A Reassessment in the Light of the Different Forms and Degrees of Contemplation Described by St John of the Cross
Jean Khoury
Companion study to “Contemplation and Contemplative Prayer: Distinguishing Their Forms, Contents, Degrees and Daily Practice”
Summary: The controversy over contemplation which occupied Catholic spiritual theology during the first half of the twentieth century, particularly between the Dominican and Jesuit schools, concerned the relationship between acquired and infused contemplation, the universality of the call to mystical life, and the necessity of infused contemplation for the attainment of Christian perfection. Despite extensive theological discussion, the controversy produced no generally accepted synthesis.
This article proposes that an insufficient distinction between different forms, objects and degrees of contemplation contributed to the difficulty. Three realities were repeatedly brought into the discussion: the contemplation of Gospel scenes and mysteries characteristic of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius; the infused contemplation of revealed mysteries, particularly as understood by Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange within the Thomistic tradition; and the progressively purifying, transforming and ultimately obscure contemplation described by St John of the Cross.
These realities are related, but they cannot be identified without qualification. Moreover, the opposition between acquired and infused contemplation risks concealing another distinction, equally fundamental: the difference between the initial forms of supernatural contemplation, still accommodated to the human person’s ordinary modes of reception, and the more purified communication of God which follows the passive purification of the spirit.
The article examines the historical development of the controversy, clarifies the positions adopted by the principal authors, and considers the participation of Carmelite theologians, whose interpretations of St Teresa and St John of the Cross were not always unanimous.
It argues that the controversy can be reassessed more fruitfully by distinguishing the object of contemplation, the mode of divine communication, the degree of spiritual purification and the stage of the spiritual journey. Such distinctions do not eliminate every doctrinal disagreement, but they make possible a more precise understanding of the positions involved and a more comprehensive theology of contemplative growth.
Introduction
One of the most striking episodes in the history of twentieth-century Catholic spiritual theology is the prolonged controversy concerning contemplation.
The debate occupied theologians from the closing years of the nineteenth century until well into the middle of the twentieth. It involved Dominicans, Jesuits, Carmelites, Benedictines and other authors, generated a substantial theological literature, and produced disagreements which were never resolved through a universally accepted synthesis.
At its centre stood several questions. Is infused contemplation the normal development of the life of grace? Are all Christians called to it? Can a person attain Christian perfection without experiencing mystical contemplation? Does contemplation constitute an extension of ordinary mental prayer, or does it require a special divine intervention? And can contemplation properly be described as acquired?
These are legitimate and important questions.
Nevertheless, when examining the arguments advanced by the different authors, one encounters a difficulty which deserves much greater attention.
Were all the participants speaking of the same reality when they employed the word “contemplation”?
The question is particularly pertinent when three spiritual traditions are considered.
The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius employ contemplation as a method of prayer involving the attentive consideration of the mysteries of Christ’s life, frequently through the imagination, accompanied by movements of the intellect and will and the reception of spiritual lights.
The Dominican theological tradition, especially in the synthesis developed by Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, speaks of the infused contemplation of the mysteries of faith, proceeding through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, particularly wisdom and understanding.
St John of the Cross, meanwhile, describes contemplation as a progressively deeper communication of God, leading the person beyond the ordinary activity of imagination and discursive understanding, through the passive nights of sense and spirit, towards transforming union.
These forms of contemplation are neither mutually exclusive nor entirely unrelated. Nevertheless, their objects, modes of operation and places within the spiritual journey are not identical.
The difficulty becomes greater when we consider that St John himself distinguishes different degrees of purity within contemplation. What is communicated to a soul still affected by sensible consolations differs significantly from the divine communication received after the more profound purification of the spirit.
The central hypothesis of the present study is therefore that the twentieth-century controversy was complicated by an insufficiently differentiated understanding of contemplation.
This hypothesis must be examined historically rather than presumed. The controversy was not simply a misunderstanding between religious orders, and its participants frequently made sophisticated distinctions. Nevertheless, their principal categories did not always provide an adequate account of the progressive transformations involved in contemplation itself.
The purpose of this article is to investigate this difficulty and propose a more integrated understanding.
I. The Historical Controversy: Its Origins and Principal Questions
1. A controversy older than the 1930s
Although the debate remained particularly prominent during the 1930s and 1940s, its immediate origins go back to the end of the nineteenth century.
In 1896, Auguste Saudreau published Les Degrés de la vie spirituelle. He subsequently developed his position in La Vie d’union à Dieu et les moyens d’y arriver, published in 1901.
Saudreau defended the view that mystical contemplation should not be treated as an exceptional privilege reserved for a small category of Christians.
Rather, he considered infused contemplation to belong to the normal development of the spiritual life.
A different position was associated with the Jesuit Augustin Poulain, whose Des Grâces d’oraison appeared in 1901.
Poulain distinguished ordinary forms of mental prayer, including what came to be called acquired contemplation, from infused mystical contemplation.
For him, mystical contemplation remained a freely given grace, which could not simply be considered the necessary culmination of every Christian life.
The disagreement was progressively taken up by other theologians.
Among the Dominicans, Juan González Arintero and Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange became particularly important defenders of the continuity between ordinary Christian life and mystical contemplation.
Among the Jesuits, Joseph de Guibert defended important aspects of Poulain’s position, while other Jesuits supported the opposite school.
Consequently, the controversy was never a straightforward confrontation between two religious orders, each defending a single doctrine.
Nevertheless, different theological traditions did bring distinct historical emphases into the debate, and these emphases influenced the terminology and the questions considered fundamental.
2. The central doctrinal disagreement
The controversy is often summarised as an opposition between acquired and infused contemplation.
This description is incomplete.
The more profound disagreement concerned the place of infused contemplation within the normal development of Christian life.
