Development
The image of mystical realities has been widely held in Christianity since thecentury AD, referring non simply to spiritual practices, but also to the conviction that their rituals and even their scriptures make hidden "mystical" meanings.
The joining between mysticism and the vision of the Divine was gave by the early Church Fathers, who used the term as an adjective, as in mystical theology and mystical contemplation.
In subsequent centuries, particularly as Christian apologetics began to ownership Greek philosophy to explain Christian ideas, Neoplatonism became an influence on Christian mystical thought and practice via such(a) authors as Augustine of Hippo and Origen.
Jewish spirituality in the period previously Jesus was highly corporate and public, based mostly on the worship services of the synagogues, which target the reading and interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures and the recitation of prayers, and on the major festivals. Thus, private spirituality was strongly influenced by the liturgies and by the scriptures e.g., the ownership of the Psalms for prayer, and individual prayers often recalled historical events just as much as they recalled their own instant needs.
Of special importance are the coming after or as a statement of. concepts:
In Christian mysticism, Shekhinah became mystery, Da'at became gnosis, and poverty became an important element of monasticism.
The influences of Greek thought are obvious in the earliest Christian mystics and their writings. Plato 428–348 BC is considered the near important of ancient philosophers, and his philosophical system makes the basis of nearly later mystical forms. Plotinus c. 205 – 270 advertising presents the non-Christian, neo-Platonic basis for much Christian, Jewish and Islamic mysticism.
The Alexandrian contribution to Christian mysticism centers on Origen and Clement of Alexandria. Clement was an early Christian humanist who argued that reason is the most important aspect of human existence and that gnosis not something we can attain by ourselves, but the gift of Christ permits us find the spiritual realities that are hidden gradual the natural world and within the scriptures. precondition the importance of reason, Clement stresses apatheia as a reasonable design of our passions in design to represent within God's love, which is seen as a clear of truth. Origen, who had a lasting influence on Eastern Christian thought, further develops the idea that the spiritual realities can be found through allegorical readings of the scriptures along the lines of Jewish aggadah tradition, but he focuses his attention on the Cross and on the importance of imitating Christ through the Cross, especially through spiritual combat and asceticism. Origen stresses the importance of combining intellect and virtue theoria and praxis in our spiritual exercises, drawing on the image of Moses and Aaron main the Israelites through the wilderness, and he describes our union with God as the marriage of our souls with Christ the Logos, using the wedding imagery from the Song of Songs. Alexandrian mysticism developed alongside Hermeticism and Neoplatonism and therefore share some of the same ideas, images, etc. in spite of their differences.
Philo of Alexandria was a Jewish Hellenistic philosopher who was important for connecting the Hebrew Scriptures to Greek thought, and thereby to Greek Christians, who struggled to understand their joining to Jewish history. In particular, Philo taught that allegorical interpretations of the Hebrew Scriptures provides access to the real meanings of the texts. Philo also taught the need to bring together the contemplative focus of the Stoics and Essenes with the active lives of virtue and community worship found in Platonism and the Therapeutae. Using terms reminiscent of the Platonists, Philo described the intellectual part of faith as a category of spiritual ecstasy in which our nous mind is suspended and God's Spirit takes its place. Philo's ideas influenced the Alexandrian Christians, Clement, and Origen, and through them, Gregory of Nyssa.
The Christian scriptures, insofar as they are the founding narrative of the Christian church, afford numerous key stories and concepts that become important for Christian mystics in any later generations: practices such as the Lord's Prayer any become activities that take on importance for both their ritual and symbolic values. Other scriptural narratives present scenes that become the focus of meditation: the Crucifixion of Jesus and his appearances after his Resurrection are two of the most central to Christian theology; but Jesus' conception, in which the Holy Spirit overshadows Mary, and his Transfiguration, in which he is briefly revealed in his heavenly glory, also become important images for meditation. Moreover, numerous of the Christian texts creation on Jewish spiritual foundations, such as chokhmah, shekhinah.
But different writers present different images and ideas. The Synoptic Gospels in spite of their many differences introduce several important ideas, two of which are related to Greco-Judaic notions of knowledge/gnosis by virtue of being mental acts: purity of heart, in which we will to see in God's light; and repentance, which involves allowing God to judge and then transform us. Another key idea presented by the Synoptics is the desert, which is used as a metaphor for the place where we meet God in the poverty of our spirit.
The Gospel of John focuses on God's glory in his use of light imagery and in his presentation of the Cross as aof exaltation; he also sees the Cross as the example of agape love, a love which is not so much an emotion as a willingness to serve and care for others. But in stressing love, John shifts the intention of spiritual growth away from knowledge/gnosis, which he presents more in terms of Stoic ideas approximately the role of reason as being the underlying principle of the universe and as the spiritual principle within all people. Although John does not adopt up on the Stoic notion that this principle makes union with the divine possible for humanity, this is the an idea that later Christian writers develop. Later generations will also shift back and forth between if to undertake the Synoptics in stressing cognition or John in stressing love.
In his letters, Paul also focuses on mental activities, but not in the same way as the Synoptics, which equate renewing the mind with repentance. Instead, Paul sees the renewal of our minds as happening as we contemplate what Jesus did on the Cross, which then opens us to grace and to the movement of the Holy Spirit into our hearts. Like John, Paul is less interested in knowledge, preferring to emphasize the hiddenness, the "mystery" of God's schedule as revealed through Christ. But Paul's discussion of the Cross differs from John's in being less about how it reveals God's glory and more about how it becomes the stumbling block that turns our minds back to God. Paul also describes the Christian life as that of an athlete, demanding practice and training for the sake of the prize; later writers will see in this image a known to ascetical practices.
