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It was only a few years ago during six months spent in Israel that I expe-
rienced the desert for the first time, both from afar as I viewed it every
day from the northern outskirts ofJerusalem and also close up, especially
during a trip to Sinai. To stand atop Jebel Mussa (Mount Moses) on Sinai
to watch the sunrise is like being present at the creation. The great ocean
of the ancient Mediterranean world (i.e., the Atlantic) I first really en-
countered sailing from New York to Naples in 1959 when ocean crossings
were still common. Though the southern route through the Azores was
generally more hospitable than northern crossings, a few stormy days on
that trip made an impression on me as powerful as that of Sinai.
My excuse for beginning with these autobiographical remarks is that
many have argued that the experience of such vast and powerful geo-
graphical ambiences as the desert and the ocean has a significant impact
on how we symbolize God and God's relation to us. Edmund Burke in
his A PhilosophicalEnquiryinto the Originof OurIdeasof the Sublimeand Beau-
tiful put it thus: "But because we are bound by the condition of our na-
ture to ascend to these pure and intellectual ideas [of God], through the
medium of sensible images, and to judge of these divine qualities by their
evident acts and exertions, it becomes extremely hard to disentangle our
idea of the cause from the effect by which we are led to know it." For
Burke, the consideration of divine power in the created universe was the
most potent source of that pleasure derived from objects including terror
that he called the sublime. Applied to God, sublimity reaches its limit:
"But whilst we contemplate so vast an object, under the arm, as it were
* The following
lecture is dedicated to the Donnelley family and to all those other gener-
ous donors who have made it possible for the Swift Hall community, both faculty and stu-
dents, to devote themselves to interests more than quotidian and to rewards often not im-
mediate.
? 1994 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-4189/94/7402-0001 $01 .00
155
156
newal)."2 Particularly important for the later mystical tradition are those
texts (e.g., Jer. 2:2; Hos. 2:14; Song 8:5) that speak of the desert as the
place of betrothal either between God and Israel or, by extension, be-
tween God and the human person.
In the New Testament, the sea continues to bear an ill-omened reso-
nance. In John's Apocalypse the prediction that the sea will be no more
(Apoc. 21:1, "he thalassa") clearly indicates the end of evil. The desert, as
in the Hebrew Bible, remains both positive and negative. John the Baptist
lives and preaches in the desert. Jesus retreats into the desert to be
tempted by the devil and there to overcome him. Though his preaching
is in the cities and towns, he sometimes retires to a "desert place" (eremos
topos)to rest and to pray (e.g., Matt. 14:14; Mark 6:31-32; Luke 9:10). All
this indicates that what has been called the "spirituality of Exodus" had a
profound effect on early Christianity, even before the movement of the
first monks out into the Egyptian desert.3 The centrality that monasticism
gave to the desert experience doubtless was a crucial element in the back-
ground that led to the theme of the divine desert, which makes it all the
stranger that none of the early monastics, to the best of my knowledge,
ever used the desert as a symbol for God's self, but only as the place of
the encounter with God.4
To go from the dry to the wet, it was in Greek philosophico-religious
mysticism, especially in the Platonic tradition, that we must look for the
literary roots of ocean language among Western mystics. In Plato's Sympo-
sium, Diotima's teaching about the ascent of eros culminates when the
157
soul, "turning towards the great sea of the beautiful [topolypelagos... tou
kalou] may by contemplation of this bring forth ... many fair fruits of
discourse and meditation in a plenteous crop of philosophy" (210D).5
This brief positive use of vastness of the sea as an image of the abso-
luteness of the Beautiful-in-itself, the goal of Plato's mystical ascent, is
rare. Plato also spoke of the universe falling into "the boundless sea of
unlikeness" (Statesman273D, "eiston tes anomoiotitosapeirononta ponton"),6
and even that great Greek culture hero, Odysseus, preferred reaching
port to just sailing along admiring the ocean and its dangers. In the pa-
gan Platonic tradition, Plotinus insists that the sea, like everything else,
exists in living form in nous, the ultimate intelligible principle, but this is
far from later Christian uses of the sea as a symbol for divine infinity.
