Mystical Tradition: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Table of Contents
Professor Biography ....................................................................................i
0] Course Scope 1
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Judaism1]
Lecture One A Way into the Mystic Ways of the West 4
Lecture Two Family Resemblances and Differences 9
Lecture Three The Biblical Roots of Western Mysticism 14
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Judaism2]
Lecture Four Mysticism in Early Judaism 18
Lecture Five Merkabah Mysticism 22
Lecture Six The Hasidim of Medieval Germany 26
Lecture Seven The Beginnings of Kabbalah 30
Lecture Eight Mature Kabbalah—Zohar 34
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Judaism3]
Lecture Nine Isaac Luria and Safed Spirituality 38
Lecture Ten Sabbatai Zevi and Messianic Mysticism 42
Lecture Eleven The Ba’al Shem Tov and the New Hasidism 46
Lecture Twelve Mysticism in Contemporary Judaism 50
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Christian4]
Lecture Thirteen Mystical Elements in the New Testament 54
Lecture Fourteen Gnostic Christianity 58
Lecture Fifteen The Spirituality of the Desert 62
Lecture Sixteen Shaping Christian Mysticism in the East 66
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Christian5]
Lecture Seventeen Eastern Monks and the Hesychastic Tradition 70
Lecture Eighteen The Mysticism of Western Monasticism 74
Lecture Nineteen Medieval Female Mystics 78
Lecture Twenty Mendicants as Mystics 82
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Christian6]
Lecture Twenty-One English Mystics of the 14th Century 86
Lecture Twenty-Two 15th- and 16th- Century Spanish Mystics 89
Lecture Twenty-Three Mysticism among Protestant Reformers 93
Lecture Twenty-Four Mystical Expressions in Protestantism 96
Lecture Twenty-Five 20th-Century Mystics 100
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Islam7]
Lecture Twenty-Six Muhammad the Prophet as Mystic................. 104
Lecture Twenty-Seven The House of Islam........................................ 108
Lecture Twenty-Eight The Mystical Sect—Shi’a.............................. 112
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Islam8]
Lecture Twenty-Nine The Appearance of Sufism............................. 116
Lecture Thirty Early Sufi Masters.......................................... 120
Lecture Thirty-One The Limits of Mysticism—Al-Ghazzali ........ 123
Lecture Thirty-Two Two Masters, Two Streams............................ 127
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Islam9]
Lecture Thirty-Three Sufism in 12th–14th Century North Africa...... 131
Lecture Thirty-Four Sufi Saints of Persia and India....................... 134
Lecture Thirty-Five The Continuing Sufi Tradition....................... 137
Lecture Thirty-Six Mysticism in the West Today ........................ 141
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Timeline ................................................................................................... 145
Glossary ................................................................................................... 154
Bibliography............................................................................................ 163
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Lecture
Thirteen Mystical Elements in the New Testament
Scope: In the same way that the Old
Testament can be read in terms of mystical experiences and symbols, so the
writings of earliest Christianity, despite a strong tendency toward the
exoteric, can be understood mystically. The figure of Jesus as depicted in the
Gospels is a man of prayer who claims a special relationship with God.
Especially in the Gospel of John, Jesus appears as a human constantly united
with the divine. The apostle Paul also claims visions of the risen Jesus and to
have made an ascent to the third heaven. Paul speaks of Christians as
mystically united in “the body of Christ.” Finally, the Letter to the Hebrews
portrays Christian existence as a pilgrimage toward God.
Outline
I.
In this lecture on the
mystical elements in the New Testament, we begin with some basic factors that
helped shape the development of Christian Mysticism.
A.
Christianity arose in the 1st
century C.E. from the experience of Jesus after his death among some of his
followers.
1.
Only a few historical facts
about Jesus are certain: his existence, his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate
around 30 C.E., and a movement in his name that spread from Jerusalem to Rome
before the year 60.
2.
This movement was far more
successful among Gentiles than it was among Jews, although Jesus himself was a
Jew.
B.
By far, the earliest
sources for nascent Christianity are the Greek writings of the New Testament,
which were canonized between the 2nd and 4th centuries
but written between 50100 C.E.
1.
The New Testament consists
of four narratives (the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), written c.
7090 C.E.; a narrative of Christian beginnings called the Acts of the Apostles,
written c. 85; 21 letters (by Paul, James, Peter, John, and Jude), written
around 50100; and one visionary composition (book of Revelation), written about
96.
2.
The New Testament letters
were written by believers and report on contemporary experiences and conflicts
within the churches; the Gospels look back on the story of Jesus.
