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“In
finem nostrae cognitionis Deum tamquam ignotum cognoscimus”
*
Saint Thomas Aquinas
Dedication:
to Mary, Mother of God
A
Brief Note to the Reader
Mysticism
is a phenomenon fraught with nuances, both linguistic and metaphysical. The Metaphysics, consequently, as a philosophic work, presumes to address
issues of a nature less than congenial to the universe of ordinary discourse.
Philosophy, to be sure, demands a rigorous language, a syntax, if you will, that
is subtly antagonistic to the fluid and sometimes extremely volatile concepts
intrinsic to the phenomenon of the mystical experience.
The austere language that philosophy arrogates to itself is sometimes too
rigid a probe to uncover, reveal, the subtle and often delicate complexities
that inevitably arise in a careful examination of mysticism;
hence a sometimes involuted terminology will
be encountered in our fragile attempt to render
linguistic
what merely verges on becoming intelligible. I have, to the best
of my ability, limited this proliferation of abstruse language applied to an
already abstruse subject. I have attempted to keep neologisms to a minimal, but
have not blenched from employing them when my own linguistic resources are
exhausted. Notwithstanding the difficulties inevitably encountered in language,
I have endeavored in this work not simply to clarify what is obscure, but to
address what is unique and compelling in this type of experience, an experience
that has challenged philosophy for something more than a parenthetical account,
an account, more often than not, much too eager to either dismiss this
phenomenon, or to relegate it to psychology through its own failure to provide
it with an adequate epistemological framework. Philosophy, in a word, has not
yet coherently responded to this challenge. I am not satisfied that I have done
so to the extent required, and many readers will no doubt concur with my
assessment. Nevertheless it is a beginning of sorts,
and
if it provokes more questions than it answers it will at least have served to
rehabilitate the philosophical arrogance that has been too ready to dismiss what
it finds uncongenial.
Hence the impetus of this
work.
What
this Book is, and what it is not
Although
this book is subtitled a “Commentary on the Mystical Philosophy of St.
John of the Cross” it will become immediately evident to the reader that, both
in scope and purpose, it is a commentary structured around some very specific
epistemological issues. In particular, it is concerned with exploring the
possibility of articulating a coherent theory of knowledge that is
implicit, or perhaps better yet, latent, in the writings of St. John. I say latent
because the theory itself is really rather an aside to the very practical issues
raised by St. John in the writing of his several treatises on mystical
experience. Anyone who has read St. John will undoubtedly agree that his
approach to the subject is more programmatic than analytical, at least in any
contemporary sense. As such, the aperture, if you will, of our focus must go
beyond the hard and fast boundaries that might otherwise define our expectations
of a commentary dealing strictly with the theological complexities that
inevitably arise upon a close reading of St. John of the Cross.
In one
sense, of course, the works of St. John are a commentary unto themselves, and
while this may simplify matters in one respect, it considerably complicates them
in another. The verse by verse interpretation which St. John himself offers is,
obviously, the first and most apparent level, a level where St. John provides us
with an often detailed explication of the meaning behind his extremely subtle
poetic utterances. This meaning, both in scope and intention, is purely
theological. Our own purposes within this book, however, are not: they are, by
and large, epistemological. And this is where the issue becomes a bit
more complex.
A commentary of the type proposed, it seemed to me, must take this first level
of meaning fundamentally rooted in theology, to the next and less
apparent level of meaning radicated in epistemology; in other words, one
that specifically emerges from an epistemological criticism of the first level.
In this sense it is a striving for what might be called hyper-textual meaning, a
meaning always latent within, but often suppressed by, the complexities of the
text itself. At the same time it is also a striving for contextual coherence. In
any critical encounter between mysticism and epistemology, it is the demand for
coherence, and not credence, which inevitably predominates. The often attenuated
and sometimes conflicting principles that have largely become part and parcel of
mystical theology remain no more than mere speculations until coherence is
demonstrated to obtain not merely between the principles themselves within their
own legitimate province (theology), but more importantly, between these
principles and the canons of reason to which epistemology presumes to hold them
accountable. Questions likely to emerge from such an encounter are of the
following sort: “Do the implications of St. John’s often abstruse statements
actually hold up under epistemological criticism?” “Does a fully explicated
meaning which accords with accepted theological principles, also accord
with accepted epistemological principles?” "Is the via negativa,
or the apophatic way, a legitimate epistemological venue?" In a word, do the theological
principles have adequate epistemological credentials?
