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Home , Ascent of Mount Carmel, Dark Night of the Soul, Divine light, John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF DIVINE LOVE ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN OF THE

Thesis

Submitted to

The College of Arts and Sciences of the

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

The Degree of

Master of Arts in

By

Huili Stout

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

Dayton, Ohio

August 2018

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF DIVINE LOVE ACCORDING TO ST.

Name: Stout, Huili Shen

APPROVED BY:

______Sandra Yocum, Ph.D. Faculty Advisor Associate Professor

______Silviu Bunta, Ph.D. Faculty Advisor Associate Professor

______William L. Portier, Ph.D. Faculty Advisor Professor

ii

ã Copyright by

Huili Shen Stout

All rights reserved

2018

iii ABSTRACT

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF DIVINE LOVE ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS

Name: Stout, Huili Shen University of Dayton

Advisor: Dr. Sandra Yocum

St. John of the Cross is presented as an authentic epistemologist with a comprehensive theory of mystical knowledge. He describes the nature and excellence of mystical knowledge and explains how it may be attained through an unyielding and total adherence to the telos—union with —and through the dark night, in which a of the sensory and intellectual faculties leads to a gradual transformation of our apprehensive capacity. Mystical knowledge has the characteristics of passivity, substantiality, supra-abundance, and ineffability; it is a dynamic loving communication between God and the capable of transforming the whole person. The radical demands of nada on the intellect, the will, and the memory placed by John’s epistemology can be understood through a rationale of divine love. The necessary operation of faith in the dark night, which transcends reason through a loving trust of the

Master amidst intellectual and affective suffering, is described. John’s insight into divine love as the fountain of all knowledge and inspiration, his thorough analysis on the power of the theological virtues to elevate our intellectual faculties, and his wisdom about the relationship between human suffering and divine knowledge make him a unique epistemologist with much to contribute to our philosophical conversations today.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... iv

LIST OF FIGURES ...... vi

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER 1: EPISTEMIC FOUNDATIONS ...... 16

CHAPTER 2: “A SWEET AND LIVING KNOWLEDGE” ...... 34

CHAPTER 3: THE RATIONALE OF DIVINE LOVE ...... 65

CHAPTER 4: THE LIGHT OF FAITH ...... 91

CHAPTER 5: CERTITUDE, CRITERIA, AND CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ...... 110

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 133

v LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Natural and Apprehensions ...... 38

vi INTRODUCTION

Mysticism and epistemology are not often associated with one another. One of the definitions for offered in the Merriam Webster dictionary is “the belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual , or ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience,” a germane definition that could categorize the mysticism of St.

John of the Cross. Epistemology, the theory of knowledge, is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion. The fundamental difficulty in connecting mysticism and epistemology is deciding whether or not knowledge of God is a worthy subject of “justified belief.” In this introduction, I will contend that the field of epistemology, given its vast scope and multitudinous interests, should very well study mysticism and that St. John of the Cross can be appreciated as an authentic epistemologist.

Diversity of Considerations in Epistemology

Although the word epistemology did not get coined until the 19th century, the theory of knowledge has been studied since the Greek philosophers such as Plato and

Aristotle. Accounting for major modern developments, there have been many divergent schools of thought in epistemology: rationalism represented by Plato and Descartes, empiricism represented by , Hume, and Locke, transcendental idealism heralded by Kant, skepticism, realism, pragmatism, etc. Among the differing philosophies, topics of controversy include whether truth resides in the human consciousness or in experience,

1 whether knowledge corresponds to an objective reality or can only be subjective representations, what types of knowledge there are, and what constitutes true epistemic rather than mere opinion.

For a glimpse of the diversity in epistemology we will look back briefly at a few luminaries in the field. While Plato believes in an innate “capacity of judgment”1 which can be trained to see the invisible world of forms—“abstract and universal properties”2 of things, Aristotle designates sense perception, memory and experience as the source of knowledge of the that, which lays the foundation for the causal inquiry of general principles of a particular science.3 Aristotle also distinguishes knowledge of scientific principles from knowledge of essence.4 Contrary to both Plato and Aristotle, an ancient skepticism Pyrrhonism represented by Sextus Empiricus believes that the best attitude towards knowledge is an indefinitely ongoing investigation and a suspension of judgment, which leads to tranquility.5 Fast forwarding to modernity, we have Descartes, who locates epistemic certainty in the cogito—the ego—and Hume, who turns to sensory experience for his source of all knowledge: “we can never think of anything which we have not seen without us, or felt in our own minds.”6 Kant in his Copernican hypothesis proposes knowing as a combination of sensory experience with intellectual concepts

1 Nicholas D Smith, “Plato’s Epistemology,” in Epistemology: The Key Thinkers, ed. Stephen Hetherington (London: Continuum, 2012), 42. 2 Stephen Hetherington, “Epistemology’s Past Here and Now,” in Epistemology: The Key Thinkers, ed. Stephen Hetherington (London: Continuum, 2012), 10. 3 Robert Bolton and Alan Code, “Aristotle on Knowledge,” in Epistemology: The Key Thinkers, ed. Stephen Hetherington (London: Continuum, 2012), 68. 4 Ibid., 68. 5 Gisela Striker, “Ancient Skepticism,” in Epistemology: The Key Thinkers, ed. Stephen Hetherington (London: Continuum, 2012), 81. 6 P. J. E. Kail, “Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Epistemology,” in Epistemology: The Key Thinkers, ed. Stephen Hetherington (London: Continuum, 2012), 113.

2 mediated through “categories.”7 Nineteenth century philosopher William James, a radical empiricist, rails against “essentialism” and defines cognition as selecting from the confusing supply of sensory experience what is interesting and pragmatic.8 Twentieth century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose dictum “essence is expressed by grammar” has enjoyed various interpretations, seems to strike a balance between

“linguistic idealism and naive realism”: even though things have essences, they are carried through particular linguistic schema and cannot be grasped by the general discipline of philosophy or metaphysics.9 A contemporary of Wittgenstein, scientist and philosopher Polanyi puts forth an epistemology of personal knowledge, defining knowing as an art of “pouring ourselves”10 into the object, a process shaped by tacit personal factors11 and motivated by a heuristic passion for a “closer contact with reality.”12

More recently, scholars have suggested some new directions of exploration in epistemology. American analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga and others have proposed

7 Melissa McBay Merritt and Markos Valaris, “Kant and Kantian Epistemology” in Epistemology: The Key Thinkers, ed. Stephen Hetherington (London: Continuum, 2012), 135-36. 8 J. Kalupahana, “The Epistemology of William James and Early Buddhism,” in Religious Experience and Religious Belief: Essays in the Epistemology of Religion, eds., Runzo and Craig K. Ihara (Lanham, MD: University Press of America Inc, 1986), 54, 57. Essentialism is a school of thought which believes we are able to know the essence of things, or things as they are. 9 Roger Pouivet, “Wittgenstein’s Essentialism,” in Liber Amicorum Pascal Engel, eds. Julien Dutant, Davide Fassio and Anne Meylan (Geneva: University of Geneva, 2014), 450, 464, https://www.unige.ch/lettres/philo/publications/engel/liberamicorum/pouivet.pdf, accessed on March 22, 2018. 10 Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Toward a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 59. 11 Ibid., 95. 12 Ibid., 106.

3 knowledge as the product of proper functioning in the cognitive faculty.13 Virtue epistemologists such as Linda Zagzebski, Robert C. Roberts and W. Jay Wood begin to attach importance to the roles of motivation, epistemic virtues and case studies of epistemic exemplars,14 with the latter two advocating placing the will as the central intellectual faculty because it defines a knower’s identity as agent and is the driving force behind the most interesting and important kinds of knowledge.15 Philosophers Jeremy

Fantl and Matthew McGrath suggest investigating deeper into the links between action and knowledge and deliberating the nature of belief according to its impact on practice.16

British philosopher Timothy Williamson believes that knowledge in and of itself should be studied in lieu of traditional concepts of “truth, belief and justification.”17 Another

British philosopher Gilbert Ryle distinguishes knowledge of a truth, “knowledge-that,” from knowledge of a skill, “knowledge-how.”18 Other scholars have criticized the limitation of epistemic goods to propositional knowledge in mainstream epistemology, proposing as alternatives the study of understanding, wisdom, cognitive agents and cognitive abilities.19

13 Hetherington, “Epistemology’s Future Here and Now,” 231. 14 Ibid., 231-32; Dalibor Renic, Ethical and Epistemic Normativity: Lonergan and Virtue Epistemology (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2012), 73-81. 15 Renic, Ethical and Epistemic Normativity, 79, citing Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 111-112, 154. A separation between the will and the intellect is therefore contrived, ill-conforming to reality, because knowing is sustained by agents not faculties. Intellectual life cannot be isolated from other parts of life. 16 Ibid., 232. 17 Ibid., 234. 18 Ibid., 232. 19 Dalibor Renic, Ethical and Epistemic Normativity: Lonergan and Virtue Epistemology (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2012), 22-3.

4 The above summary, though in no way exhaustive of its full scope, shows that the field of epistemology has ample room for expansion and creative approaches. Its subject area can and should include propositional knowledge, particular scientific knowledge, philosophical knowledge of essence, practical skills, cognitive faculties, motivational aspects, epistemic virtues, understanding and wisdom. I believe it should also include the knowledge of God, for its universal significance which compels people to form a judgement in belief, for its powerful influence on action, and for the interesting historical characters it inspires and their epistemic qualities. This idea is neither new nor revolutionary. The eleventh annual Philosophical Symposium at California

University in 1986 had its theme as “Religious Experience and Religious Belief,” exploring topics such as taking belief in God as basic, Williams James and early

Buddhism, St. John of the Cross on mystic apprehensions, conceptual relativism and religious experience, etc.20 Moreover, Christian theologians have often studied knowledge as an interface between philosophy and theology. In the following paragraphs

I will briefly describe how prominent Christian theologians have approached the study of knowledge.

Christian Theologians on Knowledge

Christianity from the very beginning has placed in the center of its religion knowledge of the one true God—not a conceptual understanding of something but a real existential knowledge of someone: “This is eternal life, that they may know (γινώσκωσιν) you, the only true God, and Christ whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3). Knowledge of

20 Joseph Runzo and Craig K. Ihara, eds., Religious Experience and Religious Belief: Essays in the Epistemology of Religion (Lanham, MD: University Press of America Inc, 1986).

5 God is the most excellent and ultimate knowledge which fulfills every desire, says 7th century Syriac theologian of Nineveh.21 Although God is elusive to being conceptualized, early Christians writers such as , Maximus the

Confessor, Dionysius the Areopagite, and Diadochus of Photike proclaim that we can know God through wonder and the “feeling of the heart”—the most concentrated source and most alive part of the human being, an “organic unity” gathering together all the senses and faculties.22 Knowing God, according to the , is more than learning about him from a distance but tends toward intimacy as in the apprehension of a person with whom we are in direct contact.23 Two major principles implicit in the of John are applied by the Fathers to the knowledge of God: first, this knowledge is made possible by the illumination of the soul24 by the divine light; second, it is not anti-rational but bound up with an objective understanding of truth in and through the divine logos.25

In order to attain the knowledge of God, the Fathers agree that purity through ascesis and

21 Olivier Clement, Roots of : Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary (Hyde Park: New City Press of the Focolare, 2013), 229, quoting from Ascetic Treatises, 38, p. 164. This belief is shared by other early Christian writers. For instance, Evagrius of Pontus says, “To progress in thinking about creatures is painful and wearisome. The of the Holy is ineffable peace and silence.” See Clement, 230. 22 Ibid., 255, 84, 27, 29, 30-32. 23 Dumitru Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical guide for the Faithful and a Definitive Manual for the Scholar (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary Press, 2003), 37. 24 The term “soul” will be used throughout the thesis to mean the whole person with an emphasis on the spiritual dimension, which is the usage shared by early Christian writers and St. John of the Cross. See Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, trans., The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1991), 774, “Glossary.” 25 Ibid., 239, 208-09.

6 detachment is necessary so that the heart may become “an antenna of infinite sensitivity.”26

Thomas Aquinas, building on Aristotle, posits that after perceiving “instantiated and particularized forms” through sense-powers, the agent mind is able to abstract general ideas about things with the help of the imagination.27 In his commentary on the

Gospel of John, Aquinas propounds that Christ is the “light of intelligibility” through which we come to any type of knowledge.28 He also suggests that our activities in knowing things of the earth including our pursuit in philosophy are less intense forms of participation in the divine light of Christ, limited by “tenebrae”—darkness of the mind, a universal symptom of our fallen humanity.29

More recently, Cardinal successfully argued for the inclusion of faith and affectivity as natural components in coming to belief. In his An

Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, Newman shows that assent30 is more often given to

26 Clement, Roots of Christian Mysticism, 131. 27 , Summa Theologiae: A Concise Translation, ed. Timothy McDermott (Notra Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 1989), 131-34. See Summa Theologiae, 12.84.6-8. 28 Robert Barron, The Priority of Christ: Toward a Postliberal Catholicism (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2007), 147. 29 Ibid., 149. My advisor Dr. Sandra Yocum points out that tenebrae was also a traditional liturgical service in the Latin Rite celebrated during the Holy Week, accompanied by the gradual extinguishing of candles to commemorate the Passion of Christ. During the Easter Vigil liturgy, when the Paschal Candle is blessed and lit, the priest is to say the prayer, “May the light of Christ rising in glory dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds,” see http://www.ibreviary.com/m/preghiere.php?tipo=Rito&id=544, accessed on April 17th, 2018. Here we see an implicit connection between Aquinas’s understanding of knowledge and the Catholic liturgy. 30 The term “assent” was first coined by the Stoics in an effort to distinguish between impression and belief. Assent was defined as accepting a cognitive impression as true. See Striker, “Ancient Skepticism,” 74. In Newman’s writing, “assent” has a similar meaning which includes both an assertion and an intellectual apprehension, see John

7 cumulative probabilities than watertight syllogistic inferences. He makes a strong case against the evidentialist positivism of Locke and Hume. By distinguishing “real” vs.

“notional” apprehension,31 Newman highlights the importance of affectivity in intellection. He further recognizes the implicit influence of first principles as starting points of apprehension, concluding that human knowledge is to a large extent personal.32

Canadian theologian , seeing the development of modern sciences which seek to explain all phenomena, assigned philosophy to “the world of interiority,” charging it with the study of human consciousness.33 Building on his ideas of the transcendental method, transcendental precepts, and self-appropriation, Lonergan constructs a “personalist and holistic understanding of human rationality.”34 Bucking the

Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 32. 31 Newman, Grammar of Assent, 50-1. Objects of “real” apprehension are things and experiences that are concrete, particular and external to us while the “notional” involves abstractions and ideas representing some aspects of external reality. “Real” apprehension is much more vivid with a greater impression on our senses, imagination and affective faculties, thereby having a greater power of persuasion. 32 Ibid, 169-75. The larger purpose of Newman’s essay is to show that strictly “notional” inference is an artificial process, a paper logic with its hypothetical and impersonal nature. Impersonal reasoning, especially in matters of morality, ethics and religion is not possible. No syllogism is self-evident. The world is both logical and poetical (174). 33 W. A. Stewart, Introduction to Lonergan’s Insight: An Invitation to Philosophize, Studies in the History of Philosophy, V. 41 (Lewiston/Queenstown/Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1996), 259. To adjust to the modern demand of being a scientific discipline, Philosophy can no longer be purely theoretical. 34 Dalibor Renic, Ethical and Epistemic Normativity: Lonergan and Virtue Epistemology (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2012), 12. The transcendental method is Lonergan’s rule of all studies transcending all disciplines. More than a set of exterior rules of reasoning, the transcendental method is an invitation to authentic understanding through the appropriation of the transcendental precepts or intellectual virtues: be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible. See Lonergan, Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017).

8 post-Cartesian trend to view humankind as either an extended thing or a thinking thing,35

Lonergan calls on us to be self-transcending subjects who through the knowing process come to know the objective reality and achieve authentic subjectivity. To do so will require a converted mind which embraces the virtues of transcendental precepts.

Theologian and auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles Robert Barron is another recent voice arguing for the validity of a Christ-centered epistemology, grounded on the observation that presuppositions and traditions are inevitable building blocks of knowledge and belief—even the so-called self-evident foundations of a foundationalist epistemology are conditioned by “a preexisting web of interdependent insights, assumptions, and desires.”36 Barron further insists on Aquinas’s relationality epistemology that predicates knowing on the dynamic participation between knower and known. Moreover, he credits

William James for validating the importance of emotion and experience in the act of knowing, noting that most of the greatest scientific advances have been achieved through intuition and “emotionally charged gropings in the direction of things only vaguely seen.”37

St. John of the Cross and Epistemology

The themes and developments I have outlined above suggest that not only can the scope of knowledge be widened to include religious knowledge, a truly comprehensive science of knowledge should account for the complexity of human nature in all its

35 Stewart traces both these trends to Descartes’s view of as a mind in a machine. The results are either a strictly materialist account of knowledge, stressing its mechanical nature, or a subjective account focusing on its “thinking” aspect. Locke and Hume represent the former school while Kant and Hegel belong to the latter. See Stewart, 46-7. 36 Barron, The Priority of Christ, 140, 138-40. 37 Ibid., 160.

9 strivings and operations. It is within this larger meta-epistemology that I will present St.

John of the Cross as an authentic epistemologist worthy of study.

St. John of the Cross did not set out to build a philosophy or an epistemology. His writings are squarely focused on the process of spiritual growth leading towards union with God. Yet his works can also be described as a systematic treatise on the nature of mystical knowledge of God and its attainment. The term mystical knowledge is equivalent to contemplative knowledge, contemplation of God, or , defined as “the communication of God untied [sic] to the senses, or the particular, received passively by the spirit in an attitude of faith and love, of general loving attention.”38 If knowledge of God is the knowledge par excellence which fulfills all desires, mystical knowledge of God is its ultimate fruition in this life—not a separate category from it but its qualitatively advanced state. It can therefore be said that the epistemological subject in St. John of the Cross is the knowledge of God and its progressive growth. He carefully and comprehensively defines different types of spiritual apprehension, distinguishes them from mystical knowledge in nature and value, describes different stages of growth in mystical knowledge and their signs, and offers a systematic proposal for attaining this knowledge. He describes his works as a “substantial and solid doctrine”39 for all who desire to know God according to the contemplative spirit.

St. John of the Cross can provide helpful insights to epistemological conversations in several areas. First of all, he does not isolate knowledge as an object to be acquired by a thinking machine. Rather, he establishes knowledge as a central part of

38 Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, trans., The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1991), 768, glossary. 39 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 118, A1.

10 the whole human suppositum40 which comprises one’s aspirations, sensory and intellectual faculties, spiritual capacity, and the moral life. The interrelationship between knowledge and other factors, psychological, cognitive, spiritual, and moral, is always attended. Secondly, even though John’s object of knowledge concerns the supernatural life, he gives a lucid and thorough rationale for his epistemological paradigm based on the logical demands of love, utilizing persuasive tools from a wide range of considerations: philosophy, Scripture, psychology, common sense, and experience. Even those not invested in spirituality can appreciate his comprehensive reasoning. He is thus an exemplary case study for the epistemology of religious knowledge.41 Thirdly, he gives minute explanations about the role of faith, and how it interacts with our intellectual faculties in real time. Faith, in John’s portrayal, is no mere concept asking to be appreciated as a given but a real and powerful cognitive means for the attainment of mystical knowledge, whose attributes can make sense in philosophical terms. He shows the reasonableness and necessity of faith but also its difficulty due to the darkness it brings to the intellectual faculties. Fourth, John’s criteria for true and worthy knowledge, or authentic mystical knowledge, when carefully examined, reveal many more nuances than what might be presumed about mysticism: his epistemology is no empiricism due to the fact that he rejects private experience as warrant for authentic mystical knowledge.42

40 Ibid., 395. The word suppositum is a generic word borrowed from Aquinas referring to all individual existing substances. 41 Here “religious knowledge” can include phenomenological knowledge of a religious practice-belief, under which some may categorize St. John of the Cross. It must be noted, however, that knowledge in John’s paradigm is concerned with the ultimate objective reality of God and so he would not consider it equal to phenomenological knowledge of other religious backgrounds. 42 John’s criteria for authentic mystical knowledge will be discussed in Chapter five.

11 His handling of experience along with other factors such as reason, tradition, and human authority shows great potential for comparative studies with empiricist religious epistemologies. Lastly, John’s strong stance in the certitude of mystical knowledge as well as his proposal of nada43 as the ideal preparatory disposition for its attainment may provide new grist for the mill concerning the existence of an objective reality. If John is correct that “to come to the knowledge of all” one must “desire the knowledge of nothing,”44 then might the knowledge attained in a state of desiring nothing correspond to an objective reality independent of subjective illusions?

Sources and Methodology

I will extrapolate St. John of the Cross’s theory of knowledge from his complete collection of writings, most importantly his poetry and commentaries. Chapter one will explain two foundational epistemic principles embedded in the teachings of John of the

Cross: first, the unity of the human person whose energy and strength—exterior and interior, sensory and intellectual, intellect and will—are gathered together in service of the human telos; second, knowing as a dynamic participation with divine action motivated by love. Chapter two will describe the nature and characteristics of mystical knowledge as taught by St. John. I will also speak briefly about the progression of knowledge and the difference between authentic mystical knowledge and other types of knowledge. Chapter three will explore in detail the relationship between love and knowledge in John’s thought. I will examine the specific demands placed on the intellectual faculties by divine love. Chapter four will be devoted to faith as the

43 Nada is the Spanish word for “nothing”—John’s prescription for climbing the mount of mystical knowledge, see Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 110-11, A. 44 Ibid.

12 “proximate and proportionate means”45 to mystical knowledge of God. I will explore how faith relates to reason and how it brings both darkness and illumination. Chapter five will consider the epistemological elements of certitude and criteria in St. John of the Cross, and whether his theory of knowledge can be applied universally. I will conclude by analyzing how John of the Cross might contribute to today’s epistemological discussions.

A brief introduction to the content and structure of John’s writings is in order here. The consistent thesis throughout his writings is that mystical knowledge is the fruit of love between God and the soul, progressively attained by living the theological virtues through the dark night of the faculties, both sensory and spiritual, exterior and interior.

John’s poetries, written at different times but mostly during and after his nine-month imprisonment at Toledo by the Carmelite authorities,46 were outpourings of his own mystical experiences, while the commentaries written on request from the Carmelite community seek to give a systematic theological explanation to his experience as well as the teachings he shared with them. The commentaries are titled: The Ascent of Mount

Carmel (A), The Dark Night (N), The (C), and The Living Flame of

Love (F).47 The Ascent of Mount Carmel48 addresses the active night of purgation both in the senses and in the spirit, where he employs every argument possible to convince his

45 Ibid., 177, A2. 46 John’s trouble with his order was a result of conflicting jurisdiction between papal visitators, the ’ general in , and the Spanish royal authorities. Difficulty in the means of communication also played a part. For more details, see Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 17-20. 47 In all subsequent footnotes, the abbreviations will be used to represent the commentaries. 48 A consists of three books: Book 1 discusses the active night of the senses, Book 2 active purification of the intellect, and Book 3 active purification of the memory and the will.

13 audience to actively reject all that is not God in order to gain the knowledge of God. As a further exposition on the same poetical work, The Dark Night49 commentary explains the passive aspect of this purgation, detailing how the soul can profit from this night by cooperating with God’s grace. The Spiritual Canticle describes the soul’s sublime loving knowledge of God as she gradually emerges from the dark night, purified and ready for union with God through a spiritual betrothal. The Living Flame of Love continues the theme, and with more poetical symbols describes the ineffable beauty and illumination the soul experiences prior to attaining the beatific vision of God in heaven.

I must make an extra note here about the scholarly sources used in this thesis.

Since John of the Cross cannot be isolated from the Christian tradition both before and after his time, I will sometimes reference other Christian authors who can help elucidate his ideas. Among these authors are Thomas Aquinas, Orthodox theologian Dumitru

Staniloae, Robert Barron, John Henry Newman, Bernard Lonergan, ,

Popes Benedict XVI and Francis, and Catholic theologian . Both

Robert Barron and John of the Cross explicitly build on the legacy of Thomas Aquinas.

Barron, Newman, and Lonergan, as explained before, all share John’s epistemological orientation which does not reject revelation or affectivity. Staniloae gives a comprehensive overview of early Church teachings about contemplation, citing

Dionysius of Areopagite and other patristic Fathers who might have also influenced John of the Cross.50 Staniloae’s affinity with John is salient in his emphasis of the importance

49 D consists of two books: Book 1 discusses the passive night of the senses, and Book 2 passive night of the spirit. 50 According to Thomas Merton, the practical doctrine of John of the Cross is based on the speculations of Thomas Aquinas and Dionysius, see Thomas Merton, The Ascent to Truth (NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1951), 89. Merton’s book is an exposition on

14 of the will, his treatment of passions, and his relating mysticism to knowledge—,51 but he also has criticism for mysticism in the western tradition, some of which will become relevant in relation to John of the Cross. Balthasar, too, has both agreements and some contention with John.

the mysticism of St. John of the Cross and knowledge, touching on many interesting topics such as vision and illusion, false mysticism, knowledge and unknowing, concepts and contemplation, reason and faith. 51 Dumitru Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical guide for the Faithful and a Definitive Manual for the Scholar (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary Press, 2003), 131-35. According to Staniloae, the gnosis of mysticism is the gnosis of faith rooted in the biblical theology of John and Paul and further developed by Clement and .