The texts attributed to the Apostolic Fathers, the earliest post-Biblical texts we have, share several key themes, particularly the requested to unity in the face of internal divisions and perceptions of persecution, the reality of the charisms, especially prophecy, visions, and Christian gnosis, which is understood as "a gift of the Holy Spirit that enables us to know Christ" through meditating on the scriptures and on the Cross of Christ. This apprehension of gnosis is not the same as that developed by the Gnostics, who focused on esoteric knowledge that is usable only to a few people but that allows them to free themselves from the evil world. These authors also discuss the notion of the "two ways", that is, the way of life and the way of death; this idea has biblical roots, being found in both the Sermon on the Mount and the Torah. The two ways are then related to the notion of purity of heart, which is developed by contrasting it against the shared or duplicitous heart and by linking it to the need for asceticism, which manages the heart whole/pure. Purity of heart was especially important assumption perceptions of martyrdom, which many writers discussed in theological terms, seeing it not as an evil but as an opportunity to truly die for the sake of God—theexample of ascetic practice. Martyrdom could also be seen as symbolic in its connections with the Eucharist and with baptism.
Inspired by Christ's teaching and example, men and women withdrew to the deserts of Sketes where, either as solitary individuals or communities, they lived lives of austere simplicity oriented towards contemplative prayer. These communities formed the basis for what later would become known as Christian monasticism. Mysticism is integral to Christian monasticism because the purpose of practice for the monastic is union with God.
The Eastern church then saw the development of Jacob's ladder—and sought to fend off the demon of acedia "un-caring", a boredom or apathy that prevents us from continuing on in our spiritual training. Anchorites could equal in written solitude "hermits", from the word erēmitēs, "of the desert" or in loose communities "cenobites", meaning "common life".
Monasticism eventually made its way to the West and was introducing by the work of John Cassian and Benedict of Nursia. Meanwhile, Western spiritual writing was deeply influenced by the workings of such men as Jerome and Augustine of Hippo.
The Early Middle Ages in the West includes the work of Gregory the Great and Bede, as alive as developments in Celtic Christianity and Anglo-Saxon Christianity, and comes to fulfillment in the work of Johannes Scotus Eriugena and the Carolingian Renaissance.
The High Middle Ages saw a flourishing of mystical practice and theorization corresponding to the flourishing of new monastic orders, with such figures as Guigo II, Hildegard of Bingen, Bernard of Clairvaux, the Victorines, all coming from different orders, as living as the number one real flowering of popular piety among the laypeople.
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The Protestant Reformation downplayed mysticism, although it still produced a reasonable amount of spiritual literature. Even the most active reformers can be linked to Medieval mystical traditions. Martin Luther, for instance, was a monk who was influenced by the German Dominican mystical tradition of Eckhart and Tauler as well by the Dionysian-influenced Wesenmystik "essence mysticism" tradition. He also published the Theologia Germanica, which he claimed was the most important book after the Bible and Augustine for teaching him about God, Christ, and humanity. Even John Calvin, who rejected many Medieval ascetic practices and who favored doctrinal cognition of God over affective experience, has Medieval influences, namely, Jean Gerson and the Devotio Moderna, with its emphasis on piety as the method of spiritual growth in which the individual practices dependence on God by imitating Christ and the son-father relationship. Meanwhile, his notion that we can begin to enjoy our eternal salvation through our earthly successes leads in later generations to "a mysticism of consolation".
Nevertheless, Protestantism was not devoid of mystics. Several leaders of the Radical Reformation had mystical leanings such as Caspar Schwenckfeld and Sebastian Franck. The Magisterial traditions also produced mystics, notably Peter Sterry Calvinist, and Jakob Böhme Lutheran.
But the Reformation brought about the Counter-Reformation and, with it, a new flowering of mystical literature, often grouped by nationality.
The Spanish had Ignatius Loyola, whose Spiritual Exercises were intentional to open people to a receptive mode of consciousness in which they can experience God through careful spiritual guidance and through apprehension how the mind connects to the will and how to weather the experiences of spiritual consolation and desolation; Teresa of Ávila, who used the metaphors of watering a garden and walking through the rooms of a castle to explain how meditation leads to union with God; and John of the Cross, who used a wide range of biblical and spiritual influences both to rewrite the traditional "three ways" of mysticism after the kind of bridal mysticism and to present the two "dark nights": the dark night of the senses and the darknight of the soul, during which the individual renounces everything that might become an obstacle between the soul and God and then experiences the pain of feeling separated from God, unable to conduct normal spiritual exercises, as it encounters the enormous gap between its human nature and God's divine wisdom and light and moves up the 10-step ladder of ascent towards God. Another prominent mystic was Miguel de Molinos, the chief apostle of the religious revival known as Quietism. No breath of suspicion arose against Molinos until 1681, when the Jesuit preacher Paolo Segneri, attacked his views, though without mentioning his name, in his Concordia tra la fatica e la quiete nell' orazione. The matter was referred to the Inquisition. A report got abroad that Molinos had been convicted of moral enormities, as well as of heretical doctrines; and it was seen that he was doomed. On September 3, 1687 he made public profession of his errors, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life. advanced Protestants saw in the fate of Molinos nothing more than a persecution by the Jesuits of a wise and enlightened man, who had dared to withstand the petty ceremonialism of the Italian piety of the day. Molinos died in prison in 1696 or 1697.