Posts tagged Evelyn Underhill
Warfield on the Mysticism of Evelyn Underhill (Part Four) -- The Inevitable Result: Self-Deification
Warfield on the Mysticism of Evelyn Underhill (Part Four) -- The Inevitable Result: Self-Deification

As mentioned in the previous installments, Warfield’s extensive “Review” of four of Evelyn Underhill’s books was published in the 1914 Princeton Theological Review, (105–123). Underhill’s works were gaining popularity at the time, the reason for Warfield’s detailed and critical response. Many of her books remain in print today, and she still has a following despite her death over eighty years ago (1941). Her “Christianized” form of mysticism (actually pantheism) still finds an audience among those who identify as “spiritual but not religious,” a phenomenon currently being addressed by Michael Horton’s three volume series on the subject.

In Part One, I took up Warfield’s less than favorable review of Evelyn Underhill’s works championing a so-called “Christian” mysticism—a subjective religious impulse grounded in ecstatic experience and not based upon the written word of God. In Part Two, Warfield addresses her notion of God as the “Absolute,” which, as we noted, has much in common with the inscription on the infamous Athenian altar dedicated to an “unknown god,” mentioned by Paul in Acts 17:23. A better term for the “religiosity of the human spirit,” might just be “the flesh,” as identified by Paul in Romans 8:5-8.

In Part Three, The Lion of Princeton presses her on matters of definition—a problem often associated with mystical religious experience, because such experience is difficult to put into explanatory words. But Christianity is essentially a religion of objective truth (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:1-8; 2 Corinthians 5:19) revealed in revelatory speech and acts, not in subjective experience. As noted, the heart should follow the mind, not skip over it into a mystical and subjective abyss divorced from those historical events upon which Christianity is based.

Warfield’s in-depth review of Underhill’s work is important for us to consider because mysticism always seems to resurface in times of religious confusion because its gives people a way to unite through shared mystical experience without any doctrinal commitments—“the heart rules over the head.” Such religious experience exists apart from creeds, objective truth claims, and redemptive history, which provides the foundation for a proper Christian faith, which looks to a very real incarnation, a life lived in perfect obedience to the law of Moses, the shedding of RH-typable blood and an empty tomb. Many of today’s “spiritual but not religious” folk have read or would enjoy the Underhill’s writings.

We pick up where we left off last time. Warfield points out that Underhill mistakes the writings of Plotius and her own pantheizing tendencies with that of “abounding culture,” which, she contends, creates a society which fosters those like her who seek God through direct experience. Warfield corrects her misguided assumption.

Miss Underhill would have us believe that Mysticism appears always in the train of great periods of abounding culture; it is the consummate flower of human culture. We think it truer to say that it appears always in the train of periods of the dominance of a Pantheizing philosophy: it is the effect in the religious mind of prevalent Pantheizing thought. . . . Miss Underhill allows (though this is far from all that she allows) that the Mystics at least speak the language of Plotinus. So true is this, that even she, though set upon cleansing the idea of Mysticism from the smudge of Pantheism, yet herself speaks the language of Plotinus, if indeed she stops with that. Though she may on occasion therefore insist that in his achieved “union with the Absolute,” the Mystic does not lose his identity in God, but “in the Mystic this union is conscious, personal thought”; and even indeed that what the Mystic “calls ‘Union with God’ is only his utter identification with the interests of the spiritual life”—she naturally cannot maintain this point of view, and everywhere lapses into language with quite other implications. . . . [I]t is of the very essence of Mysticism to maintain the immediate presence of the divine in man, needing only to be recognized and felt; and it is therefore that it is by the way of “contemplation” that the Mystic bids us seek and find God. Miss Underhill herself tells us that “the whole claim of the Mystics ultimately depends on man’s possession of pure being in ‘the spark of the soul’” “pure being” being but a synonym for the Absolute.

Notice, for Underhill, there is no mediated encounter with the Holy God. She seeks something quite apart from the intercessory work of Jesus Christ and the indwelling Holy Spirit as described in Romans 8:14-17. According to Underhill, we can encounter the immediate presence of the Absolute, who is “pure being.” Recall that Isaiah had an encounter with the Lord (Isaiah 6:1-13), so did Paul (Acts 9:1-16), as did John (Revelation 4-6). But these were certainly not the sort of experiences sought and endorsed by Miss Underhill. Isaiah, Paul, and John were immediately aware of their own sin and unworthiness and were filled with dread and terror. Union with the God of the Bible requires mediation, lest we be consumed, “for our God is a consuming fire,” (Hebrews 12:29).

