Several months ago I wrote an article, "Evangelical or Mystic, or Evangelical Mystic?" (June 12, 2006). In that article I looked at the relationship between mysticism and evangelicalism. I continue to think about this subject almost daily. Perhaps this is because I have lived long enough to witness various excesses in the church which I have either encountered in strands of teaching, or personally experienced by means of trying to live my out my Christian calling for over fifty years.
TWO TYPES OF SPIRITUALITY
As I previously noted, there have been two basic types of Christian spirituality that have been lived out in Christian history. One is mystical and the other is evangelical. These are types, or models. No tradition, generally speaking, is all one or all the other. Various systems and tendencies reveal one or both of these types. I think Donald G. Bloesch gets this about right when he concludes:
Mystical spirituality has been dominant in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, whereas evangelical devotion characterizes the mainstream of Protestantism. This is not to deny, however, that many Protestants have also been mystics and some of the Catholic saints have been strongly evangelical and biblical as well (The Crisis of Piety, 1988, page 88).
I believe Bloesch is correct when he reminds us that mystical spirituality, within Christian history, has had two principal sources-the Bible and neo-Platonism. In certain kinds of Christian mysticism there is a tension between biblical piety and Hellenistic philosophy. Today, even elements of Buddhism and Hinduism have crept into some Christian circles. This has resulted in a reaction from some very conservative writers who often understand very little about Christian thought or mysticism. This reaction brought about some popular books that prompted large numbers of fundamentalist Christians to reject all the mystical elements found in true faith. More recently, a pendulum swing has taken place as hungry and thirsty souls are looking for a deeper experience of their union with Christ. Witness the continued popularity of books by Richard Foster and Dallas Willard in particular.
Evangelical devotion seeks to be biblical, in that it grounds itself in the Old and New Testaments. This type of spirituality was called "biblical personalism" by the late European theologian Emil Brunner. He called it this in order to show a difference between biblical religion and monistic spiritualities. In biblical personalism the human personality affirmed in a wholistic manner. In monistic models personality is negated or transcended. Even some conservative Christian tendencies miss this when they stress a kind of "deeper life experience" whereby it is not me who lives and acts, but Christ in me. This emphasis misuses plainly biblical texts such as Paul's testimony that it is "Christ in you, [who is] the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27) and "it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 1:20). I once tried to live this brand of evangelical mysticism only to realize that faith was a serious fight and it was I who had to stand and run the race set before me if I would truly be myself and be empowered by the Spirit of Christ who lives in me. Christ does not, in other words, replace me as a person.
GRACE ALONG AND FAITH ALONE
A major key to Protestant thinking, at this point, is its doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone. This discovery had led a host of people to rely solely upon grace in a way that captures the whole heart and soul of the believer. This doctrine has served as the mainspring and proper motivation for all response to God in the Spirit. When this grace is moved to the side by any kind of mysticism, and not all mysticism does this for sure, the results will never be good. A doctrinal emphasis that does not stress discontinuity between man and God will ultimately lead to an emphasis on something other than radically free grace. Mysticism inherently tends to stress continuity. It desires to transcend the subject-object relationship by immersing man, the subject, into God, the object. This is why grace is often viewed as an infused spiritual power that transforms us into God, a kind of divinizing work that makes us more and more divine. Athanasius, in one of his most often quoted statements, said: "Christ became man so that man could become God." While this strong emphasis on the incarnation has an element of truth in it I have some profound questions about its continued use in church tradition as it is worked out mystically. Simply put, I believe some in the church have used Athanasius' words in ways that lead to denying a healthy biblical personalism. One reason for this denial is the failure to clearly affirm God's grace in terms of justification, or our personal vindication before a holy God. At the heart of evangelical religion is the reality of the substitutionary atoning sacrifice of Jesus for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2). Remove this emphasis and the results will not strengthen the church but weaken it.
THE PROPER PLACE FOR THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN FAITH
What, then, is the proper place for the mystical element in true faith? I answer by first affirming that we must not leave out the mystical element in faith or we end up with rationalism. I have experienced this tendency among some strongly confessional Protestants. Rationalistic orthodoxy argues against subjective feelings and enthusiasm. This is why some Reformed thinkers do not like, for example, Jonathan Edwards. He is too subjective in his emphasis upon gracious affections. And many Lutherans and Reformed Christians despise talk about revival and revival movements, seeing these as the enemies of faith as rational confession alone. Bloesch is again helpful when he concludes that "faith consists in personal confidence in Christ but also in mystical participation in Christ" (The Crisis of Piety, 97). Passages like John 17:21 clearly make this vital point: "As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us." And John 15:1-6 makes the same point in the analogy of the vine and the branches. And Jesus himself tells us that "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" (John 6:53). And the Eastern Orthodox Church is correct to stress that 2 Peter 1:4 plainly teaches that we become "participants of (in) the divine nature." As I wrote in my earlier article, the Pauline metaphor "in Christ" is a vitally important mystical element in living faith.
