Mongrain Rule Governed Christian Gnosis Hans Urs Von Balthasar On Valentin Tomberg S Meditations On The Tarot 2009 1

Modern Theology 25:2 April 2009
ISSN 0266-7177 (Print)

ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)
RULE-GOVERNED CHRISTIAN
GNOSIS: HANS URS VON
BALTHASAR ON VALENTIN
TOMBERGS MEDITATIONS ON THE
TAROT
KEVIN MONGRAIN
Introduction: The Beguiling World of Meditations on the Tarot
Valentin Tomberg (d. 1973) was a Roman Catholic theologian who shared a
general opinion held by many today: organized religion in the West is undergoing a prolonged crisis of authority due to its forgetful disregard of its own
traditions of prayer and spiritual discipline. Human beings created by God to
eat and drink the eternal love of trinitarian communion, but starved of spiritual guidance by the Christian churches, will seek their nourishment in
different foods from other tables. The cultural vacuum created by Christianitys forfeiture of its spiritual and mystical heritage is being lled by a vast
panoply of esoteric religious discourses offering to guide the spiritually perplexed into long-lost, or long-suppressed, secret paths to hidden mystical wisdom.1 There is a widespread assumption that Christianity either does
not have a spiritual or mystical tradition, or if it does that tradition is pernicious in myriad ways. Christian leaders have become more attentive to these
trends, and they have been wrestling with how to respond to them.2 The
question of whether it is possible or desirable to re-establish normative
theological standards for dening Christian spirituality and mysticism has
become extremely pertinent.3 Tomberg saw all these trends emerging in
mid-twentieth century Europe, and he had a profound grasp of the sincere
Kevin Mongrain
Program of Liberal Studies, 215 OShaughnessy Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN
46556, USA
kmongrai@nd.edu
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Journal compilation 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
286 Kevin Mongrain

religious seeking behind them. He also anticipated many of the questions
Christians are asking themselves today about the rise of alternative spiritualities and he understood that it would be suicidal for the churches simply to
force a choice between esotericism and traditional Christianitysuch a move
would only conrm the often-voiced suspicion that institutional religion is
the mortal enemy of spirituality. Christianity can survive, and even thrive, in
this cultural context if it can persuade its cultured despisers that institutional
Christianity is not the rival of spiritual esotericism but its best friend, patron,
and protector. Tombergs Meditations on the Tarot is his beguiling, sui generis
project to make this case.4
In many ways Meditations on the Tarot (MT) can be read as an intervention
to arrest the progress of the modern Wests state of spiritual amnesia. The text
is a curative exercise in which Tomberg retrieves from the pharmacy of the
Christian spiritual tradition the medicinal perspectives of mystical luminaries and theological doctors, such as Anthony the Great, Francis of Assisi,
Bonaventure, John of the Cross, and Teresa of Avila. But Tomberg does more
than remind. Following a common contemporary practice, he endeavors to
enhance the contemporary relevance of these saints today by integrating their
perspectives with the writings of respected esoteric authors such as Jacob
Boehme, G. J. Gurdjieff, Carl Jung, and Rudolf Steiner. And Tomberg seeks to
illuminate the spiritual capaciousness of great Christian mystics by interpreting them with themes learned from the Bhagavad-Gita, the Cabbala, Hermeticism, theurgy, and the tradition of tarot occultism. Relying on Hinduism
and the Cabbala to interpret Christian spirituality is certainly not a novel
exercise, but the addition of Hermeticism, theurgy, and tarot cards to the mix
manifests the creativity and daring of Tombergs text.
Tombergs own intellectual and spiritual journey through the odd world of
European esotericism to the Roman Catholic Church gave him the dual
perspective and dialogical sensibility to carry out the uniquely challenging
task of MT.5 Tomberg was born in Russia and emigrated to Estonia after his
mother was killed during the Revolution. There he became an avid student of
Rudolf Steiners writings and joined the Anthroposophical Society in 1925.
He was an active leader and speaker in the Society, as well as the author of
numerous pamphlets, essays, and books on the spiritual science of Anthroposophy. However, he eventually broke with Steiners school. Partly he
became disillusioned with Steiner and the cult of personality that surrounded
him. But the break with Anthroposophy was more the result of a change in
Tombergs own religious sensibility. He came to believe that prayer to a
personal God of love was the foundation of authentic spiritual life, but the
spiritual science of Anthroposophy was too theoretical and abstract to do
justice to the deeply personal realities of the life of prayer.6 And as we will see
below, Tomberg developed serious concerns about spiritual discourses that
could not do justice to these realities. He began to seek out a more liturgical,
prayerful form of Christianity. He rst tried to join the Russian Orthodox
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Rule-Governed Christian Gnosis 287

