The Charter of Christian Mysticism « The Website of Unknowing

Carl McColman has a really startlingly profound post - full link below - in which he identifies Ephesians 3 as the foundational Scripture for the Christian mystical tradition. I won't attempt to reproduce his discussion here - I doubt I'd do it justice anyway - but I will just post a couple of snippets to tempt you to click over and read the whole post:

Mysticism’s detractors often accuse it of being “un-biblical” or “extra-biblical.” Mysticism cannot be an authentic element of Christian spirituality, so their reasoning goes, since it is not found in the Bible.

True, the word mysticism does not occur in the Bible. But it is related to the Greek word mysterion, translated in most English versions as “mystery.” If we think of mysticism as the spirituality of the Christian mystery, we are much closer to finding its scriptural foundation.

Thinking about this, I turned to the third chapter of Ephesians, in which Paul mentions the mystery of Christ four times. In this chapter he is discussing why Christ came not just for Israel, but for the entire world: gentiles as well as Jews. As I read over the chapter, it occurred to me that this is the headwaters of mystical theology. Indeed, here is the scriptural justification for mysticism: the “charter,” if you will, of the Christian tradition of entering via contemplation into the loving and transforming presence of God...

It was Whitehead, I believe, who suggested that all of western philosophy is little more than an extensive collection of footnotes to Plato. The more I sit with Ephesians 3, the more I think that the Christian mystical tradition is simply two thousand years of annotations to this powerful chapter.

The Charter of Christian Mysticism « The Website of Unknowing