THE MYSTICAL THEOLOGY

OF KARL RAHNER
Harvey D. Egan

of all the significant theologians of the twentieth

century, stands alone in calling for a new mystical theology. His own
views on what he terms the mysticism of daily life, the mysticism of the
masses and the mysticism of the classical mastersto be explained later
play a major role in stressing the importance of mysticism in theology and
Christian life. However, he emphasizes the difficulty of defining the word
mysticism, the absence of a generally accepted theology of mysticism and
the appalling lack of interest in a contemporary mystical theology. He also
criticizes some earlier mystical theology for simply repeating the teachings
of the Spanish classical mystics, for smoothing out the distinctions among
them and for naively interpreting them in accordance with an extrinsic
understanding of grace according to which direct divine intervention
is thought of in the case of mystical phenomena.1
ARL RAHNER,

Rahners Theology of Grace

Rahner is the twentieth centurys pre-eminent theologian of grace. In
his view, grace is primarily Gods universal self-communication, not the
sporadic bestowal of certain divine gifts, and all human beings are the
addressees of this communication. Therefore, all truly human activity
is a free, positive or negative, response to Gods offer of selfthe grace
at the heart of human existence.2 Because God offers nothing less than
Gods very own self to everyone, the human person is, to Rahners way
of thinking, homo mysticus, mystical man. This relationship stamps all

This article is based on a longer treatment in chapter three of Harvey D. Egan, Karl Rahner: Mystic of
Everyday Life (New York: Crossroad, 1998).
1

Karl Rahner, Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology, in Theological Investigations, volume 17,
translated by Margaret Kohl (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 9091.
Karl Rahner, Gnade als Mitte menschlicher Existenz. Ein Gesprch mit und ber Karl Rahner aus
Anla seines 70. Geburtstages, in Herausforderung des Christen (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1975),
117153.
2

The Way, 52/2 (April 2013), 4362

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Harvey D. Egan

personal experiences with at least an implicit, yet primordial, experience

of God.
Because we do have an immediate, preconceptual experience of God
through the experience of the limitless breadth of our consciousness,
Rahner writes, there is such a thing as a mystical component to
Christianity.3 In fact, he holds the theological position that,
in every human person there is something like an anonymous,
unthematic, perhaps repressed, basic experience of being oriented to
God which can be repressed but not destroyed, which is mystical
or (if you prefer a more cautious terminology) has its climax in what
the classical masters called infused contemplation.4

Therefore, all human experiences tend towards an intensification which

is directed towards something which one could in fact call mystical
experience.5 In fact, mysticism as the experience of grace grounds not
only the ordinary Christians life of faith, hope and love but also that of
anyone living according to his or her conscience.6 This view of mysticism
as the experience of grace permeates not only Rahners mystical theology
but also much of Rahners overall theology.
Rahner suggests avoiding the term mysticism because of its almost
unavoidable association with odd psychic phenomena that have nothing
to do with normal Christian lifealthough he does not hesitate to use
the term himself, and in a variety of ways.7 He insists, however, that
the reality of the experience of God in daily life, rather than the term
used for it, is what matters.
In the final analysis it is unimportant whether you call such a personal,
genuine experience of God, which occurs in the deepest core of a
person, mystical.8

Karl Rahner in Dialogue, edited by Paul Imhof and Hubert Biallowons (New York: Crossroad, 1986), 182.
Karl Rahner, Teresa of Avila: Doctor of the Church, in The Great Church Year, edited by Albert Raffelt
and Harvey D. Egan (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 362363 (original emphasis). See also Brief von
P. Karl Rahner, in Klaus P. Fischer, Der Mensch als Geheimnis. Die Anthropologie Karl Rahners (Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 1974), 405406.
5
Karl Rahner, Reflections on the Problem of the Gradual Ascent to Christian Perfection, in Theological
Investigations, volume 3, translated by Karl-Heinz and Boniface Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon, 1967), 23.
6
Karl Rahner, Mysticism, in Encyclopedia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi, edited by Karl
Rahner (New York: Seabury, 1975), 10101011.
7
For example, see Handbuch der Pastoraltheologie, volume 3 (2nd edn, Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder,
1972), 523.
8
Faith in a Wintry Season: Interviews and Conversations with Karl Rahner in the Last Years of His Life,
198284, edited by Paul Imhof, Harvey D. Egan and Hubert Biallowons (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 115.
4