Church but was refused entry because of his theories of reincarnation. Then
beginning in 1942 he went through a process of discernment that led to his
full acceptance into the Roman Catholic Church in 1945. In 1948 Tomberg
moved to London and worked as a Russian translator for the BBC. During his
retirement in the countryside of Reading, England in the 1960s he completed
work on MT, as well as another, smaller book on Christian esotericism,
Lazarus, komm heraus.7 He died of a stroke on February 24, 1973.
MT is Tombergs magnum opus. Structured as a series of Letters to an
Unknown Friend, Tombergs intended audience seems to the kinds of
people he knew during his days in the Anthroposophy movement who
believed deeply in the importance of spirituality for human ourishing, but
who also were deeply suspicious of organized Christianity. The text seeks to
allay their suspicion by crafting an alluring synthesis of orthodox Christian
theology and the practice of Christian prayer. It makes heuristic use of the
images on the twenty-two cards of the Marseilles Tarot, which Tomberg
interprets with heavy inections from the Hermetic tradition. He presents his
commentaries on the tarot cards not as didactic exercises based on brazen
eisegesis (which is what they are) but instead as an invitation to a dear
Unknown Friend to join in a noble and trans-historical communal spiritual
endeavor: For these are in essence twenty-two spiritual exercises, by means
of which you, dear Unknown Friend, will immerse yourself in the current of
the living tradition, and thus enter into the community of spirits who have
served it and who are still serving it.8 In the hands of a less learned and less
skilled author the grand project of MT could have become a frightening
exercise in bizarre syncretism and occultism. But Tomberg is a sophisticated
Christian theologian and rst-rate rhetorician. Although MT is undoubtedly
a text designed to inspire piety, it is also a project to capture and regulate
esoteric spiritual practices according to a rule-governed orthodox theological
system. Several contemporary authors similarly interested in re-establishing
a rule-governed Christian gnosis have been so charmed by MTs contribution
to their project that their superlatives on behalf of the text know almost no
bounds.9
One of the most surprising members of the books band of Christian
devotees is none other than Hans Urs von Balthasar. In one sense this is not
a surprisevon Balthasar is a major proponent of reviving Christianitys
classical spiritual and mystical tradition, and he often makes decidedly contrarian, and even quite provocative, theological arguments on behalf of this
project.10 But then again, even by his own standards of inclusiveness it is
remarkable that von Balthasar would appreciate a text as adventurous and
as far outside the mainstream as MT. Indeed, he was not only appreciative
of MT, he was positively missionary on its behalf: he wrote a glowing and
mostly laudatory Foreword to the 1980 French edition of MT, and he gave
as a personal gift a copy of the 1983 German edition to John Paul II.11 Moreover, he gave the book a place of prominence in his own writings.12 In one
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sense, von Balthasars embrace of MT is extraordinaryespecially in light
of his own anti-Gnostic agenda, which one might assume would have
given him cause for numerous grievances with a text like MT.13 Yet a closer
look at MT reveals that it has much in common with von Balthasars theology. This article will explore the deep afnity between Tombergs project
in MT and von Balthasars own esoteric-friendly theology.14 It argues that
both Tomberg and von Balthasar believe that esotericism without prayer
and institutional grounding can become narcissistic and self-righteous to
the point of megalomania, and consequently it tends to become manipulative and coercive to the point of violence. Both authors maintain that
authentic esotericism, by contrast, is marked by radical humility and nonviolence; it is biblical, ecclesial, and committed to the unity of metaphysical
reason and prayerful faith. Their positions are often provocative, but also
often astute. They ought to be seriously considered in contemporary discussions of Christianitys response to Western cultures growing fascination
with esoteric spirituality.
This article begins with a discussion of von Balthasars Foreword to MT to
gain a preliminary sense of what he found worthwhile in it. I contend that he
found in MT a special ally in the contemporary Christian battle against
resurgent Gnosticism. The article then explains that both von Balthasar and
Tomberg were advocates of a rule-governed Christian gnosis that could
function as organized Christianitys spiritual alternative to the alternative
spiritualities of contemporary Gnosticism. The article closes with a reection
on the differences between von Balthasars and Tombergs versions of Christian anti-Gnosticism.
Part One: Von Balthasars Explicit Statement of Appreciation for Meditations
on the Tarot
One remarkable feature of von Balthasars Foreword is the wide knowledge
of esoterica it displays. Von Balthasar is familiar enough with the tradition of
religious commentary on the tarot tradition, and particularly Cabbalainuenced commentary on it, that he can condently assert that MTs project
of bringing theology, Hermeticism, and the tarot tradition into a mutually
illuminating dialogue has never been tried before in the history of Christian
thought. Yet he also goes on to explain that there are respectable precedents
for its kind of intellectually adventurous effort to retrieve pagan thought as a
lens for deepening the spiritual understanding of Gods mystery at the heart
of Christian theology. He names Origen as one particularly important
example.15 As a consequence of a keen desire to interpret all things pagan as
a preparation for the Gospel, many of the greatest Church Fathers gave a
place of honor in their thought to the ancient Egyptian magus and sage,
Hermes Trismegistus.16 Many great medieval and Renaissance Christians
shared a similar fascination with Hermetic writings; there is even an inset
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honoring Hermes Trismegistus in the oor of Siena Cathedral.17 Moreover,
von Balthasar reminds us that during the Renaissance the best minds were
involved in bringing the magical and mystical themes of the Cabbala into
dialogue with Christian theology. This fascination with pagan and Jewish
esoteric discourses is understandable given Christian doctrine that God
created invisible spiritual forces and set them to work in the cosmos (angels
or more generically intelligences). Not only the Church Fathers but also the
Christian philosophers of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, von Balthasar
explains, showed serious interest in understanding how these created spirits
worked with the Creator Spirit in salvation history. Hence it is not surprising
that pagan mythological and esoteric traditions would be inviting sources of
theological reection, evenand perhaps especiallyamong the best orthodox thinkers who never lost sight of the unity of spirituality and theology in
their reections. The issue for the greatest Christian thinkers in their studies
of Jewish and pagan esotericism was not syncretism but rather appropriating
the spolia Aegyptiorum for the vast, unifying Christocentric vision of the
Church.18
Yet von Balthasar knows that there is a high degree of difculty to such
adventurous exercises and he is not uncritical of all the ways Tomberg plays
his hand in the negotiations between Christianity and non-Christian esotericism. His Foreword begins with this qualication:
I was kindly invited to write a preface to this book, which, though
certainly very enriching, has an interest that must seem very distant to a
majority of readers. However, I hasten to confess my incompetence in
the area it explores: I do not feel capable of following or validating the
author in all of the steps of his thought, and, much less still, could I
subject all his arguments to a critical examination. Their richness nevertheless is so great and so worthy of consideration that they deserve not to
be ignored.19
Von Balthasars preference for highlighting the positive and his unwillingness to go down the path of brow-furrowed criticism matches what he took
to be the playful spirit of the text.20 Yet there are a few explicitly critical
remarks in the Foreword. At the end of Part II of the Foreword von Balthasar
offers this negative observation and explicit criticism:
Certainly the author always seeks with great religious conscientiousness
to follow the middle way of Christian wisdom. Certainly it sometimes
happens that he deviates from the middle by taking a step too much to
the left (by introducing the doctrine of reincarnation, for instance), or else
a step too much to the right (by associating a little too closely, and in a
somewhat fundamentalist way, certain opinions or Catholic religious
practices with dogmatic truth, or by arriving a little too hastily at conclusions about the evangelical counsels or the recitation of the rosary).
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However, the almost enormous abundance of authentic and fruitful
insights that he brings back from his excursions into normally inaccessible areas certainly justies my intention not to deprive a broader public
of the opportunity to read these Meditations.21
Note the reserve with which von Balthasar makes his recommendation.
Nevertheless, granting that he was unwilling to give absolute and unequivocal support to all aspects of MT, it is nevertheless remarkable that his criticisms
of the text are decidedly minimal and far outweighed by his afrmations.
Throughout the Foreword he strives to associate Tomberg with several
authors of impeccable orthodox theological credentials. He writes, The basic
spiritual direction of an author is recognizable by the fact of whoin the
spiritual traditionstands close to him: Whom does he frequently refer to,
often with loving reverence? Again and again the names of St. Anthony the
Great, Albertus Magnus and St. Francis of Assisi appear; and he quotes
extensively above all from the works of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of
Avila.22 Von Balthasars point is ultimately sustainable, but he is more than a
little misleading here. He neglects to mention that Plato, Jung, Teilhard de
Chardin, and Henri Bergson all receive more positive references in MT than
any of the authors he mentions, with the one exception of John of the Cross;
moreover, positive references to the Buddha equal the number of positive
references to Teresa of Avila, and the positive references to G. J. Gurdjieff and
Rudolf Steiner equal the number of positive mentions of Albertus Magnus.23
What is interesting here is that Teilhard and Jung, two authors whom von
Balthasar perceives as serious threats to Christian orthodoxy (with Jung of
course presenting the far more serious threat) are overlooked and Tomberg is
credited for engaging the texts of high holy gures from the Christian theological tradition.24 Why does von Balthasar cast Tomberg in this light, even if by
his own standard of favored authors the truth is more ambiguous?
One might argue that he is simply accenting appreciation because he wants
the book to be brought to a wider circle of readers and hence tainting it with
criticisms other than the most mild would undermine this goal. Yet there is
reason to think something more complex might be happening, and it has
everything to do with the point about integrating thought and prayer mentioned a moment ago. Von Balthasar has a special afnity for Tombergs
project in MT because, despite what he must have considered its imperfections, he sees it as a special ally in the contemporary Christian battle against
resurgent Gnosticism. This illustrates one reason why von Balthasars
reading of this text is relevant to contemporary discussions about Christian
responses to contemporary fascination with esotericism. Many of these discussions of how Christianity ought to respond either completely ignore the
question of resurgent Gnosticism or, if they are attentive to it, are unwilling
or unable to have a sufciently critical understanding of the dangers it poses
to Christian spirituality and mysticism. If we look closely at two specic
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passages in von Balthasars Foreword to MT we can see that he considers
Tomberg a Christian who is ready and able to recognize the dangers of
resurgent Gnosticism and who built numerous rewalls into his text to
defend Christian spirituality and mysticism against it.
The rst passage is von Balthasars description of Tomberg as A thinking,
praying Christian of unmistakable purity . . .25 As we will see below, for von
Balthasar the line between a religious sensibility that thinks and prays and one
that only thinks is the line between Christianitys true gnosis and Gnosticisms false gnosis. The second important clue to von Balthasars reading of
MT comes in a footnote to a quotation from Pico della Mirandola. The context
is how Christian humanists believed it possible to revive calcied Christian
faith with secret Jewish and pagan teachings without succumbing to the
dangers of religious syncretism. Von Balthasar holds up Pico as an admirable
example of a humanist with a non-syncretistic orthodox Christian sensibility.
He quotes him declaring, I bear on my brow the name Jesus Christ and
would die gladly for the faith in him. I am neither a magician nor a Jew, nor
an Ishmaelite nor a heretic. It is Jesus whom I worship, and his cross I bear
upon my body. Immediately following the quote von Balthasar asserts, The
author of these Meditations could also have afrmed this oath of allegiance.26
The footnote to the Pico quotation identies Henri de Lubacs 1974 book Pic
de la Mirandole as the source. But von Balthasar then adds, almost as a non
sequitur, this point:
There is of course another stream, deriving strongly from Joachim of
Fiore, active from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance into modern
times, which aspires to elevate the dogmatic faith of the Church in the
direction of the third kingdom of the Spirit. Henri de Lubac follows this
step-by-step in his work La postrit spirituelle de Joachim de Flore (Paris,
1979), but as this is irrelevant to the work of our author, we do not need
to discuss it further.27
It seems clear then that von Balthasar had the whole problematic of
modern Gnosticism in mind when reading MT. In Theo-Drama 4 von Balthasar identies the origins of modern Gnosticismand particularly its
refusal to accept the Creator-creature ontological difference and the real
difference between inner-trinitarian Personswith Joachim of Fiore.28 Thus it
is highly signicant that von Balthasar explicitly exonerates Tomberg from
any connection with the Joachim stream of Christian esotericism. Moreover,
he praises Tomberg for clearly understanding and teaching something the
greatest theologians in the tradition have always taught but that heretical and
heterodox thinkers have always failed to teach, namely, the necessity of
holding theological, cosmological, and anthropological discourses in a hierarchical unity under the regulative guidance of christocentric trinitarian faith.
If the author was able to enter into all the varieties of occult science with
such sovereignty, von Balthasar writes of Tomberg, it is because for him
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they are only secondary realities, which are only able to be truly known when
they can be referred to the absolute mystery of divine love manifested in
Christ.29 On von Balthasars interpretation, Tomberg assumes that in the
absence of this regulative christocentric-trinitarian faith the occult-oriented
cosmology of esotericism would easily degenerate into a mania for power
and control over nature and other humans.30 Von Balthasars point is that
Tombergs project to revive Christian spirituality and mysticism is unique in
its theological sophistication, particularly in its understanding of the underlying connections between certain types of spirituality and violence. Tomberg
not only gets right the indispensable need for the christological regulation of
all theological, cosmological, and anthropological discourses, but he also
understands the dangerous possibility of not understanding or accepting
it. Note von Balthasars assertion that in MT something very different is
happening than with garden-variety forms of Christian esotericism. And
note too the precise way in which von Balthasar species the difference. He
reads Tomberg as a thinker closely following the biblical narrative. Moreover,
he focuses on the unique Christian revelation and its incarnation of divine
love manifested in Christ. Tomberg knew both what he was for and what he
was against, and in this sense, von Balthasar explains, he is like Bonaventure
and Hildegard of Bingen, both of whom also immersed themselves in esoteric discourses to purify them from within with prayerful, biblical faith.31
Part Two: Theology and Hermeticism in Defense of True Gnosis
As his comparisons with Bonaventure and Hildegard suggest, von Balthasar
saw MT as part of the pre-scholastic tradition in Christianity that insists
religious intellectual reection must be rigorously governed by and directly
supportive of spiritual life. Von Balthasar places himself in this tradition too;
he frequently argued in a myriad of ways in most of his writings that christocentric trinitarian faith must have regulative guidance over all types of
rational logic, whether cosmology, anthropology, or even (or perhaps especially) theology. The patristic term true gnosis best expresses the aim of the
Christian tradition both von Balthasar and Tomberg represent.32 Their advocacy of true gnosis is a major reason for their relevance to contemporary
efforts to retrieve and revive Christian spirituality and mysticism.
Von Balthasars conception of the theological task strongly and repeatedly
emphasizes the necessary unity of intellectual reection and spiritual faith.
He denes theology as an intellectual discipline inherently oriented to
opening the heart to God. Theology, he explains, is a means, an active
agency for pouring the innite riches of divine truth into the nite vessels in
which revelation is given to us, so that the believer may be made capable of
encountering this innity in adoration and active obedience.33 Theologys
task is to facilitate a life of worship, adoration, and practical obedience to
Christ, who can be known as the truth only insofar as he is known as the gift
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of personal love and not as an abstraction or theory. Theology speaks of an
event so unique, so extraordinary that it is never permissible to abstract from
it . . . There is always a tendency in human thoughtand theology is no
exceptionto bracket the concrete and forget it. We are prone to look on
historical revelation as a past event, as presupposed, and not as something
that is always happening, to be listened to and obeyed; and it is this that
becomes the matter of theological reection. The saints have always been on
guard against such an attitude, and immersed themselves in the actual circumstances of the events of revelation.34 Theologys primary (but not exclusive) dialogue partner must be the Christian contemplative tradition, not the
Western philosophical tradition. Von Balthasars reason for this is simple:
Man in his search for truth can never arrive by philosophizingin however
simple or academic a wayat the statement God is love. 35 This means that
true theology is at root governed by the receptivity of prayer, not any purely
objective concept or formal abstract method. There is no neutral standpoint
outside the encounter between bride and Bridegroom, he declares, no
objective standpoint, that is, from which it is possible to survey and assess the
mystery of revelation in which both are involved (the Bridegroom as freely
imparting it, the bride as responding).36 Theology therefore is not identical
with dogma, or any form of abstract propositional discourse. While certainly
and necessarily theology involves concepts and denitions, these nite realities are valid, von Balthasar maintains, only insofar as they are vehicles for the
incarnation of Gods innite love in human discourse.37 Theology is a mystagogical project whose goal is opening hearts to the reality of divine love,
and is therefore best practiced by saints.38
Von Balthasar believes, therefore, that without the mutually correcting and
informing guidance of theology and doctrine Christian spirituality will not
remain truly Christian. His guiding incarnational principle is that in salvation
history the invisible light and love of the Word and Spirit must dwell within
the esh, the form, and the letter. He is a corpus triforme theologian for
whom the incarnation is a reality occurring in numerous modes, primarily
but not exclusively in the letter of Scripture, the ritual practice of the
sacraments, and in all the holy corporeal forms of organized ecclesial life.39
In his revival of patristic christocentric religious thought, therefore, dogma
and theology are just two of Christs many corporeal, iconic modes of incarnational presence, yet they are uniquely necessary for guiding faith and
keeping all the other corporeal forms of ecclesial life true to the spiritual
mystery of Gods self-offering in love. He makes no pretense to novelty in
this thinkinghe insists that the writings of the greatest theologians of the
tradition illustrate repeatedly that just as there is a necessary, symbiotic unity
of Word and esh, Spirit and letter in all of Christian faith, there is an
analogous unity between doctrine and spirituality.40 Moreover, in an
argument that is always circulating around his texts, von Balthasar maintains
against spiritualizing anti-body thinkers that it is a serious mistake to
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assume that because theology and dogma involve embodying of the Word in
concepts, images, and the letter this necessarily means a reduction of the
Words mystery and meaning. On the contrary, he argues, as an incarnational
religion Christianity cannot disdain the expressions of the human intellect.
Indeed, understood and applied correctly they can become iconic by leading
into and protecting, rather than erasing, the mystery of divine love.41
The dogmas of the Incarnation and the Trinity are particularly important
because, properly understood, they provide the guidance for all mystagogy
in the Church, theological or otherwise.42 Von Balthasars advocacy of not just
incarnational and trinitarian theology but also incarnational trinitarian faith is
a plea on behalf of a spiritual posture and existential disposition, not an
advocacy of a conceptual xing of God, which carries numerous dangers for
the life of faith.43 The doctrine of the Trinity, as well of course as the doctrine
of the Incarnation, ought to function to support prayer, which in turn provides the spiritual perspective necessary for understanding their profundity.
So faith is intrinsically necessary to reasons own ability to reect and live the
truth of Gods being.
This perspective, according to von Balthasars argument in numerous texts,
is the essence of Marian spirituality.44 A spirituality centered on the attitude exemplied by Mary is . . . not just one spirituality among others. For
this reason, although Mary is an individual believer and, as such, the prototype and model of all response in faith, she resolves all particular spiritualities into the one spirituality of the bride of Christ, the Church.45 The reason
for this is that Marian spirituality, von Balthasar believes, is focused on
participating in the dynamic, objective reality of the Word incarnating innertrinitarian love in the creation. In Marian spirituality, as von Balthasar presents it, one unselfconsciously cooperates with God in accepting the Word
into ones self and then incarnating it in the world according to ones own
unique personhood and capabilities; Marian spirituality is essentially a form
of existential-ontological iconography in which one crafts ones life into a
pattern of Christ-like obedience and love. The Marian and Johannine are
therefore closely related in von Balthasars theology because both stress the
meaning of holiness as intimate mystical unity (Bride-bridegroom and vinebranches) and bearing fruit (incarnating the Word) in the world. This spirituality is ecclesial in the sense of being not only embodied and communal but
also a participation in Gods providential work in history. It is also trinitarian
in that it is fundamentally about nding a unique, distinct identity through
mystical union with the triune God. But this is never a purely private affair.
Christ bestows each form of spirituality in the Church from above and with
the purpose of serving the will of God and the greater good of the Church.
Spiritual gifts are not given to individuals or groups for their own sake but
only for the sake of the historical mission of the Church as guided by Gods
providence. The ultimate grounding of all spirituality in the Church, von
Balthasar maintains, is the work of the Trinity to become embodied in human
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life as communal difference-in-relation. The shared inner mission of all forms
of spirituality is their common work in the on-going process of incarnating on
earth the paradoxical unity-in-difference of the inner trinitarian communion.46 This is at the core of what von Balthasar means by genuine esotericism and the true gnosis of faith expressing itself in words and concepts.47
However, von Balthasar does not believe this vision of true gnosis has been
remembered or widely adhered to in modern Christianity. The ideal is difcult, he contends, because it runs against the sinful tendency of human reason
to set up its own idolseven especially theological and doctrinal
onesso as to evade Gods love and the difcult task of embodying it in
iconic concepts.48 This type of evasion is characteristic of much modern
theology, he believes. When theology at the desk superseded theology at
prayer in the post-Reformation period, von Balthasar contends, both theology and spirituality fell into decadence.49 The result was esotericism without
substance and dogmatism without spiritual life. In the former case modern
spirituality ceased to be Marian in a genuine sense and instead became too
individualistic and focused on personal experience to the detriment of the
wider life and mission of the Church. Rather than focusing on the reality of
God and the embodying of this reality in iconic forms, modern spirituality
became too subjective and interior. Spirituality began to excessively accent
the psychological laboratory, with its experiments and statistics instead of
accenting the reality of God and the mission of the Church in history.50 In the
case of modern theology and dogma, the exact opposite happened: all personal spirituality was drained away and the intellect occupied itself with
nothing but concepts; abstract propositional truth claims substituted for the
living faith of the hearts love for God.51 Theology became fascinated by the
scientic method and, consciously or not, it set up neutrality and pure
objectivity as its ideals.52 Generally speaking, von Balthasar thinks that the
split of spirituality and theology in modern Christianity is especially dangerous because it creates fertile soil for the reemergence of ancient Christian
Gnosticism. When spirituality and theology are not integrated in a healthy
symbiosis, Gnosticism invades and corrupts both. We will return to this point
below. Let us turn our attention to Tombergs MT to see how its highly
esoteric Christian Hermeticism actually has much in common with von Balthasars conception of Christian true gnosis.
As stated earlier, in Tombergs conception of Christian Hermeticism the
accent falls heavily on the adjective Christian, with attentive focus on its
biblical and doctrinal foundations. For Tomberg Christian Hermeticism is
much less about exploring the Egyptian religious philosophy of Hermes
Trismegistus and far more about asserting the general, yet fundamentally
central, principle that religious intellectual reection must be rigorously governed by and directly supportive of Christian spiritual life. Indeed, there
seems to be more St. Paul than Hermes Trismegistus in his understanding of
Christian Hermeticism. One might even hypothesize that Russian Orthodox
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Sophiology is an unspoken core element of Christian Hermeticism.53 In any
case, Tombergs seemingly cryptic and abstruse phrase Christian Hermeticism is in practice deployed very straightforwardly throughout MT: Christian Hermeticism is for him simply the practical life of Christian prayer as it
informs the reective consciousness. This open-ended denition allows
Tomberg to be much more inclusive and broad-minded in his understanding
of Hermeticism than the ism at the end of the word seems to imply.54
Hermeticism is not a technique or dened doctrine, Tomberg explains, but
properly understood represents an understanding of the unity of intellect
and spirituality, knowledge and revelation, metaphysics and mysticism.
Seeking such unity is, he writes, a form of sacricing the intellect to spirituality in such a way that it grows and develops instead of becoming
enfeebled and atrophied.55 In a very Balthasarian voice he describes Christian Heremeticism as thinking on ones knees and thought-prayer or
prayer-thought.56 Hence it is about the unity of the head and the heart, with
the latteralways under the guidance of the Judeo Christian tradition of
faithleading the former.57 Modifying Pascals famous dictum, Tomberg
observes that a motto for Christian Hermeticism could be: the heart has its
own dogmas, which theological reasoning does not know.58 The focus on
practical spirituality and the regulatory guidance of faith (which we will
discuss more in a moment) means for Tomberg that Christian Hermeticism
resists any and all attempts to reduce the mysterious reality of Gods love to
nothing but logic, concepts, formulas, denitions, abstractions, totalizing
theories, and systems.59 In describing this resistance, Tomberg sometimes
equates Christian Hermeticism and Christian theology and sometimes he
sets them in opposition, depending on the extent to which theology is a
spiritually informed exercise.60
Yet as we have seen, Tombergs prioritizing of prayerful, faithful spirituality over theology (narrowly conceived) does not mean he disdains the life of
the mind. Nor does his emphasis on the esoteric mean he rejects the externals
of religious faith. Quite the oppositeMT puts forward a vigorous defense of
organized religion in general and institutional Roman Catholicism in particular. A fundamental principle of the text is the unity of esoteric-exoteric
religion. Working with patristic incarnational principles very similar to von
Balthasars (Word-esh; Spirit-letter; form-light), Tomberg insists on the
superiority of exoteric religion over esoteric religion in the sense that the
exoteric is the condition for the possibility of the esoteric: Esoteric Christianity is entirely within exoteric Christianity; it does not existand cannot
existseparately from it.61 Hermeticism does not seek to rival organized
Christian religion in any sense, he argues, but rather it seeks to foster within
it the lan vital of spiritual life.62 For example, Tomberg explains that although
Johns esoteric spirituality is responsible for vivifying the living heart of
Christs ecclesial Body, it could not possibly exist without the exoteric Body
of Christ and Peters leadership of it.63 Tomberg shows considerable impa 2009 The Author

