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Participatio Christi: H. R. Mackintosh's theology of the unio mystica
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
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The concept of unio mystica stands out of the more distinctive aspects of H.R. Mackintosh's theological work. Generally regarded as one of the leading English-speaking theologians of the first third of this century, Mackintosh and his innovative insights have since fallen into comparative neglect. Interestingly, the concept of the unio mystica seldom appeared as a theme on its own, apart from his programmatic article ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’ (1909). Rather it served as a leitmotif which recurred at important points in his christology and soteriology. This essay will survey the meaning and importance Mackintosh gave to the unio mystica, and the various ways the concept functioned in his theology. Hence the first part will reconstruct his understanding of union with Christ, while the second part will examine three main applications of the concept: participatory christology, justification, and the Christian life. We will also explore some of the potential the concept may have for contemporary theology in a few concluding remarks.
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- Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1996
References
1 Apart from his unpublished lecture manuscripts, Mackintosh's most systematic works are The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ (T&T Clark, 1912 = DPJC) and The Christian Experience of Forgiveness (Nisbet, 1927 = CEF). On his theology as a whole, cf. Leitch, James W., A Theology of Transition. H. R. Mackintosh as an Approach to Karl Barth (Oliver and Boyd, 1953)Google Scholar, and my article, ‘H. R. Mackintosh's Contribution to Christology and Soteriology in the Twentieth Century’, SJT 42 (1988), 517–534Google Scholar.
2 ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, The Expositor 7/7 (1909), 138–155Google Scholar = Some Aspects of Christian Belief (Hoddtr & Stoughton, 1923 = SACB), 99–120Google Scholar. The later edition will be used here.
3 Mackintosh readily admitted that the term unio mystica does not appear in the New Testament, but he argued that ‘the thing itself is on every page of St Paul and St John’. ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 102.
4 ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 104. Emphasis in original.
5 ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 103.
6 ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 107.
7 ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 104.
8 Calvin, Institutes III.3.1: quandiu extra nos est Christus.et ab eo su mus separati.quicquid in salutem hu manie generis passus est ac facit, nobis esse inutile nulliusque momenti. ‘As long as Christ remains outside of us and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race will remain useless and of no value to us.’ Many scholars consider the unio mystica to be Calvin's ‘central dogma’. Cf. e.g., Kolfhaus, W., Christusgemeinschaft bei Calvin (BGLRK 3; Neukirchener Verlag, 1939)Google Scholar; Tamburelle, Dennis E., Union with Christ (Westminster/John Knox, 1994)Google Scholar; Partee, C., ‘Calvin's Central Dogma Again’, Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987), 191–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 This can be clearly seen in the early Scottish Reformed theology of the sacraments. Cf. the Scots Confession (1560), ch. 21: ‘We assuredly believe that by Baptism we are engrafted into Christ Jesus, to be made partakers of his righteousness, by which our sins are covered and remitted, and also that in the Supper rightly used, Christ Jesus is so joined with us that he becomes the very nourishment of our souls.’
10 Gregory, T., ‘Union with Christ the Ground of Justification’, New College Theological Society Bulletin (privately published manuscript, 1883).Google Scholar
11 Deissmann, A., Die neutestamentliche Formel ‘In Christo Jesu’ (Marburg 1892).Google Scholar
12 Kähler, M., ‘Der Verkehr mit Christo in seiner Bedeutung für das eigene Leben and den Gemeindedienst der Geistlichen nach dem Neuen Testament’, in Angewandte Dogmen (Deischert, 1908), 156–176.Google Scholar
13 Ritschl's influence upon modern theology at this point cannot be overestimated, nor is it limited to ‘liberal’ versions. Hisanti-mystical and anti-pielistic prejudices have surfaced in a wide variety of non-liberal and anti-liberal theologies, including Barth, some liberation and feminist theology, and even some evangelical theology.
