Revelation and Meditation

I was meditating this afternoon when it struck me that I should say something about the relationship between revelation and meditation, particularly from a Christ-centred perspective.

Many forms of meditation, such as Zen and Yoga, focus on immediate experience. I have no problem with this, so far as it goes, yet I think its worth highlighting the difference between general revelation and special revelation and how that relates to meditation. A distinctive feature of Christianity is the recognition that some experiences are more authoritative than others, particularly the experience the apostles had of Jesus of Nazareth. Hence our emphasis on scripture.

This has important implications for how we do mystical theology. Mystics who recognise Jesus as Messiah also tend to recognise the limits of immediate experience. That is, even as they embrace their immediate experiences they seek to discern how these square with the experiences of Jesus that have been passed down from the ancients. Thus meditation on scripture is commonly found within their mystic writings. There is a holistic relating of the now to the not now.