The Mystical Theology of Karl Rahner

45

Rahner is also convinced that everyone experiences God constantly, not

intermittently, although often only in a hidden way:
It must be made intelligible to people that they have an implicit but true
knowledge of Godperhaps not reflected upon and not verbalized;
or better expressed, they have a genuine experience of God ultimately
rooted in their spiritual existence, in their transcendentality, in their
personality, or whatever you want to call it.9

This view of grace provides the foundation for Rahners contemporary

mystical theology.
Despite his frequent use of the terms experience of grace and
experience of God, Rahner is not referring to an experience, because
God cannot be reduced to a specific content of thought or object of love
in consciousness. The transcendental experience of God and of grace, in
Rahners sense, is the ground of all experiences and is not a particular, or
categorical, experience to which we can point. As the horizon in which
all our experiences take place, the objectless awareness of God and of
grace is the atmosphere in which we live, our basal spiritual metabolism,
more intimate to us than we are to ourselves, as the mystics are fond of
saying. Just as we often overlook or take for granted our breathing, our
beating hearts, or our own self-awareness, so too does the ever-present
experience of God often remain overlooked, repressed, or even denied.10
The Mysticism of Everyday Life
Rahner holds the position that everyoneeven the agnostic or atheist
who lives moderately, selflessly, honestly, courageously and in silent
service to others, lives what he calls the mysticism of everyday life.11 He
stresses not only the intrinsic unity between the love of God and

Faith in a Wintry Season, 115.

This is a salient theme in Nicholas Lashs book, Easter in Ordinary: Reflections on Human Experience
and the Knowledge of God (Notre Dame: U. of Notre Dame P, 1990).
11
See Egan, Karl Rahner: Mystic of Everyday Life. For concrete examples of the mysticism of everyday
life, see Karl Rahner, Experiencing the Spirit, in The Practice of Faith, edited by Albert Raffelt and
Karl Lehmann (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 81. Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote of persevering through
the grayness of every day in faith, hope, and love (The Von Balthasar Reader, edited by Medard Kehl
and Werner Lser [New York: Crossroad, 1982], 342). Thomas Merton wrote of masked and hidden
contemplatives who led hectic lives of self-emptying service and were closer to God than they thought
(Thomas Merton, The Inner Experience: Kinds of Contemplation [IV], Cistercian Studies, 18/4 [1983],
294). St Francis de Sales emphasized an ecstasy of work and life that embraces renunciation and selfdenial in true imitation of the crucified Christ (Treatise on the Love of God, translated by John K. Ryan
[Rockford: Tan, 1975], volume 2, book 7, chapters 67, 3033).
10

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Harvey D. Egan

neighbour12 but also Jesus teaching that love for the least of his brethren
is love for himeven in the case of those who do not know him.13 Thus,
the most profound form of the mysticism of everyday life, in Rahners
view, is the unreserved love for another.
When anyoneHindu, Buddhist, Jew, Christian, Muslim, agnostic
or atheistcourageously and totally accepts life and him- or herself,
even when everything tangible seems to be collapsing, then that person
experiences, at least implicitly, the holy Mystery that fills the emptiness
both of oneself and of life. Accepting the depths of ones humanity, the
depths of life and thus Mystery itselffostered either with or without
explicit Christian faith, hope and charityis the salient feature in
Rahners mysticism of everyday life.
This view has profound theological and pastoral significance. I
know of no theologian who so emphasizes the idea that we weave the
fabric of our eternal lives out of our humdrum daily lives.14 A
Ordinary genuine Christian must have the bold, but often hidden,
daily life is confidence that ordinary daily life is the stuff of authentic life
the stuff of and real Christianity.15 For this reason, the words ordinary,
authentic life banal, humdrum, routine and the like, appear frequently
in Rahners writings. For him, grace has its history in the
persons day-to-day existence with its splendors and failures and is
actually experienced there.16
The everydayness of Jesus life grounds Rahners appreciation of daily
life:
That which is amazing and even confusing in the life of Jesus is
that it remains completely within the framework of everyday living;
we could even say that in him concrete human existence is found