tience with esotericists who cannot or will not understand that spirituality
cannot be a rival to organized religion, and hence he pleads with Hermeticists to make peace with the institutional Church.64 Because the Hermeticist
is essentially an iconophile, Tomberg believes, Hermeticists must learn to
nd their role and vocation in organized Christianity.65
And what is this vocation? As stated earlier, it is ensuring that spiritual life
governs and is supported by intellectual reection. Tomberg argues throughout MT that the vocation of Hermeticists is to synthesize mysticism, gnosis,
and magic.66 But Tombergs conception of the vocation of Hermeticism is
extremely rule-governed. Tombergs understanding of the biblical and christocentric criteria for synthesizing mysticism, gnosis, and magic render his
position quite similar to that of von Balthasar. First of all, mysticism, gnosis,
and magic must always be understood within the perspective of biblical
theology, particularly the centrality of Israel and the Church in salvation
history.67 This is a point that could greatly deepen contemporary discussions
of Christian spirituality and mysticism.68 For Tomberg this means Christian
Hermeticism will always advocate for biblical monotheisms understanding
of the transcendent Creator God (understood in terms of the doctrine of
creatio ex nihilo) who enters the depths of creation through a free gift of love,
and hence Christian Hermeticism advocates against any and all forms of
ontological-metaphysical dualism, monism, or pantheism.69 Indeed, trinitarian doctrine and the metaphysics of interpersonal love it yields are Christian
Hermeticisms clear alternative to both gnostic dualism and all types of
pantheistic self-worship and/or nature worship.70 Only orthodox christological and trinitarian doctrines and the philosophical metaphysics they yield,
Tomberg maintains, can guarantee true human freedom against the everpresent dangers of theological and/or cosmological determinism, both of
which result from a failure to maintain the ontological difference between
God and world.71
For example, Tomberg very clearly asserts that when thinking about
redemption as the supreme work of divine magic Christian Hermeticists
must be guided by the christological doctrine of the the perfect union in love
of two wills, distinct and freehuman will and divine will. 72 (Tomberg is
almost certainly referring to the dithelite teaching of the Sixth Ecumenical
Council, Constantinople III in 680681 CE, that Christ possessed a fully
divine and a fully human will, which were perfectly united in him without
confusion, division, separation, or change.) The paradox of the Creators
unity-in-difference with creatures in Christ is the paradox of the gift of
creaturely freedom made real through the bond of love with the
transcendent-and-immanent divine. This is what Tomberg means when he
insists that Hermeticism is Christocentric and unequivocally committed to
the centrality and superiority of Jesus Christ (whom Tomberg reverently
designates simply as the Master73) over all other religious gures and
teachers.74 Moreover, his commitment to a christological doctrine of crea 2009 The Author
298 Kevin Mongrain