More typical was the way in which Porphyry in his allegorical reading of
the Odysseyin On the Cave of the Nymphsinterpreted the sea as the watery
chaos of the material world.8 Later Proclus read Plato's "great sea" as the
sciences that needed to be studied during the course of this life until
the philosopher could separate himself from all to arrive at "the mystical
mooring-place of the soul."'9To the Greeks, then, the sea was at best an
ambivalent symbol in mystical discourse.
Many of the Christian fathers, particularly Latin figures like Augustine
and Gregory the Great, continued to use the sea primarily in negative
fashion as imaging the turmoil of this life.'0 What is surprising is that
beginning in the late fourth century some Christian authors, perhaps re-
membering their Plato, began to use the symbol of the sea or ocean to
indicate the immense and unbounded character of the divine nature.'1 It
5 For this and the following translation from Plato, I will make use of the versions found
in the Loeb Classical Library, Plato, ed. H. N. Fowler et al., 12 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1982).
6 This passage from the Statesman,however, is ambiguous because of a significant debate
over whether the correct reading is ponton or topon. See Jean P6pin, "Apropos du symbol-
isme de la mer chez Platon et dans le n6oplatonisme," AssociationGuillaumeBuds: Congrisde
Tourset Poitiers:Actesdu Congris (Paris, 1954), pp. 257-59.
7 See, e.g., Enneads 5.8.3 and 6.7.12. Plotinus also uses the image of Odysseus putting out
to sea from Odyssey9.29 ff. and 10.483-84 in Enneads 1.6.8.
8 Porphyry On the Cave of the Nymphs34. The
Naiads of Odyssey13.102-12 are described as
souls descending into genesis in chaps. 10-12 of this work. See Robert D. Lamberton, Homer
the Theologian:NeoplatonistAllegoricalReadingand the Growthof theEpic Tradition(Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California, 1986).
9 Proclus Commentary on Plato'sParmenides,bk. 5 (1025), as translated by Glenn R. Morrow
and John M. Dillon: Proclus' Commentaryon Plato's Parmenides(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1987), p. 373. Little has been written on the use of sea symbols in Greek
philosophy. For an overview of one theme adopted by Christian authors, see Campbell
Bonner, "Desired Heaven," Harvard TheologicalReview 34 (1941): 49-67.
'~o See H. Rondet, "Le symbolisme de la mer chez saint Augustin," in
AugustinusMagister
3 vols. (Paris: L'ann6e th~ologique augustinienne, 1954), 2:691-711.
" For example, Basil AdversusEunomium 1.16
(PG 29:548B); Gregory Nazianzenus Oratio
38.7 (PG 36:317B). Gregory's notion of God as "an infinite and undetermined sea of sub-
158
appears that it was the insistence on divine infinity against Origen and on
divine unknowability against Eunomius that moved the Cappadocians,
among others, to this kind of language. A passage from the first of John
Chrysostom's homilies On the Divine Incomprehensibility reveals a note of
precisely what Burke would call the divine sublime: "We wonder at the
open sea and its limitless depth; but we wonder fearfully when we stoop
down and see how deep it is. It was in this way that the Psalmist stooped
down [referring to Ps. 138:6 and 14] and looked at the limitless yawning
sea of God's wisdom [to apeiron . . . pelagos tes tou theou sophias]. He was
struck with shuddering."'2 It was with a student of the Cappadocians
turned desert monk, Evagrius Ponticus, that we find the earliest use of
the ocean motif in Christian mystical literature.
