re MDDM 35 Christ and History

[Terrance]

Thomas Eckhardt wrote:
> 
> Terrance wrote:
> 
> > A is one of those men who makes most others look like dwarfs, as Newton
> > does. No other man has done more to construct and to authorize the
> > Church than A,  but he is
> > also the father of Catholic Mysticism. Yes! This man of iron dogma and
> > authority was a mystic.
> 
> So the contradiction between Christ as origin and goal of History
> (dogma) and Christ as ahistorical (mysticism) has been there right from
> the
> beginning?
> 
> Thomas

Long before Augustine and Faustus. 
In what sense does RC, cry out for Christ? It seems that Cherrycoke, in
his reflections on Christ and History, is a man of his day. The cry
"Back to Christ" is, in some regards, a cry for "Apostolic
Christianity." Almost every big, or profound, movement (Great Awakening
& Co.) in the history of Christianity has involved a movement toward a
more spiritual and unfettered form of Christianity. Believing that the
Apostolic Age and the Glailean Circle was a sort of "golden age," when
the Divine and the Human were United in Life and Fellowship, Christians
have tried to recover or re-discover, either by new interpretation of
texts or by revival of what has been called "Primitive Christianity,"
Christ. Of course, there was no single Apostolic Christianity, but a
bunch, just as there were during RC day and just as there are today. 
However, the Apostolic Church was a Mystical fellowship, formed and
gathered not by the will of man, but by Direct Revelation from God.  God
sends his Son to men, defying Time and Death by the Revelation of the
Divine in the Human (or the Soul in the Stone). 

In this Chapter, the RC is asked about his Church. His reply is very
important. 

The primitive Church, as described in Acts & Co., is clearly a Mystical
Fellowship and not an organization of believers bound by something
political and external, but by Christ. More importantly, although bound
by Expectation, Faith in His Return and the Kingdom, it is the Direct
Experience, first-hand experience of an extraordinary and Mystical
kind,  that holds them together in Fellowship. We should remember that
the Holy Ghost was thought to be flooding the hearts of men at this
time. The Holy Ghost was literally invading from outside, coming in to
the lives of men and women and children. And what was the Holy Ghost?
Why it was the Wind of course. The wind, carried something, swiftly,
miraculous, temporary. Many began to speak in tongues. The Agape or Love
Feast, the consciousness of Divinity,  the Invasion of the Spirit, the
Wind in the Stone, the Expectations and Experiences of the marvelous and
wondrous, caused people to be unconcerned with  eating cake and much
else, and to experiment with new societies, guided by ecstatic prophecy.
But along came James and Paul and the Jerusalem Church and the rest is
History. ;-)

But Paul too, was a Mystic. Now, it is possible to go and discover
almost anything in writings of Paul and like Augustine we tend to think
of Paul not so much as a Mystic, but as scholastic theologian. However,
Paul's Gospel is deeply planted in the direct experiences of the Divine.
And the story goes on and on
.and I could go on and on and on with this
until the cows come home, but the point is, that the Church, unless we
take a very simplistic ANTI-Catholic position, did not stomp out magic
and mysticism (of course, it did all sorts of stomping, on mystics and
mysticism, scientists, victims countless and unaccounted for mostly
and
not to excuse the Church for any of its many mortal sins, but it was,
after all, THE CHURCH-what Freud has called Civilization) but is the
very ground of mysticism in Christianity and was though history and is
today. In fact, in many regards, it remains its most radical
practitioner. Consider the Real Presence (some slight variations in the
Catholic Churches) of Christ at the Mass and the fact that Catholics eat
the body of their resurrected god (not a symbolic gesture), after it has
been changed into Christ's very own flesh and that they drink his blood.