Natural Mysticism Gateway or Detour? Aquinas, Maritain, and the Core / Contextualist Debate ...

31 Pages·2015·19.96 MB·English

HEATHER M. ERB
Natural Mysticism(cid:8212)(cid:8212)(cid:8212) Gateway
or Detour?
Aquinas, Maritain, and the
Core/Contextualist Debate
I. Introduction
Spiritual progress is marked by a mystical knowledge in which dogmas
shine like stars in the midday sun and is a result of persevering in grace
through the dim awareness of faith.l Through the byways of sensible real(cid:8217)
ities and the fragilities of human existence, theological speculation helps
us penetrate the knowledge of simple faith, bathing our early certitudes
in a (cid:8220)second clarity.(cid:8221)2 Maritain echoed Garrigou-Lagrange(cid:8217)s focus on the
close association of metaphysics, theology, and mysticism, and his zeal for
climbing the (cid:8220)luminous summits which must illuminate all the rest.(cid:8221)3 For
1. Charles Cardinal journet, What is Dogma? (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, zou), 121,
speaks of mystical knowledge thus: (cid:8220)[C]onceptual knowledge of revealed truths is not in any
way laid aside, or in any way got rid of, it is merely for the moment covered over, transcended.
All the dogmas thus subsist in the faith of the contemplative, but like the stars in the midday
sunlight. . .. The passing light which throws them into the shade strengthens them to a wonderful
degree.(cid:8221) Emphasis in original.
2. The notion of (cid:8220)(cid:64257)rst(cid:8221) and (cid:8220)second(cid:8221) clari(cid:64257)es is developed by Baron Friedrich Von Hiigel
and Andrew Louth. In von Hiigel's words, only in the saint is thought about God transformed
into a religious act, and the (cid:8220)dim apprehension(cid:8221) of nascent faith becomes the (cid:8220)clear perception(cid:8221)
of true knowledge of God. See Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of
Theology (Wichita, Kansas: Eighth Day Books, 2007), 135.
3. Garrigou-Lagrange, Christian Perfection and Contemplation According to St. Thomas Aqui-
nas and St. john of the Cross, translated by Mary Timothea Doyle (St. Louis, Missouri: Herder,
1949), 50~5L
2n3
24. HEATHER M. ERB
Maritain, realist metaphysics is shot through with a mystical aspiration for
union with the (cid:64257)rst principle of being.4 In their syntheses ofthe fundamen-
tal doctrines of Aquinas with the fruits of mystical theology, Garrigou and
Maritain echo the integral approach of the commentatorial tradition and
together constitute what has rightly been called the (cid:8220)Thomistic-mystical
movement.(cid:8221)5
The binary structures that permeate mystical theology (eternity/ time;
transcendent/immanent,- etc.) also appear in the contrast of interpretation
and religious experience, in the (cid:8220)core/contextualist(cid:8221) debate among late
twentieth-century scholars of mysticism. Whether there is an initial core of
mystical experience that is subsequently interpreted by reference to texts
and traditions, or whether an experiential and conceptual matrix precedes
and informs mystical experience, is also relevant to Garrigou(cid:8217)s and Marit-
ain(cid:8217)s considerations of mystical experience (cid:8220)outside the Church.(cid:8220) Terms
such as natural or pre(cid:8212)mysticism, implicit faith, pan-supernaturalism and
pseudo(cid:8212)supernaturalism, emerge in the attempt to reconcile the authentic
4. "The natural desire to see the Cause of being derives from the natural desire of knowing
being. . .. [E]very great metaphysic is indeed pierced by a mystical aspiration." Jacques Maritain,
(cid:8220)The Natural Mystical Experience and the Void,(cid:8221) in Ransoming the Time, translated by Harry
Lorin Binsse (New York: Charles Scribner(cid:8217)s Sons, 1941), 260(cid:8212)61. The article was based on a talk
Maritain gave to the Fourth Congress of Religious Psychology in 1938. For a good summary, see
Henry Bars, (cid:8220)Maritain(cid:8217)s Contributions to an Understanding of Mystical Experience," in Jacques
Maritain: The Man and His Achievement, edited by Joseph Evans (New York: Sheed and Ward,
1963), 119(cid:8212)120. Compare this with what Evelyn Underhill says in (cid:8220)What is Mysticism?(cid:8221) in Collect-
ed Papers ovaern Underhill (London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1946), 107: (cid:8220)[A] mystic is
not a person who practices unusual forms of prayer, but a person whose life is ruled by this thirst,(cid:8221)
echoing St. Augustine(cid:8217)s saying that (cid:8220)Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless un-
til they find rest in Thee.(cid:8221) This thirst seeks nourishment from God(cid:8217)s hand, not by snatching at spir-
itual satisfactions (cid:8220)like greedy greyhounds" (Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, chap.