12

Karl Rahner, Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbor and the Love of God, in Theological
Investigations, volume 6, translated by Karl-Heinz and Boniface Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon, 1969),
231249.
13
Karl Rahner, The Love of Jesus and the Love of Neighbor, translated by Robert Barr (New York:
Crossroad, 1983).
14
Karl Rahner, Eternity from Time, in Theological Investigations, volume 19, translated by Edward
Quinn (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 169177. For an eloquent theology of work, sleeping, eating,
drinking, laughing, seeing, sitting and getting about, see his Everyday Things, in Belief Today,
translated by Ray and Rosaleen Ockenden (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), 2021. And see Philip
Endean, Karl Rahner and Ignatian Spirituality (Oxford: OUP, 2001), and Declan Marmion, A Spirituality
of Everyday Faith: A Theological Investigation of the Notion of Spirituality in Karl Rahner (Louvain:
Peeters, 1998).
15
This is a constant theme in Karl Rahner, Biblical Homilies, translated by Desmond Forristal and
Richard Strachan (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966).
16
Karl Rahner, On the Theology of Worship, in Theological Investigations, volume 19, 147 (emphasis added).

The Mystical Theology of Karl Rahner

47

in its most basic and radical form. The first thing that we should
learn from Jesus is to be fully human!17

In Christ, God has assumed the everyday. Because of Christ, the mysticism
of daily life is one of joy in the world and an Easter faith that loves the
earth.18 Participation in the death of Christ, although often anonymous,
enables a person to die to self and to the world in order to surrender to the
Mystery that permeates daily life. To experience that such dying is not in
vain is to participate in Christs resurrection. This is the christological
foundation for a mysticism of everyday life.
Rahner offers common human experiences to help us dig out
from under the rubbish of everyday experience 19 real life occurrences of
grace, such as accepting with hope the experience of utter loneliness;
forgiving with no expectation of the others gratitude or even of feeling
good about ones selflessness; being utterly faithful to the depths of ones
conscience, even when taken as a fool; praying, even when it feels useless;
maintaining faith, hope and love, even when there are no apparent
reasons for so doing; experiencing bitterly the great gulf between what
we desire from life and what it actually gives us; and silently hoping in the
face of death.20 God is experienced, in Rahners view, most clearly and
intensely,
where the graspable contours of our everyday realities break and
dissolve; where failures of such realities are experienced; when lights
which illuminate the tiny islands of our everyday life go out.21

And Rahner prefers negative experiences to joyful ones because:

wherever space is really left by parting, by death, by renunciation,
by apparent emptiness, provided the emptiness that cannot remain
such is not filled by the world, or activity, or chatter, or the deadly
grief of the worldthere God is.22

17

Rahner, On the Theology of Worship, 121.

