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Love, Knowledge, and Mystical Union in Western Christianity: Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Bernard McGinn
Bernard McGinn
Affiliation:
Professor of historical theology and the history of Christianity in the University of Chicago Divinity School, Chicago, Illinois.
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Extract

All ideals of Christian perfection, and mysticism is certainly one of these, are forms of response to the presence of God, a presence that is not open, evident, or easily accessible, but that is always in some way mysterious or hidden. When that hidden presence becomes the subject of some form of immediate experience, we can perhaps begin to speak of mysticism in the proper sense of the term. The responses of the subject to immediate divine presence have been discussed theologically in a variety of ways and according to a number of different models. Among them we might list direct contemplation or vision of God, rapture or ecstasy, deification, living in Christ, the birth of the Word in the soul, radical obedience to the directly present will of God, and especially union with God. All of these responses, which have rarely been mutually exclusive, can be called mystical in the sense that they are answers to the immediately experienced divine presence. Therefore, the mysticism of union is just one of the species of a wider and more diverse genus or group.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , March 1987 , pp. 7 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1987

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References

1. This is clearly the case, despite the efforts of Butler, Abbot who claims that “St. Augustine does not employ this term [union]; yet there are passages in which he equivalently expresses the same idea”; Western Mysticism (New York, 1923), p. 62.Google Scholar However, Augustine does speak of being one with God in heaven (for example, Ennarationes in Psalmos 36. 1. 12). In order to make the following footnotes more managable, many references have been restricted to the loca in the texts cited and not to the editions used.

2. Confessions 9.10.3: “attingimus aeternam sapientiam”; Contra Faustum 12.42: “aeternam lucem sapientiae contueri.”

3. See De mystica theologia 1 and 3 for some key texts.

4. De diligendo Deo 10.28. The most complete study of the history of these comparisons is to be found in Pepin, Jean, “‘Stilla aquae modica multo infusa vino, ferrum ignitum, luce perfusus aer.’ L'origine de trois comparisons familières à la théologie mystique médiévale,” Miscellanea André Combes (Divinitas 11), 2 vols. (Rome, 1967), 1:331–375.Google Scholar For a treatment of some late medieval authors, see Lerner, Robert E., “The Image of Mixed Liquids in Late Medieval Mystical Thought,” Church History 40 (1971): 397–441.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Sermones in Cantica 71.6–10. Compare In Cant. 83.3 and De diligendo Deo 15.39. Bernard discusses nine kinds of union in De consideratione 5.8 and De diversis 80.1.

6. See especially In Cant. 83.4–6. Compare In Cant. 45.1 and 6, 52.2–6, 59.2, and 69.7. In 82.8 Bernard identifies caritas with the visio Dei and the similitudo Dei.

7. Besides the well-known four-fold ascent of the De diligendo Deo, see, for example, De diversis 101.

8. Gregory the Great, Homilia in Evangelia 27. Bernard cites this text in his De diversis 29.1. In In Cant. 49.4 he speaks of an ecstasy that involves both intellect and will. On the use of the Gregorian theme in the twelfth century, see Javelet, Robert, “Intelligence et amour chez les auteurs spirituels du XIIe siècle,” Revue d'ascetique et de mystique 37 (1961): 273–290, 429–450;Google Scholar and his Image et ressemblance an douzième siècle, 2 vols. (Paris, 1967), 1: 427–435.Google Scholar

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11. Speculum fidei 66; Super Cant. Cant. 109.

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16. Super Cant. Cant. 76.

17. Epistola deanima 8.

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19. Commentarta in quatuor Libros Sententiarum III (hereafter cited as In Sent.), d.6, a.2, qq.l-2.