46) in the pursuit of rari(cid:64257)ed, abstract mental states, but through the course of daily circumstance
and struggle Progress in the Christian spiritual life is won, in part, by wrestling with the paradox
of eternity entering into and transforming time.
5. Aidan Nichols indicates that this trend at uni(cid:64257)cation anticipates readings of Aquinas such
as are fonnd in Jean(cid:8212)Pierre Torrell. See Aidan Nichols, Reason with Piety: Garrigau-Lagrange in
the Service of Catholic Thought (Naples, Florida: Sapientia Press, 2008), 117.
6. Garrigou-Lagrange, (cid:8220)The Grace of Christ and the Mystics Outside the Church,(cid:8221) in Our
Savior and His Love for Us, translated by Bouchard (Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books, 1998), 355(cid:8212)84.
Maritain deals with the topic of natural mysticism and mystical experience outside the Church
in several works, such as: (cid:8220)The Natural Mystical Experience and the Void,(cid:8221) 255~89; (cid:8220)Mystical
Experience and Philosophy,(cid:8221) in Distinguish to Unite, or The Degrees of Knowledge, fourth edition,
translated by Gerard Phelan (New York: Charles Scribner(cid:8217)s Sons, 1959), 247(cid:8212)90; On the Church
of Christ: The Person of the Church and Her Personnel, translated byJoseph Evans (Notre Dame,
Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973), 93-434, for instance.
Natural Mysticism(cid:8212)Gateway or Detour? 25
ecclesial experience of God in Catholicism with the universal call to grace
and divine omnipotence. .
For Aquinas and Garrigou, authentic supernatural mystical experience
is possible outside the visible Church, but only as accompanied by an (cid:8220)im(cid:8212)
plicit faith(cid:8221) which grounds the experience on a minimal set of explicitly held
truths about God concerning His existence and providence.7 Given this
demand, what are the chances that a core cross-religious mystical experi-
ence exists, let alone one prior to interpretation? The question of (cid:8220)natur (cid:8221)
mystical experience outside Christianity is, nonetheless, of importance for
inter(cid:8212)faith dialogue, spiritual pedagogy, and cross(cid:8212)disciplinary topics such
as the role of the subconscious. For Maritain, natural mystical experience
involves both a turning of intelligence from its metaphysical outward course
towards a lived nescience and self~denial, and a metaphysical and ascetic
discipline which accesses the immensity of God through a return on the
self(cid:8217)s own act of existence. I will argue that Garrigou maintains a closer af-
(cid:64257)nity to Aquinas on the parameters of the spiritual life, and that he does so
by consistently and sharply subordinating mystical experience to the life of
theological virtue, understood as a process of conformity, through charity,
to Christ.
(cid:8216) There are several factors at work in discerning the positions of Aquinas,
Maritain, and Garrigou with respect to the contemporary core/contextualist
debate. First, there is the seventeenth(cid:8212)century rupture of ascetic and mystical
theology which ironically laid the groundwork for the nineteenth-century
cultural shift to a personal, experiential approach to religion.8 Second, Aqui(cid:8212)
nas(cid:8217)s sacramental, ecclesial approach is invariably absent in treatments of
7. (cid:8220)However, we can inquire whether the Gospel is to be considered as promulgated in plac«
es where it has not yet been preached or where it has been completely forgotten. In any event,
true mysticism presupposes at least an implicit faith in the Redeemer.(cid:8221) Garrigou-Lagrange, Our
Savior and His Lovefor Us, 362 n. 13. He develops the notion of implicit faith in this chapter, rest(cid:8212)
ing his view on Aquinas(cid:8217)s use of Hebrews 11.6 ((cid:8220)But without faith it is impossible to please God.
For he that cometh to God must believe that he is: and is a rewarded to them that seek him(cid:8221)
[Douay-Rheims] ), where belief in God(cid:8217)s existence and providence conditions true faith. Implicit
faith in the Redeemer is virtually contained in explicit faith in these two credibilia. Aquinas de(cid:8212)
velops the notion of implicit faith in his outline of the categories of unbelief, in ST II(cid:8212)II, q. 2, aa.