15

CHAPTER 1

EPISTEMIC FOUNDATIONS: UNITY OF THE HUMAN PERSON AND THE

DYNAMIC NATURE OF MYSTICAL KNOWLEDGE

When describing the ultimate purpose of the dark night, St. John of the Cross says that through it “God gathers together all the strength, faculties, and appetites of the soul, spiritual and sensory alike, so the energy and power of this whole harmonious composite may be employed in this love.”1 The love refers to the soul’s love for God which is enkindled at the very beginning of its contemplative journey. Both commentaries of The

Ascent to and The Dark Night deal with the tremendous challenges the soul faces in bringing its senses and intellectual faculties to harmony with its pursuit of divine love. The dark night is the necessary preparation through which the soul is stripped of many imperfections and comes to grow in the knowledge of God.2 Implied by

John’s belief in the necessity of the dark night is an understanding that the human person must be an integrated being whose body and soul, sensory and intellectual faculties are unified by the human telos—the love of God. In this chapter we will first examine why integration within the human person is important for the attainment of knowledge. We

1 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 420, N2. 2 Ibid., 115 (A), 375 (N1). According to John, the dark night is “extremely necessary” to many ; it is the “pure and reliable road leading to union” (115). There will be more discussion on the universal applicability of the dark night in chapter three.

16 will then look at the dynamic nature of mystical knowledge due to its synergetic relationship with love.

The Intricacy of Knowing

Knowing is much more than drawing conclusions based on syllogisms. When critiquing modern foundationalists, Robert Barron says trenchantly that they are often blind to their own assumptions playing a part in apprehension, “pretending that they are knowing as such, or as one ought to know.”3 The intricacy of the knowing process is apparent when we look at the larger picture of how humans come to assent. The heart has reasons of which reason knows nothing, says Pascal, or as Aristotelians tell us, we are constituted of both an intellect and a will: the will guides the intellect and motivates it toward specific objects of desire, while the intellect through its apprehensions modifies the attitude of the will. Intuition, feelings, affections, and experiences are often an integral part of thinking. The type and extent of knowledge a person acquires are often determined by personal factors such as predilection and attitude.4 Complexities of the human being are astutely observed when Newman says, “man is not a reasoning animal; he is a seeing, feeling, contemplating, acting animal.”5

3 Barron, The Priority of Christ, 141. 4 Newman describes personal factors underpinning the habits of the mind, our apprehension, inference, speculation and assent: “a great many of our assents are merely expressions of our personal likings, tastes, principles, motives, and opinions, as dictated by nature, or resulting from habit; in other words, they are acts and manifestations of self...in what may be almost called the mechanical operation of our minds, in our continual acts of apprehension and inference, speculation, and resolve, propositions pass before us and receive our assent without our consciousness...” Newman, Grammar of Assent, 157. Michael Polanyi similarly ascribes a fiduciary character to one’s intellectual passions, tacit assent, cultural and communal heritage in every act of knowing, see Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 266, 274, 303. 5 Ibid., 90.

17 To authentically study the nature of human knowing we should account for the unity of the human person incorporating affectivity, actions as well as cognitive processes. St. John of the Cross does this by considering three important factors: the human telos as the unifying end of knowledge, the integration of sensory and intellectual faculties, and the problem of appetites. We will look at each of these in turn.

The Human Telos

The overarching factor, or the organizing principle, in the unity of the human person is the human telos: what we perceive to be our final end, the fulfillment of our happiness. As Aquinas teaches, the intellect will never rest until it fully comprehends the essence of our greatest and final happiness.6 The reason that many suffer from distraction or inattentiveness may be due to a disconnect between one’s intellectual activities and existential purpose. We are either at a loss as to the nature of that purpose or we compromise it by not serving it, leading to a general degradation of our intellectual capacity, or what Aquinas regards as tenebrae—darkness of the mind. Interestingly,

Thomas Merton defines as the illness of reason being given over to the service of passion7—rather than the love of God. In all his treatment of knowledge, John of the Cross never deviates from the final happiness for which the soul was created— union with God. Only with this in mind can we understand his statements such as this:

“The natural sciences themselves and the very works of God, when set aside what it is to know God, are like ignorance. For where God is unknown nothing is known.”8

6 Ralph McInerny, ed., Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings (London: Penguin Books, 1998), 522, or Summa Theologiae, I-2, I-5. 7 Merton, The Ascent to Truth, 49. 8 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 578, C.

18 Knowledge in the paradigm of John of the Cross, if it is to be worthy and excellent, has to stem from and relate to the knowledge of God. God is the one and only unadulterated telos of knowledge which unifies and orients every aspect of the human capacity.

God is the unmistakable, constant and only end towards which the soul traverses.

Consequently, God is the one true object of our quest for knowledge, uniting all our sensory and rational faculties into a harmonious suppositum infused with divine potential.

This is similar to Lonergan’s appreciation of God as “the lure for the mind, even in its simplest acts of cognition.”9 All human search for truth is rooted in a fundamental desire for the beatific vision of heaven, where we will know “everything about everything.”10

Thus our quest for knowledge is bound up with our reach for God through prayer and right living. Knowledge and love of God become inseparable in this philosophy. Our potential for knowledge is commensurate with the loftiness of our communion with God.

The highest knowledge we can aspire to is no less than the essential vision of God in heaven, which in John’s terminology is identical to the beatific vision, where souls “see the divine essence with an intuitive vision and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature by way of object of vision; rather the divine essence immediately manifests itself to them, plainly, clearly, and openly... [This] vision and enjoyment ... will continue without any interruption and without end until the last judgment and from then on forever.”11

9 Bernard Lonergan, Understanding and Being, in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, V. 5 (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1990), 146-55. Cited by Barron, Priority of Christ, 168. 10 Ibid. 11 Benedict XII, Benedictus Deus (On the Beatific Vision of God), 1336, http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/b12bdeus.htm, accessed on Feb 14, 2018.

19 Integration Within the Cognitive Faculties

To address the complexity of human knowing, St. John of the Cross makes the distinction, first of all, between the five exterior senses and the rational faculties—will, intellect, and memory. Exterior sense perception is considered a lower apprehensive function than the rational faculties, which are more noble because of their adherence to reason. Sensory faculties have to be bridled and brought to conformity with the rational, the process of which is presented in The commentary Book One.

John’s division within the rational faculties conforms more to the Augustinian tradition rather than the Aristotelian which is bipartite with the omission of memory.12 Even though memory is technically part of the intellect, St. John of the Cross singles it out because of its distinctive function and effect within human cognition. The will is associated with love, desire and affections, the intellect is devoted to intellectual apprehension and understanding, and the memory is a warehouse of images, forms, and symbols accumulated from sense perceptions, on which the imagination depends. In her book Knowledge and Symbolization in John of the Cross, literature professor

Elizabeth Wilhelmsen states that memory is understood by John of the Cross as a

“totalizing agent” that consolidates one’s past experiences into a historical and temporal consciousness, serving as the horizon of all future possibilities of thinking and being.13

12 For more on how the Augustinian division corresponds to the Aristotelian, see Elizabeth Wilhelmsen, Knowledge and Symbolization in Saint John of the Cross (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1993), 19-21). A note of distinction must be made here about the categories used to differentiate the human faculties between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Eastern spirituality, while speaking similarly about the memory, the heart and the passions, divides the soul into two main parts: the mental or spiritual part called which is worthy of eternal life, and powers of the soul including the rational and irrational. For more details see Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality, 96-7. 13 Wilhemsen, Knowledge and Symbolization, 22-24, 43.

20 According to Dumitru Staniloae, we might have something analogous to this understanding of the memory in modern psychology in its category of the subconscious, where past experiences are reserved and “ideas, inspirations, intuitions and tendencies are hammered out.”14 The subconscious could be what mystics call the “cellar of the conscience,”15 where the accumulation of bad experiences can potentially lead to the disturbance of other faculties.

Among the three faculties the will predominates.16 St. John of the Cross says that the faculties, passions and appetites are all ruled by the will, and in the process towards union with God the will plays a decisive role by moving the other faculties.17 Christian author C. S. Lewis says similarly that the “head rules the belly through the chest—the seat ... of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments...”18 In other words, the heart steers the mind and motivates it through the

14 Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality, 97-8, 159. A note of distinction must be made here about the categories used to differentiate the human faculties between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Eastern spirituality, while speaking similarly about the memory and the heart 15 Ibid., 98. 16 Interestingly, Aquinas, whose philosophy about will and intellect is largely inherited by John of the Cross, declares intelligence the highest human faculty to the will (Summa, I, Q. 82, A. 23), even though he acknowledges the motivational and directional force of the will over the intellect (McInerny, Thomas Aquinas, 56). Thomas Merton gives a satisfactory explanation to this: “St. Thomas reminds us that this superiority of the intellect over the will is primarily theoretical. It rests on the fact that the intelligence has a higher and purer object than the will. It is the function of the intellect to show man the very essence of goodness which the will seeks. However, in actual practice, the intelligence is not always superior to the will. This is because the will may often attain to a higher and more perfect object than the intelligence is capable of reaching.” See Merton, The Ascent to Truth, 284. 17 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 292, A3. 18 C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (NY: HarperSanFrancisco, 1974), 24-5. Lewis adds that it is the chest that renders us human, for according to the intellect we are mere spirits and according to the appetites we are mere animals.

21 power of love. As Staniloae aptly states, “love is a gigantic increase of knowledge,” producing “a huge plus of life” in both lover and beloved.19 This loving knowledge applies to all types of knowing—we seldom hear of experts who do not possess a passion for their subject, but it is most conspicuous and necessary in the knowledge of someone vs. the knowledge of something.

The heart may be understood as “the depths of the mind.”20 Inasmuch as the intellect is docile to the will, the heart opens to a deeper level, revealing the vision of an invisible reality through the virtue of hope. The intellect attentive to the movement of the will can detect the light of its own conscience as well as the interior presence of the transcendent, to which the will is drawn. It is within the depth of the will where mystical convictions take place and the whole person is made transparent to things beyond the visible world. Without this opening of the heart towards the object of its love, the mind is restricted to its own mental activities with no vision or power to rise above itself, therefore incapable of attaining a more creative and elevated level of knowledge, which according to Dionysius and 14th century Gregory Palamas is not a luxury but the most necessary type of knowledge.21 Given such a dominant role of the will, the first order of business in calibrating epistemic values thus pertains to what Aquinas calls

“rectitude of will.”22 In fact, John of the Cross says that the “entire matter of reaching union with God consists in purging the will of its appetites and emotions so that ... it may be changed into the divine will...”23 Only when the will becomes conformed to the love

19 Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality, 316. 20 Ibid., 162. 21 Ibid., 328. 22 McInerny, Thomas Aquinas, 547, Citing Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Q5 A7. 23 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 293, A3.

22 of God can the sensory and intellectual faculties begin to reside in harmony, gathered in strength and ready to receive divine communication. In the eventual state of contemplation, all sensory and intellectual faculties will rest in quiet while the soul receives the secret wisdom of God, which is beyond anything the faculties can acquire by themselves.24

The Problem of Appetites in the Attainment of Knowledge

As no thing comes without a cost, neither can this harmonious picture of mystical knowledge be realized without the conquering of a fundamental human weakness: habitual voluntary appetites25 and their underlying passions—joy, hope, sorrow, and fear26. In Orthodox spirituality, all inordinate desires, appetites, and emotions are bundled into one overarching term: passion. In the words of John of the Cross, God is like “a perfect painting with many finely wrought details and delicate, subtle adornments, including some so delicate and subtle that they are not wholly discernible... one whose vision is somewhat purer will discover more details and ... the one who possesses the clearest faculty will discern the greatest number of qualities and perfections.”27 The process of purification will involve two steps of the dark night: first,

24 Ibid., 436, N2. 25 Natural appetites that are involuntary are not an issue of concern. John primarily deals with a habitual voluntary attachment to something other than God, whether the object of passion is big or small. 26 These four passions come from the scholastic tradition, see Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 292, A3, footnote 2. It must also be noted that “hope” as a passion is qualitatively different from the theological virtue of hope, in that the former is a desire for things other than God while the latter means looking to God with trust and expectation. Likewise, the passions “joy,” “sorrow,” and “fear” all refer to emotions attached to things other than God and should be differentiated from their holy counterparts. 27 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 165, A2.

23 detachment from all sensory appetites that are habitual and voluntary through the night of the senses; second, a cleansing of the root of passions, both sensory and spiritual, from the intellect, the will, and the memory through the night of the spirit. It is no wonder that this purification process is called the dark night, because severing oneself from the passions, some of which might have been lifelong, involves a great deal of suffering.28 In the following paragraphs I will briefly describe the harmful effects of appetites and their remedy.

Wisdom 4:12 cited by St. John of the Cross captures well the problem of appetites: “The deceitfulness of vanity obscures good things, and inconstancy of concupiscence overturns the innocent mind.”29 Attachment to things other than God, either sensory satisfactions, temporal goods, natural goods, or even supernatural gifts that do not pertain to the essence of God,30 corrupts our intellectual and spiritual faculties, obscuring our spiritual vision. John uses the image of a bird whose feet should not be tied

28 However, the suffering of the dark night is not only due to the battle against passions. It also has to do with the intellect’s inability to access God and a sense of being abandoned by God. The darkest part of dark night can be understood as the night of faith, where one must soldier on without a clear distinct knowledge to satisfy the intellect or a tangible feeling of God’s presence to console the heart. More about this will be expounded in chapter four on faith. 29 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 704, F. According to Kavanaugh, John’s translator and editor, his biblical source was primarily the Latin , from which he sometimes quotes verses from memory with resulting minor errors, but he also used his own translations into Spanish. The closest modern day translation to John’s usage of the Bible may be the Rheims-Douay version. 30 Supernatural gifts or apprehensions that pertain to the essence of God are communicated without the disguise of images, figures or visions aided by the imagination. An example of essential communication between God and the Soul is when God spoke to mouth to mouth on Mount Horeb (Dt 4:15), see Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 202, A2. St. John of the Cross painstakingly distinguish various kinds of supernatural apprehensions, from most of which he cautions us to be detached. This topic will be covered in depth in chapter two.

24 down with any strings to prove his point. Just as a bird tied down with either a thick cord or a thin thread cannot fly freely, the will attached to any affection, big or small, will prevent it from soaring to the heights of divine love, and make impossible the attainment of its happiness. “There are souls that wallow in the mire like animals, and there are others who soar like birds...”31—and we are all destined to soar. John also compares appetites to a cataract of the eye—no matter how small, it will cause weakness of vision—and to a mist that clouds the judgment. This concern is not limited to the

Christian perspective, either. says in The Consolation of Philosophy that those who desire a clear understanding of the truth must cast from themselves joys, hope, fear, and sorrow.32 Buddha speaks of a “dispositionally conditioned world (sankhata)” within subjectivity that is caused by attachment. He further concludes that this dispositionally conditioned world is ultimately unsatisfactory and must be conquered through the eightfold path33 to gain freedom from the underlying attachment. According to Maximus the , everything in the world is rational except passion because it alone is not based on divine λόγοι,34 and that may be the reason why different religions share the same somber prognosis of passion. Staniloae calls passion “a knot of contradictions”35 constantly seeking to gratify one’s ego but finding nothing that would satisfy, leading to an ever-agitating tortured web of wants and hurts. John of the Cross at one point compares it to a hungry dog that is never satiated.

31 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 92, “The Sayings of Light and Love.” 32 Ibid., 293. Citing The Consolation of Philosophy 1.7. 33 Kalupahana, “William James and Early Buddhism,” 67. The eightfold path is Right Understanding, Right Intent, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. 34 Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality, 79. 35 Ibid.

25 The effects of passion include torment, blindness and darkness, dullness, boredom, defilement, weakness, turbidity, spiritual sloth, and a disintegrated perception of the world, corrupting both intellect and will.36 Emotionally it renders a person disturbed and unstable, for it cannot find any lasting solace. It is to these who are wearied by their passions that Jesus calls: come to me and I will give you rest (Mt 11:28).

Intellectually, passion renders the mind distracted and weakened, for its energies are no longer concentrated in one direction, but scattered in many various ways in search of strange fruits. Memory becomes clogged, weary, and disordered, no longer agile and ready as in its innocent state. Reasoning power is weakened because it has been effectively rejected in the embrace of passion, being pushed to the sideline and suppressed into indifference. The divine light shines as brightly as ever but its luminosity cannot penetrate the soul due to its unevenness, resistance, and avoidance. The soul that darts to and fro, chasing phantoms, weary and conflicted, is in no shape to embrace the divine light in agreeable mutuality. Its apprehensions can only be piecemeal, isolated and fleeting, without any strength or even the desire to comprehend the coherence among things. Enslaved by passion, the soul is drawn away from its deepest center toward the exterior and only capable of functioning on a superficial level. In the words of John of the

Cross, appetites cause dissipation just as “[h]ot water quickly loses its heat if left uncovered, and aromatic spices when unwrapped eventually lose the strength and pungency of their scent.”37 Appetites weaken the intellectual capacity “like shoots burgeoning about a tree, sapping its strength, and causing it to be fruitless.”38

36 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 130-41, A1. 37 Ibid., 140, A1. 38 Ibid.

26 And if that is not ominous enough, John warns us that the fiery manner in which souls suffer in purgatory have much to do with these appetites, which must be completely burned away before the soul is ready to rejoice with God in heaven.39

To offer some concrete examples, St. John of the Cross cites Simon Magus who attempted to buy the power of the Holy Spirit from the apostles (Acts 8:18-19), representing someone who covets exceptional supernatural goods with an inappropriate appetite, the judges of Israel who, according to God’s command to Moses, were appointed for their lack of avarice so their judgment would be upright (Ex 18:21), and

Samuel who upheld his own integrity as an enlightened judge in front of the people with the fact that he never accepted gifts from anyone (1 Sm12:3). Understanding and wisdom are inherently connected with purification from attachments and desires. “If you purify your soul of attachments and desires, you will understand things spiritually. If you deny your appetite for them, you will enjoy their truth, understanding what is certain in them.”40

Appetites or passion must therefore be overcome to pave the way for higher knowledge. This process is in general called purification, without which later stages of contemplation and union with God are not possible. Orthodox spirituality, following the footsteps of patristic Fathers, offers ascesis——as the curative method leading towards dispassion. St. John of the Cross goes into greater lengths explaining the challenging process of purification, in which there is not only an active element of human efforts but also a passive element of being docile to God’s action. Not only do we need to

39 Ibid., 417, N2. 40 Ibid., 89, “The Sayings of Light and Love.”

27 free ourselves from exterior attachments we also need to uproot the spiritual impurities embedded deep within. All this purification will be accomplished through the dark night.

In the first night of the senses, we cooperate with God’s grace by shaking off the bondage to sensory appetites, conforming them to reason. In the second night of the spirit, all attachments are not only tranquilized but gradually uprooted through a total purification of the will, the intellect, and the memory.

The Dynamic Nature of Mystical Knowledge

Mystical knowledge is compared by St. John of the Cross to a “ladder of secret contemplation” whose principal property is “being a science of love, ... an infused loving knowledge that both illumines and enamors the soul, elevating it step by step to God, its creator.”41 In this description we see John’s fundamental understanding of mystical knowledge: it is not an intellectual possession to be acquired but a supernaturally infused and progressive knowledge, the fruit of a loving relationship between God and the soul.

We will examine the relational dynamics of mystical knowledge in three ways: first, our capacity for mystical communication through the spiritual senses; second, the nature of the soul’s cooperation with God’s grace; third, the progressive nature of mystical knowledge.

First, John of the Cross ascribes our ability to receive spiritual communication from God to what he calls “visions of the soul,” or “understanding of the soul.”42 Kieran

Kavanaugh, editor and translator of John’s collected works, believes that by these terms

John is describing what Origen and Gregory first developed as “the spiritual senses,”

41 Ibid., 440, N2. 42 Ibid., 238, A2.

28 which were referenced by Augustine and the Cistercian mystics and fully integrated into a theological system by .43 Kavanaugh notes that John’s poetical experiences

“came as though through spiritual senses.”44 Spanish historian and literary critic Menédez

Pelayo notes that John’s poetry has a “heavenly character” that “didn’t seem to be of this world.”45 Spiritual senses are the counterparts of corporeal senses, but they facilitate purely spiritual apprehensions without the help of exterior or interior bodily senses.

These spiritual apprehensions also happen supernaturally without any effort by the soul itself. John lists four types of the spiritual apprehensions: vision, revelation, locution, and spiritual feeling. Mystical knowledge as pursued by John of the Cross is the most substantial and interior type of the spiritual apprehensions.46

Spiritual senses are not a contrivance fabricated to serve the imaginary whims of the modern subject, but an entrance toward the deepest center of the human being—what

Catholic theologian Ewert Cousins defines as the “inner dimension of the person” and

“the spiritual core”47—a moving towards ultimate transcendent reality. If the memory might be psychologically understood as the subconscious, spiritual senses may constitute the supra-conscious or the “room upstairs, where the superior powers are stored and function, ready to flood the conscious life and even the subconscious...”48 Another way to understand spiritual reality is through the realist symbolism of Russian philosopher

43 Ibid., 239, A2, footnote 2. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., 41, “Introduction to the Poetry.” 46 More differentiation of mystical knowledge from other types of spiritual apprehension will be found in chapter two. 47 Alexander Golubov, introduction to Dumitru Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical guide for the Faithful and a Definitive Manual for the Scholar (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary Press, 2003), 9. 48 Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality, 98, 159.

29 Nicolas Berdyaev, who avers that this reality is “beyond the antithesis between subject and object,” for what are ordinarily called objective realities are only of a secondary order, and so, too, are the subjects and their subjective world.49 Both subject and object are symbolic of the creative and dynamic reality consisting of real activities of the spirit, such as freedom, suffering, love, creation, and death. Reality thus exists in a dynamic, participatory, relational mode that incorporates both subject and object but cannot be narrowly objectified by either. Robert Barron, in presenting Aquinas’s epistemology, says the same: what constitutes the very being of a creature is the “elemental mutuality between the divine knower and the creature.”50 Sharing in this elemental mutuality are all forms of ordinary knowing in which there is a mystical relationship between finite knower and finite known.51

The epistemic engagement between the divine and the human finds its theological foundation in John 1:3-5 and 1:9: “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. ... The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”52 John of the Cross uses this scripture reference to explain the fundamental struggle at the beginning of the dark night, which is the conflict between the light of God and our darkness—our inability

49 Nicholas Berdyaev, Freedom and the Spirit (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1935), 55-6, as referenced in Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality, 201. 50 Barron, Priority of Christ, 157. 51 Philosopher Michael Polanyi would agree with Barron. He describes knowing as pouring ourselves into the object of learning, dwelling in them, and assimilating them into our own existence, see Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 59. 52 All scripture passages, unless directly cited by St. John of the Cross, will be cited from the NRSV version.

30 to perceive and respond to the “enlightenment and dominating fullness of God’s pure and simple light” due to misplaced affections.53 Following Augustine, , and Aquinas,

John regards the light of the divine λόγος as the illumination through which we come to see and know, much as the sun provides natural light for our corporeal vision. Just as natural light can be blocked by objects in the line of vision, the supernatural light of the

λόγος can also be blocked by a lack of receptivity in the soul. Therefore, the Christian tradition has consistently called for the conversion of the mind in order that it may come to a correspondence with the divine light and through the divine luminosity attain a spiritual vision of revealed objects. More exposition on John’s understanding of the divine light will take place in chapter four.

Secondly, from the dynamic nature of mystical knowledge follows that both and human cooperation are necessary for its attainment. John of the Cross shows this by ascribing both an active and a passive element to the dark night.54 In the active night, the soul voluntarily cleanses itself from all appetites, attachments and ambition. In the passive night, through aridity and darkness the spiritual substance of the soul is disentangled, dissolved, and reborn through the action of God, who imparts it a secret knowledge without any effort or understanding on the part of the soul.55 The dark

53 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 123, A1. References of the same scripture passage can also be found on pages 424 (N2), 650 (F). 54 The passive element of the dark night reminds us that God’s grace is always at work behind the scenes from beginning to end. As we shall see more clearly later, one cannot embark on the journey of the dark night unless placed there by God, and active efforts in the dark night always have to be accompanied by a docile receptivity to God’s guidance. The attainment of mystical knowledge is a process initiated by grace where grace begets more grace through the generosity of God and the loving cooperation of the soul. See ibid., 118 (A1), 603 (C). 55 Ibid., 404, 401, N2. John compares the passive night to “a cruel spiritual death ... an anguish comparable to ’s in the belly of the whale...” (404). John’s description of

31 night is usually a long and arduous process, with its progress dependent on both one’s endurance of the night and God’s providential plan for the soul. The contour and details of the engagement between God and the soul are predicated on a complete freedom in both parties. This relational and participatory nature renders mystical knowledge an experiential enterprise, concrete, unpredictable, and ever-unfolding.

Thirdly, implied in this epistemological dynamism is the inherently progressive character of knowing, for God alone knows everything and we as creatures can only gradually attain a fuller sense of truth. In heaven we will enjoy a “clear and serene vision” of God while the highest mystical knowledge on earth consists of only vague glimpses.56 According to Dionysius the Areopagite, even the “progress in an unending way in the knowledge of the Truth.”57 John of the Cross says of the angels that

“their spirit is ever being filled by the object of their desire without the disgust of being satiated.”58 This suggests that there is an infinite capacity for growth in knowledge even in heaven when we are satisfied with the clear vision of God’s essence. While describing the earthly progress in the knowledge of God, John follows the traditional schema of a three-stage process: purification, contemplation, and union with God, or in his metaphor largely inspired by The : purification, spiritual betrothal, and spiritual marriage. The soul’s knowledge of God as well its wisdom and understanding grow

this night was no doubt partially inspired by his own experience in the Carmelite prison, where, according to John’s biographer Richard Hardy, he suffered a complete and total absence of God, in “absolute darkness ... and crushing anguish.” See Richard P. Hardy, John of the Cross: Man and Mystic (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2015), 73-4. 56 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 627, 523, C. John of the Cross does not mention this, but according to Dionysius the Areopagite, even the angels in heaven “progress in an unending way in the knowledge of the Truth”. 57 Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality, 211. 58 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 682, F.