For this
reason, and others, I thought it best to entitle this work a commentary dealing
with St. John’s mystical “philosophy”, and not his “theology”
as such, for a much broader range of issues, especially epistemological issues,
are clearly necessary to the scope of this type of endeavor, issues which a
purely theological analysis would otherwise, and legitimately, exclude. The
reason I have done so will, I think, become apparent early on. I have
essentially attempted to bring three related issues into focus within the
present work: the phenomenon that we have come to understand as the “mystical
experience”, the metaphysics ostensibly underlying it, and the consonance, if
any, obtaining between the two when viewed under the objective lens of
epistemology. The real question of the work, then, can be summarized simply as
this: “Is the mystical experience epistemologically coherent?” There
are, of course, inevitably a subset of questions latent within this: “Are the
conclusions drawn from St. John’s arguments consistent with the premises
implied?” “Do the premises and conclusions themselves coherently accord with
the metaphysics?” In short, is the mystical experience described by St. John
of the Cross at the very least epistemologically credible?
But why
St. John of the Cross? Why not Eckhardt, Gerson, or Tauler? Even the briefest
historical survey of the great Western Christian Mystics offers, especially in
the way of speculative mysticism, a wide variety of other and perhaps better
known candidates. The reason that I have chosen St. John is simply this: the
works of St. John of the Cross, particularly the Ascent of Mount Carmel
and The Dark Night of the Soul, stand, I think, as the culmination of the
Western tradition of mysticism. Every other representative of this tradition is
either in some way defective or deficient in articulating what has come to be
accepted as orthodox doctrine in mystical theology. It is, in
retrospect, no small token to the depth and scope of his writings that St. John
was declared the first “Doctor of Mystical Theology” within the Roman
Catholic Church. Much of this remains to be discussed later.
As a
final note in the way of explaining what this book is, or at least
endeavors to be, I think it necessary to say something briefly about the term
“mysticism” itself. It has always appeared to me somewhat regrettable that
the term “mysticism” is used to define what would really be more accurately
described as “contemplative theology”. With the term “mystical” we are
likely to conjure up a good deal that is either unrelated, or deeply inimical to
the contemplative theology that comes to us in the writings of the great Christian mystics. Mystical theology, in one of its typical paradoxes, is
essentially a rational enterprise despite the fact that the mystical
experience itself is not. While basically a practical undertaking, in presuming
to set forth reasons for this practical task, it is at least implicitly a
rational justification as well. And it is precisely this rational aspect of the
mystical experience that is the focus of this book.
On the other hand, it is
equally important to the reader to understand what this book is not. This
book is not a compendium. While it carefully attempts to chronologically
accompany the text where possible, it does not blench from a departure where an
examination of concurrent issues is warranted. Some will undoubtedly find this
vexing. And while it adverts to the Mystical Tradition in general, a tradition
out of which the thought of St. John very clearly emerges, it does not presume
to exhaustively treat of the many notable figures who have contributed to this
long-standing tradition. Deidre Carabine’s “The Unknown God: Negative
Theology in the Platonic Tradition: Plato to Eriugena”,
I suggest, would be much more suitable to this purpose. The goal of this book is
unabashedly epistemological. Neither do I presume the reader to be intimately
acquainted with Thomism as such, from which many of the metaphysical doctrines
articulated by St. John unquestionably derive. For the sake of clarity, and the
convenience of the reader, I have endeavored to reiterate them when necessary,
providing pertinent documentation should the reader wish to explore the issue
further. As dearly as I wish this work to be all things to all people, I have
settled for the more modest goal of providing epistemological perspective on the
sometimes fluid, sometimes volatile, but always paradoxical issues that
mysticism perpetually engenders.
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*
In the end, we know God as unknown (In
Boetium de Trinitate, q. 1, a. 2, ad 1um)
Preface
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