Following Origen, Evagrius taught a double creation. In the beginning
God created the ideal world of minds, or spiritual beings (logikoi), per-
fectly united with him in "essential gnosis of the Trinity." When these
beings fell away from contemplative unity, he then made the universe
we experience, characterized by multiplicity, differentiation, and varying
degrees of materiality. Salvation brought through Christ consists of re-
gaining the lost unity through the overcoming of vices on the ascetic level
and growth in contemplative prayer. An image that Evagrius uses for the
goal of this ascent back to "essential gnosis" is that of the rivers flowing
back into the sea: "When minds flow back into him like torrents into the
sea, he changes them all completely into his nature, color and taste. They
will no longer be many but one in his unending and inseparable unity,
because they are united and joined with him. And as in the fusion of
rivers with the sea no addition in its return or variation in its color or
taste is to be found, so also in the fusion of minds with the Father no
duality of natures or quaternity of persons [i.e., of the Trinity] comes
about." " At first reading a text like this seems to indicate what we can
call undifferentiated unity, a kind of absorption into God; but a more
stance" was picked up by John of Damascus (Defide orthodoxa1.9) and from him dissemin-
ated to the medieval Scholastics, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Summatheologiae la.13.11. For an
introduction of some other patristic uses of sea symbolism, see Hugo Rahner, GreekMyths
and ChristianMystery(London: Burnes Oates, 1963), pp. 328-86.
'2John Chrysostom Homily 1 on the Divine Incomprehensibility, lines 204-8, in Jean Chrysos-
tome:Sur l'incomprehensibilitide Dieu, ed. Jean Daniblou et al., Sources Chr~tiennes (hereafter,
SC), 28bis (Paris: Cerf, 1970), 1:116-18. I use the translation of Paul W. Harkens, St. John
Chrysostom on theIncomprehensible Natureof God (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University, 1984),
p. 60.
13This text, from Evagrius's Epistola ad Melaniam 6, survives only in Syriac. I am using
the translation of M. Parmentier, "Evagrius of Pontus' 'Letter to Melania,'" Bijdragen,tijd-
schriftvoorfiolsofieen theologie46 (1985): 13. See also the German translation and discussion
in Gabriel Bunge, Evagrios Pontikos:Briefe aus der Wiiste(Trier: Paulinus Verlag, 1986), pp.
312-13, 396. This image of the mixing (Greek krasis) of rivers in the wider water of the sea
recalls another mystical image, very popular in the Middle Ages, of the mingling of a drop
159
of water in a vat of wine. For the history of this image, see Jean P~pin, "'Stilla aquae modica
multo infusa vino, ferrum ignitum, luce perfusus aer': L'origine de trois comparisons fami-
libres A la thbologie mystique m~diivale," Divinitas (MiscellanaeAndr~ Combes) 11 (1967):
331-75.
'4 For Evagrius's teaching on union, see my TheFoundationsof Mysticism:Originsto the Fifth
Century(New York: Crossroad, 1991), pp. 154-55. Bunge, p. 396, n. 50, supports a similar
interpretation of the passage.
'5 See, e.g., Cassian Conlationes8.25, where the "breath of the Divine Spirit" drives us
"into the deep sea" of questions about God.
'6 For example, Tertullian AdversusMarcionem3.16; Ambrose Explanatio in Psalmum 118
14.34, and De Isaac 5.44; Augustine Confessiones2.3.5, and Enarratioin Psalmum62.8.
i Jerome Epistola 14.10, which identifies the desert with paradise: "Infinita heremi vasti-
tas terret? Sed tu Paradisum mente deambula." Compare Eppistolae20 and 125.7-8.
18 De laude heremi23: "O laus magna deserti, ut diabolus qui uicerat in paradiso in heremo
uinceretur!" See Sancti EvcheriiLvdvunensisOperaOmnia, ed. C. Wotke, Corpus Scriptorum
Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 31:191.20-22.
160
'9 De laude heremi39 (191.20-22): "Hic interioris hominis pratum et uoluptas, hic incultum
desertum, illic mira amoenitate iucundum est, eademque corporis est heremus animae par-
adisus." The encounter with Christ that takes place in the interior desert is also described
through the use of the erotic language of the Song of Songs in chap. 38 (191.4-7). For
studies of the De laude heremi,see Ilona Opelt, "Zur literarischen Eigenart von Eucherius'
Schrift De laude eremi," Vigiliae Christianae 22 (1968): 198-208; and Pierre Courcelle,
"Nouveaux aspects de la culture lerinienne," Revue des itudes latines 46 (1968): 379-409.