7(cid:8212)8 and ST II-II, q. 10, for instance.
8. On the contribution of William James to the modern (cid:8220)episodic(cid:8221) notion of mysticism as
a set of discrete paranormal phenomena, see John Peter Kenny, 'Ihe Mysticism of St. Augustine
(New York: Routledge, 2005), 147: (cid:8220)[I]n the nineteenth and twentieth centuries mystical
experience became an unusual but highly prized phenomenon, conferring upon its subject the
sensation of transcendence and the feeling of certainty.(cid:8221)
HEATHER M. ERB
26
core mysticism, since his spirituality is resistant to the psychological analysis
favored by them. In addition to the distinction of explicit and implicit faith
and the various types of union with the divine (differentiated vs. undiffer(cid:8212)
entiated), there are other intersecting questions, such as the role of apophat(cid:8212)
ic or (cid:8220)dark(cid:8221) metaphysical contemplation and the treatment of paradoxes in
scriptural texts.
Amidst this web of issues lie three tasks. First, I will note the terms and
assumptions of the core/contextualist debate. Second, Iwill examine Mar(cid:8212)
itain(cid:8217)s and Garrigou(cid:8217)s ideas of natural or pre(cid:8212)mysticism and implicit faith in
light of relevant texts of Aquinas as these Thomists become our imaginary
interlocutors in the debate. Third, I will ask whether Aquinas(cid:8217)s use of para-
dox in his texts on natural contemplation and in his Christology as devel-
oped in two biblical commentaries provides any evidence for elements of
the core View in his thought.
11. The Core/Contextualist Debate
Two opposed approaches to religion have helped set the terminology
and parameters of the twentieth(cid:8212)century debate about the nature and pos(cid:8212)
. -sibility of union with the divine. 'Ihese are the secular philosophy and re(cid:8212)
ligious studies camp, which (cid:64258)ourished at the turn of the twentieth century
and set the terms of the core/contextualist debate, and the French Catholic
camp, consisting of a medley of scholastic and transcendental Thomists,
nouvelle the(cid:8217)ologie adherents, and interreligious scholars. The secular camp
combines a post(cid:8212)Enlightenment divorce of thought and being with the no(cid:8212)
tion that the study of mysticism is at root an endeavor to assess epistemic
and psychological claims about religious experience. The French Catholic
camp develops various views on religious experience in relation to a Thom(cid:8212)
ist, ecclesial, sacramental spirituality.9
9. An overview of modern mysticism scholarship approaches can be found in: Bernard Mcv
Ginn, The Foundations of Mysticism, vol. 1 of (cid:64258)u: Presence of God: A History of Western Christian
Mysticism (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1991), 265(cid:8212)343. Closer than many of these to Gar-
rigou(cid:8217)s account is the German Benedictine Anselm Stolz, who retrieves a Scriptural and Patris-
tic basis for a Eucharistic mysticism. See McGinn, Foundations of Mysticism, 281. On Garrigou(cid:8212)
Lagrange, see ibid., 279(cid:8212)80. McGinn also treats Maritain, but does not analyze his views on natu-
ral mysticism in any detail; see ibid., 305(cid:8212)310. Both the secular and French religious camps boast
adherents of both the core and contextualist views on mysticism, which points to the pervasive
desire for both universality and historical context.
Natural MysticismmGateway or Detour? 27
1. 'lhe (cid:8220)Care(cid:8221) View
First is the core or (cid:8220)essentialist(cid:8221) position, an interesting term hinting at
a kind of (cid:8220)abstraction with precision(cid:8221) from lived religious traditions. Here,
mystical experience or consciousness is pre-linguistic and has a cross-reli(cid:8212)
gious set of key characteristics. Divisions and distinctions among objects,
and later, religious dogmas, are said to emerge through the (cid:64257)lters of lan-
guage, tradition, and cult. Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, and Su(cid:64257) mystics are
said to experience the same absolute, expressed variably in terms of God,
Brahman, Atman, or Allah, or Emptiness.lo A core of mystical experience
is said to precede interpretation and tradition, such that three elements in
mysticism are cemented and seen as invulnerable to skeptical critique or
dismantling. These elements are a comprehensive phenomenology of mys(cid:8212)
ticism, a nonsectarian (cid:8220)spirituality,(cid:8221) and a robust ecumenism.
