description of the intellect/will dynamism. • Quasi ignotuscognositur – The unknown is almost known • We pass through Jesus’ human nature into His divinity. • Scholasticism fell into decadence after Thomas

31. Saint Thomas the Augustinian • Distinction between acquired and infused prayer. • Acquired prayer is closely yoked to the use of reason. • Infused prayer is the gift of God and give co-natural knowledge. • 1 John 4:19, “We love because He first loved us.”

32. Eastern Christianity • There were three great initial inculturations of the faith in the first thousand years of Christianity: Greek, Latin and Syriac. • Latin and Greek Christianity slowly drifted apart. • In 1054 relations between the Latin West and Greek East began to break down. • Scholasticism, the Catholic Reformation and the Ottoman occupation deepened the estrangement.

33. Hesychastic Prayer • Eastern Orthodox theology remained deeply rooted in the Fathers, the Liturgy, experience and the Bible. • Saint John Climacus (6th cent.) is the first clear witness to the Jesus prayer • The practice of hesychasm thrived on Mount Athos and was a leaven in Eastern Church

34. Saint Gregory Palamas (1296-1359) • In the 14th century a controversy over hesychasm erupted. • Palamas, a monk on Mount Athos, defended the practice • His arguments focused the mystical experience as an experience of divine light. • Most importantly, he introduced the distinction between the divine energies and the divine essence.

35. Saint Gregory Palamas (cont.) • This distinction runs afoul with Thomas’ theology of God. • The fundamental insight that Palamas was defending was theosis or divinization. • We should not reject Palamas out of hand because few maintain a dogmatic Thomism today. • Western saints like Augustine, Hildegard and Teresa speak of divine grace touching the soul with vocabulary that is very similar to Palamas.

36. Saint Gregory Palamas (cont.) • In light of current theological confusion, we do well to look to the East. • Theophan the Recluse spoke of the energies of God as kindling the soul as fire does a wet log. • Other important sources in Eastern spirituality are The Way of the Pilgrim and The Philokalia.