Mysticism and Language.

Edited by Steven T. Katz, Oxford University Press, $38,262 pp.

Katz's volume is the third he has edited and contributed to over the past fifteen years. Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (1978) argued strenuously that all mystical experience is mediated experience (religious and cultural) and, as a consequence, those that hold for the fundamental sameness in mysticism (e.g., the philosophia perennis) are wrong. In Mysticism and Religious Traditions (1983), Katz (and his contributors) set out to demolish the common perception that mystics are, of necessity or by vocation, peripheral to religious traditions as well as the object of suspicion. Both of these volumes, especially the first one, have generated a good deal of (healthy) learned discussion.

This present collection takes up the issue of the use of language in the mystical tradition. A moment's reflection will show how complex a subject this is. How, for instance, does one create a language about an experience which is generally described as ineffable? How does one analyze the use of the Zen koan which is a linguistic device designed precisely to get beyond language? What are the uses of language in the rich tradition of Jewish mysticism which focuses, at least among some, on the mystic penetration of texts, words, and even letters? What are we to make of the intensely erotic language of certain mystical traditions?

These and cognate issues are raised and discussed by some premier scholars in the field. This collection offers reflection on Jewish mysticism (Moshe Idel); on love language in Christian and Jewish mysticism (Bernard McGinn); on Buddhist and Christian texts (Ninian Smart); on Chan/Zen Buddhism (Bernard Faure); etc. Such essays are marked by a serious control of the literature and a rigorous reading of the textual tradition. Katz's opening essay--a kind of over view of the issues involved in the relationship of language and mysticism--sets the stage for the more particular studies mentioned above. It also provides openings for further research.

The particular merit of the series is to set out, with rigor, a serious consideration of mysticism that is both philosophically and historically sophisticated. These volumes are not for the casual browser. Not everyone in the field of mysticism and spirituality is a "Katzian," but no person, serious about mysticism, can remain ignorant of the agenda that these volumes propose. For that reason alone, the trilogy in general and this volume in particular are welcome.

I had the good fortune of reading Burton-Christie while teaching a course on Christian spirituality. It was a valuable resource which I mined for its many insights into the early development of monastic faith and practice. Readers of Augustine's Confessions will remember how influential Athanasius's Life of Antony was for him and those about him. Along with that paradigmatic vita we also possess a vast collection of "sayings" from the early desert dwellers of the late fourth century (mainly Coptic-speaking peasants) who went into the wilderness to serve God through a life of prayer, asceticism, and work. These "sayings" are brief, sometimes almost aphoristic, and, most likely, remembered and handed on by those who received them. Only later were they compiled into the collections which we possess today.

Burton-Christie's study focuses on this issue: how did these early ascetics encounter the Word of God, flesh it out in their lives, and transmit their insights to others; what, in short, was their hermeneutical strategy? How is this reflected in the collection of "sayings" which we have from this period? That they rooted their lives in Scripture is, for Burton-Christie, a given despite the judgment of those (most conspicuously the historian Edward Gibbon in the eighteenth century) who saw the desert ascetics as aberrant Christians at best and fanatical un-Christians at worst. Burton-Christie shows, convincingly to my mind, that they did shape their lives according to a particular way of encountering the Scriptures and, further, when others came to see them seeking a "good word," it was to the Scriptures that they turned in offering spiritual direction to their supplicants.

His focus on the desert ascetics (who are the ancestors of the monastic tradition for both the Eastern and Western church) reinforces a larger point which I think is crucial for Christian spirituality, to wit, that it may be seen as a tradition seeking to work out the implications of certain topoi in the Bible. There is much truth in Gerhart Ebeling's assertion that the history of Christianity is the history of biblical interpretation. The desert ascetics (fathers and mothers, let it be noted) fastened on the "not-yet" of eschatological yearning, the need for compunction (penthos), the humble life of Christ, the aspiration for a "purity of heart," and the demands of the great commandment of love of God and neighbor.

Burton-Cristie teases out these and other themes in exacting detail. His book, then, makes a wonderful companion to the easily available translation of the Savings of the Desert Fathers like that translated by Benedicta Ward for Cistercian Publications. The Word in the Desert is a major work of scholarship in early Christian spirituality; it deserves a close reading by anyone in the field. I have profited much from it.

Wilken is one of this country's most distinguished patristics scholars. His new book on the rise and significance of the Holy Land in both the imagination and history of Christians is a superbly written and researched piece of historical scholarship. Wilken has a historical thesis to present and a conclusion to draw. The thesis, simply put, is this: Christians have lived in Palestine from the beginning of Christianity but, roughly beginning in the fourth century, the idea rose that the land in general and Jerusalem in particular was a holy Christian place that was not only a destination for pilgrims (there were many of them) but a place to live.

In the "Golden Age" of Byzantine Christianity (from, roughly, the fourth to the seventh century), the population of Jerusalem rose from 15,000 to nearly 50,000. Its Christian patriarch, Wilken observes, could have well challenged the authority of the See of Rome had it not been for the subsequent Islamic conquest. Archaeologists have traced over five hundred Byzantine churches from the Negev north while the Judean desert was dotted with monastic establishments, at least one of which (Mar Saba) exists to this day. Jews, of course, were still a continuing presence but their numbers in Jerusalem were slight. More importantly, from Wilken's perspective, the idea of the sacredness of the land among Christians changed from a metaphorical notion of the land to an exigent belief that this was Christian territory with a profound theological significance.