turely freedom in spiritual life is the root of all his (sometimes quite surprising75) assertions about the importance of the Virgin Mary and spiritual
virginity for the vocation of Hermeticism.76
With all these regulators and criteria in place Tomberg crafts his eisegetic
commentaries on the tarot cards, using them as vehicles to present his views
on the true Christian meaning of mysticism, gnosis, and magic. For example,
true mysticism is completely centered on ones own direct experience of the
mystery of personal divine love offered in Christ; it is the ineffable experience
of Gods spiritual touch beyond what any theory or concept could
explain.77 It is the end of all abstract religious thinking because it transforms
the entire self, humbles it and personalizes it so that one understands at an
entirely new level both ones own unique and irreducible creaturely personhood but also the unique and irreducible trinitarian Persons of the Creator
God.78 Mysticism is the seed of all true gnosis. True gnosis, as Tomberg
understands it, is simply esoteric theology, which means for him that it is
mysticism become conscious of itself and the practical acquisition of the
higher knowledge of Gods identity as a Trinity of freely given and
received love.79 It brings understanding and memory to the mystic experience of divine love so that the mystic is able to express and communicate
to others his experiences.80 The fundamental law of true gnosis, Tomberg
maintains, is that it refuses to substitute images from the human mind, or
from Nature, for divine intuition.81 Its knowledge comes exclusively from
the christocentric mystical experience, or from above, as he frequently puts
it.82 True magic, or what Tomberg calls sacred magic, is also therefore the
spiritual assimilation of grace from above. Sacred magic is the art of receptivity to Gods free grace and the virginal ability to freely accept it, gestate
it, and miraculously give birth to sacred realities in the world.83 It is the
uniting of that which is from above and that which is from below so that the
latter is illuminated and perfected by the former. Being born from above by
grace is the work of sacred magic, and the bodily resurrection is the ultimate
expression of this magic. Although only God originates sacred magic,
Tomberg argues, as grace humans can learn to cooperate freely with it.84
When humans cooperate in Gods sacred magic it is generally synonymous
with sacerdotal power and iconography in the widest senses of these terms.
Sacred magic, therefore, is synonymous with Christian spirituality: it is
simply the free, creative, practical living out of what one knows in true
gnosis.
Part Three: The Anti-Gnostic Voices of Von Balthasar and Tomberg
All attempts to revive Christianitys spiritual and mystical traditions must
take very seriously the contemporary cultural context of the West. Von Balthasar would argue this context includes the complex phenomenon of resurgent ancient Gnosticism that, in its modern form, is virulently hostile to
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Christian orthodoxy. Von Balthasars reading of MT is relevant to discussions
about the meaning of Christian spirituality and the nature and relevance of
Christian mysticism because he sees it as a text that is uniquely aware of and
astutely engaged in the contemporary Christian contest with modern versions of Gnosticism. Contemporary discussions of the meaning and relevance of Christian spirituality and mysticism would be greatly deepened if
they read MT as an anti-Gnostic text with deep afnities with the substance
of von Balthasars own anti-Gnosticism.
Although von Balthasars uses of the terms gnosis, Gnostic, and
Gnosticism are often imprecise and somewhat unfocused, they are not
incoherent or conceptually irredeemable.85 Granting too that von Balthasar is
not as precise as he could be about distinguishing the Gnostic spiritual type
and the intellectual systems spawned by some who share the type,86 he does
offer a fairly clear spiritual prole of it. False gnosis is the inverse of true
gnosis. The common denominator in what he denes as false gnosis is the
refusal to understand faith according to monotheistic and biblical categories.
False gnosis prefers instead to eschew monotheism and rewrite the Bible so
that it seems to be saying that the divine is identical toand not simply
present withinthe depths of the human self and/or the depths of nature. In
either case there is a refusal to maintain the Creator-creature ontological
difference and respect for creaturely freedom and personal uniqueness as
these are interpreted in orthodox christology and trinitarian theology. The
mark of false gnosis in practical operation, therefore, will be a chronic
neglect of prayer to a personal God of love. This neglect is motivated by a
disdain for the very idea of a personal God who knows the secret, hidden
recesses of the self but who is beyond the selfs manipulative control; this
neglect manifests itself as a preference for purely and exclusively meditative
forms of spirituality either centered on the selfs own concocted self-image or
distracting the self from itself and its freedom and responsibility, thereby
instead allowing the self to focus on a void or on some fatalistic and impersonal forces in nature.
Central to von Balthasars case against the spiritual type designated by
false gnosis, therefore, are his arguments about its deliberate effort to avoid
dealing honestly with the provocation of Christ.87 He characterizes the
theodrama of salvation history in terms of a Yes or No to the Incarnation
of the Son of the Fathera Yes or No to the mystery of Christ and what it
reveals about the God of love who probes the dark recesses of the heart.88 The
proponents of false gnosis prefer to redene Christ in spiritually safer and
less challenging ways. Those Gnostics who assert No to the unique Incarnation of God in Christ do so, he argues, because they refuse to accept the
difference between themselves and God. The Gnostic type denies creaturely
indebtedness to God as the ground of being. It prefers the self-absolutizing
of his own freedom so it can avoid the truth that freedom comes from God as
a gift.89 The Gnostic type usurps the power of the Creator in a delusional act
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300 Kevin Mongrain

of self-creating that refuses to acknowledge its true source. The lie here is a
willful falsifying of the reality of creation and the true nature of the Godworld relationship. Von Balthasar interprets this sinful dynamic as the
epitome of evil and sees it through the lens of the serpents temptation to Eve
to be like God.90 It results in deformation of humanity: the very power of
self-transcendence given to humanity by God so that it could freely respond
to Gods love becomes instead bent in upon itself (incurvatio in se ipsum) in
a perversion of human nature.91 Later he describes this dynamic as the
creatures No, its wanting to be autonomous without acknowledging its
origin . . .92
The Gnostic type, therefore, engages in a self-righteous assertion of his
own absoluteness, even to the point of denying Gods transcendence and
otherness. It refuses the humility of being known by Goda spirituality of
prayerand prefers instead to be the only knower who knows God, self, and
world from a panoptic perspective.93 This is what accounts for the elitist and
arrogant character of the Gnostic type.94 What follows from this selfrighteous arrogance then are elaborate efforts to rationalize this assertion
with sophisticated short-circuits in reasoning and distorted aspects of truth.
In this way the sinner builds a kind of bulwark against the real truth; he
hides behind its illusion, knowing all the while that the truth he has wickedly suppressed (Rom 1:18) will eventually come to lay siege against his
citadel.95 All quests for absolute knowledge and the perfectly logical
religious System, no matter how different in form (pantheist-monist or
dualist, pro-history or anti-temporality, pro-body or anti-body, etc.) have this
in common: a preference for the idols of reason that allow the heart to
avoid facing up to the reality of Gods love and enable its head-long ight
from it.96 The versions of Christian faith advocated by the Gnostic type, von
Balthasar argues, are not true faith but instead faith . . . overtaken or hollowed out by knowledge.97 The Gnostic type practices any and all types of
rationalism to avoid God, all the while pretending to itself that it alone
knows the truth about God.98 The libido dominandi and the will to power are
the underlying motivations for the myriad intellectual games the Gnostic
type plays. There can be no listening to the other, no learning from the other,
no real repentance, and no genuine love in the Gnostic type because it is
Promethean: control, manipulation, and power are all its ontologized selfrighteousness can understand.99 Hence the Gnostic type is like the Serpent in
Eden; it is not only under the sway of Satan but driven to bring others under
it too,100 even if this means murdering those who confront it with the truth,
like Christ and the martyrs of the Church.101 It also means denying the
doctrine of the Trinity or else completely reinterpreting it so that its paradoxical unication of sameness and difference can be replaced with monistic
sameness (as in Joachim and Hegel).102
According to von Balthasar, this conict between rival spiritual types led to
an increasing polarization between the Churchs mission to propagate
2009 The Author

biblical spirituality and the satanic counter-strategy of its enemies to replace
this spirituality with a non-biblical one of their own devising; this conict
eventually became a full theodramatic war between the Christ-Church and
the anti-Christ.103 The antagonists in this war are the proponents of true gnosis
who allow themselves to be known by God and the proponents of the lie, i.e.,
the false gnosis that sets itself in hostile opposition to true gnosis by seeking to
know God only with theories in the mind rather than allowing God to know,
love, and heal what is in the heart, and thereby guide the mind.
We nd a very similar description of the spiritual pathologies of the
Gnostic type in Tombergs MT; however, Tombergs description is neither
polemical nor marked by a vaguely paranoid tone. Like von Balthasar, he
operates on the assumption that certain spiritual types in practice chronically
neglect prayer in favor of purely meditative forms of spirituality centered on
the self or some impersonal forces in nature.104 These spiritual types, Tomberg
contends, are recognizable by their disdain for the true Christi.e., the
powerless incarnation of God who washed his disciples feet before he was
executedand prefer instead some other, more exalted and heroic religious
ideal.105 He explicitly links false gnosis to non-christocentric and nontrinitarian mysticism and to black magic. For example, Tomberg contends
false mysticism is purely cerebral, arrogant, and focused on its own dualistic
or pantheistic theories about God instead of enjoying a real encounter with
God.106 Like von Balthasars view of false gnosis as a refusal of Creatorcreature difference and a proclivity toward a solipsistic and narcissistic
deication of the self, Tomberg argues that false mysticism is purely psychological and a form of megalomania in which one deies the regulating centre of ones own being, ones ego, and where one sees the divine only
within oneself and becomes blind to the divine above and outside of oneself.107 Tomberg returns several times to his critique of spiritual megalomania, and in all cases the target is all those who practice false gnosis and false
esotericism by deviating from the christocentric norm.108 False gnosis, which
Tomberg explicitly labels the gnosticism practiced by gnostic sects, is the
preference for knowing God without being rst known by God.109 False
gnosis lacks all humility and values pure human autonomy over against the
mystery of the unity-in-difference of divine freedom and human freedom
revealed in Christ.110 It therefore exchanges the humility and patience of
sacred magic for sorcery and black, poisonous magic; this exchange is
motivated by the will to power and the drive to subjugate, manipulate, and
control nature and other human beings.111 It is the idolatry of power and
the source of all idolatry.112 This worship of power refuses spiritual
virginity and opts for spiritual adultery.113 Moreover, those who fall
into false mysticism, false gnosis, and/or black magic rebel against
organized Christianity and seek to rival it with their own alternative religious
communities.114 Indeed, the root of all wars and violence, Tomberg argues, is
the revolutionary rejection of the proper hierarchical ordering of God, world,
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302 Kevin Mongrain

and humanity, with the gift of grace from above being negated in favor of
some sort of human action (religious, philosophical, technological, or political) from below.115
Despite all the similarities, however, von Balthasar and Tomberg are not
identical in their anti-Gnosticism. Von Balthasar speaks in two distinct antiGnostic voices, but Tomberg only speaks in one voice. The rst anti-Gnostic
voice, which, as we have seen, both von Balthasar and Tomberg share, speaks
less of Gnosticism as system and more of Gnostics as a spiritual type.116 This
voice is concerned with motivations, religiosity, and the types of selves who
create and maintain Gnostic systems. The focus in the rst voice is existential
and/or psychological experiences and states of mind. The second voice,
present in von Balthasar but not Tomberg, is an analytical voice that stands in
some tension with the experiential voice.117 The analytical voice focuses on
explaining theoretically and conceptually how Gnostic narratives engage in a
hostile rewriting of the biblical narrative into speculative metanarratives
with an emphasis on the generation of the conditions of absolute knowledge
and total irrefutability.118 This analytical voice relies on philosophical and
objective scholarly analysis of Gnosticism as an onto-theology of divine
development with specic theological agendas (theogony, theodicy), rhetorical strategies, argumentative tactics, and hermeneutic methods. This voice
stresses therefore the transgressive nature of Gnostic narratives, but always in
a descriptive rather than an evaluative mode; this voice insists that it is much
more intellectually productive to give careful analytical attention to the specics of the rule governed practices and narrative grammar guiding both
the overall pattern and the details of Gnosticisms hostile metaleptic reinterpretations of Judaism and Christianity.119 This second voice, therefore,
while not irrelevant to, or even necessarily unsupportive of, intra-ecclesial
anti-Gnostic discourses, eschews polemics and nds itself at home in the
world of academia with its standards of testable evidential criterion.120
Because he speaks in this second anti-Gnostic voice, von Balthasar must be
considered a more sophisticated anti-Gnostic thinker than Tomberg, who
speaks only in the rst voice.
But this point should not be exaggerated. What is fascinating about
Tomberg is that, while unlike von Balthasar, he lacks the objective scholarly
precision of the second voice, he deploys the rst anti-Gnostic voice in a very
rare and uniquely objective and non-polemical mode. Traditionally antiGnosticism that focuses on the spiritual pathologies of the Gnostic soul can be
demonological and polemical; it tends to speak maliciously of Gnosticism as
a spiritual pathology to be cured or resisted.121 This mode of the experiential
voice does indeed have a long and ugly history, which has led it to be
associated (sometimes fairly but sometimes not) with ecclesiastical repression and coercive violence.122 Yet Tombergs version of the rst anti-Gnostic
voice is decidedly irenic and non-violent. For this reason he must be considered a more rhetorically savvy anti-Gnostic thinker than von Balthasar. Von
2009 The Author

