Could There Be a Mystical Core of Religion

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Could There Be a Mystical Core of Religion?Author(s): Grace M. JantzenSource: Religious Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Mar., 1990), pp. 59-71Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20019387

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Rel. Stud. 26, pp. 59-71

GRACE M.JANTZENCOULD THERE BE A MYSTICAL CORE OF

RELIGION?An identical consciousness of close communion with God is obtained by the nonsacramental Quaker in his silence and by the sacramental Catholic in the Eucharist.The Christian contemplative's

sense ofpersonal intercourse with the divine

asmanifest in the incarnate Christ is hard to distinguish from that of the HinduVaishnavite, when we have allowed for the different constituents of his apperceivingmass.1

This sort of claim, articulated here by Evelyn Underhill, is frequently heard.It involves the idea that in mystical or religious experience we can findidentity across world religions, that this somehow constitutes the heart orcore of religion, and that this is of enormous religious and human sig?

nificance. In this paper Iwish to explore something of the background to thequestion of whether there could be a mystical core of religion. I shall arguethat it is a question that has emerged out of specific post-Enlightenmentthought forms, and shall illustrate some of the ways in which it has changedin meaning from the Deists to the present. I wish to suggest that there areserious difficulties about accepting the context in which such a question canbe raised in the first place. When we consider seriously the tradition ofChristian mysticism - which philosophers who theorize about a commoncore frequently fail to do - we find that the parameters of the discussion mustbe significantly altered.

What ismeant by the idea of a common mystical core? Even at first glance,two quite different possible meanings present themselves, both of themillustrated and influenced by Schleiermacher's Speeches. The first meaning isthat mystical experience, or at any rate intense religious feeling, is at theheart of religion. It is the kernel; the doctrines and rituals in which thisexperience is contained or by which it is expressed are the external wrappingsor husk. To the extent that they foster and protect the essential experience,they are valuable; but when they become a hard shell preventing peoplefrom penetrating to the inner reality, they are worse than useless.

Schleiermacher, itmust be said, did not usually use the term'mysticism

' :that term was applied more consistently by Schelling and then by William

James (on whom the extent of Schleiermacher's influence is insufficiently1 Evelyn Underhill, 'The Essentials of Mysticism' in Richard Woods, ed. Understanding Mysticism

(London: Athlone Press, 1980), p. 38.


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6o GRACE M. JANTZEN

noticed).2 Yet in Schleiermacher's notion of immediate feeling as the truecentre of religion we have all the ingredients of the theory of a mystical coreof religion in this primary sense. 'The true character of religionis... immediate consciousness of the Deity as he is found in ourselves and inthe world'.3 And again, religion isto have life and to know life in immediate feeling, only as such an existence in theInfinite and Eternal... It is an affection, a revelation of the Infinite in the finite, Godbeing seen in it and it in God.4

From this primary understanding of immediate feeling as the core ofreligion arises the second sense in which one might postulate a mystical coreof religion, namely that all the world religions are expressions of that feelingor experience.

Whence do these dogmas and doctrines come that many consider to be the essenceof religion ?... They are all the result of that contemplation of feeling, of thatreflection and comparison, of which we have already spoken. The conceptions thatunderlie these propositions are... nothing but general expressions for divine feelings.

They are not necessary for religion itself, scarcely even for communicating religion,but reflection requires and creates them.5

The original feeling, the immediate consciousness, is, according to Schleier?macher, essential to human nature and therefore everywhere the same; but

the way in which it is articulated varies with the language and culture andsituation of the experiencer. Hence arise the different religions of the world.

Their differences of dogma and ritual are simply different expressions of thesame essential experience, more or less adequate according to the degree ofauthenticity, balance, or corruption of its proponents, but all of them areonly efforts at expressing the inexpressible pure experience.6It is important to notice that for Schleiermacher this is ultimately basedon his anthropological theory. One might have thought that it would bepossible to argue for a mystical core of religion in the first sense while denyingit in the second sense : that is, one might agree that experience is at the heartor core of all religion, but deny that this is always the same experi?ence. Maybe it differs as much as do the doctrines and rituals of the variousreligions around the world. But this is not the position of Schleiermacher.

