Learning to Unknow: On James K.A. Smith’s Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark

In the same way that there are many different Nietzsches and Foucaults—each refracted through different eras of their careers and interpretations of their thought—it’s now fair to say that there are many different James K.A. Smiths. There’s formational James K.A. Smith whose Augustinian retrieval revolutionized theologies of sanctification in the 2010s. There’s philosopher James K.A. Smith, who helped popularize the work of Charles Taylor for pastors and Christian thought leaders. Then there’s social media James K.A. Smith—often preoccupied by Marxism, partisan complaints, disagreements with Calvin’s reaffirmation of their roots in the CRC, and Why Christians Should be Leftists.

Since trajectory is something of an indicator of future reality, I assumed that Smith’s latest book (also one of the few outside a Baker publishing imprint) would fall squarely in this final category.

However, in Make Your Home in this Luminous Dark, an accessible meditation that functions as a mostly relatable introduction to mysticism, the second version of Smith, the “philosopher,” is the version that steps to the fore (xii). So for the purposes of this review, I will not address or speculate upon the social media Smith. To the best of my ability, I’ll attempt to approach his book according to stated authorial intention.

But first, a word on mysticism. It’s a concept that many Protestants carry some healthy skepticism toward. Thankfully, Matthew Barrett’s seminal The Reformation as Renewal traces how the Protestant Reformation itself had some loose continuity with mystical traditions—Luther himself even emerged from the German mysticism. But Barrett stresses that the earliest Protestants didn’t uncritically adopt every aspect of mysticism, fortunately leaving behind much of the tradition’s wonky features. It becomes problematic when the focus is entirely upon subjectivity and necessary objective revelations are taken for granted. For this discussion, it’s simply important to note mysticism’s varied reception history; it’s not a boogeyman in its entirety. Accordingly, this provides another helpful hermeneutic to charitably approach Smith’s work.

The central aspect of mysticism Smith addresses is simply “unknowing.” It’s essentially a diligent effort to eliminate the need for intellectual certainty. While much post-Enlightenment dogma focuses on knowledge acquisition as something of a soteriology, Smith calls the security offered by religion and philosophy “prisons” (2). Mysticism’s comfort with not understanding frees oneself from the need to control and dominate through stocking up knowledge. In his own words, “I used to imagine that my calling was to defend the Truth. Now I’m just trying to figure out how to love” (5-6).

Smith structures the book around a four-stage spiritual movement that guides readers toward this process of unknowing:

1. Anachoresis: a movement of withdrawal, a retreat to solitude.
2. Hesychia: achieving stillness to dwell in silence.
3. Docta ignorantia: the cloud of unknowing, the dark night of the soul.
4. Mysterion: emergence to wonder, a new form of attention.

Smith enlists the classic works of mystics throughout history to walk through his lessons in love. All the figures you’d expect make an appearance: St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Ávila, the unnamed author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, and Martin Laird. Yet one disappointment with the book’s bibliography is that it never goes beyond the classics; the well Smith draws from feels shallower, at least when comparing his expansive resources on previous projects such as time, Taylor, or tongues. As someone who has never done a deep dive into mysticism, I would’ve expected a scholar of Smith’s caliber to dig deeper and reference some mystical works I didn’t read during seminary. But he doesn’t reference anything that appeared outside of intro to spiritual formation courses. However, there’s a possibility that this is intentional: in moving beyond an obsession with a knowledge-as-power-and-security posture, maybe there’s less of a need for demonstrating a deeper acquaintance with the mystical tradition. Perhaps even that this disappointment itself crossed my mind is evidence of my overexposure to academic paradigms that implicitly teach head-knowledge as a soteriology—or at the very least, sanctification (5).

By embracing the discomfort of unknowing, we come into a more profound awareness of love in all its splendor (16). Classically and more popularly, this is called “the dark night of the soul” or “senses.” To “make our homes in this luminous dark” is to reach a nexus of acquiescence between our lack of understanding (the dark) and embodied love Himself (God). It’s almost like feeling lost but then slowly becoming un-lost because we give up trying to find (160-161). In St. John of the Cross’s language, “By walking in darkness, not only is the soul not lost, but it has even greatly gained” (161). This in itself is a “great happiness,” in that it strips us of our clamoring need to control by way of comprehension (162).

While much more than can be summarized in a single dictum, what Smith teaches throughout the book is this basic wisdom: “‘being right’ is sorry substitute for being loved” (46). And perhaps the most interesting medium in Smith’s toolbox is his classic transmission of his favorite pieces of art through prose—a feature native to all Smith’s books but handled this time with a sapiential maturity that makes them genuinely affecting. Through a pattern of introducing concepts via drawing from an impressive drawer of philosophical history, illuminating the philosophy with wisdom of the mystics, and then dwelling on how art reveals this philosophy—slow cinema, literary short stories, European art galleries, and so on—Smith drills past our analytic defenses and turns philosophical striving into mush that gives way to contemplative insight. This is not a put-down in the slightest; you can see the pattern coming every time, and the book ends well before it gets old.

