Mysticism and Apocalyptic:

Mysticism and apocalyptic are two categories that I suspect are closely related, yet in our present usage are often viewed as mutually exclusive. In the context of modern theology they do often seem rather opposed to each other. At the same time, I find it interesting that many theologians, especially of the Modern era, have found it prudent to reject both. This may show that the two categories at least have in common something offensive to certain types of theology. This is understandable since apocalyptic language in our time is most often popularly framed in the categories of religious extremists who apparently relish the imminent violent destruction of the Earth. Mysticism, on the other hand, is frequently caricatured as a self-indulgent and vaguely heterodox import from the far east, a pastime of the leisure classes. Both may be seen as harmful distractions from careful attention to responsible faith and life in this immediate human existence.

Mysticism and apocalyptic have in common a concern with another reality. Mysticism holds that this reality is somehow embedded or encoded in the ordinary world, and hence may be experienced more or less directly now. Apocalyptic talks more about how this reality is beyond this ordinary world and is breaking — or will soon break — in. Mysticism tends to be more individual and personal, while apocalyptic has more to do with the communal and cosmic, and uses temporal language.

If apocalyptic and mysticism are different aspects of the same way of thinking, then it might be that reestablishing contact with its mystical side might help in the recovery of a true apocalyptic sense — as opposed to the mistaken, twisted, violent, self-serving, and hateful apocalypticism of fundamentalism. And vice-versa. Mysticism might be rescued from the pagan, therapeutic, escapist, and even cosmetic uses to which it is now often put, by restoring its original relationship with apocalyptic thinking.

And, in the 21^st century, apocalyptic and mysticism are moving closer. Where apocalyptic imagery and ideas were once all but banished from the life of the Christendom church, today they have been making a comeback. For instance, an admittedly unscientific study of hymns appearing in successive Presbyterian hymnals shows a gradual and dramatic increase over time of hymns having to do with the themes of Advent, the most apocalyptic season of the liturgical year. Writers from Schweitzer to Beker have pointed out the indelibly apocalyptic character of much of the New Testament. At the same time, Christians are becoming reawakened to the mystical side of their own faith. In some parts of the church, such as my own Reformed tradition, this mystical side was all but forgotten.

Clearly it is time to take a closer look at these two important theological categories. Are they really diametrically opposed so that to choose one is to reject the other? Or is there room here for a reconnection and reintegration of two indispensable ideas, which could together provide a new source of energy for the church? This very brief and superficial examination is intended at least to raise these questions and point to some helpful directions for further study.

II. Apocalyptic.

A. A Different Mode of Knowing.

Apocalyptic, of course, simply comes from the word meaning "revelation" in Greek. Indeed, the whole literary genre seems to have received its name from the final book of the New Testament. It is often considered a subset of eschatology, which had to do with general views of Christian doctrine concerning death, the afterlife, judgment, and resurrection¹. Apocalyptic more often focuses on the imminent expectation of the End. The distinction between eschatology and apocalyptic is often confusing and inconsistent from writer to writer. Some will talk about eschatology to avoid apocalyptic language, and even distance themselves from what they take to be apocalypticism. However in recent years the two terms seem to have been largely conflated. Though there are subtle differences in usage, in this paper I will be using apocalyptic and eschatology more or less interchangeably.

According to Ithamar Gruenwald, apocalyticism emerges as an independent and defined phenomenon in the Jewish tradition as both a reaction against Hellenization, and at the same time an incorporation of some Hellenistic ideas. The kind of knowledge spread by the Greeks throughout the ancient near east was both pagan and "secular" in the sense that it did not depend upon divine revelation or the scriptures. Apocalypticism matured in response to this powerful complex of ideas by offering an alternative form of knowledge based on a different kind of vision. Beyond the limits of scripture, apocalypticism experimented with what we might call ecstatic experiences, such as "heavenly ascent." The knowledge gained in this way was not technical or utilitarian, rather it was a knowledge that led to one’s salvation², presumably by connecting one to the larger, unseen foundations, scope, and goal of reality. In other words, while the historical situation may seem disastrous when viewed from the perspective of normal existence, when a more comprehensive view is attained, one that allows for a more widely inclusive vision beyond the limitations of space and time, it becomes apparent that there are patterns and trajectories of meaning and redemption which will be fulfilled.

Gruenwald indicates that knowledge of redemption is not something we get from normal experience and reason; it must be attained in extraordinary ways by means of extraordinary experiences³. In short, "Jewish Apocalypticism developed a concept of knowledge that for all practical purposes transcended its biblical antecedent. In its new eschatological setting the biblical idea of knowledge was made to burst through its rather narrow limits and acquire soteriological functions...." ⁴.