Recently, Hans Bayer has claimed that the text is actually twelfth-century ([n. 3 above], pp.
16-20), but this seems unlikely. Gregory the Great also used the theme of the inner desert,
identifying the desert into which Moses fled (Exod. 19:3) with the interior sleep in which
God is heard, in Moralia in Job 23.20.37.
20 For an introduction to the medieval view of the desert, see Jacques Le Goff, "The Wil-
derness in the Medieval West," in TheMedieval Imagination(Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1988), pp. 47-59. In his "Le desert," (n. 3 above), pp. 265-66, Leclercq identifies the
medieval monastic understanding of eremus/desertumwith the notions of (1) vastitas, vasta
solitudo,(2) remotus,abditus,secretus,and (3) interiorin the sense of"removed from the periph-
ery." The yoking ofdesertum with the notion of vastitas, however, was probably as much the
product of biblical influence, especially Deut. 32:10 ("invenit eum in terra deserta in loco
horroris et vastae solitudinis"), as it was of physical geography. For example, the early Cis-
tercian documents described the original site of the monastery of Citeaux in 1098 as a locum
tunc horroriset vastaesolitudinis("Summa exordii Cisterciensis," in CisterciiStatutaAntiquissimi,
ed. Joseph Turk [Rome: Tipografia Pio X, 1949], p. 81), although there is evidence that the
site was actually inhabited (see Louis J. Lekai, The Cistercians:Idealsand Reality [Kent, Ohio:
Kent State University Press, 1977], p. 21).
161
162
of what came to be called mystical union, though not without a note of con-
tinuing distinction. Eriugena speaks of the divina celsitudo,the height of the
divine nature prior to all creation produced by the Word's creative shout,
in order to stress absolute transcendence, though without forgetting divine
immanence-all intellects "desert" God, but he does not "desert" them.
Significantly enough, Eriugena's writings also contain a striking image
of the ocean of divinity. Without advancing an argument based on crude
"Iromania," it is noteworthy that early Christianity, which produced holy
men, like Saint Columba's friend Baitan, who set sail "to seek a desert in
the ocean,"24 also provided at least part of the background to Eriugena's
mystical theory in which both desert and ocean appear as symbolic ex-
pressions of the divine nature. As Edouard Jeauneau has shown, Eriu-
gena was unusual in relation to the early Latin tradition, both classical
and Christian, in employing ocean and sea (oceanus,pelagus) in a largely
positive manner.25 In his Commentary on the CelestialHierarchyof Dionysius
he speaks of "the sea [pelagus] of infinite goodness ready to give itself to
those wishing to participate in it,"26but the most interesting use of ocean
symbolism occurs in his great summa,the Periphyseon.Many Christian exe-
getes, beginning with Origen, had spoken of scripture as a "vast sea of
mysteries."27 At the beginning of book 4 of Periphyseon,Eriugena com-
pares the relatively smooth sailing of the first three books with the danger
of shipwreck on the difficult seas of the investigation of the return of all
things to God to be considered in the final two books. Nothing daunted,
this Brendan of Irish theologians adds: "Let us spread our sails, then,
and set out to sea. For Reason, not inexperienced in these waters ...
shall speed our course: indeed she finds it sweeter to exercise her skill
in the hidden straights of the Ocean of divinity than idly to bask in
the smooth and open waters where she cannot display her power."28
24 See Adomnan'sLife of Columba,ed. and trans. Alan Orr Anderson and Marjorie Ogilvie
Anderson (London: Nelson, 1961), p. 248: "Qui ad quaerendum in ociano desertum per-
git" (1.20). Compare J. M. MacKinley, "In oceanodesertum:Celtic Anchorites and Their Is-
land Retreats," Proceedingsof the Societyof Antiquariesof Scotland33 (1899): 129-33.
25 Edouard Jeauneau, "Le symbolisme de la mer chez Jean Scot Erighne," Le Nioplatoni-
163
164
36 William of Saint Thierry Meditativae Orationes4.9 (PL 180:217C): "Da mihi, Domine,
consolationem solitudinis meae, cor solitarium et colloquium tuum frequens" (cf 216B
and 217D).
