Before becoming a Christian, Augustine had been a student of Plotinus, and the God with whom he sought union was that neoplatonic ‘something not susceptible of change,’ which lies behind and is the source of all personal manifestations of deity. Plotinus was interested in oriental thought and as a young man accompanied the Emperor Gordian’s expedition to the East, in order to pick up first-hand information on the subject of Persian and Indian philosophy. His one, ultimate reality which cannot be understood except through a direct mystical experience bears a close resemblance to the Brahman which is also Atman, the That which is at the same time Thou. During the fourth and fifth centuries, neoplatonism and along with it, at several removes, the most valuable elements of Hindu religion, entered Christianity and became incorporated, as one of a number of oddly heterogeneous elements, into its scheme of thought and devotion.
St. Augustine, as we have seen, played an important part in this Christianizing of oriental mysticism. Even more important was the part played by the unknown Syrian monk of the fifth century who, in order to ensure the widest possible circulation for his writings, put them forth under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Paul’s first Athenian convert. The pious fraud was admirably successful. Dionysius the Areopagite was read with the reverent attention due to his all but apostolic position.
This was unfortunate in some ways, fortunate in others; for his books were of very unequal value. On the debit side of the account must be placed the two disquisitions on the heavenly and ecclesiastical hierarchies respectively. The first helped to justify the idolatrous polytheism, into which popular Christianity has always tended to degenerate; the second had a certain undesirable political significance info far and it affirmed the divine origin of the Church’s temporal organization.
Over against these, on the credit side, must be set two very remarkable books, Concerning the Divine Names and Concerning Mystical Theology. Using philosophic material derived from neoplatonism and various oriental sources, and drawing upon his own first-hand experience, their author sets forth the mystical tradition in its most austere, Vedantic form. Translated into Latin by Scotus Erigena, in the ninth century, these books were widely read during the whole of the Middle Ages and exercised an extraordinary influence.
Accepting the Areopagite’s theology and psychology as given, the medieval mystics proceeded to work out for themselves the operations corresponding to these concepts, operations which-in India, in the Egyptian desert, among the Sufis, wherever contemplation has been practised have always resulted in the same sort of philosophy. In the literature which these contemplatives left behind them, we can read a description of Such operations and of the spiritual discoveries which were made possible by their means.
Benet of Canfield was a learned man and had read, not only the Areopagite, but also all the important medieval and sixteenth-century mystics, for whom the writings of pseudoDionysius had been an inspiration and a comforting guarantee of their own orthodoxy. An artist is born with certain talents, specifically his own; but he makes use of those talents within the framework of the current artistic tradition. It is the same with the mystic, whose religious life is constituted by the interaction between inborn spiritual aptitudes and the tradition within which he thinks and works. What was the nature of the tradition, at once philosophical, ethical and psychological, in which Father Benet had been brought up? To answer this question I shall briefly summarize a little book that is one of the finest flowers of medieval mystical literature.
Composed by an so anonymous English author of the fourteenth century, The Cloud of Unknowing is at once profoundly original and completely representative of its class. Its author was a man who combined high spiritual gifts and a remarkable literary and philosophic talent with a deep knowledge and love of tradition. Within the compass of that small book the whole medieval development of Dionysian mysticism is exhibited in its essence, and at the same time, as a modern Catholic writer, Father John Chapman remarks, ‘it seems to sum up the doctrines of St. John of the Cross two hundred years beforehand.’
That Father Benet was acquainted with this book is certain; for, in his admirable commentary on The Cloud, Father Augustine Baker, the English Benedictine monk and mystical theologian, who was an almost exact contemporary of Father Joseph, records that his own manuscript copy of the book had ‘belonged to the private library of Father Benet Fitch, our countryman, the Capuchin, author of the book called The Will of God, and upon his death was found among other books in his library.’ Richly did it deserve its place there. The book’s title implies its central doctrine. ‘The cloud of unknowing’ is the same as what the Areopagite calls the ‘superluminous darkness’ -the impenetrable mystery of God’s otherness.
