The Pilgrim, Contemplative Self: Plotinus’s Platonic Portrait of Perfection

08 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by ryan5551 in Contemplation, Plotinus

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Ascent, Contemplation, Contemplation and Classical Christianity, Dialectic, Epistemology, Plato, Plotinus

In the last post (found here), I discussed at length the epistemology of Plato, focusing especially on his understanding of the spiritual contemplation of beauty. This post will explore and elaborate Plotinus’s view of contemplation.[1] It will do so for two reasons: (1) I find Plotinus a fascinating read and an engaging pedagogical presence in the classroom, and (2) as Kenney notes, “it was in Plotinus that pagan monotheism achieved its clearest philosophical articulation” (16). As in the previous post, I will follow some of the course laid out in John Peter Kenney’s helpful book, Contemplation and Classical Christianity.

As Kenny notes, while Plato’s philosophy terminated in the notion of intelligible being as “first-level transcendence,” Plotinus (following Middle Platonists[2]) moved from intelligible being to the postulation of a first principle, the One. The One was deduced through a “negative or apophatic theology that served to mark off the One’s unique status in reference to the intelligibles,” and thus it “was systematically removed from any finite predication” (16). In the words of Plotinus, the One is an existence, a “presence that is beyond knowledge” (Enneads, 6.9.4, 4).

Plotinus’s Apophatic Method

Plotinus’s postulation of the One was entirely interconnected with his idea of apophatic discourse. Kenney explains, “Apophatic discourse allowed Plotinus to reject any conception that might have allowed the One to be drawn back into the structure of reality, whether that reality was transcendent of the spatio-temporal world or contained within the cosmos” (17-18). Indeed, he later elaborates,

Apophatic theology was thus about challenging the embodied soul’s own self-representation. For to predicate is both to categorize and to occupy a grammatical place as a subject. Affirmative theology is a dualistic process of representation; theological predication accentuates the contemplative soul’s distance from a divine object within the frame of its semantic appraisal. As such it is a mode of theological discourse that promises divine description at the expense of presence. Forcing a separation between the divine and the soul (32).

Apophatic theology is the only way to understand the otherness of the One and simultaneously (and ironically) hold to the monism of reality.

In this manner, Plotinus’s apophatic method forced his system into a philosophical monism, one in which there is a single transcendental principle that is the source of all. His view, Kenney explains, “was thus an inclusive understanding of monotheism; the force of his theology was centered not on establishing a single deity against a plurality of gods but on finding a final divine unity within and behind the cosmos” (18). Notice the departure from Plato at this juncture; notice also that Plotinus rightly can say that he is merely elaborating what Plato has already maintained (cf. Plato, Symposium).

The newness of Plotinus was simple: “The force of Plotinian monotheism rested on a profound paradox: that the One was entirely hidden and intensely present, transcendent of all predicates and yet the immediate ground of all finite being” (19).

Epistemological Basics

Following Plato’s influential wake, Plotinus thus developed his united epistemology. He stressed that knowledge includes the external dimension of the forms that are united in his rational postulation of the “One.” As he asserts, a person “knows” something when the soul begins its “ascent to intellect and there will know the Forms;” moreover, as these forms or ideas “are beauty,” they refer to “the nature of the Good” or “primal beauty” (Enneads, 1:6.9).[3] While Plato merely attaches the external dimension to the forms themselves, therefore, Plotinus places the forms within the mind of the One, who is simple, indivisible, and incomprehensible.[4]

Because the One itself is, as Plotinus says, “simple and without need,” it brought forth into being all things through the process of emanation. The nous (“mind”)—which contains Plato’s forms—proceeds first, and the thinking psuche (“soul”)—which is an intermediary between the celestial (nous) and sub-celestial (body)—proceeds second.^{^[5]} A fact or reality, therefore, is deemed true insofar as it reflects the fact or reality found inside the One.[6] All knowledge, therefore, is ultimately derived from and based upon the One.

Kenney articulates well the advantages of emanation:

First, emanation sharply accentuates the singularity and sufficiency of the One as the source for all other sorts of reality. No primordial stuff is needed…. Second, this ontological cascade is in no way arbitrary or based upon a divine choice among finite alternatives. It is grounded exclusively in the inner life of the One, in its mysterious and infinite existence, and is the One’s best and only finite expression (19-20).

Notice, therefore, that creation and emanation are not sharply contrasted in Plotinus. Kenney writes, “There is, as it were, more volition around than one might suspect in Plotinian monotheism, a residual commitment to the One’s inner volition from which all reality then can be said to depend” (20).

The Tolma and the Dialectic

The metaphysical necessity of emanation, based upon apophatic discourse, thus leads inevitably to the idea of the “fall” in his system. In other words, as the Nous emanates from the One, there is for the first time something other than the One. The Nous, then, contemplates and imitates the perfection of the One, resulting in lower emanations. (While this post will not elaborate the hierarchy of emanations, it is helpful to note that the Nous’s activity here is the groundwork for Plotinus’s prescription of human contemplation of the One.)

After the Nous, the Soul emanated from the One. Plotinus suggests, however, that souls were not content with returning to the One; rather, they had the audacity to desire individuality and otherness: “Now the origin of evil for them [souls] was audacity [tolma] and being born and initial otherness and the desire to be on their own”” (Enneads, 5.1.1, 4-5). While the soul desires distinctiveness and otherness, it ironically loses its understanding of the true self, the highest self, and the One itself.

Therefore, tolma affects all descended things from the One, including human souls. In particular, Kenney writes,

Soul’s procession from the Intellect [Nous] has an irreducibly self-assertive or irrational aspect to it. We harbor, in the very nature of our separateness, a desire for illegitimate distinctiveness born of our deepest, but most obscure, desires. At the core of our embodied nature is self-assertion, a demand for difference and independence. That desire fuels the soul’s descent from Intellect, driving the soul out of the table life of eternity into the rude sequence of time, psychic dispersal, and embodied consciousness (22).

Notably, the soul, according to Plotinus, is not entirely descended in the material world but rather has a higher self in contact with the One. Kenney explains again: “Plotinus maintained that the soul is here in the world at least in part because it chose to decline into materiality. And that act of audacity, of tolma, is an irrational one” (21; cf. Enneads, 5.1.1; 3.7.11). In other words, the soul is not a static thing but may move away from or towards the One. Plotinus summarizes, “So one might say that time is the living nature of the soul in transitional movement from one point of life to another” (3.7.11, 43-5).

This idea leads us to Plotinus’s theory of the dialectic. Tolma requires reunion with the One. As Plotinus suggests, we are able to overcome our tolma through our soul’s discrete powers. In other words, we can tap into powers of our soul. Kenney explains, “The soul had only to turn within itself, to the One present there, and secure access in a higher level of transcendence through theoria” (21). As embodied people, this higher intellectualization is imperfectly available to us as we are imperfectly related to the One.

Therefore, there are two options. The soul may return to its lower, animal-like sense experience, or it may move upwards in its rationality and spirituality. As Plotinus says, “We are this ruling part of the soul between two powers, one better and the other worse; the worse is sense perception, the better is intellect” (5:3.3, 37-40). The intellect is better than the senses, for it has as its telos knowledge and union with the One. Kenney explains, “That intellectual perception is the province of nous. Distinct from our everyday consciousness, it is nonetheless accessible to us through interior contemplation” (25). One can either move further away from the One, deeper into bodily pleasure and individual glory; or, one can move towards the one in contemplation and final metaphysical union. The choice is ours. Wherever we end up is exactly what our soul chose (Enneads, 5:3.9).

The ascent to the One is no easy task. Plotinus describes the ascent in detail in Enneads, 6.9.3, 1-11. Kenney paraphrases Plotinus well:

Here we find an unusual expression of the self’s fears at ascending to the unfamiliar level of the One, lacking as the One does any finite specification of its nature. Since the One is formless (aneideon), the soul is unable to comprehend it and so it becomes afraid that is has encountered nothing at all. It slips back down to the level of perceptible things, where it rejoices at things that seem solid. That suggests once again that the self has a menu of epistemic and ontological options at its disposal. Here the slide of the soul down from the formlessness of the One to the solid earth of perception seems understandable, although behind that description there lurks a host of questions of the moral aspects of this declension, in particular the specific source of the soul’s fright before its infinite source. Thus there is a deep spiritual poignancy in this passage, indicative of the anxiety that the self has with efforts to return to its original source. (27).

Because contemplation is best seen in the context of tolma and ascent, we will now turn to his theory of contemplation.

Contemplation through Ascent

Two things should be noted. First, as discussed before, contemplation is ultimately based upon the primordial activity of the One. As the One emanates, it produces its highest product, the Nous, or intellect. The Nous is the understanding of the One, seeking to contemplate and imitate perfection. As such, the Nous is naturally turned inwards, focusing its vision and imitation on the One itself. Through this contemplation, ironically, it also secures its own independent, secondary existence by an act of self-assertion. Kenney summarizes, “This attention by the first product of the One [that is, Nous] back upon the infinite is the primordial act of contemplation. Contemplation is thus an ontological principle of sorts, holding together the first instance of finite reality and its infinite foundation” (28).[7]

Second, the soul ascends by its own native, latent capacity within itself, that is, its relation to its higher nature. This higher nature can be found through the philosophical dialectic, which achieves understanding the intelligibles (cf. Plato), moderate asceticism, and the practice of virtue. He also prescribed somatic training and meditation. However, as Kenney rightly holds, “Negative theology was the primary method by which the soul could shift its focus from the incarnated self towards the divine and raise itself beyond finite materiality. Apophasis was integral to contemplation” (31).

As discussed before, apophatic theology is the only way to understand the otherness of the One and simultaneously (and ironically) hold to the monism of reality. “Plotinus maintains that when pursued with the proper philosophical guidance, apophatic contemplation offers a deep communion with the One as the boundaries of embodied consciousness dissolve. In order to discover the infinite ne, the soul must seek “a presence beyond knowledge’ (6:9.4,3). It must practice descriptive diffidence, and submit to a frameless cognition that rejects epistemic intentionality” (32).