3.
In the 2nd
century, these 27 writings in Greek began to be gathered together and joined to
TaNaK to form the Christian Bible.
C.
It was not the
impressiveness of Jesus’s ministry that launched the movement that became a
world religion.
1.
Jesus’s activity was brief,
his teaching non-systematic, and his success minimal. His violent death seemed
to disprove any messianic claims.
2.
Jesus is not the “founder”
of Christianity in the sense that he elaborated a way of life (as did Moses and
Muhammad) or taught a mystic path (as did the Buddha).
D.
What distinguishes
Christianity from Judaism is its claim that Jesus is Lord because of his
resurrection and exaltation.
1.
The conviction that Jesus
entered the life and power of God (became “life-giving Spirit”) shapes the
Christian sense of him as Messiah.
2.
Jesus is not only
powerfully present among his followers (through the Holy Spirit) but is the incarnation
of God (“God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself”).
E.
The figure of Jesus takes a
central place in Christianity not held by Moses or Muhammad.
1.
Jesus is the ultimate
revelation of God in humanity and the source of all salvation by the free gift
of God, not through any human effort.
2.
Jesus is, therefore, also
the model for true humanity, the way to the Father.
II.
Those drawn to mysticism
can find suggestive examples in the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels.
A.
In the synoptic Gospels
(Matthew, Mark, and Luke), Jesus appears as a prophetic figure in frequent if
not constant communication with God.
1.
At his baptism (Matt. 3:17)
and transfiguration (Matt. 17:18), a voice from heaven declares Jesus as God’s
son.
2.
He is shown frequently in
prayer (especially throughout Luke) and declares his special knowledge of God
that he gives to the others (Matt. 11:2530).
B.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus is
the “word made flesh” (John 1:14) who reveals God’s presence among humans.
1.
He performs wonders that
are signs of God’s power at work through him.
2.
The monologues in John make
clear that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the
Father except through him (John 14:6); knowing Jesus is knowing God.
III. The New Testament letters, especially those ascribed to Paul, also
contain intriguing mystical elements.
A.
Paul speaks freely of his
own extraordinary experiences, including his encounters with the risen Lord
Jesus (1 Cor. 9:1; 1 Cor. 15:8; Gal 1:11) and his ascent to the third heaven (2
Cor. 12:15), as well as a physical connection with the crucified Jesus (Gal.
2:20; 6:17).
B.
He views the community as
the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:27) because everyone has drunk of the same Holy
Spirit.
C.
Paul himself does not
provide any model for the mystical way, but Christian mystics picked up his
presuppositions and his examples.
IV.
The anonymous Letter to the
Hebrews contains the basic structure for much later Christian Mysticism.
A.
Christ is both fully divine
and fully human, the mediator between God and humans; his path is one of
obedience, moving in faith from suffering and death to exaltation and a full
sharing in God’s life and power.
B.
Discipleship is envisaged
as a pilgrimage greater than that of the Israelites to the Promised Land; the
true goal of human existence is the heavenly Jerusalem, to which Christ has
gone as pioneer and perfector of the faith.
C.
The physical pilgrimage is
a metaphor for personal transformation through faithful obedience, following
the example of Jesus.
V.
The book of Revelation
describes a classic mystical ascent reminiscent of those found in Merkabah
Mysticism.
A.
The seer John has visions
of the risen Son of Man who recites letters to the churches of Asia Minor, then
ascends to the heavenly throne-room and the presence of the living creatures
and saints.
B.
He is given visions of the
great cosmic conflict that lies behind the church’s experience of persecution
and martyrdom in the Roman Empire.
C.
Revelation does not provide
a template for mystical experience, but with Hebrews, it establishes the
architecture for a Christian Mysticism: Human experience on Earth is intimately
linked to heavenly realities.
1.
This vision of the
resurrected Jesus resonates with the vision that Ezekiel had of the heavenly
throne-chariot.
2.
John describes the heavenly
palace, the hekal; the throne; and
the sea of glass that we saw in the Exodus account, but what is different in
this ascent is the presence of the resurrected Jesus, the lamb who was slain
but now lives.
3.
We see in this account the
recasting of Merkabah mystical symbolism in light of Jesus.
Recommended Reading:
Johnson, L. T. The Writings of the New Testament: An
Interpretation.
Questions to Consider:
1.
Consider how faith in a
crucified and raised Messiah could mark Christian Mysticism in a distinctive
fashion.
2.
How does a mystical reading
of Hebrews and Revelation throw new light on these compositions?
