Response to Rick Phillips on Mother Teresa's Dark Night

In my "Two Paradigms" post I described how Protestantism and Catholicism are distinct paradigms. Criticizing one paradigm from the point of view of the other paradigm is typically an exercise in question-begging. An example of such an exercise can be found in Rick Phillips' article titled "Mother Teresa's Redemption".

Phillips first claims that there are "many streams of ... Catholic piety". He lists four:

"There is the sacramental indulgence approach, perhaps most common among the peasant class, whereby pilgrims seek spiritual leverage by venerating saintly relics (at a price, of course).  There is the monastic good works approach, typified by the monkish Martin Luther (who said, "If anyone could get into heaven by monkery, I would have been the one." ) There is the penitential approach, probably most common among Roman Catholics in the West today, whereby one maintains a relationship with God (really, the Church) via the mass, confession, and penance.  But there is also the mystical way, pioneered by such luminaries as St. Teresa of Avila, who was made famous by her ecstatic visions of the Lord.  Most Roman Catholics will have bits and pieces of most of these (Luther tried them all of them prior to "discovering" the gospel), with one of them as the leading approach to spirituality."

Then he pigeonholes Mother Teresa into the "mystical" stream. But from a Catholic point of view, these are not "many streams"; these are all aspects of one thing: Catholic piety. Phillips has imposed an artificial division on what in Catholicism is essentially united. Having artificially categorized Mother Teresa's piety, Phillips then claims that the inner struggle Mother Teresa endured "offers a dire warning of the perils of this approach to God". Phillips believes that what Mother Teresa went through internally is a symptom of some bad theology. He writes:

"Why was her faith so dry and dead ...? One key answer seems to be that her faith was not rooted in the Word of God, but in experiential ecstasy.... In this, parallels can be seen between Mother Teresa and Christians of many stripes -- many of them evangelicals -- whose faith is driven by spiritual experiences instead of by the truth of God's Word."

Mother Teresa's problem, according to Phillips, was that she didn't know or trust her Bible. If she had, her privation of spiritual experience of Christ would not have concerned or troubled her. She was, according to Phillips, basically the equivalent of a charismatic who seeks God in spiritual experiences instead of simply standing on the promises of Christ in Scripture. Phillips says that if he had been her minister, he would have pointed her to Scripture. He even claims that she thought of her salvation primarily in terms of mystical experiences:

"... Mother Teresa thought of her salvation primarily in terms of mystical experiences.  ... Her idea of salvation was to participate mystically in deity itself.  To have such an experience was to have Christ.  To fail to achieve this mystic height was to be without Christ. ... Underlining it all [Mother Teresa's inner darkness] was a lack of belief in the all-sufficiency of the finished work of Christ."

Such lines could only come out of the Protestant paradigm with its either/or oversimplifications. If she longed for mystical experiences of Christ and yet failed to acquire them, it follows for Phillips that she didn't have enough faith in the all-sufficiency of the finished work of Christ. Apparently for Phillips, the Beatific Vision is just something accidental to salvation, if it has anything to do with it all. As long as you know Christ died for you, you're saved; its all done, so get on with your life and be happy and stop thinking about experiencing Christ mystically or spiritually. Or at least wait until after your soul leaves your body to start thinking about that sort of stuff.

The claim that what Mother Teresa went through internally was a symptom of some bad theology assumes that what Mother Teresa went through internally is something contrary to true Christianity. Phillips does not mince words:

"But as a spiritual example, she is to be sincerely and compassionately pitied.  In saying this, I do not mean to declare her as damned; such a pronouncement is beyond my authority or competence.  But reading the pieces of her correspondence, I found myself lamenting that someone so noble as Mother Teresa should be led down such a false and tortuous path.  It simply is not Christianity.  Therefore, as a spiritual guide, her example should be shunned."

Phillips graciously refrains from proclaiming Mother Teresa to be damned. But how does Phillips show that what Mother Teresa went through is something contrary to true Christianity? Easy. One verse is sufficient. He writes:

"Jesus said, "Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life" (Jn. 8:12). Simply put, the spiritual testimony of Mother Teresa is directly contrary to the depiction offered by Jesus in the Bible."

Case closed. Mother Teresa should be "pitied" and "her example should be shunned".

But does that verse really mean what Phillips assumes that it means? Is it talking about the "dark night of the soul", as we see in St. John of the Cross? Or is it talking about the darkness of depravity and selfishness? It seems to me that the weight of Phillips' entire argument rests on these two questions, questions which he does not answer.

For Phillips, the height of Christian life is the "light-bathed spirituality" of resting on the finished work of Jesus on the cross. He writes:

"... Paul's light-bathed spirituality rested on the finished work of Jesus on the cross.  The light that shone in his heart -- but did it shine in Mother Teresa's? -- was this great truth: He died for me.  Therefore, Paul spoke of life, not death for himself ("the life I live"!), since Christ had died already for him."

Phillips apparently thinks of salvation as something entirely forensic. Epistemic awareness of that forensic work equals "light-bathed spirituality". If this is not gnosticism, how would gnosticism be different? Phillips says that salvation is epistmic awareness of a "great truth: He died for me". But for a Catholic, salvation is Christ Himself, not just epistemic awareness of (and belief in) a truth about what Christ did for me, no matter how great. Mother Teresa was not ignorant of the Scriptures; she was not ignorant of what Christ had done on the cross for her. It was precisely because she knew what Christ had done for her that she longed so deeply for Christ Himself; her soul yearned and panted for the living God. Her long dark night was the long night of a soul crying out in thirst for nothing less than Christ Himself, so much so that anything else was for her like the darkness of hell itself. It was the sixty-year desert of a lover who, having been once touched by her Lover, subsequently in His absence experienced everything else as dry empty darkness, waiting and longing for His return. This kind of darkness is not evidence of a lack of faith, but rather evidence of having experienced a veiled glimpse of the Beatific Vision; this is the symptom of only one kind of love, the kind of love that has once beheld the Perfect Lover, only to have Him be withdrawn from her. If only I could attain to a small portion of the love for Christ that Mother Teresa had.

Phillips writes:

Most tragic to me was the analogy drawn by one of Mother Teresa's apologists.  He writes, "Let's say you're married and you fall in love and you believe with all your heart that marriage is a sacrament.  And your wife, God forbid, gets a stroke and she's comatose.  And you will never experience her love again.  It's like loving and caring for a person for 50 years and once in a while you complain to your spiritual director, but you know on the deepest level that she loves you even though she's silent and that what you're doing makes sense.  Mother Teresa knew that what she was doing made sense."  What is so horrific about this analogy is that the comatose spouse is none other than Jesus Christ. ... She is the selfless savior; Christ is the silent, impotent lover. 

Phillips does not say exactly what is so "tragic" and "horrific" about this analogy. Either Phillips considers a healthy spousal relationship to consist in reading letters that his spouse wrote to him many years ago, or Jesus Himself comes to Phillips' house daily and talks with him in person. In the former case, Phillips does not know what true spousal love is like; in the latter case, Phillips's relationship with Christ is more than merely trusting in the finished work of Christ. Either way, his criticisms of Mother Teresa's spirituality collapse. In the former case she had something at one point that he has never experienced and never understood. In the latter case, he himself has something daily that he is saying Mother Teresa should have been content not to have.