The core view on the inner unity or fundamental sameness of all mysti-
- cal experience was popularized by Stace and Smart, and by William James,
who extracted four (cid:8220)marks(cid:8221) of mystical experiencewineifability, noetic
quality, transiency, and passivity (some core adherents add Evelyn Under(cid:8212)
hill(cid:8217)s phenomenology of mysticism to the list).11 Core adherents are fond
of lists and charts wherein typologies and traits are compared and distilled
into universal categories of experience.12 Cross(cid:8212)religious access to a core of
pure consciousness, accessed by a non-conceptual unity with the univer-
sality of being, is sometimes claimed,l3 suggesting a confusion of mystical
and metaphysical contemplation, and of absolute and universal being.
10. On this view, see Larry Short, (cid:8220)Mysticism, Mediation, and the Non(cid:8212)Linguistic,(cid:8221) journal
of the American Academy ofReligion 63, no.4 (1995): 659. Short defends the view that there is, in
fact, no dichotomy of the core and contextualist positions, and that both are true, since there can
be a nonlinguistic basis of mediated experiences.
M. William james, 'Ihe Varieties of Religious Experience (London: Longmans, Green and
Company, 1902), 380(cid:8212)82. For a list of authors on either side of the core/contextualist debate, see,
for example Edward Howells, (cid:8220)Mysticism and the Mystical: The Current Debate,(cid:8221) supplement,
The Way Supplement 102 (2001): 15(cid:8212)27. In 1960, Stace made an unsuccessful attempt to overcome
the problems of the experience/interpretation dichotomy by distinguishing introvertive and ex(cid:8212)
trovertive species of mystical experience, which still share seven common characteristics. See:
Walter Stace, Mysticism and Philasaphy (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1960).
12.]ose Nieto, for example, gives an appendix with various charts on the essentials of (cid:8220)uni-
versal mysticism." See his Religious Experience andMysticism: Otherness as Experience of Transcem
dence (Lanham, Maryland: University Press ofAmerica, 1997).
13. The Problem ofPure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philnsophy, edited by Robert K. Forman
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), and Ihe Innate Capacity: Mysticism, Psychology and Phi(cid:8212)
losophy, edited by Robert K. Forman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
28 HEATHER M. ERB
The core thesis is (cid:64258)awed in many ways. First, it errs in its circularity,l4
in that mystical experience of objective, transcendent being is purported-
ly based on a subjective state of content(cid:8212)less pure consciousness, which
claims universality while failing to escape the privacy of an inner psycho(cid:8212)
logical state. Second, it errs in its ahistorical arti(cid:64257)ciality and withdrawing
of texts from their religious contexts in order to attain a level of (cid:8220)pure ex-
perience.(cid:8221) The monistic tendency among core adherents often assumes a
hiatus between religion and spirituality in the critique of the divisive ef-
fects of theistic revelation.15 Third, it errs in claiming that traditional reli-
gious claims about divine union are extraneous and secondary to the real
nature of mysticism.(cid:8220)5 Fourth, the core View fails to recognize the ways in
which language and belief systems in(cid:64258)uence and shape experience, such
that a defense of the thorny claim of (cid:8216)pure experience(cid:8217) is again sidestepped.
(cid:8220)Pure experience(cid:8221), a rebellious stepchild of the Cartesian and Kantian self/
world divide, is a notion that situates the core/contextual debate in a nest
of modern approaches to religion. George Lindbeck(cid:8217)s (cid:8220)post(cid:8212)liberal(cid:8221) theol-
ogy represents an objection to the kind of direct, universal intuition of the
divine which the core view assumes.
Robert Bellah situates the core theory within George Lindbeck(cid:8217)s pan(cid:8212)
.theon of religious typologies as outlined in the latter(cid:8217)s The Nature of Doc(cid:8212)
trine.l7 Lindbeck(cid:8217)s own (cid:8220)cultural-linguistic(cid:8221) approach makes doctrines
(cid:8220)commonly authoritative rules of discourse, attitude, and action(cid:8221) and in-
terprets inner religious experiences as formed by and derived from outer
in(cid:64258)uences such as language and community. Opposed to this view are two
views: the traditional (cid:8220)cognitive(cid:8221) or (cid:8220)propositional(cid:8221) approach, which sees
religious doctrines as truth claims about objective realities, and the (cid:8220)experi(cid:8212)
entialist-expressivist(cid:8221) approach, which views religious doctrines as expres(cid:8212)
14. On this critique, see Bernard McGinn, (cid:8220)Quo Vadis? Re(cid:64258)ections on the Current Study of
Mysticism,(cid:8221) Christian Spirituality Bulletin 6, no. 1 (1998): 15.