Balthasars analytical anti-Gnostic voice, deployed genealogically, undoubtedly has primacy over the experiential anti-Gnostic voice in his trilogy.123 This
is likely because he was distancing himself from the polemical nastiness and
(to some ears) implied violence of the negative experiential voice. Even
though von Balthasar shares Irenaeus overall anti-Gnostic war mentality, he
understands better than Irenaeus and traditional heresiologists the difference
between a clean and dirty war. But understanding better is not the same as
understanding perfectly. Occasionally von Balthasar writes in the rst antiGnostic voice in ways that repeat Irenaeus vicious slandering tactics, and
which unfortunately give the impression of religious paranoia.124 He seems
oblivious to the self-subverting potential of such rhetoric for his own overall
project to revive Christianitys spiritual and mystical traditions.
Tomberg does not make these kinds of mistakes. The success of Tombergs
project may in the end be greater because he is so much better than von
Balthasar at giving a non-offensive description of Gnosticism as a perverse
psychological type. Certainly, both he and von Balthasar agree that some
types of esoteric spirituality (i.e., the ones that are inherently antimonotheistic, anti-incarnation, and anti-trinitarian, and hence neglectful of
prayer) are inevitably hostile rivals to institutional Christianity. But Tomberg
also knows that it is suicide for Christianity to ght against these perverse
types of esoteric spirituality by appearing to oppose any and all types of
esoteric spirituality; indeed, in our contemporary culture any polemical
nastiness on the topic of Gnosticism is likely to be misconstrued as antispirituality and then used against institutional orthodoxy. Tomberg therefore opts instead for a rhetoric that invites the practitioners of esoteric
spirituality to move out of the unhealthy, unloving types of esoteric spirituality and into the healthier, more love-oriented, prayerful types. Therefore
even though Tomberg is a religious warrior of a certain kind, he assiduously
avoids all language of religious war because he knows this would only
alienate and reinforce the Gnostic canard that all types of spirituality must be
rivals with institutional Christianity. Hence even when he is oppositional he
is never censorious. Every anti-Gnostic move he makes is carefully considered, well placed, and hedged around with numerous irenic claims that
invite potential enemies to become friends on a higher plane of spiritual
religiosity. MT offers a compelling presentation of esoteric spirituality, which
is always in the womb-like milieu of the exoteric Church, and functions as an
invitation to the dear Unknown Friend to consider a deeper, richer, higher,
more love-lled alternative to purely esoteric spirituality.125 Tombergs
truth, certainly not in substance but in his rhetoric, is found on a spectrum
of more or less, not in a dichotomy of black and white.126 He states explicitly
his disdain for polemics and he follows his principles throughout.127 What we
nd in MT, then, is an unusual case of a benign and conciliatory mode of the
anti-Gnostic exercise of describing spiritual pathologies. This is rare but
evidently not impossible.128
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304 Kevin Mongrain

Conclusion
Contemporary discussions of how Christianity ought to respond to Western
cultures growing fascination with esoteric spirituality can learn from
Tombergs MT, especially when read through the lens of von Balthasars
Foreword. Tombergs MT shows that it is possible to articulate a maximally
capacious version of Christianitys mystical spirituality that is metaphysically
sophisticated, biblically grounded, and centered on prayer and ecclesial
iconic-sacramentality. Moreover, in contrast to the polemical tendency in von
Balthasars own texts, MT presents a rhetorically compelling version of
Christian spirituality that is able to resist modern forms of false gnosis
without succumbing to viciousness or paranoia. Tombergs framing of the
issues implicitly challenges the notion of an inevitable rivalry between spirituality and organized religion, and it also subverts the idea that all spiritualities are fundamentally the same and are simply embodied differently by
different religions. Like von Balthasar he understands that spiritualities that
value the centrality of prayer are fundamentally different from ones that do
not.129 And with von Balthasar, Tomberg teaches that esotericism without
prayer and institutional grounding can become narcissistic and self-righteous
to the point of megalomania, and consequently it tends to become manipulative and coercive to the point of violence. Both authors maintain that
authentic esotericism, by contrast, is marked by radical humility and nonviolence; it is biblical, ecclesial, and committed to the unity of metaphysical
reason and prayerful faith. For these reasons the contributions of both
Tomberg and von Balthasar are worth considering in contemporary discussions about Christianitys response to Western cultures growing fascination
with esoteric spirituality and the need to re-establish normative theological
standards for dening Christian spirituality and mysticism.
NOTES
The wide popularity of books like Dan Browns The Da Vinci Code and Philip Pullmans His
Dark Materials trilogy are just the tip of a massive cultural iceberg. Countless more
examples could be giventhe collections in the Religion and Spirituality sections of any
mainstream corporate bookstore tell the story. We nd there, for example, numerous
deant retrievals of ancient non-canonical literature as lost sources of wisdom, dozens of
gauzy pop-psychology re-interpretations of Cabbala, Su, Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist
texts, and numerous works explicitly recommending esoteric and occult spiritual
paths. Writings by or about Christian mystics are rare, and the ones that are there most
often attempt to de-Christianize gures from the Christian mystical tradition, such as
Meister Eckhart and Hildegard of Bingen, and repackage them as cross-cultural spiritual
gurus.
2 For example, see the Vaticans Pontical Commissions on Culture and Interreligious Dialogue 2003 document, Jesus Christ, Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian Reection on
the New Age , Origins 32/35 (February 2003) (also available at http://www.vatican.va/
roman_curia/pontical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_
new-age_en.html) The document gives an interpretation not only of the risks but also the
opportunities presented to traditional Christianity by the New Age movement. For
2009 The Author