32 progressively in each of these stages leading up to the final permanent consummation in the beatific vision.

Summary of Chapter One

St. John of the Cross situates human knowing in the larger context of our existential purpose from a Christian perspective. Knowledge becomes a central human pursuit motivated and shaped by our final end: union with God, happiness of heaven, blissful repose of the intellect through the essential vision of God. Knowing is inseparable from the belief in God and our love for him who is invisible yet revealed. It promises a lofty knowledge beyond human understanding leading us to the vision of the beloved, provided that we stay true to our purpose, unifying our capacity steadfastly and single-mindedly. More than propositions, ideas and articles of faith, mystical knowledge is experiential and dynamic. It progressively engages and transforms the whole person including the exterior and interior senses, intellectual and spiritual faculties, elevating the human capacity to divine potentiality. To accomplish this, we must detach ourselves from all appetites that weaken our desire for God and cooperate with his grace through the dark night. In the following chapter we will explore the nature and characteristics of mystical knowledge available to us according to St. John of the Cross.

33

CHAPTER 2

“A SWEET AND LIVING KNOWLEDGE”1

--“In the inner wine cellar, I drank of my beloved... I no longer knew anything... There he gave me his breast; there he taught me a sweet and living knowledge.”2

St. John of the Cross

--“But no one is like my servant Moses, the most faithful one in all my house, and I speak with him mouth to mouth, and he does not see God through comparisons, likenesses, and figures.”3

Nm 12:6-8

The excellence, loftiness, and mystical nature of the knowledge of God is predicated on his divine nature. St. John of the Cross leads his audience far beyond conventional understandings of God, whether it is the abstract absolute essences taught by philosophers, or ethereal meditative experiences in Asian religions, or notional concepts of God formulated in . John points us to the impossible

1 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 78, 475, from the poem The Spiritual Canticle, written during John’s imprisonment in Toledo in 1578 from the inspiration of the biblical Song of Songs, which he knew by heart. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., 202, A2. This is John of the Cross’s interpretation of Num 12:6-8. The text itself in the NRSV version reads: “Not so with my servant Moses; he is entrusted with all my house. With him I speak face to face—clearly, not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord.”

34 aspiration that we can someday see God face to face and behold his essence as naturally and plainly as a child beholds the physical world with wide open eyes. Speaking as someone who has experienced a foretaste of this beatific vision, John of the Cross combines his theological understanding, scriptural wisdom, and mystical experience into a vivid account of what lofty knowledge awaits us even in this life.

I will use John’s own term “a sweet and living knowledge” to describe our subject at hand. This knowledge is a loving, substantial and ineffable knowledge of God, with which souls purified from passions and approaching the state of spiritual marriage are gifted even while living on earth. It is not the perfect, clear, essential vision of God in heaven but the most sublime knowledge one can attain in this life: not fragmentary, distant or abstract but immediate, general,4 and penetrating. It can be understood as spiritual apprehensions of God transformed through a of fire: the fire of divine love. As such, this knowledge is not an intellectual possession to be acquired or even a mystical state to abide in, but a transformative process in which the soul is gradually infused with a divine knowledge through prayer and workings of the Holy Spirit, whose fire is both heat and light.5 It is both filled with light and shrouded in obscurity, due to the supra-abundance of God and our limitations. It is the most satisfactory knowledge not reserved to a privileged few but possible for everyone. We have in the figure of Moses an eminent forerunner, who progressed in the knowledge of God from seeing him in the

4 The word “general” does not connote imprecision but rather an all-embracing totality. See more in Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 356, Introduction to The Dark Night. 5 The fire of the Holy Spirit within the soul is compared to the living flame of love, whose warmth inflames the will and whose light illumines the intellect. Ibid., 423, N2.

35 burning bush, to being led by him across the desert in a pillar of cloud, to ascending

Sinai, where God spoke to him face to face.6

Mystical Knowledge vs. Other types of Knowledge

Before the characteristics of this knowledge can be furthered elucidated, it is important to clarify what it is not. Among mystic writers, St. John of the Cross may have a unique reputation of being wary of supernatural visions. In fact, he is criticized by

Balthasar for his lack of enthusiasm towards mystical charisms.7 He is meticulous in defining the nature of knowledge that is most salutary. He first separates all apprehensions into natural and supernatural categories: the former are gained through bodily senses or reflection while the latter transcend the intellect’s natural capacity.

Within natural apprehensions, some are formed by exterior senses in what we call sense perceptions; others are the work of the interior senses, mainly imagination and phantasy

(sense memory).8 Imagination is discursive with images which are formed by the phantasy. is the work of these two interior sense faculties, which supply the necessary forms, figures and images for its discursive act. Meditation is also conditioned by exterior senses since the phantasy depends on prior sense experiences—the imagination cannot conceive what has never been experienced. Within supernatural apprehensions, some are represented to corporeal senses while others are purely

6 St. Gregory of Nyssa was one of the first to allegorize Moses’s experience as degrees of ascent to God. See Merton, The Ascent to Truth, 50-1. 7 Hans von Balthasar, Seeing the Form, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetic, Vol. 1 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press; New York: Crossroad Publications, 1983), 401. 8 Aquinas lists as the internal senses the common sense, imagination, the estimative sense, and the sense memory (Summa Theologiae 1.78.4). John mainly deals with imagination and sensory memory, which are treated almost identically. See Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 185, A2, footnote 1.

36 spiritual.9 The former are also called “imaginative visions”: natural apprehensions wrought by the imagination through meditation can all be represented supernaturally without any efforts by the soul.10 The latter—purely spiritual apprehensions are further divided into distinct, clear and particular knowledge such as in visions, revelations, locutions, and spiritual feelings, and a general, vague and dark contemplation through pure faith. Some examples of supernatural apprehensions include visions about and angels, spiritual unction, prophetic utterances, revelations about persons, events and nations, but it is contemplative knowledge through faith that John of the Cross treasures the most.

John of the Cross cautions readers to detach themselves from all forms of apprehension outside the contemplative knowledge of faith, no matter what information they might contain or what feelings they bring about. Of special importance is the leaving behind of meditative apprehension, which is a suitable method for beginners who are lured to God by sensory sweetness but only a “remote means”11 to union with God.

Meditative apprehensions are to contemplative knowledge what milk is to solid and substantial foods. The soul leaves the work of meditation by forgetting the imagination and resting in a loving attentiveness to God. As for supernatural apprehensions, even though John recommends they be altogether rejected in favor of a pure nakedness of

9 Spiritual apprehensions differ from corporeal ones in manner and mode: “the soul may behold with greater facility and clarity the earthly and heavenly objects... as though a door were opened and the soul could see as it would a flash of lightening were to illumine the dark night and momentarily make objects clearly and distinctly visible...” See Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 242, A2. 10 Ibid., 119-20, A2. Examples given for such imaginative visions include beholding God in his glory in Is 6:2-4, seeing the rod keeping watch in Jer 1:11, and Pilate’s wife having a vision about not condemning Christ in Mt 27:19. 11 Ibid., 187, A2.

37 spirit, he points out that if the object of these apprehensions concerns the general essence of God rather than particular events or creatures, if they are entirely passively induced, and if they touch the substance of the soul, they are eminently good and should be cherished and remembered often. The reason is that if an apprehension is substantial, general, and purely passively induced, its effect is immediately experienced in the substance of the soul without it having to do, think, or desire anything. Neither the devil nor the intellect is capable of producing such a substantial effect.12

via exterior senses

via interior senses of imagination and phantasy Natural apprehension

represented to exterior bodily senses corporeal represented to interior senses of imagination and phantasy

visions

revelations

distinct, particular, clear

spiritual locutions Supernatural apprehension general, vague, dark contemplation through faith spiritual feelings

Figure 1: Natural and Supernatural Apprehensions

12 Authentic mystical knowledge is not acquired by human efforts but infused. The most anyone can do is to prepare oneself for its possible reception, but it can never be reduced to a technique of self-inducing a desirable psychological state.

38 Here it suffices to know the rule of thumb for John of the Cross: the more interior and substantial an apprehension, the more advantageous for the soul.13 John gives three main reasons for this preference. First, according to Deuteronomy 4:12, “God has no form or likeness: You heard the voice of his words, and you saw absolutely no form in

God.”14 Substantial knowledge of God cannot abide in distinct images, forms or figures.

Secondly, natural apprehensions and clear supernatural apprehensions allow greater leeway for demonic meddling and human error in understanding and judgment. The more interior and devoid of images an apprehension, the more protected the soul is from error.

Thirdly, clear and particular knowledge about the things of God is much less important than substantial apprehensions of God, even though the latter is more vague and clothed in darkness. Union with God does not require natural erudition or supernatural experience but a loving attentiveness and passive receptivity to God’s will and action.

Progression of Mystical Knowledge

While contemplative knowledge, which is authentic mystical knowledge for John of the Cross, is the most eminent, the soul ordinarily has to go through a series of stages before reaching contemplation. A clear view of qualitative differences between the progressive stages can be seen from John’s poetical lyrics:

1. In the dark night of purification, the soul detaches itself from all lower forms of knowledge in a nakedness of spirit, and begins to be moved only by divine love at its deepest center:

13 Ibid., 264, A2. 14 Ibid., 201, A2.

39 “On that glad night / in secret, for no one saw me, / nor did I look at anything /

with no other light or guide / than the one that burned in my heart.”15

2. In the state of spiritual betrothal leading up to spiritual marriage,16 the soul has been freed from disturbances of lower apprehensions, now able to enjoy a loving, substantial and ineffable knowledge of God, the supra-abundance of which affords the soul a habitual union with God and a sublime wisdom concerning creatures:

There he gave me his breast; / there he taught me a sweet and living knowledge... Now I occupy my soul / and all my energy in his service; / I no longer tend the herd, / nor have I any other work / now that my every act is love // ... Let us rejoice, Beloved, / and let us go forth to behold ourselves in our beauty, / to the mountain and to the hill, / to where the pure water flows, / and further, deep into the thicket. // And then we will go on / to the high caverns in the rock / that are so well concealed; / there we shall enter / and taste the fresh juice of the pomegranates. // There you will show me / what my soul has been seeking...17

3. Before the Spirit carries away the soul by tearing through the veil of death,18 a foretaste of the actual union with God in heaven is sometimes given to the soul:

O lamps of fire! / in whose splendors /the deep caverns of feeling, / once obscure and blind, / now gives forth, so rarely, so / exquisitely, / both warmth and light to their / Beloved. // How gently and lovingly / you wake in my heart, /

15 Ibid., 51, stanza from John’s poem The Dark Night. The meaning of this stanza and the following verses will be explained in detail when I describe the characteristics of mystical knowledge. 16 The difference between betrothal and spiritual marriage is this: in the state of betrothal, the soul “still suffers from her Beloved’s withdrawal and from disturbances and afflictions in her sensory part and from the devil,” all of which will cease in the state of marriage. Ibid., 539, C. 17 Ibid., 79-80, stanzas from John’s poem The Spiritual Canticle. 18 In John’s understanding, death for holy souls occur by a sublime “impetus and encounter of love,” which tears through the veil of our bodily existence and “carries off the jewel, which is the soul.” Such a death is “sweeter and more gentle than was their whole spiritual life on earth.” See Ibid., 654, F.

40 where in secret you dwell alone; / and in your sweet breathing, / filled with good and glory, / how tenderly you swell my heart / with love.19

Just as a dark night deepens into the stillness of midnight before fading into dawn, the soul undergoes a long and intense purgation before the intellect is adequately purified so the divine light can stream through without inhibition. This process starts when the soul is wounded by the flame of divine love at its deepest center, causing a passionate love for God alone, making it weary of all other delights. In the beginning this flame of love can be so subtle that it is unnoticed, but the soul cannot receive nourishment anywhere, its usual means of meditative prayer now becoming dreary, dull, and unproductive. Both exterior and interior senses experience a prolonged dryness, unable to enjoy its natural mode of apprehension. The one constant during this dark night is the soul’s persistent solicitation for God: it ardently loves God and wants to serve him even when spiritual activities cannot bring it tangible relief. As this night darkens, the soul is brought into a greater passivity, the intellect quiet, the memory emptied of forms, figures and images, and the will purified of all foreign love. As the soul becomes freed of impurities and encumbrances, it is able to give a complete yes to God in all its faculties, energy, and strength through a spiritual betrothal. The fire of divine love continues to burn brighter and hotter until it reaches the serene state of spiritual marriage, when the soul can no longer be molested by any disturbances, for its senses, intellect, memory and will are all transformed into divine qualities: the intellect is infused with divine knowledge, the memory transported to divine remembrance of glory, the will perfectly conformed to the will of God, and its corporal senses in repose while occasionally tasting

19 Ibid., 52-53, stanzas from John’s poem The Living Flame of Love.

41 the happiness spilled over from the spirit. During this process, sometimes the intellect is distinctly illumined without the will being inflamed, but most of the time mystical knowledge is communicated to the will without necessarily a simultaneous understanding in the intellect; hence mystical knowledge is rightly called a loving knowledge.20 In the following paragraphs I will describe six characteristics of the mystical knowledge close to the state of spiritual marriage, where the soul after purgation has enjoyed contemplation and is approaching or has already arrived at mystical union.21 I have synthesized these characteristics from a close reading of John’s four commentaries, paying special attention to his demarcation of mystical knowledge from other types of apprehension in The Ascent to Mount Carmel and his poetical symbolization of this knowledge in The Spiritual Canticle and The Living Flame of Love.

The First Characteristic of Mystical Knowledge: Passivity

First of all, this knowledge has a divinely infused, passive character. It is God who places the soul on this journey starting with the dark night, which is why John of the

Cross calls it “sheer grace.”22 It is also passive in the sense that the soul has stilled all her natural apprehensive activities, having acquired a subtle habit of contemplation through previous meditative prayers but now unable to profit from these. It is as if the soul has exhausted its natural capacity and can do nothing else now but to wait on the mercy of

God. The difference between active and passive operation of the soul is “between what is

20 Ibid., 196 (A2), 694 (F). 21 John of the Cross says that his poetry and commentaries ought to be read with a sense of fluidity and broadness so that each may profit according to their mode and capacity. His purpose is to shed some general light on mystical knowledge so it is not necessary to be rigid in the description of stages and their mystical apprehensions. Ibid., 469-70, C. 22 Ibid., 118, A1.

42 being done and what is already done, or what one intends to attain and what has already been attained.”23 The soul has outgrown its previous mode of experience and entered a new phase. It is time for God to secretly instruct the soul without it doing anything or understanding how it happens. Abiding in God’s presence with “a loving attention and a tranquil intellect,” the soul little by little receives “a wondrous, sublime knowledge of

God, enveloped in divine love.”24 Because the soul is still and no longer fidgeting with its own “lowly activity and vile inclinations,”25 the divine light can serenely touch its deep crevices without it being aware, without any disturbance. Such an infusion of divine light is impossible to be achieved through natural ability, for it involves two tasks impossible for human capacity: to banish natural apprehensions, and to unite with divine knowledge.26 Yet God the divine artist can freely sketch his image in the center of the soul when it cooperates through pacification and a loving trust. In this passive state, the soul is moved by God alone, who acts in its very depth. In fact, the soul is occupied with nothing but receiving from God.27As a result, all the movements of the soul would become divine in quality. In a similar vein, Olivier Clement speaks of an “intuition of

God”28—a habitual assimilation to the divine way: when in the course of prayer of

23 Ibid., 287, A3. Teresa of Avila says the difference is between drawing water through aqueducts and being effortlessly filled by a spring, see Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, trs., The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications,1976), Vol. 2, 323. 24 Ibid., 199, A2. 25 Ibid., 429, N2. 26 Ibid., A3. 27 Similarly, Clement says that ultimate spiritual knowledge comes by grace alone and only when “we have become nothing but expectation.” Clement, Roots of Christian mysticism, 230. 28 Ibid., 201.

43 meditation, if something takes hold of our spirit, we should stop multiplying words and thoughts in the usual fashion but let the spirit settle gradually and deeply within our heart.

Experientially, some psychological and cognitive effects are produced by this passivity of the soul. While abiding in this quietude, the soul sometimes senses a strong passion29 of love for God especially in the beginning of its contemplative journey, which may come out of nowhere when the soul least expects it, wounds it and makes it long for

God. This longing for God dwells secretly in the soul, its origin unclear and its presence imperceptible to others or even to the soul itself. Yet it serves as an indispensable sign that divine work is at hand here, otherwise the soul would be strictly idle. Passivity also produces a pervasive peace and a liberality of spirit, because the soul is kept safe from many hazards of natural apprehension: “falsehoods, imperfections, appetites, judgments, loss of time, and numerous other evils engendering many impurities in the soul.”30

Through fading of natural operations such imperfections are not given a chance to speak.

The faculties are silenced so that God alone may speak. The devil is allowed no entry since it can only operate by influencing one’s knowledge.31 Moreover, the soul gains a wideness of heart and a liberality of spirit when the memory is emptied of all its troubles and sorrows. It enjoys a tranquility and equanimity even in the midst of great disturbances,32 which leads the soul away from unnecessary afflictions and readies it for

29 In the beginning stage, the soul’s love for God is not yet purified; hence it is a passion of love rather than a free act of the will, see Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 425, N2. 30 Ibid., 273-74, A3. 31 “Knowledge” here refers to that which is acquired through one’s own efforts, which can be influenced and undermined by the devil’s suggestions. 32 Here we might sense a testimony to John’s personal experience of suffering in the prison of Toledo.

44 God’s blessing. How passive knowledge33 is granted to the soul is best described by

John’s own words:

...he who entered the room of his disciples while the doors were closed and gave them peace, without their knowing how this was possible [Jn 20:19-20], will enter the soul spiritually without its knowing how or using any efforts of its own, once it has closed the doors of its intellect, memory and will to all apprehensions. And he will fill them with peace, descending on them...like a river of peace [Is 66:12]. In this peace he will remove all the misgivings, suspicions, disturbances, and darknesses that made the soul fear it had gone astray.34

The Second Characteristic of Mystical Knowledge: A Living Communication

Mystical knowledge is a living communication between the soul and God. It is a consistent experiential knowing of God: spontaneous, non-conceptual, reciprocal, communicative, creative, and loving. She drinks nourishment from the fountain of the living water which is God, and burns gently with a fire of divine love that illumines her intellect and enflames her heart. Similarly, according to St. Gregory the Great, when the

Holy Spirit descended on the apostles visibly, “they burned interiorly and gently with love.”35 The reciprocity between God and the soul resembles the “marriage union and surrender,” in which the goods of one are shared by the other, and which will continue in heaven “uninterrupted in perfect fruition.”36 The metaphor best capturing the dynamic nature of this living knowledge is the title of John’s poem The Living Flame of Love.

John describes: “Love is never idle, but in continual motion, it is always emitting flames everywhere like a blazing fire, and since its duty is to wound in order to cause love and delight, and it is present in this soul as a living flame, it dispatches its wounds like most

33 This is also called possible knowledge. 34 Ibid., 275, A3. 35 Ibid., 444., D2. John is referencing Homilia 30 in Evangelium, in Migne, PL 76. 1220. 36 Ibid., 706, F.

45 tender flares of delicate love. Joyfully and festively it practices the arts and games of love, as though in the palace of its nuptials.”37

Most of the time the soul simply carries a vivid awareness of God living and reposing within her soul; sometimes, though, she experiences spiritually and in the depth of her soul the loving movements of God, as if God awakes in her heart. Of course God is always the same, immutable and unmovable, explains John, so this symbolic expression of God’s awakening refers to “the communication of God’s excellence to the substance of the soul... [like] the voice of a multitude of excellences, of thousands of virtues in God, infinite in number. The soul is established in them, terribly and solidly set in array in them like an army (Sg 6:4), and made gentle and charming with all the gentleness and charm of creatures.”38 When God moves within the soul, “all the virtues and substances and perfections and graces of every created thing glow and make the same movement all at once.”39 John compares this to the rotation of earth in which everything on earth moves along with it and in it but without any abruptness or apparent awareness.40 As a result of this movement of God within the soul and the accompanying revelation of his excellences and goodness of his creatures, the soul is given a new countenance; she is made happy, gentle and charming, absorbing all the goodness God has manifested to her.

Such experiences are symbolized by the occasional flares of a bright burning fire. They are most sublime acts of love God incurs in the soul, the value of which is so great that

37 Ibid., 643, F. 38 Ibid., 711, F. Here John is commenting on a verse from his poem The Living Flame of Love: “How gently and lovingly you awake in my heart.” 39 Ibid., 709, F. 40 Ibid. The University of , where John received his seminary education, was the first to accept and teach the Copernican theory, see footnote 1.

46 one such act can obliterate many faults the soul might have struggled with all her life.

These experiences with their ecstatic nature do not happen often, however, and cannot be sustained for long in this life.41

Another trait of the dynamic reciprocity between God and the soul is portrayed in these verses: “O lamps of fire! / in whose splendors / the deep caverns of feeling, / once obscure and blind, / now give forth, so rarely, so / exquisitely, / both warmth and light to their / Beloved.”42 The lamps of fire are power and grandeur of God’s attributes, innumerable and each of them infinite in magnificence. Through the light and love of these lamps of fire the soul apprehends in her depth each of God’s attributes. According to John of the Cross, Moses beheld these lamps of God’s attributes on Mount Sinai when

God passed by and he uttered this praise: “Emperor, Lord, God, merciful, clement, patient, of much compassion, true, who keeps mercy unto thousands, who takes away iniquities and sins, no one is of himself innocent before you (Ex 34:6-8).”43 The fire of the lamps catches and burns in the soul, shooting up splendors of flames, which are not from air alone or the fire alone, but both air and fire—both God and the soul.44 The splendors render the soul resplendent like God, at the same time causing the soul to give light and warmth back to her beloved. In such luminous and loving festivals, the soul gives back to the giver what she has received from him.

41 “Were he always awake within it, communicating knowledge and love, it would already be in glory.” Ibid., 714, F. 42 Ibid., 52, 673-708. F. 43 Ibid., 674, F. 44 Ibid., 677, F.

47 Another aspect of the soul’s living knowledge of God is her participation in the

Trinitarian life itself—very much an emphasis in Orthodox spirituality45. The reciprocal flow of love between God and the soul resemble the love between the Trinitarian persons, which is poetically rendered by John of the Cross as follows:

As the lover in the beloved / each lived in the other, / and the love that unites them / is one with them, / their equal, excellent as / the One and the Other: / Three persons, and one Beloved / among all three. / One love in them all / makes of them one lover, / and the lover is the Beloved / in whom each one loves...46

In such perfect and continuous love between the Trinitarian persons the soul is able to participate by grace, transformed through the activity of the Holy Spirit. In the poem The

Spiritual Canticle, John thus describes the soul’s participation in the Trinitarian love:

“the wounded stag / is in sight on the hill / cooled by the breeze of your flight.”47 The bridegroom is the “wounded stag,”48 the contemplation of the soul in ecstasy consists the

“flight,” and the Holy Spirit is the “breeze.” Most notably, the “breeze” here is not attributed to the movement of the divine bridegroom but to the soul in contemplation, for the love produced by her contemplative knowledge moves toward the bridegroom,

45 Orthodox spirituality finds it a bone of contention that , even in mysticism (such as in and Spanish mysticism), focuses too much on a philosophical concept of God while neglecting the Trinitarian persons. Staniloae quotes Georg Koepgen: “Western mysticism is under the influence of Plotinus, and is monotheistic in the strict sense of the word; it sees the Trinity as a matter of fact, but only as a unity of persons in divinity...” See Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality, 47-50. The strong and vivid portrayal of the Trinity by St. John of the Cross in his poem The Romances: On the Gospel text “In principio erat Verbum” and his commentaries The Spiritual Canticle and The Living Flame of Love should render this claim questionable. 46 Ibid., 61, The Romances: On the Gospel text “In principio erat Verbum.” 47 Ibid., 523-24, C. 48 God is called the “wounded stag” for when the soul is wounded for love, her wound is shared by the beloved, for they share but one feeling. Ibid., 523, C. The “stag” is also used in the Song of Songs to represent the lover (Sg 2:9).

48 communicating and bonding them to each other, in the same spirit as that which communicates between the Father and the Son and bonds them. The Holy Spirit who first causes the soul’s contemplation now moves to return her love to God, producing a loving breeze that refreshes the divine bridegroom. The metaphor of the breeze as union between God and the soul is reiterated toward the end of the poem: the soul longs for a graced transformation effected by the “breathing of the air”: “breath and spiration of the

Holy spirit from God to her and from her to God.”49 The transformation of the soul would not be true and complete, according to John of the Cross, unless she is able to participate in the Trinitarian life itself “in an open and manifest degree.”50 United with God and transformed through spiritual marriage, the soul “breathes out in God to God the very divine spiration that God ...breathes out in himself to her.”51 Through the gift of divine communication and participation, the soul becomes like God by grace: her knowledge and love are united with the knowledge and love of the Trinity itself. She freely gives back the splendors of love and truth which God has freely given her.

