Simply put, Fundamentalists reject Tradition, and Hesychasm is Tradition. Let's just agree to disagree.KR Wordgazer wrote:I'm not a fundamentalist, but I used to be-- and I disagree that Christian mysticism is not part of the fundamentalist tradition.
The problem here is that the word "mysticism" has recently taken on connations of Eastern-style pantheism and meditation techniques.
Agree.
That's good enough."Mysticism" as defined by the Online Dictionary, is "immediate consciousness of the transcendant or ultimate reality of God; the experience of such communion. . ."
No, we are talking about mysticism akin to the first definition, one which St. Paul himself couldn't describe.Almost any Christian who describes him/herself as "born again" will also place emphasis on personal experience of "the presence of God." Such experience is part of the second definition of "mysticism" in the same dictionary: "A belief in the existence of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible by subjective experience." The Christian, Triune God is just such a "Reality." Not all "mysticism" is Eastern panthestic mysticism.
What, in reality, can one say of the mystical experience of St. Paul: ‘I knew a man in
Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of
the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth); such an one caught up to the third heaven.
And I knew such a man (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth);
how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not
lawful for a man to utter’. To venture to pass any judgement upon the nature of this
experience it would be necessary to understand it more fully than did St. Paul, who avows
his ignorance: ‘I cannot tell: God knoweth.’
Source:
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church
(St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press: Crestwood, NY, 1976)
