Jean Khoury
Summary: There is a persistent tendency in modern theological historiography to treat “mystical theology” as something secondary to theology proper: a form of spirituality, an account of religious experience, an application of dogmatic theology to the spiritual life, or a particular branch of ascetical literature. This interpretation does not adequately account for the historical evidence.
Long before the seventeenth-century manuals of “ascetical-mystical theology”, there existed a recognisable theological form whose proper concern was the knowledge and transformation of the human person through contemplation, love, purification and union with God. It possessed its own questions, theological anthropology, epistemology, account of the theological virtues, understanding of contemplation, doctrine of transformation and conception of the relationship between contemplation and ecclesial fruitfulness. It was therefore not merely “spirituality”. It was theology.
This form of theology emerged from several converging traditions. In the Christian East, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and, later, Maximus the Confessor developed major foundations of a theology of spiritual progression, contemplation, deification and transformation. In the Latin West, Augustine, Cassian, Gregory the Great and the monastic tradition supplied other fundamental elements. But the particular medieval current considered here was decisively stimulated by the reception of Pseudo-Dionysius in the Latin West. Through successive translations, interpretations and theological appropriations, especially in the Victorine and affective Dionysian traditions, this theology passed through figures such as Thomas Gallus, Hugh of Balma, the Carthusian tradition, Ruusbroec and Hendrik Herp, before entering the Spanish tradition of recollection and eventually receiving one of its most mature expressions in St John of the Cross.
This history should not be confused with the general history of Dionysian influence. Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and many other Scholastic theologians made profound use of Dionysius, but their use of him does not automatically place them within the particular theological current being traced here. Influence is not genealogy; reception is not transmission. What is at stake is a specific configuration of theology.
Nor is there any opposition between mystical theology and Scholastic theology. St John of the Cross himself makes this perfectly clear in the Prologue to the Spiritual Canticle. He says that he will employ Scholastic theology, while Mother Ana de Jesús possesses mystical theology, “the science of love”, in which divine truths are not only known but experienced. Scholastic theology and mystical theology therefore represent different modes of theological knowing, not rival theologies. John himself brings them together.
In this perspective, St John of the Cross appears as one of the last great representatives of a long theological tradition. He does not invent mystical theology, nor does he derive it simply from St Thomas Aquinas. Rather, he inherits a living theological current and gives it an extraordinarily integrated expression. Contemplation becomes loving knowledge; loving knowledge becomes transformative union; transformative union produces a soul capable of extraordinary ecclesial fruitfulness. In John’s theology, contemplation and apostolate therefore belong to one theological organism. This tradition may legitimately be considered one of the Western ancestors of what would later be called Spiritual Theology.
Introduction: Was Mystical Theology Really Theology?
The historical problem begins with a surprisingly simple question: Was mystical theology actually theology? The answer must be yes. Yet this answer requires us to recover a category that has often been obscured by the later history of theological disciplines. Once theology became increasingly divided into dogmatic, moral, ascetical and mystical branches, it became tempting to imagine that mystical theology was a kind of application of theology to religious experience. On that model, theology explains God, grace, Christ, the virtues and the sacraments; spirituality then explains how the Christian lives those truths; mystical theology describes exceptional experiences occurring in some advanced Christians. But that is not sufficient to describe the older tradition. The writers whom we encounter in this tradition are not merely asking how a Christian should practise devotion. They are asking properly theological questions.
How is God known when God exceeds every created mode of knowledge? What happens to the intellect and will when the soul is united to God? What is contemplation? What is the relationship between knowledge and love? How does grace transform the faculties? What is the function of faith, hope and charity in the ascent to God? What is purification? What is union? What does it mean to be deified? How can the soul know God without possessing Him as an object of ordinary cognition? What is the relationship between contemplation and action? And, ultimately, what does transformation in God mean for the Church? These are not marginal questions. They constitute a theological field.
The argument of this article is therefore not simply that there was a “mystical tradition” in Christianity. That is obvious. The stronger argument is that there existed a distinct form of theology, with its own governing problematic, theological anthropology, epistemology, vocabulary, principles, method and finality. It could coexist with Scholastic theology, monastic theology, biblical theology and other forms of theology without being reducible to any of them.
The later emergence of “Spiritual Theology” can therefore be understood not as the sudden invention of a new discipline in the seventeenth century, but as the eventual formal recognition, systematisation and institutionalisation of a much older theological reality.
I. A Form of Theology Is Not Necessarily a Separate School
The first clarification is essential. To call mystical theology a distinct form of theology does not mean that it constituted a separate theological school in the institutional sense. It did not require its own religious order, university faculty or philosophical system. Nor did it need to reject other forms of theology. A Dominican could participate in it. A Franciscan could participate in it. A Carthusian could participate in it. A Carmelite could participate in it. A theologian formed in Scholastic theology could participate in it. The distinction is therefore not primarily institutional. It is theological. A form of theology can be recognised by the questions it considers central, the way it orders theological material and the particular options it takes concerning the Christian mystery. This is precisely what happens here.
The theological tradition under consideration repeatedly gives priority to the incomprehensibility of God, the transcendence of every created mode of cognition, the primacy of loving union, purification of the faculties, contemplative prayer, transformation through grace, the theological virtues and the ultimate participation of the creature in divine life. These emphases form a coherent theological configuration. Consequently, one must distinguish between influence and genealogy.
Dionysius influenced medieval theology on an enormous scale. Albert the Great, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas read him; so did theologians concerned with angelology, metaphysics, ecclesiology, sacramental theology and the hierarchy of being. The mere fact that a theologian quotes Dionysius does not make him a representative of mystical theology in the particular sense intended here. The question is not: Who read Dionysius? The question is: Which reception of Dionysius developed into a theological tradition whose governing concern was the contemplative transformation of the human person in God? That is a much narrower question.
