First, a point I've been making over the last few years, we need to attend to the experiential, mystical aspects of faith in our disenchanted age.
Second, while I think that is true, I think the story needs to be modified a bit. Yes, I think many Christians are struggling with disenchantment. But that's not all that is going on. What we may be seeing is a shift in enchantments, trading one sort of enchantment for a different one.
Third, if that's true, what sort of shift is going on? Following Steven Smith, we're witnessing a shift from a Christian to a pagan enchantment, where the sacred is no longer found outside of creation but within creation. Enchantment is shifting from the transcendent to the immanent.
And that brings me to something I've been thinking about regarding faith and mysticism.
Perhaps we're more enchanted than I've been giving us credit for over the last few years. I've been going on and on about the need for a direct, experiential encounter with the sacred. And I've been assuming these experiences are growing rarer and rarer in our secular, disenchanted age. But maybe that's not the case. Maybe we remain very much enchanted, and mystical experiences very common.
If so, then the issue shifts. Any Christian call for the mystical has to be less a general call for mysticism than attending to the particular sort of mysticism we are talking about. Specifically, is this mystical encounter transcendent or immanent? Mystical experiences need to be discerned.
The big point in all this is that in my ruminations about mysticism I'm starting to think less of mysticism than mysticisms, and which sort of encounters with God are vital to a vibrant walk with God.