This clearly indicates from the outset the obvious but often strangely overlooked fact that, from the beginning, apocalyticism has been linked to, if not positively identified with, spiritual experiences we would identify as forms of mysticism. Apocalyptic data is acquired by means of some kind of intensified mode of interior religious/spiritual experience, altered states of consciousness we would recognize as ecstasy, meditation, or contemplation. This connection will remain the case from the earliest expressions of apocalypticism, to the Jewish Merkavah mystics, to books like 1 Enoch, to Jesus and the apostle Paul, to the book of Revelation. It is all but impossible to imagine apocalypticism without the visionary experiences upon which it was originally based.

B. The Evolution of Apocalyptic in Jewish Tradition.

1. The Prophets.

The deepest roots of apocalypticism predate the encounter with Hellenism, and stretch back to the crisis of the Babylonian conquests and subsequent sending of the people into exile. We see the tradition preparing the way for apocalypticism, for instance, in the buried traditions of worship in the original Temple, in writings of some of the classical prophets, and in the book of Job from the Wisdom stream of Jewish thought.

Even prior to the crises of the collision with Hellenism, the prophets were delivering oracles concerning current events based on direct, often ecstatic, experiences of God’s words. In the earlier prophets, like Elijah and Elisha, these experiences appear to be very similar to what we know as shamanic experiences in traditional societies. What apocalypticism will do is build on and transforms prophecy by extending its time-limits into the future and incorporating a redemption at the End of days. Redemption becomes less a matter of historical changes, and has more to do with the dawning of a completely new era⁵ that overwhelms and replaces this present one.

Paul Hanson notices an oscillation between "prophetic eschatology," which emerged in periods which were more optimistic about human efforts, and "apocalyptic eschatology," which came out of periods of more intense and hopeless suffering⁶. A similar development is noticed by Thomas J. J. Altizer. He sees prophecy moving from the historical towards the eschatological, while keeping the focus on the moral and ethical life. In other words, the prophets remained primarily concerned with how people were to live now in light of a coming and imminent End⁷. The prophets were more concerned that people grasp the moral and religious consequences of the fact that the End was imminent. "It was this expectation which made life bearable in the terrifying days of the destruction of the nation and during the exile, for it was the imminence of the end which gave power and urgency to the moral-religious obedience of the believer"⁸. Altizer notes that in this development "the future replaces the present and the past as the primary arena of the deity"⁹. This eventually caused a change in the basic framework of Jewish faith. "The whole substance of the traditional religion must be so transformed as to lose its ancient form and meaning"¹⁰.

This is largely what happens in Margaret Barker’s analysis. Her view is that a cataclysmic shift in Jewish religion occurs at the time of Josiah’s reform, which she sees as a kind of coup in which the older, traditional forms of the religion are repressed and replaced with new forms similar to what Altizer describes as the "ethicoeschatological absolutism" of the prophets. For Barker, the remaining adherents to the old religion of the first Temple have to go underground. Its ideas are maintained in the diaspora and in eccentric communities like Qumran, but may also be discerned in the scriptures. It appears to be these marginalized outsiders who finally develop apocalyptic literature as an intentional and very pointed critique aimed at the in-group who held power at the Temple. Her point is that apocalyptic thought is really "the repository of Israel’s oldest traditions"¹¹. Those traditions would later emerge in a new form in Christianity.

Barker’s detailed reconstruction of the liturgical life of the first Temple includes a great deal of attention given to creation, especially "Day One." The ceremonial complex was thus focused on the past, in this case the creation. Influenced by the prophets, the ascendant party, led by Hilkiah during the Josianic reform, may have radically shifted the focus of the religion from this orientation towards creation to one that was more attentive towards the future, the coming End.

According to Altizer, "The Eschaton is a transformation of the primeval event of the past into a primeval event of the future"¹². "The repetition of the creation in the New Year festival becomes the final event of world judgment"¹³. The prophetic message is based on the enthronement ritual in which the drama of Yahweh’s triumph over chaos in creation was reenacted annually. In other words, both creation and eschaton are events in primordial time. The prophets, for Altizer, shift the attention to the latter as a dramatic re-creation which is coming. It should not pass without noting that Altizer, like Barker, sees some of the roots of apocalyptic reaching into the liturgical life of the Temple.

Altizer hears Rudolf Otto saying that "the hidden mainspring of eschatology is ‘the idea that righteousness is not possible in an earthly form of existence but only in the wholly other form of an existence that God will give, not possible in this age but only in a new age’"¹⁴. This insight leads us into another significant biblical root of apocalyptic thinking, the book of Job.