15. The familiar narrative of the Church incorporating alien mystical strands for the stated
purpose of determining which strands are orthodox or heretical, but with the actual motive of
suppressing it under institutional, hierarchical control, is stated explicitly, or implied, by many
core adherents. See, for example, Jose Nieto, Religious Experience and Mysticism, 165. Core(cid:8217)s mo-
nism is not only antireligious and a confusion of mystical and metaphysical contemplation; it is a
Platonic rejection of individuality. Personhood, Nieto thinks, belongs to the realm ofmatter, and
so pure mystical consciousness must be monistic to be properly metaphysical.
16. See McGinn, (cid:8220)Quo Vadis?(cid:8221) 15, for some of these critiques.
17. See Robert Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 2011), 11, where he discusses George Lindbeck's The
Nature ofDoctrine (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984).
Natural Mysticism(cid:8212)Gateway or Detour? 29
sions of non-discursive inner states,18 a view Lindbeck associates with the
liberal theologies of Schleiermacher and Tillich. V
The (cid:8220)experientialist(cid:8212)expressivist(cid:8221) version of the core theory assumes in-
ternally common states or intuitions of the divine among mystics, which
language and culture then diversify into outer formulae (creeds), rituals,
and doctrines. Lindbeck rejects this model of religious typology, viewing it
as a denial of what religious traditions have understood as radically distinct
ways of experiencing and being oriented toward self, neighbor, and cos(cid:8212)
mos. Finally, the core view errs by introducing pantheistic monism, which
is entailed by the suggestion that a universal intuitive grasp of the unity of
being that excludes the God/ creature distinction.19
There is a knot of assumptions at work in the core View, starting with
the assertion that authentic and (cid:8220)pure(cid:8221) mystical experience transcends
creed as well as the Western God/ creature distinction. Bellah notes the
problems with the notion that the (cid:8220)unitive event(cid:8221) is a kind of (cid:8220)ground zero(cid:8221)
with respect to interpretation. A core experience requires conceptual rep(cid:8212)
resentation if it is to be communicable.(cid:8221) The reality/ interpretation duality
(as well as the particularities of symbol and tradition) is said to be tran-
scended by a nugget of pure experience. This fundamental event is said to
then issue in paradox and apophatic language (sunyata/ emptiness, void,
silence, incomprehensible lux inaccessa, etc), which highlights the inade-
quacies of the rational discourse in interpretation. The core View also as(cid:8212)
sumes that non-religious mystics (including those who have (cid:8220)transcended(cid:8221)
or ignored their religious heritage) embody the vocation of mystic more
properly than do religious ones; and third, that religion is a step along the
way to a fuller, more metaphysically developed, spirituality.
The pitting of spirituality against religion and the confusions about the
types of contemplation and of concepts such as personhood21 are symp-
tomatic of pseudo-scienti(cid:64257)c approaches to mysticism. In addition to dis(cid:8212)
tinguishing the levels of contemplation with clarity and precision, Aquinas
rejected monism on the grounds that God is not the (cid:8220)formal being(cid:8221) of all
18. Core theorists often view religious experience as (cid:8220)existing generically in the human psy(cid:8212)
che," with particular religions as (cid:8220)surface manifestations(cid:8221) of a "panhuman" experiential potential-
ity, and other such vagaries. See Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution, 11.
19. On some of these errors, see McGinn, Foundations ofMysticism, 315(cid:8212)16, where he focuses
on the problems with Walter Stace(cid:8217)s views in Mysticism and Philosophy.
20. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution, 12.