II. The Deep Roots: Eastern and Western Foundations
The claim that mystical theology is a genuine theology does not begin in the Middle Ages.
In the Christian East, Origen is already developing a theology of spiritual progression, ascent, contemplation, transformation and the soul’s encounter with the Word. His exegesis of Moses’ ascent, his interpretation of the Song of Songs and his account of the soul’s progressive movement towards God contain many of the structural elements that later become characteristic of mystical theology.
Gregory of Nyssa deepens this theology through his account of epektasis, the soul’s perpetual movement into God, his interpretation of Moses’ ascent into darkness and his theology of participation and deification. Maximus the Confessor later integrates many of these elements into a more comprehensive theology of transformation, contemplation and participation in Christ.
The Philokalic tradition can consequently be understood as participating in a theological world in which contemplation, purification, transformation and union are not merely devotional subjects but dimensions of Christian theology.
The Latin West possesses its own foundations. Augustine’s theology of charity, interiority and participation, Cassian’s theology of prayer and contemplation, and Gregory the Great’s theology of contemplation and action all contribute essential elements.
The point, however, is not to construct a simple genealogical chain from one author to another. The tradition develops through convergences. A decisive moment in the Western Middle Ages is the reception of Pseudo-Dionysius.
III. Dionysius and the Emergence of a Particular Western Current
Pseudo-Dionysius did not invent Christian mystical theology. His importance lies elsewhere. His corpus gave the Latin West an extraordinarily powerful theological synthesis of divine transcendence, negative theology, hierarchical ascent, illumination, contemplation, divine names, love and union. Once the Dionysian corpus became increasingly available in Latin, it became capable of generating different theological receptions. And these receptions must not be confused.
The history of Dionysian theology contains intellectualist and affective interpretations, metaphysical and contemplative uses, Scholastic and monastic appropriations. The thirteenth century is particularly important because new translations and commentaries opened the Dionysian corpus to fresh interpretation. Robert Grosseteste produced a new Latin translation after learning Greek, while Thomas Gallus developed a strongly affective interpretation in which love receives a much more prominent role in the final movement towards union.
Thomas Gallus is therefore particularly significant for the genealogy proposed here. Modern scholarship has described him as inaugurating a particular medieval tradition of affective interpretation of Dionysius, one that gave love or affection an increasingly prominent role in the soul’s ascent to union with God. This is one of the moments at which the specific theological current becomes increasingly recognisable. The question is no longer merely whether God can be known. It becomes: what happens when intellectual cognition reaches its limit, and how does love bring the soul into union with the incomprehensible God? That question will become decisive.
IV. Hugh of Balma and the Appearance of a Genuine Treatise on Mystical Theology
The argument becomes even stronger with Hugh of Balma. His Viae Sion lugent, long attributed to St Bonaventure and circulated under titles such as De triplici via and Theologia mystica, is not simply a collection of devotional observations. It is a substantial theological treatise on the contemplative life, organised around the purgative, illuminative and unitive ways. The work was transmitted in numerous manuscripts and was for a long time associated with Bonaventure. The Bibliothèque nationale de France records seventy-one manuscripts, with at least twenty-six bearing Hugh’s name in one form or another. This is crucial for the history of Spiritual Theology. Here, centuries before Philip of the Trinity, we already encounter a treatise explicitly concerned with mystical theology as such.
Moreover, Balma’s mystica theologia is not merely speculative discourse about mystical phenomena. Recent scholarship has shown that Balma uses the expression to designate an advanced form of imageless prayer coinciding with immediate union with God and intended for those approaching perfection. This is precisely the conceptual world that later authors will call mystical theology.
Balma also provides an important bridge between Dionysian apophaticism and affective theology. The intellect encounters the incomprehensible God in darkness, while love moves beyond the limits of ordinary intellectual cognition. This is not a rejection of theology. It is a theological account of how the soul encounters God when God exceeds every created mode of cognition.
Indeed, Balma’s influence extends far beyond his own immediate environment. His work was transmitted through later medieval and early modern traditions, including Gerson and other writers concerned with mystical theology. The historical importance of Balma is therefore enormous: a full treatise on mystical theology existed long before the seventeenth-century manuals usually taken as the beginning of the discipline.
V. From Balma to Herp: A Living Theological Current
The tradition does not stop with Balma. The affective Dionysian interpretation develops through several channels. The Carthusian environment becomes especially important, as do the Rhineland and Low Countries. Ruusbroec develops his theology of the deepest ground and superessential union. Hendrik Herp receives and combines several strands of this tradition, including the Dionysian-affective inheritance and Ruusbroec’s mystical anthropology. Here again, the historical pattern should not be simplified into a chain of direct textual dependence. It is better understood as a theological current.
Different authors receive different elements, reinterpret them and place them in new theological configurations. Some stress affective union; others emphasise apophatic knowledge; others purification, recollection, nakedness, interior prayer or the transformation of love. What remains recognisable is the theological structure. God exceeds every created mode of knowing. The soul must be purified. Contemplation is a real mode of knowledge. Love reaches beyond ordinary conceptual cognition. Union with God transforms the person. And the final criterion of the spiritual life is not the possession of experiences but the transformation of the person in charity.
The circulation of these works matters enormously for sixteenth-century Spain. Hugh of Balma’s influence reached Spanish mystical writers through various channels, including early translations and print culture; scholarship has specifically associated this transmission with figures such as Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross.
At the same time, the Spanish environment contributes its own vocabulary and developments: recollection, interior prayer, nakedness, infused contemplation and the purification of love. Thus by the sixteenth century, mystical theology is not an archaeological memory of Dionysius. It is alive.
