Explainer

Creed

Weirdness

6 January 2025

5 min read

The year of the mystics

Ready to be turned upside down?

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

An abstact image hints at twisting figure in front of a St Andrews Cross.

Jr Korpa on Unsplash.

Last year, a journalist called me, completely out of the blue. We’d never met before, but she had a couple of questions she wanted answering about Christianity and, somehow, she found me.

Firstly, she wanted to know what the heck was going on with Christianity at the moment – why can’t Nick Cave stop talking about his Wild God? What was up with Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s infamous U-Turn? Why, despite decline in church attendance and institutional failures, are more and more people finding themselves falling into the Christian story? I wish I had then, what I have now: Graham Tomlin’s round-up of 2024 as the year Christianity (for better or for worse) made somewhat of a comeback. Because, she’s right, it really has been quite something.

But, leaving Graham to answer her first question, this article is an attempt to answer her second, far more unexpected, one: where are all the Christian mystics?

I got the sense that this second question wasn’t being asked for the benefit of a piece she was writing, but for the sake of her own mystically inclined heart. I feel like what she was really asking was something akin to - is there a place within the Christian story for people who are friends with mystery and oddness, who want the unexplainable and the ecstatic, who consider ‘strange’ and ‘spiritual’ to be two sides of the same coin? Is there a way in for those who don’t want the weirdness of it all to be underplayed? Is there space within Christianity for one to be turned up-side-down by God’s ‘heart melting nearness’?

Well, in short, yes. Completely and utterly. Yes to all of it.

Where are the mystics, I hear you ask? It would be my pleasure to introduce you to a few of my favourites.

First up to the plate, it’s Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179).

A master of music, medicine and mysticism – Hildegard of Bingen is one of the most interesting women in German history. As a Benedictine Abess, she dedicated much of her time to mystical theology and philosophy, largely informed by her visionary experiences of God. She reluctantly recorded twenty-six of these visions in a piece of work entitled Sci Vias Domini (which translates to mean ‘Knowing the Ways of the Lord’). She also composed songs, again largely inspired by her visions of God, and even a musical mortality play entitled Ordo Virtutum.

Her Christian mysticism bled into her understanding of science and medicine; she emphasises the deep interconnectedness of all living things - having originated from one creator - and therefore sees medicine as just as spiritual of a pursuit as theology. According to Hildegard, all is sacred, all is connected, and so the health of the natural world matters. It both informs and reflects our own health.

Clare of Assisi (1194-1253) is celebrated as an Italian saint and founder of the Order of Poor Ladies.

Born into a wealthy family, Clare shunned comfort, luxury, and an arranged advantageous marriage in favour of a life devoted to intimate and vibrant prayer. She soon gathered a community around her, and their obvious disdain for luxury of any kind is what caught the world’s attention and earned them the title of ‘Poor Ladies’.

Her life of prayer had dramatic consequences and, ultimately, saved the lives of those she loved. While their Order was under attack, Clare’s prayers caused a violent storm to sweep across the town and scatter the terrified attackers.

Next up is a particularly strange (in the best way) character, Catherine of Sienna (1357-1380).

Catherine had religious visions from the age of six or seven, and took them incredibly seriously, even then. As she grew older, her parents urged her to marry the widower of her sister, who had tragically died in childbirth. In response, Catherine cut off her hair and joined the Sisters of Penance of St. Dominic. That’s quite the outright rejection, isn’t it?

After three years of isolation (during which she is said to have prayed, contemplated, and developed a rich understanding of Jesus’ death and its implications), she became quite the famous figure, feeling sure that God had commanded her to publicly speak of what he had told and shown her.

Now for a personal favourite, Theresa of Avila (1515-1583).

I read her prayers and poems endlessly. And, can you blame me? Just listen to this:

Let nothing disturb you,
let nothing frighten you,
all things will pass away.
God never changes;
patience obtains all things,
whoever has God lacks nothing.
God alone suffices.

The gentleness of her words are like a balm to a world that can so often sting us. And, indeed, stung Theresa, as she suffered with severe ill-health and persecution her entire life. Nevertheless, she developed a passion for mental prayer and is said to have heard God’s audible voice, seen visions, and even felt her body levitate. She became infamous for her poetry, her mystic theology and her unusual independence as a medieval woman.

These women, these mystics, are separated from us by time and context. And yet, to many, they are close companions. They are still aiding those on a quest to enter into Christianity through the ‘mystic’ door. They are still reminding us that we oughtn’t be fooled by the pesky left-side of our brains, the part that wants us to believe that we understand all that’s worth understanding. They are still challenging us with the knowledge that all that we see is not all that there is.

You want mysticism? Christianity can down-right give you mysticism.

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Explainer

Creed

Virtues

14 March 2023

5 min read

How to encourage a second nature of virtue

Cultivating virtue could make you cheerful. Andrew Davison explore the benefits. The first in a five part series for Lent.

Andrew Davison

Andrew works at the intersection of theology, science and philosophy. He is Canon and Regius Professor of Divinity at Christ Church, Oxford.

Kenny Eliason on Unsplash.