2. Job.

It is in the book of Job that we also see the seeds of apocalypticism in the breaking down in Job’s experience of the traditional and simplistic idea of God’s justice. In chapters 14, 16, and especially the famous passage in 19:23-27, Job begins to hope beyond all rationality and evidence in a "redeemer" or judge who will somehow vindicate him. He seems to think of this figure as somehow above even the traditional views of God. This is kind of a turning point in his experience of suffering, after which he gains confidence in standing up to his accusers. It is almost like an interior insight that Job receives directly, apart from and in contradiction to the outward data and his experience. His suffering had driven him to some ecstatic place where he could see more clearly than his friends, who are able to do little more than spit back at him lame anecdotes from their experience or simplistic doctrine they learned in Sunday School, as it were.

At the same time, the book of Job continues to ask whether human beings are able to grasp real Wisdom at all. In 28:28 we see Job appearing to agree that the best we humans can do is to settle for keeping the religious ceremonial and moral law.

On the other hand, the appearance of God in chapters 38-41 may be understood as a theophany, a precursor to the kinds of experiences which would come to characterize apocalyptic literature. Job is given a glimpse, or at least verbally informed, of the basic nature of things, beginning from creation. When God asks "Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?" (38:17) it may sound like a rhetorical question. But God, Job, and the reader know that Job can confidently answer, "Yes!" ¹⁵. For in his suffering he did descend to the extremities of human pain and despair, and it is on the basis of that experience that Job’s awareness is opened up to hope in a redeemer, and then to be given the magnificent theophany — "now my eyes see you" (42:5b) — at the end of the book. The message and insight of Job is thus in line with passages like Isaiah 52:13-53:12, pointing as well to the passion of Jesus. Spiritual insight is a by-product of suffering.

More importantly, what all these analysts share in common is the understanding that the spark of insight which eventually produced apocalypticism was suffering. It is the encounter with massive and painful, even catastrophic and unspeakable events and experiences, in which the integrity and continuity of the individual, community, nation, faith, and even the cosmos is placed in doubt, when all sense of justice evaporates in a firestorm of horror, which drives the development from a secure and conventional religious life to prophecy and finally to apocalyptic.

C. The New Testament.

As Douglas Harink says in his recent book on Pauline scholarship: "Most simply stated, ‘apocalypse’ is shorthand for Jesus Christ. In the New Testament, in particular for Paul, all apocalyptic reflection and hope comes to this, that God has acted critically, decisively, and finally for Israel, all the peoples of the earth, and the entire cosmos, in the life, death, resurrection, and coming again of Jesus, in such a way that God’s purpose for Israel, all humanity, and all creation is critically, decisively, and finally disclosed and effected in the history of Jesus Christ"¹⁶. And: "God, in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, has inaugurated among the nations nothing less than a new cosmos, the new creation...."¹⁷. It is this insight, that "apocalypse" refers to Jesus Christ, which will ground this brief study.

One of the most important figures in the recovery of a sense of the importance of apocalypticism in the early part of the 20^th century was Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer wrote two books on the subject, The Quest of the Historical Jesus and The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. In the former he puts to rest (for a while) the idea that Jesus was a nice, middle-class, ethical teacher. While Schweitzer’s own hypothesis was also kind of eccentric, and rendered Jesus’ teaching nearly irrelevant, he did manage to point out that Jesus’ message and career were thoroughly apocalyptic (he would say "eschatological") in character.

Altizer also sees this central apocalypticism in Jesus’ ministry, holding that Jesus preached a provisional ethic based on the assumption of an imminently in-breaking Kingdom of God. But this radical apocalypticism was not sustained. Instead, in his view, the church viewed Jesus’ apocalypticism as a scandal which the church attempted to address and correct at least as early as the Fourth Gospel. In what h e sees as a clear reaction against the apocalypticism of the synoptic Jesus, the Fourth Gospel presents a realized eschatology. "The Kingdom in John has lost its future and apocalyptic elements and has become a present and spiritual reality"¹⁸. He sees this trend, to water-down apocalypticism by understanding it psychologically or existentially, and replacing it with some kind of "eternal now," as continuing through Christian history. I suspect he would identify this flight from apocalypticism with forms of mysticism.

The impetus for this movement away from apocalypticism seems to be based on both the delay of the parousia and the increasing institutionalization of the Church. The effect is that "the ethical demand become compromised with the ‘world’"¹⁹. "Now the structures of this world — which can only mean of man’s (sic.) world, of history — are given the absolute sanction of God’s authority. Consequently, it is no longer possible to advocate the reversal of values and structures of the world — despite the fact that this is the heart of Jesus’ message"²⁰.