example, while recognizing the hostile anti-Christian forces at play in many esoteric
movements, it also suggests that Christians take seriously the deep spiritual hunger of
people in the West today who are being drawn to these forms of spirituality. Christians
ought, the document recommends, make the most of the riches of the Christian spiritual
heritage so that they can begin to address this hunger in ways that deepen our cultures
understanding of the spiritual meaning of orthodox christology and trinitarianism (section
6.2).
3 For a representative overview of some of these discussions, see Symposium: The Uses and
Misuses of Spirituality, Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 7/1 (Spring 2007), pp.
7498. Outside a governing theological context, the terms Christian spirituality and
Christian mysticism can become problematic and misleading. Bernard McGinns reections on this point are still relevant; see his The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian
Mysticism, Volume I: The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century (New York,
NY: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002), pp. xixx.
4 Written originally in French from 1958 to 1967 and published anonymously, Meditations on
the Tarot is now widely acknowledged to be the work Valentin Tomberg (19001973). The
text was rst published in German as Meditationen ber die grossen Mysterien des Taro, trans.
Gertude von Hippel (Meisenheim: Anton Hain-Verlag, 1972). The rst French edition,
Mditations sur les 22 arcanes majeurs du Tarot (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1980), was an edited
version of the original manuscript. Another French edition by same publisher and with the
same title appeared in 1984, and again in 1992. A second, newly revised German translation
appeared in 1983 entitled, Die Groen Arcana des Tarot. Meditationen (Basel: Herder, 1983).
This was followed in 1993 by a third German edition, translated by Michael Frensch, with
the same title and publisher as the 1983 German edition. The rst English translation, done
from the original French manuscript, was published in 1985 as Meditations on the Tarot: A
Journey into Christian Hermeticism, trans. Robert A. Powell (Warwick, New York: Amity
House Inc., 1985). This Powell translation with the same English title and the same pagination was subsequently re-published in 1991 by Element Books, Inc., Rockport, Massachusetts. The most recent English edition, also using Powells English translation and
following exactly the pagination of the 1985 Amity House and 1991 Element editions, is
Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism (New York, NY: Tarcher/
Putman, 2002). All subsequent references to the text in this essay will be given as MT,
followed by the publication date and the page number from that edition. For example,
references to the 1980 Aubier Montaigne French edition will be MT 1980, pp. , and the
2002 Tarcher/Putnam edition will be MT 2002, pp. , and so forth.
5 The best short biography I know of on Tomberg is Christopher Bamfords Introduction
to Christ and Sophia: Anthroposophical Meditations on the Old Testament, New Testament,
and Apocalypse (Great Barrington, MA: Steiner Books, 2006), pp. viixxxvi. Readers interested in a more in-depth biography should consult Liesel Heckmann (with Michael
Frensch), Valentin Tomberg: Leben, Werk, Wirkung Band 1.1 19001944, Band 1.2, 1944
1973 (Schaffhausen, Switzerland: Novalis Verlag, 2001 and 2005); and Valentin Tomberg:
Leben, Werk, Wirkung, Vol. 2, Quellen und Beitrage zum Werk (Schaffhausen: Novalis
Verlag, 2000).
6 In a fascinating letter written March 9, 1970, just three years before his death, Tomberg
explains the change in this thinking that led him to abandon Anthroposophy. He writes
that in the 1930s he believed it was possible to save Rudolf Steiners life workspiritual
sciencefrom eradication and sclerosis by bringing it back to its central focus. However,
the inner descendant of this same person today [Tomberg himself] believes that there is no
spiritual science and never can be. Because even a spiritual science based on its central
focus can only add momentum to the mill of death. It will unavoidably become intellectualized and fossilized. Also, spiritual science never existed because the essential criteria
for every science must be that it can be tested, and that it applies universally. . . . But
knowledge of the spirit is not science but inner certaintythat means it is a condition that
cannot be imposed on someone else. In any case it has to forgo any claim to universal
validity and scrutiny. It is based on the most personal inner experience and can possibly
only be shared with very close companions, close friend who have been joined through
destiny. . . . Today my life is prayer and contemplation, and thatand only thatis what I
live for; not study. Letter cited in Sergei O. Prokoeff, Valentin Tomberg and Anthroposo 2009 The Author
306 Kevin Mongrain
7
8
9
10
11
12
phy: A Problematic Relationship, trans. Peggy Elliott (Forest Row, E. Sussex, England: Temple
Lodge Publishing, 2005), pp. 24 (original German letter given on pp. 4547).
English translation: Lazarus, Come Forth!: Meditations of a Christian Esotericist, trans. Robert
Powell and James Morgante (Great Barringon, MA: Lindisfarne Books, 2006).
MT 2002, pp. ixx.
The back covers of MT 1985, MT 1991, and MT 2002 all cite Bede Grifths, Basil Pennington, OCSO, and Thomas Keating, OCSO extolling the text.
His efforts to bring Origen and Meister Eckhart into mainstream theological respectability
are just two cases in point. See his introduction to Origen: Spirit and Fire: A Thematic
Anthology of his Writings, trans. Robert J. Daly, S.J. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of
America Press, 2001). See also Cyril ORegan, Balthasar and Eckhart: Theological Principles and Catholicity, The Thomist 60/2 (April 1996), pp. 203239. However, von Balthasar
had a penchant for advancing his agenda in ways that alienated more than persuaded the
theological mainstream; some have dismissed his ideas as the ravings of an incorrigible
theological provocateur. For example, his frequent problematizing of pure philosophical
reason and stress on the threats it poses to faith, his provocative teachings on Christs
descent into hell, and his willingness to entertain the possibility of universal salvation have
all been a source of consternation to many who consider his thought a deliberatively
mischievous effort to overturn traditional Church teachings. Moreover, he alienated many
of his potential reformist allies by suggesting there were anti-Catholic ideological motives
behind such popular post-Vatican II progressive causes as liberation theology and ecumenism among world religions. But in the eyes of some it is his quite odd intellectual
allegiance to the Marian visionary Adrienne von Speyr that best illustrates his dangerously
eccentric sensibilities.
Von Balthasars Foreword to the 1980 French Aubier Montaigne edition (MT 1980, pp. 716)
was edited and reprinted as a Foreword to the 1983 German Herder Basel edition (MT
1983, ixxvi). The 2002 English Tarcher/Putnam edition is unique among the English
editions because it alone includes von Balthasars Foreword (MT 2002, pp. 659665), which
Robert A. Powell translated and selectively edited from the 1983 German edition. In this
article I will primarily reference von Balthasars 1980 French Foreword because it is the
longest and most detailed (except that it lacks the footnotes included in MT 1983 and MT
2002). In this article I will primarily cite from the Afterword in MT 2002, but when
appropriate I will note differences between it and MT 1980 and MT 1983. For a photo
of John Paul II with von Balthasars gift of MT on his desk, see www.medtarot.
freeserve.co.uk/pictures.htm.
It is relevant to note that the original French Foreword was published in 1980, which means
it was being written approximately during the same time von Balthasar was writing
Theodramatik: Zweiter Band: Die Personen des Spiels, Teil 2: Die Personen in Christus in 1978
(English translation Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Volume III: The Dramatis Personae: The Person in Christ, trans. by Graham Harrison (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press,
1992; henceforth noted as TD3) and Theodramatik: Dritte Band: Die Handlung in 1980
(English translation: Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Volume IV: The Action, trans.
by Graham Harrison (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1980; henceforth noted as TD4).
Featured on the title page of TD3 we nd a quotation from MT that encapsulates one of the
central themes of all the Theo-Drama volumes. Von Balthasar only gives the name Valentin
Thomberg (misspelling in original) after the quotation without citing the source. But the
source is, of course, Meditations on the Tarot (it can be found in MT 2002, pp. 182). The quote
is: Thus the Fathers joy and his banquet of welcome remain incomprehensible both to
those who worship Gods wisdom (the Greeks) and to those who worship Gods power
(the Jews). Only those who worship the Love of God (the Christians) can understand
these things. They understand that the story of the Prodigal Son is a real drama of real love
and real freedom and that both the Fathers joy and the Fathers banquet are genuine, just
as the sufferings of Father and Son, which preceded their reunion, were genuine. Furthermore, they understand that the story of the Prodigal Son is the history of the whole human
race and that the history of the human race is a real drama involving real divine love and
real human freedom (quoted in TD3, p. 9). There is a second reference to MT in TD3 on
p. 487, footnote #61the topic is Tombergs understanding of demons. Also MT must still
have been on his mind when von Balthasar was writing Theo-Drama, Volume IV because this
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text has a footnote to the 1972 German edition of MT (see TD4, p. 51, note #16, which is to
MT 1972, 68) afrming one of Tombergs claims about the Book of Revelation, a text which
is a major theological interest in TD4 (see pp. 1567). References to the Book of Revelation
and/or the Apocalypse of John are also frequent in MT and clearly show that this text is very
relevant to Tombergs theological project. See MT, pp. 33, 64, 91, 188, 195, 240, 264, 269, 270,
271273, 277278, 281, 283, 414, 472, 526, 543, 545547, 558, 565, 567, 583584, 610, 648649.
It is very possible that von Balthasars reading of MT is colored by his theological agenda
in TD3 and TD4, and perhaps even some aspects of the theology of these volumes was
inuenced by his reading of MT.
For a discussion of von Balthasars anti-Gnosticism, see Kevin Mongrain, The Systematic
Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar: An Irenaean Retrieval (New York: Crossroad Publishing
Company, 2002).
Von Balthasar explicitly defended esoteric versions of Christian faith: Even so truly a
church of the people as the Catholic Church does not abolish genuine esotericism. The
secret path of the saints is never denied to one who is really willing to follow it. Hans Urs
von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics: Volume I: Seeing the Form, trans.
Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1982), p. 34.
MT 2002, pp. 659660.
In TD4 von Balthasar refers to Hermes Tismegistos teaching an anti-body doctrine of
body-soul dualism that seeks to interpret the self as quasi-divine (p. 225). But interestingly
this does not alter his positive evaluation of Tomberg.
MT 2002, p. 660.
Ibid., 661. Von Balthasar advocates a strong version of spolia Aegyptiorum when he asserts
that . . . it is not only the Church which inherits the ancient patrimony of humanistic
learning, but [also] that the Messiah himself inherits the interior realities of the religions of
all peoples, insofar as these contain theophanies and not demonologies. GL1, p. 502. See
also GL4, pp. 320322.
On a bien voulu me solliciter pur donner un avant-propos ce livre si enrichissant, certes,
mais dont lintrt doit paratre bien lointain la plupart des lecteurs. Cependant, je me
hte davouer mon incomptence dans le domaine quiil explore: je ne me sens pas en
mesure de suivre ni dapprouver lauteur dans chacune des dmarches de sa pens, et, bien
moins encore, pourrais-je soumettre tous les arguments proposes un examen critique.
Leur abondance est pourtant se grande et si digne de notre consideration quelle mrite
mieux que lindiffrence (MT 1980, p. 7). Unfortunately the English translation given in
MT 2002 entirely omits this paragraph, which is given in the German Foreword from
which the translation was made: Buch gebeten, mu ich als erstes meine Inkompetenz auf
dem von ihm erforschten Gebiet bekennen; weder vermag ich jeden seiner Gedankengnge billigend nachzuvollziehen noch erst recht alles kritisch zu prfen; aber des
Erwgenswerten wird hier so viel geboten, da man daran nicht gleichgltig vorbeigehen
darf (MT 1983, p. IX).
Von Balthasar writes, It is not necessary to enumerate here the many authorsoccultists,
theosophists and anthroposophistswith whom our author enters into dialogue. There
are those whom he rejects as incompetent, and others, in contrast, from whom he borrows
a thought that appears valuable to him, which he then incorporates into his meditations
whether an interpretation of the Sephirot (from the Cabbala), or a thought from Jacob
Boehme or Rudolf Steiner, from Jung or Pladan, from Papus or Matre Philippe, or
whoever it may be, let us not miss this nely humorous air with which he gathers every
sort of ower from the side of the road to tie in his rich bouquet of imagination. Often he
refers to the great philosophers and theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura,
Leibniz, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Bergson, Solovieff, Teilhard de Chardin; or to
dramatists and poets, such as Shakespeare, Goethe, De Coster, Cervantes, Baudelaire, and
many others. He easily plays with all registers of world literature. MT 1980, pp. 1011.
Both the German of MT 1983 and the English of MT 2002 omit from this passage the
important tone-setting lines ne manquons pas dobserver cet air nement humoristique
avec lequel il cueille sur les bords de sa route toute sorte de eurette pour les nouer dans
son bouquet riche dimagination and il joue avec aisance de tous les registres de la
literature mondiale. The spirit with which von Balthasar reads MT matters. Along these
lines, we might even add here that when von Balthasar afrms Tombergs idea that the
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book of Revelation cannot be made into a philosophical, metaphysical, or historical system,

