A Course in Christian Mysticism
v
Contents
Foreword vii
Michael N. McGregor
Editor’s Prologue xi
Preface xix
Lecture 1: The Aim of This Course ......................1
Lecture 2: Mystical Theology in St. John’s Gospel ........12
Lecture 3: Martyrs and Gnostics (Ignatius, Irenaeus,Clement, and Origen) ....21
Lecture 4: Divinization and Mysticism(Te Cappadocian Fathers) ......40
Lecture 5: Evagrius Ponticus ..........................57
Lecture 6: Contemplation and the Cosmos(Maximus the Confessor) .......71
Lecture 7: The Dionysian Tradition ....................79
Lecture 8: Western Mysticism: The Influence ofSt. Augustine ..........88
Lecture 9: St. Bernard of Clairvaux .....................99
Lecture 10: St. Bernard’s Sermons on the Song of Songs .118
Lecture 11: Fourteenth Century Mysticism:The Béguines, Eckhart, Tauler......141
Lecture 12: Spanish Mysticism: St. Teresa of Avilaand Others .........161
Lecture 13: St. John of the Cross: Dark Nightsand Spiritual Crises .......184
Foreword by Michael N. McGregor
W hen the editor of this volume, Jon M. Sweeney,
asked me to write a foreword for it, my first
thought was that I’m not worthy to write about
Tomas Merton and mysticism. Tat feeling intensified as I
read the thirteen lessons collected here, filled as they are with
Merton’s intellectual vigor and supple application of sometimes
disparate theologies. What gave me hope was a hunch that the
young monastics these lessons were originally intended for were as perplexed as me by some of Merton’s more esoteric concepts and conclusions—that and the glimmer of simplicity that lies at the heart of what Merton is saying. When stripped of the history
and tradition that Merton takes such pains to trace, mysticism, in
his mind, is simply union with God, and the path to it is opened
primarily by grace and prayer.
Judging by what Merton writes in
Te Seven Storey Mountain
,
his introduction to real mysticism came at twenty-two when
he read Aldous Huxley’s
Ends and Means
, a book Robert Lax—whose concept of mysticism and most other spiritual ideas was
far less complicated—recommended he read. Until that time,
Merton and Lax and their college friends had distrusted even the
word
mysticism
, thinking it represented a kind of hocus pocus.
What impressed Merton about Huxley’s book was Huxley’s
erudition and sobriety, that “he had read widely and deeply and
intelligently in all kinds of Christian and Oriental mystical litera-
ture, and had come out with the astonishing truth that all this,
far from being a mixture of dreams and magic and charlatanism,
was very real and very serious
o become more truly right with God, Huxley insisted, we
need not only to avoid using evil means to achieve positive endsbut also to free our spirits from “a servitude to the flesh” through
prayer and asceticism—an idea, as Merton shows in these les-
sons, that runs throughout the history of Western Christian
mystical thought. But, according to Merton’s reading of Huxley,
release from the flesh was only the beginning: “Once the spirit
was freed, and returned to its own element, it was not alone
there: it could find the absolute and perfect Spirit, God. It could
enter into union with Him: and what is more, this union wasnot something vague and metaphorical, but it was a matter of
real experience.”
It is easy to see the seeds of the lessons contained in this
book in these lines about Huxley’s concepts from Merton’s early
autobiography, but Merton was never one to take the easy path
to anything or to let someone else’s investigation stand in the
stead of his own. In truth, he continued to distrust the concept
of mysticism—and even the word, often substituting
contemplation for it in his writings, though he felt, as he suggests inmore than one place here, that contemplation and mysticism
weren’t really the same thing. In order to feel comfortable withthe term, he had to do a thorough survey of the available litera-ture on his own. One of the great blessings of working through
these lessons is learning from Merton’s research—viewing the
rich Christian mystical tradition through the eyes of a brilliant,spirit-filled man.
But of course this book is not meant to be just an interesting
study; it is intended to open us more completely to mystical
possibilities, to prepare us for a deepening of our own experi-
ence of God. As Merton himself warns, and Sweeney reiterates
in his introduction, if we are to undertake this journey, we must
be willing to accept deep and profound change.
pp 11-12
Theology and Spirituality—the Divorce
For some, theology is a penance and effort without value, except as a chore to be offered up, whereas spirituality is to be studied, developed, experienced. Hence there is an experience of spirituality but not an experience of theology—this is the death of contemplation. It promotes experience of experience and not experience of revelation and of God revealing. Perhaps in our modern world we are witnessing a kind of death agony of spirituality—a real crisis has been reached.
Fr. Georges Florovsky has said,
“In this time of temptation and judgement theology becomes again a public matter, a universal and catholic mission. It is incumbent upon all to take up spiritual arms. Already we have reached a point where theological silence, embarrassment, incertitude, lack of articulation in our witness are equal to temptation, to flight before the enemy.
