Reason must not be confounded with ratiocination, or mere reasoning. Shall we follow reason? Yes, but not individual reasoning, against the testimony of those who are better informed than we; nor by insisting on demonstration, where probable evidence alone is possible; nor by trusting solely to the evidence of the senses, when spiritual things are in question. Coleridge, in replying to those who argued that all knowledge comes to us from the senses, says: “At any rate we must bring to all facts the light in which we see them.” This the Christian does. The light of love reveals much that would otherwise be invisible. Wordsworth, Excursion, book 5 (598)—“The mind's repose On evidence is not to be ensured By act of naked reason. Moral truth Is no mechanic structure, built by rule.”
Rationalism is the mathematical theory of knowledge. Spinoza's Ethics is an illustration of it. It would deduce the universe from an axiom. Dr. Hodge very wrongly described rationalism as “an overuse of reason.” It is rather the use of an abnormal, perverted, improperly conditioned reason; see Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:34, 39, 55, and criticism by Miller, in his Fetich in Theology. The phrase “sanctified intellect” means simply intellect accompanied by right affections toward God, and trained to work under their influence. Bishop Butler: “Let reason be kept to, but let not such poor creatures as we are go on objecting to an infinite scheme that we do not see the necessity or usefulness of all its parts, and call that reasoning.” Newman Smyth, Death's Place in Evolution, 86—“Unbelief is a shaft sunk down into the darkness of the earth. [pg 031]Drive the shaft deep enough, and it would come out into the sunlight on the earth's other side.” The most unreasonable people in the world are those who depend solely upon reason, in the narrow sense. “The better to exalt reason, they make the world irrational.” “The hen that has hatched ducklings walks with them to the water's edge, but there she stops, and she is amazed when they go on. So reason stops and faith goes on, finding its proper element in the invisible. Reason is the feet that stand on solid earth; faith is the wings that enable us to fly; and normal man is a creature with wings.” Compare γνῶσις (1 Tim. 6:20—“the knowledge which is falsely so called”) with ἐπίγνωσις (2 Pet. 1:2—“the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” = full knowledge, or true knowledge). See Twesten, Dogmatik, 1:467-500; Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 4, 5; Mansel, Limits of Religious Thought, 96; Dawson, Modern Ideas of Evolution.
3. Scripture and Mysticism.
As rationalism recognizes too little as coming from God, so mysticism recognizes too much.
A. True mysticism.—We have seen that there is an illumination of the minds of all believers by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, however, makes no new revelation of truth, but uses for his instrument the truth already revealed by Christ in nature and in the Scriptures. The illuminating work of the Spirit is therefore an opening of men's minds to understand Christ's previous revelations. As one initiated into the mysteries of Christianity, every true believer may be called a mystic. True mysticism is that higher knowledge and fellowship which the Holy Spirit gives through the use of nature and Scripture as subordinate and principal means.
“Mystic” = one initiated, from μύω, “to close the eyes”—probably in order that the soul may have inward vision of truth. But divine truth is a “mystery,” not only as something into which one must be initiated, but as ὑπερβάλλουσα τῆς γνώσεως (Eph. 3:19)—surpassing full knowledge, even to the believer; see Meyer on Rom. 11:25—“I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this mystery.” The Germans have Mystik with a favorable sense, Mysticismus with an unfavorable sense,—corresponding respectively to our true and false mysticism. True mysticism is intimated in John 16:13—“the spirit of truth ... shall guide you into all the truth”; Eph. 3:9—“dispensation of the mystery”; 1 Cor. 2:10—“unto us God revealed them through the Spirit.” Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 35—“Whenever true religion revives, there is an outcry against mysticism, i. e., higher knowledge, fellowship, activity through the Spirit of God in the heart.” Compare the charge against Paul that he was mad, in Acts 26:24, 25, with his self-vindication in 2 Cor. 5:13—“whether we are beside ourselves, it is unto God.”
Inge, Christian Mysticism, 21—“Harnack speaks of mysticism as rationalism applied to a sphere above reason. He should have said reason applied to a sphere above rationalism. Its fundamental doctrine is the unity of all existence. Man can realize his individuality only by transcending it and finding himself in the larger unity of God's being. Man is a microcosm. He recapitulates the race, the universe, Christ himself.” Ibid., 5—Mysticism is “the attempt to realize in thought and feeling the immanence of the temporal in the eternal, and of the eternal in the temporal. It implies (1) that the soul can see and perceive spiritual truth; (2) that man, in order to know God, must be a partaker of the divine nature; (3) that without holiness no man can see the Lord; (4) that the true hierophant of the mysteries of God is love. The ‘scala perfectionis’is (a) the purgative life; (b) the illuminative life; (c) the unitive life.” Stevens, Johannine Theology, 239, 240—“The mysticism of John ... is not a subjective mysticism which absorbs the soul in self-contemplation and revery, but an objective and rational mysticism, which lives in a world of realities, apprehends divinely revealed truth, and bases its experience upon it. It is a mysticism which feeds, not upon its own feelings and fancies, but upon Christ. It involves an acceptance of him, and a life of obedience to him. Its motto is: Abiding in Christ.” As the power press cannot dispense with the type, so the Spirit of God does not dispense with Christ's external revelations in nature and in Scripture. E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 364—“The word of God is a form or mould, into which the Holy Spirit delivers us when he creates us anew”; cf. Rom. 6:17—“ye became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto ye were delivered.”
B. False mysticism.—Mysticism, however, as the term is commonly used, errs in holding to the attainment of religious knowledge by direct communication from God, and by passive absorption of the human activities into the divine. It either partially or wholly loses sight of (a) the outward organs of revelation, nature and the Scriptures; (b) the activity of the human powers in the reception of all religious knowledge; (c) the personality of man, and, by consequence, the personality of God.
In opposition to false mysticism, we are to remember that the Holy Spirit works through the truth externally revealed in nature and in Scripture (Acts 14:17—“he left not himself without witness”; Rom. 1:20—“the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen”; Acts 7:51—“ye do always resist the Holy Spirit: as your fathers did, so do ye”; Eph. 6:17—“the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”). By this truth already given we are to test all new communications which would contradict or supersede it (1 John 4:1—“believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are of God”; Eph. 5:10—“proving what is well pleasing unto the Lord”). By these tests we may try Spiritualism, Mormonism, Swedenborgianism. Note the mystical tendency in Francis de Sales, Thomas à Kempis, Madame Guyon, Thomas C. Upham. These writers seem at times to advocate an unwarrantable abnegation of our reason and will, and a “swallowing up of man in God.” But Christ does not deprive us of reason and will; he only takes from us the perverseness of our reason and the selfishness of our will; so reason and will are restored to their normal clearness and strength. Compare Ps. 16:7—“Jehovah, who hath given me counsel; yea, my heart instructeth me in the night seasons”—God teaches his people through the exercise of their own faculties.