Lecture
Fourteen Gnostic Christianity
Scope: The mid-2nd century
was critical for Christianity’s self-definition and involved a pitched battle
between two tendencies. On one side were those seeking a fundamentally exoteric
understanding of the religion, defined in terms of a closed canon of Scripture,
a creed, and institutional authority. On the other side were those—broadly
categorized as Gnostics—who understood Jesus and his message in terms of a
saving knowledge mediated through enlightened teachers, mythical narratives,
and spiritual advancement. This lecture focuses on the writings found in the
Nag Hammadi library as firsthand evidence for the second position, the orthodox
response to this challenge, and the enduring forms of the Gnostic tendency in
the Christian religion.
Outline
I.
In the mid-2nd
century, some writers advanced a vision of Christianity that was fundamentally
mystical in character, but in general, mysticism in Western religions struggled
to find its place within such emphatically exoteric traditions.
A.
In Judaism, we saw that
Sabbatai Zevi was resisted and excommunicated because of his antinomianism and
apostasy;
Hasidism was resisted by some because it
slighted Talmudic study.
B.
In Christianity, the
challenge of Gnosticism in the 2nd century forced a firm definition
of a still growing religious movement.
1.
The evidence suggests a
powerful movement involving a number of places and teachers.
2.
After a determined
struggle, Gnosticism was resisted—and, eventually, marginalized—because it threatened
the exoteric understanding of salvation through Christ.
II.
Before the archaeological
discoveries made at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, Gnosticism was known mainly
through attacks on it in patristic literature.
A.
Orthodox opponents, such as
Irenaeus and Tertullian, described the Gnostics primarily in terms of their
doctrines, as though they were a philosophical sect.
B.
Patristic authors mocked
the elaborate cosmic schemata in Gnostic myths—so much in contrast to the plain
stories of the Gospels.
C.
Patristic writers devised a
strategy of response that revealed their understanding of the challenge posed:
Something fundamental was at stake.
1.
In response to the
proliferation of revelational texts, they affirmed a closed canon of Scripture.
2.
In response to what they
regarded as rampant speculation, they established a rule of faith, or creed.
3.
In response to competing
teachers purveying secret revelations, they argued for the public apostolic
succession of the bishops as the guarantors of faithful teaching.
III. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi library extended and complicated
our understanding of Gnosticism, as insider literature often does.
A.
The codices, containing
Coptic translations of compositions originally written in Greek, reveal a wide
variety of writings, none of them especially philosophical.
1.
The writings include
tractates that record conversations with otherworldly revealers; “Gospels” of
various sorts, but none of them in narrative form; letters and sermons that
contain esoteric interpretations of the readers’ experience; writings from
Greco-Roman religion (the Hermetica); ascetical instruction (Sentences of Sextus); and even a snippet
of Plato’s Republic.
2.
The single unifying element
is the theme of revelation: Truths not available through empirical observation
are disclosed.
B.
At least two distinct
ideological tendencies show themselves within these varied compositions.
1.
Some of the writings are
Sethian in character, so-called because of the Old Testament figure Seth, who
plays the role of revealer and hero. These writings tend to be strongly
dualistic (matter is bad; only spirit is good) and show hostility to the creator
God of Judaism; they usually contain little trace of Christianity.
2.
Some are Valentinian, named
for the mid-2nd-century teacher Valentinus; these usually have
explicitly Christian elements.
C.
The precise character and
purpose of the collection remain obscure.
1.
Was there a distinct
Gnostic community for whom these writings were a counter-Bible, a Scripture?
2.
Or were the writings merely
the recreational spiritual reading of Pachomian monks of the 4th
century, who were otherwise thoroughly orthodox?
3.
Given that we have only the
slightest hints concerning a community life, primarily from the Gospel of Philip (hostility toward
orthodox leaders, language about distinctive ritual), a firm answer to this
question is not possible.
IV.
Many of the Gnostic
compositions exhibit characteristics that suggest an origin in mysticism or the
intention of encouraging mysticism.
A.
In The Apocryphon of John, Jesus’s role is only that of revealer of
the great myth of cosmic descent and return.
1.
The work opens with the
apostle John asking a series of questions; as he does so, a strange revealer
figure appears to him in various forms.
2.
The revealer tells John
that the divine realm is a pleroma, a
“fullness,” made of many spirits called “aeons.”
3.
In the story of Genesis and
the material creation of Adam and Eve, the revealer says that they were given a
water of forgetfulness by the first ruler so that they may not know themselves
or realize where they came from.
