Quietism (Christian philosophy)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"It has been said that "Mysticism finds in Plato all its texts," and certainly most of Christian Mysticism may be traced back to the Neo-Platonists. From their time to our own we find this tendency towards a theologia mystica appearing in one form or another, -whether it be in the secret traditions of the Jewish Cabala-in the preaching of Eckhart in the fourteenth century-in the revival of Neo-Platonism at Florence in the days of Cosmo de Medici-in the science of sympathies taught by Agrippa and Paracelsus - in Jacob Behmen's celestial visions-or in Saint Teresa's "four degrees" of prayer necessary to reach a perfect "quietism."--Plato (1874) by Clifton Wilbraham Collins |
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Quietism is a Christian philosophy that swept through France, Italy and Spain during the 17th century, but it had much earlier origins. The mystics known as Quietists insist, with more or less emphasis, on intellectual stillness and interior passivity as essential conditions of perfection. All have been officially proscribed as heresy in very explicit terms by the Roman Catholic Church.
Origins of Quietism
The state of imperturbable serenity or ataraxia was seen as a desirable state of mind by Epicurus, Pyrrhonian and the Stoic philosophers alike, and by their Roman followers, such as the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Quietism has been erroneously compared to the Buddhist doctrine of Nirvana. The possibility of achieving a sinless state and union with the Christian Godhead are denied by the Roman Catholic Church.
Among the ideas seen as errors and condemned by the Council of Vienne (1311–12) are the propositions that humankind in the present life can attain such a degree of perfection as to become utterly sinless; that the "perfect" have no need to fast or pray, but may freely grant the body whatsoever it craves (a tacit reference to the Cathars or Albigenses of southern France and Catalonia), and that they are not subject to any human authority or bound by the precepts of the Church. Similar assertions of individual autonomy on the part of the Fraticelli led to their condemnation by John XXII in 1317. The same pope in 1329 proscribed among the errors of Meister Eckhart the assertions that we are totally transformed into God just as in the sacrament the bread is changed into the body of Christ (see transubstantiation) and the value of internal actions, which are wrought by the Godhead abiding within us.
Quietism may have had some indirect effect on the mysticism of the great 16th century Spaniards, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, but there were clearly other influences. It should be made clear that both Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross were very active reformers and that both cautioned against a simple-minded "don't think anything" (no pensar nada) approach to meditation and contemplation; further, both remained firmly committed to the authority of the Catholic Church.
Quietism's primary defender was Miguel de Molinos, referred to by the Catholic Encyclopedia as the "founder" of Quietism. The apostle of the Quietist movement in 17th-century France was Molinos' correspondent, the prolific writer Mme Guyon, who won an influential convert at the court of Louis XIV in Madame de Maintenon and an ally within the Catholic hierarchy in Archbishop Fénelon.
Molinos and the doctrines of Quietism were finally condemned by Pope Innocent XI in the Bull Coelestis Pastor of 1687. A commission in France found most of Madame Guyon’s works intolerable and the government confined her, first in a convent, then in the Bastille. In 1699, after Fénelon’s spirited defense in a press war with Bossuet, Pope Innocent XII prohibited the circulation of Fénelon’s Maxims of the Saints, to which Fénelon submitted at once. The inquisition's proceedings against remaining Quietists in Italy lasted until the eighteenth century.
Theology
Quietism states that man's highest perfection consists of a self-annihilation, and subsequent absorption, of the soul into the Divine, even during the present life. In this way, the mind is withdrawn from worldly interests to passively and constantly contemplate God. Quietists would say that the Bible describes the man of God as a man of the tent and the altar only, having no part or interest in the multitudinous affairs, pursuits, and pleasures of the world system.
Quietists were so called from a kind of absolute rest and inaction, which they supposed the soul to be in when arrived at that state of perfection which they called the unitive life; in which state, they imagined the soul wholly employed in contemplating its God, to Whose influence it was entirely submissive, so that He could turn and drive it where and how He would. In this state, the soul no longer needs prayers, hymns, etc. being laid, as it were, in the bosom, and between the arms of God, in Whom it is in a manner swallowed up.
Quietist thinking was influential among the British Quakers of the later 19th century, when A Reasonable Faith, by Three Friends (William Pollard, Francis Frith and W. E. Turner (1884 and 1886) caused sharp controversy with evangelicals in the society.
See also
- Beguines and Beghards
- Christian mysticism
- Hesychasm
- Johannes Kelpius
- Religious Society of Friends
- Zen Buddhism
