The Logic of Mysticism

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-123
Author(s):  
Stephen Grimm
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Experience Of God ◽  
Union With God ◽  
Direct Encounter

I argue that mystical experience essentially involves two aspects: (a) an element of direct encounter with God, and (b) an element of union with God. The framework I use to make sense of (a) is taken largely from William Alston’s magisterial book Perceiving God. While I believe Alston’s view is correct in many essentials, the main problem with the account is that it divorces the idea of encountering or perceiving God from the idea of being united with God. What I argue, on the contrary, is that because our experience of God is an experience of a relationship-seeking, personal being, it brings with it an important element of union that Alston overlooks.

Theology of Mystical Experience

1979 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 501-520
Author(s):  
Jürgen Moltmann
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Imitatio Christi ◽  
Experience Of God ◽  
The Road ◽  
History Of ◽  
Thomas Merton ◽  
Mystical Theology ◽  
On The Road ◽  
The Way

Mystical Theology aims to be a ‘wisdom of experience’, not a ‘wisdom of doctrine’.1 It is not as theology that it is mystical, but in the fact that it brings mystical experience to expression in words. Mystical experience, however, cannot be communicated in doctrinal propositions. So the ‘theology of mystical experience’ always tells only of the way, the journey, the transition to that unutterable and incommunicable experience of God. So far as its doctrinal content is concerned, the theology of the mystics has up to the present seldom appeared particularly impressive. By tracing the history of ideas, one can easily enough recognise the augustinian, the neoplatonic and the gnostic motifs, and track them back to their roots. With this approach, however, one is not on the same path as the mystical theologians. It is therefore more appropriate to ask what experiences they were seeking to express with the help of those images and ideas. In order to share in their experience, it makes sense to join with them on the same journey, whether with Bernard of Clairvaux on the ‘ladder of love’, with Bonaventura on the ‘pilgrimage of the soul to God’, with Thomas à Kempis on the road of the Imitatio Christi or with Thomas Merton on the ‘seven-storey mountain’.

Le Refus Lévinassien de la Mystique

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (45) ◽  
pp. 69-81
Author(s):  
Fabio Samuel Esquenazi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Mystical Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Experience Of God ◽  
Ethical Commitment ◽  
Consequent Reduction ◽  
The Needy ◽  
Prime Location ◽  
Ethical Experience

Despite recognizing the Other, particularly the needy person, as a prime location for a meaningful experience of God and the metaphysical nature of his interpretation of the fundamental ethical experience, a careful reading of Levinas’ corpus reveals the modulations of his rejection of the mystical phenomenon. This paper analyzes the main arguments that justify his « Lithuanian » distrust of mysticism and the consequent reduction of religion as ethics in his thought, as a result of forgetting that the perception of and adherence to the same transcendent principle present in the deep consciousness –conversio cordis – that directs one’s gaze towards the need and suffering of others –conversio morum – is common to the mystical experience, faith – as core of religious experience to Jewish-Christian tradition –, and ethical commitment.

Eschatology

2020 ◽  
pp. 645-665
Author(s):  
Hugh Feiss
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Divine Presence ◽  
Compassionate Care ◽  
Mystical Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Union With God

Mystical experience is a foretaste of heaven and so eschatology and mysticism are related. Five examples of this relationship are Gregory the Great’s account of Benedict’s final vision of the world in the light of God, the twelfth-century Victorines’ explanation of how mystical union leads to configuration with Christ and so to compassionate care for others, Bernard of Clairvaux’s theory that the souls of the blessed do not have full union with God until they are reunited with their bodies and their fellow Christians at the final resurrection, Julian of Norwich’s struggle to understand how all can be well when there is sin, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s vision of the divine presence in matter and of the responsibility of humanity to evolve toward the fullness of Christ. These intersections of mysticism and eschatology are elucidated by Jean-Yves Lacoste’s phenomenology of prayer.

Mystical Experience and the Apophatic Attitude

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 17-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sameer Yadav
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Divine Transcendence ◽  
Union With God ◽  
Mystical Theology ◽  
Theology And Philosophy ◽  
Recent Account ◽  
Central Claim

Apophaticism in mainstream analytic theology and philosophy of religion has come to denote a metaphysical and semantic thesis: that, due to divine transcendence, God is ineffable, inconceivable, or incomprehensible.  But this conception fails to properly take account of the central claim of apophaticism as a special type of mystical theology.  As such, the apophatic commitments to divine ineffability (however understood) are instrumental. More fundamental is the function of theological ignorance to uniquely inform the task of theology and transform the theologian in union with God.  Taking Jonathan Jacobs’ recent account as a test case, I argue that reconstructions of apophaticism need to be supplemented by an account of this informational and personally transformative value that apophatic mysticism places on its commitment to divine incomprehensibility.   I supply the needed account of apophatic valuing in terms of wonder as the appropriate emotional attitude toward divine transcendence.

The Experience of God as Light in the Orthodox Tradition

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-185
Author(s):  
Paul Ladouceur
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Experience ◽  
Divine Essence ◽  
Experience Of God ◽  
Union With God ◽  
Orthodox Theology ◽  
Metaphorical Expression

This article explores the sense of John the Evangelist’s expression God is Light (1 Jn 1.5) in the Orthodox tradition, both in the experience of mystics and its theological ramifications. The article reviews the scriptural basis for the experience of God as Light and presents first-hand accounts in Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022), Seraphim of Sarov (1759–1833), Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) (1896–1993), and Nicolae Steinhardt (1912–1989), and in Orthodox liturgical services. Beyond a metaphorical expression or a psychological experience, God as Light, often called the ‘Uncreated Light’, in Orthodox theology is considered an experience of the divine energies, as distinct from the divine essence, a theology elaborated notably by Gregory Palamas (1296–1359), and is a foretaste of union with God, ‘deification’ or theosis.

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