In the poem The Living Flame of Love, John of the Cross thus describes the

Trinitarian aspects of God touching the soul in the state of spiritual marriage: “O sweet cautery, / O delightful wound! / O gentle hand!”52 The cautery is the Holy Spirit, who burns each soul when and how he desires, transforming whomever he touches. The delightful wound is what is left behind by the cautery of the Holy Spirit, symbolizing

God the Son. It is a taste of eternal life, piercing the soul with a pure delight, like a

49 Ibid., 622, C. 50 Ibid., 623, C. This participation on earth, even if open and manifest, cannot compare to what it will be in heaven. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., 657-60, F.

49 mustard seed that sprouts and blossoms into a tree of life, or a fiery dart that enkindles an encompassing fire.53 The gentle hand is God the merciful and omnipotent Father, who despites his awesome and terrifying powers chooses to guide the soul with love, grace, and gentleness. The Trinity is experienced by the soul in one divine act but in three distinctive ways.

The Third Characteristic of Mystical Knowledge: Substantiality

Mystical knowledge is a touch “of the substance of God in the substance of the soul.”54 This touch happens secretly and delicately in the deepest center of the soul, without form, image or figure. An object’s deepest center is “the farthest point attainable by that object’s being and power and force of operation and movement.”55 When an object arrives at its deepest center, it will no longer have any inclination or power to move any further. God is the center of the soul, which nonetheless has many layers and depths.56 We reach our deepest center57 when we have known, loved, and embraced God with all our strength and capacity, when there is no longer any discontentment or inclination to go any further. There the soul will have attained the final degree of love and be so illuminated that its whole being “appears to be God.”58

53 Here John relates what seems the ecstatic experience of St. Teresa of Avila being visited by a seraph. Ibid., 661, F. 54 Ibid., 665, F. 55 Ibid., 645, F. 56 Ibid. John of the Cross also calls these many degrees of love for God. He further compares the various centers of the soul to the many mansions Christ declared that were in his father’s house (Jn. 14:2). 57 John also explains that the various depths of the soul are not quantitatively different since the spirit is essentially one, but they are illumined equally in degrees of different intensity. Ibid., 644, F. 58 Ibid., 645, F. John here compares the soul to a crystal, similar to Teresa’s interior castle. Once the soul has reached its deepest center, the crystal seems “undistinguishable from the light” since it is now illumined to its full capacity.

50 The substantial knowledge of God communicated to the soul here is pure and penetrating. It is pure because it is spiritual and interior, imperceptible to the senses, secret and safe, free from exterior corruption. It is a simple, transcendent, and vivifying touch of substance between God and the soul, its purity so “recondite”59 that it goes undetected, sheltered from the imperfections of natural apprehensions and evil meddling of the devil. The soul, even while employed with this knowledge, may not perceive or feel it, because the purer the knowledge, the less clear and less prominent it seems to the intellect.60 Neither angels nor the devil can notice what is happening in this secret hiding place of the soul, for God communicates directly to the soul substance to substance, giving her a direct taste of him and of eternal life. No natural apprehension or angelic powers or the devil could produce the same effect in the soul. The purity of this knowledge also means that it does not pertain to particular things, forms, images, figures, or concepts, but remains general and colorless.61 It cannot deal with particular things,

“since its object is the Supreme Principle.”62 By not esteeming particular apprehensions, the soul honors the incomprehensibility of God and runs no risk of judging him less worthily than he is, for no distinct apprehensions are proportioned to his being.63

59 Ibid., 193, A2. 60 Ibid., 194, A2. Knowledge that is less pure, less simple, and less substantial is clothed in more intelligible forms which seem more apprehensible to the intellect or the senses. John uses the analogy of sunlight appearing more visible through dust particles to explain this. 61 Ibid., 535, C. The word “colorless” means that the soul does not have any particular consideration, nor can it describe the mode or manner of its knowledge, for “what it possesses is an abyss of the knowledge of God.” 62 Ibid., 246, A2. 63 Ibid., 284, A3.

51 Compared to sensory perceptions and natural knowledge, the substantial communication of God is infinitely more delectable and, once tasted, causes the soul to find every other knowledge insipid. According to John, those who have experienced this communication have a proclivity to unknowing with regard to particular knowledge, imaginative acts, and the affairs of others. This is not a denial of the goodness of particular knowledge but an asymptotic assimilation to God’s purity and simplicity. In heaven, the pure, substantial and general knowledge of God will cohere with other particular knowledge, according to John of the Cross, as a bright light is mingled with faint ones: they are not supplanted but neither are they of great importance; they are perfected by the bright light but are not the principle light.64 As such, this pure knowledge of God is not conducive to conceptual analysis. When subjected to intellectual description and analysis, it runs the danger of being cheapened and distorted.65 This is why John of the Cross often mentions the need for inner recollection during his writing process.

The purity and simplicity of divine knowledge gives it an unparalleled penetrating power. Because it is not a product of deduced conclusions but instinctive, interior and essential, it captivates the substance of the soul, produces an unwavering assent in the intellect, and moves the will to complete obedience the moment it touches the soul. It also leaves a permanent mark in the memory so that the experience is not forgotten even

64 Ibid., 579, C. 65 Commenting on the mystical knowledge in John of the Cross, says: “As soon as any such thing is turned into a ‘mystical experience,’ to be described and analyzed and intellectually ‘processed,’ it will become a delusion. Knowledge of God is thus entirely distinct from knowledge of particulars.” Williams, Wounds of Knowledge: A Theological History from the to Luther and St. John of the Cross (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1980), 170.

52 with the passage of time.66 To describe the power of such knowledge St. John of the

Cross uses the metaphor of a wound. There are three degrees of wound corresponding to three kinds of knowledge of God: the first is simply a “wound,” arising from the knowledge of creatures; the second is a “sore wound,” produced by “knowledge of the

Incarnation of the Word and the mysteries of faith”; the third is a “festered wound,” “a death of love,” caused by a touch of ineffable sublime knowledge of God.67 It is the third type of knowledge that we speak of. This wound is so delicate, refined and mild that

“every other touch of all things both high and low seems coarse and spurious.”68 Being without any form, figure or accident that sets a boundary to substance, its subtlety penetrates straight to the heart, giving it incomparable delight.69 Sometimes when God permits, this wound felt in the depth of the spirit is extended to the corporal senses, which, according to John, would be the case for St. Paul who bears Christ’s wounds in his body (Gal. 6:17) and the stigmata of St. .70

Another metaphor John uses to describe this knowledge is the “whistling of love- stirring breezes”—a “most sublime and delightful knowledge of God and his attributes,

66 Though not explicitly on the topic of mystical knowledge, Newman’s distinction between simple and complex assent similarly observes the persuasive power of apprehensions that are not subject to intellection: “we have but to look at the generous and uncalculating energy of faith as exemplified in the primitive martyrs, in the youths who deified the pagan tyrant, or the maidens who were silent under his tortures. It is assent, pure and simple, which is the motive cause of great achievements; it is a confidence, growing out of instincts rather than arguments, stayed upon a vivid apprehension, and animated by a transcendent logic, more concentrated in will and in deed for the very reason that it has not been subjected to any intellectual development.” Newman, Grammar of Assent, 177. 67 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 500, C. 68 Ibid., 664, F. 69 Again here we can relate to Teresa of Avila’s experience with the seraph. 70 Ibid., 662-63, F.

5 3 which overflows into the intellect from the touch produced in the substance of the soul by these attributes of God.”71 The spiritual nature of this communication is signified by

John’s careful wording, for “whistling” affects the spiritual sense of hearing while

“breezes” affect the spiritual sense of touch. Both these senses are more spiritual and more interior than that of feeling.72 John further describes that this communication of

God is first experienced in the sense of touch, which resides in the substance of the soul, and then spills over to the intellect, which hears the “whistling” of the breezes. It is a whistling that “penetrates with wonderful savoriness into the innermost part of the substance of the soul,” just as a material whistling would pierce the corporeal sense of hearing.73 In this spiritual whistling, naked of God are secretly unveiled to the soul.

The Fourth Characteristic of Mystical Knowledge: Supra-abundance

The soul united to God through spiritual marriage, having been purged of its imperfections, possesses a liberality of spirit and a gentle receptivity which embraces all things readily. As Scripture says, the spiritual person “penetrates and judges all things, even the deep things of God”,74 because her deep caverns of feeling have been awakened by the divine light, and she searches and scrutinizes constantly the good things of her beloved. The feeling of the soul refers to her capacity and ability to experience and enjoy

71 Ibid., 530, C. 72 Ibid., 530-31, C. The “hearing” and “touch” here must be understood as spiritual senses. As discussed previously, mystical knowledge according to John does not occur in the corporeal senses. John further associates this “whistling” with what Scripture refers to as “a communication of God that enters by hearing” (he does not cite the Bible passage) in which naked secrets of God are revealed to the intellect purely spiritually without the help of corporeal senses. The word “feeling” here is less clearly defined by John. Since he says it is not as spiritual as “hearing” and “touch,” it is apposite to understand it as a more exterior experience associated with sensory satisfactions. 73 Ibid., 531, C. 74 Ibid., 314, A3. Here John references 1 Cor 2:10-15.

54 spiritual realties;75 it is the aggregate of her spiritual faculties, the chasms and recesses of which are all capable of receiving divine contact. We will look into the abundance of knowledge in this state through some of John’s poetic symbols.

The soul comes to know intimately the attributes of God, compared by John to

“lamps” which shine and dance into the chasms and recesses of the soul,76 and to pomegranates, each of which “like a round shell of power and mystery, holds and sustains a multitude of marvelous decrees and wondrous effects.”77 As mentioned before,

John gives Moses as an example of someone who experienced such knowledge when

God proclaimed his own name in front of him (Ex 34:6-8). Moses was revealed God’s attributes of “omnipotence, dominion, deity, mercy, justice, truth, and righteousness,” which, according to St. John of the Cross, are the highest knowledge of God because they were not mere concepts but communicated to Moses in a way saturated with love and fruition.78 Through such knowledge the soul gains a real taste of God’s excellence and beauty, his wisdom and fortitude, his grandeur and majesty.

The soul gains the knowledge of God himself, which John calls “the mountain,” as well as the knowledge of his wisdom in creation—“the hill.”79 Included in the latter is

75 Ibid., 702, F. “The feeling of the soul” is therefore the ultimate spiritual faculty qualitatively different from exterior sensory feelings and interior sensations of the imagination. 76 Ibid., 673-74, F. John further associates the movement of the “lamps” in the soul with an overshadowing by God, similar to the favor granted to the Mary during the Annunciation, see 678, F. 77 Ibid., 617, C. “Pomegranate” is a term frequently used in the Song of Songs (4:13, 6:7, 6:11, 7:12, 8:2), but “lamps” do not appear there. 78 Ibid., 674, F. 79 Ibid., 612, C. John borrows these two images from Sg 4:6, where “the mountain of myrrh refers to the clear vision of God and the hill of incense to the knowledge of creatures.” In conjunction with this, John terms the knowledge of God himself “the

55 a thorough sense of one’s own unworthiness and a pervasive ever-expanding knowledge of God’s principles and actions operating in creation. The dark night, through which the soul forgets oneself for love of God, necessarily precedes this knowledge. John of the

Cross uses an analogy from natural science where an element unaffected by any particular taste, odor, or color can concur with “all tastes, odors, and colors.”80 Similarly, a pure soul detached from all things is able to appreciate all things to an eminent degree.

According to John, even without a special grace, purified spirits can possess perceptive wisdom concerning human events and the inclination, talents and interior motives of other people.81 Buddhism, for instance, teaches that through meditation82 we can better understand human affairs as well as “see our own illusions and hallucinations face to face without pretense.”83 Freedom from passion allows the soul to perceive the hidden principles that interconnect and harmonize all creation, things and human events alike.

The capacity for understanding becomes ever-expanding,84 for egotism will have been displaced by a reverent and disinterested attention to all things.

“Silent music” and “sounding solitude” are two other metaphors John uses to describe the symphonic harmony of creation which is communicated to the soul: “the

morning and essential knowledge of God” and the knowledge of him in creation “the evening knowledge of God,” pointing again to the former’s excellence over the latter. 80 Ibid., 412, N2. John does not name this scientific element. He could be referring to inert gases which are often used in experiments to prevent unwanted chemical reactions from degrading a sample. 81 Ibid., 249-50, A2. 82 The word “meditation” in the context of Buddhism is more akin to John’s contemplation than what he refers to as meditative practices which rely on concepts and the imagination. 83 Kalupahana, “William James and Early Buddhism,” 65, citing T. W. Rhys and J. E. Carpenter, eds., Digha-nikaya (London: Pali Text Society, 1967), 1:79-83. 84 According to Jean Danielou, the sanctified soul becomes “an expanding universe.” See Clement, Roots of Christian Mysticism, 241.

56 tranquil night / at the time of the rising dawn, / silent music, / sounding solitude, / the supper that refreshes and / deepens love.”85 Both metaphors refer to the voice of praise that creatures lift up to God in harmony and in their own way, which appears silent to the natural faculties but is a sublime symphony to the spiritual ear, drawing the soul to her beloved in rapt attention. As attested here, a further distinction of this knowledge from natural apprehension is that it knows creatures through God and not the other way around.86 Everything is apprehended with God being their final cause; everything points to God and coheres in him.

“The thicket” and “high caverns”87 are yet two more symbols for the supra- abundant knowledge enjoyed by souls who are close to God. The “thicket” represents the depth and intricacy of God’s wisdom acclaimed in Romans 11:33: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways!” No matter how deeply we come to know God, there is always more to find out, the mysteries of his works forever new and refreshing. The “high caverns” symbolize the Incarnation, “the highest and most savory wisdom of all his works:”88 high because of the sublimity of the nature of Incarnation, and caverns because of the infinite depths of mysteries hidden therein, such as the of souls in

Christ and God’s foreknowledge of history.

The supra-abundance of mystical knowledge also pertains to the overflowing sweetness and delight enjoyed by the soul. No longer perturbed by exterior distractions or

85 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 76, 534-37 (C). 86 Ibid., 710, F. 87 Ibid., 613, 615, C. 88 Ibid., 615, C.

57 interior imperfections, the soul is arrayed in dignity and freedom, drinking up God’s favors in his banquet of bounty, receiving new gifts from him without any need, able to return his love with love, and a new song of praise ever flowing from her mouth. She lives in gladness and festivity both inwardly and outwardly,89 her faculties refreshed by divine knowledge—the will inebriated with divine love, the intellect flooded with wisdom and understanding, and the memory delighted by “the remembrance and feeling of glory.”90 She is like the ocean that neither decreases or increases with the movement of its waves but firmly established in the fountain of living waters, which “leap up into life everlasting” (Jn 4:14).91 She resembles God,92 who does not lack anything but delights in all things in himself. As the divine light shines through her soul, a whole abyss of richness and delight is opened up to her, ever new and ever fresh. She receives every goodness from the bosom of her beloved, who bids the daughters of Jerusalem not to disturb her until she wishes [Sg. 3:5]. The abundance that she receives from God here is infinitely more than all the trials she could ever suffer. It is important to note, however, that no matter how rich these spiritual apprehensions, they are but faint glimpses of God from a distance compared to what awaits us in heaven.93

The Fifth Characteristic of Mystical Knowledge: Transformation

Mystical knowledge is so transformative that the soul is made to be like God. Her heart is one with him in spirit and love, her apprehensions a shadow94 of his own wisdom.

89 Ibid., 672, F. 90 Ibid., 576, C. 91 Ibid., 556, C. 92 Ibid., 557, C. 93 Ibid., 523, C. 94 Ibid., 679, 706, F.

58 Her attention is occupied in nothing but his glorification, and her first movements pure and undisturbed as in the Blessed Virgin Mary.95 Her whole image is dignified with virtues and charisma befitting the espoused of God or daughter of the Most High. She enjoys all seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. She can now proclaim with St. Paul, “I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20). Her virtues are compared by John of the Cross to

“a cone of roses,” a “vineyard” and “linking dens of lions”96 in describing their harmony, beauty, fragrance and fortitude. She comports herself with “an ‘I don’t know what’ of greatness and dignity,”97 radiant with charisma. Unlike in previous stages of purification where she only saw her own unworthiness, now she sees that her beloved has given her excellent qualities even though they are not as good as they will be in heaven. The bodily confinement that stays her on earth makes her feel like a “noble lord held in prison.”98

Spiritual marriage is a total transformation in the Beloved, where the human and the divine surrender freely and entirely to each other. While neither relinquishes their own unique being, they “both appear to be God.”99 Just as the light of a star or a candle becomes absorbed into that of the sun,100 the soul is absorbed into God without losing her identity. This union is not as perfect as in heaven, but it is a “veritable embrace,”101 spiritual and intimate. The soul is like a phoenix rising out of the fiery ashes of divine

95 Ibid., 271, A3. 96 Ibid., 541, 539, 567, C. Roses shaped into a cone symbolize the virtues being integrated together into a solid . Likewise, “linking dens of lions” symbolize that fact that the virtues are “united and fortified by each other...fitted to the full perfection of the soul...” The image of “vineyard” is rife in The Song of Songs but “roses” and “dens of lions” are not in use there. 97 Ibid., 544, C. 98 Ibid., 546, C. 99 Ibid., 561, C. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid., 562, C.

59 love,102 or an old lover of God who resembles old wine: not coarse, sharp, unstable like new wine but smooth, settled and in no danger of going bad.103 Dressed in a divine garment, the soul now lives freely as a true child of God, her faculties moved by God alone. She is able to love with divine affection, her intellect informed by a higher supernatural light, and her memory changed to the consideration of “the eternal years mentioned by David.”104 She resembles innocent before the fall in her judgment of things, understanding no evil nor judging anything in a bad light.105 With great facility the soul knows and remembers what ought to be known and remembered, and she ignores what ought to be ignored. She is taught all things in secret by the “artificer of all, who is

Wisdom” (Wis. 7:21). Fully faithful and stable in this state of marriage, the soul employs all her thoughts, affections and actions in the love of God without suffering any deterrence even in the first movements. She loves in every act without having to think about it or being aware. Nothing is wasted on “unprofitable occupations... [such as] ostentation, compliments, flattery, human respect, the effort to impress and please people...”106

The Sixth Characteristic of Mystical Knowledge: Ineffability

The sixth and final characteristic of divine knowledge is its ineffability. John of the Cross writes in the prologue of The Spiritual Canticle: “Who can describe in writing the understanding [God] gives to loving souls in whom he dwells? And who can express

102 Ibid., 484, C. 103 See more explanation on the differences between old and new wines, old and new lovers: ibid., 572-74, C. 104 Ibid., 671, F. John is citing Ps 77:5. 105 Ibid., 578, C. 106 Ibid., 585, C.

60 with words the experience he imparts to them? ... Certainly, no one can! Not even they who receive these communications.”107 He cites the examples of David and St. Paul.108

Unable to adequately describe God, David can only praise him: “God’s judgments—the virtues and attributes we experience in God—are true, in themselves justified, more desirable than gold and extremely precious stone, and sweeter than honey and honeycomb.” St. Paul after being caught up to paradise refused to speak of the

“inexpressible things” he heard there, for they are things humans are not permitted to tell

(2 Cor 12:4). John often acknowledges that his best effort at describing mystical knowledge produces but a faint sketch of reality. The ineffability of divine knowledge is rooted in the infinity of God and the limitations of our understanding and words.

There are three main reasons mystical knowledge is ineffable. First, if subjected to rigid conceptualization, mystical knowledge with its spiritual richness runs the risk of becoming an idol. Hence God resorts to the best available option for his own name: “I am who I am,” which is everything but distinct or intellectual.109 Even for angels and the blessed who see God face to face, he is incomprehensible so as to be called “strange islands”: “only to himself is he neither strange nor new.”110 A second reason is that mystical knowledge is a secret private communication between God and the soul. As such, it is the “white pebble” of Rev 2:14 where a new name is written and revealed to

107 Ibid., 469, C. 108 Here John is citing Psalm 19:10. Ibid., 246, A2. 109 According to Dionysius the Areopagite, God uses this name for himself to avert people “from any knowledge that could be expressed in a name.” Dionysius the Areopagite, Divine Names, I,i,6 (PG 3,596), quoted in Clement, Roots of Christian Mysticism, 29. 110 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 528, C. In another instance, John uses the term “I don’t-know-what” to describe the loving wound experienced by the soul, see 502, C.

61 one person alone.111 A third reason that mystical knowledge is ineffable is due to its purity, which strips it of distinct colors, forms and contours. John of the Cross, along with

Teresa of Avila, uses the metaphor of light streaming through a window pane: when there are no dust particles in the air, the light is invisible to the eye. Similarly, mystical knowledge received in a pure soul reaches every recess without leaving distinct traces, rendering it difficult to express verbally the content of divine light.

As a result of this ineffability, poetic language becomes a natural conduit for conveying mystical communication. John of the Cross first learned to compose poems for worship hymns to be sung at Teresa’s convents.112 Teresa and the Carmelite cohort also had a habit of sending poetic compositions to friends as greeting cards. Poetry was John’s primary vehicle of expression for his own mystical experiences.113 All of the related commentaries were written on the request of those under his . John himself notes that through poetry people can “let something of their experience overflow in figures, comparisons and similitudes, and from the abundance of their spirit pour out secrets and mysteries rather than rational explanations.”114 Theologian Thomas Gilby juxtaposes poetical knowledge with mystical knowledge, noting that they both involve a cognitive act “which engages to an unusual degree the totality of human powers—senses,

111 Ibid., 665, F. 112 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Ibid., 41, “Introduction to the Poetry.” 113 According to art historian Michel Florisoone, “The spirit of John of the Cross turns toward art with utter spontaneity. In him there is a sort of artistic instinct which emerges, no matter what he does, in his attitude, his conversation, his style. An artistic sensibility characterizes his behavior of each day, manifesting itself especially in the expressions and images he employs with full ease in his writings; they come to his thought and pen in a way that is totally natural, without effort...” Emilio Orozco Diaz, Poesia y mistica: introduccion a la lirica de san Juan de la Cruz (Madrid, Ediciones Guadarrama, 1959), 58, 61-62, cited in Wilhelmsen, Knowledge and Symbolization, 154. 114 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 469, C.

62 memory, imagination, affectivity, intellect—and yields an experience far more fecund than our common, daily acts of understanding.”115 John of the Cross further suggests that his poetic expressions be read according to their spirit of simplicity and love. They are a general guide to assist people according to their capacity and mode; they do not need to be understood or analyzed with a rigid intellectualism. Similarly, when we approach elevated knowledge of God, it is not necessary to cling to distinct ideas. In fact, John says that the less distinct our understanding of God, the closer we approach him.116 This is in agreement with Newman’s observation that clear inference often leads to weakened assent, that the most intense assent usually occurs when inference is least clear.117

Summary of Chapter Two

Throughout the poetry and commentaries of St. John of the Cross, we can see a consistent sketch of the highest Christian mystical knowledge. It differs dramatically from rationalist knowledge due to the fact that its object is someone rather than something. Affectivity in this epistemology is interwoven with apprehension: the heart takes on an indispensable gnosiological character, and true understanding of the mind simultaneously becomes love for that which is understood.118 Knowledge becomes living, dynamic, progressive, and relational. It is the “springing forth”119 of one to meet another, a fearful and mysterious contact between living entities. More significantly, it is the coming together of humanity and divinity, in which neither party is an intellectual abstraction but a throbbing reality that defies rational circumscription.

115 Wilhelmsen, Knowledge and Symbolization, 157. 116 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 482, C. 117 Newman, Grammar of Assent, 52. 118 Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality, 100. 119 Clement, Roots of Christian Mysticism, 32.

63 The supra-abundant character of mystical knowledge both in quality and quantity need not render it doubtful. Its credibility is vouchsafed to the believer by the nature of

God himself. Experiences of mystics and their portrayal of God serve to make theology real, to show that the truth of Scripture is not just a promise for the next world but latent in our midst and in our hearts. When Christ says, “whoever loves me will be loved by my

Father, and I will love them and manifest myself to them” (Jn. 14:21), he is not just being metaphorical. Even the highest mysteries, those that are ordinarily only notionally grasped—such as the Trinity,120 await to be apprehended mystically through contemplation.121 Theology seeks understanding, but contemplation or mystical theology seeks vision of the beloved; hence it is called a “sweet and living knowledge.”

120 Newman explains that mysteries contain notions that we normally can’t conceive nor experience, therefore they are usually accorded a notional assent. See Newman, Grammar of Assent, 55. 121 Teresa of Avila relates her experience of infused knowledge about the Trinity: she had heard about this truth from learned men but couldn’t understand it until after the Trinitarian persons were mystically represented to her. After that she realizes this was a great truth for which she would die a thousand deaths. There were still things about the truth that she couldn’t understand, but she says, “I don’t get involved in thinking a lot about this.” In another instance, Teresa says that as a result of the infused knowledge she could no longer think of any of the three divine persons without thinking of all three. See Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, St. Teresa of Avila, Vol. 1, 400-01, 410.

