Part 4 (1/2)
I. WHAT IS THE FALSELY MYSTICAL?
Two very clear answers made from different points of view deserve attention.
1. _Nash's Definition._--In trying to set forth the ”main mood and motives of religious speculation” in the early Christian centuries, Professor Nash takes, as perhaps the two strongest influences in determining the type of man to whom Christian apologetics had then to appeal, Philo and Plotinus, and says: ”By what road shall the mind enter into a deep and intimate knowledge of G.o.d? That is the decisive question. Plotinus the Gentile and Philo the Jew are at one in their answer. The reason must rise above reasoning. It must pa.s.s into a state that is half a swoon and half an ecstasy before it can truly know G.o.d. Philo gave up for the sake of his theory, the position of the prophets. Plotinus, for the same theory, forsook the position of Plato and Aristotle. The prophets conceived the inmost essence of things, the being and will of G.o.d, as a creative and redemptive force that guided and revealed itself through the career of a great national community. Plato and Aristotle conceived the essence of life as a labor of reason; and, for them, the labors of reason found their sufficient refreshment and inspiration in those moments of clear synthesis which are the reward of patient a.n.a.lysis. Revelation came to the prophet through his experience of history. To the philosopher it came through hard and steady thinking. But Philo and Plotinus together declared these roads to be no thoroughfares. The Greek and the Jew met on the common ground of a mysticism that sacrificed the needs of sober reason and the needs of the nation to the necessities of the monk.”[29] Mysticism is here conceived as unethical, unhistorical, and unrational.
2. _Herrmann's Definition._--Herrmann's definition of mysticism is the second one to which attention is directed. He says: ”When the influence of G.o.d upon the soul is sought and found solely in an inward experience of the individual; when certain excitements of the emotions are taken, with no further question, as evidence that the soul is possessed by G.o.d; when, at the same time, nothing external to the soul is consciously and clearly perceived and firmly grasped; when no thoughts that elevate the spiritual life are aroused by the positive contents of an idea that rules the soul--then that is the piety of mysticism. He who seeks in this wise that for the sake of which he is ready to abandon all beside, has stepped beyond the pale of Christian piety. He leaves Christ and Christ's Kingdom altogether behind him when he enters that sphere of experience which seems to him to be the highest.”[30] The marks of mysticism for Herrmann, then, are: that it is purely subjective; that it is merely emotional and unethical; and hence that it has no clear object, and is abstract, unrational, unhistorical, and so unchristian.
II. THE OBJECTIONS OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS TO THE FALSELY MYSTICAL
Against this neo-platonic, falsely mystical conception of religion, the social consciousness seems to be clearly arrayed, and, so far as the social consciousness influences religion, it will certainly tend to draw it away from this falsely mystical idea.
1. _Unethical._--For, in the first place, this neo-platonic conception of religion has nothing distinctly ethical in it. The ethical is manifestly not made the test of true religious experience, as it is in the New Testament. The social consciousness, on the other hand, is predominantly and emphatically ethical, and can have nothing to do with a religion in which ethics is either omitted or is wholly subordinate. At this point, therefore, the pressure of the social consciousness is strongly against a neo-platonic mysticism.
2. _Does not Give a Real Personal G.o.d._--In the second place, the social consciousness cannot get along with the falsely mystical, because it does not give a real personal G.o.d. Let us be clear upon this point. Is not Herrmann right when he says that all that can be said of the G.o.d of this mysticism is ”that he is not the world? Now that is precisely all that mysticism has ever been able to say of G.o.d as it conceives him. Plainly, the world and the conception of it are all that moves the soul while it thinks thus of G.o.d. Only disappointment can ensue to the soul whose yearning for G.o.d in such case keeps on insisting that G.o.d must be something utterly different from the world. If such a soul will reflect awhile on the nature of the G.o.d thus reached, the fact must inevitably come to the surface that its whole consciousness is occupied with the world now as it was before, for evidently it has grasped no positive ideas--nothing but negative ideas--about anything else. Mysticism frequently pa.s.ses into pantheism for this very reason, even in men of the highest religious energy; they refuse to be satisfied with the mere longing after G.o.d, or to remain on the way to him, but determine to reach the goal itself, and rest with G.o.d himself.”[31]
Now we have already seen that the social consciousness can find adequate support and power and motive only in faith that its purpose is G.o.d's purpose, that the deepest thing in the universe is an ethical purpose, conceivable only in a personal G.o.d; and, therefore, neither an empty negation nor pantheism can ever satisfy it.
3. _Belittles the Personal in Man._--The false mysticism, moreover, belittles the personal in man as well as in G.o.d; for it does not treat with real reverence either the personality, the ethical freedom, the sense of obligation, or the reason of man. This whole thought of ”a state that is half a swoon and half an ecstasy” is a sort of swamping of clear self-consciousness and definite moral initiative, in which the very reality of man's personality consists. It is a heathen, not a Christian, idea of inspiration which demands the suppression of the human, whether in consciousness, in will, in reason, or by belittling the sense of obligation to others. But mysticism has at least tended toward failure in all these respects.