21. See note 15 above.
3O HEATHER M. ERB
things. Rather, God is separate and transcendent, yet omnipresent causally
through His essence, presence, and power.22 Thus, the intellectual basis of
a core mystical experience is mistaken, inasmuch as the undifferentiated
unity of absorption it entails is, in fact, impossible. Maritain himself viewed
the divine immensity supposedly experienced by the Hindu mystics(cid:8217) con-
tact with the substantial esse of the soul as distinct from the mystical depths
of God accessed by Christian supernatural charity.23
2. '111e (cid:8220)Contextualist(cid:8221) View
In 1983, the core view came under attack by Steven Katz, whose con(cid:8212)
textualist or (cid:8220)constructivist(cid:8221) view complemented the historical research of
Bernard McGinn. Katz(cid:8217)s work of retrieval is a curio cabinet of religious phe(cid:8212)
nomena (autobiographical, doctrinal, and literary narratives), produced to
prove the dependence of mystical experience on particular cultures, tradi-
tions, and belief systems. Bridal mysticism, as well as Jewish Kabbalistic lit-
erature, for instance, presupposes a personal, differentiated union of love,
based on The Song of Songs. As removed from Scripture as Zoharic Kabbal(cid:8212)
ah may seem, with its doctrine of the divine Se(cid:64257)roth reunited through hu(cid:8212)
man action, it is nonetheless true that biblical education is thought to pro-
vide the context of divine encounter,and biblical texts anchor and enrich
Rabbinic literature. As Katz puts it, (cid:8220)what the rabbinic mystic (cid:8216)saw(cid:8217) was not
independent of what he had studied in order to (cid:8216)see.(cid:8217)(cid:8221)24 Interpretation not
only follows, but precedes and permeates, mystical experience, and these
accounts draw on cosmologies telling us about origins and ourselves and of
ascending paths towards perfection.25
Metaphysical frames~of-reference are neither accidental conditions nor
biased reprises of content(cid:8212)less, ine(cid:64258)able (cid:8220)experiences.(cid:8221) If dogmas are like the
stars that shine in the midday sun of mystical experience, then ontic sche(cid:8212)
22. See SCG I, chap. 26, (cid:8220)Is God the formal being of things?(cid:8221) Steven A. Long details the
metaphysical path of Aquinas(cid:8217)s rejection of Parmenidean monism, from his adoption of Aristo-
telian notion of potency and the hierarchy of being, to the implications of an in(cid:64257)nite act which is
not self»limiting, in his recent book Analogia Entis: On the Metaphysics ofAnalogy, Being, and the
Act ofFaith (South Bend, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), 13-38.
23. See Maritain, (cid:8220)The Natural Mystical Experience and the Void,(cid:8221) 279-80 n. 18.
24. Mysticism and Religious Traditions, edited by Steven T. Katz (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1983), 9. McGinn denies the relativism and truth-denying character of the contextualism,
but does agree that there are no (cid:8220)mysticisms(cid:8221) but only mystics adhering to various traditions and
beliefs.
25. See ibid., 33.
Natural Mysticism(cid:8212)Gateway or Detour? 31
mas are the like the light-transmitting atmosphere itself, which make them
possible. So, a Buddhist undifferentiated absorptive state, which makes no
room for individual souls, is not a Western relational union of charity; grace
as exercised by an omnipotent benevolent divine will is not necessitarian
karma; Buddhist release from samsara (cycle of rebirth) is not the perfec-
tion of Christian resurrection, and so on, contra the (cid:8220)one summit(cid:8221) view of
spirituality.
Despite its nuances, the contextualist view is also (cid:64258)awed. Katz not only
af(cid:64257)rms mystical contexts, but also denies any direct contact with ultimate
reality, and denies the truth value of any proposition about mystical expe-
rience. Katz thus accepts the dichotomy that either mystical experience is
unmediated and direct (the core view), or it is generated and limited by
context and tradition, precluding access to objective truth(cid:8212)in short, a re-
ligious relativism.
To bracket out religious texts, doctrines, and even sacraments as either
mere triggers, or as secondary re(cid:64258)ections on primary ine(cid:64258)able and certain
(cid:8220)experience(cid:8221) also reduces mysticism to a transitory alteration of conscious-
ness, instead of the complete appetitive and personal transformation called
for by Maritain in his distinction of mystical from mere philosophical con-
templation. The post-Enlightenment (cid:8220)contents(cid:8212)of(cid:8212)consciousness(cid:8221) ersatz26
mysticism also ignores the in(cid:64258)uence of language on experience, yet the
power of language effects personal transformation in the mystic, especially
considering the incommensurability between the (cid:64257)nite and in(cid:64257)nite sub-
jects.(cid:8221) The paradox of presence and absence is a verbal strategy in the via
negativa, for example.
