Divine love not only abides in the beloved, but also calls the beloved into being, since love’s nature is to proceed out of itself into the other. Dionysius (or Denis) the Areopagite, a sixth-century Syrian monk, was the first to characterize God as eros, ekstatikos, or ecstatic love, accommodating Christianity to Neo platonic thought. Mystics in the Dionysian tradition have understood creation as a flowing-out or emanation from divine being and salvation as a return to it, both motivated by love. In this vein the Flemish holy woman Hadewijch (thirteenth century) interpreted the twofold rhythm of Christian life as an imitation of the Trinity. In the active life of charity and service, the soul moves out into the world in the same way the Son and the Spirit proceed from the Father, while in the contemplative life of union, the soul returns to the Father and is engulfed in the abyss of love. Others have taken the genera-tive nature of the Trinity as a model for human community, symbolized by the family or the company of friends. Richard of Saint-Victor (d. 1173) argued that the static love of a couple cannot be complete in itself because charity is always directed outward, requiring a third as its fruit and object.
In the Incarnation, wrote Paul, the Son of God “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, [and] humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7–8), for the sake of fallen humanity. This divine act of self-emptying (kenosis), understood as the supreme revelation of love, provides a model for the Christian whose life should imitate Christ’s.
In the mystical tradition, imitation is carried to the point of identification, expressed through acts of compassion as well as deliberate self-mortification. Medieval mystics supplemented ascetic practices such as sexual abstinence, fasting, and night vigils, common to most religions, with specifically Christian expressions of love that included kissing lepers, re-enacting Christ’s passion in one’s own body, and self-inflicting or miraculously receiving the marks of his wounds (stigmata). Saints Francis of Assisi (d. 1226) and Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) are the best-known exemplars of these rituals.
Catholic mysticism is characterized by a distinctive fusion of the ascetic with the erotic, both justified by Christ’s self-emptying love. Mystical prayer involves both elements—in ascetic terms it aims at self-surrender or even “annihilation,” but in
erotic terms, at unitive love. Theologians disagreed about the highest form of union the soul could attain. Some characterized it as a union of wills, the more orthodox position, others as a union of essence or “oneness without difference.” The second position was ultimately condemned as heretical in the writings of Marguerite Porete—burned at the stake in 1310—and Meister Eckhart.
Central to Christian mysticism is the biblical Song of Songs. This sensual love poem has been read allegorically as an account of the romance between Christ and his bride, who is variously interpreted as the Church, the Virgin Mary, and the individual soul. “Bridal mysticism” was popularized especially by Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), who taught both monks and women to identify with the bride as she alternately praises the beauty of her beloved, exults in his presence, laments his absence, and seeks him in the night of desire. The amorous cycle of yearning, embracing, and parting that governs the ‘Song ‘proved well suited to describe the mystic’s experience of intense, fleeting encounters with God punctuated by long periods of “aridity” or absence.
Although many mystics wrote rapturously about their moments of ecstatic union, an emerging consensus maintained that God grants such “consolations” early in the contemplative life to seduce and intoxicate virgin souls. Later, once the “bride” of either sex has fallen hopelessly in love with him, he withdraws these graces and lets the soul languish in dark-ness. But this seeming estrangement from God actually represents spiritual progress, for when tested in the crucible of pain, the soul’s love is conformed to Christ’s suffering on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Mechthild of Magde-burg (d. 1282) wrote lyrically about this alienation or “sinking love,” which St. John of the Cross (d. 1591) more famously anatomized as the “dark night of the soul.” The ability to endure long periods of desolation without wavering in one’s fervent love of God and neighbor became a hallmark of later mystics, including the beloved French saint Thérèse of Lisieux (d. 1897).
Not all mystical writing about love follows the heterosexual pattern of the Song of Songs. Aside from this and the maternal paradigm, an alternative model rejects images altogether, emphasizing the unknowability of God. This tradition of apophatic—or inverse—discussion, rooted in Dionysius, culminates in an anonymous fourteenth-century English treatise, The Cloud of Unknowing. Its author advises contemplatives to bury their knowledge of creatures beneath a cloud of forgetting and pierce “with a sharp dart of longing love” against the cloud of unknowing where God dwells. “By love may he be gotten and holden,” the text advises, “but by thought neither.” This willed rejection of thought and imagination parallels the crucifixion of desire in the theoerotic tradition. In both models, the love of a transcendent God requires renunciation of created goods.
Mystical discourse on the love of God is inevitably entwined with secular theories of love. Augustine posed a sharp antithesis between cupidity, or self-seeking desire, and charity or divine love—a dichotomy traditionally re-inforced by the requirement of celibacy for devout lovers of God. But many theologians developed mystical pedagogies for the trans-formation of physical love into divine love. Bernard of Clairvaux explained that, as the devotee progresses from self-love to charity, his relationship with God alters. Beginning as a slave who fears punishment, he advances to the condition of a servant who seeks rewards, thence to filial love, and finally to the ardour of a bride, who wants only her lover’s kiss. Richard of Saint-Victor, influenced by secular romance, outlined “four degrees of violent charity” through which the mystic ascends with ever-growing intensity: the stages of wound-ing, binding, languishing, and fainting or insatiable love. The best-known schema may be the Interior Castle of Teresa of Avila (d. 1582), describing seven “mansions” in which the soul rests en route to her goal of spiritual marriage with God. These diagrams of mystical progress are inflected by gender—men’s typologies tend to posit steady progress toward the goal, while women’s more often oscillate between phases of fulfilment and frustration. Nevertheless, all Christian mystics concur that love is both their way and their end. As Gregory of Nyssa (d. ca. 395) taught, humans are finite and God is infinite, so “perfect” joy in heaven must consist in eternal progress (epektasis) toward an ever-deepening knowledge and love of the divine. Or, in Augustine’s words, “this is what will be in the end without end.”
This piece of work is owed to Barbara Newman, in an entry in the ‘Encyclopedia of Love in World Religions’. Please acknowledge this information if you are to use this work for any of your writings. Thank you.
-A.W.