Now to discuss what the ascent ‘looks like’, so to speak…. Echoing Plato, Plotinus maintains an internal principle to knowledge wherein the person is part of the recollective process or, as he prefers, the ascent unto knowledge.^{^[8]} But Plotinus went beyond his intellectual teacher by positing a mystical stage, a “dance,” wherein the person is “transfigured to the godhead, nay, being in essence God;” therefore, the “Divine” is “not distinct but one with his own consciousness” (Enneads, 6:9.9, 10).^{^[9]} In other words, the ascent is not so much an escape from reality through intellectual cleansing (Plato) as a return to the One in mystical union.^{^[10]} The ascent is thus a vigorous enterprise, requiring ethical purification, knowledge, and intellectual and mystical union with the One.[11] It is not surprising, therefore, that Plotinus and his followers held that only an enlightened person could achieve participation.^{^[12]} Steven Strange summarizes well: “The participant is to be thought of as somehow active in participation: it ‘approaches’ the Idea in ‘striving’ to be like it, while the Idea remains unmoved and impassive.”^{^[13]}

There are consequently two elements within Plotinus’ epistemology: (1) the passive nature of the object of knowledge itself and (2) the active nature of a person’s knowledge that culminates in the ecstatic union with the One.^{^[14]} Plotinus’s integration of both elements allows him, like Plato before him, to maintain an external and internal basis for knowledge and thus achieve (at least partially) a unified epistemology.

Contemplation, then, is a rational necessity in Plotinus’s system. It allows him to explain what we ought to do and from what reality is ultimately produced.

[1]For a provocative biographical discussion of Plotinus, see M. J. Edwards, “A Portrait of Plotinus,” The Classical Quarterly 43:2 (1993): 480-490.

[2]Plotinus moves beyond Plato and Middle Platonism by his exultation of the first principle, the One. However, Middle Platonism did generally speak of a transcendent nous, a divine mind, that is over the world, but it did not speak of a primary, apophatic principle, like the One of Plotinus.

[3]Plotinus, Enneads, 7 vols., trans. A. H. Armstrong, LCL (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989, 1979, 1980, 1984, 1984, 1988, 1988).

[4]As he argues, the One is best identified with the concepts or principles of Good and Beauty (Plotinus, Enneads, 1:6.9, cf. 1:6.6). In other words, he follows Plato by suggesting that the highest conception of the forms is the Beauty/Good, and he thereafter goes beyond Plato by suggesting that this highest conception is best understood as the One. This One, it must be added, cannot be explained or reasoned; it simply is and is without deficiency (Ibid., 3:8.11; 5:6.6). It is purely dynamis or potentiality without which nothing could exist (3:8.10).

^{^[5]}Ibid., 5:6.4, cf. 1:6.6, 9; 4:8.7. Namely, Plotinus argues that that Good itself, the One, “will not need thinking” (Ibid.), for thinking itself is a product of the ineffable One. Intellect or thinking is thus an expression of the One as it is “thinking the Good” (Ibid.). The soul, then, is an expression of the intellect as it thinks itself. He concludes on the relation of the One, nous, and soul: “The First should be compared to light, the next, to the sun, and the third, to the celestial body of the moon” (Ibid.). The One, therefore, is the ultimate divine light from and to which all other things emanate. For an excellent yet simple discussion, see Gerson, God and Greek Philosophy, 201-211, 221-226; cf. John N. Deck, Nature, Contemplation, and the One: A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967).

[6]He expresses this idea in Ibid., 5:6.4: “For Soul [psuche] has intellect as an external addition which colours it when it is intellectual, but Intellect has it in itself as its own, and is not only light but that which is enlightened in its own being; and that which gives it light is nothing else but is simple light giving Intellect the power to be what it is. Why then would it have need of anything?” In other words, the One does not think; the One simply is. The nous, which emanates from the One, is thinking Intellect, that which thinks the highest possible thoughts (i.e., the One). The psuche, which emanates from the nous, thinks only at it participates in the one. And such participation takes place via the nous, via the One. Knowledge or truth is thus ultimately only knowledge or truth as it derives from the One.

[7]Interestingly, Kenney notes, “In this way the primordial act of self-assertion is woven into the ontological self-expression of the One, and the fall becomes, as it were, both a culpable act and a moment of divine self-expression. For Plotinus, these two values are never wholly distinct. And so the finite reality that emerges from the One is thus both the best that can have emerged from the Good and also a fall Tom its perfection, never free from the tincture of that primordial choice and yet longing always for redress and return” (28).

^{^[8]}Plotinus, Enneads, 4:8.6-8; cf. Ibid., 1:6.9; Copleston, History of Philosophy, 1:470; Canlis, Calvin’s Ladder, 27-28. He begins, “If, then, there must not be just one alone—for then all things would have been hidden, shapeless within that one, and not a single real being would have existed” (Ibid., 4:8.6). In other words, the process of recollection and ascent necessarily presume the fact of one principle, that is, the One. The process of knowledge thus assumes an ascent, or growth, as a “seed”: “from a partless beginning” to a “final stage” (Ibid.). This ascent thus entails participation in the One, for anyone could share in knowledge “as far as each thing was able to participate in it” (Ibid.). Consequently, the soul “should not be annoyed with itself because . . . it occupies a middle rank among realities [between the One and matter]” (Ibid., 4:8.7). In other words, all knowledge happens only through the soul’s perception of the eternal One, for “there is always something of it in the intelligible,” whether this be something merely in sense perception or contemplation of the divine (Ibid., 4:8.8). Knowledge is had through the soul’s recollection and ascent into the divine.

^{^[9]}Plotinus, Enneads, 6:9.9, 10, cf. Copleston’s translation in idem, History of Philosophy, I:471; and Joseph Katz’s excellent discussion of Plotinus’s mysticism in idem, Plotinus’ Search for the Good (New York: King’s Crown, 1950), 15-28. Indeed, as Plotinus continues, the person can reach this mystical realm, which is the epitome of the “active actuality of the Intellect,” out of which springs all knowledge such as good, beauty, righteousness, and virtue (Ibid., 6:9.9). The person wants such knowledge because the soul “in her natural state is in love with God and wants to be united with him” (Ibid.).

^{^[10]}As Plotinus continues, this is why the mystical ascent entails, among other things, that there is ethical transformation and thus an absence of duality (Plotinus, Enneads, 6:9.9; cf. Gerson, God and Greek Philosophy, 221-226).

[11]On account of the human soul’s contamination through its union with the material body, the soul must first ethically ascend in order to be mystically transformed and purified (Plotinus, Enneads, 4:8.6-8; cf. Copleston, History of Philosophy, I:470; Canlis, Calvin’s Ladder, 27-28). The first stages of this ascent follow Plato: purification, knowledge, and union with the Nous (“mind”). Purification is the first stage whereby the person, under the impulse of eros, frees himself or herself from the dominion of the body and its senses and instead practices virtue. As Plotinus rhetorically asks throughout the opening section, “What could be more fitting than that we, living in this world, should become like to its ruler(?),” a question that explicitly attempts to follow Plato’s reasoning in his Symposium (Plotinus, Enneads, 1.2.1). Knowledge is the second stage whereby a person rises above his sense perception and turns towards the Nous in the study of philosophy and science (Ibid., 1.3.4; the “Nous” here corresponds to the Nous of Aristotle, which, again, is that which is uncontaminated by matter [Copleston, 1:471]). As he continues later, it is through this “ascent to intellect” that the person “will know the Forms” (Ibid., 1:6.9). The union with Nous, the third stage, is that stage whereby the person rises about discursive thought to union with the Nous (Ibid., 6:9.9-10). Plotinus characterizes this stage as “protos kalos,” that is, “first beauty.” cf. Hajime Nakamura, A Comparative History of Ideas (Jawahar Nagar, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992), 313. These three stages, then, lead to the fourth and final one, a stage beyond Plato, whereby a person is mystically united with the One.

^{^[12]}Proclus Diadochus, Commentary on the First Alcibiades of Plato, trans. L. G. Westerink (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1954), III. For example, Iamblichus also argued for the necessary value of divine illumination. As one scholar summarizes him, he says, “We must look to divine revelation in order to ascertain the means of entering upon union with God” (Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:477; cf. I:476-477). Indeed, Plotinus “regards mystical experience as the supreme attainment of the true philosopher” (Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:472). For a more recent discussion, see Edward Moore, “‘Likeness to God as Far as Possible’: Deification Doctrine in Iamblichus and Three Church Fathers,” Theandros 3:1 (2005). The assertion will also be defended implicitly in the following discussion on Augustine.

^{^[13]}Steven K. Strange, “Plotinus’ Account of Participation in Ennead VI:4-5” JHP 30:4 (1992): 495, cf. 479-496. For an excellent discussion of Plotinus’s mysticism, see Joseph Katz, Plotinus’ Search for the Good (New York: King’s Crown, 1950), 15-28.

^{^[14]}Regarding this summary, one scholar wisely perceives, “Christian theology leaned heavily on these concepts, and it was not without temptation and crucifixion that it gradually (and not entirely) transformed them” (Canlis, Calvin’s Ladder, 29).

Plato’s Spiritual Epistemology: The Nature and Result of Contemplation in the Writings of Plato

26 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by ryan5551 in Contemplation, Plato

≈ 1 Comment

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Beatific Vision, Contemplation, Contemplation and Classical Christianity, Dialectic, Epistemology, John Peter Kenney, Plato, Recollection

The following post is more substantial and lengthy than usual. I may have gotten carried away. I make no apologies, however. 🙂

After reading John Peter Kenney’s Contemplation and Classical Christianity, I am on a philosophical kick again. In the next couple posts, I want to summarize Plato and Plotinus’s view of ‘contemplation,’ which they summarize variously as they discuss recollection/dialectic (Plato) and the soul’s epistemic, ethical, and mystical ascent (Plotinus). While these views are not biblical, and while they do not adhere to the Christian worldview, they are interesting and useful, profitably contributing to the broad contours of a philosophical account of spiritual epistemology.

Indeed, I find myself often defending Plato and Plotinus in the classroom. My students (especially at Ivy Tech) generally do not like these two philosophers. While I may disagree with these men’s views, I have to defend them. They purport thoughtful, relatively holistic, and constructive views. Their views are simply too profound and elegant to ignore them or shrug them off.

