This is a long post. But it asks what I’d consider a relevant and important question:
In this life, how far along the spiritual journey can non-Christians go?
It seems to me that, if anyone cares about God and about his neighbours in an environment that is not primarily Catholic or Christian, then this question will surge into mind at some point. It may be a debilitating question if there are not sound foundations. Whatever sparks the question can cause scandal. Can non-Christians be here spiritually? Can non-Christian be there spiritually? What is possible? What is normal?
Just how far along the spiritual journey can non-Christians, operating in this precarious but grace-inundated life without explicit knowledge of the dogmas of Christianity, go?
The way one answers this question depends entirely on one’s conception of the spiritual journey itself. The traditional map of the spiritual journey divides into three parts: (1) beginning, (2) becoming proficient, and (3) becoming “united” to God in a quasi-continuous state.
It seems easiest to look at each state in turn.
(1) Can non-Christians be beginners in the spiritual life?
This is the same question as, “Can non-Christians be saved?” or “Can non-Christians be in a state of grace?” Everyone who is in a state of grace is (at least) a beginner and is on the road towards union with God. The road only goes up, though of course we may not be travelling in that direction.
Non-Christians can accept the grace that comes, through divine light, with the two primary articles of faith: “God is” and “God rewards those who seek him” (Heb 11:6). These truths may be formulated explicitly or implicitly, formally or inchoately, in concepts or only in the tendency of the will. But they are offered to those whom God came to save: human beings.
This is no radical teaching. It is exactly what Saint Thomas taught, for example: in grace, the two primary truths of Hebrews 11:6 are or can be offered to all (Sum. theol., IIa-IIae, q. 2, a. 7, ad 3). Therefore, in theory, anyone can or could be a beginner. I take the point as largely indisputable, though much can be added to it and learned from and about it!
(2) Can non-Christians pass beyond the beginner stage of the spiritual life and become “proficients”?
This is the same question as, “Can non-Christians undergo and pass beyond Saint John of the Cross’ dark night of the senses?” or “Can non-Christians succeed in having their senses purified and begin to enter into contemplative prayer?” or “Can Christians pass beyond the purgative way to the illuminative way?” or “Is contemplative prayer open to non-Christians?”
One wants to say yes.
One thing that might make us stop to ponder is that, for Saint Catherine of Siena, her “second step” has people who are following Christ, whereas the “first step” only had those following the Father, without a care yet for Christ and his suffering and detachment from sense consolation. But, in reality, that’s only a superficial objection. One can implicitly love Christ’s suffering without explicitly knowing that Christ, like me but in perfection rather than imperfection, suffers for the sake of good. It seems more likely that Saint Catherine is speaking about Christians in particular: if they cling only to a Father who consoles them, they never move along the spiritual life; but if they remember, love, and truly follow their Christ, they can move farther along the spiritual journey.
On the whole, there is nothing particularly and exclusively requiring a divine revelation in the notion that one must die to oneself, especially in things related to our senses, our sense consolations, our feelings, our sense wants and needs.
This means that, on the whole, non-Christians can be “proficients” in the spiritual life.
Where are some possible sources of contemplation outside of Catholicism? Passing over the obvious examples of Protestantism and Judaism, I’d note the following:
- I frequently hear comments about detachment from, for example, Buddhists here in Thailand. Simply to preach detachment is to preach the possibility of contemplation. That may not be the message as explicitly formulated. But it is certainly a possible outcome. Strip oneself of sense attachment and the void is open for God to fill with an orientation towards himself in the contemplative love of grace, wordless, unsensory, freeing.
- Mansūr Ḥallāj is, from within Islam, a pretty clear example of what Christians would consider contemplative experience. It is hard to find a reason to dispute this.
The tricky part is, of course, that the constant teaching of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church regarding transformation in Christ may be unavailable or, in the case of Protestantism, obscured. But that’s something tricky. It’s not a total obstacle. In masked, unapparent, unconceptualized ways, anyone generous and magnanimous enough to die to her senses can approach Christian contemplation – though she may not call it Christian contemplation, to be sure!