VI. “Mystical Theology” Means Contemplative Knowledge of God
This point is particularly important for interpreting St John of the Cross. In the Prologue to the Spiritual Canticle, John explicitly distinguishes his own theological method from the mystical knowledge possessed by Mother Ana de Jesús. He says that he will speak using Scholastic theology concerning the soul’s interior commerce with God, while she possesses mystical theology, described as the “science of love”, in which divine truths are not only known but experienced. This passage should not be overcomplicated. John is not secretly saying that Mother Ana “knows Dionysius”. He is using “mystical theology” in the living sense in which contemplation itself is called mystical theology. St Teresa of Ávila uses the terminology in the same theological environment. Mystical theology is contemplative knowledge of God: a knowledge received through loving union, not simply knowledge acquired through study and discursive reasoning. This gives us a fundamental distinction. Scholastic theology articulates divine truths through conceptual distinctions, argumentation and theological reasoning. Mystical theology knows those truths in another mode: through loving contemplation and the experience of divine action in the soul. They are not opposed.
Indeed, John’s Prologue demonstrates that they can belong together within one theological work. He will use Scholastic theology precisely because he is speaking about a reality that Mother Ana already knows through mystical theology. This is not “theology versus spirituality”. It is theological science and contemplative knowledge of the same divine mystery.
VII. John of the Cross Does Not Become a Mystical Theologian by Transforming Thomism
This is one of the most important consequences of the argument. John of the Cross does not become a mystical theologian by taking Thomistic theology and converting it into spirituality. He belongs to an already existing mystical-theological tradition and, when necessary, employs Scholastic theology to articulate that tradition with theological precision.
John certainly possesses Scholastic formation. The intellectual environment of Salamanca matters, and the Aristotelian-Thomistic formation of his education contributed significantly to the conceptual solidity of his writings. At the same time, he was eclectic in his reading and drew from Fathers and medieval mystical writers including Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Hugh of St Victor and Pseudo-Dionysius. But John hardly “copies St Thomas Aquinas”. One substantial passage traditionally attributed to Aquinas is particularly important because John can employ it as Scholastic theological material. But the existence of such a passage does not establish that John’s spiritual theology is fundamentally Thomistic. Indeed, the opposite is more revealing.
John can employ Thomistic theological categories without simply reproducing Thomas’s theological organisation of the spiritual life. He appropriates what he needs. He can use Scholastic anthropology, metaphysics, the doctrine of grace and the theological virtues while organising these elements around a different governing question: how is the human person transformed by God and brought to union with Him? That is a different theological problematic. John is therefore not anti-Thomistic. Nor is he simply a Thomistic commentator. He is doing theology from within a mystical-theological tradition while using Scholastic instruments.
VIII. A Distinctive Theological Anthropology
This becomes especially clear in John’s theology of the faculties. The human person is not merely described psychologically. The faculties become the theological arena of transformation. Understanding, memory and will are progressively purified and transformed. Faith, hope and charity correspond to these faculties in a way that allows John to describe the supernatural transformation of the person. Faith purifies the understanding. Hope transforms and empties the memory. Charity transforms the will. This is not simply a repetition of Thomas Aquinas. It is John’s own theological configuration of the faculties around the theological virtues and the movement towards union. And here we encounter one of the distinctive theological options of the tradition. God cannot be possessed by the soul as an object of sensory experience. Nor can the deepest union with God be identified with sensible consolation, imaginative perception or even ordinary conceptual apprehension. This does not mean that God cannot be experienced.
It means that sensible experience cannot be made the measure of God’s presence. The distinction is fundamental. Consolation is an experience. Charity is a divine operation. The former can disappear while the latter becomes more profound. This is one of the reasons the theology of darkness is so central. The soul is progressively detached from every created mode of possessing God so that it may be united to God Himself through faith, hope and charity.
IX. Contemplation as Mystical Theology
At this point the definition of mystical theology becomes clearer. Mystical theology is not merely theology about mystical phenomena. It is theology that recognises contemplative knowledge of God as a genuine mode of theological knowing. This idea is already visible in Bonaventure. His theology explicitly speaks of cognitio Dei experimentalis, experiential knowledge of God, in the context of contemplative and holy persons. Recent scholarship has shown how Bonaventure integrates experiential-sapiential theology with speculative theology and understands mystical theology as experiential knowledge of God and union with Him. This is particularly important for the history of Spiritual Theology. The expression “experiential knowledge of God” did not suddenly appear in seventeenth-century mystical manuals. Bonaventure uses it; Gerson develops the concept of mystical theology as experiential knowledge of God; Hugh of Balma gives the affective tradition a major systematic expression; and the terminology continues into the sixteenth century. There is therefore a substantial prehistory of Spiritual Theology. The later manuals did not invent the object. They systematised an already existing theological reality.
X. The Carthusian Question: Contemplation as a Vocation
John’s own biography gives another fascinating indication of the significance of this theology. After his studies at Salamanca, John seriously considered leaving the Carmelites to become a Carthusian. Teresa herself records that he intended to enter the Carthusian Order before she persuaded him to join the Carmelite reform. This should not be treated as a trivial biographical episode. The Carthusian vocation represented one of the clearest institutional embodiments of the contemplative ideal in Western Christianity: solitude, silence, prayer, recollection and sustained contemplation. The significance is therefore theological. John did not emerge from Salamanca saying, “I have discovered Thomism; therefore I shall become a Dominican.” His attraction was towards the contemplative vocation. This suggests that what was becoming clear to him was not simply a theological system but the meaning of contemplation as a form of Christian existence. Teresa’s intervention then redirects this contemplative vocation into the Carmelite reform. This is an extraordinary convergence. The theology that John was already discovering through his intellectual and spiritual formation could now become embodied in the Teresian Carmelite project. The result is not a compromise between contemplation and action. It is a new synthesis in which contemplation remains structurally primary while possessing genuine ecclesial fruitfulness.