One of Altizer’s conclusions is that "Eschatological repentance must not be confused with mystical rebirth"²¹. However, Schweitzer, when he attempts to do for Paul what he did with Jesus, chooses to frame his argument precisely in terms of Paul’s "mysticism." This mysticism is concerned with union not with the Godhead but with Christ. Schweitzer seems aware that in talking about Paul’s mysticism he is dealing with apocalyptic categories. "We are always in the presence of mysticism when we find a human being looking upon the division between earthly and super-earthly, temporal and eternal, as transcended, and feeling himself, while still externally amid the earthly and temporal, to belong to the super-earthly and eternal"²² .

"And why should there not be possibilities of mysticism in eschatology?"²³ Schweitzer asks, pointing out that, like mysticism, eschatology also attempts to resolve the radical differentiation implicit in the language of transcendence. In other words, both seek to bring together two worlds, the natural and the supernatural. "[Eschatology] lets the natural world dissolve into the supernatural, and sees this event as having its beginning in the dying and rising again of Jesus."²⁴ Schweitzer asks us to imagine that "for a speculative mind, moving amid ardent eschatological hopes and fears in the moment when the expected transformation was being prepared, the two worlds might appear to coincide."²⁵ He goes on to suggest that this "would provide the necessary conditions for the experiencing of the future in the present and the eternal in the temporal, which is the characteristic procedure of mysticism."²⁶ The understanding of mysticism which appears in Paul is "precisely that the interpenetration of present and future did not in it come about by an act of thought, but was a simple reality, which thought only needed to apprehend. Now, in point of fact, the peculiar traits which distinguish Pauline mysticism from that of the Hellenistic mystery religions, and indeed that of every other form of mysticism stands in close relationship with the cosmic Events which were to mark the times of the End"²⁷.

Schweitzer’s view of Paul’s "eschatological mysticism" is that Paul was granted a look into eternity, or the End. His preaching was then informed by the knowledge he gained of this ultimate truth. The question arises as to whether apocalyptic constitutes an "unveiling" of something already present but invisible, which would make it more readily adaptable to mysticism, or whether it is "God’s invasion into a world order enslaved by powers opposed to God’s purpose"²⁸. My sense is that even these two formulations are not mutually exclusive; they simply point out the differing perspectives between apocalyptic and mystical thought. There is a sense in which the End is already present; there is also a sense in which it is coming. These two senses depend on each other. For Schweitzer the milieu of Paul’s thought was both eschatological (ie. apocalyptic) and mystical. The two are not diametrically opposed.

We too easily forget how much of the apocalyptic material in the Bible originally emerged as the content of what we would identify as mystical vision. Certainly it is true for the apostle Paul that his apocalyptic sense is based on his own mystical encounter with the Lord on the Damascus Road. God revealed to him directly — "apocalypsed," is Martyn’s coined term — what has been/will be accomplished in Jesus Christ. Because the future has already been accomplished in Christ it is something upon which we may rely, something in which we may place our trust and faith. The barrier between past and future has been at least temporarily erased.

Chris Beker wrote: "Resurrection language is eschatological language that is intelligible only within an apocalyptic world of thought where it is at home. This language is about the world to come and thus constitutes an essential component of apocalyptic’s expectation of the transformation and restoration of the whole cosmos"²⁹.

But resurrection language is also inherently mystical language. Margaret Barker finds a line in the Gospel of Philip which underscores this connection. "Those who say that the Lord died first and then rose up are in error for he rose up first and then died" (Philip 56). Quoting J. H. Charlesworth, she points out that "the very existence of the gospels proves that the pre-crucifixion life of Jesus was important for the early church... What we have in fact is a proclamation of the risen Lord but an emphasis on his pre-Easter life. Little is said of the post-Easter Lord. The obvious conclusion to draw would be that the ‘earthly life’ was the risen state"³⁰. Her contention is that "the original raising of Jesus was at the start of his ministry" (p. 8), that is, at the mystical experience that he had at his baptism. Perhaps we could even read the gospel of John as having to do with Jesus’ "being lifted up," not just in his crucifixion, rising from death, and ascension, but in his whole career.

Thus, if these hypotheses are accurate, both the apocalypticism of Jesus and that of Paul were rooted in particular ecstatic experiences. Somehow they were able to experience or at least envision the future within the present, the next world within this one, the transcendent in the temporal. Jesus emerges from his baptism experience to proclaim the knowledge and insight he received therein: "The time is fulfilled; the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel!" (Mark 1:15).