Bernard McGinn hits on the Achilles heel of the core View in noting
that the fundamental error involved (cid:8220)lies in thinking that there is a real
division between the experiential and the theological in the mystical
tradition. The mystics themselves never thought that this was the case.(cid:8221)28
james(cid:8217)s contribution to the erroneous split in his Varieties of Religious Ex(cid:8212)
perience (1902) set the tone for a three~pronged approach to mysticism as:
26. As Howells puts it: (cid:8220)In the modern period, this Christian framework broke down under
the in(cid:64258)uence of the new science, and was replaced by an ersatz 'scienti(cid:64257)c(cid:8217) (cid:64257)eld of (cid:8216)mysticism(cid:8217)
focusing on extraordinary phenomena, now divorced from the system of thought which gave it
meaning.(cid:8221) Howells, (cid:8220)Mysticism and the Mystical: The Current Debate," 22.
2.7. Cf. McGinn, Foundations ofMysticism, xviii.
28. Bernard McGinn, (cid:8220)The Changing Shape of Late Medieval Mysticism,(cid:8221) Church History 65,
no. 2 (1996): 214.
32 HEATHER M. ERB
i. experiential and autobiographical; ii. focused on the paranormal and ex-
traordinary; and: iii. involving an exchange of the properly theological for
an empirical, inductive, psychological approach(cid:8212)a fundamental failure of
methodology, according to Garrigou, which further separated ascetical and
mystical theology.29 Anglicans such as Dean Inge and Evelyn Underhill
rightly rejected this arti(cid:64257)cial division, as well as the pseudo-spirituality of
the paranormal promoted since the seventeenth century, but it was Garri-
gou who reintegrated the elements of the spiritual life by positing a con(cid:8212)
tinuity of natural, acquired, and infused levels of contemplation, to make
mysticism a normal, if rare, culmination of the universal call to holiness.30
III. Garrigou, Aquinas, and Maritain on
Implicit Faith and the (cid:8220)Mysticism of Self(cid:8221)
1. Garrigou and Aquinas
Despite the universal call to holiness and the possibility of grace being
dispensed outside the visible Church, however, Garrigou does not accept
the core thesis. Why not? First, his limitation of authentic mysticism to the
supernatural life of grace precludes Pelagian-style generated states of con-
sciousness as an index of spiritual progress. Second, his goal of reunifying
ascetical and mystical theology (in Christian Perfection and Contemplation,
29. On Garrigou-Lagrange(cid:8217)s rejection of modern approaches to mysticism, both within and
outside the Church, see the excellent review by Aidan Nichols, O.P., Reason with Piety: Garrigou-
Lagrange in the Service of Catholic Thought (Ave Maria, Florida: Sapientia Press, 2008).
30. Garrigou(cid:8217)s articles in La vie spiritualle were taken up in his 1923 book Perfection chréti(cid:8212)
enne et contemplation selon S. Thomas d(cid:8217)Aquin at S. jean de la Croix (Christian Perfection and Con-
templation According to St. Thomas Aquinas and St. john of the Cross), where the universal call to
contemplation and holiness as the normal outcome of the development of the life of grace, is
asserted. In the same stroke, the arti(cid:64257)cial division of the ascetic and mystical, and the confusion
of contemplation with paranormalphenomena was dispelled. Inspired by Aquinas, for whom
mysticism is not a discrete set of experiences, but a life whose principle and end is charity, Gar-
rigou detailed the stages of spiritual growth in which the giving and uniting of ourselves to God
is made possible. Mystical union for the viator shares in the secret wisdom of God, the loving
knowledge proceeding from the gift of wisdom. For the theologian, the Gifts open an inward
vision of the mysteries of faith in a joining of the practical (end-directedness) and theoretical
loving contemplation. See Reginald Garrigou(cid:8212)Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life, trans-
lated by Mary Timothea Doyle, 2. vols. (Herder: St. Louis, 194.6). On the various components
of the mystical life in terms of the de(cid:64257)nition of contemplation in Aquinas, see ST II-II, q. 24, a.
9. On the degrees of charity, where Aquinas distinguishes between the charity of the incipientes,
pro(cid:64257)cientes, and perfect!) see ST II-II, q. 24., a. 9. Cf. David Knowles, "Contemplation in Saint
'lhomas Aquinas, Part 2,(cid:8221) Clergy Review 8 (July, 1934): 85403.