Garrigou-Lagrange and those associated with his position maintained that infused contemplation, considered apart from extraordinary phenomena such as visions or ecstasies, belongs to the ordinary development of sanctifying grace towards Christian perfection.
This did not mean that everyone would actually reach mystical contemplation, or that every individual was immediately called to it.
The distinction between a general and remote call and an individual and proximate call was essential to his argument.
De Guibert and other theologians, however, questioned whether the attainment of a high degree of charity necessarily required the habitual experience of infused contemplation.
They considered it possible for a person to reach profound holiness without passing through the identifiable mystical states described by St Teresa.
The disagreement therefore concerned the relationship between sanctity and a particular form of contemplative experience.
Could the perfection of charity exist without mystical contemplation?
Or did the perfection of charity necessarily imply, at least ordinarily, the action of the Holy Spirit characteristic of infused contemplation?
This was the principal theological question.
3. A revealing witness from 1941
A particularly valuable source is the article “Recent Theological Opinion on Infused Contemplation”, published by Robert B. Eiten, S.J., in Theological Studies in February 1941.[1]
Eiten provides a contemporary account of the positions adopted by the different authors.
His study is especially important because it demonstrates that the supposed division between Dominicans and Jesuits was considerably more complex than a simple opposition between the two orders.
He identifies several Jesuits, including Maurice de la Taille, Joseph Maréchal, Louis Peeters and Jaegher, among the defenders of the position associated with Saudreau and Garrigou-Lagrange.
Conversely, de Guibert, Poulain, Cardinal Billot and de Maumigny appear among those associated with the opposing view.
Thus, the actual division was theological rather than merely institutional.
Furthermore, Eiten identifies a number of substantial points of agreement between the schools.
Both recognised that charity constitutes the essential measure of sanctity, that the spiritual life requires divine grace, that purification is indispensable, and that the relationship with God must progressively deepen.
The disagreement concerned the precise nature of the divine interventions necessary for this progress, and whether those interventions should properly be identified with infused contemplation.
This historical evidence prevents the controversy from being reduced to a conflict between Dominican intellectual contemplation and Jesuit imaginative contemplation.
Yet it also suggests that another question remained insufficiently explored: whether the contemplation under discussion had been adequately distinguished according to its form and degree.
II. The Different Meanings of Contemplation Behind the Controversy
1. Ignatian contemplation: a method which may become the occasion of grace
The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius propose contemplations of the mysteries of Christ’s life, especially during the Second, Third and Fourth Weeks.
These contemplations frequently involve the imagination.
The person is invited to consider the persons present in the Gospel scene, listen to their words, observe their actions and engage personally with Christ.
The purpose is not merely to reconstruct an event mentally but to enter spiritually into the mystery, allowing it to illuminate the person’s life and guide a response to Christ.
The exercise may produce affection, understanding, consolation, repentance or a new determination to follow the Lord.
Moreover, Ignatius explicitly recognises the possibility of receiving divine illumination during an exercise.
This is particularly evident in the Second Annotation, where he acknowledges that the person may receive understanding through an enlightenment of the intellect by divine power.[2]
There is therefore no reason to oppose Ignatian contemplation and the supernatural action of the Holy Spirit.
Nevertheless, a distinction remains between the deliberate method of contemplating a biblical mystery and the infused contemplation described by St John of the Cross.
The first can be undertaken voluntarily.
The second, in its properly mystical sense, cannot be produced through the deliberate exercise of the faculties.
This difference concerns the mode of operation.
An Ignatian contemplation may become the occasion of infused grace, but the method itself does not constitute infused contemplation merely because it bears the name “contemplation”.
2. Did Jesuit theologians confuse these realities?
The historical evidence does not justify attributing such a confusion indiscriminately to Jesuit theologians.
Indeed, Joseph de Guibert offers an important counterexample.
In his studies of St Ignatius’s mystical life, particularly those published in 1938, de Guibert carefully distinguished the profound mystical experiences of Ignatius from the pedagogical purpose of the Spiritual Exercises.
He recognised in the Spiritual Diary a genuinely infused mystical experience.
Yet he did not simply identify the contemplations proposed in the Exercises with the mystical states experienced by Ignatius himself.
His historical and theological approach therefore reveals an awareness of the distinction between a spiritual method and the supernatural degree of contemplation.
This distinction is confirmed by Timothy W. O’Brien’s recent historical study, “The Modern Making of Ignatian Spirituality” (2026).[3]
O’Brien demonstrates that the interpretation of Ignatius and his Spiritual Exercises underwent a significant transformation during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Earlier interpretations, particularly that associated with the Jesuit Superior General Jan Philipp Roothaan, placed greater emphasis upon ascetical effort and self-conquest.
Later authors increasingly interpreted Ignatius and the Exercises in relation to mystical experience.
Consequently, the relationship between the imaginative contemplations of the Exercises and the mystical experience of Ignatius was itself a subject of discussion within Jesuit spirituality.
This observation considerably enriches the historical question.
The Jesuit contribution to the controversy did not arise simply from defending one type of contemplation against another. It included different attempts to understand the relationship between ordinary mental prayer, infused mystical experience and the particular spirituality of St Ignatius.
3. Garrigou-Lagrange: the infused contemplation of the mysteries of faith
The position of Garrigou-Lagrange requires equally careful analysis.
In The Three Ways of the Spiritual Life, he repeatedly speaks of the “infused contemplation of the mysteries of faith”.[4]
This expression is particularly significant.
It indicates that the contemplation he is describing is supernatural in its origin while remaining closely associated with revealed truths.
He explains that the gifts of understanding and wisdom, together with faith, are principles of infused contemplation.
He also distinguishes different expressions of this contemplation.