(3) Can non-Christians journey so far as to become what the spiritual writers sometimes call “perfect” (though possibly committing indeliberate venial sins) or “on the unitive way”?
This is the same question as “Can non-Christians enter the so-called ‘mystical marriage’?” or “Can non-Christians reach the third step of Saint Catherine’s bridge?” or “Can non-Christians experience a quasi-continuous, rather than intermittent, contemplation?” or “Can non-Christians get so far, in this life, as to be able to pass immediately or almost immediately to Heaven, without additional purgation after death?”
This is where the question gets especially difficult, interesting, or scandalous.
In the first place, most spiritual writers claim that, although the path and invitation and possibility is open to all, few Christians make it this far in this life. So, if we were to claim that few non-Christians get this far, we would hardly be saying anything different than we already say about Christians!
But we aren’t asking, “Do non-Christians get this far in the spiritual life?” We’re asking, “Can non-Christians get this far?” Do and can: two different questions.
Is it actually possible for someone to whom the explicit revelation of Christ and the Trinity is unknown to enter into quasi-continual contemplation of God, either in the cloister or on the road?
We can recall two points of view:
- Saint Teresa who describes her own experience of the “mystical marriage” as containing an intellectual vision of the Trinity;
- Saint John of the Cross who says that, in general, someone penetrating this far has some sort of contemplative or mystical experience of the Trinity;
In the first place, we are dealing with Saint Teresa’s own experience, which, if Saint John’s terminology is more accurate, is a particularly prophetic charism. The general aspect is a deep interior experience of the Trinity. An intellectual vision is a particular charism by which this can arrive.
So, taking Saint John’s description as the more general one, can non-Christians attain to a contemplative or mystical experience of the Trinity?
The question is surely, What would a non-Christian think that such an experience is?
Without the Scriptures, without dogma, and/or without theology, what would a non-Christian even understand such an experience as? That there are Three who are One living and loving in me, united to me in love not substance, continually open to being listened to and overwhelmed by, in the silence of a heart that beats with the spiritual Blood of Christ who is both fully human and fully God: could anyone experience this without a reference within Christianity and without crushing the whole greatness underfoot?
Is it possible to bypass the Christian frame of reference and get this far? Wouldn’t that also mean that one had become, in the fullest sense of the word, an Apostle? When Pentecost came, the Apostles become what they were. Similarly, after three years in her cell, Saint Catherine of Siena emerged “mystically married” and set for a fully apostolic life. Someone “mystically married” to Christ is an Apostle. Can we imagine a fully Christic Apostle who is not a Christian?
For my part, I can’t imagine any of this. It doesn’t seem a reasonable, prudent conclusion that there is any normal, normative way for non-Christians to get as far as the traditional third state of the spiritual journey (“mystical marriage”, “unitive way”, “perfect” souls, Catherine’s “third step”) – nuances and exceptions made, of course, for the history of Judaism and for Gentiles who, like Saint Job, had remarkable experiences in the spiritual life.*
However, none of this bars salvation or even contemplation to non-Christians. And let us be perfectly fair. They may attain to these states, by their implicit knowledge, with greater efficacy than Christians do with their explicit knowledge. Such is the scandal of Christianity.
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* Indeed, one of the traditional interpretations of the Book of Job is that it contains a story of both major purifications required in the spiritual life: first, as to the senses and sense consolations (Job loses his possessions and relations [Job 1–3]) and, second, as to the deeper roots of the soul (Job himself is attacked in his health and person [Job 4–37], and God upbraids him in intellect and will, asking, “Shall a fault-finder contend with the Almighty?”, [Job 40:1]). The first experience is easily generalizable, in a more subdued way, to all Gentiles; the latter is more remarkable, and the opening chapters of Job make it clear that Job himself was remarkably able to sustain such a purification in this life (see Job 1:7; 2:3).
Some related posts:
Contemplative in the Mud 