D. The Early Church.

As Ernst Käsemann famously said, "Apocalypticism... was the mother of all Christian theology"³¹. The earliest christology was expressed "in the fervid vision of the Son of man breaking the power of the demons and ushering in the new aeon with divine judgment and mercy.... Each major tenet of primitive Christian belief must be understood in this apocalyptic context...."³². The subsequent "eclipse" of this expectation was not, in the view of Jaroslav Pelikan, a product of bitter disappointment over the "delay," nor a watering down of apocalypticism by a more organized and comfortable church, as Altizer would have it. Rather Pelikan points to "a shift within the polarity of already/not yet"³³. In other words, the coming — the advent, revelation, or apocalypse — of Jesus Christ changed everything. Salvation could no longer be relegated to the future; it was in some sense a present reality. Apocalyptic writings such as Revelation and Hermas remained popular in a church that was able to include and balance them with the obvious confession that Christ had already come. The creeds and liturgies of the church retained their apocalyptic language³⁴. In short, the church found itself led to maintain the already/not yet dialectic. In one sense, Christianity emerged as a "faith whose content was a history that had already happened"³⁵; yet at the same time the church came to affirm in the second coming the final completion of salvation³⁶.

Using imagery from the book of Hebrews and referring to the liturgy of the Day of Atonement, Barker shows how two priestly appearances were part of the expectation from the beginning. The High Priest appears at the altar and performs the sacrifice, then he ritually enters into the Holy of Holies with the blood, disappearing behind the curtain for a time, after which he reemerges with the blood to sanctify the sanctuary. The time of the church is the time of waiting for Christ, the Great High Priest, to reemerge from heaven to complete the salvation begun when his blood was shed and he entered into heaven. Her point is that the already-not yet tension was not something the church had to invent to account for the delay, but that some delay was part of the expectation from the beginning.

In short, the church’s understanding and embrace of apocalypticism is defined by a continuum with the "already" at one pole and the "not yet" at the other. This continuum emerges due to certain apparent and necessary ambiguities in early Christology which are embedded in the New Testament itself. The "already" view has it that salvation is basically an event of the past; it is completed and accomplished in Christ. Believers gain access to the salvation brought about by this event through their trust in him and memory of what he did, which is experienced in terms of sacraments, worship, morality, and mission. In this view apocalypticism, if it doesn’t completely disappear, is heavily qualified. The "not yet" perspective listens more carefully to what Jesus actually said and looks ahead to a time when the redemption he inaugurated is completed. This will occur at the End. Yet the church, no matter how comfortable or how terrorized, has never wanted to jettison either side of the equation. The dual confession that Christ has come and that Christ will come again has always to be maintained. Indeed, one might make the case that it is this very collapsing of temporal categories — past and future — into the present which constitutes the salvation Jesus brings. "The time is fulfilled."

III. Mysticism.

A. Theosis.

Mysticism is another ill-defined term. It can mean a peak experience of ecstasy in which one’s self is annihilated by, or identified with, God. Or it can refer more simply to almost any vaguely spiritual feeling. Dorothee Soelle finds a medieval definition which holds mysticism to be the knowledge of God which is acquired in and through personal experience³⁷. I am going to be working with the more standard Christian usage: mysticism refers to an experience of theosis or union with God in Christ.

Kallistos Ware has said that "all true Orthodox theology is mystical"³⁸. In the eastern Christian tradition the mystical experience which grounds theology is referred to as theosis or deification³⁹. This "becoming God" is the whole point of Christian theology, based as it is on God’s becoming human in Christ. Theosis is salvation. It is as well an experience, not simply a mental construct or opinion.

In no case, of course, does any orthodox Christian theologian hold that human beings may become God in the sense of sharing in God’s essence. Humans become united with and in God, but not identical with God. Believers become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4), but are not ever identified with or swallowed up in the divine essence. "Creator and creature do not become fused into a single being.... Man (sic.), when deified, remains distinct (though not separate) from God"⁴⁰. I say all this to reject the view that identifies mysticism with a kind of dissolving of the self in God. Mysticism is often rejected out of hand because it is assumed to have this character. In Christianity it does not.

Ware and Lossky both understand that this deification should not be understood as an exclusively individualistic and private experience. It relates to and reflects the more communal and cosmic framework which is the theater of apocalypticism. "Not only man’s body but the whole of the material creation will eventually be transfigured.... Redeemed man is not to be snatched away from the rest of creation, but creation is to be saved and glorified along with him...." That’s the way Ware states it, quoting Revelation 21:1, and Romans 8:19-22, two passages normally associated with apocalypticism. "This idea of cosmic redemption is based... upon a right understanding of the Incarnation: Christ took flesh — something from the material order — and so has made possible the redemption and metamorphosis of all creation – not merely the immaterial, but the physical"⁴¹. Perhaps we can say that the new creation is something that pertains to the whole cosmos and therefore to each individual; apocalyptic is the way we talk about the former, but when we want to talk about the latter we use the language of mysticism. In apocalyptic we are possessed by a new world-reality which is out there and coming as future. In mysticism we are formed and shaped by this reality today as individuals and communities.