20. In III Sent. d.26, a.2, q.1; and d.31, a.3, p.1. In III Sent. d.6, q.3, dub.2; and d.10, al, q.2.

21. In I Sent. d.31, p.2, a.2., q.1.

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29. A survey of some of the texts from the two surviving commentaries on the Song of Songs makes this evident, for example, Comment. 2 (Barbet, pp. 68–69, 102);Google ScholarComment. 3 (Barbet, pp. 110–113, 120, 155, 173).Google Scholar On love as superintellectualis cognhtio, see the texts from the Explanatio super Mysticam Theologiam given in Javelet, R., “Thomas Gallus ou les écritures,” pp. 108–110.Google Scholar

30. For some illustrative texts from the commentaries on the Song of Songs, see Barbet, , ed., Thomas Callus, pp. 68–70, 204–205.Google Scholar

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32. Johnston, William, The Mysticism of the Cloud of Unknowing (Wheathampstead, 1978), pp. 34–36, 89–91, 119–133, 136–138, 208–210, 257–258, 271.Google Scholar

33. Johnston, , Mysticism, p. 91.Google Scholar

34. For example, chapter 21 (Walsh, pp. 163–165).

35. Chapter 67 (Walsh, pp. 249–250).

36. The fourth part of Johnston's book (pp. 189–256) is a detailed study of the Cloud author's teaching on union.

37. Gerson, Jean, De mystica theologia speculativa 43, in Jean Gerson: Selections, ed. Ozment, Steven (Leiden, 1969), p. 50.Google Scholar

38. Hart, Mother Columba, trans., Hadewijch: The Complete Works (New York, 1980);Google Scholar see Letter 9 (p. 66), Letter 17 (p. 84), Vision 4 (p. 274), Vision 12 (p. 296), and others.

39. On the unity of God's ground and the soul's ground, see, for instance, German Sermon 5b and 15 (hereafter cited as Pr.), as translated in Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defense, trans. Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn (New York, 1981), pp. 183, 192Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Essential Eckhart).

40. See Latin Sermon 4.1.n.28 (hereafter cited as Serm.), as translated in Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, trans. Bernard McGinn in collaboration with Frank Tobin and Elvira Borgstädt (New York, 1986), pp. 209–210Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Teacher and Preacher).

41. On union without a medium, see, for example, Pr. 62, 76, 81; Liber Parabolorum Genesis n. 146; Expositio Libri Sapientiae. nn. 282–284; Serm. 6.1.

42. Pr. 6 (in Essential Eckhart, pp. 187–188).

43. On the “just man insofar as he is just” see especially the commentary on John's prologue, nn. 14–22 (Essential Eckhart, pp. 126–129).

44. For example, Pr. 22 and 6 (Essential Eckhart, pp. 194, 187).

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46. The Book of Divine Consolation 2 (Essential Eckhart, p. 247).Google Scholar

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48. A useful account is Kieckhefer, Richard, “Meister Eckhart's Conception of Union with God,” Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978): 203–235.Google Scholar

49. For example, Quaestiones Parisiensis 1; Expositio sancti Evangelii secundum Johannem, nn. 673, 697; and Serm. 11.2.

50. For example, Pr. 7 and 21 (Teacher and Preacher, pp. 254, 281).

51. Serm. 29, n. 302 (Teacher and Preacher, p. 226).

52. For example, Serm. 6.1–4, 30.1–2, 40.1–3, 47.2–3; Pr. 5a, 5b, 27, 28, 41, 48, 63, 65, 67, 75, and 82. See also caritas in the Glossary in Teacher and Preacher, pp. 390–391; and McGinn, Bernard, “St. Bernard and Meister Eckhart,” Cîteaux 31 (1980): 380–386.Google Scholar The quotation is from Pr. 70 (Teacher and Preacher, p. 317).

53. In Sap. n. 282 (Teacher and Preacher, p. 172).

54. Pr. 39: “The Holy Spirit's being lies in my catching fire in him and becoming totally melted and becoming simply love” (Teacher and Preacher, p. 298).

55. Pr. 28.

56. Pr. 39 (Teacher and Preacher, p. 298). Compare Pr. 7 (Teacher and Preacher, p. 254), and Pr. 52 (Essential Eckhart, p. 201).