This would all end, of course, with, first the Sassanid ( Persian) invasion of Byzantine Palestine and the far more permanent conquerors of Islam. Wilken ends his story with that invasion but, as he astringently notes, the belief in the Christian notion of the Holy Land was deep-rooted and it would blossom, terribly, with the rise of the crusading spirit in the Romanesque period of the medieval West.

That, in brief, is Wilken's story (an inadequate summary of his deeply rich historical narrative) but here is his conclusion: Christianity's "homeland is the Middle East, and continuity with its past is dependent on the Christians who continue to live in that land in which the faith is native." Otherwise, Wilken fears, the Christian presence in present-day Israel will become a museum piece and relic (as it is, say, in present-day Istanbul, where the patriarch of Constantinople keeps a flickering presence alive), and, as a consequence, a rich part of the Christian experience will be lost.

Such a scenario could well play out. Christian Arabs today find themselves squeezed by the militancy of Islam and the expansionism of Israel; many Palestinian Christians already find themselves in the diaspora. According to many thoughtful people, and Wilken would be one of them, that is not a good thing. However, it is a tragic reality.

The estimable Paulist series Classics of Western Spirituality continues to issue excellent editions. The best seller of the series is Julian of Norwich's Showings. Her wonderful English prose, her attention to feminine language, and her great sense of love and compassion all help to explain why this fourteenth-century English recluse should be a contemporary best seller. It is a work that I always have on my reading list for students when my annual course on Christian spirituality comes around.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Julian's book should also spawn an enormous secondary literature (some of which I have noted in this column previously). Bradley's volume is a welcome addition to that literature. A longtime student of medieval spirituality (she is one of the founders of the journal Mystics Quarterly), this work sums up her long familiarity with Julian's writings. She writes in a straightforward and engaging fashion with the hope, as she says, that her book might provide a student of Julian with a "practical" guide as they read the Showings. I think she does just that and, as a consequence, can recommend her briskly written work as a good first entry into Julian's writings.

What I most admire is Bradley's ability to contextualize Julian's writings by reference not only to the religious culture from which she springs but also her attention to the metaphors drawn from her life in late medieval Norwich. Bradley pays attention to Julian's use of clothing and knitting metaphors, to her reactions to the art of the period, and to her fresh use of language.

Bradley rightly observes that Julian did not write for a spiritually elite audience (as did, for example, the Cloud author) but for those whom she called her "even-Christians," the ordinary folks who came to her for a "good word." We know that they did come to her because Margery Kempe tells us so in her own autobiography. Bradley is especially good in explaining how Julian saw herself as a teacher (and, I would say, spiritual director) despite a rather hefty tradition warning women against undertaking such duties. Julian's favorite themes--the goodness of creation, the notion of God and Christ as Mother, the "nothingness of sin, " that "all things will be well" (a phrase immortalized in Eliot's Four Quartets), the passion of Christ--all get sensibly treated in this very fine little book which ends with a (too) short bibliography and an index.

Anyone who wishes to truly understand Julian must be conversant with a small body of literature, published more than a century before Julian's day, destined for anchoresses in England. Unlike hermits who sought out inaccessible rural retreats, anchoresses lived in towns and cities, in a small house attached to a church (called an anchorhold) where they lived a life of prayer and penance. Ceremonies of enclosure for such penitents frequently appealed to the metaphors of solitary confinement or prison to describe their lives. Interestingly, this rather grim language existed in tension with other metaphors, drawn mainly from The Song of songs, which described the anchorhold as a "bower" or a "garden" or a "bridal chamber."

Savage and Watson have translated (from Medieval English) the contents of the so-called "Titus Manuscript," an anthology of anchoritic spirituality copied in a Franciscan provenance in the first half of the thirteenth century. The most famous of the treatises in this volume is the Ancrene Wisse--a rule for recluses composed, it is believed, by a learned canon. The Titus manuscript also contains some other short works: "The Soul's Keeping" (Sawles Warde), "Holy Maidenhood," "The Wooing of Our Lord," and a hagiographical treatise called "St. Katherine." Appendices in this volume also reproduce some other works from the same period which do not appear in the Titus manuscript.

These works are much earlier than Julian's Showings, nonetheless they provide a context for Julian's life and shed much light on her writings. As I read the Ancrene Wisse (AW), for example, I could see more clearly what Bradley meant by the limits imposed on these female ascetics with respect to teaching. Julian's great vision of the Crucified Lord, which is part of her opening chapters, made even more sense to me as I read the passage in the AW which recommended the power of a prayer said before the "great crucifix" (which evidently referred to the one over the main altar of the church that the recluse could see through her "church window"). Bradley's analysis of Julian's clothing and knitting metaphors came alive in those pages of the AW where the legitimate occupations of the anchoress are described (sewing for the poor and for the church is recommended).

What makes this volume so rich is both its generous notes (running to nearly 100 pages), its index of scriptural and patristic citations, valuable appendices (including some wonderful medieval prayers to Our Lady), and a quite adequate general index. The treatises are prefaced with some extremely helpful introductory notes, including an illuminating discussion of translation problems when scholars attempt to transpose Medieval English dialect into contemporary speech. This volume, then, both in its own right and as a resource for understanding Julian is invaluable. Once again, we are much in the debt of Paulist Press for giving us such good value.

LAWRENCE S. CUNNINGHAM, professor and chair of the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, is editing the 1956-60 personal notebooks of Thomas Merton for publication.