Sometimes silence is the best way to unknowing, as in Pascal’s famous dictum that our problems consist in not being able to sit in a quiet room alone (48). In the inner refinement caused by silent contemplation of God, we come to find that the happiness we crave won’t result from an upgrade in scenery or our careers, but through a peace of mind that upgrades the way we see the world (57). Without this peace, our interiority resembles that of a fatigued Henri Nouwen in an affecting story that Smith relays. After expressing how frustrated he is with how draining his conversations in a monastery are, a monk informs Nouwen that he’s investing too much of himself into his every interaction. Rather than allowing God to manage his public perceptions, Nouwen found himself empty because of the energy wasted on trying to resemble a good, spiritual person (68-69). But through becoming comfortable with the quiet, we come to realize the silliness of constantly managing our social interactions and start focusing instead on love.

This is nerve-wracking for digital natives with abhorrent screen time. But Smith notes that the anxiety experienced by the soul’s liberation “from control” is rendered palatable by its subsequently being “enfolded into Care itself, led by love” (162). Even when we feel adrift, like our spiritual and emotional progress is stunted, there’s a good chance we are still being morphed in the right directions by the One who led us into these directions in the first place. If we measure progress by binary reasoning and overcooked logic, we’ll find our journey into the depths of spiritual formation perilous; if we lose the need for quantifiable progress—even apprehension itself—we surrender to an ocean of God’s refining, peaceful light (162).

There, we enter a state where the expertise and training that’s scaffolded us our whole lives are rendered useless, irrelevant. The only way through the prison of our minds is by breaking whichever cell walls we’ve unknowingly constructed. This is essentially the full crux of the book’s argument: become used to silence, to solitude, to mystery, to art that breaks our brain’s craving for fast-paced stimulation, and then you might experience a freedom unknown to those who neglect contemplation.

While it may have been implicit within Smith’s thesis, the book leaves an important theological issue unresolved: the positive and essential aspects of knowledge. Mystery is essential to theology (1 Tim. 3:16; Rom. 11:25; 16:25; 1 Cor. 2:7; Eph. 1:9; 3:3-9), but so is comprehension and apprehension of doctrine (2 Tim. 3:16; 1 Pet. 3:15). It’s okay to feel certainty. Paul felt certain about the Resurrection. It’s the plausibility structure on which he bases the entirety of his Christian faith (1 Cor. 15:12-19). I’m sympathetic to Smith’s attempts to write for a broader audience as a “philosopher,” but I do worry that the lack of objectivity in this book may lead uncritical readers into an over-reliance upon subjectivity.

And regardless of his intended audience now, much more than a different publisher will be needed to separate the new Smith from the former when so much of his past decade of work landed squarely in the hands and minds of thoughtful Christians. In this sense, the book is almost destined to ruffle the feathers of those wary of subjectivity within our cognitive and experiential spirituality.

There’s still plenty to agree with, however. Exhibit A: “It seems unlikely that we can think our way out of the culture wars” (8). However, sentiments like this were where it was most difficult to keep social media Smith out of mind. “In my own experience, social media encourages—and rewards, in a perverted way—the sort of polemics that revels in binary thinking.” (63). Readers familiar with Smith’s more polemical online presence may find this conversation a bit ironic. Okay, that was my one cheap shot I’ll include in the review; I digress.

Smith conveys a lot of beauty throughout this little book—often and somewhat ironically by accentuating the ways in which the beauty of the dark night is ineffable. But one question repeatedly hammered in my mind: who is this book for? It’s not the book I would hand off to the young guys I mentor who are looking for guidance on spiritual growth. It’s not even the book I’d recommend to that same audience if they expressed interest in contemplative spirituality. There’s just not enough connective tissue between mysticism and the core tenets of the Christian faith. Most often, it seems as though it was written toward an audience of Christians with a few graduate degrees, a distaste for cliché, and perhaps a collection of Wes Anderson coffee table books. So, I suppose, it hit its target audience of one, at least.

Regardless of its audience and scope, it did impact someone. It impacted me. And perhaps it will impact you.

I imagine most readers will come into this book, as I did, with preconceived notions about whether or not they’ll enjoy it. But those presuppositions spoiled much of my first read through. There’s something undeniably special happening in these pages. Smith’s book ultimately asks to be read in the spirit it praises: with the analytic mind quieted and our hearts attentive.

Image Credit: Caspar David Friedrich, “Winter Landscape” (1811)