In this post, I want to discuss Plato and his unique position that elaborated, focusing, in the end, on his theory of contemplation. In order to accomplish this goal, this post will be a bit lengthy, discussing (1) the contours of contemplation in ancient Greece in general, (2) Plato’s view of dualism (especially body-soul), (3) his epistemology following his dualism, and finally (4) his account of contemplation.

Three preliminary notes: First, I am not being anachronistic to suggest that Plato held to a form of contemplation. As I will show throughout this post, his postulation of recollection necessarily led to an epistemic dialectic between ‘this’ world and the world of forms; this dialectic, in its final stage of gazing beauty, is itself what can rightly be called contemplation. Kenney, as far as I read him, would agree with this general assessment as well. Second, throughout my post, I am defining contemplation as that restful, transcendent gazing upon the divine, or in Plato’s case, the higher forms (especially of the Good/Beauty). Third, this post is a sketch. While it is lengthy, I am in no way attempting to be comprehensive. As always, I am open to feedback.

The Contours of Contemplation in Ancient Greece

Philosophically speaking, the need for and use of contemplation begin whenever a worldview holds to a kind of dualism, especially a dualism between a ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’ world. This kind of dualism may be loosely discerned in Heraclitus, as he postulated that the material flux of the empirical world was united by a transcendental Logos above. Dualism is also existent in Pythagoras’s conception of a spiritual and transcendent reality, even beyond that of the immaterial numbers. (While we do not have record of how he elaborates this notion, I think that it is implicit in his nod to the existence of the immaterial soul.) Even Parmenides’s more rational conception of the unchanging ‘One’ might have lent itself towards a ‘formal’ dualism, though we have no record of this. I am simply communicating that these proto-dualistic views—if I can call them this—contain the bare minimum ingredients necessary for the construction of a philosophical development of contemplation.

Plato’s Dualism

Historically speaking, the need for and use of philosophical conceptions of contemplation did not arise until the thoughtful architecture provided by Plato. Plato suggested that there is a dualism between the world as we empirically know it (the world of matter) and the world that must be (the world of forms). The latter reality is the transcendental grounding of the former. One might liken the forms to the universal blueprints of the world of matter. In the same way that a building infers the existence of an architectural blueprint, so also the reality of matter implies a design. If there is no design, if matter is all there is, then there can be no universals (such as goodness, justice, ethics, etc.). Indeed, if there is no blueprint, then there is no acceptable explanation concerning composition and form of one material thing versus another. Plato finds these suppositions problematic, rejects them, and thus avers the necessary existence of a transcendental world. In this way, Plato asserts what can be called classical transcendentalism, which, Kenney explains, is “the postulation of a level of reality that is both separate from the world of space and time and also superior to that world” (15).

For example, Plato often maintains that the body is an impediment to the soul. One cannot have true knowledge or attain full wisdom while the body is connected to the soul. Why? Plato answers on the basis that the body’s “companionship disturbs the soul and hinders it from attaining truth and wisdom” (Phaedo, 66a). The body is even “contaminated by such an evil” that “we shall never attain completely what we desire, that is, the truth” (Ibid., 66b). He reasons that the body has all sorts of needs (e.g., physical, emotional, etc.), in addition to being evil, and these issues distract the soul’s pursuit (66c). He concludes,

Because of all these things, we have no leisure for philosophy. But the worst of all is that if we do get a bit of leisure and turn to philosophy, the body is constantly breaking in upon our studies and disturbing us with noise and confusion, so that it prevents our beholding the truth, and in fact we perceive that, if we are ever to know anything absolutely, we must be free from the body and must behold the actual realities with the eye of the soul alone (66d-e).

Consequently, Plato maintains that we need to avoid, “so far as possible,” sex, communion with the body, purity, and all foolishness of the body (67a-b).[1] While embodied, in other words, the soul is affected by the material powers of the body. While reason (i.e., the soul) must drive the chariot, the reality is that embodied people necessarily fail. A person is only released from the effects of the body after physical death. Notably, Plato suggests, a person can (partially) overcome the powers of the body through the soul’s moral attempts toward perfection, that is, moral goodness (cf. 67a-b). For these reasons, Kenny also notes, Socrates himself even allows suicide (cf. 62b-c). The soul is the source of moral goodness within itself, for it—and it alone—has been eternally acquainted with the forms. A person can therefore know and do the good through cultivating the powers of the soul. (Notice how Plato’s argument runs entirely against the Christian worldview at these points—the nature and goodness of the soul, the relation between soul and body, the soul of goodness, and suicide.)

Plato’s Epistemology

In order to understand more comprehensively Plato’s notion of contemplation, it is necessary to explore his epistemology on a general basis. Plato’s thought contains a surprisingly united epistemology. In his view, knowledge is attained through a person’s intuition of the forms. The forms are the eternal and immutable basis of knowledge and objectivity in the material world. Plato argued that the forms are constants or universals, accounting for logic, justice, moral absolutes, and human dignity, among other things. Individual things (e.g., a table) are particular instances of these universals that “participate” in the universals (e.g., brownness, hardness, woodness, etc.). In other words, following Heraclitus, Plato accepts the relativity of sense knowledge and the fact that this world of matter is in flux; following Parmenides, he also accepts the existence of a transcendental world that can account for stability.[2] As he argues in the Republic, in the same way that the light of fire is derivative of the light of the sun, so also knowledge of material things is derivative of the forms.[3] Given his understanding of the forms, he continues in the Theaetetus to argue staunchly against the idea that “knowledge is perception.”[4] Under the guise of Socrates, he instead maintains that knowledge, as it corresponds to the forms, is objective and immutable, so much so that the person is an “infallible judge” of truth.[5] Using the broad language of my dissertation, knowledge for Plato includes an external dimension, that is, the unchanging forms.

Some influential scholars, such as Georg Hegel, unhelpfully terminate their description of Plato’s epistemology at this point, contending that Plato is merely an externalist or objectivist.[6] This argument, however, fails. Plato continues to suggest that knowledge includes what you might call an internal dimension, which is grounded in his conception of recollection and the dialectic process. Plato’s concept of recollection (“anamnesis”) makes the claim that the objective forms of the world exist in the person’s mind through intuition. Through this multifarious process, the person is in contact with the eternal forms so that the forms are apprehensible by the intellect.^{^[7]} Therefore, Plato’s concept of recollection is grounded on the fact that knowledge includes not only the immutable but also the mutable, not only the external forms but also the internal person.^{^[8]} The person thus knows only in so much as their immortal soul recollects (i.e., intuits) the forms. This epistemic action is the soul’s^{^[9]} ascent towards knowledge, that is, the higher ideals of beauty. (I will discuss this process more in the following section.)

Recollection, Dialectic, and Contemplation

The preceding begins to illuminate Plato’s basic conception of contemplation. Indeed, Plato’s concept of recollection itself is an upward dialectic process. As a person lives, he begins to recall or re-collect the truth of reality through his familiarity with the forms. Because all souls—before embodiment—were ‘swimming around’ the celestial pool of the forms, to put it crudely, all people have recollection of the universals.

Recollection, therefore, is an upward dialectic process. According to Plato, the dialectic process is a mental progression whereby the person is able to arrive at knowledge itself. Plato also calls this process the ascent towards knowledge—something that his follower, Plotinus, extensively elaborated (see my next post). As Plato says, by the person’s dialectic, the soul is raised “to the contemplation of that which is best in existence.” Or, more literally, this activity “has the ability to uplift the best part of the soul toward the contemplation of the best in things that are in the real world (Plato, Republic, 532c-d, cf. 531d–534d).”^{^[10]} Plato thus bridges the external and internal in knowledge as he simultaneously maintains the objectivity of truth in the world of forms and the internal subjectively of the person whose knowledge (correctly) corresponds to those forms. Copleston sums masterfully,

Man appears as the knowing and willing subject, the being who realizes, or should realize true values in his individual life and in the life of society, the being endowed with an immortal soul; and human knowledge, human nature, human conduct and human society, are made the subject of profound and penetrating analyses and considerations.^{^[11]}

Knowledge requires the immutable forms and the mutable mind, which knows the forms through the re-collective dialectic process. Knowledge, in other words, is acquired through an upward process whereby the person recollects the universal and thereby contemplates good/beauty itself, the highest, most abstract form. (Because Plato can speak of good and beauty simultaneously as the most transcendent form, I will henceforth call it ‘beauty’ for short.)

The final stage for Plato, so to speak, is gazing beauty itself, which is the result of contemplation. While the soul has no sensory experience of the “good,” “just,” or “beautiful,” it can apprehend them intellectually (Phaedo, 65d-e). This is the importance of a rational, contemplative mindset (that is, a mindset attuned to the higher transcendental realities). As Kenney notes, the soul alone, at the height of its epistemic power, may grasp these intelligibles (15).

Thus, unsurprisingly, there is a strong association between contemplation and the soul’s salvation in Plato’s writings (cf. Symposium, 210a-e).[12] Plato elaborates the association through the words of a wise Mantinean woman,

When a man has been thus far tutored in the lore of love, passing from view to view of beautiful things, in the right and regular ascent, suddenly he will have revealed to him, as he draws to the close of his dealings in love, a wondrous vision, beautiful in its nature; and this, Socrates, is the final object of all those previous toils (210e).

The lover of beauty, she continues, is characterized as such:

Beginning from obvious beauties he must for the sake of that highest beauty be ever climbing aloft, as on the rungs of a ladder, from one to two, and from two to all beautiful bodies; from personal beauty he proceeds to beautiful observances, from observance to beautiful learning, and from learning at last to that particular study which is concerned with the beautiful itself and that alone; so that in the end he comes to know the very essence of beauty. In that state of life above all others, my dear Socrates,’ said the Mantinean woman, ‘a man finds it truly worthwhile to live, as he contemplates essential beauty. This, when once beheld, will outshine your gold and your vesture, your beautiful boys and striplings, whose aspect now so astounds you and makes you and many another, at the sight and constant society of your darlings, ready to do without either food or drink if that were any way possible, and only gaze upon them and have their company (211c-d).