he qualies his basic agreement by informing the reader that he takes the point with a
grain of salt; see TD4, p. 51, note #16.
MT 1980, p. 14. The original French runs: Il est certain que, toujours et avec une grande
conscience religieuse, lauteur cherche suivre lalle centrale de la sagesse chrtienne. Il
lui arrive, certes, de scarter du milieu en faisant un pas de trop vers la gauche (en
prsentant par exemple la doctrine de la reincarnation), ou encore un pas de trop vers la
droite (en rapprochant dune manire quelque peu fondamentaliste, des opinions ou des
pratiques religieuses catholiques un peu trop du dogme ou en arrivant sans transition aux
conseils vangeliques ou la recitation du rosarie). Cependant, labondance presque crasante des lumires authentiques et fcondes quil ramne de ses randonnes dans des
regions normalement inaccessible justie certainement lintention de ne pas priver un
public plus large de la lecture de ces Mditations. Again, it is unfortunate that the
English translation given in MT 2002 (p. 665) entirely omits the critical second sentence in
this paragraph, even though it is given in the German Foreword. The entire paragraph in
German runs: Sicher sucht der Verfasser immer und mit groer religiser Gewissenhaftigkeit den Mittelweg christlicher Weisheit einzuhalten. Er mag zuweilen von der Mitte weg
einen Schritt zu weit nach links tun (wenn er zum Beispiel die Lehre von der Reinkarnation
als wenigstens christlich erwgenswert hinstellt) oder einen Schritt zu weit nach rechts
(wenn er oft etwas fundamentalistisch kurzschlssig katholische religise Ansichten
oder Praktiken zu nah an das Dogma heranrckt oder unvermittelt bei den evangelischen
Rten, beim Rosenkranzgebet usf. anlangt). Die fast erdrckende Flle echter, fruchtbarer
Einsichten aber, die er heimbringt, rechtfertigt es sicher, diese Meditationen einem
greren Leserkreis nicht vorzuenthalten (MT 1983, p. XV). This is slightly different from
the French originalit seems mildly more circumspect than the French. My translation
would be: To be sure, the author always seeks, with great religious conscientiousness, to
stay on the middle path of Christian wisdom. Occasionally he might move away from the
middle by taking a step too far to the left (for example when he presents the doctrine of
reincarnation as at least worth considering Christian) or by taking a step too far to the right
(when he frequentlyand in a somewhat rash and fundamentalist mannerplaces
certain Catholic religious views or practices within the scope of dogmatic truth or abruptly
arrives at the evangelical counsels or the rosary etc.). The almost overwhelming abundance
of genuine, fruitful insights that he offers, however, certainly justies not withholding
these Meditations from a larger circle of readers.
MT 2002, p. 663.
Excluding biblical authors, the following list ranks the authors given the most frequent
positive mentions by Tomberg in MT: John of the Cross, Henri Bergson, Carl Jung, Teilhard
de Chardin, Plato, Teresa of Avila, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Anthony the Great,
Goethe, Bonaventure, Albertus Magnus.
It is also interesting to note that von Balthasar completely fails to make any comment about
Tombergs afrmation of the Cabbalas doctrine of tsimsum (MT 2002, pp. 8485) even
though he is explicitly critical of it in his own work. See TD2, pp. 263, 265266, 271.
MT 2002, p. 659.
Ibid., p. 661.
Ibid., note #7. This footnote does not appear in the French MT 1980, but the German MT
1983 has it as follows: Natrlich gibt es daneben, vom Mittelalter ber die Renaissance bis
zur Neuzeit eine starke von Joachim von Fiore abgeleitete Strmung, die den kirchlichen
und dogmatischen Glauben in Richtung auf ein drittes Reich des Geistes zu bersteigen
trachtete. Henri de Lubac hat sie in seinem neuesten, im Erscheinen begriffenen Werk La
postrit spirituelle de Joachim de Flore (Bd. I, 1979) Schritt fr Schritt verfolgt. Aber da sie fr
das Werk unseres Autors bedeutungslos ist, brauchen wir darauf nicht einzugehen.
TD4, p. 380. Von Balthasar hyperbolically asserts that Joachims modern successors are as
innumerable as the sand of the sea (TD4, 446).
MT 1980, pp. 1112. See also MT 2002, pp. 663664.
MT 1980, pp. 1112.
MT 2002, p. 665.
For a lucid explanation and vigorous defense of the patristic notion of true gnosis see
Jean Borellas essay, The Gnosis with a True Name in The Secret of the Christian Way: A
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Contemplative Ascent Through the Writings of Jean Borella, ed. and trans. G. John Champoux
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001), pp. 527.
Von Balthasar, The Place of Theology in Explorations in Theology, Volume I: The Word Made
Flesh trans. A. V. Littledate and Alexander Dru (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1989),
pp. 152.
Von Balthasar, Theology and Sanctity in Explorations in Theology, Volume I, p. 205.
Von Balthasar, The Personal God in Elucidations, p. 54.
Von Balthasar, Spirituality in Explorations in Theology, Volume I, p. 211. With revelation
there is no such thing as an objective, uncommitted, scientic objectivity, but only a
personal encounter of Word and faith, Christ and Church, in the mystery of the Canticle of
Canticles. When she understands, then is the Church holy; and, insofar as she is holy, she
understands. Theology and Sanctity in Ibid., p. 201. See also TD4, pp. 362, 433.
Von Balthasar, The Place of Theology in Explorations in Theology, Volume I, p. 154.
Von Balthasar, Theology and Sanctity in Explorations in Theology, Volume I, p. 181.
For a discussion of corpus triforme christology in the premodern Catholic tradition see
Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, trans.
Gemma Simmonds, C. J. Richard Price, and Christopher Stephens, ed. Laurence Paul
Hemming and Susan Frank Parsons (London: SCM Press, 2006), pp. 265301. For von
Balthasars concise deployment of this theological paradigm see his essay The Word,
Scripture and Tradition in Explorations in Theology, Volume I, pp. 1126. See also Mongrain,
The Systematic Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar, pp. 25130.
Von Balthasar, Theology and Sanctity in Explorations in Theology, Volume I, pp. 182183,
195. See also Spirituality in Explorations in Theology, Volume I, pp. 212213.
Von Balthasar, The Unknown God in Elucidations, pp. 3949.
Von Balthasar, Theology and Sanctity in Explorations in Theology, Volume I, pp. 197201.
Von Balthasar, The Unknown God in Elucidations, p. 38. See also TD4, pp. 458459.
See for example GL1, pp. 362365; TD3, pp. 292360; TD4, pp. 399400, 403405; The Ofce
of Peter and the Structure of the Church, pp. 183225; and The Marian Principle in Elucidations, pp. 101113.
Von Balthasar, Spirituality in Explorations in Theology, Volume I, p. 218.
Ibid., pp. 224225.
See for example his discussion of Pistis and Gnosis in The Glory of the Lord, Volume I:
Seeing the Form, pp. 131141. The entire second part of this volume (The Subjective
Evidence, pp. 131425) is an analysis of the Christian tradition on the interior understanding of God that comes from the experience of authentic, prayerful faith. See also GL2, pp.
44, 60; TD2, p. 140.
Von Balthasar, The Unknown God in Elucidations, pp. 3940. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The
Moment of Christian Witness, trans. Richard Beckley (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press,
1994), pp. 8081.
Von Balthasar, Theology and Sanctity in Explorations in Theology, Volume I, pp.187194.
Ibid., p. 192.
Von Balthasar, The Place of Theology in Explorations in Theology, Volume I, p. 157.
The critique of modern theologys refusal to be grounded in prayer and spirituality and its
perversely maniacal preference for pure logic, absolute theoretical precision, and rigid
systematic conceptual orderliness is scattered throughout von Balthasars published
corpus, but see especially his sustained critique of the System in The Moment of Christian
Witness, pp. 59130.
This hypothesis would proceed along the following lines. First, Tombergs general religious sensibility was very congenial to Russian Orthodoxy, so much so that he rst tried to
join the Russian church after becoming Christian. Second, he was obviously a reader and
admirer of Vladimir Soloviev (see MT 2002, pp. 503, 519, 608); Soloviev is for him the ideal
representative of Christian gnosis (p. 608). Third, he seems to have assimilated Solovievs
theological interest in the cosmic-human Sophia: Tomberg frequently refers to the
feminine creaturely principle of Sophia, and in many places he identies it with the Virgin
Mary (MT 2002, pp. 39. 274, 279, 283, 574, 548, 549, 582, 633). Fourthand this would of
course require documentation not possible herehis own basic theological perspective is
extremely similar to the theology of Sergei Bulgakov, which is perhaps due to their
common source in Soloviev. See for example Sergei Bulgakov, Sophia, the Wisdom of God: An
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Outline of Sophiology (Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Books, 1993), and Sergei Bulgakov,
The Bride of the Lamb trans. by Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 2001). In The Bride of the Lamb Bulgakov invokes positively the hermetic
tradition: see p. 50. Therefore, readers interested in understanding Tomberg ought to look
less at the so-called Hermetic tradition or the schools of tarot card esotericism and more at
the Russian Orthodox school of Sophiology as represented by Soloviev and Bulgakov.
Tombergs Christian Hermeticism therefore is quite different than the texts of other selfdescribed Christian Hermeticists who are not as self-consciously concerned with the unity
of old and new covenants or as assiduously focused on delity to classical Christian
doctrine. See for example the works of Robert Powell, particularly his Christian Hermetic
Astrology: The Star of the Magi and the Life of Christ (Great Barrington, MA: Steiner Books,
1998).
Notice for example how loose and inclusive Tomberg is in dening the mission of Hermeticism: Now, the historical and evolutionary mission of Hermeticism is to advance the
progress of the alchemical work engaged in developing the philosopher stone or the
union of spirituality and intellectuality. It is called to be the crest of the wave of contemporary human effort aspiring to the fusion of spirituality and intellectuality. This effort and
aspiration is larger than the group of Hermeticists, properly said, who are dispersed in the
world. There are probably more people who are not avowed Hermeticists and who are
engaged in the endeavor of aiming at the fusion of spirituality and intellectuality than there
are Hermeticists, properly said. MT 2002, pp. 607608.
Ibid., p. 605; see also p. 284.
Ibid., p. 393.
Ibid., pp. 67, 245.
Ibid., p. 550.
Ibid., pp. 43, 67, 90, 91, 221, 263, 459. Like von Balthasar Tomberg is particularly concerned
with the reduction of divine mystery to reason in Hegelianism. See Ibid., pp. 174, 201.
Tomberg writes, We Hermeticists are theologians of that Holy Scripture revealing God
which is named the world; similarly, theologians of the Holy Scriptures revealing God are
Hermeticists in so far as they dedicate their effort to the glory of God. Ibid., p.188. See also
pp. 41, 190, 194. Against theology, Tomberg writes, . . . theology rationalizes the material
of mystical experience in deriving rules and laws, whilst Hermeticism wants thought and
imagination involved. Ibid., p. 320; see also pp. 175 and 293. He argues at one point that the
all the Church doctors who teach the way of spiritual experience beyond theoretical
theology, and all the saints and mystics of the Church who have had this experience are
Hermeticists (p. 136). Interestingly, Tomberg praises Thomas Aquinas as a true Hermeticist
for making Aristotelianism Christian (p. 194) and yet damns mediaeval theologism and
the doctrine of God as the First Cause as a yet another of the endless mental idols created
by the human intellect (p. 175).
Ibid., p. 390; see also pp. 6, 264.
Ibid., pp. 135136.
Ibid., p. 6. See von Balthasar, The Ofce of Peter and the Structure of the Church, pp. 100,
137161.
Has not the time nally arrived, he pointedly asks when we Hermeticists shall take
account of the incontestable fact that it is thanks to the Church that we have air to breathe
and that we have a place of shelter and refuge in this world or materialism, imperialism,
nationalism, technologism, biologism and psychologism? It is in so far that the Church
lives that we live. The church bells once reduced to silence, all human voices desiring to
serve the glory of God will also be reduced to silence. We live and die with the Church.
Because in order to live, we need air to breathe; we need the atmosphere of piety, sacrice,
and appreciation of the invisible as a higher reality. This air, this atmosphere in the world,
exists in the world only by grace of the Church. Without it Hermeticismindeed, every
idealistic philosophy and all metaphysical idealismwould be drowned in utilitarianism,
materialism, industrialism, technologism, biologism and psychologism. Dear Unknown
Friend, imagine to yourself a world without the Church. . . . Do you think that Hermeticism could exist and live for a single day? MT 2002, 188189.
Ibid., pp. 292, 390391.
Ibid., pp. 42, 48, 69, 87, 89, 135, 173, 264, 365, 404, 451, 458.
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Speaking generally, since Thomas Mertons fascinating and ground-breaking studies of the
similarities between Christian and Asian religions there has been a strong tendency for
scholars of Christian spirituality to give preference to the study of Asian religions, particularly Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, as a lens for understanding and retrieving the
sapiential traditions of Christianity, and consequently they have tended to neglect the
study of biblical and post-biblical Judaism. The writings of Bruno Barnhart are typical and
representative of this tendency. See Bruno Barnhart, The Future of Wisdom: Toward a Rebirth
of Sapiential Christianity (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2007) and
Bruno Barnhart, Joseph Wong, and Yuese Huang, Purity of Heart and Contemplation: A
Monastic Dialogue Between Christian and Asian Traditions (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group), 2001. Given that Christianity arose out of Judaism and developed in dialogue and rivalry with it, prioritizing the study of Asian religions over the study
of Judaism as a means to understand Christian spirituality is at best a limited project
because it undervalues monotheism, covenant theology, and the communal and eschatological nature of spiritual life. At worst this tendency drifts toward a quasi-Marcionist
worldview that presumes Christianity makes the most spiritual sense when it is the least
like Judaism. There are of course exceptions to this general tendency to neglect the special
and uniquely important relevance of Judaism for understanding Christian spirituality. See
for example Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing (New York: Doubleday, 1999), pp. 64, 65,
75, 99, 102, 126, 135, 162, 175. Another important exception is the profound text by Matthew
the Poor (Fr. Matt, El-Meskeen), The Communion of Love (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimirs
Seminary Press, 1984). Yet neither Rolheiser nor Matthew the Poor reach the level of depth
and sophistication on this topic we nd in Tomberg and von Balthasar, both of whom bring
thick descriptions of Judaism to bear in their projects to revive Christian spirituality.
Ibid., pp. 4647, 8485, 235, 274, 297. On this fundamental issue Tomberg seems to have
much in common with Bulgakov; see The Bride of the Lamb, pp. 37.
Ibid., pp. 3133, 297.
Ibid., pp. 93, 105, 237, 346, 479, 520.
Ibid., pp. 56; see also pp. 6061, 66, 7273,183, 573.
Ibid., pp. 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 17, 19, 20, 30, 31, 33, 36, 38, 39, 68, 79, 130, 135, 150, 151, 162, 163, 189,
192, 208, 209, 223, 227, 250, 251, 274, 281, 348, 367, 418, 485, 498, 537, 560, 571, 574, 616.
Ibid., pp. 37, 66, 131, 150151, 192, 612613, 616.
Tomberg is a strong believer in the Marian apparitions at Fatima, Lourdes, and elsewhere.
See Ibid., pp. 280. In this context he writes, . . . the thesis I am advancing with one hundred
percent conviction is that every Hermeticist who truly seeks authentic spiritual reality will
sooner or later meet the Blessed Virgin (p. 281).
Ibid., pp. 277296, 301.
Ibid., p. 41.
Ibid., pp. 3339.
Ibid., pp. 4041, 44.
Ibid., p. 368.
Ibid., p. 297.
Like von Balthasar, Tomberg freely uses the binary pairs above/below and vertical/
horizontal to distinguish Creator/creature, divine/non-divine, heaven/earth, eternal/
temporal, innite/nite. See Tombergs use of above/below: Ibid., pp. 4, 16, 22, 24, 25, 33,
34, 40, 44, 57, 59, 68, 73, 86, 88, 100, 112, 132, 133, 134, 139, 140, 141, 148, 149, 150, 159, 178,
179, 262, 274, 298, 307, 314, 316, 317, 334, 337, 352, 358, 361, 369, 376, 378, 384, 387, 440, 441,
444, 477, 488, 490, 512, 528, 540, 571, 576, 605, 608, 616, 630, 643. For his use of vertical/
horizontal see Ibid., pp. 40, 44, 45, 48, 73, 101, 102, 109, 118, 132, 134, 136, 140, 178, 214, 215,
216, 254, 258, 259, 278, 326, 332, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 351, 353, 362, 363, 378, 382, 383, 438,
439, 443, 483, 578, 580, 643.
Ibid., pp. 46, 56, 478.
Ibid., p. 274.
For an overview discussion of the meaning of false gnosis in von Balthasar, see Mongrain, The Systematic Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar, pp. 3337.
On close examination it is the case that von Balthasar operates with this unstated assumption: there is an anti-Marian spiritual type which is something like a genus, and those who
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develop and maintain Gnostic systems are simply one very prominent and inuential
species within this genus. There are other non-Gnostic species in the genus; but all
members of the species Gnostic belong to the genus dened by the anti-Marian spiritual
type. Yet his rhetoric often confuses things by equating without remainder the species
Gnostic with the wider anti-Marian genus.
Von Balthasar, TD4, pp. 21, 167168, 445; GL7, pp. 115129; see also Elucidations, pp. 5859
and The Moment of Christian Witness, p. 97.
Von Balthasar, TD4, p. 181; see also TD2, pp. 417428; TD3, pp. 391401.
Ibid,, p. 163.
Ibid., p. 164.
Ibid., p. 165.
Ibid., p. 329. Von Balthasar writes, Innite freedom summons nite freedom to go beyond
itself and share in the former. This remains a mystery, because the creation, although it is
profoundly affected in it innermost essence, has no wayeven at the level of speculationof translating this offer into the terms of its own nitude. The attempt to do so
characterizes all forms of Gnosticism. There is a distinction between the ineradicable
nondivinity of the creaturely image and its vocation to participate in the divine prototype
(likeness): Gnosticism obliterates this distinction and makes of the two a single process,
comprehensible in terms of nite being and nite thought. Ibid., p. 380.
Like Tomberg, von Balthasar cites 1 Corinthians 8:12 numerous times to contrast true and
false gnosis: Ibid., pp. 463464; Elucidations, p. 31; Theology and Sanctity, p. 196.
Von Balthasar, GL7, p. 448; see also TD4, p. 445.
Von Balthasar, TD4, pp. 166167.
For example, von Balthasar contends that modern Gnosticism running through Joachim of
Fiore, Jacob Boehme, and Hegel postures as this-worldly unlike the ancient Valentinian
model but is really not pro-creation because it is monism and reduces paradox of otherness
and difference to the divine Same. It is a pan-optic discourse that is vehemently anthropocentric (although its own self-understanding might be that it is vehemently theocentric,
but its understanding of God is such that its theocentrism is monistic erases all that is not
God so there is no human cosmic reality apart from God). It is a species of the No to God
and a preference for pure thinking and absolute knowledge and hence it is on von
Balthasars interpretation truly an anthropocentric discourse that has confused the human
mind with God. Hegel and absolute knowledge, see TD2, pp. 35, 89, 125; TD3, pp. 62, 64;
TD4, pp. 128, 446, 464; TD5, p. 226; Elucidations, pp. 31, 38, 49, 193195, 197, 203, 304. For his
critique of the System see Moment of Christian Witness, pp. 59130.
Von Balthasar, TD4, p. 457.
Ibid., p. 459460.
Von Balthasar, TD2, pp. 417425; TD4, pp. 148160; Moment of Christian Witness, pp. 8284;
Elucidations, p. 49.
Von Balthasar, TD4, pp. 21, 450451, 463464.
Ibid., pp. 2021.
Ibid., p. 380.
Ibid., pp. 21, 463.
It is unquestionable that both Tomberg and von Balthasar would agree with Joseph Ratzingers insistence that Christians must understand meditation practices, either developed
within the Christian tradition (such as hesychasm) or outside of it, as enriching of, and
perhaps even as a preparation for, prayer rather than as spiritually sufcient in themselves.
See the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Some Aspects of Christian Meditation,
Origins 19, no. 30 (October 1989), pp. 492498. However, both Tomberg and von Balthasar
would likely share Bede Grifths concern about Ratzingers use of the term distance
(para. 10) to characterize the Creator-creature relationship. See Bede Grifths, OSB,
Monks Response to Document on Christian Prayer from the Congregation Doctrine of
Faith, Bulletin of the North American Board for East-West Dialogue 38 (May 1990), p. 11. Using
the word distance connotes a non- (or even anti-) incarnational mindset that makes
problematic traditional Christian teachings on the deifying indwelling of Christ and Spirit
in the creation. Saying that God and the world are ontologically different, on the other
hand, does not mean that God and the world are either distant or separate.
MT 2002, p. 151.
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106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
Ibid., pp. 3036, 297.