The methodology, if we can call it that, of theosis is apophaticism, the idea that God cannot be primarily described positively but only by what God is not. There is something that feels apocalyptic about apophaticism. If we reject all images, concepts, ideas, and even words with regard to God, as apophaticism requires, it can be quite iconoclastic. Such a procedure ought to lead us away from identifying anything in society or culture with God, or as having particular divinity. This is not far from an apocalypticism that also refuses to latch onto the things of this world, which is passing away.

Lossky talks about how even "the ‘supreme theophany,’ the perfect manifestation of God in the world by the incarnation of the Word," still retains this apophatic character, as if in the Incarnation God is revealing what God is not... but even this is still better than having no revelation at all. Lossky goes on to quote Pseudo-Dionysius to the effect that God was revealed in Christ’s humanity without ceasing to be at the same time hidden therein⁴².

B. Mystical Union.

In the west, theosis did not become per se the central category, virtually identified with salvation, as it was understood in the east. Unlike in the east, one can be an active and educated Christian in the west, and have only heard rarely of the idea of theosis, or, as it is more frequently expressed, mystical union. Yet it is a doctrine which, however it may have gone into eclipse from time to time (usually to the degree that the church is secularized), remains an important part of our heritage and understanding. John Nevin’s classic 1846 work, Mystical Presence, is one of those moments with the church awoke to reclaim the centrality of a kind of theosis in its life.

The most important doctrinal truth that needs to be affirmed in our understanding of theosis or mystical union is that of the hypostatic union of two natures in the one person of Jesus Christ, affirmed and codified at the ecumenical council at Chalcedon in 451. Because of Jesus Christ, who unites true God and true humanity in himself, we who share in his humanity may also share, through him by the power of the Holy Spirit, in his divinity. "If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his," says Paul (Romans 6:5). Of course, we don’t share in his hypostatic union as "fully God and fully human;" but by faith, love, and hope, we share in his life and through him in God’s life.

The doctrine of mystical union reminds me of Schweitzer’s work on Paul because of its centeredness on Christ. Schweitzer distinguises "Christ mysticism" from "God mysticism," which he says was not Paul’s meaning. This Christocentric focus, while present in the language of the eastern church, is perhaps even more pronounced in the west. The west also does not tend to talk about any distinction between God’s essence and God’s "energies." Rather than becoming one with God’s energies, the west has tended to talk more in terms of becoming one with Christ.

In his book on Bernard of Clairvaux’s influence on John Calvin, Dennis Tamburello shows how Bernard’s mysticism was present in Calvin’s thought. But where Bernard spoke of contemplation, "Calvin’s mysticism was a fact of Christian existence, the fruits of which were expressed primarily in the active love of God and neighbor"⁴³. And where Bernard spoke of love, Calvin emphasized faith. (Jürgen Moltmann will emphasize hope as the guiding principle for the post-Modern church, as love was for the pre-Modern, and faith for the Modern, thus completing the Pauline triad (1 Corinthians 13:13)⁴⁴.)

My point is that this mystical Christ language is inherently and unavoidably apocalyptic, because of who Christ was, what he taught, and what he accomplished. Union with Christ is therefore in some sense a union with the End of the world. If, as Harink observes about Paul: "Apocalypse is shorthand for Jesus Christ," union with Christ can only mean a participation in the apocalypse, the ultimate and final revelation, the coming End of all things.

This mystical participation in the apocalypse is something Christians begin to effect by means of the Sacraments. In particular has this always been the case concerning the Lord’s Supper, where the focus is on both of Christ’s comings. The Eucharist is at once a remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice, and an anticipation, even a participation in advance, in his coming again at the End. Geoffrey Wainright, in Eucharist and Eschatology, points this out. And the church’s usage has evolved in the past few decades to express a greater appreciation of this fact. The widely used memorial acclamation of Vatican II says, "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again." The Sacrament is referred to as a "memorial" — which would seem to refer to a past event — "of our redemption" — which is an even the completion of which is still to come. But even near the beginning of Christian liturgical history, in the Didache, we hear the Eucharist concluded by the urgent cry of "Maranatha! Our Lord, come!"

It may be the case that mysticism is also a kind of shorthand for Jesus Christ, viewed from a different perspective. For mysticism is a way of talking about how the believer experiences union with and in Christ, who is the revelation, the apocalypse, and the End of the world.

