gives us a definition of mystical theology. “‘In the serene night’—that is, contemplation, in which the soul desires to behold the grove (God as the Creator and Giver of life to all creatures). It is called night because contemplation is obscure, and that is the reason why it is also called mystical theology—that is, the secret or hidden wisdom of God, wherein God, without the sound of words or the intervention of any bodily or spiritual sense, as it were in silence and repose, in the darkness of sense and nature, teaches the soul—and the soul knows not how—in a most secret and hidden way. Some spiritual writers call this ‘understanding without understanding,’ because it does not take place in what philosophers call the active intellect (intellectus agens), which is conversant with the forms, fancies, and apprehensions of the physical faculties, but in the intellect as it is passive (intellectus possibilis), which, without receiving such forms, receives passively only the substantial intelligence of them, free from all imagery.”[35]
Father Baker explains mystic contemplation as follows: “In the second place, there is a mystic contemplation which is, indeed, truly and properly such, by which a soul, without discoursings and curious speculations, without any perceptible use of the internal senses or sensible images, by a pure, simple, and reposeful operation of the mind, in the obscurity of faith, simply regards God as infinite and incomprehensible verity, and with the whole bent of the will rests in him as (her) infinite, universal, and incomprehensible good.… This is properly the exercise of angels, for their knowledge is not by discourse (discursive), but by one
simple intuition all objects are represented to their view at once with all their natures, qualities, relations, dependencies, and effects; but man, that receives all his knowledge first from his senses, can only by effects and outward appearances with the labor of reasoning collect the nature of objects, and this but imperfectly; but his reasoning being ended, then he can at once contemplate all that is known unto him in the object.… This mystic contemplation or union is of two sorts: 1. Active and ordinary.… 2. Passive and extraordinary; the which is not a state, but an actual grace and favor from God.… And it is called passive, not but that therein the soul doth actively contemplate God, but she can neither, when she pleases, dispose herself thereto, nor yet refuse it when that God thinks good to operate after such a manner in the soul, and to represent himself unto her by a divine particular image, not at all framed by the soul, but supernaturally infused into her.… As for the former sort, which is active contemplation, we read in mystic authors—Thaulerus, Harphius, etc.—that he that would become spiritual ought to practise the drawing of his external senses inwardly into his internal, there losing and, as it were, annihilating them. Having done this, he must then draw his internal senses into the superior powers of the soul, and there annihilate them likewise; and those powers of the intellectual soul he must draw into that which is called their unity, which is the principle and fountain from whence those powers do flow, and in which they are united. And, lastly, that unity (which alone is capable of perfect union with God) must be applied and firmly fixed on God; and herein,
say they, consist the perfect divine contemplation and union of an intellectual soul with God. Now, whether such expressions as these will abide the strict examination of philosophy or no I will not take on me to determine; certain it is that, by a frequent and constant exercise of internal prayer of the will, joined with mortification, the soul comes to operate more and more abstracted from sense, and more elevated above the corporal organs and faculties, so drawing nearer to the resemblance of the operations of an angel or separated spirit. Yet this abstraction and elevation (perhaps) are not to be understood as if the soul in these pure operations had no use at all of the internal senses or sensible images (for the schools resolve that cannot consist with the state of a soul joined to a mortal body); but surely her operations in this pure degree of prayer are so subtile and intime, and the images that she makes use of so exquisitely pure and immaterial, that she cannot perceive at all that she works by images, so that spiritual writers are not much to be condemned by persons utterly inexperienced in these mystic affairs, if, delivering things as they perceived by their own experience, they have expressed them otherwise than will be admitted in the schools.”[36]
That kind of contemplation which is treated of in mystical theology is, therefore, a state or an act of the mind in which the intellectual operation approaches to that of separate spirits—that is, of human souls separated from their bodies, and of pure spirits or angels who are, by their essence unembodied, simply intellectual beings. Its direct and chief object is God, other objects
being viewed in their relation to him. The end of it is the elevation of the soul above the sphere of the senses and the sensible world into a more spiritual condition approaching the angelic, in which it is closely united with God, and prepared for the beatific and deific state of the future and eternal life. The longing after such a liberation from the natural and imperfect mode of knowing and enjoying the sovereign good, the sovereign truth, the sovereign beauty, through the senses and the discursive operations of reason, is as ancient and as universal among men as religion and philosophy. It is an aspiration after the invisible and the infinite. When it is not enlightened, directed, and controlled by a divine authority, it drives men into a kind of intellectual and spiritual madness, produces the most extravagant absurdities in thought and criminal excesses in conduct, stimulates and employs as its servants all the most cruel and base impulses of the disordered passions, and disturbs the whole course of nature. Demons are fallen angels who aspired to obtain their deification through pride, and the fall of man was brought about through an inordinate and disobedient effort of Eve to become like the gods, knowing good and evil. An inordinate striving to become like the angels assimilates man to the demons, and an inordinate striving after a similitude to God causes a relapse into a lower state of sin than that in which we are born. The history of false religions and philosophies furnishes a series of illustrations of this statement. In the circle of nominal Christianity, and even within the external communion of the Catholic Church, heretical and false systems of a similar kind have sprung up, and the opinions and writings
of some who were orthodox and well-intentioned in their principles have been tinctured with such errors, or at least distorted in their verbal expression of the cognate truths. This remark applies not only to those who are devotees of a mystical theology more or less erroneous, but also to certain philosophical writers with their disciples. Ontologism is a kind of mystical philosophy; for its fundamental doctrine ascribes to man a mode of knowledge which is proper only to the purely intellectual being, and even a direct, immediate intuition of God which is above the natural power not only of men but of angels.