64

CHAPTER 3

THE RATIONALE OF DIVINE LOVE

--“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Dt 6:5

--“God does not fit in an occupied heart.”1

St. John of the Cross

Within Catholic mysticism there have been distinct schools of thought, even though they overlap with many similar themes.2 Image mysticism, centered around the theology of the divine image, was first developed by Origen and later by Gregory of

Nyssa and Dionysius,3 and preserved in the Eastern Church uninterruptedly. With modern representatives such as Thomas Merton and Teilhard de Chardin, image mysticism emphasizes the conversion to the image of God already present in our innermost core. Trinitarian mysticism in the west, heavily influenced by Augustine’s theology of the Trinity, believes that manifestation of the Trinitarian life constitutes the

1 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 692-93, F. 2 For detailed distinctions among schools of mysticism, see Louis Dupré, “Introduction,” in Light from Light: An Anthology of Christian Mysticism, Louis Dupré & James A. Wiseman (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1988), 10-16. 3 Louis Dupré classifies Dionysius in the school of image mysticism, but he has been traditionally cast as founder of negative theology. Louis Dupré also mentions that for negative theologians such as Dionysius and later Meister Eckhart, God is beyond all names and all beings, even beyond the divine image and the Trinity. Ibid., 11-2.

65 very essence of God while assigning Trinitarian qualities to the operations of the soul. As explained in chapter two, there are strong Trinitarian features in the spirituality of St.

John of the Cross, especially on the soul’s eventual participation in the Trinitarian life itself, but the best name to characterize John would have to be love mysticism. According to Catholic religious philosopher Louis Dupré, love mysticism has its origin in Bernard of

Clairvaux, with whom “the words of St. Gregory, amor ipse notitia est [such fire is love], became the guiding principle of the contemplative life.”4 Dupré observes that the demands of love mysticism seem most stringent compared to the other schools, for its highest achievement consists in loving nothing except God and loving everything for the sake of God. Motivated by this totality of love, mysticism in John of the Cross is not primarily about detachment or asceticism, though his austerity in this regard may be impressive. In other words, John of the Cross is not primarily about the dark night, or the nada in our assent to Mount Carmel, even if those things are most familiar to people. The best defining image for John of the Cross might be the living flame of love, which determines the nature and height of our assent to God as well as its unusual demands. In this chapter I will examine how John constructs his spirituality seamlessly through a rationale of divine love. In John’s quest for knowledge of the beloved, his radicalness in matters of apprehension is entirely logical as a matter of love.

Before we start, however, I should address a question that may be lingering after chapter two: does the kind of mystical knowledge John describes pertain to everyone, or simply a chosen few? The short answer is, it pertains to everyone but only a few obtain it, and what makes the difference will segue to the heart of the present chapter.

4 Ibid., 14.

66 Who May Attain Mystical Knowledge?

John’s major commentaries on his poetry comprising his systematic treatment of the mystical life were all written for a specific audience: usually a group of

Carmelite or under his spiritual direction. He addresses them as proficients of the spiritual life, as they had already made a strong commitment to follow God and practiced self-abnegation for some time. However, he also spends seven chapters analyzing the imperfections of beginners in the first book of The Dark Night,5 showing how these hinder spiritual progress and must be cleansed by entrance into the dark night.

The chief shortcoming of beginners is their tendency to approach God “as if he were comprehensible and accessible.”6 John says of them, “No matter how earnestly beginners in all their actions and passions practice the mortification of self, they will never be able to do so entirely—far from it—until God accomplishes it in them passively by means of the purgation of this night.”7 While introducing his first major commentary The Ascent to

Mount Carmel, John presents it as “a substantial and solid doctrine for all those who desire to reach this nakedness of spirit.”8 Given the inherent unity within his commentaries, it is reasonable to believe that John considers the mystical knowledge in the state of spiritual marriage available to all Christians who desire it, though they do have to go through the dark night of purgation first. In his writings he is presenting a doctrine that all can follow rather than an esoteric extraordinary account of personal experience to which only a privileged few can relate.

5 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 361-75, N1. Some of these imperfections are pride, spiritual avarice, vanity, anger, spiritual gluttony, spiritual sloth. 6 Ibid., 372, N1. 7 Ibid., 375, N1. 8 Ibid., 118, A1.

67 Here one might object that spiritual marriage is precisely an esoteric state to which only a privileged few could relate. How might a lay person called to the vocation of married life, for instance, possibly attain to this state and its promised lofty knowledge of God? To this John of the Cross would answer, Christians are called to the state of spiritual marriage with Christ exactly as we are called to be the adopted children of God.

It is a universal calling that is initiated at the moment of Jesus’s incarnation, accomplished eternally at his crucifixion, and activated individually through baptism.9

The spiritual marriage with Christ that each of us can aspire to and obtain through concrete cooperation with God’s grace is a historical, temporal and progressive fulfillment of what has been eternally wrought. John explains:

The espousal made on the cross is not the one we now speak of. For that espousal is accomplished immediately when God gives the first grace that is bestowed on each in baptism. The espousal of which we speak bears reference to perfection and is not achieved save gradually and by stages. For though it is all one espousal, there is a difference in that one is attained at the soul’s pace, and thus little by little, and the other at God’s pace, and thus immediately.10

Another sign that John believes we are all called to mystical contemplation is that he often juxtaposes the fire which purifies us in this life with that which cleanses us in the next: unless the fire of the Holy Spirit purifies us through love in this life, ushering us

9 In his poem The Romances: On the Gospel text “In principio erat Verbum,” John writes about humanity and divinity being wed through the Incarnation: “Men sang songs / and angels melodies / celebrating the marriage / of Two such as these. / But God there in the manger / cried and moaned; / and these tears were jewels / the bride brought to the wedding...” In the same poem, John also speaks of angels being the bride of Christ: angels and humans “were divided in this way, / yet all form one, / who is called the bride; / for love of the same Bridegroom / made one bride of them. / Those higher ones possessed / the Bridegroom in gladness; / the lower in hope, founded / on the faith that he infused in them...” Ibid., 68, 63, “The Poetry.” 10 Ibid., 564, C. John also connects spiritual marriage to the espousal between God and his people described in Ezek 16:5-14, see 564-65.

68 into contemplation, we shall be purified in the next by the same Spirit through purgatory before enjoying the beatific vision of God in heaven.11

Having established the above, it must also be said that the road to mystical knowledge is not trodden by many. John of the Cross admits that while many enter the first night of sense, relatively few enter the second night of spirit, and even fewer would persist all the way to reach the state of spiritual marriage. In John’s words, “God does not bring to contemplation all those who purposely exercise themselves in the way of the

Spirit, not even half.”12 We thus face a conundrum between a theoretical possibility and realistic difficulties. What makes the difference? While allowing for God’s ultimate sovereignty in how he chooses to lead each soul,13 John of the Cross suggests that the rarity of contemplative knowledge of God is due to its demanding nature: it is none other than “the narrow gate and constricted road that leads to life, which Jesus spoke of in St.

Matthew’s Gospel.”14 In this chapter I will also contend that the demanding nature of this path is due to the exclusive, jealous and totalizing nature of love.

11 Ibid., 422, N2. According to John, the difference is that here souls are purged with a “dark, loving spiritual fire” but in purgatory with a “dark material fire.” 12 Ibid., 380, N1. Some are brought into the night only to be humbled and reformed to a certain extent; they do not progress all the way to contemplation, nor do they completely detach themselves from sensory satisfactions. 13 Teresa of Avila believes that to be a contemplative is a gift from God. The best attitude is to resign oneself to the way God leads her. However, she also believes if one prepares through humility and detachment, God will give the gift of contemplation. If he does not do so in this life, he will grant it to her all at once in heaven. See Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, St. Teresa of Avila, Vol. 2, 99, 101. 14 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 169, A2. John more specifically compares the first night of sense to the “narrow gate” and the second night of spirit to the “constricted road.”

69 The Case for Divine Love

Loving God has always been the central tenet in both Judaism and Christianity, but to do so concretely to the satisfaction of the greatest commandment is not an average call. To John of the Cross, the commandment to love God requires a laying down of one’s inner self for the sake of God just as Jesus laid down his life for love of his Father.

It is difficult to die a martyr’s death physically, but it may be even harder to die interiorly for Christ, slowly and gradually through the dark night. The fortitude necessary for passing through this night is not possible unless we are convinced that God is our telos, that we have no other cause but to love him. John of the Cross is fully aware of the importance of this premise, and argues that God should be loved because of his excellence, and because everything else is dross and crumbs that do not satisfy.

God is the supreme good outside of whom there is nothing good. John of the

Cross breaks down all possible human desires into a few categories: sensory goods, temporal goods—earthly riches and power, natural goods such as intelligence, beauty and a good family, moral goods of virtues, supernatural goods of visions, locutions, , etc. Spiritually-minded people easily see the vanity of temporal goods, but may not be as resolute about the other categories. A few examples will suffice to explain how John approaches these.15 Why do some people go to extreme measures in order to have children? How do they know these children will grow to be servants of God? What is the good of being intelligent if our hearts are not with God? What was the good of all his wisdom when was lost to idolatry in his old age? Moral virtues are truly the best one can have in life, but if we rejoice in these and hold them up as the highest

15 Ibid., 295-33, A3.

70 possible goods, we will become haughty and judgmental of others. Our virtues will degenerate into vainglory devoid of any eternal value. As for supernatural gifts, the craving for these is the reason we have false prophets, sorcerers and witches. However good his gifts, it is “seriously wrong to have more regard for God’s blessings than for

God himself...”16 We should rejoice in nothing except the honor and glory of God.

We should love God for the reason that he is our final cause. John of the Cross used to recite quietly on his road trips with great devotion chapter 17 of the Gospel of

John,17 where Jesus says: “This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and your son Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3). Applying an allegorical interpretation to the smart Canaanite woman’s response to Jesus, “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table” (Mt 15:27), John of the Cross remarks that loving creatures or anything other than God is equivalent to being satisfied with crumbs, which will only make us more miserable.18 On the contrary, the knowledge of God is the taste of manna that satisfies all palates and surpasses all understanding, as shown in chapter two. Other Christian writers have expressed similar thoughts. Evagrius of Pontus says, “To progress in thinking about creatures is painful and wearisome. The contemplation of the Holy Trinity is ineffable peace and silence.”19 Thomas Merton compares a life devoted to matter and sense to the tortuous futility of Sysiphus rolling a boulder uphill again and again only to see it roll back down every time, or to Tantalus

16 Ibid., 95, “The Sayings of Light and Love.” 17 Ibid., 624, C, footnote 1. 18 Ibid., 131, A1. 19 Evagrius of Pontus, Centuries, I,65 (Frankenberg, 105), quoted in Clement, Roots of Christian Mysticism, 230.

71 “starving to death with food an inch from his lips.”20 We are created for the contemplation of God, says Merton, and our frenetic searching for meaning in all the wrong places is precisely due to a sense of incapacity to reach God. We can choose to avoid God but can never dispense with an innate longing for him.

Love for God, therefore, should be the foundation and focus of our approach to everything, including knowledge. The centrality of divine love is reflected in all John’s writing. His theory of knowledge has divine love as its rationale and guiding principle.

After combing through his writing I have summarized six distinct demands of love, which together weave into a logical foundation for John’s epistemological approach. By analyzing these demands of love, I hope to show that John’s theory of knowledge is no fanciful exaggeration but a carefully considered paradigm centered on divine love. These six demands of love—desire, free consent, exclusivity, availability, purity, and complete mutual surrender—will somewhat overlap but each will provide a different angle for viewing the epistemological implications of love.

The Frist Prerequisite of Love: Desire21

The first demand, or rather, prerequisite of love, is the fire of desire which must be present in both parties. Christian theology teaches that God’s desire for humanity is preordained from time eternal, manifested at the Incarnation and proven through the crucifixion of Christ. John of the Cross further explains that God’s love for humanity is

20 Merton, The Ascent to Truth, 23. 21 “Desire” here must be distinguished from impure passion or appetites which are to be cleansed through the dark night. It is the divine eros expressed in the Song of Songs. According to Dupré, this holy desire was applied by “in its full erotic power to the relation between God and the soul,” and became the foundation of a new spiritual humanism that still blooms today. See Dupré & Wiseman, “Introduction,” in Light from Light, 14.

72 of a different quality from any human affection. God by nature cannot love anything except in himself, because nothing and no one is good except God alone, as affirmed by

Jesus in Mk 10:18. He is all that which is good, and outside of him there is nothing good.

Therefore, for God to love the soul is “to put her somehow in himself and make her his equal.”22 This means that God’s love tends all the way to make us like him, that he desires our deification.23 “For the Son of God became man so that we might become

God.”24

On the other side of the coin, our desire for God is symbolized by John as a living flame which burns in the center of the soul. He does not specify when this flame is first lit. Considering his understanding that the first grace of divine espousal is given individually during baptism, we can assume that for Christians, our love for God is definitively ignited at the moment of baptism.25 How that flame of love is nurtured afterwards has much to do with the soul’s continual disposition towards God. What is the quality and extent of its longing for God? Mystics like John of the Cross tell us that our capacity for God goes far beyond an institutional proclamation of faith, ritual participation, or occasional consolation through prayer. The soul desires from God three things “proper to love,” says John: “to receive the joy and savor of love ... to become like

22 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 600, C. 23 The term “deification” does not appear in John of the Cross although he does mention that in mystical encounters God “penetrates and deifies the substance of the soul,” see ibid., 656, F. Garrigou-Lagrange, who synthesized Thomas Aquinas with John of the Cross, built a doctrine centered around deification. See Adam Cooper, “Criteria for Authentic Mystical Experience: Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s Doctrine of Deification,” HeyJ LV (2014), 230-243. 24 Athanasius, De inc. 54, 3: PG 25, 192B. 25 Here our scope is not widened to address the primordial desire for God even in nonbelievers, to which we alluded earlier.

73 the Beloved ... to look closely at and know the things and secrets of the Beloved himself.”26 In other words, the soul desires an affective presence of God,27 an assimilation to him, and an intimate substantial knowledge of him.

With regard to knowledge, the saints and mystics are not satisfied with an apophaticism in the narrow sense. They ask for complete knowledge of God, longing to see him in plain sight as Moses once beheld him face to face. The via negativa is a necessary corridor but not the final destination. Through negative theology, we acknowledge that God is infinitely beyond the capacity of created intellect, that whatever is spoken of him is but an impoverished descriptor compared to his true likeness. For this reason, the name He Who Is “belongs especially to God, because it does not determine any form of God but signifies existence indeterminately.”28 Yet even in apophaticism we strain conceptually towards a more clear vision of God by both affirming and negating.

For instance, according to Dionysius, the divine names affirm certain qualities of God while attributing them to God eminently and negating their opposites.29 Still more, we long to transcend a mere negative knowledge of God and the mere affirmation of his attributes, his effects, and his works.30 Our hearts long to see his face and the intellect

26 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 611, C. 27 John of the Cross distinguishes three types of God’s presence: presence by essence, which subsists in all creation by virtue of their existence; presence by grace, through which God abides in the soul and is pleased with it, which is not perceptible and can be lost through mortal sin; presence by spiritual affection, through which God “refreshes, delights, and gladdens” the soul. It is the third type of presence that the soul seeks. Ibid., 511, C. 28 McInerny, Thomas Aquinas, 314. 29 Ibid., 315. 30 The soul desires to know God’s attributes intimately through experience as described previously. As for God’s effects and works, John relegates them to being the “back” of God not his face, the latter being “an essential communication of the divinity to the soul.” See Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 550, C.

74 ultimately cannot rest until it grasps the essence of the beloved. Until we gain Christ through a loving contemplation of him in this life and perfect fruition in the next, we are like “a stag wounded by a poison arrow” that can never stop “seeking remedies for her sorrow.”31

The soul desires the manifestation of the divine essence, “which is alien to every mortal eye and hidden from every human intellect.”32 Therefore she asks of God: “Where have you hidden?”33 She seeks an intimate substantial knowledge of him which is living and ever-deepening, an experiential touch by the divine essence so she might never live apart from his presence. Though John of the Cross does not explicitly state this, baptism by fire and by the Holy Spirit (Matt 3:11 & Lk 3:16) may be the best description for this knowledge, considering his metaphor of the living flame and what Jesus says in Lk

12:49: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” Fire has always been used by theologians to describe the essence of God since the early

Church,34 and John is no exception. He portrays the whole process of union with God as supported and energized by the Holy Spirit,35 while also symbolizing this process from beginning to end with the living flame of love. At the outset of the dark night, the soul is

“fired with love’s urgent longings” and goes on this journey “with no other light or guide

/ than the one that burned in [her] heart.”36 In the state of spiritual marriage the soul gains her bridegroom in the serenity of a “consuming and painless” flame,37 which continues to

31 Ibid., 502, C. 32 Ibid., 478, C. 33 Ibid. 34 Clement, Roots of Christian Mysticism, 33. 35 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 164 (A2), 444 (D2), 640 (F), 677 (F). 36 Ibid., 118, A1. 37 Ibid., 622, C.

75 burn and dance in the soul in a joyful foretaste of heaven. The growth in mystical knowledge can thus be understood as a gradual baptism by fire and by the Holy Spirit, a process immersed in the mutual loving desires between God and the soul.

The awareness of our longing for God is therefore crucial for the attainment of mystical knowledge. Without a love-sickness for God that tires the soul of human attachments, she would never embark on the blessed journey of the dark night. The soul’s knowledge of God is commensurate with the intensity of her desire to know him.

Because God is hidden in the vicissitudes of life, we may perceive him to be “a good with negative and positive characteristics,” consequently reserving our most fervent desire for some other good instead.38 This could explain why mystical knowledge is only granted to a few in this life. Perhaps God, who knows all human hearts, sees that only a few, among whom are the poor, the simple, the distraught and the rejected, truly desire him.

The correlation between the desire for God and mystical knowledge of him also means that we try to know him through the theological virtue of hope: the more we hope, the more likely we will know him. According to John of the Cross, hope is the opposite of possession.39 The more room we make by emptying ourselves of possessions, the more capacity we have for being filled by God. This self-emptying, or kenosis of the intellectual faculties, is prescribed by John of the Cross as the necessary active step one must take in order to enter the dark night, along with a persistent desire to conform one’s

38 McInerny, Thomas Aquinas, 551, Introduction by editor to On Human Choice— Disputed Question on Evil, 6 (1266-72). According to McInerny, this preference for creatures over God due to an inability to see God for who he is in this life is Thomas Aquinas’s definition for sin. 39 John of the Cross writes: “Every possession is against hope. As St. Paul says, hope is for that which is not possessed (Heb 11:1).” Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 279, A3.

76 life to Christ in all aspects.40 John therefore urges us to empty our faculties—forgo our usual mode of conceptual reasoning, forget what we already possess by way of images, symbols, figures and forms, quiet our passion for all conceivable goods, so that through the theological virtue of hope we come to attain what is more excellent, what cannot be acquired by our natural ability, and what our hearts truly desire.

The Second Pre-requisite of Love: Free Consent

From the enkindling of divine love to its final consummation, there is a continuous exchange of mutual consent between God and the soul given in freedom. The spiritual marriage is the soul’s complete yes given in joyful freedom to God’s complete yes of grace.41 This demand of freedom means, first of all, we are not concerned with a prayer technique, a method that will miraculously connect us with divinity, as if God could be manipulated by gnostic cleverness.42 Even the dark night, while John of the

Cross proposes it as the ordinary way of union with God, is not portrayed by him as the only way. John’s fundamental premise is that God deals with us however he wishes in accordance with his eternal design.43 With that said, it is more likely, based on John’s presentation, that we miss the opportunity for deeper knowledge of God due to the suffocating constraints of passion. Those who are mired in other interests are unable to pursue God.

40 Ibid., 149, A1. There is also a passive aspect of the dark night where the soul simply abides in the gradual work of purification wrought by the Holy Spirit. 41 Ibid., 682, F. 42 Staniloae similarly says: God “is a Person and as such, without an initiative on His part, He can’t be known. ... He is above an offensive which uses force or slyness.” Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality, 29. 43 Here we may be reminded that the divine potter has the right to “make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use” (Rom 9:21).

77 God can do all things except force the soul to love him,44 or rather, he desires no love which is not offered freely. The freedom of spirit is therefore paramount, without which the soul is in no stature to approach God.45 Herein lies most of all our problems, for “freedom cannot abide in a heart dominated by desires, in a slave’s heart. It abides in a liberated heart, in a child’s heart.”46 To gain this precious freedom the soul must shake off the “fetters and straits”47 of sensible attachments through the night of sense, conforming its sensory faculties to reason and the flesh to spirit, and then liberate its intellect, memory, and will from their “cramped prison cell”48 through the night of spirit.

Both nights are necessary but the second night is much more challenging.

In the first night of sense, it is somewhat easy to discern what sensory “beasts”49 are constricting one’s spiritual movement, and for those who have been touched by divine love, their subjugation is not overly difficult. A more subtle danger in this night, according to John of the Cross, is that people sometimes neglect very minor appetites after successfully disentangling from more serious ones. For instance, one can quit after years of abusing alcohol but remain attached “to a person, to clothing, to a book..., or to the way food is prepared, and to other trifling conversations and little satisfactions in tasting, knowing, and hearing things...”50 About such a misfortune John writes:

It is regrettable, then, to behold some souls, laden as rich vessels with wealth, deeds, spiritual exercises, virtues, and favors from God, who never advances

44 Clement, Roots of Christian Mysticism, 81. 45 This freedom of spirit is equivalent to the state of dispassion in Orthodox spirituality, which is said to be “the doorstep” to the love of God and the passing from the active life to the contemplative. Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality, 69. 46 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 126, A1. 47 Ibid., 384, N1. 48 Ibid., 395, N2. This clearly is redolent of John’s prison experience at Toledo. 49 Ibid., 392, N1. 50 Ibid., 143, A1.

78 because they lack the courage to make a complete break with some little satisfaction, attachment or affection (which are all about the same) and thereby never reach the port of perfection. This requires no more than a sudden flap of one’s wings in order to tear the thread of attachment...51

In the second night of spirit, one undergoes a complete renunciation52 of intellectual possessions, stripping the intellect, the memory, and the will of concepts, imaginative forms, and affections. It is a living apophaticism where all natural apprehensions are negated to make ready for divine illumination. The goal of this night is a loving rest in God without the concern, effort or desire for any ideas, thoughts, or feelings.53 A common sign that one is called to enter the night of spirit is fatigue with the usual practice of discursive meditation: one can no longer profit from meditative practices as in the past even though the heart is more than willing; instead of spiritual unction one only experiences dryness and emptiness. John explains that God guides the soul according to its mode of receptivity and its stage of growth.54 In the beginning he often grants spiritual benefits to help the soul advance, only to later withdraw them so it can grow sturdy without being attached to those gifts. As it advances, the soul is asked to forsake more so that through the way of unknowing it might soar with a divine lightness of spirit, free from any cumbrance. Unshackled from all natural apprehensions which are

“mute and comprehensible,” the soul with total interior freedom is able to offer a resolute

51 Ibid. 52 Garrigou-Lagrange calls this “self-effacement,” through which human personality develops towards “moral and psychological perfection” as it becomes more and more dependent on God, see Cooper, “Criteria for Authentic Mystical Experience,” 236. 53 Ibid., 382, N1. 54 Ibid., 683, F.

79 yes to God, who is “Immutable and Incomprehensible.”55 Free of all unseemly attachments, the soul can now respond to God with dignity and maturity.

The Third Demand of Love: Exclusivity

The exclusivity of love reminds us of God’s self-appellation of being a jealous

God (Ex 20:5). According to John, the essence of God is utterly contrary to creatures, and philosophically speaking, love for God and love for creatures are light and darkness, two contraries which cannot coexist in one subject.56 To love him as a bridegroom it is impossible to leave behind any trace of attachment for creatures. Just as Jesus asks the rich young man (Mt 19:21) to sell everything, give the money to the poor and then follow him, John of the Cross exhorts the soul to give a complete yes to God by giving up all possessions—in this case, its possessive affections for any creature or goods, no matter how faint. The soul is to be an enclosed garden (Sg 4:12) of solitary quietude, unseduced by anything. The darkness of creatures cannot be comingled with the light of God; neither can the desires of flesh cohere with the spiritual life. John finds his scriptural support in 2 Cor 6:14 and Jn 3:6: “what fellowship is there between light and darkness?”

“What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit”. If we love God while simultaneously loving another object,57 we reduce our estimation of God to its level. Furthermore, fickle distracted hearts are like “leaking cisterns that hold no water,”58 unable to concentrate on the beloved nor to retain his grace.

55 Ibid., 277, A3. 56 Ibid., 123-24, A1. Kavanaugh notes that John inherits this principle from Aristotle’s On Sensation 8. This is an insistence on the divine transcendence. 57 This does not mean we are not to love our neighbor. The exclusivity of love for God means our love is rooted in God alone. Divine love, once firmly established, leads us to find the right quality of love for others. 58 Ibid., 130, A1.

80 Pragmatically, John of the Cross advises living as if only God and oneself exist, forgetful of all else.59 We are to keep to our own affairs. Were we to live among the devils, we should not advert to their business lest we lose inner tranquility. Even if the world crumbles around us, we ought not be disturbed or try to interfere, lest we share the sorry fate of Lot’s wife.60 We ought to regard all people as strangers and avoid loving some more than others, for “the person who loves God more is the one more worthy of love, and you do not know who this is.”61 He also suggests that the memory “be left free and unencumbered and unattached to any earthly or heavenly consideration.”62 Let things come and go but forget them as earnestly as others try to remember them. The only thing that should detain us is the law of God and the cross. Just as the Ark of the Covenant, where the manna was, held nothing but the law and the rod of Moses, which signified the cross, we the true arks of God will possess the real manna when we attend to nothing but the law of God and the cross.63 By doing so we exalt God above all else and give him the honor due to him. We are thus made ready to receive the testimony of who he really is.