Ibid., pp. 151, 152.
Ibid., pp. 111, 152, 153, 155, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 166, 168.
Ibid., pp. 164, 368.
Ibid., pp. 152, 163, 165, 293, 528.
Ibid., pp. 38, 43, 53, 68, 72, 8182, 118, 140, 143, 144, 160161, 164, 215, 286, 369, 518.
Ibid., p. 81.
Ibid., pp. 291294, 296, 299.
Tomberg complains of the pretension of certain Hermeticists . . . to have the authority to
found small churches under their own leadership and to set up altar against altar and
hierarchy against hierarchy. Ibid., p. 189.
Ibid., p. 15.
Cyril ORegan, Balthasar and Gnostic Genealogy, Modern Theology 22/4 (October 2006),
pp. 609650. See also his Gnostic Return in Modernity (Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press, 2001), pp. 5, 16, 2935, 70.
In addition to himself, ORegan names Franz Anton Staudenmaier (18001856) and Ferdinand Christian Bauer (17921860) as examples of this second voice. Ibid., p. 611; see also
Gnostic Return, pp. 2348.
Ibid., p. 612.
This second voice too is genealogical in that it concerns itself with precise conceptual and
analytical descriptions of the complex continuities and discontinuities between modern
Gnosticism and its ancestor discourses in the ancient and medieval periods. ORegan,
Gnostic Return, pp. 99177; see particularly his discussion of Gnostic metalepsis on pp.
148159, and his discussion of Valentinian narrative grammar on pp. 99136.
ORegan, Gnostic Return, p. 32.
Taking Irenaeus as a representative of the polemical mode of the rst voice, ORegan
writes, In Against Heresies Valentinians are falsiers and liars (1.Preface, 2.Preface),
creators of ction (1.8.1, 3.12.12), deceitful (2.3.1), presumptuous and vain (1.Preface.1), depraved (3.2), riddled with intellectual pride and perverse (2.1.1), ridiculous
trusters of personal experience (2.32), and antinomian (4.15). The code is that of pathology, and Irenaeus is prepared to make it explicit. Valentinians are responsible for bringing
about disease (3.2). They are sick and in need of a cure, the two parts of the therapy of
which consist in Irenaeuss rough refutation of their pseudo-Christian proposal and his
provision of a grammar of motive, to evoke Kenneth Burkes famous phrase. This is the
paradigmatic heresiological voice that provides the code for abuse of positions deemed to
be other than orthodox for the best part of the next two millennia. Ibid., pp. 143144. For
another example of the rst voice speaking in a vitriolic tone, see Vogelins notoriously
demonological and scatter-shot anti-Gnostic arguments in The New Science of Politics
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1952), pp. 107184.
Arthur Versluis makes this association between anti-Gnostic polemics and religiously
sanctioned violence in Vogelins Anti-Gnosticism and the Origins of Totalitarianism,
Telos 124 (Summer, 2002), pp. 173182. He has a point, although he seriously undermines
it by not granting exceptions in principle or in fact.
ORegan, Balthasar and Gnostic Genealogy, pp. 613633; Gnostic Return, pp. 3236.
This is particularly true in some of TD4s extreme rhetoric. See TD4, pp. 440, 463,
460.
Commenting on the line overcometh every subtle thing from the Hermetic text, The
Emerald Table, Tomberg revealingly writes, The deeper meaningmystical, gnostic,
magical and Hermeticof overcoming is to change the enemy into a friend. MT 2002,
p. 282.
Even when his monotheistic christocentrism leads him to speak in either/or categories he
softens the presentation by using the rhetoric of higher/lower rather than good/evil
or true/false. For example: Spiritual adultery is therefore the exchange of higher moral
and spiritual value for a lower moral and spiritual value. Ibid., p. 299.
Ibid., p. 276. He also makes this disarmingly conciliatory argument: Anyone who takes on
himself the mission of judge can act only in the sense of destruction. Anyone who begins
to criticize before long passes to censure and sooner or later ends up by condemning,
which leads inevitably to division into hostile camps. Criticism and polemicism are mortal
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314 Kevin Mongrain

enemies of the spiritual life. . . . Now, there is no authentic spirituality which owes its
origin and existence to opposition or rivalry. Ibid., p. 300.
128 ORegan grants that this kind of thing is possible. Although he decidedly favors the
analytical-genealogical voice, he leaves open the possibility that the rst voice can be
puried and function in a supporting and symbiotic role with the second in a clean and fair
anti-Gnostic discourse. He writes, As deployed genealogically in the texts of Balthasar,
the term Gnosticism refers to a relatively restricted range of religiously aspirated modern
discourses of a broadly Christian character towards which he takes a negative attitude. And
while Balthasar occasionally strikes an experiential note, his use of the term Gnosticism
is largely narratively based. ORegan, Balthasar and Gnostic Genealogy, p. 613.
But yet ORegan also argues that the second voice is not necessarily irenic (he offers
Staudenmeiers vituperative analytical-genealogical reading of Hegel as an example),
and although the rst voices interest in diagnosing states of mind encourages polemical
descriptions of the Gnostic selfs pathologies, it does not necessarily demand such descriptions. ORegan, Gnostic Return, p. 46.
129 On this point Tomberg and von Balthasar would likely disagree with Sandra Schneiders
assertion that Christians share the fundamental reality of spirituality with other traditions
such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, and indigenous traditions such as
Native American, Aboriginal, and Maori. Schneiders grants that not all of these spiritual
traditions have a personal God but contends nevertheless they belong in the same
category with ones that do because they practice self-transcendence toward ultimate
value rather than narcissistic egoism. See Sandra M. Schneiders, Religion vs. Spirituality: A Contemporary Conundrum? Spiritus 3/2 (2003), pp. 167168. Tomberg and von
Balthasar would welcome Schneiders exclusion of narcissistic egoism from the category
of spirituality. However, they might also question whether it is helpful to include in the
same category spiritualities that practice prayer to a personal God with ones that do not.
They would likely argue that it is precisely because spirituality with prayer is focused on a
personal God it has an inherently higher level of resistance to narcissistic egoism than
spiritualities without prayer. Both Tomberg and von Balthasar would argue (Tomberg
perhaps more forcefully) that spiritualities with and without prayer need not necessarily
rival each other, but they would be quick to add that sometimes they do rival each other
and should not be conated. They would insist Christians must be alert to this unfortunate
truth if they want to defend the uniqueness of spirituality with prayer and the Christian
orthodox religious tradition that supports and is supported by it.
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Modern Theology 25:2 April 2009

ISSN 0266-7177 (Print)

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book of Revelation cannot be made into a philosophical, metaphysical, or historical system,

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Ibid., pp. 245, 253, 296.

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Ibid., pp. 3036, 297.

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