XI. Mary Magdalene and the Apostolic Value of Contemplation
This becomes explicit in the Spiritual Canticle, especially in the introduction to stanza 29. John defends Mary Magdalene with remarkable force. He argues that once the soul has reached a profound union of love, even a small act of pure love can be more precious to God and more beneficial to the Church than many external works, even good works undertaken in God’s service. He then presents Mary Magdalene’s withdrawal into solitude as motivated precisely by the desire to benefit the Church.
This is a theological claim of enormous importance. John is not merely defending the contemplative against the accusation of uselessness. He is redefining apostolic efficacy. The deepest apostolic action is not necessarily the most externally visible action. The value of an action is determined by the degree of charity in which it participates. Thus contemplation does not compete with apostolate. It can become its deepest source. The contemplative soul is not “doing nothing”. She is loving. And if love is the greatest work, then the contemplative act possesses an extraordinary ecclesial value.
XII. The Living Flame: The Apostolate of the Transformed Soul
John takes the argument still further in the Living Flame of Love. At the summit of the spiritual journey, the soul is not merely enjoying God. She is undergoing transformation in God. The “flamings” of the soul are acts of love produced within this transformation. They are not merely emotional intensifications or psychological experiences. They belong to the soul’s participation in the divine action. The result is extraordinary. The transformed soul becomes capable of communicating what she has received. John can even speak of the soul giving God to others — a startling expression, but one that becomes intelligible once the soul is understood as participating in divine love. The principle is simple: God gives Himself to the soul; the soul is transformed by that gift; the transformed soul becomes an instrument through which God gives Himself to others.
This is the theology of apostolate implicit in transformative union. The apostolate is therefore not something added to mystical theology from outside. It is the ecclesial consequence of mystical transformation.
XIII. The Chapter of Almodóvar: Contemplation and Apostolate in Practice
The same theological principle appears at the level of John’s concrete understanding of the Carmelite reform. After Teresa’s death in 1582, the Chapter of Almodóvar in May 1583 revealed significant tensions concerning the future orientation of the Discalced Carmelites. One of the central questions concerned the relationship between contemplative-eremitical life and apostolic activity. Contemporary historical studies identify John with the insistence on the priority of contemplative life, while other figures, especially Jerónimo Gracián, placed greater emphasis on missions and active apostolate. This is not merely a question of religious administration. It reveals two different theological understandings of apostolate. John’s position becomes intelligible once we understand his mystical theology. The contemplative vocation is not an escape from ecclesial responsibility. Rather, the contemplative life is itself ordered to a deeper participation in God’s action. The disagreement therefore concerns the source and nature of apostolic fruitfulness. John’s position is consistent with his theology of Mary Magdalene and with the Living Flame: the more profoundly the soul is transformed by divine love, the more profoundly she can participate in God’s work. Thus contemplation is not opposed to apostolate. Rather: apostolate without transformation risks becoming external activity; contemplation without ecclesial charity would contradict the very transformation it seeks. John’s theology holds the two together by placing both within transformative union.
XIV. The Distinctive “Options” of This Theology
We can now identify more precisely what makes this theological form a genuine form of theology. It does not possess a different Creed. It does not reject Scholastic theology. It does not establish a competing metaphysics. It does not deny the validity of Thomistic principles. Its distinctiveness lies in the theological options it makes when interpreting the spiritual life. It takes seriously the incomprehensibility of God. It refuses to identify God with sensible religious experience. It understands contemplation as a genuine knowledge of God. It gives love an epistemological and theological significance beyond discursive cognition. It interprets purification as a transformation of the faculties. It gives faith, hope and charity a central role in the movement towards union. It distinguishes God Himself from the experiences and consolations associated with God’s action. It understands mystical union as transformative rather than merely experiential. And it understands the transformed soul as ecclesially fruitful. These are not isolated spiritual preferences. Together they constitute a theological configuration. This is why John can read Thomas Aquinas differently from some later Thomistic commentators. He is not simply applying a ready-made Thomistic system. He is reading Thomas from within the problematic of mystical transformation. The same applies to Dionysius. John does not simply copy Dionysius. He receives a Dionysian theological inheritance that has already passed through centuries of interpretation and develops it within the theological language of faith, hope and charity.
XV. John of the Cross as a Major Late Representative
For this reason, St John of the Cross can legitimately be described as one of the great late representatives of this theological form. He is not its founder. He does not stand at its beginning. Nor does everything in his theology come from a single predecessor. Rather, he stands at the end of a remarkably long development. Behind him stand the patristic traditions of spiritual ascent and deification; Augustine and Cassian; Pseudo-Dionysius; the Victorines; Thomas Gallus; the affective Dionysian tradition; Hugh of Balma; the Carthusian tradition; Ruusbroec; Herp; the Spanish tradition of recollection; and the theological environment of Teresa of Ávila. What is extraordinary is the degree of integration John achieves. The darkness of faith, the purification of the faculties, the theological virtues, contemplation, loving knowledge, spiritual marriage, transformation, the “flamings” of charity and apostolic fruitfulness all belong to one coherent theological structure. This is why John should not be reduced to a “mystic” in the modern psychological sense. He is a theologian of mystical transformation. And he is one of the most mature representatives of a theological tradition that had existed for centuries before him.
XVI. Theological Consequences
The first theological consequence is that the history of theology needs a broader taxonomy. If mystical theology is a genuine form of theology, then the history of Christian theology cannot be written simply as the history of dogmatic, Scholastic and academic theology, with mystical literature appearing as a secondary appendix. There was a theology whose proper object was the transformation of the human person in God.
Secondly, the history of Spiritual Theology must be moved considerably backwards. Philip of the Trinity is important because he gives ascetical-mystical theology a more explicit systematic and academic form in the seventeenth century. But he cannot be treated as the inventor of the theological reality itself. Before him stand substantial works explicitly concerned with mystical theology: Hugh of Balma’s Viae Sion lugent, the tradition of Thomas Gallus, Bonaventure’s experiential-sapiential theology, Gerson’s treatments of mystical theology, Herp’s mystical works and other late medieval and early modern treatises. Balma’s work alone is sufficient to establish that a substantial treatise on mystical theology existed centuries before Philip.