37 Guerricd'Igny:Sermons,ed. John Morson, Hilary Costello, and Placide Deseille, SC 166
(Paris: Cerf, 1970), Sermo 4.1-2 (1:134-42).
38 See ExordiumMagnum Cisterciensesive Narratio de Initio CisterciensisOrdinis, ed. Bruno
Griesser (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1961), dist. 1, cap. 1-13 (pp. 48-66).
39 Gilbert of Hoyland, Sermosuper Cantica 15.3-4 (PL 184:75-76). I use the translation
of Lawrence Braceland, Gilbertof Hoyland: Sermonson the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo, Mich.:
Cistercian Publications, 1978), 1:179-81. Richard of Saint Victor also identified the desert
of the Song (this time Song 8:5: "quae est ista quae ascendit de deserto") with the human
heart, which gives rise to ecstasy when filled with spiritual joys. See Benjamin Major 5.14
(PL 196:185CD).
40 Isaac de l'Etoile:Sermons,ed. A. Hoste, G. Salet, and G. Raciti, SC 207 (Paris: Cerf, 1974),
Sermo 30.4: "Desertum petant ac secreta loca ubi Deo vacent, ... ubi respondens ipse lo-
quetur ad cor eorum, iuxta prophetam dicentem: Ducam eam in solitudinemet ibi loquarad cor
eius" (2:182.38-42).
165
166
43See Hans Jonas, "Myth and Mysticism,"Journal of Religion 49 (1969): 315-29, esp. 328.
44 See Offenbarungder SchwesterMechthildvon MagdeburgoderDasfliessendeLichtder Gottheit,
ed. Gall Morel (1869; reprint, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963), p. 17:
"Du solt mifien das niht, / Du solt vliehen das iht, / Du sollt alleine stan / Und du solt zil
nieman gan .... Du solt das wasser der pine trinken / Und das fir der mifie mit dem holtz
der tugende entzunden, / So wonest du in der waren wiistenunge" (1.35). For other uses
of desert, see, e.g., 2.23, 24; 6.2; and 7.53. For a study of Mechthilde on the desert, espe-
cially in relation to Eckhart, see Frank Tobin, "Mystical Expression: Mechthild von Magde-
burg and Meister Eckhart" (University of Nevada) (I thank the author for allowing me
access to this yet-unpublished essay).
167
168
tinction in which God is the "more indistinct the more distinct [he] is,"
because he is, as Eckhart noted, quoting John of Damascus, "a sea of
infinite substance, and consequently indistinct."49
Eckhart's preference for the desert theme, rather than the "sea of infi-
nite substance," to tease out the meaning of the soul's dialectically indis-
tinct union with God is found primarily in his vernacular sermons. Some
passages lay stress on the identification of the desert with God, as in ser-
mon 10: "I have spoken of a power in the soul which in its first out-
pouring does not take God as he is good and does not take him as he is
truth. It seeks the ground, continuing to search, and takes God in his
oneness and in his solitary wilderness [einoede],and in his vast wasteland
[wiiestunge],and in his own ground."50
Here the wilderness indicates either the Father as the source of the Son
(i.e., Truth) and the Holy Spirit (i.e., the Good), or perhaps the inner
divine ground prior to all distinction of persons, as suggested in sermon
52 and other texts. Similar concentration on the divine side of the equa-
tion seems to be in the fore in sermons 12, 48, 60, and 81.5'
Other passages, however, emphasize the soul's inner being as the true
desert. Central to all of Eckhart's preaching was the claim that "God's
ground and the soul's ground are one ground."'52So if the desert is an
apt symbol for the utter simplicity of the inaccessible divine nature, it is
no less appropriate a designation of the hidden mystery of the ground of
the soul. Eckhart taught that the soul could not be given an essential
name because of its purity and simplicity,53but he certainly thought that
169
54 Predigt 28 (DW 2:66.6-8): "Ez ist ein elende und ist ein wuiestenunge und ist m& ungen-
ennet, dan ez namen habe, und ist me unbekant, dan ez bekant si. Ktindest dfi dich selben
vernihten einen ougenblik, ich spriche, joch kurzer dan einen ougenblik, s6 waere dir allez
daz eigen daz ez in im selben ist." A reference in the early Rede der underscheidunge6 (DW
5:207.6-8) in which Eckhart invites his audience to "practice a solitude of the spirit" ("er
muoz ein innerlich einoede lernen") by breaking through things to grasp God may be an
early version of this theme.
