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Does the sanctity of Christian mystics corroborate their claims?

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Notes

  1. For example, William Alston'sPerceiving God (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), and William Wainwright'sMysticism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981).

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  2. Ascent of Mount Carmel, book II, chapter 24, sections 6–7, inThe Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross (Kieran Kavanaugh, trans., Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1973). Strictly speaking, this test is meant to apply to visions only, and Saint Teresa's is meant to apply to locutions. Nevertheless, both writers think the general point to be true that encounters with God are to be expected, by and large, to have the result of increasing the subject's virtue, especially humility.

  3. Interior Castle (E. Allison Peers, trans., Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1961), p. 99 (Fifth Mansion, chapter I).

  4. Interior Castle, p. 141 (Sixth Mansion, chapter III).

  5. Interior Castle, pp. 161–162 (Sixth Mansion, chapter V).

  6. Interior Castle, p. 181 (Sixth Mansion, chapter VIII).

  7. See William J. Wainwright,Mysticism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981), pp. 86–87 for a good general discussion of such tests. He describes six tests, of which only the first two are of any relevance here. Three of those tests, including that the experience should result in peace and virtue, are summarized by R. Garigou-Lagrange inChristian Perfection (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1937), pp. 447–448.

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  8. In addition to the passage cited above, Saint Teresa makes the same point in several other places. See, for example, Fifth Mansion, chapter one; Sixth Mansion, chapters three, five, and eight.

  9. Saint Teresa frequently mentions peace as another sign of genuine experiences of God. In ‘Religious experience as doubt resolution’,International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 81 (1985): 81–86, I argue that peace is a result of most religious experiences, and that this agreement among experiences is a sign that they are experiences of some mind-independent reality. However, I don't see any reason to think that such agreement shows that the experiences are good evidence for any particular religious doctrine.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Texas Tech University, 79409-3092, Lubbock, Texas, USA

    Mark Owen Webb

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Webb, M.O. Does the sanctity of Christian mystics corroborate their claims?. Int J Philos Relig 37, 63–71 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01565778

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