Summarizing Plato here, one might say that life is not about knowing or loving material things; rather it is about contemplating spiritual, transcendental things. Life is about going ever upward for the sake of beauty to the form of beauty itself. This higher, intelligible beauty exists without change. It is, as Kenney summarizes Plato, the stable paradigm in which beautiful things in this world participate (cf. 211b). As it looks within itself (by contemplation), the soul brings forth fruits “in a plenteous crop of philosophy” (210d), and herein it can perceive the transcendental nature of beauty itself (210e). By contemplating true being itself, the soul might even become immortal (211d). As Kenney well notes, this is the salvific promise of contemplation (15).

Elsewhere, in the Republic, while Plato discusses the allegory of the cave, he also hints at contemplation’s true goal, that is, what later philosophers and theologians would call the ‘beatific vision’:

My opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of the Good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual (Republic, 517b-c).

“The Good” (or “Beauty”) is the highest, most abstract form for Plato, the form in which all other forms participate. For Plato, this form is the author of all others, albeit mysteriously. As later Christian theologians would summarize (e.g., Augustine), the form is analogous to the idea of God.

I will tentatively summarize Plato’s view of knowledge as the following (though bear in mind that this post does not intend to do so comprehensively): (1) empiricism, as it corresponds with the world of matter, is a necessary but incomplete epistemology; (2) knowledge fundamentally is rationally drawn through a recollective process grounded on the world of forms; (3) this knowledge is thus directed upwards in a dialectic process of moving from concrete to abstract forms (e.g., from the ideal color “royal blue” to the ideal reality “beauty”); (4) the philosopher consequently ought to direct his mind upwards into contemplation of the truth; and (5) this temporal contemplation is experienced in perfection through the beatific vision. I realize that Plato’s writings do not consistently distinguish points 2-5. There is a huge debate in Plato studies here, but I will have to refrain. My opinion should be clear: At the very least, I believe that formal distinctions amongst 2-5 are helpful to the reader.

Conclusion

Plato has plenty to say about gazing at the immovable, that is, beauty. Contemplation (or, as he more often calls it, the dialectic or theoria) even becomes a central theme throughout his writings. Indeed, glancing at his philosophy in general, contemplation is the epistemological hinge from which his philosophy swings. As he maintains in the baldest sense, there must be a transcendental world; the only way to know this world is through something like recollection; therefore, the most attuned person, the philosopher, is the person who knows ultimate reality as it is grounded in the forms. Contemplation is thus the postulation that unites his ideological philosophy. It is the only way to know and experience the other, as later philosophers would assert.

Obviously, this post is not prescribing Plato’s view. While I do find it fascinating and insightful, it is important to remember that it is not Christian. A later post will articulate things we can learn from Plato and Plotinus, but here I can only emphasize that his view of contemplation can be devastating. Indeed, following platonic emphases, many early Christian thinkers naturally but harmfully distinguished contemplation from practice, suggesting that the most virtuous person does not “do” something (e.g., feeding the poor) so much as “gaze” at God. Sadly, as I have experienced, many Christians today implicitly hold to a similar distinction, believing that the more spiritual person is the one who “knows” the most. Anyway, I will tackle this issue at a later time.

Thank you for reading. I realize that this post is not as tight as some of my other posts. It is simply a reflection and elaboration of Plato’s understanding of contemplation and, broadly, his epistemology.

My next post will describe Plotinus’s elaboration of the theory of contemplation.

[1]Translations from Plato, Plato in Twelve Volumes, vol. 1, trans. Harold North Fowler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966).

[2]Cf. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:149-150; 164-165; L. P. Gerson, God and Greek Philosophy: Studies in the Early History of Natural Theology (London: Routledge, 1990), 33-39. These forms exist on their own, apart from the world of the material (Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:166ff., cf. 174-175). The forms, in fact, are analogous to numbers (Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, 4:251ff., 525; cf. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:194-196). For an excellent and comprehensive understanding of Plato’s theory of knowledge, see I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato’s Doctrine’s: Volume II, Plato on Knowledge and Reality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), 1-152. Therefore, while Plato was primarily concerned with the objectivity of knowledge of persons, as Copleston notes, “Plato’s effort was not to enrich, beautify and transmute this world by subjective evocations, but to pass beyond the sensible world to the world of thought, the Transcendental Reality” (Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:205).

[3]Plato, Republic, in vol. 6 of Plato, trans. Chris Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy, LCL [Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2013], 516A-517B. Put in another way: just as the Sun is the source of the “seasons, and the years, and governs everything in the visible world,” so also the forms are the source and stability for all knowledge (Ibid., 516B). Plato suggests this analogy in the context of his allegory of the cave. In this allegory, Plato describes people living chained to the wall of a cave for all of their lives. As the fire from the cave casts shadows on the wall, people can only see and describe these shadows. The philosopher, however, is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, but that reality is rather something greater than he could have imagined (Ibid., 514A-520A).

[4]Or, he also says, “perception is knowledge,” an idea that Plato attributes especially to Protagoras, in whom Theaetetus enthusiastically places his trust (Plato, Theaetetus, Sophist, 151E).

[5]Ibid., 160D. In other words, the immutable soul of the person, as it was eternally familiar with the world of forms, may know things objectively according to its familiarity with the forms (cf. Ibid., 160-210). Indeed, continues Plato, existence and non-existence cannot be perceived by wavering perception but only by immutable reason, lest a person confuse existence with a mirage (Ibid.; cf. cf. Copleston, 1:144-146). Plato therefore moves from defining knowledge as perception, as does Protagoras (Ibid., 151E-187), to knowledge as true judgment (Ibid., 187-202), and finally to knowledge as true judgment with a logos or an account (Ibid., 202-210). He continues to suggest that the objects of knowledge must be stable and abiding, fixed, capable of being grasped in clear and scientific definition, which is of the universal (cf. Ibid., 209-210). He concludes, “Then, it seems, if asked, ‘What is knowledge?’ our leader will reply that it is right opinion with the addition of a knowledge of difference; for that would, according to him, be the addition of reason or explanation” (Ibid., 210A).

[6]As Hegel writes with regards to Plato’s Republic, “[T]he principle of subjective freedom is lacking, i.e., the principle that the individual’s substantive activity . . . shall be mediated through his particular volition” (Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox, in Great Books of the Western World, vol. 46, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins [Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952], 100 [section 299]). Hegel goes on to show that, in Plato, the person in knowledge is completely overlooked (Ibid., 100-106 [sections 300-320]). Or, as he writes elsewhere, Plato “absolutely excluded” the “principle of self-subsistent particularity” from the state and family so that the “subjective will” or “subjective freedom” is “denied;” as he continues, he notes that “this principle dawned in an inward form in the Christian religion” (Ibid., 64 [section 185]). In other words, he suggests that Plato was only interested in the external or outward form of knowledge (as he overlooked the inward or subjective principle), and the inward form of knowledge was only expanded through later Christian writings. While Hegel is right that Plato tends to emphasize the external dimension of knowledge, at least in this particular analysis, he often overlooks the rest of Plato’s philosophy outside of the Republic.

^{^[7]}Plato, Symposium, in vol. 3 of Plato, trans. W. R. Lamb, LCL (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 175-208. The eternal forms, then, are truly known and acted upon by the person. For example, Plato (in the guise of Socrates) suggests that we know love and beauty through this process. He uses the example of Alcestis, Orpheus, Achilles and several others to make his point (Ibid., 179, 201, 206). Contact with the forms, then, simultaneously presumes the immortality of the soul (Ibid., 206). In this sense, Plato’s high view of the forms is inseparable from his high view of the subject of the person (Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, 4:389; Michael L. Morgan, “Plato and Greek Religion,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed. Richard Kraut [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992], 236-238). This idea does not entail that the forms are confined to the mind (Gerson, God and Greek Philosophy, 33-39, 52-56; Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:174-175, cf. 1:164). For an excellent discussion on recollection, especially concerning Plato’s Meno, see J. T. Bedu-Addo, “Sense-Experience and Recollection in Plato’s Meno” AJP 104:3 (1983): 228-248; or Norman Gulley, “Plato’s Theory of Recollection” CQ 4:3/4 (1954): 194-213.

^{^[8]}This argument runs contra Parmenides, with whom he often dueled. In the Sophist, for example, he says that the philosopher must include both the “moveable and immoveable” in his definition or understanding of “being and the universe” (Plato, Theaetetus, Sophist, 249D). He is obviously responding to Parmenides’ conception of being here. Moreover, Plato continues, both “motion and rest” are real and not opposed to one another, and thus we must admit what changes and change itself are real things (Ibid., 250A; cf. 250B-261; cf. Copleston, 1:187-8; 1:179ff.). For Parmenides, see Parmenides, Fragments, in Plato and Parmenides: Parmenides’ ‘Way of Truth’ and Plato’s Parmenides Translated with an Introduction and a Running Commentary, ed. Francis MacDonald Cornford (London: Humanities Press, 1951); and his Fragments, in The Fragments of Parmenides, ed. A. H. Coxon (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1986).

^{^[9]}He calls the soul the motion of the body. This idea is perceived most clearly in Plato, Laws, in vol. 11 of Plato, trans. R. G. Bury, LCL (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984), 896:A-B, 775ff., wherein he defines the soul as “the motion able to move itself.” It is, therefore, “self-movement,” or the movement of the self. It is the volitional or willful capacity of (or rather, within) the body. For an excellent discussion here, see Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:207-209.