According to him, the immediate feeling which is at the core of religion is thesame wherever it is found. This is not an empirical thesis; it is a thesis aboutwhat constitutes our essential humanity. Human beings are created in such

2See my 'Mysticism and Experience' in Religious Studies 25, 1989.3 F. Schleiermacher, Speeches on Religion to its Cultured Despisers (Eng. trans. John Oman; New York:

Harper and Row, 1958), p. 101. It should be noted that Schleiermacher's views shifted considerablybetween the Speeches and his later book The Christian Faith ;but itwas his earlier view that most influencedSchelling and in due course William James.4 Ibid. p. 36.5 Ibid. p. 87.6 Cf. Speech no. 5.


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A MYSTICAL CORE OF RELIGION.' 6la way as to have a capacity for the immediate consciousness of the Infinite,and the different world religions are ways of trying to put into doctrine andpractice that immediate consciousness.

Subsequent writers on mysticism who have argued for a mystical core ofreligion have not always been clear about this. William James, for example,in the section on mysticism in The Varieties of Religious Experience piles oneexample on another to make it look like an empirical thesis that mysticseverywhere have the same experiences. Similarly Walter Terence Stace in

Mysticism and Philosophy thinks that the appropriate methodology requiresthatwe must quote a number of representative descriptions of their experiences whichhave been given by mystics, taking them from all historical times, places, andcultures, as widely separated as possible; and by an examination of these descriptionswe must try to arrive inductively at their common characteristics, if there are any.7

That such characteristics exist, and what their significance is, is the burdenof the rest of his book. I will defer discussion of his thesis and its implicationsuntil later; what I wish to point out here is the difference between thisempirical methodology and that of Schleiermacher. For an empiricist thepiling up of examples is crucial tomake the case; and the fact of discrepancies/in descriptions of experiences is a problem that must be resolved if the thesisis to stand. For Schleiermacher neither of these applies. It is in virtue of whatit is to be human that we are capable of immediate consciousness of the

divine: his thesis is not a consequence of accumulated statistics. Neither needhe be troubled by the fact that descriptions of such experiences vary. He cansay, in effect, 'Well, they would, wouldn't they?' Descriptions are verbal,and as such they are already conditioned by the language and the culture ofthe describer; consequently their variation is to be expected and does notcount against Schleiermacher's central contention.

But if Schleiermacher's account of a core of religion in immediate feelingis not based on generalization from statistics but on an anthropological thesis,the question immediately arises: how can this anthropological thesis be justi?fied? In the Speeches Schleiermacher gives no indication that such a justi?fication is necessary; and this in itself is indicative. I suggest that whatSchleiermacher was doing in this respect was simply varying a theme whosemajor notes were taken for granted from the time of the Deist controversy

through Kant to the Romantics. Great as the differences between them were,the common ground was far greater, and indeed made the disagreements

possible. Some variant of the anthropological thesis was part ofthat commonground, and because it was taken for granted itwas not seen as standing inneed of justification. Let me explicate that suggestion in more detail.In reaction to the interminable strife over religion in the sixteenth and

7Walter Terence Stace, Mysticisms and Philosophy (London and New York: Macmillan, 1961), p. 45.


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62 GRACE M. JANTZENseventeenth centuries, Deists in England and on the continent had come to

hold that the essence of religion did not consist in personal experience of Godnor yet in authoritative revelation, whether through Scripture or throughtradition, but rather in that which could be known by anyone through

natural reason. There was, according to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, acommon denominator in all religions which had nothing to do with mysterymongering priestcraft: it had rather to do with basic truths such as theexistence of a Supreme Power worthy to be worshipped, and with lofty moralideals, all discoverable by the natural light of human rationality which wascommon to people of every language and culture.8 For the Deists, in other

words, the question was not 'Is there a mystical core of religion?' but 'Isthere a rational core of religion?' and the answer was emphatically 'Yes!'

That the question could be asked in that way at all indicates that it wasassumed that religion, in all its divergent manifestations, nevertheless is asingle thing with an essence, that essence being its common denominatordiscoverable by natural reason. But furthermore, the question, and theanswer given, reveal that it was assumed that this natural reason, thiscapacity to ascertain the common denominator, is built into what is to behuman. To be human is to be rational : that much had been ingrained formillennia. Furthermore, partly through

the influence of Descartes, thisrationality was now seen to be individual, logically prior to language andculture. It was now argued that this individual rationality provided accessto the common denominator of religion : the essence of human nature con?nects with the essence of religion.