In St Augustine, for example, contemplation may concern the mysteries themselves.
In St Vincent de Paul, it may concern the practical consequences of those mysteries in the life of charity.
For Garrigou-Lagrange, both can be genuinely infused contemplation.
This is already a substantial enlargement of the concept of contemplation beyond purely speculative intellectual activity.
Nevertheless, a difficulty remains.
If contemplation is understood primarily as an infused penetration of revealed mysteries, how does this conception relate to the contemplation which St John of the Cross describes as obscure, secret and beyond every particular apprehension?
Does the latter constitute merely a more advanced degree of the former?
Or must we recognise a difference in the form of divine communication?
This question is central to the present inquiry.
4. The significance of the object of contemplation
A distinction must first be made between the object contemplated and the mode of contemplating it.
The mystery of the Incarnation may be contemplated through discursive theological reflection.
It may also be contemplated through an intuitive illumination granted by the Holy Spirit.
The same mystery may become the occasion of a profound experience of divine love in which the person no longer possesses a clear conceptual understanding of what is being communicated.
Thus, the object may remain substantially the same while the mode of divine action changes.
Conversely, two experiences may both be infused while differing considerably in their immediate content.
It would therefore be incorrect to equate the phrase “infused contemplation of the mysteries of faith” with intellectual meditation merely because it refers to identifiable doctrinal objects.
Garrigou-Lagrange himself did not make such a simplistic identification.
He explicitly recognised the passive purifications described by St John and the transformation of the spiritual faculties.
Nevertheless, his preferred theological categories raise the question of whether the different phenomenological and transformative forms of contemplation were sufficiently differentiated.
The difficulty is not simply that he spoke of the mysteries of faith while St John spoke of God himself.
It concerns the relationship between the divine illumination of the faculties and a progressively deeper action of God which transcends their ordinary manner of operation.
III. St John of the Cross: Not One Undifferentiated Contemplation, but a Progressive Transformation
1. The importance of the successive degrees of contemplation
The writings of St John of the Cross do not describe contemplation as a single, uniform experience.
On the contrary, they reveal a progressive transformation in the manner in which God communicates himself to the person.
The contemplation received at the beginning of the mystical journey is not identical, in its effects and degree of purity, with that received after the passive purification of the spirit.
This distinction is indispensable for understanding his spiritual doctrine.
Indeed, without it, the expression “infused contemplation” risks becoming so broad that it covers experiences of radically different spiritual depth without providing an adequate account of their relationship.
St John does not simply distinguish meditation from contemplation.
He also describes different stages within contemplation itself.
2. Spiritual milk and the initial adaptation of grace to human weakness
At the beginning of the Dark Night, St John compares the action of God towards beginners to that of a mother nursing her child.
The mother provides milk, warmth, protection and consolation, adapting herself to the weakness of the child.
In the same way, God initially encourages the newly converted person through sensible devotion, spiritual sweetness and the enjoyment of religious exercises.
John describes these consolations using the image of “spiritual milk”.[5]
The image is theologically significant.
At this stage, the divine action is accommodated to the person’s present condition.
The person receives God’s help through forms which remain closely connected with ordinary psychological and affective capacities.
Prayer may produce consolation.
Meditation may become particularly attractive.
The person may experience a strong sensible desire for the things of God.
Nevertheless, St John insists that these experiences do not constitute spiritual perfection.
Indeed, the person may become attached to them and begin to seek the pleasure of prayer rather than God himself.
Consequently, the spiritual journey must advance beyond this initial mode of reception.
An important qualification is necessary here: the spiritual milk described at the beginning of the Dark Night does not necessarily constitute infused contemplation in the strict sense.
It represents the initial divine pedagogy, often involving the sensible effects of grace.
It prepares the person for a deeper action of God, but it should not automatically be identified with that action.
3. The first passive purification and the beginning of contemplative prayer
The first great change occurs when God begins to withdraw the sensible satisfactions previously associated with prayer.
The person may find that discursive meditation no longer functions as before.
The imagination becomes less helpful.
The former consolations disappear.
Yet, under appropriate conditions, this difficulty does not signify spiritual decline.
It may indicate that God is introducing the person into a different mode of prayer.
In the Dark Night, Book I, chapter 9, St John distinguishes the ordinary causes of dryness from the more profound purification through which God leads a person towards contemplation.
The change involves a movement away from reliance upon sensible activity and discursive reasoning towards a more simple, receptive and loving attention to God.
In the Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book II, chapters 13–15, John explains how the person must respond to this development.
The decisive point is that God is now communicating himself in a manner which cannot be adequately received through the earlier exercise of the faculties.
Nevertheless, this first movement into contemplation does not mean that the person has already reached the highest or purest degrees of mystical prayer.
It marks the beginning of a new stage.
4. The contemplative life of the proficient: a still imperfect purity
An especially important passage appears at the beginning of Book II of the Dark Night.
St John describes the condition of those who have passed through the first purification but have not yet undergone the more radical purification of the spirit.
These persons can experience profound contemplative prayer.
They may enjoy a relatively simple and loving relationship with God, without the former labour of discursive meditation.
They may also receive abundant spiritual sweetness.
Nevertheless, John explains that their contemplation is still affected by the imperfect purification of their nature.
The spiritual communication can overflow into the senses.
The person’s bodily and affective constitution continues to influence the manner in which the divine action is received.
Consequently, the contemplation is genuinely spiritual but not yet perfectly purified.
John explicitly distinguishes these communications from the more purely spiritual communications received after the second night.
This text is of exceptional importance because it demonstrates that the supernatural origin of contemplation does not necessarily imply that the contemplation is already pure in its mode of reception.
There can be a genuine communication from God which remains accommodated to the limitations of the human person.
