Gnostic versus Mystic

Thoughts re: Gnosticism versus Mysticism

While both the gnostic and the mystic may embrace a heavenly experience, the gnostic rejects the immanence of God in this realm as impossible and inappropriate. They try to escape this realm because it's very materiality is unclean or illusory (and historically
rejected the incarnation for that reason).

But while I am not a gnostic, I am unapologetically a mystic. That is, I believe in direct interactive fellowship with God both in the heavenly realm (beholding him and approaching him boldly as a beloved child) AND in the earthly realm ("Lo, I am with you always.") He is Lord of heaven and earth and is utterly immanent in our daily lives. I take Jesus' promise, "I will be with you and in you" very literally and seriously.

What has made the presence of Christ real to me -- a constant, conscious awareness of his "withness" -- is the opening of the eyes of my heart to behold him. Peter, quoting David in Ps. 2 said, "I saw the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken." He goes on to speak of how he has been filled with joy in the Lord's presence. 'Presence' is good, but the word translated is more specific: lit. "face". So too with 2 Cor. 3-4 where we get this idea of hearts unveiled, "beholding the glory of God... in the face of Jesus Christ." Modernism would reduce this to an idea, a concept, a notion. The mystic (esp. the Apostle John and his lineage) would say, "No, we really mean it. Our hearts truly see him." This is what made their fellowship with Christ so real ... and how it has become so for me as well. This is not the esoteric, elitist experience of the gnostic, but rather, the promised inheritance of all of God's children.

Discernment then means continually saturating oneself with the Jesus of the Gospels to ensure that the Jesus I behold in my heart or the Jesus I encounter in the streets in the poor are in alignment with the true Lord Jesus of Nazareth. And this is such a joy because then life in the Word, in prayer, in worship -- or in the grocery store or the nursery are all full of the fellowship of 1 John 1!

I thought I'd offer some little quotes by Symeon the New Theologian. (942-1022) By way of background, Father George Mahoney says, "The battle of two opposing views of theology centered around St. Symeon and his mystical apophatic approach of the experiencing of God immanently present to the individual, as opposed to the 'head trip' scholastic theology as represented by Stephen of Nicodemia, the official court of theologian in Constantinople. Stephen represented the abstract, philosophical type of theologizing while Symeon strove to restore theology to its pristine mystical tendency as a wisdom infused by the Holy Spirit." N.B.: the problem with the scholastics was not their love of scholarship, but rather, that they opted for a mediated knowledge of God that denied direct experience. Symeon on the other hand spoke, esp. in the Philokelia (the Eastern Church's favorite theological collection) and in his discourses of his experience of seeing the glorified and risen Jesus:

"[A Christian is] the person who has come to see with the eyes of the spirit and who has beheld the true and quenchless light."

"The person who has not consciously invested his intelligence and intellect with the image of our Lord Jesus Christ, the heavenly one, man and God, is still but flesh and blood."

"Most men believe in the resurrection of Christ, but very few have a clear vision of it. Those who have no vision thereof cannot even adore Christ Jesus [!!] as the Holy One and as Lord... That most sacred formula which is daily on our lips does not say, 'Having believed in Christ's resurrection,' but, 'Having beheld Christ's resurrection, let us worship the Holy One, the Lord Jesus, who alone is without sin.' How then does the Holy Spirit urge us to say, 'Having beheld Christ's resurrection,' which we have not seen, as though we had seen it, when Christ has risen once for all a thousand years ago, and even then without anybody's seeing it? Surely Holy Scripture does not wish us to lie? Far from it! Rather, it urges us to speak the truth, that the resurrection of Christ takes place in each of us who believes, and that not once, but every hour, so to speak, when Christ the Master arises in us, resplendent in array and flashing with the lightnings of incorruptible deity. For the light-bringing coming of the Spirit shows forth to us, as in early morning, the Master's resurrection, or, rather, it grants us to see the Risen One Himself. ... Those to whom Christ has given light as He has risen, to them He has appeared spiritually, He has been shown to their spiritual eyes. When this happens to us through the Spirit He raises us up from the dead and gives us life. He grants us to see Him, who is immortal and indestructible. More than that, He grants clearly to know Him who raises us up and glorifies us with Himself, as the divine Scripture testifies."

Symeon, as an apophatic theologian, tends to emphasize the transcendence of God to the nth degree, speaking more in terms of knowing God by what he is NOT. Apophatic theologians are careful to not make absolute statements about what he IS because that would be too categorical and could put God in the box of our intellectual capacities. However, I would say that we CAN say something of who God is by virtue of the incarnate and resurrected Christ. So without reservation we say, "God is exactly like Jesus. All the glory of the divine godhead has been poured into Christ as eternal living image/icon. And we DO know this God as we know Jesus and we know this Jesus as we behold him."

Further, I'd say as we behold him with spiritual eyes in the heavenlies, our material eyes are invested with spiritual vision to behold him in the HIV baby, the autistic child, 'the homeless, penniless Jesus the Son' (to quote Jason Upton).