^{^[10]}Therefore, the dialectic allows one to transcend the flux of reality and to know that which is truly infallible. As Guthrie notes, the dialectic “aims directly at a knowledge of beauty and goodness” and ultimately “reaches the self-authenticating source of their existence and intelligibility: the Form of the Good” (Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, 1:524, 526; cf. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:151-160). In this sense, the ascent is primarily intellectual. It was not religious or mystical (cf. A. E. Taylor, Plato, the Man and His Work [London: Methuen, 1926], 225). Copleston suggests a possibility of the latter, but he concedes that its more likely upward, ethical or intellectual dialectic (Copleston, A History of Philosophy, I:197, 200). Namely, Plato writes in his Symposium, “Beginning from obvious beauties he must for the sake of that highest beauty be ever climbing aloft, as on the rings of a ladder . . . so that in the end he comes to know the very essence of beauty” (Plato, Symposium, 211C; cf. 179, 201, 206; cf. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:199-200; Julie Canlis, Calvin’s Ladder: A Spiritual Theology of Ascent and Ascension [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010], 26-27). This ascent includes a threefold ethical and intellectual process: purification, illumination, and contemplative union (Plato, Symposium, 210 A-D [Diotema’s Speech]; cf. 179, 201, 206; he explains the ascent in terms of beginning with [1] purifying beauty by being “in love with one particular body,” [2] illuminating beauty by seeing how the beauty attached to the first body is “cognate” to others, and finally, and of “higher value,” [3] “contemplating” the splendor of the soul until “he decries a certain single knowledge connected with a beauty which has yet to be told” [Ibid.].). For other excellent descriptions of the dialectic, see Ian Mueller, “Mathematical Method, Philosophical Truth,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed. Richard Kraut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 183-194; and John Sallis, Being and Logos: The Way of Platonic Dialogue, 2^nd ed. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities, 1986). Interestingly, some argue that Plato replaced his earlier idea of recollection (i.e. anamnesis) with the dialectic (cf. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, V:174, n. 2). As Guthrie notes, however, most scholars do not take this recourse.

^{^[11]}Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:491. In other words, Plato, for all his emphasis on the object, also left room for the person in knowledge by his understanding of recollection and the person’s dialectic process.

[12]All references from Plato, Plato in Twelve Volumes, vol. 9, trans. Harold N. Fowler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925).

A Look at Thomas Keating: The Benefits and Pitfalls of His View of Contemplation

16 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by ryan5551 in Contemplation

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Contemplation, Mysticism, Open Mind Open Heart, Thomas Keating

In order to dispel confusion on the topic of contemplation, today’s post will clarify certain benefits and problems inherent in some forms of the ancient practice. In order to accomplish this goal, I will use as an example Thomas Keating’s quaint book, Open Mind, Open Heart (1986). The title itself may beckon cheesy chick-flicks or, even worse, a Lifetime movie special on the horrors of unrequited love. In actuality, however, the book is refreshing and contains many great nuggets of truth. It is worth the buy. (You can do so here.)

Keating’s book also sometimes purports less desirable forms of contemplation. I say, “less desirable;” and not, “anti-gospel.” There will be no finger pointing today. I simply want to contrast an evangelical form of contemplation from Keating’s Roman Catholic and sometimes mystical perspective. I also realize that Keating, while an influence for the last 60 years, does not speak for all those who contemplate. The purpose of the post is simply to explain Keating’s view of contemplation, which contains both strengths and weaknesses, in order to learn from them as evangelicals.

Throughout many of my previous posts, I have mentioned that contemplation is somewhat content centered, that is, centered on the gospel of Jesus Christ. I also mentioned that contemplation is the quiet, restful, and ruminating side of communion with Christ. Keating also assumes these realities at times: “Jesus in his divinity is the source of contemplation,” as, for example, in the case of the transfiguration (16, cf. 17 for an elaboration).

But he can also say that the real problem confronting contemplators is not their sin but rather their thinking: “The chief thing that separates us from God is the thought that we are separated from him” (44). I can certainly appreciate some of Keating’s sentiment if he refers only to believers in Christ, who are already washed in his blood but struggling through sanctification; yet, Keating’s words undoubtedly demonstrate a low view of sin, which is all too common in various strands of contemplation. One does not need to scour the history books to find examples of mystics affirming Keating at this juncture. (This is a later blog to be developed.)

Perhaps Keating’s following analogy clarifies what he means:

“Contemplative prayer is a way of awakening to the reality in which we are immersed. We rarely think of the air we breathe, yet it is in us and around us all the time. In a similar fashion, the presence of God penetrates us, is all around us, is always embracing us. Our awareness, unfortunately, is not awake to that dimension of reality. The purpose of prayer, the sacraments, and spiritual disciples is to awaken us” (44-45).

And: “God’s presence is available at every moment, but we have a giant obstacle in ourselves—our world view. It needs to be exchanged for the mind of Christ, for his world view. The mind of Christ is ours through faith and baptism . . . but to take possession of it requires a discipline that develops the sensitivity to hear Christ’s invitation: ‘behold I stand at the door and knock; if anyone opens I will come in and sup with him and he with me’ (Rev 3:20). It is not a big effort to open a door” (45).

In a large sense, I agree with Keating here and elsewhere: a major problem that confronts human people is their own distorted worldviews. However, again, to say that flawed thinking is the “chief” problem misses the larger issue. The fundamental problem is not so much epistemological (thinking, worldview) as ontological (sin, separation, etc.). Keating’s analogies are insightful, even brilliant, but his metatheology sometimes misses the mark, at least from an evangelical vantage point.

Moreover, Keating helpfully identifies the importance and reality of the inner spiritual life of the believer. As he rightly notes, the heart of the monastic life was not so much its structures but rather its interior life in contemplation (29). He also effectively summarizes the lectio divina in several places: (1) the reflective part is meditation, which consists of pondering the words of Scripture; (2) the spontaneous part is affective prayer as one responds to the reflections; and (3) the contemplative part is where the reflections and acts of will are simplified as one moves into rest in the presence of God (20). Furthermore, he makes contemplation practical for people in new and insightful ways. He explains at least three steps: (1) silence, calmness; (2) focus on a “sacred word;” and (3) rest in God. I especially like his focus on “intention” and not “attention” in contemplative prayer.

Lastly, Keating rightly identifies God’s work in contemplation: “In contemplative prayer the Spirit places us in a position where we are at rest and disinclined to fight. By his secret anointings the Spirit heals the wounds of our fragile human nature at a level beyond our psychological perception, just as a personal who is anesthetized has no idea of how the operation is going until after it is over. Interior silence is the perfect seed bed for divine love to take root” (45). While his suggestion here faces some of the same objections I previously noted, he carefully notes God’s spiritual work, which functions as a scalpel in our hearts as we silently rest in him.

Nevertheless, Keating often identifies the inner life of the human in contemplation in odd and perhaps unbiblical manners. In one instance, he peculiarly states that the object of contemplation is to “deepen our contact with the ground of our own being” (46). If he refers to introspection here, then his sentiment is understandable; but it seems odd to say “our own being.” Is not the object communion with God in Christ by the Spirit? (Other times he does suggest this reality.) In another instance, while he rightly notes that our thoughts and feelings must be resting on something (34-35), he then elaborates, “They are resting on the inner stream of consciousness, which is our participation in God’s being” (35). Granted that all things, including our thoughts, are ultimately held together in Christ (Col 1:15); yet his view tends to associate too quickly our thoughts and our participation in God’s being. I cannot help but discern an implicit mysticism and even pantheism in some of these statements. Perhaps I misunderstand.

The point of this post is in no way to demean Keating’s work; it is also not to set up the proverbial whipping boy. I greatly respect and appreciate his insights. Rather, recognizing the distinct possibility for theological problems in the controversial subject of contemplation, this post has sought to show how my understanding of contemplation is similar and different from another view, namely, Thomas Keating’s view. Hopefully, the post has related the positives of Keating’s view throughout; hopefully, it has demonstrated some potential pitfalls as well. (I am sure that my view has as many pitfalls.)

In short, Keating’s work is excellent and practically relatable, yet it sometimes misplaces or ignores the theological foundations of contemplation, namely, those related to the seriousness of sin and the centrality of the cross. (For a more coherent treatment of theological foundations, see Kyle Strobel’s excellent article, “In Your Light They Shall See Light” in the Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care.)

How should one contemplate? By reading Scripture, meditating it, remembering God, and thus moving into a quiet, humble posture of resting in God (cf. Augustine, Calvin, and the Psalms).

(For a more expansive overview of Keating’s work, see James C. Wilhoit’s article, “Contemplative and Centering Prayer” in the Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care.)

Gazing God (part 2): Contemplation, Remembering, and Seeing

09 Monday Mar 2015

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Contemplation, David, Gazing, Remembering

The previous post argued that contemplation is epistemologically based upon revelation in both its external (e.g. Scripture) and internal (e.g., illumination) senses. This statement includes and inevitably leads to a practical theology of contemplation.

Today’s post will look at two specific examples wherein David contemplates God (that is, “gazes God”) in a personal manner. The first example involves David beholding God’s face (Ps 17), and the second example involves him contemplating God in his mighty works (Ps 77). In both examples, David searches history (whether personal or corporate), seeking God’s face in the present life through searching the past. David teaches us a simple point: beholding God is personal and transformative.

In Psalm 17 David desires to behold God in a personal way. He cries out to God in his distress and asks for justice: “Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry!” (Psalm 17:1). Having established his anguish, weakness, and torments (vv. 2-12), he then emphatically points to the hope that is his, as it is grounded in God’s covenant: “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness” (in v. 15; cf. 24:6; 44:24).[1] These are strong words, indeed.

While only Moses knew God face to face (Deut 34:10; Num 12:8), the author asks for this privilege for himself. As Kidner reflects, David “leaves these earthy preoccupations behind” in the former verses, and he boldly requests the judicial and transformative experience of seeing and knowing God, pointing towards the final promise of seeing God as he is and being like him (1 John 3:2; cf. 2 Cor 3:18).[2] As Calvin notes, while v. 15 ultimately reflects the final resurrection, one must not limit it to that time frame: “but as the saints, when God causes some rays of the knowledge of his love to enter into their hearts . . . David justly calls this peace of joy of the Holy Spirit satisfaction.”[3] While David struggles to sense God, he is assured that one day he will in fact behold him closely. He wants to contemplate God again in his righteousness.