The mode of reception still bears the marks of an insufficiently purified nature.
The divine gift is real, but the person is not yet capable of receiving it in its greater purity.
5. The distinction between an accommodated human mode and the more purely divine mode
We can describe this distinction as one between an initial, humanly accommodated mode of contemplation and a more purified mode of divine communication.
This terminology requires precision.
By “humanly accommodated”, we do not mean that the contemplation is merely human in origin.
Nor do we mean that grace is absent or that the Holy Spirit is not acting.
We mean that the divine communication is still received through capacities which have not yet undergone their complete purification.
The person may experience the spiritual action of God through sweetness, interior satisfaction, recognisable illuminations or other effects accessible to consciousness.
The divine initiative remains real.
Nevertheless, the mode of reception still reflects human limitations.
A further distinction must be made concerning the Thomistic terminology of the human mode of the virtues and the superhuman mode of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Garrigou-Lagrange employs this distinction to describe the different principles governing supernatural operations.
The present distinction concerns another question: the degree to which the person is purified and therefore capable of receiving the divine communication without its being shaped or impeded by the limitations of the sensible and psychological faculties.
These two distinctions should not be confused.
An action may proceed from the gifts of the Holy Spirit while still producing effects in a person whose spiritual and sensible faculties remain imperfectly purified.
This explains why an infused contemplation can be genuine without yet possessing the purity described by St John at the more advanced stages.
6. The passive purification of the spirit
The most radical transformation occurs through the passive night of the spirit.
St John describes this purification particularly in Book II of the Dark Night.
The divine communication now penetrates the depths of the person, purifying the intellect, memory and will of their remaining attachments and imperfections.
In chapter 5, John calls this contemplation an “inflowing of God into the soul” and identifies it with mystical theology.
He explains that God communicates a loving wisdom which purifies and transforms the soul without the person necessarily understanding the nature of what is taking place.
This is a crucial difference.
The divine action is no longer principally received through consolations, particular insights or clearly identifiable experiences.
It is received in a manner that may appear obscure because the ordinary faculties cannot adequately comprehend it.
God is not merely communicating new information about himself.
He is transforming the very capacity of the person to receive him.
The contemplation is simultaneously illuminating and purifying.
It is dark not because God is absent, but because the divine light exceeds the ordinary capacity of the intellect to apprehend it.
7. The disappearance of particular apprehensions
The deeper contemplation described by St John is characterised by an increasing transcendence of particular images, concepts and apprehensions.
This does not mean that the person ceases to know or love God.
Rather, the knowledge and love become increasingly simple, profound and purified.
The person no longer depends upon the conscious possession of a particular intellectual object in order to remain united to God.
This point is fundamental.
The absence of something identifiable by the mind does not imply the absence of divine communication.
On the contrary, St John explains that divine wisdom may be most profoundly operative precisely when the intellect cannot reduce what is received to a distinct concept.
Nevertheless, such contemplation must not be confused with psychological emptiness or an artificial suspension of thought.
It is an action of God received in faith.
It is also inseparable from the progressive transformation of charity.
The decisive criterion is therefore not the absence of conscious thoughts as such, but the authentic purification and transformation of the person.
IV. What Happens When These Different Degrees Are Treated as One?
1. The danger of treating infused contemplation as an undifferentiated category
The distinction developed by St John raises an important question for the twentieth-century controversy.
What exactly was meant when theologians argued that infused contemplation belonged to the normal development of Christian life?
Were they referring to the first manifestations of contemplative prayer after the passive purification of the senses?
Were they referring to a supernatural illumination of the mysteries of faith through the gifts of understanding and wisdom?
Were they referring to the more purified contemplation received after the passive night of the spirit?
Or were they treating these different realities as successive degrees of one continuous contemplative life without sufficiently examining the qualitative changes involved?
The answer varied among the authors.
Garrigou-Lagrange certainly recognised the distinction between the different stages of the spiritual journey.
Indeed, his entire synthesis of the three ages of the interior life depends upon the transitions associated with the passive purifications.
Nevertheless, the formulation of the general call to infused contemplation can become ambiguous when the term “contemplation” covers these different degrees without specifying which is immediately under consideration.
The consequences are substantial.
A statement which may be defensible concerning the initial manifestations of infused contemplation is not automatically applicable, in the same sense, to the highest degrees of transforming union.
2. The question of universality changes according to the degree considered
St John himself distinguishes the frequency of the two passive purifications.
In Dark Night I.8, he explains that the night of the senses is relatively common, whereas the night of the spirit is experienced by comparatively few.
This is a significant observation.
If infused contemplation begins in connection with the first passive purification, the statement that many Christians may be called to contemplation has considerable support in John’s teaching.
But this does not mean that the same persons will necessarily undergo the profound night of the spirit or reach transforming union.
The distinction between the initial and advanced stages is therefore indispensable.
When theologians ask whether contemplation is accessible to all, the answer depends partly upon what degree of contemplation they are discussing.
The question cannot be resolved satisfactorily by employing the term “infused contemplation” without further qualification.
At the same time, Garrigou-Lagrange’s distinction between a general and remote call and an individual and proximate call shows that he was aware of this difficulty.
The problem was therefore not the complete absence of distinctions, but whether the distinctions employed were sufficient to account for the different modalities of contemplative growth.
3. A second danger: identifying contemplation with recognisable experience
An additional problem concerns the criteria used to identify infused contemplation.
If contemplation is understood principally through its recognisable effects within consciousness, it becomes difficult to account for the hidden divine action described by St John.
Some contemplative experiences involve identifiable spiritual lights.
Others are accompanied by peace, sweetness or a heightened awareness of God’s presence.
Yet the more purified forms of contemplation may be experienced without any distinct object or apprehension.