14 Mackintosh was sharply critical of the utilitarian tendency of Ritschl's theological program which either devalued religious concepts or converted them into moral ones: ‘At the supreme level attained in the Psalms, or in the Epistles of St Paul, communion with God is sought for its own sake alone, and the religious consciousness repels ardently the insinuation that in turning to God in prayer and fellowship the soul is animated by any ulterior motive or desire, even that of moral improvement.’ ‘The Presuppositions of Ritschlianism’, in SACB, 136 (emphasis added).
15 ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 99; cf. also ‘Principal Denney as a Theologian’, Expository Times 28 (1916–1917), 492.Google Scholar
16 ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 109–110.
17 ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 110–111.
18 ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 111.
19 ‘The Subliminal Consciousness in Theology’, in SACB, 235.
20 ‘The Subliminal Consciousness in Theology’, 235–236.
21 In opposition to Roman Catholic mysticism, Protestant scholastics generally emphasized the mediated character of union with Christ as a unio mystica sive praesenlia gratiae tantum, union by the presence of grace alone. Cf. cfMuller, Richard A., Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms. Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Baker, 1985), 314.Google Scholar
22 ‘Quoted in ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 100.
23 ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 100–101.
24 ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 101.
25 ‘The Unio Myslica as a Theological Conception’, 115.
26 ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 116.
27 DPJC, 320–344.
28 DPJC, 333–334; cf. also ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 99–102.
29 DPJC, 337; cf. also ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 107.
30 DPJC, 338.
31 Mackintosh was particularly critical of liberal attempts to bind Christian faith to the results of critical scholarship. ‘It does not follow that every doctrinal statement about Jesus must be sanctioned verbally by a word from His lips by a distinct apostolic utterance. What is required is that the New Testament picture as a whole should be truthfully reflected in our construction as a whole.’ (DPJC, 319)
32 Calvin, Institutes III. 11.2. For later developments of the doctrine, cf. cfHeppe, H., Reformed Dogmatics, ed. Bizer, E. and tr. Thomson, G. T., 2nd ed. (Baker, 1978), 548–551.Google Scholar
33 Cf. cfRiesen, R. A., ‘Criticism and Faith: William Robertson Smith on the Atonement’, SJT 37 (1984), 177–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
34 CEF, 224: ‘In the relation to Him created by faith, the supposed isolation of one personality from another is somehow mitigated and overcome; and, without ever a thought of mystical absorption, we are able in living adhesion to transcend ourselves, and, abandoning ourselves, commit our life to Him.’
35 CF, 225.
36 ‘The order of Mackintosh's dogmatics lectures further illustrates his thinking on this point. The lectures on soteriology began with an exposition of the traditional Reformed doctrine of the three-fold office of Christ and the teaching of Jesus regarding his saving work. Seven lectures on the doctrine of the atonement follow, four on biblical and historical foundations and three devoted to his own constructive restatement. At this point, however, Mackintosh took up the doctrine of the Holy Spirit before moving on to the doctrine of Justification, justification is as much the work of the Spirit, who is the agent of union with Christ, as it is the work of the Son, who is the object of union.
37 CEF, 224–225.
38 Lecture Synopses, 61. Prior to each lecture, Mackintosh distributed a one page summary of the material to be presented. The synopses consulted are from 1934–35, and were graciously made available by Professor T. F. Torrance.
39 CEF, 226.
40 CEF, 226: ‘The merely given fact of Jesus’ death may leave us untouched and estranged. Somehow the virtue of that sacrifice must come to be within us. There was a spirit in it which must become our spirit if we are to become sons of God.’
41 ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 119. It is worth noting that this is a fundamental axiom of Knoxian Calvinism. Knox wrote: Jesus dueth not only Justifie us, by covering all our foutes and iniquities, but also renueth us by his Spirit, and that these two pointes can not be sepearte, to obtaine pardone for our sinnes, and to be reformed unto an holie life. ‘Quoted in Bell, M. Charles, Calvin and Scottish Theology. The Doctrine of Assurance (Handsel Press, 1985), 65 n. 74.Google Scholar
42 CFF, 255: ‘To be in filial contact with the Father has once for all abolished the painful and disabling solitude of the moral conflict; it affords the certainty of an inward presence by which moral weakness will be sustained because the deepest springs of joy have been unsealed.’