B.
The Allogenes, another
Gnostic composition, describes a heavenly ascent.
C.
The “Hymn of the Pearl” in
the Gospel of Thomas (which was not
found at Nag Hammadi) is a classic metaphoric rendering of exile and return.
1.
A young nobleman is told to
go to Egypt to find a pearl that belongs to the family and to bring it back to
the place where it belongs.
2.
There is no mention of
Christ; there is no need for an external savior. The nobleman’s success in his
mission is a matter of loss and recovery through memory and self-awareness.
D.
Jesus appears in the explicitly
Christian texts as a revealer of a way of life in which the believer discovers
his or her identity with Jesus.
1.
In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says that those who know what he teaches
will not die and that he himself is the revealer of truths.
2.
The Gospel of Truth locates the importance of Jesus, above all, in his
role as revealer.
E.
Throughout the Nag Hammadi
writings, we find elements reminiscent of Jewish Mysticism.
1.
We see in the Nag Hammadi
writings the same fascination with aligning parts of the body and the passions
with specific cosmic entities that we saw in Kabbalism.
2.
The Christian Gnostics have
a similar conception of the divine as emanating into the world, although this
emanation is much more negative in Gnosticism.
3.
Gnosticism, too, makes
theurgic use of syllables and names, either as passwords or as expressions of ecstasy.
4.
There is also a resemblance
to Jewish Mysticism in the use of erotic imagery.
F.
Gnosticism is, indeed, a
complex phenomenon, but in light of the mystical traditions we have already
learned, we can understand its deep attraction to some Christians of the 2nd
and 3rd centuries.
Recommended Reading:
Layton, B., ed., The Gnostic Scriptures.
Questions to Consider:
1.
Discuss the distinct
conceptions of the role of Jesus in the New Testament and in the Nag Hammadi
compositions.
2.
Why is it difficult to
determine the precise purpose or motivation for the writing of the Gnostic
literature?
Lecture Fifteen
The Spirituality of the Desert
Scope: With Constantine’s adoption of
Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire, the age of persecution ended.
Repelled by such security, some fervent believers sought the “white martyrdom”
of a life completely given to physical asceticism and prayer. This lecture
examines the mysticism of Egyptian hermits and monks. Athanasius’s Life of Antony tells the paradigmatic
story of someone abandoning comfort in order to embrace a more radical
discipleship, and Palladius’s Lausiac
History provides a narrative frame for the lives of those embracing the
rigors of asceticism. The witty aphorisms in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers point to a distinct style of
mysticism, and the Conferences of
John Cassian show a thoroughly developed form of spirituality.
Outline
I.
The future direction of
Christian Mysticism was not set by Gnosticism, although versions of it
continued to occur on the margins, but by a thoroughly orthodox form of
spirituality that arose and thrived in the 4th-century Egyptian
wilderness.
A.
Unlike the Gnostics, who
craved the speculation found in revelatory writings while scorning the Old
Testament, the desert monks embraced all of canonical Scripture, finding
meaning especially in the Psalms.
B.
Unlike the Gnostics, who
regarded Christ primarily as the revealer of truths concerning their own inner
light, these ascetics modeled themselves on the Jesus of the Gospels,
especially in his suffering.
C.
Unlike the Gnostics, whose
mysticism consisted, above all, in theosophy (knowledge of the divine), the
desert fathers and mothers sought the moral transformation of their lives,
desiring sanctity.
D.
Unlike the Gnostics, whose
self-realization was instantaneous and total, desert spirituality emphasized a
slow process of moral discipline and constant prayer.
II.
The monks of the Egyptian
desert arose at least in part as a response to the changed circumstances of
Christianity in the 4th century.
A.
Until the time of
Constantine, Christians had been a marginalized and persecuted minority.
1.
Persecution moved steadily
from the local and sporadic to the general and state-initiated, climaxing in
the systematic persecution of Diocletian.
2.
Christians who refused to
abandon their faith in the face of persecution were called confessors, but the
highest commitment was expressed by martyrs.
3.
Already in the 2nd
century, a distinctive martyr piety developed in Christian writings (see the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch and The
Martyrdom of Polycarp). The imitation of Christ’s death ensured
participation in his resurrection.
B.
When Constantine made
Christianity the imperial religion, faith became a far safer and more
comfortable proposition.
1.
Christians could own
property, and churches shared in imperial wealth; ministry was a path to social
success.
2.
In the eyes of some,
radical discipleship was threatened by wealth, privilege, and corruption.
