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 1:1-7; 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.

Warfield continues his attempt to pin Underhill down . . .

Here certainly there is “an opinion,” or rather a body of opinions; and certainly there is here “a philosophy,” and, we are afraid we shall have to add, what, despite the vagueness which may be allowed to cling to the several notions involved, looks very much like that specific philosophy which we know as Pantheism. It is notorious that in the history of religious thought the types which it has been commonly agreed to speak of as Mystical have ordinarily been associated with Pantheistic or at least Pantheizing conceptions: the very language of Mysticism has been dictated to it by Pantheism, and it is therefore in any event difficult for the Mystic to express himself without at least seeming to declare himself a Pantheist.

Pantheism is the usual consequence of such mysticism, but Underhill tries to mitigate the charge.

Miss Underhill has reduced this Pantheizing implication to a minimum in her formal definitions. Therefore in the one now before us she avoids even declaring that Mysticism is the “science of union with the Absolute.” Instead, she says that it is the process by which man enters into the conscious enjoyment of the love of God—by which, she truly says, he “achieves” “his immortal heritage”: and in the alternative clause she explains that what Mysticism seeks is the establishment of “conscious relation with the Absolute.” Obviously these are carefully chosen phrases. If we were to abide by the breadth of their suggestion Mysticism would be what indeed Miss Underhill calls it (p. x.), just “the science or art of the Spiritual life.” Every “other-worldly-minded” man would be a Mystic.

Ask yourself, “do you want a conscious relationship with the absolute”—defined as a consuming fire in Hebrews—”apart from the mediatorial work and intercession of the incarnate Christ?” I would think not!

There are other views proposed to us of what “the immortal heritage of man” consists in, and of how it may be achieved. There is, to go no further, Christianity, which thinks that it can point the way to the enjoyment of “the perfect consummation of the Love of God,” and finds the Way in Christ. Mysticism is not sufficiently defined by simply declaring that it differs from all these by—“doing the trick.” Many have essayed to penetrate to “the Reality behind the veil,” says Miss Underhill (p. 4): “but if we may trust the reports of the mystics—and their reports are given with a strange accent of certainty and good faith—they have succeeded where all these others have failed, in establishing immediate communication between the spirit of man, entangled as they declare amongst material things, and that’ only Reality,’ that immaterial and final Being, which some philosophers call the Absolute, and most theologians call God.” It is a great claim—if only it can be substantiated. Its substantiation is, however, the last thing the Mystic seems to think of.

Warfield grants that Underhill appeals to “the way in Christ.” But does she do so to make appeal to his example of how to experience God?—just like Jesus did. Or does she appeal to a redeemer and mediator between the Holy God and sinful men and women? No, of course not. As Warfield points out, apart from the definitions of God’s nature and attributes found in Scripture, all Underhill can offer her fellow mystics are unsubstantiated claims, knowing if she even attempts to substantiate her claims, she ceases to be a good mystic.

Warfield notes that William James, the father of American Pragmatism, and astute observer of “varieties of religious experiences,” like that claimed by Underhill, differs from her vague definitions

Even William James’s well-known definition (“The Varieties of Religious Experience,” 1902, p. 508) is better—for at least it is discriminating. He finds the “nucleus of agreement” among all Mystics in the feeling of the subject that his higher self is “conterminous and continuous with a More of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck.” Clearly on this conception Mysticism is fundamentally Pantheistic, and therefore Quick criticizes it. It is not inclusive, he says, of Christian Mysticism through which there runs a profound feeling of “infinite otherness” from God; and he goes on to insist that Mysticism embraces every and “any direct consciousness of God’s presence and nature” (Journal of Theological Studies, xiii. 1912, p. 172).

The mystic seeks for direct consciousness of God through the experiences of the “higher self,” presumably one which bypasses sight, touch, and smell, and all contact with a real and objective world in which we live—a world in which God created us as his image-bearers, who are designed to function amidst things material. Set off on a mountain or desert hike without maps or GPS, and instead seek to be led by the experience felt by your “higher self” in communion with the Absolute, and months later, a team of searchers will find your remains. There is no “higher self,” and attempting to listen to it is a dead end. But there certainly is a God who reveals himself in nature and his Word, which points to the person and work of Jesus, not inward to seek a “higher self,” which does not exist.

Ms. Underhill seeks to escape the pantheistic charge by going her own mystical way, completely free to jettison her “Christianity” when her experiences of the absolute requires that she do so.

By thus broadening the skirts of Mysticism to enclose all “sense” of God, we may of course rid it of its Pantheistic stamp; but the question is whether we are not merely merging it thus into a wider category. What it concerns us to take note of here, however, is merely that this is Miss Underhill’s method. To her the typical form of Mysticism is Christian Mysticism, as manifested especially in the great Mediæval Saints. She is therefore careful to define it so as to make it include them; and she then proceeds to expound it from them as its purest examples. This seems to stand the whole matter upon its head. It is not in virtue of their Christianity that the Christian Mystics are Mystics: Miss Underhill, as we have seen, herself allows that their Mysticism is quite independent of their Christianity. We might better say that it is in despite of their Christianity; and that therefore Mysticism in them is modified by their Christianity just so far as their thought and practice is determined by their Christianity. They are Mystics not by virtue of what they have in common with other Christians, but by virtue of what they have in common with other Mystics.

To be continued . . .