59 Ibid., 96, “The Sayings of Light and Love.” This saying needs to be understood in the context of John’s whole teaching and life. This aloofness advised by John pertains to the interior life of the soul not its exterior engagements. He is directing souls to an interior solitude—one’s inner room of prayer where nothing should be allowed to disturb the soul’s communion with God. 60 Ibid., 726, “Spiritual Counsels.” 61 Ibid., 720-21, “Spiritual Counsels.” These three sayings give another glimpse of how John might have been influenced by his prison experience. In the nine months spent in abject degradation taunted by animosity and hatred from his own community, interior life was his only source of equanimity. See Hardy, John of the Cross, 68-74. 62 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 272, A3. 63 Ibid., 130, A1. Here John references Dt 31:6 and Nm 17: 10, but a more exact scriptural reference is found in Heb 9:4: in the ark of the covenant “there were a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant.”

81 Here it might seem that John is advocating an escape from the world into the refuge of interiority, but that is not the case. The forgetfulness of all things is a means to an end, a necessary purgation to recalibrate the intellectual faculties according to the divine scale. As such, it is a curative process in preparation of a fuller, more excellent capacity to attend to all things. John compares this process to someone being restricted to a basic but substantial diet in the case of illness so that she may well enjoy all foods again once her health is regained.64 The final outcome of an exclusive disposition toward God is that “not finding satisfaction in anything or understanding anything in particular, and remaining in its emptiness and darkness, it [the soul] embraces all things with great preparedness.”65 For God repays every soul who renounces anything for his sake with a hundred fold even in this life (Mt 19: 29). Those who forsake all things for love of God are given the grace to properly enjoy all things in God. Before this transformation happens in a perceptible manner, the soul who “loves him above all loveable things” can enjoy God “obscurely and secretly” in a solitary quietude.66

The Fourth Demand of Love: Availability

The soul must be available to God always through a habitual recollected attentiveness. Because divine communication is concretely dynamic, inasmuch as the soul is available for divine visitation, she will be disposed to receiving him. This is done through what John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila call recollection: John describes it as

“a loving attention and a tranquil intellect”67 while Teresa defines it as collecting one’s

64 Ibid., 91, “The Sayings of Light and Love.” 65 Ibid., 412, N2. 66 Ibid., 694, F. 67 Ibid., 199, A2.

82 faculties together and entering within itself to be with God.68 It is a constant turning towards God without much in the way of words or methods. The mind is detached from all concerns and the heart abides in a peaceful vigil. Even while engaged in necessary active duties, the soul never leaves an inner state of tranquil absorption. In a solitude that no one can detect, she unceasingly waits for her Lord, who reciprocates by infusing her with the knowledge of himself.

The thought of the human mind at any given moment, according to St. John of the

Cross, is “worth more than the entire world,” therefore “God alone is worthy of it.”69

John believes that our thoughts rightfully belong to God—any thought that is not centered on God is stolen from him.70 One’s interior activities are so precious that a pure act of loving communion with God is “more meritorious and valuable than all the deeds” a person can perform without such.71 Those who love God should therefore reserve for him what is most precious: the mind and the depth of their heart. In the inner sanctuary they offer to him continuously their entire being without fanfare. No eloquence is needed and no one needs to pay any attention to them. Yet God treasures what is offered to him in the soul’s humble attentiveness. The practical advice by John of the Cross is that we should only employ what faculties and senses are necessary in the discharge of our duties and leave everything else “unoccupied for God.”72 When we are conscious of being placed in an inner solitude or state of spiritual listening, we should remain free for the

68 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, St. Teresa of Avila, Vol. 2, 141. 69 Ibid., 88, “The Sayings of Light and Love.” Moreover, John cautions us that we will have to render an account to God for every word and thought, clearly drawing from Mt 12:35-36, see 90. 70 Ibid., 93, “The Sayings of Light and Love.” 71 Ibid., 642, F. 72 Ibid., 93, “The Sayings of Light and Love.”

83 Lord by not adverting to other things, even if it seems that we are being idle. In this way

God’s wisdom, which is “loving, tranquil, solitary, peaceful, mild, and an inebriator of spirit,”73 can be infused in us. Natural apprehensions should cease inasmuch as it is possible. Once they are “driven out of the enamored soul,” God never fails to come laden with gifts, for “there can be no void in nature.”74 Staniloae calls this a state of unceasing prayer where the soul is used to “having God in mind all the time” and has “become a sweet thought of God.”75

Staying available to God through habitual acts of recollection is the work of intimacy between God and the soul. It is the practice of the one thing necessary:

“attentiveness to God and the continual exercise of love in him.”76 Eventually the soul no longer belongs to the world. She will have tranquilized her natural apprehensions by emptying the intellect of activities, the memory of imaginations, and the will of affections. She now receives from God without the intermediary of angels, creatures, or her own efforts. In her blessed solitude there is nothing to disturb the direct loving inflow of God in her very depth. The habitual enjoyment of this state belongs to spiritual marriage, a “union between two alone”77, where the soul is kissed by God “without contempt or disturbance from anyone,”78 although divine action in such a state is often quiet without a trace. The faculties having been lulled to sleep, the soul drinks deeply and spiritually from God in the dark of night, receiving his “hidden wonders, alien to every

73 Ibid., 688, F. 74 Ibid., 198, A2. 75 Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality, 256. 76 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 587, C. 77 Ibid., 608, C. 78 Ibid., 563, C.

84 mortal eye.”79 It is a communication from heart to heart. Diadochus of Photike describes this communication as “feeling of the heart,” through which we receive “God’s love into the secret places of the soul,” are known by him, and become his friend.80

The Fifth Demand of Love: Purity

Purity is defined by John of the Cross as detachment from all things other than

God.81 It is associated with both faith and love in his writings. In faith, purity is related to simplicity, keeping the mind “unlimited and unattached to any particular knowledge.”82

Purity in love means appreciating God for who he is rather than what he gives and desiring nothing but his honor and glory. It can also be understood by the metaphor of light shining through the interior window panes: the cleaner the window, the brighter the illumination. Defilement of the interior windows comes from sin,83 which is rooted in misplaced passion alienating us from God.

Epistemologically, purity means detaching oneself from the desire for distinct understanding of specific things or skills to accomplish particular tasks. Those while excellent are incomparable to the knowledge of God, who deserves our love even if he gifts us with nothing. In fact, John of the Cross advises that we desire nothing from God and prefer to be nothing. It is enough to know and love his goodness substantially without any clear apprehension. “Let Christ crucified be enough for you,”84 says John. Or as

79 Ibid., 550, C. 80 Diadochus of Photike, Gnostic Chapters, 14 (SC 5, bis, 91). Cited in Clement, Roots of Christian Mysticism, 256. 81 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 274, A3. 82 Ibid., 201. A2. 83 According to Kavanaugh, in John’s anthropology sin is considered to be the root cause for intellectual and psychological defects mentioned in his writings, an example of which is “a distracted and inattentive spirit.” Ibid., 397, N2. 84 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 92, “The Sayings of Light and Love.”

85 Rowan Williams interprets him, “what does it matter if the mind seems to be vacant and stupid? The heart is still, imperceptibly, awake to God.”85 Lest this sounds like mystical lunacy with nothing to do with our quest for knowledge, John reminds us of Christ’s promise in Mark 8:35: “For whoever would save his soul will lose it, but whoever loses it for me will gain it.”86 This is applied to epistemology by John of the Cross: the more possessive we are towards human knowledge, the farther away we are from the wisdom of God; by not clinging to earthly intelligence, we prepare ourselves for the adornment of heavenly knowledge. Such is the paradox of God’s ways.

Practically speaking, the demand of purity means two things. First, one ought to renounce the desire for all sensible consolations, experiences, or gifts of God. We should desire no particular understandings, or “the taste, feeling, or imagining of God or of any other object,” renouncing all pleasant experiences for God alone.87 To desire them would be to indulge a “spiritual sweet tooth.”88 Instead of seeking ourselves in God, we should seek him alone by eschewing all consolations.89 Secondly, one should be willing to suffer for Christ, not only in action but also intellectually by embracing aridity, emptiness and obscurity. This is the way of the cross applied to the intellectual life. “The purest suffering brings with it the purest and most intimate knowing ... because it is a knowing from further within,”90 says John of the Cross. The strength of martyrs comes from the purity of their love. John exhorts his audience to courageously embrace the dark night,

85 Williams, The Wounds of Knowledge, 169. 86 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 170, A2. 87 Ibid., 165, A2. 88 Ibid., 170, A2. 89 Ibid., 170, A2. 90 Ibid., 613-14, C.

86 forsaking all intellectual ambitions and loving God with nothing but a pure heart, guided by the flame of love. By the purity of her love the soul goes forth in boldness and fervor, believing all things, hoping all things, and enduring all things (1 Cor 13:7). Like the

“lioness or she-bear that goes in search of her cubs,” she “anxiously and forcibly goes out in search of” God in the dark of night.91 Hindered by nothing, she travels the shortest distance to reach God, or rather, God reaches her without any impediment.

The Sixth Demand of Love: Complete Mutual Surrender

It is by a total and complete mutual surrender that love is consummated and the soul is transformed into the likeness of God. Eager for this consummation, the soul lives more in the next world than this. Before permanent actual union with God occurs with the dismantling of physical boundaries through death, the soul can enjoy a habitual union with God through perfect alignment of the will, which, needless to say, is extremely difficult to accomplish. Through testimony of Scriptures and their own experience, saints and mystics tell us that even in this life it is possible to be so transformed by divine love that we are moved by nothing but the will of God. They tell us it is possible to employ all we are in the singular purpose of serving God, to live our whole being in the love of God that when death comes, it would be as mild and natural as arriving home with the blink of an eye. We will not be image-bearers of God merely ontologically because we were created in his likeness, but we will be like him psychologically,92 in our thoughts and affections, words and actions, in what we think and do not think, in what we are. We should not be incredulous about this, says John of the Cross, for true love naturally

91 Ibid., 427, N2. 92 Ibid., 124, A1, footnote 2.

87 causes likeness.93 Through loving union with God’s will, we will become one with God and in God.94

As a result, one’s whole being will become a “harmonious composite.”95 The lower part of the senses will be conformed to the higher part of reason, motives will be under rational control, and the appetites will have ceased. The “useless wanderings of the phantasy and imaginative power”96 will have quieted, the natural powers of the irascible and concupiscible and the four passions will be commanded by reason. The three faculties will be perfected by “the pleasant lyres and the siren’s song” of the bridegroom, brought to a divine operation unperturbed by any extreme measures.97 They will be moved by the Spirit of God alone and not by their natural propensities. The soul will be stable and not subject to whimsical desires, just as God is stable and immutable. With all its strength gathered together, sensory and spiritual, interior and exterior, the soul will fulfill the first commandment, loving God with totality while disdaining “nothing human nor excluding it from this love.”98 She will love as God does, and if she lacks anything at all God will supply it for her.99

This is only possible if the soul loses all that is not God by losing “all roads and natural methods” through contemplation, by no longer seeking anything either in the world, in sensory satisfactions, natural intellection or spiritual consolation. Everything

93 Ibid., 124, A1. Love “not only equates but even subjects the lover to the loved creature.” 94 This union is one of likeness not an essential or substantial union, a supernatural grace not a natural property within the Godhead. Ibid., 624, 163. 95 Ibid., 436, N2. 96 Ibid., 553, C 97 Ibid., 554, C. 98 Ibid., 420, N2. 99 Ibid., 619, C.

88 else compared to God is infinitely “coarse and crude.”100 To become totally like God means to totally reject creatures and oneself. The necessity of this rejection and the tension between our nature and the goodness of God are thus expressed:

Miserable man that I am, when will my pusillanimity and imperfection be able to conform with your righteousness? You indeed are good, and I evil; You are merciful, and I unmerciful; You are holy, and I miserable; You are just, and I unjust; You are light, and I blindness; You are life, and I death; You are medicine, and I sickness; You are supreme truth; and I utter vanity.101

Summary of Chapter Three

The road to mystical knowledge is a venture of love, where only the beloved is sought. As such, it is a prayer, a song and a life-long pursuit. It is also the meeting of two free subjects where the soul has both an active and a passive role to play. God initiates the process by wounding her with a taste of his goodness, yet the ardor of her love will to a large extent determine how much she can hope to attain, since God deals with us according to our mode. Asceticism of the senses is a natural first step in the journey of love to choose God instead of the transient world. It is a doorway through which the soul can direct herself to God with a spirit of freedom. From there she can traverse to the foot of the cross with a full and complete yes to God, by forsaking not only exterior possessions but also her very self: her rational faculties, thoughts, hopes, affections, and her will. This is accomplished through the dark night of spirit. The rationale of divine love shows that such strenuous demands are not dramatic measures for the sake of exceptional experience but simply what is required to love God, who is incomprehensible and inaccessible to human thought and more excellent than all imagination.

100 Ibid., 125, A1. 101 Ibid., Here John of the Cross is quoting from a pseudo-Augustinian work, Liber soliloquiorum animae ad Deum, ch. 2 in Migne, PL 40, 866.

89 The greatness of the demands is compensated by the lavishness of God’s generosity. By denuding ourselves of natural apprehensive operations, we lose nothing but a perishable garment—that is truly what they are, and by doing so we break free from the limits of human feebleness, allowing God to dress us in a divine garment.102 The soul is guided by God in the dark, even though the intellect cannot see him clearly, for the living flame of love gives her the surest direction. Through faith we are stripped of our natural garment and by love we are transformed from within and dressed anew. In the next chapter we will take a closer look into the function and experience of faith. This chapter will be concluded with a stanza from St. John’s drawing of Mount Carmel:103

To reach satisfaction in all / desire satisfaction in nothing. / To come to the knowledge of all / desire the knowledge of nothing. / To come to possess all / desire the possession of nothing. / To arrive at being all / desire to be nothing. //

102 Ibid., 129 (A1), 430 (N2). 103 Ibid., 111, A1. The drawing was titled either “The Mount of Perfection” or “Mount Carmel” in different autographs. Probably created after John’s imprisonment at Toledo, it depicts a narrow path for ascending Mount Carmel. Consisting of four stanzas, it is most famous for the word “nada.” John made many copies of this drawing for his Carmelite nuns and friars and also attached it to the beginning of his treatise on The Ascent to Mount Carmel as a summary of his doctrine.

90

CHAPTER 4

THE LIGHT OF FAITH

--“...all the soldiers held lamps in their hands, yet did not see the light because the lamps were hidden in darkness within earthenware jars. But when these jars were broken, the light appeared (Jgs 7:16-20).”1

John of the Cross

Faith and Mystical Knowledge

With the above quote John of the Cross describes faith: “represented by those clay jars, [faith] contains the divine light. When faith reaches its end and is shattered by the ending and breaking of this mortal life, the glory and light of the divinity, the content of faith, will at once appear.”2 In this chapter we will discuss the epistemological function of faith according to John of the Cross. It first must be clarified that by faith we are not speaking of the decisive encounter with Christ engendering a life-changing commitment to him, such as St. Paul experienced on his way to Damascus. That foundational belief in the gospel is presumed in the writings of John of the Cross, as his audience were mostly

Carmelite religious. Faith in the context of John’s mysticism is primarily the theological virtue which enables us to accept and respond to divine illumination on a continual

1 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 178, A2. 2 Ibid.

91 basis.3 It pertains to concrete experiential knowledge of God as opposed to formal confession of the creed or a consequential moment of conversion, although it does not exclude these. John of the Cross defines faith as the only “proximate and proportionate means” through which our intellect can be united with spiritual reality during divine illumination.4

Faith is a stumbling block to rationalistic thinkers who reject any type of assent unwarranted by evidence, which generally means sensible data and logical inference.

Against positivist philosophers such as Locke and Hume, John Henry Newman puts forth his own observation that assent constructed by evidence alone, “untainted” by affective factors and what he calls “notional” assent, does not occur too often in everyday life and when it does, is often weak compared to “real” assent motivated by implicit assumptions, predilections, and workings of the imagination. A further insight from Newman is that when debating philosophical, moral and religious issues, no syllogism is self-evident: even the tightest inferences are only capable of proving possibilities, leaving room for personal deliberation. One of Newman’s greatest contributions in his Grammar of Assent is a defense of the legitimacy of affectivity and imagination in rational processes.

Yet even after accounting for affectivity and imagination, our apprehensive arsenal is still limited when it comes to mystical knowledge in the Christian tradition— knowledge of the uncreated creator who loves us and of invisible supernatural realities.

3 John of the Cross calls the path of nada or the dark night “the theological life, which is the way of the theological virtues, see ibid., 102, A. He further explains that the transformation of the three intellectual faculties—intellect, memory and will—is wrought by the workings of the theological virtues: “faith in the intellect, hope in the memory, and charity in the will,” see 166, A2. 4 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 177, A2; John Paul II, Faith According to St. John of the Cross (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1981), 241.

92 The poverty of our tools is due to the richness of our subject. God and spiritual realities are infinitely beyond the scope of propositional knowledge. They are also beyond dynamic apprehensions in practical matters, artistic creations, and social relationships.

Mystical knowledge of the Christian God transcends intuition, sense perception, or metaphysical speculation. It is first of all the fruit of a historical revelation of Christ mediated through the Church.5 Rooted in that revelation, the manifestation of mystical knowledge in concrete instances is sustained by the supernatural gift of faith, a whole new mode of apprehension made possible by the relationship between Christ and the believer mediated through Christian Tradition. The gift of faith transforms our apprehensive capacity, its light illuminating the spiritual landscape and its heat prompting us forward, till we come to the vision of the one who has loved us. The light of faith, as we shall see in this chapter, while not contrary to reason transcends it; it is the only

“proximate and proportionate means”6 for apprehending divine realities.

The first reason faith is necessary is because our desire for knowledge of God goes beyond the natural ability of our intellect. We desire to know God beyond creedal recognition or conceptual speculation. The intellect desires an essential understanding of

God and the heart is restless until it somehow experiences the vision of God’s promise.

The difficulty here cannot be overstated. We wish to behold as vision God’s mysteries, and yet the days are as mundane as two thousand years ago and no one walks on water except on some Marvel superhero show. Skeptics would prefer the security of human

5 It is impossible to detach mystics from their religious tradition which is the breeding ground for their mystical apprehensions. For instance, how can a mystical experience of the Trinitarian persons be possibly separated from the mystic’s doctrinal formation in Trinitarian theology? 6 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 177, A2.

93 reason to the inaccessibility of the spiritual world, yet human reason cannot satisfy our hunger for the ultimate type of knowledge, the happy knowledge of God which “when it is had, knowledge of no other object will be desired.”7 It is for the same reason that philosophers seek fundamental meaning through metaphysics. Just “as philosophy is based on the light of natural reason,” sacred doctrine and mystical knowledge are based on the light of faith.8 Experience also informs us that natural reason is not infallible. To reject the validity of faith for its obscurity9 is to arrogantly enthrone an abstract idealized human reason above all potential knowledge.

The second reason faith is necessary is because of the distance between God and creature. “All knowledge is perfected by the assimilation of the knower to the thing known, such that assimilation is said to be the cause of knowledge...”10 In other words, to know God really and intimately requires an assimilation to him, but unfortunately there is no proportion between God and creature since we “do not agree in any genus.”11 Without the principle of faith, through which we believe what is not experienced or understood, we cannot possibly come to know God. The Trinitarian nature of God, for instance, cannot be proven or perceived, nor can it be imagined.12 We cannot transgress the

7 McInerny, Thomas Aquinas, 283, quoting Summa contra Gentiles, 3, Ch. 39. 8 Ibid., 136, quoting “The Exposition of Boethius’s On the Trinity” in On Boethius, Q2, A3. 9 Here we may relate to the scripture reference that through faith “we see in a mirror, dimly” (1 Cor 13:12). John of the Cross alludes to this scripture in Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 482, 618, C. 10 Ibid., 167, quoting Disputed Questions on Truth, Q1, A1. 11 Ibid., 117, quoting “The Exposition of Boethius’s On the Trinity” in On Boethius, Q1, A2. 12 According to Newman, the mystery of the Trinity as a whole cannot be vividly apprehended even though a real apprehension of partial aspects within this mystery is possible. Newman believes that in ordinary intellection mysteries can only be notionally apprehended and assented to, because “mystery transcends all our experience; we have

94 boundaries of our nature to peek at angelic dimensions. If could not recognize the resurrected Christ on Easter Sunday, how much worse off we are in reaching for invisible realities! “Everything the intellect can understand, the will enjoy, and the imagination picture is most unlike and disproportioned to God...”13 The knowledge of God is thus impossible unless God ushers us into his own dimension and unless we respond to him in faith. Through the Incarnation God swung the door wide open for faith to grasp us.

Faith According to John of the Cross

We will now examine the nature and inner workings of faith according to John of the Cross in conjunction with Christian tradition as a whole. Faith is the theological virtue through which we believe as if we saw. It stretches the mind as closely as possible to the reality which we have believed. In John’s words:

For the likeness between faith and God is so close that no other difference exists ... between believing in God and seeing him. Just as God is infinite faith proposes him to us as infinite. Just as there are three Persons in one God, it presents him to us in this way. Just as God is darkness to our intellect, so faith dazzles and blinds us. Only by means of faith, in divine light exceeding all understanding, does God manifest himself to the soul.14

To analyze the concrete operative role of faith in John’s epistemology, we will turn to three images utilized by him: first, as coined by Dionysius, faith is a “ray of darkness”15 whose supernatural light both illumines and obscures the intellect, producing

no experiences in our memory which we can put together, compare, contrast, unite, and thereby transmute into an image of the Ineffable Verity...” See Newman, Grammar of Assent, 115-16. 13 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 175, A2. 14 Ibid., 177, A2. 15 Pseudo-Dionysius, The Mystical Theology, 1.1, cited in Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 176, A2.

95 divine knowledge by the throes of intellectual suffering; second, faith is an active habit of obedience to God through a passive surrender of “unknowing,”16 subjecting one’s whole being to the direction of the divine master; third, faith is a “secret ladder”17 of the dark night, on which we ascend by descending and at the top of which awaits the essential vision of God. We will look at the paradoxical dark night of faith to better understand the uniqueness of divine illumination and the difficulties it poses for the intellect.

Faith: “A Ray of Darkness”

As a “ray of darkness,” faith enlightens the soul by divine illumination but does so through darkness. Thus faith presupposes the action of God in divine illumination, which is also called the light of contemplation.18 Three elements in this image are to be explained: the nature of the divine light, the soul’s experience of darkness, and its illumination. We will examine the nature of the divine light by comparing it to the natural light of intelligence. In his poem For I Know Well the Spring, John proclaims that every origin and every light have come from the “eternal spring” which is hidden in the living bread of life, affirming his theological understanding of Christ as the divine light of God and the source of all knowledge.19 Further, he says that the divine light is brighter than the faint light of natural intelligence and it is the principle light which perfects the latter.20

Within the divine light there are probably various degrees of illumination as John mentions specifically the “light of glory” which shines in heaven and clarifies everything in the essential vision of God, and which is higher than other instances of supernatural

16 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 161, A2. 17 Ibid., 430, N2. 18 Ibid., 402, N2. 19 Ibid., 59-60, “The Poetry.” 20 Ibid., 579, C.

96 light.21 As I explained in chapter one, John’s understanding of the divine light is rooted in the Johannine theology of Christ as Light of the World (Jn 1:5, 3:19, 8:12). This is congruent with the understanding of other Christian mystics and the teaching of Lumen

Fidei. The light that illumines the entire journey of believers is Christ, “the morning star which never sets.”22 According to Lumen Fidei, the divine light of Christ is a principal light in which the light of reason participates and without which all other lights become dim and confused; it is a unique light capable of penetrating every aspect of human life.23

This is why many, after discovering the verity of faith, often describe it as the fullness of truth, for every natural truth is a participation in the divine light and points to it as their principle and source.

Having explained the nature of the divine light, I will now address the nature of faith by first contrasting it with two errors mentioned in Lumen Fidei. The first error is to derogate faith as an “illusory light” to be dismissed altogether and militantly rejected so as not to impede one’s quest of knowledge, as in the attitude of Nietzsche and atheists.24

The second error, stemming from the first, is a modern effort to save faith by setting it as

21 Ibid., 240-41, A2. This light of glory, if striking us in this life, will allow us to see incorporeal substances such as angels as they are essentially, but will also mean the separation of the soul from the body, unless in a temporary way we are supported by God with a dispensation of the . John believes this is what happened to St. Paul in the third heaven and to Moses when God placed him in the cleft of the rock and covered him with his right hand (Ex 33:22). Such extraordinary visions are the work of a singular light of grace, bestowed to very pure souls briefly for a special purpose; they are not our focus here. Our topic is the general light of contemplation by which we progressively grow in the knowledge of God and which transcends the light of reason. It is a light that communicates the general wisdom of God rather than clear distinct truths. 22 Francis, Lumen Fidei (: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013), 1. 23 Ibid., 4. 24 Ibid., 2.

97 a parallel light to reason, a supplement when reason proves insufficient.25 Faith thus becomes either a complete leap into darkness—a total absence of light, or a subjective light which consoles the heart but cannot serve as an objective guide to others. Since John of the Cross is famously associated with “darkness”, it is important to demonstrate that his theology is different from both these understandings. The suffering induced by faith is real, but the accompanying illumination is also real. We will look at both in turn.

Even though there is no darkness in God whatsoever, illumination by faith is associated with darkness due to the soul’s experience therein. John describes three stages of illumination: twilight in which the soul enters into obscurity, midnight when darkness seems to reign, and the pre-dawn serenity of light and happiness. John tells us that darkness comes from three factors: the impurity of the soul plagued by many ills, her temporary lack of intellectual understanding on the journey of faith, and the dazzling brightness of God which seems overwhelming. The light of God is brighter than the noonday of summer, but what of the traveler whose frame is weak and eyes bleary?

