JOSEPH BEAUMONT.
"The One remains, the many change and pass:
Heaven's light for ever shines; earth's shadows fly:
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity."
SHELLEY.
CHRISTIAN PLATONISM AND SPECULATIVE MYSTICISM
2. IN THE WEST
"Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?"—1 COR. iii. 16.
We have seen that Mysticism, like most other types of religion, had its cradle in the East. The Christian Platonists, whom we considered in the last Lecture, wrote in Greek, and we had no occasion to mention the Western Churches. But after the Pseudo-Dionysius, the East had little more to contribute to Christian thought. John of Damascus, in the eighth century, half mystic and half scholastic, need not detain us. The Eastern Churches rapidly sank into a deplorably barbarous condition, from which they have never emerged. We may therefore turn away from the Greek-speaking countries, and trace the course of Mysticism in the Latin and Teutonic races.
Scientific Mysticism in the West did not all pass through Dionysius. Victorinus, a Neoplatonic philosopher, was converted to Christianity in his old age, about 360 A.D. The story of his conversion, and the joy which it caused in the Christian community, is told by St. Augustine[188]. He was a deep thinker of the speculative mystical type, but a clumsy and obscure writer, in spite of his rhetorical training. His importance lies in his position as the first Christian Neoplatonist who wrote in Latin.
The Trinitarian doctrine of Victorinus anticipates in a remarkable manner that of the later philosophical mystics. The Father, he says, eternally knows Himself in the Son. The Son is the self-objectification of God, the "forma" of God[189], the utterance of the Absolute. The Father is "cessatio," "silentium," "quies"; but He is also "motus" while the Son is "motio." There is no contradiction between "motus" and "cessatio" since "motus" is not the same as "mutatio." "Movement" belongs to the "being" of God; and this eternal "movement" is the generation of the Son. This eternal generation is exalted above time. All life is now: we live always in the present, not in the past or future; and thus our life is a symbol of eternity, to which all things are for ever present[190]. The generation of the Son is at the same time the creation of the archetypal world; for the Son is the cosmic principle[191], through whom all that potentially is is actualised. He even says that the Father is to the Son as [Greek: ho mê ôn] to [Greek: ho ôn], thus taking the step which Plotinus wished to avoid, and applying the same expression to the superessential God as to infra-essential matter.[192]
This actualisation is a self-limitation of God,[193] but involves no degradation. Victorinus uses language implying the subordination of the Son, but is strongly opposed to Arianism.