Another example of this personal and transformative contemplation may be found in Psalm 77. Herein the psalmist faces a deep inner struggling and depression in the face of not seeing God in his life. While he believes God is there and exists, it seems as if God does not care (vv. 1-9). The psalmist’s downcast nature is so marked that, he writes, “When I remember God, I moan; when I meditate, my spirit faints” (v. 3). In his pain, the psalmist considers and contemplates God and his works. He remembers the mighty deeds of God in the exodus, these “wonders of old,” and he ponders and meditates upon these “mighty deeds” (vv. 11-12, cf. 23-15).[4] As he remembers these mighty deeds, he recalls that the holy and great God “redeemed your people” through the exodus from Egypt (v. 15), recalling his Christian readers to consider also the second exodus.[5] Afterwards, the psalmist vividly considers the majestic actions of God in splitting the waters of the sea. As the poet ponders and captures these tremendous events in his mind, he conveys them for the sake of encouragement. These actions show not only the holy and majestic power of God but also his gracious and caring shepherding: “You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron” (v. 20). He thus contemplates God as shepherd, pointing towards Christ as the good shepherd.

The psalmist thus shows that contemplation is a means for the believer to grow and experience God in one’s walk. When one feels awry, one only needs to remember.

We must remember God; much more, we must remember God well, not merely considering him through our selective memory. Here, again, the importance of contemplation may be discerned in its gospel remembrance.

The point of these previous two posts is simple: contemplation is based upon revelation; as it is so based, contemplation seeks to remember God and behold him for the sake of personal knowledge and transformation according to the gospel of Christ. Paul explains this well: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18). Paul’s words are a reality for every new covenant believer. As he or she “turns to the Lord, the veil is removed” (v. 16-17), namely, through the more complete revelation in Christ (external) and the unveiling of perception by the Spirit (internal).

Contemplation is a key way in which believers experience communion with God in Christ. This post has added to the discussion by explaining two ways in which contemplation may be practiced: by (1) prayerfully desiring to behold God in his righteousness and (2) thoroughly remembering the mighty works of God in the past.

[1]Cf. Kidner, Psalms 1-72, 104.

[2]Kidner, Psalms 1-72, 107.

[3]Calvin, Psalms, 1:254.

[4]See also Kidner, Psalms 73-150, 309.

[5]Boice, Psalms, 2: 641-644.

Gazing God (part 1): Contemplation Grounded in (external and internal) Revelation

02 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by ryan5551 in Contemplation, Revelation

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Contemplation, Psalms, Revelation

In the next two posts, I want to consider a couple other important traits of contemplation: contemplation as (1) revelation grounded and (2) personally purposed. Today’s post will describe contemplation as gazing God in his revelation (which is both external and internal); the next post will suggest that contemplation likewise gazes God through remembering him in his past deeds and seeing him presently in one’s life in a gospel-centered manner.

Contemplation is grounded in revelation. (This point is implicit in previous posts before, such as here and here.) In order to demonstrate further this point, I will use Psalm 119.

Revelation can be understood in both an external and internal sense, reflecting what the Reformers considered to be the principium cognoscendi externum and the principium cognoscendi internum, namely, the Word and Spirit. In other words, revelation is external and internal, whether a revelation occurs objectively to the human person in the form of a disclosure of information (external) or subjectively to the human person in the form of an unveiling of perception (internal). Following Psalms 1 and 19, Psalm 119 beautifully describes the love of the law of the Lord (external) and the necessity of the illumination of the Lord (internal).

While the purpose of this discussion is not to give a detailed account of this psalm, it is important to establish what this psalm has to say or imply about contemplation. Kidner reflects the overall picture of the psalm: “The mood is meditative; the poet’s preoccupations and circumstances come to light in prayers and exclamations, not marshalled in sequence but dispersed throughout the psalm.”[1] As the poet describes in many ways, Scripture (e.g., law, testimonies, precepts, statutes, commandment, ordinances, word, promise) is the joyful basis of the poet’s reflection. “I cling to your testimonies, O LORD; let me not be put to shame!” (v. 31). He does not simply contemplate God in his being but rather God as he revealed himself. As the poet does so, he acknowledges that, by seeking God in his word, the poet is liberated from sin (v. 133), guided by light (v. 105), given new life (vv. 37, 40), and given hope and stability (vv. 49-50), among other things.[2] To know God is to know God in his revelation. The psalm thus reminds us that gospel contemplation is grounded in Scripture meditation. This notion accounts for why the lectio divina begins by “biting” Scripture (i.e., reading it) and ends by “ingesting” it (i.e., contemplating it). Contemplation is ultimately grounded in God’s revelation.

The psalm also shows that the believer requires a special inner revelation in order to perceive the word. The Mosaic law, no matter how high and wonderful a revelation, is simply not complete. David prays, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Ps 119:18). David thus prays that God might “open” his eyes so that he can actually perceive what is in the law. One insightful commentator, Leslie C. Allen, rightly deduces: the text shows that the “Torah represents God” and the “hiding of God’s face in standard psalm usage is replaced . . . by hiding the Torah.”[3] Because the Torah is “hidden,” in other words, the psalmist asks for a personal, internal revelation (i.e., “open my eyes”) to perceive or understand correctly. Reflecting upon the meaning of revelation, Colin Brown concludes, “In this way Samuel [in Sam 3:7] and David [in Ps 119:18] are able to hear God’s instructions and promises.”[4] In some sense, then, God’s revealing activity happens in both an external (covenantal speaking) and internal (covenantal hearing) sense. Contemplation thus requires the special illumination of the Spirit.

Contemplation fundamentally involves gazing God in his revelation, and this requires the work of the Spirit. Contemplation is thus ultimately based upon the revelation of God (in this case, Scripture), and it requires the illumination of God by the Spirit. The next post will use Psalms 77 and 17 to show that “gazing God” is a profoundly personal matter.

[1]Kidner, Psalms 73-150, 452. For a most detailed explanation of the setting, tone, and structure of the psalm, see Allen, Psalms 101-50, 180-192.

[2]For a more comprehensive list, see Kidner, Psalms 73-150, 456-457.

[3]Leslie C. Allen, Psalms 101-50, rev. ed., Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 21 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2002), 186.

[4]Brown, “Revelation,” 3:311. Regarding the meaning, John Calvin perceptively writes, “Having acknowledged, that power to keep the law is imparted to men by God, he, at the same time, adds, that every man is blind, until he also enlighten the eyes of his understanding.” In other words, God must “remove the veil from our eyes” (John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms 93-150, trans. James Anderson, The Calvin Translation Society [Reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996], 413).

Chewing on Jesus: Contemplation as Meditative Eating

16 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by ryan5551 in Contemplation, Lectio Divina

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Contemplation, David, Eating, Food, Lectio Divina, Meditation, Psalms

A few weeks ago I explored the difference between contemplation and related spiritual disciplines such as meditation and introspection. More importantly, I explained contemplation in light of the traditional understanding of the lectio divina and its fourfold steps: Read, meditate, pray, contemplate. Following the monastic tradition, I compared these sequential steps to biting, chewing, savoring, and digesting/absorbing food. This post will further explain how contemplation and eating are analogous. I will primarily use Psalm 19 to do so.

Before diving into Psalm 19, it is worth noting that Scripture often compares the words of God to food. First, the word of God is necessary for nourishment. As God declares through Amos, “Behold, the days are coming . . . when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD” (Amos 8:11). The words of God are necessary, so much so that a lack of them is likened to a famine. Second, and related, the words of God are pleasant to taste. God’s words are “sweeter than honey to my mouth (Ps 119:103), and they are “the delight of my heart” (Jer 15:16). Lastly, the word of God allows the believer to grow. “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Pet 2:2-3). Indeed, those who are immature need the “basic principles of the oracles of God,” whereas those who are mature can handle “solid food” (Heb 5:11-14).

The tentative point is simple: the analogy between food and God’s word is not without warrant. Therefore, the lectio divina and its fourfold step process—biting, chewing, savoring, and digesting/absorbing food—is a helpful way to understand one’s reading of Scripture. Indeed, Scripture is meant to be absorbed. David reflects this kind of perspective on God’s words throughout his psalms. These psalms reflect a deep pondering and application that is analogous to eating: biting, chewing, savoring, and digesting/absorbing.

In Psalm 19, for example, David takes a bite and savors the words of God. (He most often uses the term “law,” but this is a comprehensive term for God’s revealed will, that is, his word.[1])

The law of the LORD is perfect,

reviving the soul;

the testimony of the LORD is sure,

making wise the simple;

the precepts of the LORD are right,

rejoicing the heart;

the commandment of the LORD is pure,

enlightening the eyes;

the fear of the LORD is clean,

enduring forever;

the rules of the LORD are true,

and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold,

even much fine gold;

sweeter also than honey

and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them is your servant warned;

in keeping them there is great reward” (Ps 19:7-11).

David here contemplates the beauty of God’s word. He chews and savors the reality of the power and goodness of the word. He says that God’s word is perfect, certain, right, pure, clean, and true; it likewise gives life, wisdom, joy, enlightenment, and stability (vv. 7-9). David’s point is simple: when one beholds the words of God, one beholds something about God. In a similar way that God’s works in creation expose his awesomeness, so also Gods words in Scripture expose his majesty. As Derek Kidner reflects, David shows “the practical purpose of revelation, to bring God’s will to bear on the hearer and evoke intelligent reverence, well-founded trust, detailed obedience.”[2] It is unsurprising that David concludes with a meditation: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer” (v. 14). Contemplation for David is an act of chewing, ingesting, and absorbing.

Additionally, in the first half of the psalm, David considers the works of God, that is, creation itself. As he contemplates creation, he ascribes to creation the ability to speak the word of God. The heavens “declare” God’s glory, and the skies “proclaim” his workmanship (v. 1). He continues strikingly:

Day to day pours out speech,

and night to night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words,

whose voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world.

In them he has set a tent for the sun” (Psalm 19:2-4).

As people gaze at the universe, they behold the creator God. God’s glory is so displayed that, just as “there is nothing hidden from [the Sun’s] heat” (v. 6), so also there is nothing in the universe hidden from God’s intricate detail.[3] David thus also refers to creation as declaring and proclaiming words.

David’s poetic writings (in these and other instances) show a man who contemplated God. Along with Scripture as a whole, he often considered the words of God as an analogy of eating. This kind of argument finds warrant in how he writes his poetry in Psalm 19. (For more examples from David, which more comprehensively show David’s contemplative method, see Psalm 119 and 139.)