Mystical apprehension is fraught with difficulty, ultimately due to the infinitude of chasm between the glory of God and our nothingness.

Let us further analyze the challenges posed by faith to the intellect during illumination. Aristotle teaches that “the brightest light in God is total darkness to our intellect ... the loftier and clearer the things of God are in themselves, the more unknown and obscure they are to us.”26 This is because we are dealing with “matters we have never

25 Ibid., 3. 26 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 2.1, cited in Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 176, A2.

98 seen or known, either in themselves or in their likenesses,”27 matters inaccessible to our natural faculties. It is similar to the inability of a person born blind to comprehend the concept of color.28 To further compound the situation, in this journey of faith the will has already been inflamed by the object of its assent, but the intellect has to for a while be content with staying in the dark. As previously said, the flame of the Holy Spirit wounds the heart before the intellect can comprehend, prompting a surrender of the will through an assent of faith. The assent is firm and complete because the heart has been won, but the intellect has no essential clarity of what or who it has assented to. Thomas Merton describes this predicament well:

The man who feels the attraction of the Divine Truth and who realizes that he is being drawn out of this visible world into an unknown realm of cloud and darkness, stands like one whose head spins at the edge of a precipice. This intellectual dizziness, spiritus vertiginis, is the concrete experience of man’s interior division against himself by virtue of the fact that his mind, made for the invisible God, is nevertheless dependent for all its clear knowledge on the appearances of exterior things.29

Yet despite all this darkness, faith is also a dazzling ray of brightness, a real influx of knowledge, for it is “the substance of things to be hoped for” (Heb 11:1), even when they are not manifest to the intellect.30 Faith unites us to the substance of our hope by assenting to the entirety of its mystery. The substance and content of faith is none other than God himself, therefore through faith the soul is substantially united to God without comprehending him.31 Such is the fulfillment of God’s promise in Isaiah 45:3: “I will

27 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 157-58, A2. 28 Ibid., 157, A2. 29 Merton, The Ascent to Truth, 51. 30 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 167, A2. 31 John Paul II calls this an ontological union of the intellect with divinity without necessarily psychological (cognitive) manifestations. John Paul II, Faith, 257-58, 265.

99 give you hidden treasures and reveal to you the substance and mysteries of the secrets.”32

John Paul II observes that according to John of the Cross, the engendering of faith is the moment “when the objective element (the revealed truths) has been provided and the subjective element (light) has been infused.”33 While cognizant of the darkness of the

“ray,” namely, the limitations of the intellect and its consequent suffering, we cannot neglect the objective brightness of faith. God’s self-revelation is able to reach the substance of the soul through divine infusion by the Holy Spirit.

While the intellect in the early stages remains empty and desolate, divine light works in secret to purify the will. Through a loving subjugation of the will sustained by faith, the soul disposes itself to the purifying action of divine light. Despite the emptiness of the intellect, the dross and ugliness of sin are quietly and supernaturally burned away.

A clearer vision of the spiritual world is gradually revealed, infusing the intellect with an other-worldly wisdom.

Faith also leads to a transformation of the memory. Benedict XVI describes faith as a thread of continuity across temporal time, consolidating the past with glimpses of the fulfillment of God’s promises, the present filled with hope for things still unseen, and the future which is drawn into the present by the virtue of hope. In his words, faith:

gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a ‘proof’ of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a ‘not yet.’ The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future.34

32 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 481, C. 33 John Paul II, Faith, 72. 34 Benedict XVI, Spe salvi (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2007), 7.

100 The transcendence of faith over temporal time is implied in what John of the Cross describes as the transformation of the memory: the memory becomes “the eternal memory of God,” having in its mind only “the eternal years mentioned by David” (Ps

77:5).35 The soul now lives in sacred time with the perspective of salvation history.

Francis continues this theme in Lumen Fidei, which was largely co-written with Benedict

XVI. The light of faith cannot be seen in an ahistorical vacuum. It is in fact connected to

“concrete life-stories” of our predecessors and the “grateful remembrance of God’s mighty deeds and the progressive fulfillment of his promises.”36 By uniting us to God who transcends time and space, faith allows us to peer into eternity, giving us an understanding that flashes across the pages of history and into the future. Through a temporary privation of intellectual clarity, faith ushers us into “vaster and loftier horizons,”37 into the perspective of eternity.

Faith: Knowing by “Unknowing”

Borrowing from the apophaticism of Dionysius, John of the Cross uses the phrase—knowing by “unknowing”—to describe faith as the transcendence of natural apprehension, in which the soul undergoes a complete kenosis of her natural mode of apprehension through the dark night of spirit and by doing so becomes receptive to a higher knowledge. We will first look at the self-abandonment of faith in the dark night, and then examine the obedience and receptivity of faith to the mystical knowledge of

God.

35 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 671, F. 36 Francis, Lumen Fidei, 12. 37 Benedict XVI, Spiritual Thoughts Series (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013), 36.

101 Faith is “the admirable means of advancing to God” in the second night of spirit, says John of the Cross.38 By now the soul has already passed through the first night of senses by unshackling herself from exterior sensory attachments. The night of senses is common to many traversing the spiritual life, yet its completion is largely dependent on the second night of the spirit, which is the uprooting of spiritual causes of all attachments, and this night may be understood as the process of ‘unknowing” by faith.39 In this night both God and the soul are busy at work, yet it befalls the soul to cooperate with divine action by voluntarily quieting its intellectual faculties: the intellect should be left void of all clear distinct activities, the memory laid bare of all possessions, and the will emptied of all desires—all this must be done insofar as it is possible while attending to external obligations. As a result, the soul experiences a profound innermost darkness. Lest anyone believe this is the work of sentimentality, John of the Cross explains that one can know it is the work of God by realizing that in this night, nothing brings any consolation whatsoever according to the natural mode. No meditation or intellection or other pleasure can refresh the soul; every human effort which had previously been propitious is now wearisome and unprofitable.40 The soul can find peace only by resting from all natural apprehensions, by the solitude of the dark night. To resist by hanging on to one’s own efforts in this night would resemble a boy kicking and crying while mother is trying to carry him in her arms;41 it will only amount to wasted suffering.

38 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 155, A2. 39 Ibid., 156, 161, A2. 40 Ibid., 189-90, A2. 41 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 701, F.

102 In the night of “unknowing,” the soul abides in emptiness trusting in God’s guidance but cannot see where it is going. Sustained by faith, she undergoes what mystics generally refer to as a self-annihilation, which has both an active and a passive element.

The active element has been explained in the previous paragraph as a voluntary emptying of one’s intellectual faculties. The passive element is a broken-hearted realization that we lack God, in our thoughts, in our heart, and in our way of being. This awareness of the absence of God consists the very death of the soul, according to John of the Cross.42

Aware of its own utter unworthiness, the soul cooperates with God by emptying itself of all things it can grasp, resting on nothing it can “understand, taste, feel, or imagine,” turning from its own mode and entering into God who has no mode.43 Since the soul is not privy to the ways of God, the passive element of this night is dominantly experienced and she undergoes a tremendous suffering. In describing this suffering John of the Cross borrows Jeremiah’s lamentation: “Remember my poverty, the wormwood, and the gall

(Lam 3:19).”44 The intellect is made poor, the will left in bitterness of the wormwood, and the memory as well as one’s whole faculties and strength undergo a death signified by the gall. This death, reaching one’s spiritual substance, is a suffering that no human effort can alleviate, its only cure being the gradual influx of divine life transforming the spiritual faculties into divine qualities. “As fire consumes the tarnish and rust of metal,

42 Ibid., 489, C. It is important to be reminded here that this absence of God felt in the soul is psychological (affective and cognitive), rather than metaphysical or sacramental, for God resides in us metaphysically by virtue of our created existence and sacramentally through the gift of baptism. 43 Ibid., 158 (A1), 161-62 (A2). 44 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 488-89, C.

103 this contemplation annihilates, empties, and consumes all the affections and imperfect habits the soul contracted throughout its life.”45

To give a few specifics of how the soul suffers in this night of “unknowing,” John says that the memory sometimes falls into oblivion as it separates from all forms that are not God, causing a great forgetfulness resulting in deficiencies in exterior functions.46

The heart also suffers from a profound thirst and longing for God, similar to the heart- rending cry of Jesus on the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In a nutshell, the soul refuses to know anything other than God, who is her only joy, the only master of her fate who nevertheless hides his face. She is like “the ones who go down into hell alive (Ps. 55:15),”47 resigned to death if willed by God. John of the Cross likely suffered in this way himself in the darkest part of his imprisonment, before which his biographer notes that he “had always felt the reality of God’s presence”:

Now things changed radically. Fray Juan suffered the complete absence of God, but not just the light, momentary absence most believers experience. The absence was total. It seemed to Fray Juan that his entire life, past and present, was wasted. He could no longer pray. The very thought of God made him physically sick. He felt abandoned in his degradation.48

We may also relate this night to ’s decades of inner suffering where she felt rejected by God and doubted his existence. Philosophy of religion professor Carol

Zaleski calls her a “classic Christian mystic whose inner life was burned through the fire

45 Ibid., 405, N2. John describes in more detail the suffering of the soul in this night on pages 403-412, N2. 46 Ibid., 269-70, A3. Forgetfulness of the memory is a symptom of the beginning stage of this spiritual night and will be more than recompensed later through divine infusion. 47 Ibid., 406, N2. 48 According to Hardy, the “exact duration of this horrible trial is unknown, but in May 1578, he had passed through the worst of it and had been remade. His life of belief had reached a new stage; he had survived and grown. Now he knew he could find God not only in light, but in darkness as well.” Hardy, John of the Cross, 72-4.

104 of charity, and whose fidelity was tested and purified by an intense trial of faith, a true .”49 Mother Teresa’s friend Father Benedict Groeschel describes her darkness as a sword being put in the fire by the ironsmith so that it might be strengthened.50

Yet God does not wish the soul’s demise but has in mind great fortunes for her.

By renouncing oneself through the night of “unknowing” the soul advances in the true knowledge of God. By obedience to the master, she holds fast to all that could be known under his direct guidance. In a “continuous crescendo,”51 she unites herself ever more intimately with God who is the “origin and mainstay”52 of everything, her eyes progressively opened to the visions of an expanding country. This new growth in knowledge is not a trickery by the devil or self-deception, because the soul has rejected and always will reject clear distinct apprehensions that fall short of the substance of God.

By denuding her intellectual faculties, she is no longer clouded by subjectivity, for she is receptive only to God’s own revelation of truth. In other words, faith while being a subjective act and attitude, through the radicality of “unknowing” becomes dependent on

49 Carol Zaleski, “The Dark Night of Mother Teresa,” First Things (May 2013): 24-27. 50 Benedict Groeschel and John Bishop, There are No Accidents: In All Things Trust in God (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor), 2004, 73-4. Father Groeschel believes this suffering was a necessary purgation for Mother Teresa, who was a “world-class saint” and “a millennium star.” Less familiar to people is that, according to Father Groeschel, who witnessed a change in her about eight weeks before her death, Mother Teresa had crossed over from darkness. “She was like an ice-cold, newly-opened bottle of champagne. ... She was bubbling. She was a little forgetful. She told me the same thing twice. But she was a different person, filled with joy... I said to one of my confreres, Father Andrew Apostoli, later, ‘We will never see her again. She is going through the gates of paradise.’ St. Bonaventure speaks about that. The darkness had left her before she died.” 51 Benedict XVI, Porta Fidei (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2011), 7. 52 Francis, Lumen Fidei, 11.

105 God’s objective revelation of himself. Faith is therefore a “turning to the objective,” a

“total disposition” that “responds to God’s revelatory address,” a disposition that “listens, obeys, yields, hopes, and trusts.”53 By renouncing our own mode of understanding, faith becomes a total fidelity to God who is truth himself.54

Faith: A “Secret Ladder”

We will conclude this chapter by looking at John’s portrayal of faith as a “secret ladder” of the dark night. He explains that, just as ’s ladder happened at night while he was sleeping, the soul departs from her own house in the night of the spirit by a secret ladder.55 During this journey her garb is changed into three different colored garments.

The secret ladder represents the soul’s living faith, which bids her go out of herself in the disguise of night, unbeknownst to the members of her own household—her exterior and interior faculties—and her enemies—the world, the devil, and the flesh. The rungs of the ladder represent articles of faith, of which the soul gains an experiential knowledge. Her path is marked by both ascent and descent, or what Balthasar calls a “circumincession of pistis and gnosis.”56 John of the Cross thus describes:

...on this road it suffers many ups and downs, ... immediately after prosperity some tempest and trial follows...the calm was given to forewarn and strengthen it against the future penury. ... abundance and tranquility succeed misery and torment...fast before celebrating the feast. This is the ordinary procedure in the state of contemplation until one arrives at the quiet state...57

53 Balthasar, Seeing the Form, 127. 54 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 2.32.93. 55 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 154 (A2), 430 (N2). It must be noted that John also calls this ladder “secret contemplation,” “a science of love,” and “the mystical ladder of divine love,” see 440, N2. This blurring of terms is probably due to the symbiotic relationship between the theological virtues of faith and love. 56 Balthasar, Seeing the Form, 131. 57 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 439, N2. The quiet state is synonymous with the state of spiritual marriage.

106 Through perseverance of faith her habits are made perfect, her garb changed into the divine colors of the theological virtues: white for faith, green for hope, and red for love.

Faith is an “inner tunic of pure whiteness that it blinds the sight of every intellect,” the greenness of hope fortifies the soul with courage and renders all earthly things “dry, withered, dead, and worthless,” and love is a “precious red toga” making her beautiful to

God.58

As she approaches the top of the ladder, her faculties no longer suffer previous deficiencies such as memory lapses but possess a new-found facility in carrying out her obligations. Her faith becomes refined like pure silver, a perfect “covering and veil” of

God’s truths, the inner substance of which is pure gold that she will openly enjoy in the next life.59 It is helpful here to remember the beginning quote of this chapter, where faith is described by John as light hidden in earthenware jars. When we cross over to eternity, the jars are broken and we will see clearly what we have contemplated vaguely through faith. Epistemologically, John is reminding us again that the knowledge of faith in mystical apprehension, even the most advanced in this life, has general, vague, obscure, and ineffable qualities compared to the clear vision of heaven, as we have discussed in chapter two.

The secrecy of the ladder, beside symbolizing the transcendence of faith over natural intelligence, also implies God’s creativity in guiding the soul through the night.

58 Ibid., 446-48, N2. 59 Ibid., 516-17, C. Further, “the knowledge of faith is not perfect knowledge. Here the truths infused in the soul through faith are as though sketched, and when clearly visible they will be like a perfect and finished painting in the soul.” It is helpful here to remember the beginning quote of this chapter, where faith is described by John as light hidden in earthenware jars. When we cross over to eternity, the jars are broken and we will see clearly what we have contemplated vaguely through faith.

107 As the “supernatural artificer,” God will “construct supernaturally in each soul the edifice he desires,”60 the touches of his work secret to all.

Summary of Chapter Four

The theological virtue of faith that transcends natural intelligence is central to the attainment of mystical knowledge. Faith, whose operation in the attainment of this knowledge is poetically described by John of the Cross as a “ray of darkness,” knowing by “unknowing,” and a “secret ladder,” is the habit of a total trusting surrender in the soul’s relationship to God. It facilitates a supernatural increase of knowledge through the ’s loving trust of the master. Faith begins with hearing the master’s call,61 and guides us into the sight of God’s glory through the trials of the dark night. By a loving obedience and perseverance sustained by grace, the eyes of faith in the dark of night

“grow accustomed to peering into the depths”62 of the mysteries of God. Francis coins the word “faith-knowledge,”63 which holds together one’s “body and spirit, interiority and openness to the world and to others, intellect, will and affectivity,”64 causing a total transformation of the human person. This faith-knowledge has God as source and guarantor, its quality vouchsafed by his own faithfulness.65 It is a supernatural

60 Ibid., 692, F. 61 Ibid., 532, C. Faith comes through a “spiritual hearing,” which is also called by John “the vision of the intellect.” 62 Francis, Lumen Fidei, 30. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid., 26. 65 According to Lumen Fidei, the Hebrew word “faith” literally means “to uphold,” signifying both God’s fidelity and our faith. The double meaning of the word faith is also present in the Greek πιστός and Latin fidelis. “St. praised the dignity of the Christian who receives God’s own name: both are called ‘faithful.’ Saint Augustine explains: ‘Man is faithful when he believes in God and his promises; God is faithful when he grants to man what he has promised.’” Ibid., 10.

108 knowledge that can never be “unearthed from the depths of man,”66 for it is not “humanly knowable”67 and possessed only through a transcendence of human intelligence. As such, it necessitates a painful experience for the intellectual faculties—the will, the intellect, and the memory, all of which must persevere through a harrowing self-abandonment in order to gain a new mode of operation receptive to divine illumination.

66 Balthasar, Seeing the Form, 215. 67 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 438, N2.

109 CHAPTER 5

CERTITUDE, CRITERIA, AND CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

In previous chapters we have examined the epistemic foundations of John of the

Cross predicated on the human telos and unity of the human person and his understanding that the most important knowledge—mystical knowledge of God—is the fruit of a loving dynamic communion between God and the soul. We have detailed the characteristics of mystical knowledge according to John, the relationship between love and knowledge in his rationale, and the operation of faith as the means to the attainment of mystical knowledge. In this chapter we will look at some crucial evaluative elements for systematic epistemologies: whether or not certitude and the attainment of objective knowledge are possible, the criteria by which practices and results can be judged, whether or not John’s theory has universal significance, and what contributions he might make to today’s philosophical conversations.

Certitude and Objective Knowledge

Epistemological certitude does not have to entail the assertion that one has attained objective knowledge. As mentioned in the Introduction, a highly controversial topic in the field of epistemology is precisely whether or not objective truth and by extension objective knowledge exist. When it comes to religious knowledge, the claim to objectivity is even more dubious. For instance, Wittgenstein compares the act of belief

“to the experience of falling in love: it is something subjective which cannot be proposed

110 as a truth valid for everyone.”1 William James flatly rejects any possibility that we could know “things as they really are.”2 Epistemic individualism seems both a philosophical doctrine and a moral ideal, which finds its roots in Enlightenment epistemology dedicated to the autonomy of the will.3 Consequently knowing becomes defined as constructing “a mental representation of the world” instead of encountering the world directly and really.4

A full-scale debate on the validity and import of the category of objective knowledge is far beyond the scope and intention of this thesis. However, to present John of the Cross as an epistemologist, I must point out that he characterizes mystical knowledge with both an epistemological certitude and an objective understanding of the world. To understand things spiritually after the purification of the dark night, according to John, is to “enjoy their truth, understanding what is certain in them.”5 Attachment to temporal goods renders the mind dull and dark, preventing it from “understanding truth and judging well of each thing as it is in itself.”6 Growth in mystical apprehension leads to “a clearer knowledge of them [things] and a better understanding of both natural and supernatural truths concerning them.”7 Within the category of supernatural apprehension

1 Francis, Lumen Fidei, 27. Citing G. H. von Wright, ed., Vermischte Bemerkungen / Culture and Value (Oxford, 1991), 32-33; 61-64. 2 Kalupahana, “William James and Early Buddhism,” 56-7. 3 Matthew Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), 73. Crawford is a writer and research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. Crawford mentions Kant’s effort to elevate the freedom of the will to the place of “the unconditioned” over against any outside influence, and Locke’s insistence that the “standard for reality is no longer substantive, but procedural,” see Crawford, 77, 121. 4 Ibid., 121. 5 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 89, “The Sayings of Light and Love.” 6 Ibid., 298, A3. 7 Ibid., 302, A3.

111 John describes two kinds of knowledge of naked truths, respectively about the creator and the creature. This knowledge includes an “understanding and vision of truths about God”8 and “knowledge of the truth of things in themselves and of human deeds and events,”9 the latter he further associates with the “true knowledge of existing things” taught by wisdom in Wis 7:17-21.10 Moreover, John laments the human misery of finding it difficult to arrive at truth where the “clearest and truest things are the darkest and most dubious to us,” and he ascribes this difficulty to the weakness of our natural senses and faculties, which can nevertheless be remedied by the dark night.11

The certitude of mystical knowledge is also apparent in John’s writing. If we harken back to the attributes of mystical knowledge near its height of spiritual marriage—passivity, a living dynamism, substantiality, supra-abundance, and ineffability, we see a picture of not only certitude but plentitude, which is at the same time dressed in poetic festivity. Poetry is more capable than prose of expressing such a state of knowledge, for it resembles an inflow of colors and movements that mingle and dance and give off a multitude of lights. Mystical knowledge is ever-flowing but profoundly still, vibrant but peaceful,12 expansive but simple,13 solid as a mountain but

8 Ibid., 245, A2. 9 Ibid., 248, A2. 10 Ibid., 249, A2. The supernatural knowledge of naked truth is not necessarily included by John in authentic mystical knowledge, as his guiding principle is that the latter must be general, interior, substantive, not attached to distinct understandings of particular things. Yet the description cited above shows that he believes in the existence of objective truth. 11 Ibid., 434, N2. 12 “Contemplation is nothing else than a secret and peaceful and loving inflow of God.” Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 382, N1. 13 Contemplation can be so simple that the mystic is hardly aware of it. “All they can manage to say is that they are satisfied, quiet and content, and aware of God.” Ibid., 437, N2.

112 delicate like a touch. It is certitude at its maximum, as sure as one knowing that they are home, as happy as the bride reposing “on the gentle arms of her beloved.”14 It is the fulfillment of Song of Songs 2:11-12: “Winter is now past, the rain is gone, and the flowers have appeared in our land.”15

John’s firm belief that epistemological certitude and objective knowledge is within human reach is similar to the stance of John Henry Newman, who describes certitude as a happy repose of both the intellect and the heart knowing with certainty that one has found an objective truth.16 It is a conviction that what one has assented to is

“objectively true as well as subjectively,” and when this conviction is attained, “the assent may be called a perception ... and to assent is to know.”17 It is a confidence that one’s belief will last and even “if it did fail, nevertheless, the thing itself, whatever it is, of which we are certain, will remain just as it is, true and irreversible.”18 Echoes of this epistemological insistence of objective truth are found in other theologians and philosophers as well. Dumitru Staniloae states: “there is a truth or an objective sense in regard to everything. This is what is meant by the term logos used by St. Maximus and by other church Fathers. ... Everything has in an objective way its own sense, as well as purpose—a cause, a finality, and a special relationship with everything else.”19 According to Robert Barron, Aquinas regards knowing as the participation of the subjective mind in

14 Ibid., 562, C. 15 Ibid., 563, C. 16 Newman, Grammar of Assent, 162-70. 17 Ibid., 162. From this we can deduce that certitude occurs when our subjective apprehension aligns unequivocally with objective reality. 18 Ibid., 165. In other words, certitude is never apart from objective reality. Even when our sense of certitude falters and gives way to doubt, the thing in which we have believed with certainty both objectively and subjectively will always remain as it is. 19 Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality, 209.

113 the “intelligibility of the objective realm.”20 Michael Polanyi believes that all modifications in the intellectual life are done in hopes of a “closer touch with reality” or

“attuning our understanding, perception or sensuality more closely with what is true and right.”21

Objection One on Certitude

We will further examine the ideas of certitude and objective knowledge in John of the Cross by anticipating some possible objections. The first one is expressed by philosopher Cleanthes in Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, who is not pleased with the apophatic rejection of ideas and concepts in mysticism:

The Deity, I can readily allow, possesses many powers and attributes of which we can have no comprehension; but if our ideas, so far as they go, be not just and adequate and correspondent to his real nature, I know not what there is in this subject worth insisting on. Is the name, without any meaning, of such mighty importance? Or how do youmystics, who maintain the absolute incomprehensibility of the Deity, differ from sceptics or atheists, who assert that the first cause of all is unknown and unintelligible?22

If the incomprehensibility of God is the only thing ever proposed by the mystics, then

Cleanthes would have it right that they differ not at all from skeptics and atheists, but while mystics orient themselves towards contemplative knowledge, they do not reject the validity of formulated ideas and concepts, the import of which will become more apparent in the next section about criteria. Here it suffices to say that John of the Cross holds high esteem for both our ability to reason and religious beliefs and traditions. What

Cleanthes misses is the personal nature of the Christian God and as a result the personal

20 Barron, The Priority of Christ, 159. 21 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 106. 22 David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Nelson Pike (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), 40, quoted by Runzo, “Conceptual Relativism and Religious Experience,” 135-36.

114 nature of mystical knowledge. Notions and concepts can speak well philosophically of the first cause, but they are insufficient to capture the characteristics and essence of living persons, let alone the living God. To accept something or someone as incomprehensible is not to preclude the possibility for knowing them, otherwise we would have to concede the futility to try and know anything about ourselves, for we are often mysteries to ourselves. While skeptics assert that God cannot be apprehended with any certainty, John of the Cross shows the possibility of attaining supra-abundant knowledge of God really and experientially in the center of the soul.