There were many differences among Deists, not least in the seriousnesswith which they treated empirical evidence. Some of them, particularly inEngland, were very much impressed by the accounts of Chinese Con?fucianism that were just becoming available through the pioneering work ofthe Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci. Yet for many Deists, particularly thecontinental rationalists like Leibniz and Voltaire, the information arrivingfrom China (and to a lesser extent from India and other parts of the worldbeing explored by Europeans) was simply a welcome confirmation of theoriesof religion and human nature which they already held on other grounds.

There was much more fitting of the evidence into pre-existent theories thanbuilding up theories of religion on the basis of newly available descriptiveevidence.9 And central to the theories, whatever their other differences, wasthe premise of access to the essence of religion by individual natural reason.

With Kant the ground shifted somewhat. As iswell known, Kant dismissedall claims of human reason to be able to prove the existence of a SupremeBeing, let alone any claims to have direct experience of God :Kant argued

8 Cf. Peter Byrne, Natural Religion and theNature of Religion :The legacy ofDeism (London and New York :Routledge, 1989), pp. 52-78.9 Cf. Eric Sharpe, Comparative Religion (London: Duckworth, 1975), pp. 15-19.


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A MYSTICAL CORE OF RELIGION? 63instead that 'religion within the limits of reason alone 'must restrict itself to

morality. Precisely how Kant intended this to be interpreted can be left onone side for our present purposes :what is important for us to notice is thatalthough in some respects the ground has shifted from the earlier Deists, incrucial ways it remains the same. There is agreement both that there is anessence of religion and that there is built into individual human naturesomething answering to that essence : the disagreement is only about whetherthat essence is to be found in individual rationality or in individual morality.

Where the Deists would look for a rational core of religion (which would ofcourse have a strongly ethical component) Kant would look for a moral core(which would be within the limits of reason alone). Considering it in thislight, what they have in common is far more extensive than where they differ.

From this we can see why Schleiermacher did not feel it necessary to defendhis anthropological thesis that there is in the essence of human naturesomething answering to the essence of religion. As far as he was concernedthat was not in question :he simply accepted the position of his philosophical

precursors on that issue. What was up for debate in Schleiermacher's think?ing was not whether such an essence could be postulated but rather in

what it could be said to consist: hence his arguments that religion consistsneither in doctrine (rationality)

nor in ethics but in individual immediateconsciousness of the Infinite. In other words, the question was not whetherthere was a core of religion corresponding to the core of individual humannature: the question was whether that core was mystical.

Now, when this question is raised by contemporary philosophers of re?ligion, while the form may be the same, there are significant respects inwhichthe import is different. It is no longer assumed either that there is an essenceof religion or that there is that within every human being, constitutive of ourhumanness, which answers to that essence, so that all we need to do is to

identify the proper locus of that response. When philosophers today askwhether there is a mystical core of religion we are much more likely to beasking whether, in the light of the manifest diversity of doctrine, ritual, andpractice, and even descriptions of experience there is anything at all thatcould be an underlying unifying principle ... and looking to see whether it

might lie in mystical experience. This is why the accumulation of evidenceis important for us in a way that it never was for Schleiermacher, and alsowhy discrepancies in the descriptions of the experiences of mystics acrossworld religions is so much more problematic. There is an important sense inwhich the ground shared by the English and continental Deists, Kant, andSchleiermacher crumbles under modern feet. In a post-Christian empiricalworld, we no longer share some of their basic assumptions, and although wemight frame the question in the same words, there are significant ways inwhich what we are asking is different.

One of the ways in which that difference makes itself obvious lies in the


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64 GRACE M. JANTZENfact that the modern debate about whether or not there is a mystical core ofreligion is regularly taken as a debate about evidence for the truth of religiousclaims. If the experiences of people across world religions are recognizablythe same, then it is arguable that this constitutes evidence for the existenceof God, the putative object of the experiences. WThat sort of God this is, andwhether there is any resemblance to the God of Christian belief, is of coursea further question; but again it is a question upon which the data of theexperiences themselves are felt to have a bearing.