If all these experiences are grouped under the same category without careful differentiation, spiritual directors may identify contemplation mainly through the phenomena which accompany it.
But St John repeatedly warns against excessive reliance upon such phenomena.
The divine action cannot be measured simply by what the person consciously perceives.
Consequently, the very obscurity of contemplation becomes an essential theological question.
A theology which adequately explains infused illumination must also explain infused darkness.
It must be capable of accounting for both the communication of identifiable spiritual light and the deeper transformation which occurs without such illumination being consciously possessed.
4. The difference between knowing the mystery and being transformed by the mystery
Another distinction is required.
A person may receive a profound supernatural insight into the mystery of the Cross.
Such an insight can be genuinely infused and deeply transformative.
Nevertheless, receiving an illumination concerning the Cross is not identical with undergoing the radical purification through which the person becomes more completely conformed to Christ crucified.
The first may communicate a new understanding.
The second transforms the person’s very manner of existing, knowing, loving and responding to God.
These two dimensions can be intimately connected, but they are not interchangeable.
The distinction does not imply that intellectual contemplation is spiritually ineffective.
On the contrary, the contemplation of revealed truth can be a powerful instrument of transformation.
It means that an adequate theology must distinguish the immediate content of a divine illumination from the degree of transformation accomplished within the person.
This is particularly important when evaluating the relationship between the contemplation of the mysteries of faith and the mystical contemplation described by St John.
V. The Carmelite Participation: Agreement, Disagreement and the Interpretation of St John
1. Why the Carmelite position matters
The Carmelite participation in the controversy is especially significant because St Teresa and St John of the Cross were among the principal authorities invoked by both sides.
One might therefore expect Carmelite theologians to have offered a decisive clarification of the different degrees of contemplation described in their own spiritual tradition.
Yet the historical record reveals considerable disagreement among Carmelite authors themselves.
Some supported important aspects of the Dominican position.
Others defended the legitimacy of acquired contemplation and resisted the restriction of the word “contemplation” to infused mystical prayer.
Consequently, it would be inaccurate to say that the Carmelite school, considered as a whole, simply adopted the position of Garrigou-Lagrange.
2. The Carmelite Congress of Madrid in 1923
The Teresian Congress held in Madrid in February 1923 provides particularly revealing evidence.
Juan González Arintero, O.P., participated in the discussions concerning acquired and infused contemplation.
Arintero had criticised certain Carmelite authors for defending what he considered an inadequate understanding of acquired contemplation.
Among his Carmelite opponents were Evaristo de la Virgen del Carmen, Conrado de San José and Juan Vicente.[6]
This historical episode is important because it demonstrates that the disagreement over contemplation was not confined to a Dominican-Jesuit opposition.
It also existed between Dominican and Carmelite theologians.
Nevertheless, the conclusions of the congress concerning infused contemplation were subsequently invoked by Garrigou-Lagrange in support of his own thesis.
The situation was therefore complex.
There was substantial convergence between certain Carmelite and Dominican positions, but not complete unanimity concerning the meaning of contemplation.
3. Gabriel of St Mary Magdalene and the problem of acquired contemplation
Another important figure is Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalene, O.C.D.
His studies concerning acquired contemplation show that Carmelite theologians continued to examine the distinction between active and infused forms of prayer.
His work La Contemplation acquise, published in 1950, provides evidence of the continuing debate.
Jean Baruzi, reviewing this work in the same year, observed that the expression “acquired contemplation” could not simply be attributed to St John of the Cross himself.[7]
This observation is especially important.
The theological terminology subsequently employed by a spiritual school should not automatically be identified with the original vocabulary of its founder.
St John describes a progressive development of contemplation.
Later theologians attempted to classify the different stages by introducing more precise categories.
These classifications may be useful, but they also risk imposing conceptual distinctions which do not correspond exactly to the original structure of John’s teaching.
4. What the Carmelite tradition could have contributed
The distinctive contribution of St John of the Cross is not merely his affirmation that contemplation is infused.
It is also his extraordinarily precise description of the progressive purification of contemplation.
He explains how God begins by adapting himself to the person’s weakness, then progressively transforms the mode of reception, and finally draws the person into a more profound union through the passive purification of the spirit.
This dynamic understanding is indispensable.
If the discussion concerns only whether contemplation is acquired or infused, it may overlook the more important question of how infused contemplation itself changes throughout the spiritual journey.
The Carmelite tradition possesses exceptional resources for answering this question.
Its contribution should therefore not be reduced to the defence of one side of the acquired-infused controversy.
Rather, the teaching of St Teresa and St John makes possible a more comprehensive account of the successive stages of supernatural contemplation.
VI. Was the Controversy Based upon a False Alternative?
1. The opposition between acquired and infused contemplation
The distinction between acquired and infused contemplation has genuine theological value.
It seeks to identify whether the simplification of prayer results principally from the activity of the human faculties, assisted by grace, or from a particular divine intervention exceeding their ordinary operation.
Joseph de Guibert developed this distinction with considerable precision.
He understood acquired contemplation as a simple form of prayer resulting from personal activity assisted by grace, whereas infused contemplation involves a divine action surpassing what ordinary psychological processes can produce.[8]
This is a legitimate distinction.
Nevertheless, it does not exhaust the theology of contemplation.
It concerns the source or manner of the simplification of prayer.
It does not, by itself, explain the successive degrees of purity within infused contemplation, nor does it adequately distinguish the contemplation of identifiable mysteries from the more obscure divine communication described by St John.
Consequently, the acquired-infused distinction must be retained but situated within a broader framework.
2. Three questions were being treated together
A more comprehensive analysis reveals that several different questions were involved in the controversy.
The first concerned the mode of divine action. Is the contemplation principally achieved through the ordinary activity of the faculties assisted by grace, or does it proceed from a special intervention of the Holy Spirit?