C. Barth.

The power in Karl Barth’s The Epistle to the Romans is derived from his radical sense of God’s reality over-against the-world-as-we-know-it. He asserts, on the basis of the Word of God, Jesus Christ in Scripture, that what really matters is the reality of God, and that this reality ultimately questions the importance and even existence of all the things we think are real and significant. In other words, there is this other reality, it is described in the Bible, and it is infinitely more real, substantial, lasting, and basic than what we take for reality. The key to life is learning to live according to God’s truth, revealed in the Word of God, Jesus Christ, and in Scripture. Living this way is nearly always to live in some kind of fundamental dissonance with the world. When he uttered his famous "Nein!" to Emil Brunner, was it not something even more deeply felt than a rejection of a set of theological propositions? Was it not a "No!" to the world as it exists now, in favor of a world that Christ has at once revealed, established, and declared to be "at hand?"

Barth thus insisted that there is more to reality than the world as defined and limited by normal human experience and reason. He originally held to Kierkegaard’s "infinite qualitative distinction" between time and eternity. Mysticism, which depends on God’s real and experienced presence within the world, was thus ruled out. But if Barth can say something like, "God is known by God and only by God"⁴⁵, then is he not at least implying some kind of participation in/with God which is comparable to mysticism? For we do have knowledge of God in God’s Word. Even Calvin placed at the head of his catechism that knowing God is our "chief end" as human beings. "In Jesus Christ God has created all things. He has created all of us. We exist not apart from Him but in Him... and the whole cosmos exists not apart from Him but in Him, borne by Him, the Almighty Word. To know Him is to know all"⁴⁶. This is language that tacks very close to mysticism.

Furthermore, Barth does allow that "the fellowship of Christians with Christ, which is the goal of vocation, is a perfect fellowship inasmuch as what takes place in it is no less than their union with Christ"⁴⁷, which is neither identification nor the dissolution of one into the other. It is downwards, from Christ to the Christian, and not reciprocal⁴⁸. Union with Christ, which is repeatedly described in the New Testament in terms of "Christ in me/us," and "I/we in Christ," is for Barth, as for Calvin, Bernard, and with Christian tradition generally, the goal of Christian life. While Barth describes this in mostly ethical terms, and hesitates to use the language of mysticism (which he seems to think can only mean the identification with, or dissolving of the soul into, God), it is nevertheless real and actual, not imaginary or simply a matter of wishful thinking.

Stanley Hauerwas points out in his book, With the Grain of the Universe, that Barth later qualified his earlier stance and actually did locate the point of contact between God and creation/humanity... and it was in the person of Christ. "The infinite qualitative difference between God and us indeed obtains, but it is not a barrier between God and us; on the contrary, as this difference is enacted in the death and resurrection of Christ, in constitutes God’s identification with us"⁴⁹. Hauerwas finds Barth stating that knowledge of God is indeed possible, even by means of God’s creation and human reason⁵⁰.

Barth’s insight here, as in so many other places, is primarily Christological. It becomes apparent that the possibility of theosis is grounded in the hypostatic union of God and human being in Jesus Christ. This is the same realization made by Barth (and brought out by Hauerwas) as the point of contact between God and human being⁵¹. Hauerwas uses it as the basis for Barth’s understanding of "natural theology." In any case we are here getting closer to a point of contact between apocalyptic and mysticism, in what might have been thought to be a very unlikely place.

If Barth, even in Hauerwas’ reading, does not actually intend to participate in a process whereby mysticism and apocalyptic are reconciled, he at least prepares the ground by at the same time affirming God’s otherness and freedom, God’s very real incarnation in Jesus Christ as true God and true human, and the possibility and indeed necessity of believers finding life in union with Christ and thus with God. Furthermore, since this union is all God’s doing, the only way for it to be appropriated by the faithful is through some form of apophaticism that focuses on Christ alone.

III. Provisional Conclusion.

There are other places in which we see that the gaps between mystical and apocalyptic thinking in Christianity are also diminishing. In her book, The Silent Cry, Dorothee Soelle notes the close relationship between the two. She gives an exhaustive catalogue of examples of oppressed and victimized peoples turning to mysticism. Sometimes these mystical impulses are deeply apocalyptic as well, as we see in her brief examination of the mystical vision of the Native American seer, Black Elk⁵². In this she is relating again to the roots of apocalyptic in both mystical experience and suffering. Far from a playground or pitstop of the affluent bored, mysticism is rooted in a deep sense of both the suffering and injustice in this world, and the truth of God’s coming to set things right. Which is practically to say that it is inherently connected to an apocalyptic outlook.