57. Essential Eckhart, p. 292.

58. See McGinn, Bernard, “Meister Eckhart's Condemnation Reconsidered,” The Thomist 44 (1980): 390–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59. On God as distinct and indistinct, see, for example, In Sap. nn. 144–155 (Teacher and Preacher, pp. 166–170); and McGinn, Bernard, “Meister Eckhart on God as Absolute Unity,” in Neoplatonism and Christian Thought, ed. O'Meara, Dominic J. (Albany, 1982), pp. 128–139.Google Scholar

60. See “Documents Relating to Eckhart's Condemnation,” in Essential Eckhart, p. 72.

61. For a discussion of this, see “Meister Eckhart's Condemnation Reconsidered,” pp. 408–409.

62. The bull is translated in Essential Eckhart, pp. 77–81.

63. Sermon 11 for the Monday of Passion Week, as translated by Colledge, Eric and Jane, M., Spiritual Conferences by Johann Tauler (Rockford, 1961), p. 177.Google Scholar

64. There is an English translation by Clark, J. M., Henry Suso: Little Book of Eternal Wisdom and Little Book of Truth (New York, n.d.).Google Scholar See especially chapter 3 on the distinction of virtual and created existence (pp. 180–181), and chapter 4, based in part on Bernard, which distinguishes two forms of union (pp. 185–186).

65. John, of Ruysbroeck, , The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage; The Sparkling Stone; The Book of Supreme Truth, trans. Dom, C.A. Wynschenk (London, 1951).Google Scholar See The Adornment 3.3–4 (pp. 172–178).

66. The Sparkling Stone, chap. 9 (p. 203), 10 (pp. 208–212).

67. Baere, G. de, ed., Jan Van Ruusbroec: Opera omnia 1. Boecksken der verclaringhe (Leiden, 1981), p. 110–120.Google Scholar

68. Ibid., pp. 122–140 (the quotation is on p. 122).

69. See ibid., pp. 146–14.

70. Insisted upon on ibid., p. 152.

71. See Paul Mommaers, “Introduction,” in ibid., pp. 29–31.

72. For the debate on the “Free Spirit” heresy, see the revisionist views of Lerner, Robert E., The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1972)Google Scholar, as compared with the more traditional account in Leff, Gordon, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages, 2 vols. (New York, 1967), 1: 308–407.Google Scholar

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76. Ibid., pp. 52–56.

77. Eckhart used the analogy of transsubstantiation in his Pr. 6 (Essential Eckhart, p. 188), tried to modify it in his “Defense,” but still had it condemned as heretical in article 10 of the bull (p. 78).

78. Ozment, , ed., Jean Gerson, p. 64.Google Scholar

79. See especially pp. 64–66, where mystica theologia is described not only as cognitio experimentalis, but also as a sapida scientia congruent with mentalis intelligentia.

80. Later in the century, much of the debate over Nicholas of Cusa's docta ignorantia centered on the relation of love and knowledge to union with God.

81. John, Saint of the Cross, , Spiritual Canticle, trans. Peers, E. Allison (Garden City, N.J., 1961)Google Scholar, Second Redaction 12.7, 32.6 and 39.3–6 (pp. 304, 439, 475–477) for passages comparable to some in Eckhart. John sometimes even speaks of “substantial union or transformation,” for example, Canticle 39.6 (p. 477).Google Scholar

82. Canticle 12.7 (p. 304).

83. Canticle 31.1 (p. 430). For some key texts on union, see Canticle 12.7–8, 22.3–4, 27.6–8, 38.3, 39.3–6.

84. For some of these images, see Canticle 14–15.2, 26.4, 31.1.

85. Canticle 13.11 (p. 313).

86. See, for example, Canticle 14–15.12–20 (pp. 322–328), 26.5–9 (pp. 399–400), 35.5 (pp. 452–453), 37.2–6 (pp. 462–465), 39.12 (p. 481).

87. Canticle 26.16–17 (p. 403).

88. See especially Canticle 38.5 (pp. 470–471).

89. Inadequate typologies of late medieval mysticism based on such a contrast can be found in older works, such as Bernhart, Joseph, Bernhardische und Eckhartische Mystik in thren Beziehungen und Gegensätzen (Kempten, 1912)Google Scholar, as well as more recent ones, such as Ozment, Steven, The Age of Reform 1250–1550 (New Haven, 1980), pp. 115–124.Google Scholar

90. Campbell, Roy, Poems of St. John of the Cross (New York, 1956), p. 21.Google Scholar