The metaphor, "in Christ," is probably the strongest biblical expression for the truly mystical element found in authentic faith. We are justified and sanctified "in Christ" (Galatians 2:7) and the eucharist is a "participation" in the body and blood of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16). Modern evangelicals will never restore a proper biblical teaching on faith without this emphasis, which is almost entirely missing in most of our churches. But, and this is crucial I believe, Paul seems to always relate, as Bloesch puts it, "the Christ in us (Christus in nobis) to the Christ for us (Christus pro nobis)" (The Crisis of Piety, 97). No text better expresses this biblical balance than Galatians 2:20:
And it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Note the prepositions here. If you get the prepositions, you get Paul's thought: "in me" and "for me." This is why the famous theologian Karl Barth rightly insisted that if you get this subject-object relationship right, you will maintain a proper understanding and experience of Christian faith. We must hold to God's otherness, to his unique ontological separateness, or his nature of being. We must also insist that there really is a radical separation between God and man, because of sin, but this separation is increasingly overcome in true saving faith. God is not simply an object of faith, as certain kinds of rationalistic theologies suggest, but he is a Subject who enters into personal and intimate communion with us as a subject. Bloesch again is helpful when he says, "There is no dissolution of personality, but rather losing oneself and finding oneself again in God" (The Crisis of Piety, 98). Bonhoeffer got this right when he saw a proper mystical element in true faith and wrote: "[T]he Christian person achieves his true nature when God does not confront him as Thou, but 'enters into' him as I" (Santorium Communion, cited in Donald G. Bloesch, The Crisis of Piety, 98).
True faith receives God's revelation as always having true mystery in it. Barth rightly stressed that God stands before us in a way that will always be a mystery but, he adds, "Mystery means that He is and remains the One whom we know only because He gives Himself to be known" (Church Dogmatics, II.1.41). God can be known in this mystery, but the mystery is not a pure mystery since he has been revealed to us. Something has been disclosed and yet it remains veiled. That paradox is essential to maintain. This is a true dialectical tension that various theologies have sought to sever and thereby misled people. The Word of God is disclosed in the Scriptures and the sacraments but this revelation comes to us in a worldly form. And, says Donald G. Bloesch, "Evangelicals rightly insist that this is a mystery illumined by meaning" (The Crisis of Piety, 99).
Martin Luther gets this whole subject right, too. Luther wrote:
It is not enough that you say Luther, Peter, and Paul have said so but you must experience Christ Himself in your conscience and feel that it is unquestionably God's Word, though all the world opposes it (emphasis mine and cited by Bloesch, The Crisis of Piety, 99.)
John Calvin adds that is not sufficient:
. . . to know Christ as crucified and raised up from the dead, unless you experience, also, the fruit of this. . . . Christ therefore is rightly known, when we feel how powerful his death and resurrection are, and how efficacious they are in us (cited in The Crisis of Piety, 99).
True faith is not derived from experience. We do not believe because we have had a particular experience. In some cases we believe in spite of our experience. But true faith is plainly mediated through human experience as led by the Holy Spirit. The true source of Christian experience comes from beyond us, from outside of us. To confuse this truth is to move away from the word and power of grace. To deny experience, and its role in knowing the truth, is to land in a type of faith that is rationalistic and the result of equations and formulas. It is to be satisfied with dissecting and analyzing a corpse rather than loving a living and vital person. This faith of the equations has been done in abundance within some modern reforming movements of our time. In opposing experience, we have ended up with rationalism. In opposing rationalism, we can easily end up in mysticism.
Salvation consists of forgiveness, for sure. But it also consists of union with Christ. Both must be taught and both believed. Justification is crucial, but it is also the beginning of a process that leads on to sanctification. As much as we should distinguish these truths we must never separate them. The Reformers understood this danger.
The early church fathers spoke of the "deification" of man. But they did not mean by this emphasis that man was changed into the likeness and essence of God. Bloesch has rightly noted that Reformation emphasis in the West is tempted to "overplay the forensic aspect of justification" (The Crisis of Piety, 100). I am convinced he is correct. In the present debates about justification, among the many conservative Reformed Christians, there is a real danger that the controversy itself will drive all of us to extremes at precisely this point. I am convinced that a proper emphasis upon the mystical element of true faith will help us avoid this danger. This emphasis will stress that "though we see in a mirror dimly" (1 Corinthians 13:12a), we do actually see by faith in Christ.
GRACE WITHOUT AND GRACE WITHIN
A faithful evangelical theology will insist on grace that is outside of us, a grace which saves us for Christ's sake alone. At the same time it will insist on a grace that comes into us and unites us to Christ in a living and dynamic union that results in a form of true mysticism, that of a true gospel mystery. If we properly stress that grace is undeserved favor, not some kind of creative power within us, we will keep the emphasis where it properly belongs.
Note: No teacher has more clearly helped me balance these truths that Donald G. Bloesch. The basic outline that I employ above follows Bloesch's arguments in chapter 7, "Two Types of Spirituality," in the book, The Crisis of Piety (Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1988).
