Hodge on Mysticism

Mysticism is alive and well in many books about knowing the will of God or decision making. Here is Charles Hodge’s description of Mysticism and the difference between it and what Christians believe about the Holy Spirit leading us to understand the objective truth of the Scriptures.

Mysticism, in its application to theology, has assumed two principal forms, the supernatural and the natural. Accordint to the former, God, or the Spirit of God, holds direct communion with the soul; and by the excitement of its religious feelings gives it intuitions of truth, and enables it to attain a kind, a degree, and an extent of knowledge, unattainable in any other way. This has been the common theory of Christian mystics in ancient and modern times. If by this were meant merely that the Spirit of God, by His illuminating influence, gives believers a knowledge of the truths objectively revealed in the Scriptures, which is peculiar, certain, and saving, it would be admitted by all evangelical Christians. And it is because such Christians do hold to this inward teaching of the Spirit, that they are often called Mystics by their opponents. This, however, is not what is here meant. The mystical method, in its supernatural form, assumes that God by His immediate intercourse with the soul, reveals through the feelings and by means, or in the way of intuitions, divine truth independently of the outward teaching of His Word; and that is this inward light, and not the Scriptuers, which we are to follow. – Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology Vol. 1 p. 7, December 1982 reprint

 

 


Comments

Leave a Reply