43 CEF, 258.
44 CEF, 260.
45 CEF, 260–261.
46 Lecture Synopsis 75.
47 CEF, 271.
48 Lecture Synopsis 76.
49 Lecture Synopsis 76.
50 Lecture Synopsis 78.
51 Lecture Synopsis 78.
52 ‘The Objective Aspect of the Lord's Supper’, The Expositor 6/7 (1903), 191.
53 ‘The Objective Aspect of the Lord's Supper’, 197.
54 Cf. my dissertation, Reformulating Reformed Theology. The Personal Work of Jesus Christ in the Theology of H. R. Mackintosh (University Press of America, 1996), 145–147.Google Scholar
55 Found in Lecture Synopsis 61. Lectures 59–61 are entitled ‘Reconciliation through Christ’, which are followed by Lectures 62–64, ‘The Biblical Conceptions of the Spirit’, and ‘The Spirit in Faith and Experience’ (in two parts).
56 Lecture Synopsis 61. Note here the striking similarity to Calvin's words (Inst. III. 3.1): ‘We must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and dwell within us.’
57 ‘Lecture Synopsis 62: ‘In virtue of Jesus, faith is rooted in the past; in virtue of the Spirit (of Christ) its [the past's] dynamic is a present reality.’
58 ‘The Unio Mystica as a Theological Conception’, 113.
59 On the theology of personhood and personality, cf. cfAnderson, Ray S., On Being Human. Essays in Theological Anthropology (Eerdmans, 1984)Google Scholar; McFadyen, Alastair, The Call to Personhood. A Christian Theory of the Individual in Social Relationships (Cambridge University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle ScholarZizioulas, John D., Being as Communion (St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985).Google Scholar
60 According to Mackintosh, following the Reformed tradition, religion is knowledge of God, involving a relationship to him, rather than a knowledge about God or morality, as the German liberal tradition from Schleiermacher to Ritschl tended to define it. Hence Mackintosh's understanding of religion needs to be set apart from Barth's scathing Religionskritik, since the two were describing different things with the same word. While Barth understood religion to be humanity's quest for God, Mackintosh took it to be the expression of a divine-human relationship initiated by God through revelation in Christ and sustained by the Spirit. I have examined this in greater detail in my disscrtation, Reformulating Reformed Theology, 30–31.
61 Cf., e.g., George, A. R., Communion with God in the New Testament (Oliver and Boyd, 1953)Google Scholar; A. Oepke, TDNT 2, 537–543 and W. Grundmann, TDNT7, 766–797; Hooker, M. D., From Adam to Christ. Essays on Paul (Cambridge University Press, 1990).Google Scholar
62 Cf. e.g. Robinson, J. A. T., The Body. A Study in Pauline Theology (SCM Press, 1952), 58–67.Google Scholar
63 Hooker, 13–69. She uses the term ‘interchange’ to describe Paul's ‘in Christ’ theology, although she admits this is not entirely adequate. Her exegesis basically confirms Mackintosh's contention – first advanced in 1970 – that communion with Christ is central to Paul's whole theology.
64 On the epistemological relevance of the Holy Spirit, cf. cfTorrance, T. F., ‘The Relevance of the Holy Spirit for Ecumenical Theology’, in Theology in Reconstruction (Eerdmans, 1965), 229–239Google Scholar; ‘The Epistemological Relevance of the Spirit’, in God and Rationality (Oxford University Press, 1971), 165–192Google Scholar; and Anderson, Ray S., Ministiy on the Fireline. A Practical Theology for an Empowered Church (InterVarsity Press, 1993).Google Scholar
65 Cf. cfJoesl, W., ‘Panlus mid das lutherische simul Justus cl pcccator’, Kerygina und Dogma I (1955), 276, 279.Google Scholar
66 Recent efforts to address the theological foundations of church growth and Christian counseling would include Engen, Charles van, God's Missionary People. Rethinking the Purpose of the Load Church (Baker, 1991)Google Scholar and Anderson, Ray S., Christians who Counsel. The Vocation of Wholistic Therapy (Zondervan, 1990).Google Scholar