Thus for example we find Stace arguing, first, that underlying differencesof interpretation arising out of variations in culture and background, acommon set of characteristics of the experiences themselves can be discerned.To be more precise, Stace claims to be able to identify two such sets, onedescriptive of what he calls 'extrovertive mystical experiences' and the otherof ' introvertive mystical experiences'. These sets overlap in many respects,both involving a sense of blessedness and peace, a feeling of the holy,paradoxicality, and ineffability. The most significant difference betweenthem is that the extrovertive mystic sees all things as One and herself in

profound harmony with this unifying vision, whereas for the introvertivemystic questions of harmony fall away; there is instead complete union,merging with the One in what Stace calls unitary consciousness. Stace thenargues that the difference between these two sets of characteristics is not adifference of kind, but the difference between the partial and the complete:the extrovertive experience... is actually on a lower level than the introvertive type ;that is to say, it is an incomplete kind of experience which finds its completion andfulfillment in the introvertive kind of experience.10

From this analysis of the similarity of mystical experiences across worldreligions, based on his distinction between the pure experience and itsinterpretation (which obviously owes much to Schleiermacher even while it

differs from him) Stace goes on to consider the import of this in terms ofwhether or not one can deduce from the universality of the experience thatit has an objective referent. His findings are more nuanced than he has beengiven credit for by some of his critics. Nevertheless, with suitable quali?fications Stace affirms thatwe have reached the conclusion that mystical experience is not merely subjective,but is in very truth what the mystics themselves claim, namely a direct experienceof the One, the Universal Self, God.11

There has, of course, been much debate about the position taken by Stace,both about whether the experiences of mystics across world religions reallydo display the characteristics he claims to discern, and also about what theimplications would be if they did. Central to the first aspect of the debate is

10 Stace, p. 132. 11 Ibid. p. 207.


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A MYSTICAL CORE OF RELIGION? 65the work of Steven Katz. He argues that the distinction Stace relies on

between experience and interpretation is unsustainable. All experience takesplace within a context which includes both the personal history of theindividual and the wider cultural and religious milieux of which she is a part.This context shapes the experiences itself, not merely subsequent interpret?ation of it. Katz gives the example of the Jewish mystic, who has been taughtfrom childhood what God is like and therefore what the experience of Godmust be like: these expectations are not left behind in mystical experiencebut on the contrary actually set parameters in advance around what sort ofexperience is desired and what will count as authentic. These parameters arevery different from those which would be set by the background and contextof a Buddhist mystic, for whom, therefore, something quite different couldbe counted as genuine mystical experience. Katz concludes,This much is certain :themystical experience must be mediated by the kind of beingswe are. And the kind of beings we are requires that experience be not only instan?taneous and discontinuous, but that it also involve memory, apprehension, expec?tation, language, accumulation of prior experience, concepts and expectations, witheach experience being built on the back of all these elements and being shaped anew

by each fresh experience.12Furthermore, Katz argues that the common characteristics which Staceclaims to discern in mystical experiences are so vague as to be useless toestablish the point Stace wishes to make. From the fact that I have anexperience which I describe as paradoxical and ineffable, and that you havean experience which you describe as paradoxical and ineffable, it by nomeans follows that you and I have had the same experience, let alone thatour experiences have the same objective referent. Accordingly, Katz concludes,contra Stace, that there are insufficient grounds for asserting that mysticsacross world religions have the same experiences; and this is a substantialpart of his argument that 'mystical or more generally religious experience isirrelevant in establishing the truth or falsity of religion in general or anyspecific religion in particular.,13It might seem that Stace and Katz are polar opposites: what one affirmsthe other denies. In a sense this is indeed true. Yet my earlier discussion ofthe Deists, Kant and Schleiermacher should have alerted us to the possibilityof a common ground upon which disagreements can be debated, and Isuggest that this is again the case here. There are various aspects of theagenda between Stace and Katz which are common to both of them. Oneof these is their understanding of what a mystical experience is; I shall returnto this later. Another concerns the truth of religion. Both agree that ifmystics

did have uniform experiences within different religious traditions, this would12 Steven Katz, 'Language, Epistemology and Mysticism ' in his, ed., Mysticism andPhilosophical Analysis

(London: Sheldon Press, 1978), p. 59.13 Ibid. p. 22.3 RES 26


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66 GRACE M. JANTZENcount significantly in the assessment of the question of truth. Both, therefore,are treating mystical experiences as evidence, though they disagree aboutthe direction in which it points. In spite of their disagreement, what they

have in common in this regard is much greater than what either of themhave in common with Schleiermacher and his precursors.14