55 Predigt 29 (DW 2.76.2-77.4): "Dirre geist muoz iibertreten alle zal und alle menige
durchbrechen, und er wirt von gote durchbrechen; und als6, als er mich durchbrichet, als6
durchbriche ich in wider. Got leitet disen geist in die wuiestunge und in die einicheit sin
selbes, di er ein liter ein ist und in im selben quellende ist. Dirre geist hit kein warumbe,
und solte er dehein warumbe haben, s6 mieste diu einichet ir warumbe haben" (transla-
tion, MeisterEckhart:Teacherand Preacher,p. 288).
56 Augustine Confessiones9.10; LiberParabolorumGenesis 149 (LW 1:618.12-619.1): "Soli-
tudo, quia sola iustitia ut sic soli iusto loquitur et solus iustus ut sic iustitiam audit, et hanc
solam. solitudo, quia iustitia et iustus ut sic unum solum est; iustus enim et iustitia sola
iustitia est." The centrality of this theme to Eckhart's thought can be judged by the lengthy
170
In the early fourteenth century, the divine desert spread to other forms
of mystical literature and other languages. The Middle High German
sequence known as the "Granum sinapis," or "Mustard Seed," is a strik-
ing presentation of the main themes of Eckhart's mystical teaching. The
first three stanzas summarize the Meister's doctrine of bullitio, the inner
boiling or emanation through which the three persons of the Trinity are
distinguished. Strophe 4 deals with how the intellect relates to this mys-
tery under the images first of climbing a mountain and then of the jour-
ney out into the divine desert:
The fifth and sixth strophes present a rich variety of forms of predication
that seek to present the mysterious desert from all angles; negative predi-
cates, positive predicates, and dialectical predicates, such as
It is here, it is there, It is far,it is near,
It is deep, it is high, It exists
In such a way that it is neither this nor that.58
The final stanzas of the "Granum sinapis" turn to the personal appropria-
tion of the mystery of the Trinity, first a second-person strophe in which
Eckhart invites the reader to move out into the "desert's track" ("s6 kums
du an der wiste sp6r"), and then a personal address to his soul involving
a watery image:
analysis given to the relation of the just man and Justice in Expositioin Johannem 14-27
(LW 3:13-21).
57 I will cite from the ed. of Kurt Ruh, MeisterEckhart:Theologe,PredigerMystiker(Munich:
Beck, 1985), pp. 47-49:
Des puntez berk stig ine werk,
vostentlichkeit! der wek dich treit
in eine wiste wunderlich, di breit, di wit,
unmbziklit. di wastehat
nochzitnochstat, ir wisedi istsunderlich.
Alongwiththe studyfoundin the fourthchapterof Ruh'sbook,see esp.AloisM. Haas,
"Granum sinapis:An den Grenzender Sprache,"
in Sermo Studien
mysticus: zuTheologie
und
derdeutschen
Sprache ed.AloisM.Haas(Freiburg-Schweiz:
Mystik, 1979),
Universtititsverlag,
pp. 301-29.
58 Us hi, us d~, us verre, us ni,
us tif,us h6, us istals6,
dasus istwederdiznochdaz.
171
172
173
174
175
liberty, that is, into his inmost depths, which cannot be touched except
by the soul's abyss."74This sounds remarkably like the double "break-
through" from Eckhart's sermon 29.
