MYSTICAL UNION IN JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM

Abstract

This article presents the so-often discussed problem of the core of religions, of what seems to link them rather than to separate them. Thus, after having presented the characteristics of unitive mysticism and its language at a phenomenological level, we turn to mystical union in the three major monotheistic religions of the world. Judaism, Christianity and even Islam have all developed the idea of a personal God, this ideal representing religion at its best. In the monotheistic faiths the God of creation, revelation, and redemption is not a static and indifferent First Principle but a loving and all-knowing God, who creates humans whose likeness to Him consists precisely in their ability to know and to love. However, the variations found in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam on this topic are too multiple to be easily characterized. That’s why it is difficult to appreciate the dynamics of union unless one addresses the relation between unitive expressions and the roles of love and knowledge. Union, whether conceived of as the uniting of God and human or in a deeper way as some form of identity with God, has been a key feature of the mystical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Most mystics claim that both knowing and loving are necessary in the way to God, but many mystics stress the superiority of love, often expressed in highly erotic ways, whereas others conceive of union as attaining mental identity with the Divine Intellect. They make use of a variety of images and symbols, as well as distinctive expressions and forms of technical discourse, in their attempts to suggest through language what lies beyond language: the ‘ineffable’ God.