Mysticism, political philosophy, and play

Modern Age, Summer, 2006 by James V. Schall

Spiritualism seems to me absolutely right on all its mystical side. The
supernatural part of it seems to me quite natural. The incredible part
of it seems to me obviously true. But I think it so far dangerous or
unsatisfactory that it is in some degree scientific. It inquires whether
its gods are worth inquiring into. A man (of a certain age) may look
into the eyes of his lady-love to see that they are beautiful. But no
normal lady will allow that young man to look into her eyes to see
whether they are beautiful. The same vanity and idiosyncrasy has been
generally observed in gods. Praise them; or leave them alone; but do not
look for them unless you know they are there. Do not look for them
unless you want them. It annoys them very much.
--G. K. CHESTERTON, "Spiritualism" (1)

God as being beyond experience, that is, the primacy of God over
religion. If God is a being in Himself, independent of His being
experienced by man, and if we know about this being from what is
revealed in Torah and prophecy, then the theoretical exposition of that
which is known is possible in principle, which means theology. To this
extent, theology is the expression of simple and unambiguous piety.
--LEO STRAUSS, "The Holy" (2)

I

TO LINK MYSTICISM, political philosophy, and play together is, at first sight, rash. What could they possibly have in common, since they clearly are not the same? Mysticism relates to our contact, if we have any, with the "mysterion" with the mystery that lies at the threshold or ground of all finite beings, among which we are. Religion is a natural virtue, pietas, an aspect of justice. It is our effort properly to relate ourselves to God as the origin of our existence in terms of what we "owe" for what we are and receive, something obviously that can never be fully repaid. This latter fact, our inability adequately to respond to the reason of our being, is why the virtue of religion is related to, but not exactly the same as, the virtue of justice. Justice seeks to repay exactly what is due. Religion thus is conceived as related to justice, yet something beyond it, a kind of noble effort to do what we can for what we are, an expression of our acknowledgment that we exist as finite beings.

We do not exist in mere justice. If we existed in justice, it would mean that God, out of some deficiency in Himself, "owed" us the "to be" that we possess and that keeps us out of nothingness, something that we are intuitively aware that we cannot do for ourselves. It would also mean that we could adequately "repay" the good of existence itself that has been granted to us by the cause of our existence. In this sense, it would imply that we ourselves are equal to the Godhead, a dubious proposition however tempting to human nature. Already here is the sense that existence itself is something that is rooted in an abundance, or even "super-abundance," as Aquinas noted, a realm of non-necessity, yet of real spiritual and even material depth that may indeed have much to do with the strange vastness of the cosmos itself. Even natural religion hints in its sense of its own inadequacy that, for comprehension of this reality, what we deal with approaches love, something simply "given," not something that is "owed."

But as Leo Strauss says, God is primary even over religion, over our natural understanding of how, with rite, mind, or discipline, to relate ourselves to what is not ours to establish or fully to define with our own powers. Natural mysticism is the experience of being taken up into the mystery of what is, whatever it is. Still, we cannot a priori exclude the possibility that the mystery we seek to know will first seek us, that it itself contains the plenitude of being that we call "person," or even "persons." As we read in Psalm 94:6. "Cannot he who made the ear not hear?"

This fact that God is "primary over religion" touches on the mystery that might explain the classical questions that we each must ask at the risk of not being what we are: "Why do I exist?" "Why am I not something else?" "Why does everything possible not exist?" The very fact of these questions brings up the Aristotelian questions of whether the world is made "in vain" and whether God is "lonely?" If the world is indeed made "in vain," no further questions need be asked, nor are they even sensible. But if they are not "in vain," we must be alert, listen, consider what is proposed, even from revelation. And if God is "lonely," perhaps He needed the world to exist, but perhaps this is not the only explanation of why it exists.

Likewise, we need a criterion to be sure that that to which we orient ourselves is not diabolical, granted that there are both evil and good spirits to which we might be attracted. The fascination of evil, both the attraction to it and the naming of it, is not something that can be adequately accounted for by the simple denial of its existence. Thus piety has the connotation of an orientation to the true God, an awareness of the fact that false gods and false prophets can rise among us, even in political terms. This reflection brings up the further philosophical question, and I think it is a philosophical, not theological, question, of whether there be any criterion by which we might be protected from making such a mistake of identifying what is in fact evil with what is good?