Other writers have been concerned to challenge Stace on the other aspectof his argument. Allowing that mystics do have remarkably similar experi?ences across world religions, and that more can be made of the experi?ence-interpretation distinction than Katz admits, what follows? It mightbe argued that the fact (if it could be proved) that there are similar experi?ences across world religions simply reveals what we know perfectly wellalready, namely that at certain levels people around the world have similarreligious and psychological capabilities. In other words, human psychologyand human social structures are sufficiently alike to allow for people to haverecognizably similar religious experiences, just as we have recognizablysimilar experiences of other sorts. Widely as artistic expression varies betweencultures, for example, it is still possible for an outsider to be taught torecognize another culture's dance or painting or literature, perhaps not asfully as one born into the culture, but nevertheless sufficiently to appreciatethe aesthetic expression and to find parallels and contrasts with such ex?pression in her own culture.

But it may well be argued that this says no more than that, for all ourdifferences, we are all part of the human race. Religion, and religiousexperiences, are to be found in every human culture, just as art, and artisticexperiences, are to be found. That some people in many cultures havereligious experiences of the sort that we call mystical is on a par with the factthat some people inmany cultures have aesthetic propensities of the sort wecall musical. It is no more than a question of temperament and ability: awonderful thing about humankind and the organization of society, to be sure,but not needing an objective referent, let alone serving as evidence for theexistence of God. Various reductionist accounts of religion in general and

mystical experience in particular have been proposed and are associated withthe name of Feuerbach and Durkheim, Marx and Freud. Yet one can rejectthese reductionist accounts and still treat religion as a human phenomenonlike artistic expression or ways of living together in community ; and whilesaying that people in many world religions have experiences which havestriking similarities, see this as no more than indicating that people with thepsychological or temperamental propensity to such experiences are notrestricted to any one culture.

Against such views there are those who argue that religious experience is14 The same, of course, is true of subsequent philosophical discussions of them : cf. Peter Byrne,

'Mysticism, Identity and Realism: The Debate Continued', International Journal of theHistory of Religion(1984)


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A MYSTICAL CORE OF RELIGION? 67quite different from, say, artistic experience, because it seems to those whohave it to be an experience of something: God or some aspect of 'theSupernatural

':religious experiences have an apparent object. In the absenceof evidence to the contrary, and given that there is general coherence of

testimony about the nature of the experienced object among those who havesuch experiences, this counts as good reason to believe that such an object orbeing actually exists. Thus for example Richard Swinburne argues on thebasis of the Principle of Credulity (i.e. the principle that in the absence ofspecial considerations it is reasonable to believe that what one seems toperceive is accurate to how things are) that religious experience is goodreason to believe that there is a God.15

Again, it is clear that while in one sense those like Swinburne who believethat the common or at least sufficiently congruous testimony of those whohave mystical experiences counts as evidence for the existence of God arepolar opposites to those who account for such experiences reductionisticallyor simply as a common human phenomenon, there is a more basic sense inwhich they share the same ground. In each case the question about mysticalexperiences is a question about evidence; and relies on a common view ofhow such experiences should be characterized. While they disagree aboutthe proper evaluation of the evidence, they share a common agenda, and itis the same agenda as that shared by Stace and Katz, and in respect to

questions of evidence, different from that shared by the Deists, Kant andSchleiermacher. In modern discussions, the question 'Is there amystical coreof religion?' does not mean 'Is the core of religion to be discerned in feelingor experience rather than in rationality or morality?' It means, rather, 'Isthere reason to believe, from the reports of mystical experiences of peoplearound the world, that there is a God or Ultimate Reality to which thesereports bear witness ? 'The issue has become one of the truth of religion (orof a religion) rather than one about the essence of religion and a correspond?ing account of anthropology.And yet the differences can be overstated: there is a continuity as well.

Common to all the people we have considered, and central to their thinking,is a particular perception of religious diversity and how to account for it.Common also to all those who are particularly concerned with experience

(that is, from Schleiermacher onwards) are a set of shared assumptions abouthow such experience should be described :what are itsmain characteristics.Now, what Iwish to suggest is that these common questions and assumptionsgive the two groups we have been considering, for all their differences, ashared agenda ; and that this agenda is utterly at variance with the agendawe find when we look at the mystics themselves. The shift of ground betweenthe Deists, Kant, and Schleiermacher on the one hand and modern writers

15 Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), ch. 13.3-2


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68 GRACE M. JANTZENfrom Stace to Swinburne on the other is as nothing compared with the shiftof ground from all these philosophical writers put together and the mysticalwriters themselves. And it seems to me that in discussions of mysticism,mystics ought not to be ignored.

