The Mystic's Love: St John Of The Cross

Extract

The Mystic, says St John of the Cross, is a loving an enamoured, soul—alma enamorada. And he describes this love as the ‘labour to divest ourselves and to detach ourselves for God's sake from all that is not God’ (Ascent, ii, 5,7). When we come to analyse the immense and complex meaning of such sentences as this in the work of the Mystical Doctor we discover the two great influences that went to make up his theology, as in a lesser degree they made up the theology of nearly every Christian mystical writer. The first tradition may be called the philosophic background which was earlier in history, coming from the far East and from the purity of Greek thought, and the second, the fundamental Christian theology of love was explained rather than implemented by the former tradition of thought.