The word of God must be eaten; it must be read, savored, and contemplated. It’s a pretty simple idea with larger consequences. In the beginning was the Word, who created the universe. As we look upon and perceive the “proclamation” of creation, therefore, we are contemplating the creative result of this Word. The Word then became human flesh, dwelling among us. He is not only meant to be understood and known by humans; rather, he is to be savored and “absorbed” by his people through contemplation. (Remember Mary who lay at his feet?) He, the Word incarnate, is ultimately the object of contemplation and affection. The Spirit, thereafter, wrote the word of the gospel in Scripture to be read and contemplated by us today.

While one might not want to push this analogy through the wall, it is interesting to note the words of Jesus Christ at the first “Lord’s Supper:” he told his disciples to eat the bread and drink the wine, which is, he says, “my body” and blood “for you” (1 Cor 11:24). We remember Jesus and contemplate him by eating him and drinking his blood. This eating is of course a spiritual eating, but the wording and scriptural allusions are certainly interesting and telling. Scripture forms an analogy between God’s word and food, suggesting the very intimate manner in which the believer ought to understand the Word; likewise, Jesus Christ, drawing from the scriptural imagery before, compares his disciples eating of food to a relationship with himself, the incarnate Word.

Contemplation may be likened to eating. It is biting, chewing, savoring, and ingesting the word of God.

(I said, “May be likened.” Remember, it’s a metaphor, people. J)

[1]Kidner, Psalms 1-72, 117.

[2]Kidner, Psalms 1-72, 117.

[3]For an excellent overview of these verses, see Kidner, Psalms 1-72, 114-116.

A Monastic Contribution: Mediation, Contemplation, and the ‘Lectio Divina’

19 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by ryan5551 in Contemplation, Lectio Divina

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Contemplation, Introspection, Lectio Divina, Meditation, Origen, Rule of St Benedict

After receiving questions on the relationship between contemplation and meditation (and other spiritual practices), I thought I would write a short post to clarify the relationship. Ultimately, I will use the example of the monastic practice of lectio divina in order to describe the similarities and differences. The example will also serve as a holistic lens by which to understand the method or practice of contemplation.

While contemplation is related to and overlaps with other spiritual practices such as meditation and introspection, there is a firm distinction. For example, meditation seeks to saturate one’s mind with God’s Word and ruminate those words within. Introspection specifically seeks to understand the self (especially in terms of exposing sin). I would understand contemplation as the larger practice that organically integrates both elements as it actively seeks to understand and appraise the person’s union with God through Christ Jesus. Contemplation does not only seek reflective understanding of sin (introspection) or the text (meditation); it also seeks personal, intellectual, and practical integration of the gospel by mind-saturated, comprehensive, and cohesive rumination. Contemplation includes meditation and introspection, but not necessarily the other way around.

To use the example from last week’s post on Psalm 145: meditation is what we do when we absorb and apply God’s words through David, and contemplation is what David was doing as he ruminated on the unsearchable and mysterious greatness of God while also applying this truth to the world around him. Meditation’s content or object is Scripture, while contemplation’s object is God himself, especially as he is understood through the lens of the gospel. While they overlap in many ways, contemplation can be seen as the larger category with meditation as part. This difference was also implicit in Calvin’s heretofore seen distinction between meditation (of Scripture) and contemplation (of the acts of God, i.e., the gospel).

While one might disagree with my distinctions here, they go back to the earlier church. One can see a similar distinction within the lectio divina, an expression of the earlier Rule of St. Benedict.[1] The lectio divina involves a synthesis of the love of letters (of Scripture) and the desire for God. It sought to understand Scripture, not so much as a text to be studied, but as the living Word with Christ as the center. Founded upon the tradition set forth by Origen, Benedict, and Gregory I, the process included up to four steps: read, meditate, pray, and contemplate. The last stage was often seen as the final end or purpose of the whole practice, that is, to see and savor the Lord (cf. Guigo II).

Read, meditate, pray, contemplate. The first stage consists of a prepared stillness wherein one asks for the Spirit to come alongside as he/she thoughtfully reads the passage (cf. Ps 46:10; 1 Cor 2:9-10). The second stage involves, after several readings, a deep and multi-perspectival pondering of the text as it relates to the gospel in Christ (cf. Ps 19; 119). The third stage prays such a meditation to God as the reader asks to live out the meaning of the passage. The fourth stage involves the total experience and appreciation of the person in communion with God.

While there may have been some less helpful forms of the lectio divina, the ancient practice helpfully clarifies the purpose and progression of reading Scripture. One must take a bite (lectio), chew (meditatio), savor the essence (oratio), and then digest and absorb and thereby imitate (contemplatio). The monastic reading was thus meditative and reflective, as the person’s goal was to experience the divine realities in Scripture (hence the term from Benedict and others, “divine readings”).[2] In this sense, I would include meditation and introspection under the larger umbrella of this reading unto contemplation.

A concise example would help to express the intent of the lectio divina. Take, say, John 6:35: “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.’” A more modern analytical reading would approach the text descriptively (e.g., what Jesus meant by “bread,” how his audience would interpret this kind of statement, the literary context of John’s organization, authorial intention, etc.), which accounts for why modern commentaries are so darn dry and boring. A lectio divina reading would ask other questions. After reading the passage aloud in context several times, the person would ruminate (lit.: masticate) on the passage, perceiving connections between Jesus words here and Israel’s wilderness wanderings, for example. Using words from the passage as a sort of concordance hook for the rest of Scripture, the person would continue to pray the Scripture for the world and their own life in God. In other words, they would not so much intellectually dissect the meaning of “Bread of life” but rather ingest, chew, and digest Jesus Christ as the bread. They wanted to know Scripture, certainly; but they wanted this knowledge to intersect and change their hearts.

(Notice, I am not advocating the mutual exclusion of the analytical and monastic methods.)

Summarizing the basic difference between this monastic method and scholastic theology (more akin to analytic methods), Jean Leclercq notes, “Rather than speculative insights [in scholastic theology], it gives them a certain appreciation, of savoring and clinging to the truth and, what is everything, the love of God” (4; cf. 72-73). Benedict, for example, wanted his monks to experience the gospel in their “divine reading;” the best way to do so, he believed, was by reading Scripture as speaking (not only to the ancient context but also) to them. As Leclercq says again, “Theology, spirituality, cultural history: these three realities were not separated in the real life of the monks, and they can never be dissociated” (6; cf. 28-34). It is no wonder that Benedict preferred the pastoral and personal writings of Origen and Gregory I over other more intellectual and esoteric writings. It is also no wonder that the monks—along with many other Christians in that day—interpreted Scripture through the fourfold witness (Scripture as literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical), but this is another topic for another time.

In total, reading Scripture includes and encompasses the holistic human capacity. This is in fact part of the reason that the ancient always sounded out the words while reading, weighing all words and releasing their full flavor. Without the lectio divina, I fear, one may easily fail to read Scripture in light of its intent and goal: the personal and reflective knowledge of Jesus Christ as your Lord. Without the lectio, or at least the contemplative and personal aspects of it, one simply reads to understand the meaning of Scripture and not necessarily its direct intent for you. Reading Scripture is—and ought to be—inescapably bound with personal meditation and gospel contemplation.

[1]The Rule of St. Benedict: In Latin and English with Notes, ed. Timothy Fry (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1981), chapter 48 (pgs. 249-252).

[2]See Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), 16-22; D. Rees, Consider Your Call (London: SPCK, 1978), 261-273; D. Gorce, La Lectio Divina (Paris: Picard, 1925).

Contemplating the Acts of God: Psalm 145

12 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by ryan5551 in Contemplation

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Calvin, Contemplation, David, Martha, Mary, Psalms

In the previous post, I suggested that the importance of contemplation may be discerned in the story of Mary and Martha. Among other things, like Mary, we ought to be at the feet of Jesus absorbing his word.

The importance of contemplation may also be discerned in the psalms. The psalms of course include many dimensions of human speech and activity, including hymns of praise, adoration, lament, supplication, thanksgiving, etc. It makes sense that contemplation would also find expression in the psalms. God, the central subject of the psalms, is a mighty and mysterious God. As he claims through the psalmist, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps 46:10). The psalmist thus often seeks a quiet and contemplative disposition to know the Lord (Ps 39:2), oftentimes expressing itself as a composed submissive posture before God in which the believer acquiesces to the promises of God (62:1ff.; cf. Eccl 3:7; Isa 30:15). As David likewise reflects, “One thing I asked of the Lord . . . to behold the beauty of the Lord” (Ps 27:4).

This particular post will focus on David’s contemplative song of praise in Psalm 145. I am writing this to show the existence and necessity of contemplation as I have defined it in the previous posts. Contemplation is gospel-centered thinking that seeks to understand and appraise the person’s union with God in Christ. As David further displays in his song, contemplation may also involve a close reflection of God’s works or acts (e.g., creation and governance).

He reflects (vv. 1-7):

1 I will extol you, my God and King,

and bless your name forever and ever.

2 Every day I will bless you

and praise your name forever and ever.

3 Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised,

and his greatness is unsearchable.

4 One generation shall commend your works to another,

and shall declare your mighty acts.

5 On the glorious splendor of your majesty,

and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.

6 They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds,

and I will declare your greatness.

7 They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness

and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.

The psalmist’s words clearly communicate that, while God’s greatness is unsearchable, and while he is great beyond searching, one can reflect upon something that is visible and more concrete, that is, the manifest works or acts of God through the splendor of his workmanship. As David reflects, he wants to “meditate” on God’s wondrous works to declare his greatness. David contemplates the beauty and majesty of God through his creation.

Calvin, among many other examples, also sensed the necessity of contemplating God in his works. As he reflects in these verses, we are “called to a knowledge of God:” not one that is “content with empty speculation” or “flits in the brain,” but rather one that “takes root in the heart” (Institutes, 1:5.9). What is the way or manner of this more profound and impactful knowledge? As the psalmist suggests, Calvin reflects, it is “not for us to attempt with bold curiosity to penetrate to the investigation of his essence, which we ought more to adore than meticulously to search out, but for us to contemplate him in his works whereby he renders himself near and familiar to us, and in some manner communicates himself” (Ibid.; cf. his commentary on Psalms, 3:271-284).