The second concerned the universal call to holiness. Does the normal growth of charity require the action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in a manner which must be described as mystical contemplation?
The third concerned the particular experience of contemplation. Must a Christian who reaches profound holiness necessarily pass through the recognisable mystical states described by St Teresa?
These questions are related, but they are not identical.
One may affirm that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are essential to mature Christian life without concluding that every person must experience the same identifiable manifestations of mystical contemplation.
Likewise, one may affirm the possibility of genuine infused contemplation without claiming that every such experience possesses the same degree of purity or transformative depth.
The debate becomes more manageable when these questions are distinguished.
3. Why the disagreement could not simply be resolved by choosing one school
It would be tempting to conclude that one school was correct and the other mistaken.
Yet the historical debate contains insights which should not be discarded.
Garrigou-Lagrange rightly emphasised the organic unity of the spiritual life, the normal operation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the importance of the passive purifications for the perfection of charity.
De Guibert and other theologians rightly insisted upon the need to distinguish ordinary spiritual development from particular mystical experiences and to avoid identifying holiness with a predetermined psychological pattern.
The problem arises when either insight becomes detached from an adequately differentiated understanding of contemplation.
If one identifies the normal development of charity with a particular recognisable form of mystical prayer, there is a risk of imposing a uniform experiential pattern upon every spiritual journey.
If, conversely, one treats mystical contemplation as an exceptional addition to an otherwise complete Christian perfection, there is a risk of underestimating the transformative action of the Holy Spirit.
The teaching of St John suggests that the question should be approached differently.
The primary consideration should be the progressive transformation of the person through God’s action.
The different forms and degrees of contemplation must then be understood in relation to that transformation.
4. Does the proposed distinction resolve the historical controversy?
A necessary qualification must be made.
The distinction between forms and degrees of contemplation does not automatically settle every disagreement concerning the relationship between infused contemplation and the perfection of charity.
There remains a genuine theological question concerning whether the passive action of the Holy Spirit, necessary for profound sanctity, must always be identified with infused contemplation in the strict sense.
The schools disagreed about this, and terminological clarification alone cannot supply the complete answer.
Nevertheless, such clarification reveals that some apparent disagreements concern different realities or different levels of the same spiritual development.
It also prevents the interpretation of the highest mystical stages from being imposed indiscriminately upon the beginnings of contemplative prayer.
The historical controversy can therefore be reconsidered within a more comprehensive framework, even if its every doctrinal difficulty cannot be eliminated.
VII. Towards a More Complete Theology of Contemplation
1. The object, form, origin and degree of contemplation
A more adequate understanding of contemplation requires four distinct but complementary considerations.
The object concerns what is contemplated: a Gospel scene, a revealed mystery, the presence of God or God himself beyond every particular representation.
The form concerns how the contemplation takes place: through the imagination, intellectual consideration, simple loving attention or a communication which transcends ordinary discursive activity.
The origin concerns the particular relationship between human activity and divine initiative: whether the prayer develops primarily through the exercise of the faculties assisted by grace or through an intervention of the Holy Spirit exceeding their ordinary mode of operation.
The degree concerns the stage of spiritual growth and the purity with which the divine communication is received.
Only when these four dimensions are distinguished can the different contemplative traditions be compared adequately.
2. The progressive purification of the mode of reception
St John provides a decisive principle for understanding contemplation dynamically.
God progressively transforms the person so that the divine communication can be received more profoundly.
At first, grace is accommodated to human weakness.
The person may receive consolation, spiritual sweetness and recognisable illuminations.
Later, the sensible and psychological faculties must undergo purification.
The person becomes increasingly capable of remaining united to God without relying upon particular experiences.
Finally, the passive purification of the spirit introduces a more radical transformation.
The divine communication becomes increasingly pure, while the person’s capacity to receive God is profoundly renewed.
This progressive development cannot be adequately described by the single question of whether contemplation is acquired or infused.
It requires a theology of spiritual growth.
3. The unity of contemplation and the distinction of its forms
The distinctions proposed here must not lead to an artificial separation of Christian contemplative life.
All authentic Christian contemplation remains ordered towards communion with God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.
The contemplation of Scripture, the intellectual penetration of revealed mysteries and the infused contemplation described by St John all belong within the one Christian mystery.
Nevertheless, their unity does not require their identification.
Two realities can be deeply related without being identical.
Indeed, distinguishing them may be necessary in order to understand their proper relationship.
The same principle applies to the successive degrees of infused contemplation.
The beginnings of mystical prayer and the highest stages of transforming union belong to one spiritual journey.
Yet the differences between them are real, and the transition from one to the other involves profound changes in the person’s relationship with God.
VIII. Practical Consequences for Spiritual Theology and Formation
1. A spirituality of methods is not necessarily a theology of growth
One consequence of the preceding analysis concerns the distinction between teaching methods of prayer and providing a complete theology of spiritual formation.
A person may learn several methods of meditation and contemplation without acquiring an adequate understanding of the successive transformations involved in the spiritual journey.
The Spiritual Exercises offer an important pedagogy of conversion, discernment and following Christ.
The theological contemplation of the mysteries of faith deepens the person’s understanding of revelation.
The Carmelite doctors provide an exceptionally developed account of the progressive transformation of prayer and the soul through the direct action of God.
These contributions can complement one another.
Nevertheless, their particular purposes must be recognised.
The cultivation of a method is not identical with the accompaniment of the entire process of mystical growth.
2. The discernment of the beginnings of contemplation
A major pastoral difficulty concerns the passage from meditation to contemplation.
If the spiritual director considers contemplation to be exclusively an extraordinary gift associated with advanced mystical states, the initial manifestations of contemplative prayer may remain unrecognised.