Thirdly, the history of Dionysian reception must be differentiated. There was not one “Dionysian influence”. There were multiple Dionysian receptions. The intellectual and speculative reception associated with Albert and Aquinas must not simply be equated with the affective Dionysian current associated particularly with Thomas Gallus and subsequent authors. Modern scholarship explicitly distinguishes these currents.
Fourthly, the distinction between Scholastic and mystical theology should be reformulated. They are not opposites. Bonaventure already demonstrates how experiential-sapiential and speculative theology can belong together. Scholastic theology can articulate mystical theology without replacing it, while mystical theology can give speculative theology a horizon that prevents theological knowledge from becoming detached from the transformation of the theologian.
Finally, the theological meaning of contemplation must be recovered. Contemplation is not simply an advanced devotional technique. Within this tradition it is a mode of knowing God, and its consummation is transformation in God.
XVII. Practical Consequences for Spiritual Theology Today
The first practical consequence is that Christian spiritual formation should not be reduced to techniques of prayer. If contemplation belongs to theology, then formation in prayer must be connected to a theological understanding of God, grace, the theological virtues, purification and transformation.
Secondly, spiritual direction needs to distinguish carefully between experience and transformation. A person may experience consolation without profound transformation. Conversely, a person may undergo profound divine purification while experiencing dryness, darkness or apparent absence. This distinction is central to John of the Cross.
Thirdly, spiritual formation should not make sensible religious experience the measure of spiritual progress. The tradition insists upon a deeper criterion: growth in faith, hope and charity.
Fourthly, the apostolate must be understood from the standpoint of transformation. The contemplative is not useless because he or she is not constantly active. The deepest apostolic fruitfulness can arise from the soul’s union with God. This does not diminish active apostolate. Rather, it asks what makes apostolate genuinely fruitful.
Finally, Spiritual Theology itself should recover its theological dignity. It should not be presented merely as a practical supplement to dogmatic theology. Its proper questions are theological questions: What is the transformation of the human person in Christ? How does grace act within the faculties? How does the theological life develop? What is contemplation? What is purification? What is union? What is the relationship between divine action and human cooperation? How does charity transform the person? How does the transformed person participate in the mission of Christ? These questions constitute theology.
Conclusion: Recovering a Lost Theological Form
The historical argument can now be stated quite simply. There existed, long before the seventeenth-century manuals, a recognisable Christian form of theology concerned specifically with the soul’s transformation in God. It had deep Eastern foundations in Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus, and important Western foundations in Augustine, Cassian and Gregory the Great. In the medieval West, the reception of Pseudo-Dionysius became one of the decisive sources of a particular theological current. But the important historical task is not to trace “Dionysian influence” in general. It is to identify the particular reception in which apophatic theology, contemplation, love, purification, spiritual progression and union became organised into a coherent theology of transformation. Thomas Gallus represents a major stage in this affective Dionysian development. Hugh of Balma gives it an extraordinary systematic expression in a genuine treatise on mystical theology. The Carthusian and Low Countries traditions transmit and transform it. Ruusbroec and Herp deepen it. The Spanish tradition of recollection receives it. Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross bring it into a new historical setting. And then John. John of the Cross does not become a mystical theologian by transforming Thomistic theology. He belongs to an already existing mystical-theological tradition and employs Scholastic theology as one of the instruments with which he articulates it. His own words in the Spiritual Canticle are decisive. He can speak of Scholastic theology and mystical theology in the same breath. He can say that he will use the former while Mother Ana possesses the latter: the science of love in which divine truths are not merely known but experienced. There is therefore no opposition between the two. The mystical theologian can be Scholastic. The Scholastic theologian can be contemplative. The same theological reality can be approached through conceptual reasoning and through loving contemplation. John’s greatness lies partly in the fact that he refuses to separate them. He receives Scholastic theological instruments without becoming merely a Thomistic commentator. He receives Dionysian apophaticism without simply reproducing Dionysius. He receives the affective tradition without merely repeating Balma or Herp. He receives Teresa’s contemplative vision and brings it into a theology of the theological virtues, purification and transformative union. And finally, he demonstrates what this theology produces. Contemplation becomes mystical theology. Mystical theology becomes transformative union. Transformative union becomes charity perfected. And perfected charity becomes ecclesially fruitful. Mary Magdalene is defended because the pure act of love benefits the Church. The Living Flame can speak of the soul communicating God to others because the transformed soul participates in God’s own love. The contemplative vocation can therefore possess a genuinely apostolic meaning without ceasing to be contemplative. This is why the theological tradition we have been tracing deserves to be recognised as a true form of theology. It has an object: God as encountered and known in the transformation of the human person. It has a subject: the human person transformed by grace. It has a theological anthropology: the faculties ordered towards supernatural transformation. It has an epistemology: the distinction between conceptual, sensible and contemplative knowledge. It has a doctrine of knowledge and love. It has a doctrine of the theological virtues. It has a doctrine of purification. It has a doctrine of contemplation. It has a doctrine of union. It has a doctrine of transformation. It has a doctrine of ecclesial fruitfulness and apostolate. It has a method of reading Scripture, Fathers and theological authorities. It has a tradition of transmission. It has substantial treatises. And it has major representatives. In that sense, mystical theology is not a late appendix to theology. It is one of the great historical forms in which Christian theology has sought to understand what happens when the human person encounters the living God. The seventeenth-century authors did not create this theology from nothing. They gave a more explicit academic and systematic form to something much older. And if we follow the golden thread from Dionysius through the medieval affective tradition, Hugh of Balma, the Carthusians, Ruusbroec, Herp and the Spanish tradition to John of the Cross, we can see something that has too often been obscured: before Spiritual Theology became a recognised theological discipline, there was already a theology of the spiritual life. Indeed, one may legitimately regard this tradition as one of the principal Western ancestors of Spiritual Theology. John of the Cross stands among its last and greatest representatives — not because he invented mystical theology, but because in him an ancient theological form reached an extraordinary degree of clarity, integration and spiritual depth. And perhaps the most important conclusion is therefore the simplest: It was a theology.
