Explainer

Creed

Weirdness

6 January 2025

5 min read

The year of the mystics

Ready to be turned upside down?

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen.

An abstact image hints at twisting figure in front of a St Andrews Cross.

Jr Korpa on Unsplash.

Last year, a journalist called me, completely out of the blue. We’d never met before, but she had a couple of questions she wanted answering about Christianity and, somehow, she found me.

Firstly, she wanted to know what the heck was going on with Christianity at the moment – why can’t Nick Cave stop talking about his Wild God? What was up with Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s infamous U-Turn? Why, despite decline in church attendance and institutional failures, are more and more people finding themselves falling into the Christian story? I wish I had then, what I have now: Graham Tomlin’s round-up of 2024 as the year Christianity (for better or for worse) made somewhat of a comeback. Because, she’s right, it really has been quite something.

But, leaving Graham to answer her first question, this article is an attempt to answer her second, far more unexpected, one: where are all the Christian mystics?

I got the sense that this second question wasn’t being asked for the benefit of a piece she was writing, but for the sake of her own mystically inclined heart. I feel like what she was really asking was something akin to - is there a place within the Christian story for people who are friends with mystery and oddness, who want the unexplainable and the ecstatic, who consider ‘strange’ and ‘spiritual’ to be two sides of the same coin? Is there a way in for those who don’t want the weirdness of it all to be underplayed? Is there space within Christianity for one to be turned up-side-down by God’s ‘heart melting nearness’?

Well, in short, yes. Completely and utterly. Yes to all of it.

Where are the mystics, I hear you ask? It would be my pleasure to introduce you to a few of my favourites.

First up to the plate, it’s Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179).

A master of music, medicine and mysticism – Hildegard of Bingen is one of the most interesting women in German history. As a Benedictine Abess, she dedicated much of her time to mystical theology and philosophy, largely informed by her visionary experiences of God. She reluctantly recorded twenty-six of these visions in a piece of work entitled Sci Vias Domini (which translates to mean ‘Knowing the Ways of the Lord’). She also composed songs, again largely inspired by her visions of God, and even a musical mortality play entitled Ordo Virtutum.

Her Christian mysticism bled into her understanding of science and medicine; she emphasises the deep interconnectedness of all living things - having originated from one creator - and therefore sees medicine as just as spiritual of a pursuit as theology. According to Hildegard, all is sacred, all is connected, and so the health of the natural world matters. It both informs and reflects our own health.

Clare of Assisi (1194-1253) is celebrated as an Italian saint and founder of the Order of Poor Ladies.

Born into a wealthy family, Clare shunned comfort, luxury, and an arranged advantageous marriage in favour of a life devoted to intimate and vibrant prayer. She soon gathered a community around her, and their obvious disdain for luxury of any kind is what caught the world’s attention and earned them the title of ‘Poor Ladies’.

Her life of prayer had dramatic consequences and, ultimately, saved the lives of those she loved. While their Order was under attack, Clare’s prayers caused a violent storm to sweep across the town and scatter the terrified attackers.

Next up is a particularly strange (in the best way) character, Catherine of Sienna (1357-1380).

Catherine had religious visions from the age of six or seven, and took them incredibly seriously, even then. As she grew older, her parents urged her to marry the widower of her sister, who had tragically died in childbirth. In response, Catherine cut off her hair and joined the Sisters of Penance of St. Dominic. That’s quite the outright rejection, isn’t it?

After three years of isolation (during which she is said to have prayed, contemplated, and developed a rich understanding of Jesus’ death and its implications), she became quite the famous figure, feeling sure that God had commanded her to publicly speak of what he had told and shown her.

Now for a personal favourite, Theresa of Avila (1515-1583).

I read her prayers and poems endlessly. And, can you blame me? Just listen to this:

Let nothing disturb you,
let nothing frighten you,
all things will pass away.
God never changes;
patience obtains all things,
whoever has God lacks nothing.
God alone suffices.

The gentleness of her words are like a balm to a world that can so often sting us. And, indeed, stung Theresa, as she suffered with severe ill-health and persecution her entire life. Nevertheless, she developed a passion for mental prayer and is said to have heard God’s audible voice, seen visions, and even felt her body levitate. She became infamous for her poetry, her mystic theology and her unusual independence as a medieval woman.

These women, these mystics, are separated from us by time and context. And yet, to many, they are close companions. They are still aiding those on a quest to enter into Christianity through the ‘mystic’ door. They are still reminding us that we oughtn’t be fooled by the pesky left-side of our brains, the part that wants us to believe that we understand all that’s worth understanding. They are still challenging us with the knowledge that all that we see is not all that there is.

You want mysticism? Christianity can down-right give you mysticism.

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Column

Belief

Christmas culture

Creed

25 December 2024

7 min read

Why the incarnation adds up for me

There’s much more to it than maths and linguistics.

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

An abstract image of red and gold fluid shapes akin to stained glass, seem to depict a face and an upstretched hand.

Jr Korpa on Unsplash.

I’m rubbish at maths.

This hasn’t actually held me back all that much in life because I’m a theologian and biblical scholar by profession; I basically train vicars for a living. Being bad at maths means I fit in well in the Church because – I don’t know if you’ve noticed – Christianity is rubbish at maths too.

We go to school and we’re taught things like one plus one plus one equals three. We then go to Church and we’re told one Father plus one Son plus one Holy Spirit now somehow equals one God.

And the rubbish maths doesn’t stop there.

The Church also says that Jesus is God incarnate: that He is 100 per cent God and 100 per cent human. Even I know that this isn’t how percentages work.

But what does it mean to say that Jesus is 100 per cent God and 100 per cent human? More importantly: why should you care? What difference does this make to you?

What is the incarnation?