Marguerite Porete, the French Beguine executed for heresy in 1310,
also made use of ocean imagery, though without the dynamic character
and violence of Hadewijch's symbolism. In one place in her work The
Mirrorof SimpleAnnihilatedSouls, where she discussed how the annihilated
soul loses its name when it is united with God, she sounds remarkably
like Evagrius Ponticus:
It isjust like what happens with a streamwhich comes from the sea, which has a
name, as one would say the Aisne or the Seine, or any other river.And when this
water or river returns to the sea, it loses its course and its name that it had as it
ran through many lands in doing its work. Now it is in the sea, where it restsand
loses its labor.... This soul comes from the sea and has a name, and when it
returns to the sea it also loses its name and has none except for the name of him
in whom it has been perfectlychanged, that is, in the love of the Spouse of her
youth who changes the betrothed totallyinto himself.75
We can note how powerfully a passage like this expresses a form of ab-
sorption into God, this time with the accents of the spousal relation.76
Here again, however, we need to remember that even the condemned
Marguerite, whose writings were used by Eckhart, has a complex teach-
74 "Letter" 18.69-79 (Van Mierlo, ed., Hadewijch:Brieven, 1:154-55): "Daer es de ziele ene
grondeloesheit daer god hem seluen ghenoech met es, Ende sine ghenoechte uan hem
seluen altoes to vollen in hare heuet, Ende si weder altoes in heme. Siele es een wech van-
den dore vaerne gods in sine vriheit van sinen diepsten; Ende god es een wech vanden dore
vaerne der zielen in hare vriheit, Dat es in sinen gront die niet gheraect en can werden, sine
gherakene met hare diepheit" (p. 86). See also "Letter" 12.4-50 (pp. 70-71).
75MargueritePorete:Le Mirouerdes SimplesAmes, ed. Romana Guarnieri and Paul Verdeyen,
CCCM 69 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986), chap. 82 (pp. 234.40-236.51): "Ainsi comme feroit
une eaue qui vient de la mer, qui a aucun nom, comme l'en pourroit dire Aise, ou Sene, ou
une aultre riviere; et quant celle eaue ou riviere rentre en mer, elle pert son cours et le nom
d'elle, dont elle couroit en plusiers pays en faisant son oeuvre. Or elle est en mer, le ou elle
se repouse, et ainsi a perdu tel labour. Pareillement est il de ceste Ame. Vous avez de ce
pour ce assez exemple, pou gloser l'entent comment ceste Ame vint de mer, et eut nom; et
comment elle rentre en mer, et ainsi pert son nom, et n'en a point, fors le nom de celluy en
quoy elle est parfaictement muee; c'est assavior en l'amour de l'espoux de sa jouvence, qui
a l'espouse muee toute en luy." (For a discussion of this passage, see Robert E. Lerner, "The
Image of Mixed Liquids in Late Medieval Thought," ChurchHistory 40 [1971]: 399-401.)
The entire discussion of the soul's losing its name is filled with watery language; see chap.
81 (p. 230.13-16) and chap. 83 (p. 236.3-6). The image of being dissolved in the divine sea
of joy is also found in chap. 28 (p. 96.2-7) and in chap. 80 (p. 226.6-10). Marguerite also
uses the language of the abyss without any watery connotations to describe either God or
the soul (e.g., chap. 51 [p. 150.7-11], chap. 53, [pp. 154.3-156.7], chap. 60 [p. 176.35-38],
chap. 118 [pp. 326.130-328.146).
76 For a presentation of Marguerite's notion of indistinct union, see MargueritePorete,
chaps. 137-38 (pp. 400-2).
176
vvFor some examples of these passages expressing distinction, see, e.g., ibid., chap. 21
(p. 82.44-49), chap. 23 (p. 86.29-34), chap. 42 (p. 130.10-12).
78 For some examples of Tauler on desert
imagery, see the references under "wiieste" and
"wiiestenunge" in the Wortverzeichnisto Die Predigten Taulers,ed. Ferdinand Vetter (1911;
reprint, Zurich: Weidmann, 1968), pp. 514-15. On Tauler's mystical vocabulary, see Curt
Kirmsee, Die Terminologiedes MystikersJohannesTaulers(Engelsdorf-Leipzig: Vogel, 1930), p.
92, on "wieste, wiiestenunge."
