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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Having considered the role of ethics in Indian mystical teachings in a previous, related, essay I would like to consider the same question in its western religious contexts in the present paper, beginning with the Christian mystical tradition. As is the case with Asian traditions charges of moral unconcern are widely directed at Christian mystics, but they are false. Christian mystics are not indifferent to morality nor do they disconnect morality from an intrinsic relationship to their mystical quest. Augustine would already teach that the story of Leah and Rachel was an instructive allegory in which the active life represented by Leah was intrinsic to the contemplative life represented by Rachel while Gregory the Great would unambiguously assert: ‘We ascend to the heights of contemplation by the steps of the active life’, defining the active life as: ‘to dispense to all what they need and to provide those entrusted to us with the means of subsistence’. These representative early samples of the salience of ethical behaviour to the life of contemplation could be multiplied at great length, and almost without exception in the teaching of the major Christian mystics. This historical exegetical exercise, however, is in the present circumstances, both out of place and I hope unnecessary. Instead, the more general, more enigmatic, more repercussive, issues raised by the place and significance of morality within the Christian mystical tradition need attending to.
This essay was originally delivered as the second of my two David Baumgardt Memorial Lectures, sponsored by the American Philosophical Association, at Harvard University on 14 November 1984. The first of my Baumgardt Lectures appeared in Religious Studies, XXVIII 2 (June 1992), 253–267.
1 Cited from Butler, Dom Cuthbert, Western Mysticism (London, 1922), p. 218.Google Scholar
2 Ibid. p. 214.
3 In very rare instances a mystic of the neo-Platonic type does not emphasize the centrality of ethics for mysticism – for example, Pseudo-Dionysius – but this rare exception only proves the general rule. Moreover, Christian neo-Platonists such as Eckhart do not follow Pseudo-Dionysius' lead in this respect.
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8 Eckhart, Meister, ‘Talks of Instruction’, translated by Blakeney, R. B., Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation (New York, 1941), p. 13.Google Scholar
9 Ibid. p. 238. The metaphysical doctrines underlying this position will be explored more fully below.
10 St Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, 3.2, in The Complete Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus, trans. E. Allison Peers (London, 1978).Google Scholar
11 Nearly all of Eckhart's, Teresa's and John's German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, French, and English disciples, male and female, agree on this, as do Protestant mystical giants like Jacob Boehme.
12 For more on the ‘conservative’ character of mysticism in general see my essay by that title in Steven T. Katz, ed., Mysticism and Religious Traditions (New York, 1983), pp. 1–45.Google Scholar
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14 On the central role that ‘models’ play in all mystical traditions, see my essay ‘Models, Modeling and Mystical Training’, Religion, XII (Fall, 1982), 247–75.Google Scholar
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20 Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, 6th Mansion, Ch. 4. Available in many editions.
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30 I use this term in the sense proposed by Paul Tillich, i.e. as the sympathetic coming together of man's will/being and God's Will/being thereby overcoming the tensions extant within the opposition of autonomy vs. heteronomy.
31 It is just here on the level of ethical concern, rather than in relation to the metaphysics of ‘nothingness’, that the oft-made comparison of Eckhart and Buddhism is both apt and interesting.
32 Eckhart, Meister, Die deutschen Werke, vol. 1, pp. 194f.Google Scholar
33 Eckhart, Meister, ‘This, Too, Is Meister Eckhart Who Always Taught the Truth’, in Blakeney, Meister Eckhart, pp. 112–13.Google Scholar
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38 Ruysbroeck, Jan Van, trans, by Hello, Ernest, Flowers of a Mystic Garden (London, 1912), p. 89.Google Scholar
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40 Catherine of Siena: The Dialogue, trans, by Suzanne Noffke (New York, 1980), p. 27.Google Scholar
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42 St Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, trans. by John K. Ryan (Garden City, New York, 1963)Google Scholar, Bk 9, Ch. 3.
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47 Luzzatto, Moshe Chaim, The Path of the Upright, trans. Kaplan, Mordecai (Philadelphia, 1966)Google Scholar, Ch. on ‘Holiness’.
48 For a fuller explanation of kabbalistic theosophy in its totality and complexity see Scholem, Gershom, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1973).Google Scholar
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53 M. Luzzatto, Meshillat Yesharim, Ch. on Holiness.
54 Zohar, ‘Vayera’, 106A.
55 For this and related notions see Dresner, Samuel, The Zaddik (London, N.D.).Google Scholar
56 Published in Religious Studies, XXVIII 2 (1992), 253–267.Google Scholar