In other words, we ought to adore God in his incomprehensible essence, but also we ought to contemplate him in his works (thus again suggesting that contemplation is content based, as I argued before). This is why after David acknowledges God’s greatness (Ps 145:3), he contemplates God in his works (vv. 5-6; cf. Ps 40:5). This is also why, among other things, Paul avers that God is not far from each of us, for he created and sustains our very being (Acts 17:27-28). It is no wonder that writers of Scripture often find analogy in creation of the sovereignty, beauty, and goodness of the Lord. One cannot gaze at the sublimity of the Grand Canyon or ponder the intricacies of the quark without the acknowledgement of God, however suppressed it may be.

Returning to the psalms text, David continues to contemplate God’s works through the previous revelation of his word: “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made” (vv. 8-9; cf. Exod 34:6). David’s thoughts seamlessly travel from God’s revelation in creation to his Scripture, from his works to his words. His meditation’s purpose is to know and love God more, to perceive his works as a reflection of his majesty (v. 10) and as evidence of his power and sovereignty over the nations (vv. 11-13).

His majesty and power are no more visible than in his benevolent care of all peoples (vv. 14-21). God upholds those who are falling. He provides all creatures with food and every desire in each season. He is righteous and kind. He is a God who is present and listening. God preserves his people.

In short, David’s song of praise is a contemplation and application of the fact that all things belong to the Lord. He is, in effect, applying the truth that “my God is the Lord” to all areas of life. While the two were separated across history, I’m sure David would enthusiastically approve of Kuyper’s often quoted remark: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”

Contemplation of God’s works is central to knowing God. “It is also fitting, therefore,” as Calvin concludes, “for us to pursue this particular search for God [in contemplation], which may so hold our mental powers suspended in wonderment as at the same time to stir us deeply” (1:5.9). Contemplation of God’s works leads to our constant awe and thanksgiving. (How much more Calvin’s words apply to contemplation of God’s acts through Christ Jesus.)

Herein again lies the importance of contemplation. It is, among other things, the process by which the mind understands, connects, and applies gospel truth to all areas of life—whether emotions, thought patterns, and even one’s awareness of existence itself. Contemplation is central to knowing and loving the gospel.

In the next post I will further differentiate contemplation from other related concepts (e.g., meditation). Thanks for reading.

Becoming a Mary of Christ: The Importance of Contemplation

05 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by ryan5551 in Contemplation

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Contemplation, Luke, Martha, Mary

In the last post I defined contemplation as the intellectual and ruminating aspect of our communion with Christ. I said that contemplation is a gospel-centered (and thus content-based) cognition of the mind that seeks to understand and appraise the person’s union with God in Christ. With this general definition in mind, I will now briefly demonstrate why contemplation is important to the Christian life through the story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42; cf. John 12:1-8):

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching [lit., “his word”]. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.’ (ESV)

In writing a short post, of course, I am not going to deal with all the textual and literary issues here (for a good discussion see Marshall’s commentary, 450-454); rather I want to focus on what this passage says about contemplation. Now, the passage certainly does not intend to prioritize the ‘contemplatives’ (e.g., Mary) over the ‘servants’ (e.g., Martha), as Origen supposes. It does, however, teach us something about seeing and savoring Jesus, actions that are at the forefront of contemplation. As Marshall aptly notes, Luke understood his recorded story in a “spiritual” sense, and thus its historical occasion has practical implications (450).

The contrast between Martha and Mary should already be apparent. While Martha strives to be hospitable to her guest, Mary would rather listen to Jesus’ “word” (v. 39), which is Luke’s technical term for the gospel itself. Mary wants to know and love the Lord. She is “taking in” Jesus, so to speak. After Martha complains, Jesus lightly rebukes her and affirms Mary’s choice of the “best portion,” that is, the right meal that is the word of God (cf. Luke 4:4; Deut 8:3). I like how Robert Stein highlights the contrast: “There is a need to focus on what is most important, for although serving is good, sitting at Jesus’ feet is best” (Luke, 321). Jesus here reflects what Paul later summarizes as “setting your minds on things that are above” (Col 3:2). To hear and appropriate the gospel is key.

The story thus reflects the importance of contemplation. At the risk of sounding like a cliché sermon, we too often become ‘Marthas’ as we fail to perceive and give notice to the creator, sustainer, and redeemer of all things. We often fail in our theologies as we focus on our own framing of Scripture while ignoring its framing of us. We likewise cause harm in our commentaries as we seek merely to find the ‘objective’ meaning of the Bible, forgetting that this very meaning is directed to us in Christ. We also overlook the truth in our lives as we “eat, drink, and be merry” (Luke 12:19); but we all the while fail to recognize that God is the originator and upholder of all good things, and his redemption secures all enjoyment therein. It is easy to focus on the externals of life; easy to believe that our limited perception is ultimate reality itself.

Contemplation keeps the gospel foremost. It keeps us sane.

I hope an analogy will suffice to stress more concretely the importance of contemplation. It will also serve as a conclusion. Before I was married to my lovely wife, Laura, I was once told to remember to boast about her from time to time (tastefully, of course). While it may seem mundane and even melodramatic, it works. If I speak highly of my wife’s positive qualities, if I note her treasure to others, I will more cogently perceive her beauty myself. I am sure that the same applies to our perception of God. The more we “boast” about him—in word and thought (i.e., contemplation)—the more we see the greatness of his majesty. Herein lays the importance of contemplation. The more we think God, the more we sense him; the more we see him, the more we treasure him; and the more we treasure him, the more we, by his grace, live out the gospel with our hearts, souls, and minds.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt 22:37). Contemplation is not the whole gospel, but it is certainly a big part of it. It is the intellectual ruminating and practical appraising of who God is and why it matters for us. Therefore, in large part, contemplation involves thinking both God and ourselves and correlating the two through the gospel. (As a side note, if I had time, I would interact with Calvin’s famous opening epistemological statement in this context. To be continued another time. . . .)

As Martha and Mary teach us, we ought to be livers of life and servers of people; but also, and more fundamentally, we ought to become partakers of the gospel, sitting quietly and humbly at the feet of Jesus. Contemplation, therefore, is one manner in which we become ‘Marys’ of Christ.

Go to His feet.

Contemplating ‘Contemplation’: Definitions and Initial Matters

31 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by ryan5551 in Contemplation

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Contemplation, Definition

Over the last year or so I have been enthused about the prospect of a thoroughly evangelical, gospel-centered conception of contemplation. I am excited to see more literature coming out in this important area. The Spring 2014 issue of the Journal for Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, Jacob Sherman’s book describing the significance of contemplation in the study and practice of philosophy, and John Kenney’s volume on Augustine’s conception of contemplation are three excellent examples.

I plan to write my first several blog posts about contemplation, including its definition, importance, biblical/historical examples, and practical import. The first post (*this post*) will begin by asking the basic question: What is contemplation?

A moderate perusing of the evangelical literature reveals a lack of understanding and appreciation of contemplation. We often talk about radical Christianity and what gospel-centered living looks like, but we rarely talk about the nature of contemplation in the gospel; we incessantly speak about theology, but we seldom discuss its relevance in the contemplative or prayerful life. A. W. Tozer once quipped of this problem: “Once [Christians] have found God, they no longer need to seek Him” (The Pursuit of God, 16-17). Perhaps we could state his point more expressly: once Christians have ‘understood’ God, they no longer need to ‘experience’ him. The challenge to find an appreciation of contemplation among evangelicals should not be a surprise.

Some of the evangelical neglect undoubtedly is for good reason. Like many other spiritual practices, there are unhelpful forms of contemplation. Some stress a mystical element in contemplation whereby God directly infuses his nature into the human person to produce an ontological union. Others assert the necessity of contemplation while ignoring or otherwise defacing the authority of Scripture and/or overlooking the centrality of union with Christ by the Spirit. These kinds of options, found especially in the mystical and monastic traditions, must be rejected.

Now, to the heart of the post: what is contemplation? To put it simply, contemplation is the intellectual and ruminating aspect of our communion with Christ. It may be defined as a gospel-centered discursive cognition in which the mind, grounded in God’s Word, actively seeks to understand and appraise the person’s union with God through Christ Jesus. Contemplation is thus best understood as a biblically-based and gospel-centered introspective cognition unto God, in Christ, and through the Spirit. In short, contemplation is the action and enjoyment of thinking God.

In other words, in order to believe the gospel, one must think the gospel. This thinking does not simply entail the production and verbalization of information, although it includes these things. It also involves the personal rumination and application of the truths to the mind. Indeed, the gospel is not something that is merely framed in Scripture, taught in words, or systematized in theologies; the gospel must also be personally considered and mulled over by the mind. Indeed, the gospel is the good news that Jesus died, raised, and ascended so that we can live, advance, and flourish eternally in him. It is part of Paul’s exhortation to “set your minds on things that are above” (Col 3:2), and it thus entails counting all things as a loss for the sake of “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil 3:7-9). The gospel ought to be mind-saturating. It ought to be contemplated.

In this (more helpful) sense, contemplation is certainly a formative aspect of spiritual formation. One might even say that it is central to the gospel. The gospel ought to be “lived out” (practiced), “thought out” (through theology), and also regularly “ruminated upon” (contemplated) in one’s spiritual life.

Thanks for reading this first blog post. The following posts will spell out the importance, biblical and historical grounding, and practice of contemplation.

Ryan A Brandt .org

~ Theology Meets the World

Category Archives: Contemplation

The Pilgrim, Contemplative Self: Plotinus’s Platonic Portrait of Perfection

Plato’s Spiritual Epistemology: The Nature and Result of Contemplation in the Writings of Plato

A Look at Thomas Keating: The Benefits and Pitfalls of His View of Contemplation

Gazing God (part 2): Contemplation, Remembering, and Seeing

Gazing God (part 1): Contemplation Grounded in (external and internal) Revelation

Chewing on Jesus: Contemplation as Meditative Eating

A Monastic Contribution: Mediation, Contemplation, and the ‘Lectio Divina’

Contemplating the Acts of God: Psalm 145

Becoming a Mary of Christ: The Importance of Contemplation

Contemplating ‘Contemplation’: Definitions and Initial Matters

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