I am predominantly directing this thread at posters - religious and non-religious, theistic or non-theistic - who consider mystical experiences to be an important dimension of the human condition (i.e. either self-identifying as mystics themselves, as mystically-inclined or as scholarly students of mysticism as a phenomenon). But everyone else is welcome to contribute too!
Q: In your estimation, can mystical experience positively coincide within a religion that is clerical in structure or is there an inherent conflict of interest between mysticism and clerical intermediarism?
I invite folks to answer this question based upon their own religious / spiritual / philosophical tradition, as I will do from the perspective of Catholic Christianity (further downstream in a later post).
My definition of 'clerical' is as follows: a faith at least in part reliant upon a hierarchy of priests and/or ministers as intermediaries between the 'divine' and 'phenomenal' / intercessionaries between worshippers and God.
By 'clericalism' I'm not referring merely to an ordained caste of sacrdotal ministers engaged in a religious ritual or sacrifice, like Jewish Aaronic priests of the tribe of Levi or the Roman Catholic priesthood (which practitioners understand to be - in some sense - expiatory and a participation in the divine / effulgence of divine grace / forgiveness as 'mediated' through the sacred office and/or activity of the cleric) but rather am extending this, secondarily, to encompass other non-priestly but equally ministerial religious functionaries such as Buddhist monks and nuns, Protestant pastors, Jewish rabbis, Islamic imams, Sufi pirs, Hindu gurus, yogis etc.
So Rabbinic Judaism, Evangelical Protestantism and Sunni Islam are encompassed within my definition of 'clericalism', even though they are - unlike priestly creeds such Second Temple Judaism and Roman Catholicism - religious systems either lacking in (because there's no Jewish Third Temple, as presently constituted) or without operational priestly functionaries. Rabbis, pastors and Imams still suffice for the purpose of this thread as being "clerics" (just like they'd fall under the legal definition of "chaplains" for the purposes of US law in the armed services).
In other words - any spiritually-imbued service, rite or activity which involves a congregation or at least two people, where someone functions as a set apart 'officiator' of the process (whether preaching, whereas the non-officiating party / parties adopt a more 'receptive' role i.e. a lay congregant or student of a spiritual director/guide).
This question came to me some weeks ago, inspired by another thread, on account of that incorriguble and irritatingly thought-provoking scalliwag @Sunstone. His argument - and I must grudgingly admit his intellectual merits from time-to-time - has persuaded me to consider this in greater depth.
I felt the topic warranted a thread all to itself, so that we might meditate on it and further debate in the hopes of arriving at a 'compromise' understanding (being the representastive - as I am - of a church that is sacerdotal/priestly in its governance structure and liturgy).
The relevant section of @Sunstone's original post:
Do you agree with the thesis outlined, very effectively, by @Sunstone above? Is a priesthood / clerical system a barrier to, or at least inhibitor of, 'unmediated mystical experience' on the part of individual seekers or not?
Q: In your estimation, can mystical experience positively coincide within a religion that is clerical in structure or is there an inherent conflict of interest between mysticism and clerical intermediarism?
I invite folks to answer this question based upon their own religious / spiritual / philosophical tradition, as I will do from the perspective of Catholic Christianity (further downstream in a later post).
My definition of 'clerical' is as follows: a faith at least in part reliant upon a hierarchy of priests and/or ministers as intermediaries between the 'divine' and 'phenomenal' / intercessionaries between worshippers and God.
By 'clericalism' I'm not referring merely to an ordained caste of sacrdotal ministers engaged in a religious ritual or sacrifice, like Jewish Aaronic priests of the tribe of Levi or the Roman Catholic priesthood (which practitioners understand to be - in some sense - expiatory and a participation in the divine / effulgence of divine grace / forgiveness as 'mediated' through the sacred office and/or activity of the cleric) but rather am extending this, secondarily, to encompass other non-priestly but equally ministerial religious functionaries such as Buddhist monks and nuns, Protestant pastors, Jewish rabbis, Islamic imams, Sufi pirs, Hindu gurus, yogis etc.
So Rabbinic Judaism, Evangelical Protestantism and Sunni Islam are encompassed within my definition of 'clericalism', even though they are - unlike priestly creeds such Second Temple Judaism and Roman Catholicism - religious systems either lacking in (because there's no Jewish Third Temple, as presently constituted) or without operational priestly functionaries. Rabbis, pastors and Imams still suffice for the purpose of this thread as being "clerics" (just like they'd fall under the legal definition of "chaplains" for the purposes of US law in the armed services).
In other words - any spiritually-imbued service, rite or activity which involves a congregation or at least two people, where someone functions as a set apart 'officiator' of the process (whether preaching, whereas the non-officiating party / parties adopt a more 'receptive' role i.e. a lay congregant or student of a spiritual director/guide).
This question came to me some weeks ago, inspired by another thread, on account of that incorriguble and irritatingly thought-provoking scalliwag @Sunstone. His argument - and I must grudgingly admit his intellectual merits from time-to-time - has persuaded me to consider this in greater depth.
I felt the topic warranted a thread all to itself, so that we might meditate on it and further debate in the hopes of arriving at a 'compromise' understanding (being the representastive - as I am - of a church that is sacerdotal/priestly in its governance structure and liturgy).
The relevant section of @Sunstone's original post:
But here's the thing about Christianity: Even though it ultimately originates with a mystic (Jesus), and has always had something of a minor tradition of mysticism, Christianity is structured more as a priest's religion than it is structured as a mystic's religion.
Just compare and contrast it to Third Century Gnosticism. The Gnostics were emphasizing direct experience of 'god' roughly at the same time that the Christians were consolidating the priestly nature of their religion as a mediated experience of god....
The paradox, then, is that Christianity produced less diversity of opinions than Gnosticism, but those differences mattered far and away more to the Christians than mattered the differences of the Gnostics to the Gnostics.
The paradox is easily resolved though by reflecting on the necessary differences between a religion which mediates its follows 'experience' of their god through priests and scriptures, and a religion that encourages and promotes the direct, unmediated experience of its ultimate truths.
Do you agree with the thesis outlined, very effectively, by @Sunstone above? Is a priesthood / clerical system a barrier to, or at least inhibitor of, 'unmediated mystical experience' on the part of individual seekers or not?
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