Ultimate reality is incommensurable with our own illusoriness and imperfection; therefore it cannot be understood by means of intellectual operations; for intellectual operations depend upon language, and our vocabulary and syntax were evolved for the purpose of dealing precisely with that imperfection and illusoriness, with which God is incommensurable. Ultimate reality cannot be understood except intuitively, through an act of the will and the affections. ‘Plus diligitur quain intelligitur’ was a commonplace of scholastic philosophy. ‘Love can go further than understanding; for love enters where science remains out of doors. We love God in his essence, but in his essence we do not see Him.’
The author of The Cloud concerns himself very little with metaphysical speculations. To him, as to the Buddha, thinking about problems to which, in the nature of things, vocalized thought can give no answer seems a waste of time and an obstacle in the way of spiritual advance. Nor is he interested to quote other men’s opinions. ‘Once men thought it a meekness to say naught of their own heads, unless they confined it by scripture and doctors’ words; now it is turned into curiosity and display of knowledge.’ Because of these views about learning and speculating, he leaves unexplained the details of the philosophical system which underlies his practical mysticism. But from all he says it is evident that he takes for granted the hypothesis then current among mystical theologians as to the relation existing between God and man.
According to this hypothesis, there exists within the soul something variously called the ‘synderesis,’ the ‘spark,’ the ‘ground of the soul,’ ‘ the apex of the higher will.’ Of this divine element in their being men are, for the most part, unaware, because all their attention is fixed on the objects of craving and aversion. But, if they choose to ‘die to self,’ they can become aware of the divine element within them and, in it, experience God. For those who so desire and are prepared to fullfil the necessary conditions, the transcendent can in some way become immanent within the spark, at the apex of the higher will.
This theory bears a close family resemblance to that which, from time immemorial, has been fundamental to Indian thought. But whereas the oriental mystics have never shrunk from establishing a complete identity between the ‘spark’ and God himself, the Christians have generally adopted a more cautious attitude. ‘Thou art That,’ affirm the Indians ; the Atman is of the same substance with Brahman. A sufi mystic could say, ‘I went from God to God until they cried from me in me, “Oh, thou. For Christian thinkers, creature and creator were incommensurable, and the possibility of union with God did not imply a substantial identity of the ‘spark’ with that with which it was united. Some statements of the German and later Flemish mystics have, it is true, a positively Indian ring about them; but it was precisely for this reason that such writers as Eckhart were suspect to the ecclesiastical authorities.
In this respect the author of The Cloud is strictly orthodox. Man’s soul can be ‘oned with God’; but it is not for that reason of the same substance as God. ‘Only by his mercy without thy desert art thou made a god in grace, oned with him in spirit, without separation, both here and in the bliss of heaven without any end. So that although thou be all one with him in grace, yet thou art full far beneath him in nature.’ This ‘oneing’ of the godhead with the spark in the soul can never be complete in the present life.
The full beatific vision is reserved for eternity-indeed, in some sense, is eternity. For the soul ‘is immortal inasmuch as it is capable of the beatific vision.’ Ut heatificahilis est immortalis. In the flesh, men are not strong enough to bear the plenary experience of God without physical injury or death. In the words of Cardinal Berulle, ‘ God is infinitely desirable and infinitely insupportable. And when it pleases him to apply himself to his creature, without proportioning himself to his creature, he cannot be supported by the created being, which feels itself engulfed, ruined by this infinite power.’ Similarly, the Indians affirm that more than a certain amount of the highest samadhi is fatal to the body of him who experiences it.
So much for the metaphysical system underlying The Cloud. Our author accepts the current hypotheses without discussion. What interests him is something else -the facts of empirical experience which originally called for interpretation in terms of such hypotheses, and the means whereby such facts might be reproduced in the souls of those who desired to experience God. Only by implication and
