Understanding the Christian Apophaticism of St. John of the Cross

Introduction

In his book Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley approvingly quotes someone who says, "St. John of the Cross is like a sponge full of Christianity. You can squeeze it all out, and the full mystical theory [here Huxley adds "in other words, the pure Perennial Philosophy"] remains."¹ In our time of religious pluralism, such a position is extremely attractive because it offers a "solution" to the problem of religious pluralism, as I will explain. Nonetheless, I want to dispute the claim that you can squeeze all the Christianity out of St. John of the Cross and have anything left.

First, I set out two competing interpretations of the apophatic, one by Huxley, which I call "perennialist apophaticism," the other by St. Bonaventure, which I call "Christian apophaticism." Then I argue that the mysticism of St. John of the Cross should be interpreted as a version of Christian apophaticism.

But let me be clear: when I use the term "perennial philosophy," I intend it to apply to the position of someone like Huxley, even though the term might be used in other ways. For example, Jacques Maritain applies the term in a quite different way to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas.²

I. "Perennialist Apophaticism" and St. John of the Cross

What Huxley calls the "Perennial Philosophy" focuses on what might be called the "Upward Path," or, to use another metaphor, the "Inward Path." This path has two complementary components, the cataphatic, and the apophatic, to borrow the terminology used by the so-called Pseudo-Dionysius, most famously in his Mystical Theology, a work that had great authority through the Middle Ages because it was (mistakenly) believed to be the work of Dionysius, the disciple of Paul whose conversion on the Areopagus is related in the book of Acts (17:34). In using the Dionysian terminology to explain the perennial philosophy, I am following Huxley's suggestion that Pseudo-Dionysius is a central representative of perennial philosophy in the West because of the way he unites Neoplatonism and Christianity.³

The cataphatic way—cataphatic comes from a Greek word meaning "to affirm"—recognizes that the finite things around us reflect their infinite origin. The root idea is that the imperfect goodness, truth, beauty, and existence of finite things reflect the perfect goodness, truth, beauty, and existence of their source. In sum, the cataphatic way affirms that God is reflected in creatures, and we should move from more imperfect to less imperfect reflections of the Absolute in the world in order to know the Absolute better.

The apophatic way—apophatic coming from a Greek word meaning "to deny"—recognizes the inherent limits of the cataphatic way. Even if creatures reflect the Absolute, the Absolute still transcends all creatures. To ascend to the Absolute, all creatureliness must be left behind, and one must empty oneself of everything finite. In fact, Huxley claims that at the core of every creature is the Absolute itself, which one can get to by stripping away the finite shells that contain it.⁴ This is the feature that Huxley claims is

most important, the most emphatically insisted upon by all the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy. . . . [The] eternal Self [is] in the depth of particular, individualized selves, and identical with, or at least akin to, the divine Ground. . . . This teaching is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula tat tvam asi ("That art thou") . . . and the last end of every human being is to discover the fact for himself, to find out Who [sic] he really is.⁵

According to the perennialists, that is precisely what genuine mystics in all traditions do: they leave the finite completely behind to penetrate inwardly to the Absolute that is at their core. This mystical experience provides a way beyond the plurality of religions and their clashing doctrines. Mystics...