It is unfortunately not superfluous to insist upon this. There is far too muchphilosophical (and theological) writing about mysticism that shows no evi?dence of having studied actual mystics in depth, either in terms of theirwritings or in terms of the social and intellectual contexts in which thosewritings must be understood. Even those likeWilliam James and W. T. Stacewho pepper their books with quotations from mystical writings can be shownwith very little effort to have taken quotations out of context and to haveregularly distorted the meaning or at least given a substantially false im?pression of the mystics' overall intention, fitting their words into pre?conceived conceptual patterns. And many philosophers don't bother toquote them at all.

I propose, therefore, to look at the shared ground among the philosophers,considering in turn the question of pluralism and the question of the charac?teristics of mystical experience, and then look at the difference of this ap?

proach and these assumptions from those of the Christian mystical tradition.From the Deists onwards, we have seen that modern philosophershave

looked at mystical experience with what we might call an ecumenical ques?tion in mind. The way this question gets formulated differs, as do the methodsthat might be thought appropriate for arriving at an answer; but in animportant respect the question is the same, namely, 'Does mystical experi?ence indicate an underlying unity among world religions?' Thus for instanceSchleiermacher, who is an important fountainhead for this discussion, in hisFifth Speech is concerned to take religious diversity seriously, celebrating thedifferences between actual religions rather than looking for some universal'

religionin

general' or natural

religionas some of the Deists had done. Yet

he urges, 'I would have you discover religion in the religions. Though theyare always earthly and impure, the same form of heavenly beauty that I havetried to depict is to be sought in them. '16

Schleiermacher in this view shows himself to be a true son of the Enlight?enment, and at the same time part of the Romantic reaction to it. The projectof the Enlightenment can be described as the effort to liberate people fromtheir historical particularity in the name of freedom, and results in the

glorification of individualism.17 Thus human religiosity is founded in indi?vidualistic immediate consciousness of the divine; but that consciousnessarises out of an essence of human nature so that at root it is everywhere thesame. The important thing in terms of the Enlightenment is that the heartof religion is not to be attributed to historical particularity or context.

16 Schleiermacher, p. 211.17 Cf. Stanley Hauerwas, Against theNations (Minneapolis: Seabury, Winston Press, 1985), p. 18.


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A MYSTICAL CORE OF RELIGION? 69But Schleiermacher is also reacting against the Enlightenment and giving

impetus to the growing Romantic stream that saw the particularity of humansocieties as a good and rich treasure, the diversity of cultures being muchricher than some theoretical monolithic heap of humanity. His sentimentsabout the value of the multiplicity of religious forms are reminiscent of

Herder; as is his willingness to perceive the diversity as a strength ratherthan a weakness of religion.

Schleiermacher manages to keep the Enlightenment and the Romanticstrains together by insisting simultaneously on the essence of religion beingeverywhere the same in individual immediate consciousness, and also on itsdiversity

ofexpression

inpositive religions.

Is there not in all religions more or less of the true nature of religion... ?Must not,therefore, each religion be one of the special forms which mankind, in some region

of the earth and at some stage of development, has to accept?18The whole of religion is nothing but the sum of all relations of man to God,apprehended in all the possible ways inwhich any man can be immediately consciousin his life. In this sense there is but one religion... Yet all men will not by any meansapprehend them in the same way, but quite differently.19

As we have already seen, subsequent philosophers would not concur on allpoints with Schleiermacher, in particular questioning whether that immedi?ate consciousness really is the same, and how we could know it to be so giventhe diversity of descriptions. But for the most part modern thinkers havebought into the underlying assumption that individual religious experience,however it be construed, is logically prior to societal construction and is notdetermined by particularist traditions. It is out of this individualistic assump?tion that the ecumenical question can be put: without it such a questioncould have no point. Only ifwe assume that there is at least the possibilityof mystical experience logically independent of the culture and tradition ofthe mystic can we ask whether there might be a mystical core of religion.Only if world religions are looked upon as in some way expressions of orcontexts for individualistic experiences can we discuss them as a plurality ofpublic responses to private (but universal) religious impulses. The particularway in which pluralism is understood and the ecumenical question ofwhether there could be a mystical core of religion feed off each other, andare a joint product of post-Cartesian individualism.