There are two fundamental errors underlying all these false systems of mystical theology—or more properly theosophy—and philosophy. One is distinctively anti-theistic, the other distinctively anti-Christian; but we may class both under one logical species with the common differentia of denial of the real essence and personality, and the real operation ad extra, of the Incarnate Word. The first error denies his divine nature and creative act, the second his human nature and theandric operation. By the first error identity of substance in respect to the divine nature and all nature is asserted; by the second, identity of the human nature and its operation with that nature which is purely spiritual. The first error manifests itself as a perversion of the revealed and Catholic doctrine of the deification of the creature in and through the Word, by teaching that it becomes one with God in its mode of being by absorption into the essence whose emanation it is, in substantial unity. The second manifests itself by teaching that the instrumentality and the
process of this unification are purely spiritual. The first denies the substantiality of the soul and the proper activity which proceeds from it and constitutes its life. The second denies the difference of the human essence as a composite of spirit and body, which separates it from purely spiritual essences and marks it as a distinct species. The first error is pantheism; for the second we cannot think of any designating term more specific than idealism. Both these errors, however disguised or modified may be the forms they assume, conduct logically to the explicit denial of the Catholic faith, and even of any form of positive doctrinal Christianity. Their extreme developments are to be found outside of the boundaries of all that is denominated Christian theology. Within these boundaries they have developed themselves more or less imperfectly into gross heresies, and into shapes of erroneous doctrine which approach to or recede from direct and palpable heresy in proportion to the degree of their evolution. Our purpose is not directly concerned with any of the openly anti-Christian forms of these errors, but only with such as have really infected or have been imputed to the doctrines and writings of mystical authors who were Catholics by profession, and have flourished within the last four centuries. There is a certain more or less general and sweeping charge made by some Catholic authors of reputation, and a prejudice or suspicion to some extent among educated Catholics, against the German school of mystics of the epoch preceding the Reformation, that they prepared the way by their teaching for Martin Luther and his associates. This notion of an affinity between the
doctrine of some mystical writers and Protestantism breeds a more general suspicion against mystical theology itself, as if it undermined or weakened the fabric of the external, visible order and authority of the church through some latent, unorthodox, and un-Catholic element of spiritualism. We are inclined to think, moreover, that some very zealous advocates of the scholastic philosophy apprehend a danger to sound psychological science from the doctrine of mystic contemplation as presented by the aforesaid school of writers. Those who are canonized saints, indeed, as St. Bonaventure and St. John of the Cross, cannot be censured, and their writings must be treated with respect. Nevertheless, they may be neglected, their doctrine ignored, and, through misapprehension or inadvertence, their teachings may be criticised and assailed when presented by other authors not canonized and approved by the solemn judgment of the church; and thus mystical theology itself may suffer discredit and be undervalued. It is desirable to prove that genuine mystical theology has no affinity with the Protestant heresies which subvert the visible church with its authority, or those of idealistic philosophy, but is, on the contrary, in perfect harmony with the dogmatic and philosophical doctrine of the most approved Catholic schools. It is only a modest effort in that direction which we can pretend to make, with respect chiefly to the second or philosophical aspect of the question. We must devote, however, a few paragraphs to its first or theological aspect.