Bibliography
Primary sources
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Origen. Commentary on the Song of Songs. In The Song of Songs: Commentary and Homilies. Translated by R. P. Lawson. Ancient Christian Writers.
Gregory of Nyssa. The Life of Moses. Translated by Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson. New York: Paulist Press, 1978.
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Augustine. Confessions; De Trinitate; De doctrina christiana.
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Bonaventure. Commentary on the Sentences, especially III Sent. d. 35; De scientia Christi, qq. 6–7.
Jean Gerson. Theologia mystica and related works on mystical theology.
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John of the Cross. The Spiritual Canticle, especially the Prologue and the introduction to stanza 29. The Prologue explicitly distinguishes Scholastic theology from mystical theology as experiential knowledge through love.
John of the Cross. The Living Flame of Love.
Modern studies
Coolman, Boyd Taylor. Knowledge, Love, and Ecstasy in the Theology of Thomas Gallus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. This is particularly important for the emergence of the medieval affective interpretation of Dionysius.
Coolman, Boyd Taylor. “The Medieval Affective Dionysian Tradition.” Modern Theology 24, no. 4 (2008): 615–632.
Dubbelman, Samuel J. “Mystica Theologia and Imageless Prayer in Hugh of Balma and Blosius.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 55, nos. 1–2 (2024): 281–303.
Fisher, Jeffrey. Review of Jasper Hopkins, Hugh of Balma on Mystical Theology. The Medieval Review.
Lawell, Declan. “Robert Grosseteste, Translator of Dionysius.” In The Oxford Handbook of Dionysius the Areopagite. Oxford University Press, 2022.
McEvoy, James, ed. Mystical Theology: The Glosses by Thomas Gallus and the Commentary of Robert Grosseteste on De Mystica Theologia. Leuven: Peeters, 2003.
Puskás, Attila. “Cognitio Dei Experimentalis—Experimentalis et Vera Sapientia: Bonaventure on the Experiential Knowledge of God.” Religions 16 (2025). This study is especially useful for establishing the prehistory of experiential Spiritual Theology and the relationship between speculative and mystical theology.
Rorem, Paul. Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their Influence. Oxford University Press.
Rorem, Paul. Studies on the early Latin Dionysius, Eriugena and Hugh of St Victor.
Wlusek, Steven. “The Foundations of St. John of the Cross’ Spiritual Theology in the Thought and Writings of Pseudo-Dionysius.” Studies in Spirituality 18 (2008).
Girón-Negrón, Luis M. “Dionysian Thought in Sixteenth-Century Spanish Mystical Theology.” Modern Theology 24 (2008).
Kavanaugh, Kieran. John of the Cross: Doctor of Light and Love.
McGinn, Bernard. The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. Multiple volumes. This remains indispensable for situating the medieval mystical tradition historically.
A final methodological note
The strongest version of this thesis should not claim a simple linear chain — “Dionysius caused Balma, Balma caused Herp, Herp caused John”. The evidence is more interesting than that. The thesis is that a recognisable theological form persisted through a plurality of transmissions and appropriations. It crossed schools and religious orders. It could be intellectually or affectively interpreted. It could employ Scholastic categories. It could be expressed in monastic, Carthusian, Franciscan, Dominican or Carmelite contexts. What gives it identity is not institutional continuity but a remarkably stable theological configuration centred upon contemplative knowledge, purification, loving union and transformation. That is precisely why “form of theology” is the stronger category than “school of spirituality”. And it is also why John of the Cross can be both profoundly Scholastic in method and profoundly mystical in theology without any contradiction whatsoever.
Addenda
The Carthusian Way of Life
The Carthusian vocation represents one of the most radical forms of contemplative life in the Western Church. Founded by St. Bruno in the eleventh century, the Carthusians combine the eremitical and cenobitical dimensions of religious life. The monk belongs to a community, but his ordinary life is fundamentally that of a hermit. Each monk lives in his own cell, which includes a small living area and usually a garden, and spends the greater part of the day in solitude, prayer, lectio divina and manual work.
The community nevertheless gathers for the principal liturgical offices, especially the Eucharist and the night office, and there are certain communal meals and other occasions of fraternity. Thus the Carthusian life is neither simply solitary hermit life nor ordinary cenobitical monasticism. It is a carefully balanced form of solitude within communion.
Silence is essential. Carthusians have only one common recreation on Sunday where they can speak. The Carthusian seeks an almost uninterrupted atmosphere of recollection in which the soul can remain turned towards God. The purpose of this solitude is not merely ascetical separation from the world, but the pursuit of contemplation and union with God. The Carthusian vocation therefore places before the Church, in an exceptionally pure form, the conviction that a human life can be wholly ordered towards contemplative prayer.
This helps to illuminate the significance of St. John of the Cross’s attraction to the Carthusians after his studies at Salamanca. The attraction was not simply to a stricter religious observance. The Carthusian vocation embodied a theological understanding of Christian existence in which contemplation could constitute the central occupation and vocation of a person’s life. (Let us remember that the Carthusians where among the Orders who preserved Mystical Theology) John’s later Carmelite theology would develop this conviction in a different institutional setting, but the fundamental intuition remained: contemplation is not an optional devotion added to Christian life; it can become its deepest form and, precisely through union with God, possess profound ecclesial and apostolic fruitfulness.