C.
The monks fled from the
world (fuga mundi) and sought white
martyrdom in a life of asceticism and prayer.
1.
They cultivated an
extraordinarily hard physical life, but asceticism equally included the
practice of virtue and the control of the passions.
2.
Doing battle with demons in
the desert was the interior equivalent to fighting the imperial forces during
persecution.
3.
The supreme weapon of the
monks was prayer; they took literally the apostle Paul’s instruction to “pray
without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17).
4.
Those who progressed in
virtue and prayer were regarded by others as fathers (abbas) and mothers, saints who became guides to others.
D.
Athanasius of Alexandria
(c. 295–373) was the great defender of orthodoxy. He both reported on and stimulated such a desert monastic existence
in his book The Life of Antony.
1.
Antony responded to the
Gospel exhortation to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor; he
fled to the desert and practiced asceticism and prayer.
2.
In his efforts, he was
constantly under attack by demons, whom he battled with constant prayer and humility.
3.
He drew followers to
himself, forming a “city in the desert,” but withdrew steadily into further
solitude, resisting at the moment of his death any effort to monumentalize
himself.
III. Two remarkable compositions provide a portrait of this monastic existence
in the 4th century.
A.
Palladius (c. 363–c. 430)
wrote the Lausiac History, which
gives a first-person account of his travels among the monks in the desert.
1.
After a short introduction,
Palladius sketches some 71 anecdotes dealing with a variety of figures,
including wealthy women, such as Melania the Elder (c. 342410).
2.
He shows the basic
structure of what is called the semieremitical life of the desert monks.
3.
His stories include
examples of extraordinary asceticism and of prayer that can properly be called
mystical.
B.
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers is an anonymous collection of sayings
and anecdotes that reveal something of the wit and wisdom of the desert monks.
1.
Despite extraordinary
efforts at physical asceticism, the purification of the passions is more
important.
2.
Humility and lack of a
judgmental attitude emerge as desired characteristics.
IV.
John Cassian (c. 360–c.
430) was a transition figure between the fathers of the desert and the later
monastic spirituality of the West. He traveled among the monks in Egypt, then
settled in Marseilles and composed two great works dealing with monastic
spirituality.
A.
His Institutes was written in his own voice.
1.
The first four books
provide a rudimentary rule for Cenobitism (“common life”).
2.
The remaining books deal
especially with the passions (vices) that impede progress in the spiritual
life.
B.
In the Conferences, Cassian reports or quotes long discourses on asceticism
and prayer from various desert fathers.
1.
One of the Conferences describes the experience of
prayer that begins with the simple Our Father, then moves to a higher form of
prayer.
2.
For the ordinary person,
the Lord’s Prayer (Our Father) suffices, but those who want to push on should
seek a silent prayer, one that involves the mind and brings the worshiper to a
place that is difficult to express.
3.
This kind of prayer is
modeled by Jesus in his Prayer in Solitude and, above all, in the prayer he
made in the garden before facing his Passion and death.
Recommended Reading:
Waddell, H. The Desert Fathers.
Questions to Consider:
1.
How do the distinctive
elements of desert spirituality help us understand why Gnosticism was not an
acceptable option in the larger Christian tradition?
2.
What does the presence of
both fathers and mothers in the desert suggest about the broad attractiveness
of the ascetical life?
Lecture
Sixteen Shaping Christian Mysticism in the East
Scope: The great spiritual teachers of
the Eastern church were nourished by the monastic context that preserved
something of the desert life. Many were also shaped by the Platonic worldview
that moved from Philo of Alexandria through the Letter to the Hebrews to Origen
of Alexandria, the most widely influential of early
Christian theologians.
This lecture considers three authors of the 4th century who are
foundational for the development of the distinctive spirituality of Orthodoxy.
Evagrius Ponticus wrote the Praktikos
as instruction in the ascetic life for hermits and Chapters on Prayer for monks. The Life of Moses by the great theologian Gregory of Nyssa is a
rereading of the biblical story that is also a vision of the mystical life. An
author close to Nyssa in outlook but with a distinctive emphasis on the heart
is the Syrian monk called Pseudo-Macarius, who wrote the Spiritual Homilies and the Great
Letter.
Outline
I.
After the 4th
century, Christianity developed in distinct and sometimes divisive ways in the
West and East.
A.
Christianity in the West
was marked by constant upheaval and change that challenged its survival and
stimulated its creativity.
1.
The role of Rome shifted
from the seat of imperial power to the increasingly centralized power of the
bishop of Rome, the pope.