Although you would think things could not get worse—they do, and quickly in fact. The mystic consciousness soon leads one to become aware of one’s own deity apart from which, no union is possible.

That in this “ineffable experience” called “the act of union,” something more is achieved than merely the identification of ourselves “with the interests of the spiritual life”—something very much like the identification of ourselves with God—emerges from such statements as the following: “All pleasurable and exalted states of Mystic consciousness in which the sense of I-hood persists, in which there is a loving and joyous relation between the Absolute as object and the self as subject, fall under the head of Illumination.” “The real distinction between the Illuminative and the Unitive life is that in Illumination the individuality of the subject—however profound his spiritual consciousness, however close his communion with the Infinite—remains separate and intact.”

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Warfield on the Mysticism of Evelyn Underhill (Part Three) -- A Religion of Subjective Experience and Mere Opinion
Warfield on the Mysticism of Evelyn Underhill (Part Three) -- A Religion of Subjective Experience and Mere Opinion

The Christian mystic, Evelyn Underhill, still remains a popular figure in certain Anglo-Catholic groups, spiritual retreat movements, and among those interested in Christian mysticism and contemplative spirituality—especially as a means of coping with secularization and what such people consider to be sterile doctrinal rigidity—i.e., confessional Protestantism. Her views still find an eager audience among the “spiritual but not religious crowd” being addressed by Michael Horton’s three volume series on the subject. Underhill died in 1941, but her books became popular in the 1910s, drawing scrutiny from the guard dog of Old Princeton, B. B. Warfield.

In Part One, I addressed the background to Warfield’s stinging review of Evelyn Underhill’s works championing a so-called “Christian” mysticism—a subjective religious impulse grounded in what my late colleague Rod Rosenbladt called the “liver shiver,” an ecstatic experience not based upon the clear voice of God found in his Word when it is read and preached.

Warfield’s “review” addresses the challenge raised by mystics that doctrine divides, but spirituality—such as a “conversion experience”—unites a broad segment of Americans, which includes many professing evangelicals who do not agree with each other on important fundamental doctrines. In Part Two, Warfield points out that the “Absolute” supposedly encountered by Mrs. Underhill has much in common with the inscription on the infamous Athenian altar dedicated to an “unknown god,” mentioned by Paul in Acts 17:23. In fact, a better term for the “religiosity of the human spirit,” might just be “the flesh,” as identified by Paul in Romans 8:5-8.

In part three of my look at Warfield’s “Review” of Underhill’s works (his “Review” was written in 1914), he continues to press her on her slippery definitions—a nagging problem associated with mystical religious experience, which claims to be “felt,” and therefore difficult to put into explanatory words. This matters because Christianity is essentially a religion of objective truth (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:1-8; 2 Corinthians 5:19) revealed in revelatory speech and acts, not in subjective experience. The heart should follow the mind, not leap-frog over it.

Warfield continues to press her on the matter of definitions.

Miss Underhill reformulates her definitions thus (p. 97): “Mysticism, then, is not an opinion: it is not a philosophy. It has nothing in common with the pursuit of occult knowledge. It is not merely the power of contemplating Eternity. It is the name of that organic process which involves the perfect consummation of the Love of God: the achievement here and now of the immortal heritage of man. Or, if you like it better—for this means exactly the same thing—it is the art of establishing his conscious relation with the Absolute.”

But just who or what is the “absolute”? Here the mystic runs into reality that the God of the Bible is holy and those who encounter him experience nothing but sheer terror due to his glorious transcendence and holiness (see Isaiah 6:1-7; Hebrews 12:29). This is why any proper Christian relationship to God must be established in and through the incarnate Son (whose glory is veiled in human flesh) and through the indwelling Holy Spirit who enables us to approach the holy God as Father, without fear or terror.

Warfield sees the inconsistency in Underhill’s attempts at definition as highly problematic.