St. Mary Magdalene
According to the ancient Provençal tradition, after the Resurrection and the persecutions of the early Christians in Jerusalem, Mary Magdalene came to Provence in the south of France together with her brother Lazarus and her sister Martha, as well as other companions. Lazarus is traditionally regarded as the first bishop of Marseille, while Mary Magdalene became the great contemplative witness of the region.
After the period of evangelisation, Mary Magdalene withdrew from the world and sought a place of complete solitude in the mountains of Provence. According to the tradition, she lived there as a hermit for thirty years, devoting herself entirely to prayer, contemplation and the love of God. The place associated with this final period of her life is the Sainte-Baume, a dramatic mountain cave near present-day Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume. The tradition holds that it was there that Mary Magdalene spent the last decades of her earthly life in radical solitude.
The Sainte-Baume consequently became one of the great centres of pilgrimage in medieval Christendom. Pilgrims came to venerate the place where the tradition believed Mary Magdalene, the first witness of the Resurrection, had withdrawn into contemplative solitude. Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume likewise became an important pilgrimage centre, particularly because of the basilica traditionally associated with her relics.
This tradition is particularly significant for understanding St. John of the Cross. In the Spiritual Canticle (B, stanza 29), John invokes Mary Magdalene precisely as an example of the extraordinary value of contemplative love. He acknowledges that her preaching and apostolic activity could have been beneficial to the Church, but insists that, after having encountered Christ, she withdrew into solitude for thirty years in order to give herself wholly to love. For John, this withdrawal was not a rejection of the apostolate. Rather, the hidden life of love itself possessed an extraordinary ecclesial fruitfulness.
Mary Magdalene therefore becomes, in John’s theology, a decisive example of the contemplative vocation: the soul may be called by God beyond exterior activity into a hidden communion of love, and this apparently fruitless solitude can itself become profoundly fruitful for the Church. Her life illustrates the principle that John expresses elsewhere with extraordinary force: a small measure of pure love is more precious before God and more beneficial to the Church than many exterior works performed without such transformed love.
The Provençal tradition thus gives a concrete historical and spiritual image to one of the deepest convictions of John’s mystical theology. Mary Magdalene, the apostle of the Resurrection, becomes also the hermit of Sainte-Baume. Her apostolate and her solitude are not contradictory. Rather, the apostolic witness flows into contemplation, and contemplation becomes the hidden source of an even greater ecclesial fruitfulness.
The Heremitical Aspect of the Carmelite Rule
The hermitical character of the Carmelite vocation is already clearly present in the Rule given by St. Albert of Jerusalem to the first Carmelites. The early Carmelites were not originally conceived simply as monks living together in a conventional monastery. They were a group of hermits who gathered together on Mount Carmel, each living in his own cell, while remaining united under a common prior and following a common rule of life.
The Rule therefore combines two dimensions which might at first appear contradictory: solitude and communion. Each brother has his own cell, where he is to remain, praying, meditating upon the law of the Lord and keeping watch in prayer. At the same time, the hermits belong to one community, have a common prior, come together for the Eucharist and certain other common practices, and share their goods. The result is neither pure eremitical isolation nor ordinary cenobitical monasticism. It is, rather, a form of eremitical life lived within a community.
The structure of the Rule makes this particularly clear. St Albert instructs each brother to have his own separate cell and to remain there, unless legitimately occupied elsewhere. The cell is therefore not merely a bedroom within a monastery; it is the principal place of the hermit’s life. It is the place of prayer, meditation, reading, work and personal encounter with God. The brothers live together, but they do so largely by living apart, each within the solitude of his own cell.
This helps to explain the remarkable opening of the Rule, in which the hermits are described as those who wish to live in obsequium Iesu Christi — “in allegiance to Jesus Christ” — and who have chosen to dwell on Mount Carmel. Their common life exists in order to sustain this fundamental orientation towards Christ. The Rule is therefore organised around prayer, solitude, silence, poverty, obedience, work and continual attention to the presence of God.
The Carmelite vocation consequently belongs to the great eremitical tradition of the Church. Its ideal is not simply withdrawal from society for its own sake, but the creation of the conditions in which the hermit can seek God with an undivided heart. The solitude of the cell is ordered towards contemplation. The brother withdraws from the multiplicity of exterior occupations in order to become increasingly attentive to the one thing necessary: communion with God.
This original structure is important for understanding the later development of Carmel. When the Carmelite Order eventually developed into a more conventional mendicant order in the West, and especially when St. Teresa of Jesus and St. John of the Cross undertook their reform, the primitive eremitical ideal did not disappear. On the contrary, it remained deeply embedded in the Carmelite understanding of prayer and contemplation. Teresa’s reform sought to recover an intense form of contemplative life, while John of the Cross continued to defend solitude, recollection and the primacy of union with God.
The connection with St. John of the Cross is therefore significant. His attraction to the Carthusians after his studies at Salamanca should not be understood as an attraction to something alien to his Carmelite vocation. The Carthusian and primitive Carmelite traditions share a profound eremitical orientation: the contemplative is called to a life in which solitude is not merely an ascetical technique but part of the vocation itself. In both traditions, one can speak of a community of hermits — men who belong to one body and share a rule, yet whose ordinary life is centred upon the solitude of the cell.
The primitive Carmelite Rule thus provides an important background for understanding John’s theology of contemplation. For him, contemplation is not an occasional spiritual experience added to an otherwise active Christian life. It belongs to a vocation and a form of life ordered towards union with God. The cell, the solitude and the silence all serve this end: to create the space in which the soul can be progressively purified, transformed and united to God in love.
The original Carmelite ideal can therefore be described in a simple formula: hermits who live together, each in his cell, united by one rule and ordered towards one end — the contemplative seeking of God in Jesus Christ. This eremitical structure is an important key to understanding why Carmel could later produce such a profound theology of contemplation, transformation and union.