Objection Two on Objective Knowledge

This objection comes from empiricist epistemologies of Buddhism and William

James, both of which reject the possibility of knowing things are they are. Buddha rejects conceptual knowledge as dogmatism that leads to suffering and conflict and believes that the only absolute knowledge one can know is knowledge of the self, or “knowledge of the cessation of defilements.” 23 As for mysteries of the universe, we cannot know how things are but only how things have come to be in the “specious present,” and such is the knowledge of phenomena subject to continuous change.24 After spending six years in contemplation in the forest, Buddha “failed to perceive ... an ultimate reality or essence,” subsequently developing the idea of “mindfulness,” where meditation leads one to spontaneous knowledge.25 William James is an influential proponent of anti-essentialism who views “the Absolute” as “a metaphysical monster.”26 According to James, as we

23 Kalupahana, “William James and Early Buddhism,” 69. 24 Ibid., 66. 25 Ibid., 64. 26 Ibid., 61. James famously said during a public lecture: “Damn the Absolute. Let the Absolute bury the Absolute.” See J. Seelye Bixler, Religion in the Philosophy of William

115 come to experience the world in a “big blooming buzzing confusion,” our mind picks up from the available sensory stimuli bits and pieces that work for us, which become truth to us.27 Knowledge does not correspond to an objective absolute reality but is the cognitive result of one’s perceptual experience mediated by his/her interests and needs.

What Buddha and James both reject—the possibility of essential truth about the universe—is heartily believed, embraced, and experienced by John of the Cross. The personal Trinitarian God of Christianity is the very essence of truth containing all mysteries of the universe, and, as mentioned before, he reveals to the mystic “true knowledge of existing things.”28 The transformed soul becomes a transparent vessel unaffected by subjective filters, her vision no long her own but infused from above. Her whole perceptive powers have been cleansed and risen through the night of the cross, fully united with the light of the divine λόγος, whose fire now no longer wounds the soul but is wholly agreeable to her, for all her imperfections have been burned away like “the rust and tarnish of metal.”29 The mystical Knowledge she enjoys substantively in her deepest center is not what functions for her at each given moment but the communication of divine wisdom, who is ever ancient and ever new, the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Despite those differences, John of the Cross shares some important ideas with

Buddha and James, rendering them similarly sympathetic to the efforts of human knowing. All of them find conceptual knowledge insufficient if not problematic. They all

James (Boston: Marshall Jones Co., 1926), 21, cited in Kalupahana, “William James and Early Buddhism,” 61. 27 Ibid., 57. 28 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 249, A2. 29 Ibid., 580, C.

116 see the need for a living knowledge that is dynamic, personal, creative, unbound to distinct ideas and imaginations. Both John and Buddha believe that by detaching ourselves from passion we can avoid many falsehoods and attain a clear knowledge of oneself.30 James, while scornful of essentialism, reserves his judgements concerning religious phenomena, saying, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”31

The most important quality shared by all three can be characterized as an epistemic humility. John of the Cross is adamant that no matter how much one comes to know God, in God and through God, our knowledge is vague, incomplete, and unsatisfying compared to the vision of heaven. He would agree with Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius and

Augustine that the moment we think we have understood God is the moment we have built ourselves an idol. The hiddenness of God and of divine wisdom is a rule of thumb not an afterthought.32

Objection Three on Objective Knowledge

A third objection is a speculation from modern psychology that what mystics consider as knowledge may be nothing but self-hypnosis or subjective suggestion.33

Evelyn Underhill somewhat addresses this general criticism, which tries to define

30 According to John of the Cross, the knowledge of self is a chief benefit of the first night of senses, in which one breaks away from exterior sensory appetites, see Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 385, N1. Similarly, Buddha believes true knowledge about oneself can be attained through the “elimination of the burning fires within, namely, greed, hate and confusion,” see Kalupahana, “William James and Early Buddhism,” 68. 31 Kalupahana, “William James and Early Buddhism,” 61. 32To avoid any hint of skepticism here, it must be noted that the hiddenness of God is only a disadvantage compared to heaven; compared to all other earthly apprehensions, mystical knowledge is full of excellence as we have discussed in chapter two. 33 Dana Greene, ed., : Modern Guide to the Ancient Quest for the Holy (Albany: State University of New York, 1988), 92-3.

117 mysticism as the workings of “unconscious teleology,”34 where beliefs and expectations pre-condition our cognitive process to such an extent that we come to perceive what we desire to experience. While arguing that being deceived by spiritual experiences is as absurd as having illusions about one’s bodily health, Underhill concedes that acquired contemplation, where the mystic through attentive recollection reaches a state most conducive to divine infusion, is strikingly similar to what psychology calls

“contention”—“the quiet and steady holding in the mind of the thought which it has desired to realize.”35 Here John of the Cross cannot be said to agree with Underhill.

Recollection is an important element of John’s thought as a method of preparation for contemplation, but contrary to the said psychological movement, during recollection one does not hold on to any thought or idea; the only anchor is a general loving attentiveness to God, and if an interior solitude and peace is already present, even that loving attentiveness is to be forgotten, not to be dwelled upon.36 John’s staple prescription is to cease from all distinct concepts, images and desires. Knowledge is not acquired through concentrated techniques but infused by grace through an accumulated practice of the theological virtues and a great deal of suffering in the forms of intellectual aridity and affective deprivation. It is attained through an assiduous habit of kenotic self- abandonment as well as a patient trust in God’s providence. The dark night cannot be reduced to a psychological technique if we take note of its ordinary duration37 and the intensity of suffering therein.

34 Greene, ed., 98. 35 Greene, ed., 96. 36 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 687, F. 37 According to John, in order to be efficacious, the second night of spirit “will last for some years, no matter how intense it may be...” Ibid., 408, N2.

118 To summarize John’s position on certitude and objective knowledge, we may use the analogy of the drawing of a portrait: our knowledge in this life may only be a sketch that differs from the real person, but nevertheless it is a valid, authentic and unmistakable image of the person we know to be true.38 Authentic mystical knowledge is substantial, certain, and true. It is knowledge that once entering the soul will never be stolen away, not by trials or confusion or persecution or death. It is the silver of faith, the certainty of knowing God and being known by him, which through the fires of tribulation only becomes stronger and purer in this life and in the next an everlasting gold.

Criteria

We will now turn to the issue of criteria: how does St. John of the Cross judge knowledge to be true and worthy? John’s thoughts are very clear on this and are best summed up by his reference to the Jewish tabernacle. Just as the tabernacle contains nothing but the Torah and Aaron’s rod besides the heavenly manna, our knowledge and lives will be measured by only two things: the law of God and the cross—prefigured by

Aaron’s rod. The law of God takes on a wider meaning in the Christian context, encompassing prudence, the use of reason, human counsel, and most of all for St. John, teachings of the Scriptures. Notably, John also points out what he believes to be a dangerous and false criterion: private experience.

Criterion of the Law of God

The law of God as a criterion, though not explicitly enumerated by John of the

Cross, seems to be an aggregate of factors including reason, prudence, obedience, and

38 This analogy is used by both Newman and John of the Cross, see Newman, Grammar of Assent, 347, and Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 515, 517, C.

119 teachings of Sacred Scripture. Deviation from these fundamental standards when tried by the dark night will not lead one to truth. First of all, John of the Cross proposes reason as our sure guide in the obscurities of the night. “Blessed are they who, setting aside their own pleasures and inclinations, consider things according to reason and justice before doing them. ... If you make use of your reason, you are like one who eats substantial food; but if you are moved by the satisfaction of your will, you are like one who eats insipid fruit.”39 He also contends that God usually doesn’t manifest his wisdom through extraordinary visions and revelations because we are expected to use our reasoning powers. To prove this John cites the instance of St. Peter being persuaded by St. Paul on the issue of Gentile circumcision in the : there was no need for God to communicate directly to the head of his Church because reason, discretion, and communal engagement would be sufficient.40 Similarly, the law of Christ mediated through his church is here to shield us from ignorance so that a willful departure from it is “not only curiosity but extraordinary boldness.”41 Human counsel within the

39 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 89, “The Sayings of Light and Love.” Here John stresses the importance of the will being guided by reason, which does not contradict what is said about the dominance of the will in previous chapters. The will should dominate spiritual apprehension and guide the intellect insofar as it motivates us towards God; appetite in the will for other things is a hindrance that must be overcome, and in that regard reason can serve as an unfailing help. 40 Teresa of Avila wanted the priests in her reform to be solid theologians, even willing to soften her rules in exchange for admitting learned men into the order. The third monastery founded in her discalced order was a college for young clerics at the University of Alcala, to which John of the Cross was sent as . There he “had to supervise the clerics in their studies and preside over weekly disputations in theology and philosophy.” Later in 1579, John became Rector of another house of studies in Baeza, , where he “organized the program of studies and presided over the disputations, in which he took part, arguing, distinguishing, and resolving problems with all the finesse of a true scholastic theologian.” See more in Merton, The Ascent to Truth, 1951, 144-48. 41 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 232, A2.

120 community through natural reason is a chief medium through which God dispenses his wisdom and should never be forsaken, according to John. Despite having a direct channel to God, Moses received exceptional counsel from his father-in-law Jethro to install judges over the Israelites (Ex 18:13-23).42 God does not wish for us to be brilliant alone.

Communal confirmation serves to clarify and strengthen us in the truth. It is a sign of pride to neglect human counsel in favor of independent communication from God. Steady and robust growth in the truth requires us to be “cultivated and guarded” by a “master and guide,” lest we become a wild tree “without a proprietor,” whose fruits are picked off before they ripen.43

John of the Cross places the weightiest authority in Sacred Scripture, lauding it as his most reliable help in matters most important and most difficult.44 Kavanaugh observes that the Bible is the only book “properly called a fount of John’s experience and writings.”45 He further notes that in the Bible John finds an “excellent expression of his own spiritual experience” and “a confirmation of his theological argument.”46 He often uses biblical stories to prove his perspective—for instance, citing Jeremiah’s complaint to

God in Jeremiah 4:10, “have you perchance deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying:

Peace will come to you; and behold the sword reaches even to the soul?” and other unfortunate troubles of the prophets to demonstrate that while God sends prophetic voices and visions, they are not the most felicitous communication as they were subject to vacillating circumstances and misinterpretation due to the limitations of human

42 Ibid., 235. 43 Ibid., 86, “The Sayings of Light and Love.” 44 Ibid., 115. 45 Ibid., 35, “General Introduction.” 46 Ibid.

121 understanding.47 Thomas Merton, when explicating John’s hermeneutical style,48 notes that while often applying an interior spiritual meaning to biblical texts, he nonetheless never disdains their literal meaning and his allegorization is never contrived: “the mystical theology he claims to find in the Bible is really there.”49 One never senses that

John proof-texts the Bible in support of his experience but rather he finds his inspiration from the Bible and only later sees his own experience confirmed in it. Recall that his poem The Spiritual Canticle describing mystical ascent to divine union was largely a spin-off of The Song of Songs, sharing its theology and utilizing many of its symbols and images. One can say that the Bible is St. John’s source of inspiration while his life was that inspiration lived to the full.

Criterion of the Cross

The second epistemic criterion for St. John is the cross of Christ, which is also the animating principle of his whole philosophy of life. To live the way of the cross he says we should:

Endeavor to be inclined always: not to the easiest, but to the most difficult; not to the most delightful, but to the most distasteful; not to the most gratifying, but to the less pleasant; not to what means rest for you, but to hard work; not to the consoling, but to the unconsoling; not to the most, but to the least; not to the highest and most precious, but to the lowest and most despised; not to wanting something, but to wanting nothing. Do not go about looking for the best of temporal things, but for the worst, and, for Christ, desire to enter into complete nakedness, emptiness, and poverty in everything in the world.50

In John’s philosophy, our quest for knowledge is governed by our disposition towards

Christ. He is our inspiration, model, and goal. To be like him and walk in his footsteps is

47 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 216, 222, A2. 48 Merton, 142-43. 49 Merton, 143. 50 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 149, A1.

122 the most splendid wisdom. It is the wisdom scorned by the world but blessed by heaven.

It is the ancient disciplina arcani that still befuddles the smart and the proud. It is the intelligence of the humble that appears as folly, the activating agent that transforms simple loving souls into the royal household of God. Through sacrifice, hard work, humility and virtues baptized into the love of Christ, we are continuously created anew, intellectually and psychologically born again so to speak, until one day we may be called without shame the children of God and the bride of Christ.

The way of the cross as an epistemic principle displays an elegant simplicity. It expresses the essence of the intellectual kenosis prescribed in his epistemology. It bridges us with our neighbor, fusing together our noetic constitution with our social-ethical identity. By the spirit of the cross we bring everything that we are into conformity with our love for Christ, becoming a harmonious suppositum like the seamless garment of

Christ. Mystical knowledge therefore does not consist in “a multiplicity of considerations, methods, manners, and experiences” but in bearing the cross of Christ through the emptying of our apprehensive faculties.51 To gain mystical knowledge means to courageously embrace a dying with Christ in the mind, heart and action, in joyful anticipation of the dawn of resurrection.52

Peter Tyler observes that for John the way of the Cross is the “only sure and true path to God,” quite opposite of “what we could today term ‘spiritual tourists’ (the twenty first century descendants of St. Benedict’s ‘gyrovagues’) who move from ashram to

51 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 171, A2. 52 Here again we refer to the unity of the human person bearing an epistemological significance. John’s account of knowledge implicates the totality of life, integrating the mind, the heart, habits and actions—the whole person.

123 meditation center to retreat house ‘changing states and modes of life’ in order to find the perfect ‘spiritual high.’”53 Like Christ who did not consider equality with God something to grasp at, one is not covet extraordinary communications from God. If Christ saw it fitting to shed all human goods and comforts at the foot of the cross, it is no absurdity to join him in stripping off the security and delights of natural apprehension. If salvation was born by a love unafraid of being forsaken, we can be confident that by dying to human knowledge we lose nothing but gain what is imperishable. Death reveals many truths to us. A psychological, cognitive and ethical embrace of the cross is a brave anticipation of the cathartic effects of death, through which we hope to wash away vainglory and delusions and come face to face with reality. quotes an old

Indian poem in her autobiography: “I died as a mineral and became a plant, / I died as a plant and became an animal, / I died as an animal and was a man. / What should I fear?

When was I less by dying?”54 Nothing substantial is ever lost through self-renunciation.

The limited understandings we leave behind, the memories we lose, and the affections we lay to sleep are only sublimated through the fires of death so that their dross may be vanquished and their precious substance preserved forever. Balthasar explains this very well: by participating in the “primal experience of Christ,”55 we submit ourselves to the creative power of the Holy Spirit, who always “so arranges things that in following Christ the divine gifts are possessed more in the manner of a privation, of their being stored up

53 Peter Tyler, St. John of the Cross (NY: Continuum, 2010), 111-12. 54 Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1952), 248. 55 The experience of Christ is one of “kenotic humiliation and self-renunciation,” see Balthasar, Seeing the Form, 403.

124 in heaven, of their surrender for the sake of all others than by holding them in one’s own hands.”56

Rejection of Private Experience as Criterion

Now we must turn to address a legitimate criticism about John’s epistemology in terms of criteria, namely, his disdain for all distinct apprehensions and experiences, sensory and imaginative. The most persuasive opposing view comes from Balthasar, who accuses John of “mercilessly” severing the bond between individual Christians and their ecclesial charisms.57 Balthasar believes that through divine infusion God can transform the mystic in such a totalizing manner that he/she can live a new life possessing

“archetypal immediacy,”58 that the mystic is able to participate in the post-resurrection state of redemption not only spiritually but sensibly. Living in the beauty of the new redeemed age, the mystic has the grace to experience not only substantial spiritual knowledge but also concrete sensory and imaginative visions, which are given as ecclesial charisms to build up the church. For St. John to cast an aspersion on all distinct apprehensions especially supernatural experiences, according to Balthasar, is to render mysticism an entirely private business with no concern for the welfare of the church.59

As a spiritual director who sometimes was called on to discern cases of reported visions and even perform exorcisms,60 John of the Cross believes a cautious and detached

56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 402. There is a prominent focus on charism and mission in Balthasar’s theology, so he approaches mystical knowledge from a slightly different angle from John of the Cross. His lifelong association with Swiss visionary and stigmatist Adrienne von Speyer is another factor in his opposing view on supernatural apprehensions. 58 Ibid., 405. 59 Ibid., 402. 60 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 326, A3, footnote 1.

125 attitude towards supernatural apprehension is the wisest. The safest and easiest approach to distinct mystical experiences is to ignore all of them. While allowing for exceptional instances where one needs to obey specific supernatural communications, and this only under competent guidance,61 John believes it unnecessary to pay attention to them and cumbersome to have to discern their origin. His extreme reticence fits with his larger philosophy that mystical knowledge is excellent insofar as it is interior and substantial.

Distinct supernatural communications are less substantial and liable to deception.

Granted, charisms have a place in the ecclesial life of the church as we see throughout the

Hebrew Scriptures and in episodic apparitions in Christian history, but they are dispensed according to the pleasures of God and often to prophets who are perturbed and undesiring of the divine visitation.62 For our part we ought to resign to a loving communion with

God without desiring anything novel. There is no reason to desire additional messages or visions when Christ has been proclaimed, who is the final and most excellent Word of

God. Human nature tends to gravitate toward “pleasure, delight, and savor”63 even without the devil’s help, so it is imprudent to make oneself vulnerable to demonic meddling through attachment to mystical experiences. Just as God allowed evil spirits to deceive King Ahab with a false (1 Kgs. 22:11-12, 21-22), God may deliver us to our own folly and the devil’s wiles if we are seduced by certain experiences.64 Paying attention to them opens the door to many errors and has the potential to sour the wine of

61 Ibid., 184, A2. 62 Ibid., 213-19, A2. 63 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 283, A3. 64 Ibid., 228, A2.

126 divine love.65 It is much more salubrious to content oneself with a substantial love of God without desiring extraordinary gifts.

John’s Universal Applicability

In his Apostolic Letter of August 24, 1926 declaring John of the Cross a , Pope Pius XI describes his doctrine as “limpidly clear,” solid, and universal.66 Elizabeth Wilhelmsen observes that John’s “concern for intelligible consistency, for reasonable demonstrations” in showing the “structure of the human psyche and its potential for cognition” makes him a “scientist of mysticism.”67 According to John Paul II, John of the Cross has left us a “great synthesis of spirituality and of

Christian mystical life.”68 Along with patristic Fathers of the Church, John believes that the three-stage progression from purification to contemplation and union is normative for the Christian life, and as a unique contribution he seeks to make mystical knowledge universally appealing by his systematic approach.

The first factor contributing to the unique approachability of St. John’s mysticism is his insistence on the unimportance of mystical experiences. Visions, locutions, ecstasies, and a general state of other-worldliness, though they might seem the staple of mysticism, are not what constitutes mystical knowledge according to John of the Cross.

One does not need extraordinary supernatural experiences to contemplate God. Authentic mystical knowledge is a loving, substantial, and ineffable knowledge of God gradually

65 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 282, A3. 66 Merton, Ascent to Truth, 17-8. 67 Wilhelmsen, Knowledge and Symbolization, 4. 68 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter of Dec 14, 1990, https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JPMASTER.HTM, accessed on 3/17/2018.

127 infused into the soul by grace through its cumulative practice of the theological virtues. It is a general knowledge nourished by a loving communion between God and the soul, with the only requirement being a pure and habitual inclination toward God—certainly not an extravagant goal in terms of Christian formation. The whole process of union with

God, after all, begins with an obscure fire of love that burns within the soul, motivating it towards God. As long as that fire keeps burning and the soul does what is within her power to cooperate with God’s grace, the “gentle hand” of the Father will see to the completion of this process.

The second factor contributing to the universality of John’s theory is his deep insights into human suffering and its incredible value to the attainment of mystical knowledge. Unlike some who reserve mystical knowledge to the “regenerate” souls69 and others who commend “short and easy” methods of prayer,70 John of the Cross is an experienced doctor thoroughly acquainted with the human condition and understands the necessary role of suffering in God’s divine pedagogy. He shows that we need not be afraid of the challenges of our daily lives, for they are all part of the same tension that, if faced head on, will become our “guiding night ... more lovely than the dawn” which will unite the Lover with his beloved.71 This tension is the disjunction between the blessedness of heaven and our current state, for the noonday of heaven is qualitatively

69 Jonathan Edwards once wrote a sermon “A Spiritual Understanding of Divine Things Denied to the Unregenerate” on the difference between notional and mystical knowledge. In a later sermon, he juxtaposes the godly who apprehend the glory of God experientially with the unregenerate whose blindness prevents them from conceiving of colors. See Patricia Ward, Experimental Theology in America: Madame Guyon, Fenelon, and Their Readers (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009), 137-39. 70 One of Madame Guyon’s well-known works is titled A Short and Easy Method of Prayer. Ibid., 14-5. 71 Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works, 51, “The Dark Night” poem.

128 different from the night of this earthly pilgrimage. It is the tension spoken of by Dorothy

Day—a warring of the life of nature against the life of grace, with the only successful outcome being the harmonization of one’s intellectual and spiritual faculties into the ways of God.72 John’s epistemology of divine love shows us that suffering is the very means through which mystical knowledge is attained in this life. We do not need to “float on mystical clouds”73 but only embrace what cross is already ours. Carmelite and author Ruth Borrows agrees that the dark night according to John of the Cross is not something outlandish but quite common to all:

What is the essence of your grief, when all is said and done? Isn’t it two things: a sense that you lack God, call it absence, call it abandonment, and at the same time a devastating awareness of your own wretchedness? Oh, I know, not in the least like what John of the Cross writes about, that is what you are hastening to tell me, nothing grandiose like that, just drab petty meanness and utter ungodliness. Yes, but that is what he is talking about.74

Conclusion: John’s Philosophical Contributions

I will conclude by exploring possible contributions John of the Cross can make to today’s philosophical conversations. His insights into human psychology together with a comprehensive exposition of the mystical life, informed by experience but woven theologically, provide us with an authentic Christian epistemology. His unique contribution lies in two aspects: his careful analysis of the intellectual faculties and their potential for transformation by the theological virtues, and a convincing theory for the possible existence of objective truth.

72 Day, The Long Loneliness, 85. 73 Benedict XVI, General Audience of Feb 16 (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2011), http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2011/documents/hf_ben- xvi_aud_20110216.html, accessed on April 16th, 2018. 74 Williams, The Wounds of Knowledge, 175, citing Ruth Burrows, Guidelines for Mystical Prayer, 88.

129 First, John shows exhaustively that docility to God through love can transform the intellectual faculties into divine potentiality. Unfortunately, the important role of the will, the limitations of the intellect, and the transformative power of the theological virtues are not often discussed in mainstream epistemology. Whether in rationalism seeking infallibility of the mind or in empiricism staking it all on sense perception, there is an incredible lacuna in our pursuit of knowledge because supernatural revelation is often rejected out of hand. When knowledge is confined to a rationalistic cognitive experience of the individual, we become “brains in vats,”75 the lab creature of neurological movements down to our smallest atom,76 or “men without chests.”77 Even with naturalized epistemology which treats knowledge as psychology, we are still undermined by the ignorance of our spiritual capacity. Most modern accounts of knowledge cannot reach the deeper springs of wisdom. They cannot adequately explain where drive, inspiration, vision and creativity come from, or how to train attention and emotions in service of learning, or why virtues are important in pedagogy. Educators are forced to deal with the whole spectrum of human issues without recourse to spiritual investigations and solutions. They are expected to churn out thinking machines only to find that the call of knowledge is pale and weak without the higher call of love. St. John’s philosophy, on

75 Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head, 123. The mentality of “brains in vats” is attributed by Crawford to today’s mainstream cognitive psychology, for it “proceeds on the assumption that representation is the fundamental process by which we apprehend the world. This process happens entirely within the bounds of the skull...” 76 Harry Prosch, Cooling the Modern Mind: Polanyi’s Mission (NY: Skidmore College, 1971), 9. 77 Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 26. “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expects of them virtues and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

130 the contrary, is sympathetic to the whole human nature. He understands human struggles on the deepest level and that the most intense human suffering—the dark night of mind and heart—is actually an opportunity to gain divine knowledge. His epistemic interpretation of human longing and existential weariness shows a way to move beyond the post-modern existential crisis—one’s spiritual emptiness.

Second, John of the Cross, along with other Christian authors such as Newman,

Lonergan and Barron, through his theory of mystical knowledge offers a possibility of the existence of objective truth. When modern philosophers tried to cleanse pure knowledge from exterior influences such as tradition and religious “imposition,” there came another unintended consequence: epistemic individualism and solipsistic subjectivism.78

Knowledge came to be what the individual can reasonably perceive based on nothing but his/her reasoning powers. Despite rigorous contentions about epistemic criteria, post- modern philosophers have all but given up on objective truth. Self-reliance has become the implicit virtue supreme.79 John’s prescription of a total forgetting of oneself, in exterior senses, in the intellect, the memory, and the will, and a total forsaking of sensible delights and experiences, sets him apart from rationalists, empiricists and modern mystics who privilege private experience above all. He shows that mystical knowledge is compatible with tradition, community, and the transcending of the ego. The plenitude and

78 Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head, 130. Stewart, Introduction to Lonergan’s Insight, 46-7. 79 Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head, 130. Here Crawford cites Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance,” Walt Whitman’s democratic hero who “shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead... nor feed on the specters in books,” and Norman Miller’s idea that one must “divorce oneself from society, to exist without roots, to set out on that uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self.”

131 excellence of mystical knowledge as intimated by him paints a convincing and attractive picture of heavenly vision full of truth and grace.

St. John of the Cross leads us to reflect deeply both the complexity and simplicity of the human person, both our challenge and potential. The poetics of a small flame of love growing into a kingdom of glory should resonate with the wandering human heart, however vaguely. The veil of magnanimous knowledge opening through the dark crevices of one’s depths is the drama echoed in every human story. Combining a profound humanism with a specifically of knowledge aided by the insight of his mystical experiences, John’s epistemology of divine love provides much inspiration for the potential of knowledge.

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