"Mysticism," writes Soelle, "wants nothing else but to love life, even where analysis has run its course and all that is left is to count the victims"⁵³. "What really happens in mystical union is not a new vision of God but a different relationship to the world — one that has borrowed the eyes of God"⁵⁴. "Mysticism as the future form of religion also relates to this unity of life. As its language, prayer brings the unity that is given with creation into awareness. Into the place of the cancer-like expansion of a few living beings and life-forms there enters the well-being of all. Give and take replaces the winner mentality. Is it possible for love to overcome the illusions of autonomy, self-sufficiency, and the praxis of exclusion? It is amply evident that we will have no chance at all without this mystical dream. To live in it already, now, is the hope of self-aware minorities"⁵⁵.

For Soelle, then, a true mysticism is one that finds a home among the poor, suffering, and dispossessed. Mysticism has always been the refuge of the ones excluded from power⁵⁶. While it can be distorted into forms that only celebrate and justify injustice and violence (like the infamous mysticism of the Nazis⁵⁷), authentic mysticism relates to those who have nothing to lose in this world, and breathlessly await the next. In other words, those whose lives reflect the life and teachings of Jesus.

To conclude, we live in what might be called an apocalyptic age, in the sense that we are conscious of great changes and potential for change, much of it destructive. Whether it be nuclear holocaust, the spread of new forms of infectious disease, or massive climate changes, we stand in a position of liability. Then there are political and economic changes that loom, including especially the challenges of globalized Capitalism and its devastating effect on the biosphere and poor people. We dwell on the cusp of new eras, which means the painful passing of the old. The Modern Age, which defined things for the past 500 or so years, is now agreed to be over; yet whatever is to come has yet to gel into something recognizable. The system called Christendom, in which the church was identified with the States and culture of the West, is disintegrating; what form the church will take in the future remains undetermined. Big things are ending and new things are struggling to be born.

It is in eras such as this — beginning with the time leading up to the Exile and continuing through the convulsions of the 1^st century — that the people of God originally turned to "apocalyptic mysticism," locating the source of their hope in "the life of the world to come." Christians have believed that Jesus Christ brought them that life, which may now be enjoyed in advance. It may be that in our time as well, frustration with the present order will lead to a renewed appreciation for God’s coming to set things right. We may also seek to reorder our lives according to the world that is coming, which is revealed and given in Jesus Christ.

It may also be an apocalyptic age in the sense that the church is recovering its awareness of the apocalyptic core of the gospel, the original revelation ("apocalypse") of Jesus Christ. Once again I turn to Chris Beker: "The vision of the coming reality of God’s glory compels us to a specific posture in the present, that is, to work patiently and courageously in our world in a manner dictated by the way of Christ — the way from suffering to glory"⁵⁸. The crises of our time, and the demands of the gospel, conspire to turn this into a time of decision for us. We may in this time either serve Christ or the powers of this world, but not both⁵⁹. It becomes the task of Christians to be a living witness to the vision of God’s coming triumph, so that "the passion for God’s kingdom goes hand in hand with our compassion for our needy world"⁶⁰.

Yet I also wonder if Beker’s vision would not be even more fully realized if at the same time a "mystical" side were more consciously articulated. Soelle shows that this mystical side is most authentic when it also moves "from suffering to glory." My sense is that Beker’s "not yet" is well balanced by careful attention to Soelle’s "already," even — or especially — in the face of the horrors of injustice and violence in our time.

The future of the church in a post-Christendom era will be both apocalyptic and mystical. It will look ahead with hope and joy to the "life of the world to come," fully anticipating the passing of the structures and values of this existence and their replacement with the Kingdom of God, at the End. The church will also look within and above for signs of this Presence already at work in a world that, after all, God has visited and redeemed in Jesus Christ.

Without an appreciation for the "already" in mysticism, apocalyptic often tends to degenerate into world-hating gratuitous violence. At the same time, without the "not yet" component it receives from apocalyptic, mysticism frequently tends to descend into either an undifferentiated pantheism or a self-indulgent escapism.

Perhaps it would be fruitful to build on the synthesis hinted at by Hans Urs von Balthasar I in his book, Prayer. While "eschatologism" can ill afford to abhor mysticism,⁶¹ neither should the eschatological be subsumed into mysticism.⁶² Instead, von Balthasar talks about a contemplative life that is oriented by a quality of wakefulness, "an inner preparedness for some imminent event,"⁶³ of looking ahead for the Lord to come. A mysticism of the future, perhaps.

We need both apocalyptic and mysticism. And we are at a position, free from the social tasks assigned to the church in the regime of Christendom, to appropriate both apocalyptic and mysticism in creative and liberating ways. Both witness to the same Lord. The church derives unique and important energy from each.

+++++++

                    63. Von Balthasar, p. 147

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