Defining Mystical Experience
PATH FIVE
The Right Ordering of Our Experiences of God
I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person . . . was caught up into Paradise.
2 CORINTHIANS 12:1–4
It happened one day quite unexpectedly. For five long years he had struggled to make sense of his faith. Every time he felt settled, a new challenge arose that threatened to undo him. The further he went in life the more it troubled him. Is Christianity really true, he wondered? Could it hold up in the marketplace of ideas? Did it have the intellectual credibility he needed to continue believing in God? And what should he make of suffering? How could he believe in a loving God when evil and suffering ravished the world?
These questions haunted him. As the questions intensified, his despair grew. Would there ever be answers, or would he live the remainder of his days with only the questions?
And then it happened. Of all places, he was in school. Far removed from the grind of everyday life he had come to graduate school in hopes of finding God. While sitting in class one day listening to a lecture on Pascal’s three orders, the barriers to deeper belief suddenly collapsed.
He had been troubled by his inability to find God and make sufficient sense of a universe under God’s care. But he was also a person of faith who lived with an open and willing heart. The barriers created by the modern mentality and its confidence in human reason had hindered the natural flow of the Spirit of God. Yet with learning and especially an understanding of Pascal’s treatment of the relationship of the heart, mind and emotions, he experienced a life-giving surge.
He was overcome with a sense of the goodness and graciousness of God. Recognizing the different levels of reality helped him make sense of his own spiritual journey. Even the problem of evil and suffering, although never fully resolved, made sense to him when placed in the broader perspective of God’s ultimate plans for our life. A perceptual shift occurred as a profound and new understanding of the Christian life unfolded.
Years later he experienced a second brief encounter with God. During his early days in pastoral ministry he suffered a severe leg injury that required surgery and a long rehabilitation. His leg was placed into a large, long, heavy cast that greatly reduced his mobility. His spirits slumped and his confidence in the goodness of life disappeared. Early one Sunday morning, however, as he was preparing to lead worship, he was suddenly and unexpectedly overcome with a profound sense of the presence and love of God. The experience lasted only a few moments, but it fundamentally confirmed the reality of God’s love and produced a renewed confidence in God’s presence in his life.
These two experiences taken from the life of a close friend are like countless similar stories reported in the Bible and throughout Christian history. They are included here not because they are so unusual but because they are so commonplace. They illustrate the way both individual and corporate experiences of God help bolster our confidence in the truth and goodness of the Christian life. However impressive teachings about God’s love may be, if divine grace were not ever experienced, these teachings would remain a mere abstraction.
But religious experiences are not of themselves the highest authority in the Christian faith. A simple way to recognize this is to compare our religious experiences with the views we see as we climb a mountain. As we climb higher and higher, we get different views. We cannot say that any one of the views we experience is the definitive view, no matter how much more beautiful and overwhelming it may be compared with the others.
Likewise, we need a reasonable theological account of the Christian faith to provide a basis for the validity of our experiences and to form a framework we can use to understand their significance. This lets us measure the legitimacy of religious experiences when others make similar claims. As Paul put it so succinctly in 1 Corinthians 12:3 when facing the turmoil caused by people who claimed authority because of their experiences, “No one speaking by the spirit of God ever says, ‘Let Jesus be cursed!’” Nor are various experiences enough to sustain our spiritual life. We need a reasonable foundation for these experiences to help us understand their real meaning.
Very early in the church’s life, it was generally accepted that our knowledge of God had two main sources: the Bible and the natural order. These are referred to in the literature of the time as the “two books of God.” Scripture is more important, as it reveals God’s purposes and intentions far more clearly than nature, but nature is seen to support and confirm what the Bible reveals.
In addition, a major way we describe the goal of the Christian life is to see God “face to face.” Nothing created is necessary as a medium to know him, neither Scripture nor nature, since we can come before God directly. The phrase “face to face” is partly an allusion to Moses, who met God on the holy mountain, and also to Paul’s statement that we now see God only dimly, as in a mirror.
All of us are promised an ultimate intimacy with God, while a few of us seem to enjoy this reality here and now. It seems that God gives this life to a few people in order to encourage the rest of us and let us know what awaits each of us in the life to come. These ecstatic or mystical experiences are a gift to encourage the church. They are not given so that an individual can elevate him or herself over any other Christian who has not had this specific experience. They are meant to lead us all to knowledge of God through Jesus Christ.
Although few of us have had overpowering mystical experiences, many if not all Christians have had some degree of spiritual experience. This reality was given renewed emphasis in the twelfth century, especially through the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux. The variety of types of spiritual experience is vast, but at its core it is focused on Jesus Christ. Through the Holy Spirit we receive both a sense of his presence and the many graces he promised us, such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal 5:22). In general, the role of spiritual experiences is to confirm the teaching of Scripture through the effects of God’s Spirit on us and to enable us in time to enjoy God’s habitual presence.
Defining Mystical Experience
To experience God is to have a mystical experience of him. The word mystical is derived from the Greek verb muein, which means “to remain silent; to shutter the senses, to quiet down, to come to rest.” Originally it pertained specifically to the Greek mystery religions and included the acquisition of special knowledge leading to religious insight. Writing at the turn of the twentieth century, W. R. Inge offered twenty-six different definitions of this term. Others offered additional explanations, but the most prominent simply states that mystical experience is “the type of [spiritual experience] which puts the emphasis on immediate awareness and experience of God, on direct and intimate knowledge of Him.”
Consider these two examples from Scripture. In 1 Samuel 3, Eli and Samuel are in the private quarters of the temple, almost asleep, when Samuel hears a voice he believes to be Eli’s. Three times he hears the voice, and three times he believes it is Eli calling to him. From the text it is apparent that Samuel has not yet acquired the capacity to hear and understand the voice of God. After the third experience, however, Eli realizes that the voice is coming from God, even though he has never heard God’s voice himself. Eli instructs Samuel how to respond the next time God speaks. Eventually, it happens a fourth time and Samuel responds appropriately because he now enjoys both the experience and the right understanding of the nature of this experience. What is unique in this story is not how Samuel’s experience is alike or different from other mystical experiences, but the way he has to learn to look for God. In the process his perceptions of God are changed.
A second illustration, taken from the life of the apostle Paul, amplifies this point. In Acts 9, Paul has a mystical encounter with God that fundamentally changes the destiny of his life. Traveling to Damascus to further his campaign against the first Christians, Paul is blinded by a light and hears a voice telling him to change his ways and come to a new understanding of God. Eventually Paul’s sight is restored, and his perception of God is changed forever.
Both experiences teach us that our mystical experiences help complete our perception of God. Our experiences of God confirm the validity of our life with him. They also help us conceptualize the vast varieties of experiences that exist among Christians and our multiple understandings of God. As we consider the following four writers we will see just how varied and complex the Christian life truly is.