The Roots of Christian Mysticism.

I began this book very conscious of the historically divergent traditions of East and West. After all, the Roman Catholic church in which I have lived and Orthodoxy have been separated for nearly a thousand years. For me, encountering a religious tradition seemingly so close to my own yet innocent of both the scholastic method and the Council of Trent, is to say the least, a bit disorienting. And yet, as Olivier Clement so elegantly demonstrates, our beginnings are the same and as conscious as we may be of our differences, the incontrovertible fact remains that we have the same communion of faith and sacraments.

Clement is an Orthodox theologian who teaches at the Institute of Saint Sergius in Paris. His primary premise is stated very simply in the introduction by Jean-Claude Barreau: "Christianity is in the first place an Oriental religion, and it is a mystical religion." From a close reading of patristic texts, primarily the Greek fathers but including Ambrose, Augustine, and Benedict, Clement argues that the God who is by nature unknowable most mysteriously offers himself to be known by human beings.

The book opens with a carefully presented reminder that we live in an abiding awareness of personal mortality and finitude. Always desiring certainty and permanence, we are compelled to read the harsh facts of our existential limits not only in our own being but in everything around us. Clement quotes Augustine - a passage from the "Commentary on Psalm 121" - which echoes and expands upon the familiar opening of The Confessions: "Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in Thee." And this rest in God represents the evangelical vocation to be "perfect as the Father is perfect" and to "Love the Lord your God with your whole heart and whole soul and your neighbor as yourself."

The book opens with a very careful analysis, an exercise in nonscholastic dogmatic theology, of the inseparable dogmas concerning the Trinity, creation, the Incarnation, and finally the nature and vocation of all humanity in the Resurrection. A hidden God is always a distant God, but the Christian God's single, unchanging nature is also a trinity of persons, boundlessly creative and generative, a continuing burst of transcendence. Correspondingly, Clement notes, in every life there is the persistent call to change, to a metanoia so radically transformative that it may well begin with a lightning bolt on the high road. With such a spiritual change comes a renewed awareness that sees with the wisdom, the passion, even the erotic fury that is the Spirit with and within us.

While Christian mysticism requires a strong foundation in Scripture, Clement reminds us that a full spirituality also looks to the ready manifestation of God's being and nature in the facts of creation. Gerard Manley Hopkins put it so succinctly and with wonderful sensuality, "God's Grandeur...will flame out, like shining from shook foil."

A significant consideration in Clement's argument is the reality of human freedom. For anything like a mystical union to occur, the individual must first freely acquiesce in confidence and humility. The grace of contemplation is always a gift freely given and freely embraced. The wonder of mystical union is the wonder of divine freedom and human freedom coming together. To enter such a state requires from the individual the greatest degree of trust and self-knowledge. In such a situation, there will exist a wholesome and creative fear of the Lord, not a Lord who sits as a fiercely avenging judge, but a Lord who insistently invites the creature to enjoy the feast prepared.

Clement makes much of the fact that it is in the church that the fullest and richest contact is made with God. In the life of the sacraments, the individual finds nurture and support so that the consciousness of one person is shaped and enriched by the consciousness of all. Such an awareness of mutual dependence takes one well beyond an understanding of the church as a set of rules and regulations. Rather, the church becomes the vehicle, the means, by which the individual is transformed and sanctified.

Discussing the nature of prayer, Clement quotes Evagrius of Pontus: "Prayer is the daughter of gentleness....Prayer is the fruit of joy and gratitude." In other words, prayer exists as the product of silence and waiting, as a statement of reality observed with care and devotion, or in the words of Evagrius: "If you want to pray, you need God, who gives prayer to one who prays." Lacking the ability to take even the first step, we must have the grace to pray before we can pray, so that salvation comes by our own love and humility formed and moved by the creative impetus of grace.

Clement concludes the book with two appendices. The first is a series of biographical notes on the individual patristic authors cited and quoted; the second is a series of three essays on Arianism, Monophysitism, and early monasticism. Since today's reader might very well need a guide through the period and the subject, these pieces are a valuable adjunct to the book itself.

In an era which hopes for a closer union between the Eastern and Western church, the elements of difference must be seen not as barriers but as attractive qualities that will lead all of us to a closer union in the experience of our common faith. It seems to me that a principal vehicle for that greater union is to be found in the wonderfully rich tradition of mysticism shared by both East and West.

Harold Isbell's translation of Ovid: Heroides is available from Penguin Books. He lives in San Francisco.