Article:

Mystical Christianity
(Taken from the Journal of Contemplative Reflection, Vol. 1, Issue 1, April 1998)

It has been quite common in the contemporary world, especially among western theologians, to ridicule the notion of "mystical Christianity." The prevailing assumption has been that mysticism is only an accretion, added to Christianity after-the-fact and despite its origins. Anyone who sought to introduce mystical Christianity was subject to theological disdain. More recently, however, in light of current biblical scholarship and research into the origins of Jesus, this assumption has slowly begun to change. Marcus Borg, a well-known contemporary scholar, for example, talks openly now of the mystical and spiritual dimension not only of early Christianity, but of Jesus' own life. In his writings, he has called Jesus a "person of Spirit." This new attitude creates an opening today to rediscover and recover the mystical roots of Christianity.

At its heart, traditional Christianity is always a mystery, and about the Mystery, for the Christian faith is a mystical tradition of deep interiority. The essence of this mystery is, first, the long Semitic tradition of encounter with the divine in the affairs of ordinary human beings and within their history. Ancient Hebrew culture is saturated with this awareness. As time progresses the mystery of the divine Presence, named and nameless, interweaving itself in human history, becomes a personal encounter. In Jesus that encounter is so intense and so real that it makes Jesus, as Borg has said, a person of spirit, super-saturated (Anointed) with the divine Presence as Spirit. Everything about Jesus must be seen in relationship to his own deep awareness of that Presence experienced intimately within. The encounter between the soul of Jesus and God called "Abba" (beloved Parent) is so personal, so palpable, and so intimate that it fills all the words and acts of Jesus. It is this experience which is at the heart of his teaching and his reaching out to others.

To know this inner mystery is the essence of mysticism. It is mystical Christianity at its heart and core. Throughout his lifetime Jesus calls his students not simply to himself, but takes them personally (one could say "bodily") into that mystery. The Good News of Jesus is that an ordinary human being can awaken to the same reality he knows, and turn towards it. To live oriented to the deep, divine, interior Presence within, and to call it intimately, "Abba," is to begin to live in the realm of God, the reign of God; the rule of an authority at once so strong and yet so personal that it overwhelms everything else.

If Christianity is not mystical, then it is nothing at all, or at least there is little or nothing left of its origins. At its heart it is mystical, for it not only proclaims but is itself a "Way" of initiating all who come to it into its mystery. That introduction, however, is never institutional. It is always through the mediation of its founder who lives still to make God known. Christianity is fundamentally about a relationship not only to its living founder, but to God, the Ultimate Reality. Jesus offered his students, and still offers us today, a way forward into the Mystery of God's inner life. His offer is a gracious gift, but it is never done "to" us. It is done with us in cooperation. As we willingly walk the path Jesus opens up for us, we move forward with him through his own expert experience into the divine Mystery, into the intimate relationship with God that Jesus knew. This journey is always mysterious, for it takes us into an infinite territory; into the yawning infinitude of the divine abyss. Christian men and women of spirit, the mystics, are astronauts who explore the infinite depths of the divine abyss.

Lynn C. Bauman