Romanticism: ecstatic, intoxicating, magic, enchantment

When a tortured romantic relationship goes bad... Hermione and Birkin from the movie of Women in Love

Romanticism has a bad name among most Christians, probably because it is regarded as being emotional and sensuous rather than metaphysical. 

This is likely due to the fact that we are emotional Beings - indeed, it may be that incarnation is a way of intensifying emotion and making it more effectual. If we consider actual examples of human greatness, from the lives of Saints, through great creators, and the examples of good and loving human relationships - all are bound-up with emotions. 

It is therefore rather strange and sinister when Christians become anti-emotional; but on the other hand it is clearly dangerous, and sooner-or-later evil, if emotion becomes primary: if we become sensation-seekers.

This is a real danger in a godless and materialistic society such as ours - indeed intense emotionalism has been, and still is among the young, probably one of the most alluringly advocated ideologies of these times and this place.  

In my later teens and early twenties, I was very much a seeker of this kind of emotion-seeking romanticism - although mine was of a distinctly highbrow type, focused on music, literature, and drama; as much as upon intense human relationships. 

I was very much taken with the ecstasies of musicians like Glenn Gould or Michael Tippett, the intoxicated prose of DH Lawrence or James Joyce, the magical dramas and poetry of Shakespeare and much else. In life; I was very keen on deep conversation, intense friendships and tormented romances. I sought to live an enchanted life. 

This "worked" as a lifestyle for a while, so long as it was fuelled by the vitality of youth - although the mundane dullness of most "normal" life was a continual problem - and my own energies and motivations were never sufficient to fill long periods or to overcome subjective adversities. 

But as time went by, there was a habituation whereby the ecstasies-etc. (especially the epiphanic intoxications of living in the moment) diminished in strength, I became disillusioned by their incompleteness and brevity and the fact that they led nowhere in particular (nowhere better); and the mundane become oppressive and unavoidable. 

Yet, although materialistic romanticism is a dead-end - it cannot be ignored or suppressed, because our culture offers nothing better. Indeed Christianity offers nothing better - since the deeper into Christianity one goes, the stronger becomes the anti-romanticism: the crushing of ecstasy, and the fear of magical enchantment. 

The idea of Romantic Christianity includes a recognition that we are romantic creatures, because of our incarnation - and that this is a Good Thing, not just now, but forever. 

We ought never to accept, or regard as best, a Christianity that is mundane, disenchanted, dry, dull, anti-emotional - anti-the-physical. 

If we our wise, Christian practice ought to be romantic in its aims - and Christians need to beware of focusing on the supposedly-safe: the comfortable, the friendly, the "ethical", the political. Because (as of 2024) there is no safe way of being a Christian. 

Jesus was himself an intensely romantic, spontaneous, and emotional personage - who lived at a high level of engagement with reality (including spiritual reality) that our earthly attempts can only approach, and only briefly.

When God is depicted as is usual, as an abstract and philosophical entity, defined by attributes, and especially when God's "impassible" nature is insisted-upon (i.e. the assertion that God is incapable of "passions" or emotions) - then we are being dangerously misled (no matter how ancient and venerable such assertions may be!).  

If we accept, acknowledge, embrace our romanticism in a rigorous spirit; it leads towards theosis in this life, and resurrection in the life to come; and it is a partial guide to the deep nature of Christ's message and work.