Mystiek > Over mystiek > Geschiedenis > Christelijk

Appendix (2)

De bronnen van de christelijke mystiek

As we stand at the beginning of the Christian period we see three great sources whence its mystical tradition might have been derived. These sources are Greek, Oriental, and Christian - i.e., primitive Apostolic - doctrine or thought. As a matter of fact all contributed their share: but where Christianity gave the new vital impulse to transcendence, Greek and Oriental thought provided the principal forms in which it was expressed. The Christian religion, by its very nature, had a profoundly mystical side. Putting the personality of its Founder outside the limits of the present discussion, St. Paul and the author of the Fourth Gospel are obvious instances of mystics of the first rank amongst its earliest missionaries. Much of the inner history of primitive Christianity still remains unknown to us; but in what has been already made out we find numerous, if scattered, indications that the mystic life was indigenous in the Church and the natural mystic had little need to look for inspiration outside the limits of his creed. Not only the epistles of St. Paul and the Johannine writings, but also earliest liturgic fragments which we possess, and such primitive religious poetry as the "Odes of Solomon" and the "Hymn of Jesus," show how congenial was mystic expression to the mind of the Church; how easily that Church could absorb and transmute the mystic elements Essene, Orphic, and Neoplatonic thought.