If you’ve ever had chilli con carne, you might know this literally means ‘chilli with meat’; ‘carne’ means ‘meat’. And the ‘carne’ in ‘incarnation’ is exactly the same: it means ‘meat’ or ‘flesh’.

So, we can think of ‘incarnation’ as ‘enfleshment’, or ‘taking on flesh’, or ‘becoming flesh and blood’. This is what we mean when we talk about ‘incarnation’: that someone or something has become flesh and blood.

In the Bible we read that, while Jesus “existed in the form of God … He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, assuming human likeness.”

And this is where the maths of the whole enterprise starts to get tricky.

The Bible does not claim that Jesus stops being God when He is human, or that He is somehow ‘less God’ in some way. Nor does it say that Jesus is anything less than completely human.

The word translated as ‘form’ in English – the ‘form’ of God, and the ‘form of a human servant’ – is morphē in Greek (the language the New Testament was written in). It’s where we get English words like ‘morph’. The animated character Morph is a little clay man who changes his form – his shape – at will. The Mighty, Morphing Power Rangers are people who change their form to become superheroes.

Something like this happens to Jesus in the Gospels, too, when Jesus’ face begins to shine like the sun and his clothes become unnaturally white. Most English translations say that Jesus is ‘transfigured’.

I don’t know about you, but that’s not a word I often use; things are very rarely ‘transfigured’ in my life.

The Greek word underlying this is metamorpheō, where we get English words like ‘metamorphosis’ from. Hopefully you can see that morph (the word for ‘form’) in the middle of the word metamorpheō. And whenever a Greek word has meta- at the start of it – like in metamorpheō. It’s to do with change.

Here, then, Jesus is literally trans-form-ed. Jesus, while in human form, is now revealed in His divine form.

It’s not that Jesus becomes God in this moment, or that he stops being human. Rather, Jesus is revealed in the transfiguration – in his metamorphosis – to be, and to have always been, fully God and fully human.

And so, when the Church celebrates the incarnation at Christmas, it celebrates God’s perfect eternal Son becoming embodied – taking on human flesh and a human body – in the person of Jesus.

This is not the life of independence, autonomy, and self-sufficiency I am so often encouraged to cultivate by the world around me. It’s a life of needing other people

Okay, at this point, you might be thinking: “That’s lovely, but who cares?”

Well, the Church’s claim that Jesus is 100 per cent God and 100 per vent human is deeply important for every one of us. Without it, we’re scuppered. In particular, the incarnation matters for at least four reasons.

First, the incarnation means we really do see God when we see Jesus. Jesus is fully God. In Jesus, “the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,” to use the Bible’s language. In other words, then, there is no God hidden behind Jesus.

Jesus makes it genuinely possible to know God; if Jesus was anything less than fully God, then we would only know a diluted, watered down version of God through Him.

Second, without the incarnation there can be no rescuing of humanity, or of the world around us.

You don’t have to look very far to see the worst of humanity. All too often it feels as though those in power are exactly the last people we would want to wield it. Whether you’d call yourself a Christian or not, I think we can all agree that things need fixing.

The Church claims Jesus came to fix things.

Being fully God and fully human, Jesus acts as our representative to God, and God’s representative to us. He overcomes any difference between God and the world, and restores it to the glorious state in which God intended it to be.

But this act of fixing – of setting things right, of restoration, of transformation – is only possible for someone fully God and fully human. Only the incarnation makes it possible for us and the world around us to be put right.

Third, because Jesus is fully human, His life shows us what it means to live well.

Jesus is the most ‘human’ human who has ever human-ed. He is a human cranked up to eleven. Jesus’ life is what it looks like to live the perfect human life. He does not imitate our humanity; we imitate His. We are not the norm for what humanity looks like; He is.

But Jesus’ life does not look like my idea of perfect. Jesus’ perfect human life involved complete and utter dependency on other people.

As a baby, Jesus’ mum and dad cleaned up his poo and His sick; Mary probably breastfed Him. As a child, Jesus relied on other people to be educated. As a man, Jesus had no home: His dad probably now dead and His mum convinced he’d gone mad, He relied on other people for shelter, for clothes, and for food.

This is not the life of independence, autonomy, and self-sufficiency I am so often encouraged to cultivate by the world around me. It’s a life of needing other people.

The incarnation then, shows us what it does – and does not – mean to live well.

Fourth, and finally, the incarnation means that none of the awful things that we do to each other and are done to us by others define our value, our worth, or our humanity.

Jesus was a victim of sexual abuse.

Some people are very resistant to this idea. I wonder if there are misguided notions of shame at play here: as though this would somehow make Jesus less human, or less God, or less saviour.

Again, Jesus has other ideas.

All four of the Gospels tell us that Jesus was stripped naked as part of His torture and death at the hands of the Romans. And we know from historical records that this is what the Romans did to those they crucified: they stripped them and they tortured them nakedly and in public, as an act of very deliberate humiliation and degradation.

The radical claim of Jesus’ life – of the incarnation – is that this does not make Him less-than-human in any way.

No, remember: Jesus is more human than anyone who’s ever lived. He is the norm for what it means to be human, not us. Nor does it make Him less God, or less of a saviour. Jesus’ perfect life tells victims of abuse that their lives are not tarnished, or diminished, or downgraded through the actions of others.

The incarnation, then, is God’s decisive act to show the world, once and for all, that He is for us – that He is for you, and for me. So much so, that God has chosen to become entirely like us, that we might become more like Him.

In the incarnation, God decisively declares the goodness of humanity by freely choosing to become fully human. To be human, then, is not to be someone or something that God flees from. Rather, God loves humanity so much – He loves you so much – that He has decided He cannot be without you, and He cannot be Himself without becoming like you.