The person may be encouraged to continue discursive meditation even when the Holy Spirit is inviting a different response.
Conversely, if contemplation is identified merely with the simplification of prayer, the director may prematurely encourage a person to abandon meditation.
The teaching of St John is particularly valuable because it provides criteria for discerning the actual transition.
The essential task is to recognise the action of God rather than impose a predetermined method.
3. The discernment of the degree of contemplation
A second difficulty concerns the distinction between early and advanced forms of infused contemplation.
A person may genuinely receive infused graces while remaining attached to sensible consolation.
Another may undergo profound purification without receiving any recognisable light or sweetness.
A third may experience spiritual consolations and interpret them as evidence of advanced union.
Without a theology of the successive degrees of contemplation, these situations can easily be confused.
St John insists that the absence of consolation may accompany profound divine activity.
He also warns that spiritual sweetness can coexist with substantial imperfection.
Consequently, the spiritual director must learn to distinguish the authenticity of a grace from the degree of spiritual maturity attained by the recipient.
4. The necessity of integrating theological study and contemplative formation
The controversy also reveals the importance of restoring a more complete relationship between theology and spiritual life.
The contemplation of revealed mysteries has a genuine and indispensable place within Christian formation.
It would be mistaken to oppose intellectual illumination and mystical union as though one excluded the other.
Nevertheless, theological understanding does not by itself constitute the transforming union described by St John.
A person may possess considerable theological knowledge while remaining at an elementary stage of spiritual growth.
Conversely, profound mystical transformation may occur without the person possessing a developed capacity to articulate its theological significance.
A complete formation must therefore integrate theological knowledge, meditation upon Scripture, dedicated mental prayer, the development of the theological virtues and discernment of the successive stages of the Holy Spirit’s action.
The purpose is neither to intellectualise mystical life nor to detach it from revealed truth.
It is to restore the unity of Christian formation without suppressing the distinctive contribution of each dimension.
5. The need to recover the developmental structure of spiritual theology
The most important practical consequence concerns the way spiritual theology is taught.
A theology of contemplation should not begin and end with a classification of prayer into acquired and infused forms.
It must also explain the progressive development of contemplative life.
What changes when a person passes from meditation to contemplation?
What changes when God begins the passive purification of the senses?
What distinguishes the initial stages of infused contemplation from the contemplation received during the passive purification of the spirit?
How does the action of the theological virtues develop through these transformations?
And how does the progressively purified contemplation of God lead towards transforming union?
These questions concern the actual structure of spiritual growth.
They are not secondary to the theological classification of contemplation.
They belong to its very heart.
IX. A Reconsideration of the Twentieth-Century Impasse
The controversy concerning contemplation made important contributions to Catholic spiritual theology.
It encouraged the recovery of the mystical tradition, renewed attention to the gifts of the Holy Spirit and stimulated extensive study of St Teresa and St John of the Cross.
It also helped challenge the tendency to regard mystical life as an exceptional privilege disconnected from the normal development of Christian holiness.
Nevertheless, the debate remained largely organised around questions that did not exhaust the reality of contemplation.
The opposition between acquired and infused contemplation addressed the source and mode of a particular kind of prayer.
The controversy over the universal call addressed the relationship between sanctity and mystical grace.
The distinction between ordinary and extraordinary mystical phenomena addressed the conditions under which contemplative experience could be recognised.
But the progressive transformation of contemplation itself required a more differentiated treatment.
The decisive contribution of St John of the Cross is that he presents contemplation not merely as an experience to be classified, but as a divine action which changes in its effects and manner of reception as the person advances towards union.
The early sweetness of grace, the first passive purification, the contemplative life of the proficient, the dark purification of the spirit and the more profound union that follows must be understood within a single, developmental framework.
Such a framework makes it possible to preserve the valid insights of different theological schools while avoiding their premature identification.
It also suggests that the controversy’s difficulty was not necessarily caused by the absence of a theological answer, but partly by the inadequacy of the conceptual framework within which the answer was being sought.
The participants frequently addressed genuine questions, yet the word “contemplation” continued to cover realities which required more precise differentiation.
In this respect, the historical controversy remains relevant today.
The challenge is not simply to choose between competing schools but to develop a spiritual theology sufficiently comprehensive to account for the full range of Christian contemplative experience and its successive transformations.
Conclusion
The twentieth-century controversy over contemplation cannot be reduced to an opposition between Dominicans and Jesuits, nor can its unresolved difficulties be attributed exclusively to a confusion of terminology.
Its principal participants were serious theologians who recognised the importance of the problem and developed sophisticated arguments concerning grace, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Christian perfection and mystical experience.
Nevertheless, the controversy invites reassessment in the light of the different forms and degrees of contemplation.
The imaginative contemplation of the mysteries of Christ’s life, the infused contemplation of revealed truths, and the progressively purified contemplation described by St John of the Cross are all legitimate realities within the Christian spiritual tradition.
They can be related and, in certain circumstances, overlap.
But they cannot simply be treated as interchangeable.
Above all, the contemplation described by St John is not a uniform spiritual phenomenon.
Its initial manifestations differ significantly from the more purified communication of God received after the passive purification of the spirit.
The supernatural origin of contemplation does not determine, by itself, the degree of purity with which the person receives it.
Nor does the presence of recognisable spiritual light necessarily indicate the highest stages of contemplation.
The essential distinction is therefore not only between acquired and infused contemplation, but also between the different modes and degrees of infused contemplation itself.
This distinction changes the terms of the controversy.
It makes possible a more careful interpretation of the universal call to contemplation.
It helps distinguish the normal operation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit from particular mystical experiences.
It clarifies the relationship between intellectual illumination and transforming union.