This links directly with the question of the characteristics of mysticalexperiences, which are regularly seen as private and individual intensesubjective states. William James' characterization of mystical experiences asineffable, transient, passive, and having a noetic quality is regularly repeatedin modern philosophical discussions of mysticism. Sometimes additionalcharacteristics are added, but the fundamental assumption remains the same,

18 Schleiermacher, p. 216. 19 Ibid. p. 217.


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70 GRACE M. JANTZENthat mystical experiences are unusual and intense psychological phenomena :

voices, vision, l?vitations, ecstasies, and things that go bump in the night.I have argued elsewhere the extent to which this characterization of

mystical experiences as psychic states on the fringes of normal consciousnessis misguided.20 It is a direct consequence of the post-Kantian assumptionthat God cannot be known at the centre of our minds and beings, and musttherefore be encountered on the inarticulate margins of consciousness or notat all. James followed the Romantic philosophers in locating religion inimmediate feeling, but gave that an empirical flavour in his effort to anchorhis thesis in actual descriptions. Unfortunately his quotations were largelytaken from a compilation drawn up by his friend Starbuck without regardto either their literary or their social context, and with an eye to preciselythose intense experiences which James wished to see as paradigmatically

mystical.Now it would be folly to pretend that such phenomena cannot be found

in mystical literature : of course they can. If we want to make a study ofbizarre states of consciousness examples can be found without much search?ing. But what we need to note much more thoroughly than has been usualin philosophical writing about mysticism is that Christian mystics themselvesare emphatic that these experiences are not what is central to their spiri?tuality. Some of them, like John of the Cross or the author of The Cloud of

Unknowing give grave warnings against all such experiences, advocating thatwe should treat them all as demonic in origin and saying caustically thatthey make people behave 'like sheep with the brain disease'.21 Others, likeTeresa of Avila and Julian of Norwich, are grateful for the visions they have

had, and recognize in them the source of much spiritual teaching. Yet eventhose who are most affirmative of the experiences they have had never seethem as essential to spiritual growth, never advocate that others should tryto have them too, and certainly never see them as central to what union with

God is about.Indeed in the history of Christian spirituality mystical union is not seen interms of private individual subjective psychology: that is a post-Enlighten?ment notion foreign to the great medieval spiritual teachers. In their terms

the chief usages of the word 'mystical 'are with reference to the interpretationof scripture and to the reception of the sacraments. Scripture, along with itsliteral, historical meaning, was held to have mystical meaning : this did notrefer to some esoteric or wholly subjective understanding but rather to the

way in which ultimatelyit

pointedto Christ. To discover the way in which

any particular passage of Scripture both revealed and concealed Christ inits words was to discover the mystical meaning of scripture. This implied,

20 In 'Mysticism and Experience' op. cit.21 The Cloud of Unknowing (Classics of Western Spirituality) (New York: Paulist Press, and London:SPCK, 1981), p. 230.


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A MYSTICAL CORE OF RELIGION? 71indeed, personal exposure to the Christ thus encountered, and naturally thiscould involve intense emotion, but whether it did or not was not the centralissue. Similarly in the sacrament of the Eucharist one received ' the mysticalbody and blood of God's Son, Jesus Christ': just as the embodiment of Jesusof Nazareth both revealed and concealed the Son of God, just as the wordsof scripture both revealed and concealed Christ of whom they spoke, so thebread and the wine both reveal and conceal the presence of Christ.22

The discernment of Christ in scripture and sacrament, and the permeationof that discernment throughout all the dimensions of life, was what was

meant through the Christian centuries by the term 'mystical'. The mystical,therefore, is according to its practitioners not private and individualistic butquintessentially communal, public, and indeed political in its inter?connections with integrity and justice. It has no intrinsic relation to psychicphenomena, which may or may not occur here or anywhere else, and shouldalways be treated with due respect and caution. It has nothing whatever todo with ineffability :God is beyond all description, but our experiences arenot; and mystics usually show themselves precise and articulate in theirwritings. And if there is argued to be a mystical core of religion, this wouldbe on the basis of an understanding of 'mystical ' utterly at variance withthe Christian mystical tradition, and would rely on post-Enlightenmentcategories which the Christian mystics themselves would find baffling andrepellent.

r'sCollege, London22 Cf. my 'The Mystical Meaning of Scripture' in King's Theological Review xi, 2 (1988).

Could There Be a Mystical Core of Religion

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