The Ancient Hermitical Ideal
The ancient Egyptian monastic tradition developed a profound distinction between the cenobitical and the eremitical forms of monastic life. This distinction should not be reduced to the question of which form appeared first historically. More importantly, the Fathers understood the two forms as belonging to different stages and degrees of spiritual formation. The cenobitical life was ordinarily the necessary school of the monk; the eremitical or anchoritic life was regarded as its more demanding and, in a certain sense, more perfect fulfilment – and is not an escape from cenobitical life.
This is particularly clear in the account given by John Cassian of the Egyptian tradition. In his Conference 18, Abbot Piamun describes the two principal forms of monastic life in Egypt: the cenobites, who live together under an elder, and the anchorites, who have first been trained in the cenobium and, having been “made perfect in practical life”, withdraw into the desert. The sequence is significant. The anchorite is not simply a monk who happens to prefer solitude. He is one who has already undergone the discipline of communal monastic life and has been judged sufficiently formed to undertake the far more demanding solitude of the desert.
The cenobium therefore had a profoundly formative purpose. There the monk learned obedience, humility, patience, charity, self-denial and the renunciation of his own will. He learned to live with others, to bear their weaknesses, to receive correction and to submit his judgement to the discernment of the elders. These were not secondary virtues which could be dispensed with once the monk desired contemplation. They were precisely the purification and preparation necessary if solitude was not to become an occasion for self-deception, pride or spiritual illusion.
This explains why the ancient Fathers were extremely cautious about allowing a monk to enter the solitary life. Solitude was not considered a spiritual shortcut. It was an advanced vocation requiring a corresponding degree of maturity. Cassian explicitly warns against those who leave the cenobium prematurely because they imagine that solitude will make them perfect. Such people, he says, have not yet been sufficiently trained in the common life; their faults remain hidden rather than being corrected, and they may mistake withdrawal from others for holiness.
The principle of discernment was therefore essential. A monk did not simply decide for himself that he was ready to become a hermit. The tradition placed great importance upon the judgement of experienced elders. Cassian repeatedly presents the submission of one’s thoughts, desires and spiritual aspirations to the discernment of the Fathers as an essential protection against illusion. Even the desire for the solitary life had to be discerned. The question was not simply whether a monk desired solitude, but whether he possessed the spiritual maturity, self-knowledge, obedience and interior stability necessary to live it fruitfully.
The reason for this caution becomes clear when one understands what the anchoritic vocation actually meant. The hermit was not merely someone who lived alone. He was a monk who had been progressively purified through the practical life of charity and obedience and who was now capable, with God’s grace, of bearing the radical solitude in which the whole of his existence could become concentrated upon God. Cassian describes the goal of the hermit as the liberation of the mind from earthly concerns and its union, as far as human frailty permits, with Christ.
The hierarchy between the two forms should nevertheless be expressed carefully. The ancient Fathers did not teach that every hermit was automatically more holy than every cenobite. Indeed, Cassian can say that complete perfection consists in being capable of both lives: of bearing the solitude of the desert and, at the same time, patiently bearing the weaknesses of one’s brethren. He even presents figures such as Moses, Paphnutius and the Macarii as men who had attained excellence in both forms.
Nevertheless, there remained a genuine theological conviction that the anchoritic life represented the summit towards which the monastic formation could lead. Cassian calls the cenobium a kind of school from which the monk can progress towards the “second standard” of the anchoritic life. The monk is first formed in the practical virtues through life with others; he can then be entrusted with the solitude in which contemplation becomes the principal occupation of his life.
This is why the ancient Egyptian tradition must not be understood as simply offering two equivalent “lifestyles”. The cenobitical and eremitical forms correspond to different spiritual demands. The cenobium provides the school of purification through community; the hermitage provides the radical environment for the contemplative pursuit of God. Charity is first learned concretely through one’s brothers, while solitude tests whether that charity has become sufficiently purified to endure without the constant support, correction and structure of communal life.
There is therefore a profound paradox at the heart of the tradition: the monk learns to live alone by first learning how to live with others. The hermit does not escape the school of charity; he carries its fruits into solitude. He does not become an anchorite because he has no need of other people, but because he has been sufficiently formed in charity, obedience and self-knowledge to receive the vocation of solitude without turning it into spiritual individualism.
This ancient understanding also explains why the movement from cenobium to hermitage was traditionally a matter for discernment rather than personal preference. The elders had to determine whether the monk was ready. The question was essentially vocational: Is God actually calling this particular monk to the solitary life, and has he been sufficiently prepared to bear it? Solitude was therefore not simply a greater quantity of asceticism. It was a distinct vocation requiring a particular grace and a corresponding spiritual capacity.
This tradition has remained especially strong in Egypt. The ancient Egyptian distinction between the common life and the solitary life has never entirely disappeared, even though forms of monastic organisation have developed considerably. The modern Egyptian monastic tradition continues to preserve the idea that the solitary life is not something to be assumed lightly and that spiritual maturity, experience in community and the discernment of experienced elders are indispensable.
The significance of this tradition for the history of mystical theology is considerable. The hermitical ideal presupposes that contemplation is not merely an occasional experience available within an otherwise ordinary form of Christian life. It can constitute the very form and vocation of a person’s existence. The entire structure of life — solitude, silence, prayer, fasting, work, obedience and continual remembrance of God — is ordered towards a deeper knowledge of God and union with him.
The ancient monastic tradition therefore provides an important bridge between the theology of the Fathers and the later development of mystical theology. The hermitage is not simply a geographical withdrawal into the desert. It represents a theological understanding of Christian perfection: after being purified through the practical life of charity, the monk may be called to a life in which contemplation and union with God become the predominant occupation of his earthly existence.
In this sense, the classical Egyptian tradition offers a paradigm that will remain extraordinarily influential throughout Christian history: cenobitical life as school and preparation; eremitical life as advanced contemplative vocation; and discernment by the elders as the safeguard that distinguishes a genuine vocation to solitude from a premature flight from the demands of charity and obedience.