2.
Latin replaced Greek as the
language of the Bible, liturgy, and scholarship.
3.
Barbarian invasions
threatened the order of society and ancient learning but also opened up avenues
of expansion.
B.
In the East, the Byzantine
Empire was characterized by a sense of continuity with the past.
1.
Constantine made the “new
Rome” (Constantinople) the political center of the empire, and it remained important
until the 15th century.
2.
Greek was maintained as the
language of Scripture and the liturgy, and theologians continued the study of
ancient Greek literature.
3.
The ecclesiastical
authority of patriarchs was regional and less absolute than that exercised by
the bishop of Rome.
II.
The form of mysticism that
dominated Eastern Christianity drew on three major streams of influence.
A.
As in Judaism and Western
Christianity, the role of Scripture (both the Old and New Testaments) remained
fundamental as a source for knowledge of God, the pattern of the mystical life,
and prayers—above all, the Psalms.
B.
The spirituality of the
desert was a strong influence, with its emphasis both on the discipline of the
body and the purgation of the passions.
C.
The Platonic worldview
found in the Jewish thinker Philo and in the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews established a conceptual framework for
mysticism.
1.
Plato’s distinction between
the phenomenal and the noumenal had implications in the realms of ontology
(being), epistemology (knowledge), and axiology (worth or value).
2.
Philo read Greek Scripture
allegorically to discover the deeper spiritual truths beneath the literal
sense. The Exodus, for example, represents the achievement of freedom from the
passions in the life of virtue.
3.
Hebrews casts discipleship
as a pilgrimage toward God, involving a transition from what is physical and
transitory to what is spiritual and eternal.
D.
Origen of Alexandria
(184254) affected all subsequent thinkers, even those who rejected him because
of his controversial views.
1.
He displayed constant
fidelity to the rule of faith and heroic sanctity in his life.
2.
Although he condemned the
Gnostics as heretics, Origen was a systematic thinker who pushed beyond
tradition to ask fundamental questions, above all, concerning the origin and
destiny of souls.
3.
He read all of Scripture
allegorically, in terms of personal transformation and the path toward God.
4.
Among some Coptic monks of
the desert, he seemed dangerously intellectual, and the heresy of Origenism was
condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553.
III. Two spiritual teachers of the 4th century show the
confluence of these three elements—Scripture, the desert asceticism, and the
Platonic worldview—in their mystical works.
A.
Evagrius Ponticus (345399)
was comfortable in both the sophisticated city of Constantinople and in
wilderness communities.
1.
He was a passionate
follower of Origen and developed a speculative theology in his Kephalaia Gnostika (Gnostic Problems or Gnostic
Chapters).
2.
In the Praktikos and Chapters on
Prayer, we see a side of Evagrius that is deeply immersed in monastic
asceticism.
B.
Gregory of Nyssa (c.
332–395) was one of the Cappadocian fathers, along with Basil the Great and
Gregory Nazienzen, whose work advanced Orthodox theology concerning the Holy
Spirit.
1.
Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses is indebted to Philo of
Alexandria, as well as the work of Origen.
2.
The first part of the work
(“Concerning Perfection in Virtue”) retells the biblical story of Moses and the
Exodus with particular attention to the moments of theophany.
3.
The second part
(“Contemplation on the Life of Moses”) provides a deeper spiritual reading of
the story in terms of the life of contemplation.
IV.
Pseudo-Macarius was an
anonymous Syrian writer of roughly the same period who wrote in Greek and
brought the desert spirituality to fuller expression.
A.
His Fifty Spiritual Homilies contains sermons that address (sometimes
using the question-answer format) a variety of aspects of the ascetical life,
without any effort at systematization.
B.
His Great Letter bears strong resemblance to the writing of Gregory of
Nyssa and touches more briefly on many of the topics concerning the ascetical
life covered in the Homilies.
1.
His first homily is an
interpretation of Ezekiel’s vision at the beginning of the biblical book of
Ezekiel.
2.
The interpretation of
Pseudo-Macarius is not that Ezekiel saw something physical that suggested
something divine but that he saw something divine that pointed forward to the
divinity of Christ.
Recommended Reading:
McGinn B., and J.
Meyendorff, eds. Christian Spirituality:
Origins to the Twelfth Century.
Questions to Consider:
1.
Why is it so important for
the mystic to gain freedom from physical demands and emotional impulses
(passions)?
2.
Discuss how the combination
of a biblical cosmology and Platonic worldview shaped a specific consciousness
congenial to mystical experience.
