ABSTRACT
The modern Anglican priest and mystic Robert Llewelyn, former chaplain of the shrine of Julian in Norwich, wrote that there were two ways of knowing Christ: one can either know all about him or one can know him. He added that knowing Christ “is the only knowledge which ultimately matters. We Christians have a great start in being able to know about Christ from the Gospels, but if we do not know him it is as nothing.”1 This dichotomy represents the two different though intimately related Christianities that coexist uneasily within each other. One Christianity emphasizes human intellect and reason and is a theology, a set of beliefs to be accepted and rules to be followed, a creed that is proclaimed. The other Christianity is that of the mystics, who seek the experience of the God of the former and stress the inability of human reasoning to know the incomprehensible deity. These two Christianities present different means by which one can know God, either through the divine self-revelation to be found in the Scriptures and in Christian theology or through the direct revelation of the divine to the individual. Fr. Llewelyn’s preference for the mystical approach as the essential aspect of Christianity fits easily with the view of Evelyn Underhill, one of the twentieth century’s best-known writers and teachers on mysticism, who argued that “mysticism represents the very soul of religion.”2
