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The Divorce of Mysticism from Theology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2024
Extract
Father H. Urs von Balthasar wrote recently in Dieu Vivant (No. 12, 1948): ‘From the dogmatic point of view we no longer take the modern saints seriously because they themselves no longer have to be dogmatic…. They leave dogma to the prosaic work of “the schools” and become lyricists.’ Such a statement is not an isolated one among spiritual writers today. And we need hardly add that as a rule it is made with a view to deploring this separation of ‘sanctity’ from theology.
Some readers then begin to wonder whether sanctity in the Church has actually become a kind of lyricism or poetic enthusiasm. Is it a matter of ‘mystical’ intuition, rather exaggerated, a special ‘grace'» Moreover the mentality of many of our contemporaries, sincere Catholics though they may be, echoes these questions. For them the point of view of the ‘mystic’ which they identify with that of the ‘saint', the ‘irrationality’ of his conception of Christian life, of prayer and penance, are all things that should not be discussed. They are accepted or rejected; but in any case such a view of Christian life is not final.
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- Copyright © 1950 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Translated, with kind permission of the Editor, from Nouvelle Revue Theologique, April 1950, pp. 372-389, by K. Pond.
2 Cf. A. Stolz, O.S.B. : The Doctrine of Spiritual Perfection (Herder, St Louis, U.S.A.).
3 Among the many recent examples of their separation we will mention only one, a significant one: Pere Cayre, A.A., in his Patroiogie et hisloire de la theologie, found himself obliged to study Christian life and thought successively from the seventeenth century onwards, whereas he could describe there two aspects up to and including the middle ages without disassociating them. Cf. also Pere Congar's article ‘Theologie’ in Dictionnaire de theologie catholique (Vol. 15, pp. 423-4).
4 G. Turbessi, o.s.B., La vita contemplativa. Dottrina tomistica e ma relazione alle fonti (Rome, 1944).
5 J. Leclercq, o.s.B., ‘Mlievisme et unionisme” in Irenikon, Vol. XIX, 1946, p. 13.
6 G. Turbessi, op. cit. pp. 34-75. Cf. II-IIae, q. 180.
7 Benjamin major I, 4; P.L. CXCVI, 67. It is remarkable that St Thomas never quoted this definition which he cannot have failed to come across in Richard; but he has quoted another, more intellectualist, which is to be found at almost the same place in the Benjamin: perspicax et liber animi conluitus in res perspicietidas (II-IIae q. 180, a. 3, ad. 1).
8 In his original article the author here refers to an interesting list of fourteenth and fifteenth century spiritual writers and mystics.—ED.
9 The‘speculative repercussions of this task of spiritual direction see G. Thery, o.p., ‘Le on development des etudes eckhartiennes', in Supplement to Vie Spirituelle, No. 7, 1948, pp. 321-325
10 Cf. Gandillac, ‘Tradition et developpement de la mystique rhenane, Eckhart, Tauler, Seuse', in mel. Sc. Relig., Vol. III, 1946, P. 76.
11 Cf. an excellent portrait of the physionomy of Eckhart by G. Thery, art. cit., pp. 310-318.
12 M. de Gandilhc, art. cit., p. 44.
13 Cf. the treatise on L'homme noble, ed. Ph. Strauch (Berlin, 1933).
14 Sermon 64, ed. Vetter.
15 M. de Gandillac, art. cit., pp. 60-72; B. Lavaud, O.P., ‘Les epreuves mystiques selon Jean Tauler', in Rev. thomiste Vol. XLV. 1939 pp. 309-329.
16 His Boot of Eternal Wisdom, written in German, and its Latin adaptation, the Horologium Sapientiae, composed between 1333 and 1341 (it is not known which preceded the other; Mgr C. Grober, Der Mystiker Heinrich Sense (Frib.-en-Br., 1941), dates the first of them from 1348) have a more ambition: to put before the reader ‘simple thoughts’ which recall the Imitation and will be a help to meditation on the suffering Christ.
17 On a lower level than contemplation properly so-called, of which the Book of Truth treats, Suso recognises several other ‘states of prayer’ which it has been possible to characterise (cf. J. A. Bizet, Henri Suso et le dtdin de la scolastique (Paris, 1946), pp. 263-266) as corresponding with the ‘recollection’ and ‘ecstasy’ of later authors. Above ecstasy, he also recognises ‘transport’ (iibervart) and ‘rapture’ (abzug) of which St Paul had experience; the former ‘is distinct from rapture in that it leaves the mind in its own state instead of its being completely caught up in God'.