And yet, from the time that Paul argued with the Corinthians against their immense overestimation of the gift of speaking with tongues, this fascination of the merely mystical has been felt in Christianity.
(1) The very mystery and unintelligibility of the experience, (2) its ecstatic emotion, (3) its sense of being controlled by a power beyond one's self, and (4) its contrast with ordinary life--all these elements make the mystical experience seem to most all the more divine, although in so judging they are applying a pagan, not a Christian, standard. So far as these experiences have value, it is probably due to the strong and realistic sense which they give of being in the presence of an overpowering being. If thoroughly permeated and dominated with other elements, this sense is not without its value.
But it is interesting to notice that, although Paul does not deny the legitimacy of the gift of speaking with tongues, he nevertheless absolutely subordinates it, and insists that the most ecstatic religious emotions are completely worthless without love. Evidently the considerations which weighed most with the Corinthians in valuing the gift of unintelligible ecstatic utterance weighed little with Paul; and one can see how Paul implicitly argues against each of those considerations: (1) G.o.d is not an unknown, mystic force, but the definite, concrete G.o.d of character, shown in Christ. (2) He speaks to reason and will as well as to feeling, and he best speaks to feeling when he speaks to the whole man. True religious emotion must have a rational basis and must move to duty. (3) Religion, he would urge, is a self-controlled and voluntary surrender to a personal G.o.d of character, not a pa.s.sive being swept away by an unknown emotion. (4) G.o.d has most to give, be a.s.sured, he would have added, in the _common_ ways of life.
Now, in every one of these protests, the social consciousness instinctively joins. It cannot rest in a conception of religion that belittles the personal in G.o.d or man; for it is itself an emphatic insistence upon the fully personal. And it can, least of all, get on with the mystical ignoring of the rational and the ethical, for it holds that the social evolution moves steadily on to a rational like-mindedness, and to a definitely ethical civilization. Giddings puts the sociological conclusion in a sentence: ”It is the rational, ethical consciousness that maintains social cohesion in a progressive democracy.”[32] Now that which is clearly recognized as the goal in the relations of man to man will not be set aside as unwarranted or subordinate in the relations of man to G.o.d. And we may depend upon it.
4. _Leaves the Historically, Concretely Christian._--Once more, the social consciousness cannot approve of the mystical conception of religion in its ignoring, in its highest state, the historically and concretely Christian. With mysticism's subjective, emotional, and abstract conception of the highest communion with G.o.d, and of the way thereto, the historical and concrete at best can be to it only subordinate means, more or less mysteriously connected with the attainment of the goal, and left behind when once the goal is reached.
The social consciousness, on the other hand, requires historical justification, and definitely builds on the facts of the historical social evolution.
In the case of the prophets and psalmists, for example, who alone in the ancient world most fully antic.i.p.ated the modern social feeling, the social consciousness plainly arose in the face of the concrete historical life of a people. No result of modern Old Testament criticism is more certain. So that, speaking of ”the religious aspects of the social struggle in Israel,” McCurdy can use this strong language: ”It is not too much to say that this conflict, intense, uninterrupted, and prolonged, is the very heart of the religion of the Old Testament, its most regenerative and propulsive movement. To the personal life of the soul, the only basis of a potential, world-moving religion, it gave energy and depth, a.s.surance and hopefulness, repose and self-control, with an outlook clear and eternal.”[33] But it was this standpoint of the prophets that the falsely mystical conception of religion abandoned. We may well take to heart, in our estimate of mysticism, the gradual but steady elimination of ecstasy in the development of Israel, and its practically total absence in those we count in the highest sense prophets.[34]
The social consciousness, moreover, has almost entirely to do with men, and hence naturally must lay stress on human history, rather than on nature, as a source of religious ideas. Indeed, it will have no doubt that what nature is made to mean religiously will be chiefly determined by the prevalent social ideals. It can, therefore, least of all ignore the historical in Christianity.
The social consciousness recognizes increasingly, too, with the clearing of its own ideals and with the deepening study of the teaching of Jesus, that it really is only demanding, in the concrete, and in detailed application to particular problems, and to all of them, the spirit shown in its fullness only in Christ, as Professor Peabody's eminently sane treatment of the social teaching of Jesus seems to me fairly to have proven. The social consciousness, therefore, cannot help becoming more and more consciously and emphatically Christian.
In a single sentence, because of the steps of its own long evolution, the social consciousness instinctively distrusts the highly emotional, unless it is manifestly under equally strong rational control, and unless it has equal ethical insight and power, and is historically justified. It tends, therefore, necessarily to draw away from the falsely mystical in religion, which is lacking in all these respects.
And the same reasons, which array the social consciousness against the falsely mystical in religion, lead it into natural sympathy with a positive emphasis upon the personal, the ethical, and the historically concretely Christian in religion.
[29] Nash, _Ethics and Revelation_, p. 33.
[30] Herrmann, _The Communion of the Christian with G.o.d_, pp. 19, 20.
[31] Herrmann, _Op. cit._, p. 27.
[32] Giddings, _Elements of Sociology_, p. 321; cf. also pp. 155 ff, 302, 320, 327.