79 S. Caterina da Siena: II Dialogo, ed. G. Cavallini (Rome: Edizioni Cateriniane, 1968),
chap. 54 (p. 122). Compare esp. chap. 2 (p. 3): "Pero che l'anima allora e in Dio e Dio e
nell'anima, si come il pesce che sta nel mare, e'l mare nel pesce." For some other appear-
ances, see chap. 79 (p. 180) and chap. 89 (p. 204).
soJan van Ruusbroec, Die geestelikeBrulocht, ed. J. Alaerts, trans. H. Rolfson (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1988). These descriptions can be found at b.1148-49 (p. 419), c.246 (p. 599), and
c.255 (p. 601).
177
* Die geestelikeBrulocht,
b.1033-39 (p. 405-7), using the translation of the edition: "Die
hoge natuere der godheit wert ghemerket ende aenghesien hoe si es simpelheit ende een-
voldicheit, ontoegancleke hoochde ende afgrondighe diepheit, ombegripelijcke breyde
ende eewighe lancheit, eene duystere stille ende eene welde woestine, alre heilighen raste
in eenicheit, een ghemeyne ghebruken sijns selfs ende alre heylighen in eewicheit. Noch
mochtmen merken menich wonder inder grondeloser zee der godheit."
82 Other recent investigations of the role of what are often called pantheistic and monistic
formulas in Christian mysticism reflect a similar viewpoint; e.g., Grace Jantzen, "'Where
Two Are to Become One': Mysticism and Monism," in ThePhilosophyin Christianity,ed. Geof-
frey Vesey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 147-66; and James N. Wise-
man, "'To Be God with God': Autotheistic Sayings of the Mystics," TheologicalStudies 51
(1990): 230-51.
178
179
mysticism itself. The rise of academic study of religion did not create,
but has doubtless exacerbated, the split between those concerned with
studying mysticism within religious traditions and those who approach it
as an issue in the general investigation of religion, whether philosophi-
cally conceived or not. This division is evident in even a brief survey of
the debate between the so-called perennialists and constructivists, which
has been mostly conducted by philosophers who share the premise that
the existence or nonexistence of moments, or temporary states, of subjec-
tive trance, or pure consciousness, or nonduality, define what is meant by
mysticism. No Christian mystic ever thought this to be the case, nor did
mystics in related traditions such as Judaism and Islam, as far as I know.
In these religions "mysticism" (to use our word, not theirs) was conceived
of as a process involving both a way of life and a form of knowledge
whose authenticity could only be judged by its effects in relation to a total
religious complex, not by its phenomenological characteristics taken in
isolation. The mystics' understanding of "mysticism" was always embed-
ded in a religious matrix, a world of social, cultural, and religious symbols
and practices, not in the academic debate over the question, "What is
mystical experience?"
The academic study of religion, of course, demands a critical investiga-
tion of such traditional claims. But attention to the religious matrix of
almost all mystical texts ("religion-free" mysticism does not seem to ap-
pear before the late nineteenth century) poses an alternative question:
Are phenomenological or psychological accounts of mystical states ex-
tracted from their original religious contexts a sufficient object of study?
Or are they only one stage in a broader and more constructive investiga-
tion? Is mysticism (a term created only in the seventeenth century and
given academic life in the nineteenth) to find its defining characteristic in
the investigation of trancelike, absorptive states? Or does "mysticism,"
however we may define this academic construct, only yield its true sig-
nificance as a form of religious life when considered in relation to a total
religious complex? Naturally, these rhetorical questions suggest the di-
rection of the answers I would give to these difficult problems-and also
why I find much of the contemporary debate over mysticism, especially
when framed between the false dichotomies of "perennialists" and "con-
structivists," not terribly constructive.
If the modern study of religion is to be an open and critical pursuit of
the truth, it has to admit the possibility that the mystics themselves may
have been correct. The study of mysticism may be more than phenome-
nological and psychological investigation, and it may be less than the "re-
ligion within religion" that investigators unhappy with religious pluralism
have made it. The phenomenological issue of whether or not what may
have been experienced by particular mystics was unmediated awareness
180
181