Lent is upon us: the season to cultivate virtue. In that old-fashioned word, ‘virtue’ – so unpromising, even dismal in tone – lies so much of what Christianity wants to commend in its vision of a moral life. Even if Christian ethics enjoys a dour impression in the popular imagination, the tradition known as ‘virtue ethics’ places its emphasis on happiness, not being miserable, and on having a good disposition, not primarily on following laws. It’s all about having a good disposition – on being the sort of person to whom goodness comes naturally, even under taxing circumstances – and that as the basis for happiness. For the virtuous person, a virtuous response has become second nature: spontaneous, easy, and cheerful.

The idea of virtue as ‘second nature’ draws on Aristotle’s idea of habit. Over time, he thought, we settle into certain ways of being and reacting: into certain ways of behaving, responding, and relating to others. That can be for good, in which case we call that habit a virtue, but also for ill, in which case we call that a habit a vice.

'We are cultural, linguistic, and moral, and we have to learn and practice those things that make us human.'

We are creatures of habit, which makes us a strange sort of creature. We are born very much still a work in progress. All sorts of other organisms can perform their most characteristic actions more or less from birth. Contrast us. We are cultural, linguistic, and moral, and we have to learn and practice those things that make us human. In many important respects, what or who an infant will become remains an open question.

Aristotle put this pithily:

‘The virtues arise in us neither against nature, nor simply by nature. Rather, our very nature is to acquire them, and it is in that way that our nature reaches completion.’

Our nature is to be open, those works in progress. Inevitably, we acquire habits, one way or another, for better or worse. Habits are like a sediment that is laid down over time. Or – perhaps better – habits are like the course that river cuts through sediment or soil. The river cuts the course, but eventually the course directs the river. Acts lay down habits, then habits shape acts.

'We don’t become better or worse primarily by thinking hard about it; we become better or worse according to the way we act.'

That offers a bracing and distinctive view of what it means to be moral. For one thing, it shifts the emphasis away from motives, psychology, and an inner realm of the mind. We don’t become better or worse primarily by thinking hard about it; we become better or worse according to the way we act. Good deeds beget good habits, which beget further good deeds; bad deeds beget bad habits, which beget further bad deeds. That’s a good reason to make Lent a time for doing things (and maybe also not doing things, although virtue ethics will tend to think that action is important, and that we best drive out bad habits with good ones).

Virtue ethics has a lively place for reason, and we will come to that in the next article in this series (on the all-important rational virtue of prudence), but it’s also a remarkably bodily tradition. Virtue is almost as much laid down in one’s bones and sinews as in one’s brain. There is a ‘muscle memory’ to virtue, as also to vice. Imagine rescuing a child from an oncoming bus. It belongs to virtue in that situation for the body to move before the mind can catch up, or at least the conscious, deliberating mind. The child is snatched from danger in a pre-conscious whirl. The first well-formed thought to cross the mind of our virtuous protagonist might well be ‘Goodness, look what just happened?’

Virtue is at both home with dramatic responses in dramatic circumstances, but also disinclined to dramatize itself. The same person who reacted so bravely, and on instinct, faced with the child and the oncoming bus, is also likely to say ‘What else was I going to do? No big deal.’

The strength in virtue

The word virtue relates to the Latin with the word for strength. Virtue is strength of character. Virtue fills out what humanity can be. We might be born a work in progress, but that progress can go better or worse, depending on whether that human life is fulfilled in virtue, or hampered by vice. To fall into vices is to live an attenuated life, the glory of our humanity tarnished. To rise to virtue is to live a life of the kind of splendour of which a human being is capable.

Christianity has things to say about the crookedness of our tendency towards doing wrong, but rarely has it denied that we are still capable of making choices that are either better or worse, of performing better or worse actions, and of being formed, as a consequence, into better or worse people. Virtue isn’t the whole Christian story. It might not even be half the story, but it’s an indispensable part.

Offering common ground

Virtue perfects nature, as far as nature goes, but that isn’t the main part of that Christian story. It goes on to say that grace elevates humanity to a state beyond its wildest natural imaginings: to ‘participation in the divine nature’ and being a son or daughter of God. (There will be much more on all of that in other posts on this site). But, while that comment puts virtue in its place, it’s still an elevated place. If you are sympathetic to Christianity, but standing somewhat outside the door of the church, the traditions of thought and practice around virtue might offer common ground: common, both because they are about making the best of a humanity that we share, and common because so much of the thinking about them has been carried out across and beyond confessional lines, the great example being the place of Aristotle – an ancient Greek pagan – in all of this.

The virtues

Aristotle singled out four primary virtues. They are prudence (or practical wisdom), justice, courage, and moderation. To these, the church added three from St Paul: faith, hope, and love. We will think more about each of these in the weeks ahead, as we journey through Lent, and onto Easter.

Who is the honest man?
He that doth still and strongly good pursue;
To God, his neighbour, and himself, most true.
Whom neither force nor fawning can
Unpin, or wrench from giving all their due.

Whose honesty is not
So loose or easy, that a ruffling wind
Can blow away, or glittering look it blind.
Who rides his sure and even trot,
While the world now rides by, now lags behind.

Who, when great trials come,
Nor seeks, nor shuns them, but doth calmly stay,
Till he the thing and the example weigh.
All being brought into a sum,
What place or person calls for, he doth pay.

Who never melts or thaws
At close temptations. When the day is done,
His goodness sets not, but in dark can run.
The sun to others writeth laws,
And is their virtue: virtue is his sun.

George Herbert

'Constancy '(selected stanzas)