What was formerly declared to be a “science” has now become explicitly an “art”: but in varying the term we do not escape from the thing—behind the “art” the “science” necessarily lies. Miss Underhill says the Mystic is the man who has attained to union with the Absolute. Let us be more modest and say that the Mystic is the man who professes, or supposes himself, to have attained to union with the Absolute. Then Mysticism surely may be fairly described as that congeries of notions which are presupposed or implicated in this profession; or, if we choose, in the practice of the art by which this end is supposed to be attained. It would seem, therefore, that it must inevitably embrace a doctrine of the Absolute; a doctrine of the relation of the human spirit to this Absolute; a doctrine of the possibility of the human spirit attaining “union with the Absolute”; a doctrine of the nature of this “union with the Absolute” which the human spirit may attain.

But the subjective nature of Underhill’s enterprise means that no real definition of the “absolute” is possible and all we have is mere opinion—“I think,”, “I feel.” Such subjective claims, with little or no reference to any sort of objective reality, sadly, is the way in which many of our contemporaries determine their “personal truth.” What some describe as an “experience of the divine,” might just a weird thought, or an idea, a dream, or perhaps, lunch not properly digesting.

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Warfield on the Mysticism of Evelyn Underhill (Part Two) -- Union With The "Absolute"
Warfield on the Mysticism of Evelyn Underhill (Part Two) -- Union With The "Absolute"

In Part One, I set forth the background to Warfield’s stinging review of four books written by the then popular mystic Evelyn Underhill. Although Warfield’s “Review” was written in 1914, Underhill’s variety of mysticism (now called “spirituality”) is still very much alive today. As I noted in Part One, a subjective/mystical experience which she and others champion, “provides common ground for those seeking theological justification for religious `diversity and inclusion.’” It is often claimed that doctrine divides, but spirituality—such as a “conversion experience”—unites a broad segment of Americans, which includes many professing evangelicals. Those who are doctrinally ignorant, indifferent, or even hostile to a concrete set of beliefs, can find common ground through a vague and ill-defined “spirituality,” aligning with those with similar experiences. This revival of Underhill’s mysticism is what Michael Horton has identified as the “spiritual but not religious” phenomenon which is now widespread in America.

Warfield, whose job description at Princeton Theological Seminary (Professor of Polemic and Didactic Theology) requires him to pounce upon all perceived doctrinal error, acknowledges Underhill’s skill as a writer. She is good at what she does, which is why Warfield felt so compelled to devote significant attention to her work. He writes . . .

This volume is brilliantly written. All the resources of a trained literary art are expended upon it, and its pages are not only illuminated with numerous well-chosen extracts from the Mystical writers who are thus permitted to tell in their own quaint and often singularly impressive language exactly what they are, but are also gemmed with vivid phrases caught from the Mystics and used by Miss Underhill in her own composition with exquisite skill. Above all it is written with a verve and enthusiasm which impart to it an élan (as Miss Underhill would call it) that sweeps the reader well-nigh off his feet. (337)

Early on in his “Review,” Warfield points out that a definition of terms is very important—especially with an ill-defined subject (Mysticism) grounded in subjective religious experience. Here is where the trouble begins.

Formal definition of the term begins for us already in the Preface. “Broadly speaking,” we read there (p. x.), “I understand it to be the expression of the innate tendency of the human spirit towards complete harmony with the transcendental order; whatever be the theological formula under which that order is understood.” This is “broadly speaking” indeed. By the final clause, Mysticism is at once separated from all “positive religions” whatever; and (as we are immediately told) it is made matter of indifference to the experience of “mystic union” in which it “attains its end,” whether that union is conceived to be with “the God of Christianity, the World-Soul of Pantheism, the Absolute of Philosophy” (p. x.). “Attempts to limit mystical truth—the direct apprehension of the Divine Substance—to the formulae of any one religion,” we are accordingly told later (p. 115), “are as futile as the attempt to identify a precious metal with the die which converts it into current coin.”

Mysticism of the sort advocated by Ms. Underhill cannot be limited to any formulas of “positive religion” (presumably one with any sort of authoritative doctrine). The image given us by Isaiah (in 6:1-13) of one such moment of “direct apprehension of the Divine substance” is vastly different from the type of mystical union spelled out by Underhill. She might find “union and harmony” when encountering what she assumes is “the divine substance,” but Isaiah was immediately overcome by the awareness of his sinfulness. This is but one of the things missing from Underhill’s supposed encounter with the divine.

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