And it restores the importance of the successive purifications through which God leads the person towards a more profound participation in his life.
The central lesson may be expressed in the following terms:
A theology of contemplation cannot be complete if it distinguishes only between what the person acquires and what God infuses. It must also distinguish what is contemplated, how God communicates himself, how that communication is received, and how its mode and purity change throughout the spiritual journey.
The twentieth-century debate remains important precisely because it reveals the necessity of such distinctions.
Its lasting contribution may therefore lie not only in the answers proposed by its participants, but also in the questions that their disagreements oblige us to formulate more precisely.
The recovery of a genuinely comprehensive spiritual theology requires moving beyond the classification of contemplative experiences towards an understanding of the entire transformative action of the Holy Spirit.
The ultimate purpose is not simply to determine whether contemplation is acquired or infused.
It is to understand how God progressively introduces the human person into communion with himself, purifying, illuminating and transforming the entire being until the fullness of union in love.
Footnotes
[1] Robert B. Eiten, S.J., “Recent Theological Opinion on Infused Contemplation”, Theological Studies 2, no. 1 (February 1941), pp. 89–100, especially pp. 91–96. The author distinguishes the two principal schools and identifies the theologians associated with each. https://doi.org/10.1177/004056394100200106. Open-access text: https://theologicalstudies.net/articles/recent-theological-opinion-on-infused-contemplation/.
[2] St Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, particularly Annotations 1–2, and the contemplations of the Second, Third and Fourth Weeks. See also the rules for discernment, especially §330 concerning consolation without a preceding cause.
[3] Timothy W. O’Brien, “The Modern Making of ‘Ignatian Spirituality'”, Religions 17, no. 3 (2026), article 359, especially sections 5–9. This recent historical study examines the transformation of the understanding of Ignatius from an essentially ascetical figure to a mystic, and the consequences for the interpretation of the Spiritual Exercises. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17030359.
[4] Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., The Three Ways of the Spiritual Life, chapter 4 and the concluding note, “On the Call to the Infused Contemplation of the Mysteries of Faith”. See also The Three Ages of the Interior Life, particularly the discussions of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, infused contemplation and the passive purifications. https://www.ecatholic2000.com/lagrange/three-ways-spiritual-life.shtml.
[5] St John of the Cross, Dark Night, Book I, chapter 1, §§2–3, and chapter 12, particularly §1. The comparison with a mother nursing her child illustrates the initial divine pedagogy and the subsequent withdrawal of sensible sweetness as God introduces the person into a deeper manner of prayer. The passage should not be interpreted as identifying every initial consolation with infused contemplation.
[6] “La contemplación adquirida”, Dominican Province of Spain, historical account concerning Juan González Arintero and the Teresian Congress held in Madrid in February 1923. The account names Evaristo de la Virgen del Carmen, Conrado de San José and Juan Vicente as significant Carmelite opponents of Arintero’s position. https://www.dominicos.org/quienes-somos/grandes-figuras/juan-gonzalez-arintero/contemplacion-adquirida/.
[7] Gabriel de Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, O.C.D., La Contemplation acquise (Paris: Lethielleux, 1950). See Jean Baruzi’s review in Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses 30, no. 4 (1950), pp. 360–361. Baruzi considers the relationship between the later terminology of acquired contemplation and the original teaching of St John of the Cross. https://www.persee.fr/doc/rhpr_0035-2403_1950_num_30_4_5762_t1_0360_0000_3.
[8] Joseph de Guibert, S.J., Études de théologie mystique (Toulouse, 1930), especially the treatment of acquired and infused contemplation. See also Eiten, “Recent Theological Opinion on Infused Contemplation”, pp. 90–91, where the principal distinctions are summarised and compared with Garrigou-Lagrange’s definition.
[9] St John of the Cross, Dark Night, Book I, chapters 8–10, particularly chapter 9 concerning the signs of the passive purification of the senses; Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book II, chapters 13–15.
[10] St John of the Cross, Dark Night, Book II, chapter 1, §§1–3. This passage is particularly important for distinguishing the contemplative prayer of proficients from the more purified divine communications which follow the passive night of the spirit.
[11] St John of the Cross, Dark Night, Book II, chapter 5, particularly §1; chapters 8–9 concerning the relationship between divine illumination and darkness. See also Book II, chapter 17, concerning the ladder of contemplative love.
[12] Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ways of the Spiritual Life, chapter 4 and concluding note. His distinctions between general and remote vocation, individual and proximate vocation, sufficient calling and efficacious calling should be preserved when evaluating his argument. He does not claim that every individual actually attains the same degree of mystical prayer.
[13] Robert B. Eiten, “Recent Theological Opinion on Infused Contemplation”, especially pp. 92–100. Eiten identifies substantial agreements concerning charity, grace, the need for purification and the role of prayer, while distinguishing the remaining disagreement about the necessity of infused contemplation for heroic sanctity.
[14] St John of the Cross, Living Flame of Love, especially stanza 3, concerning the delicate action of the Holy Spirit, the purification of the faculties and the importance of spiritual direction.
[15] Jean Khoury, “The Grammar of Christian Contemplation: Forms and Degrees from Dionysius to St John of the Cross”, School of Mary, 2026. This study develops the distinction between intellectual and mystical contemplation and argues for the importance of distinguishing the different forms and degrees of contemplation within a coherent theology of spiritual growth. https://schoolofmary.org/the-grammar-of-christian-contemplation-forms-and-degrees-from-dionysius-to-st-john-of-the-cross/.
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The central contribution of this companion article is the distinction between the infused origin of contemplation and the degree of purity of its reception. That distinction is particularly strongly supported by Dark Night II.1 and II.5. It offers a way to reassess the controversy without dismissing the substantial theological work undertaken by either school.