Karl Rahner, The Ignatian Mysticism of Joy in the World, in Theological Investigations, volume 3,
277293; On the Spirituality of the Easter Faith, in Theological Investigations, volume 17, 815.
19
Karl Rahner, Experiencing the Spirit, in The Practice of Faith (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 83.
20
Rahner, Experiencing the Spirit, 81.
21
Rahner, Experiencing the Spirit, 81. Also see Karl Rahner in Dialogue, 57, 83, 142, 183, 227, 245,
and 293; Reflections on the Experience of Grace, in Theological Investigations, volume 3, 8689.
Experience of the Holy Spirit, in Theological Investigations, volume 18, translated by Edward Quinn
(New York: Crossroad, 1983), 189210.
22
Rahner, Biblical Homilies, 77.
18

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Harvey D. Egan

One of Rahners short pieces gives poignant examples of individual

mystics of everyday life, whom he also calls unknown saints. He writes:
I still see around me living in many of my [Jesuit] companions a
readiness for disinterested service carried out in silence, a readiness
for prayer, for abandonment to the incomprehensibility of God, for
the calm acceptance of death in whatever form it may come, for
total dedication to the following of Christ crucified.23

He mentions, among others, his friend Alfred Delp, who signed his
final vows with chained hands and then went to his death in Berlin for
anti-Nazi activity; and another friend, a prison chaplain appreciated more
for the cigarettes he brings to the inmates than for the gospel he preaches.
The mystic of everyday life, Rahners unknown saint, is one who with
difficulty and without any clear evidence of success plods away at the
task of awakening in just a few men
and women a small spark of faith, of
hope and of charity.24
Rahners understanding of the
mysticism of everyday life also results
in a different theology of sanctity.
He distinguishes the canonized saints
from the unknownnot by different
degrees of holiness, but rather by the
explicit, conscious self-discovery in
the official, public sphere, achieved by
the Church through the canonisation
of these saints.25 The canonization
process illustrates the truth that the
Church has not only a development
of dogma but also a development
of holiness. Canonized saints,
Alfred Delp

23
Karl Rahner, Why Become or Remain a Jesuit?, Madonna [Jesuit publication, Melbourne,
Australia] (April 1987), 11.
24
Rahner, Why Become or Remain a Jesuit?, 11.
25
Karl Rahner, The Church of the Saints, in Theological Investigations, volume 3, 103. See also Karl
Rahner, Why and How Can We Venerate the Saints?, in Theological Investigations, volume 8, translated
by David Bourke (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), 323; All Saints, in Theological Investigations,
volume 8, 2432.

The Mystical Theology of Karl Rahner

49

are the initiators and the creative models of the holiness which
happens to be right for, and is the task of, their particular age .
They show experimentally that one can be a Christian even in this
way.26

However, in his view, one should ponder more deeply the mystery of the
anonymous saint, the saint of everyday life.
The Mysticism of the Masses
In addition to the mysticism of everyday life, Rahner describes what he
oddly calls the mysticism of the masses or the mysticism in ordinary
dress.27 This designates the mysticism of those in contemporary
charismatic movements, who claim to be intoxicated with the Holy
Spirit, experience dramatic faith conversions, speak glossolalia, publicly
and loudly proclaim their faith, prophesy, experience swooning or being
slain in the Spirit, healings, and the like. This noisy mysticism manifests
itself more ostentatiously than the mysticism of everyday life and more
commonly than the extraordinary mysticism of the saints.
Although Rahner considers himself to be a sober Christian, he takes
seriously charismatic phenomena as real and concrete expressions of
Christianitywhen they deepen Christian faith, hope and love. However,
his writings indicate an unease with and suspicion of this mysticism in
ordinary dress. For example, he urges those in the charismatic movements
to find a way to a genuine self-understanding and [to] come to terms
with themselves in a self-critical way. 28
In so far as charismatic experiences disrupt everyday religious
consciousness, Rahner understands them as the reverberations or echoes
from the persons primordial experience of God that overflow into
the various dimensions and levels of ones psychic structure. This
psychosomatic language can both point to and disguise that fundamental
experience of God. He neither views themeven when genuineas
the unadulterated operation of the Holy Spirit, nor does he dismiss
themas some of his contemporaries didas so much rubbish or as a
sign of skewed religious emotions.

26

Rahner, The Church of the Saints, 100.

Karl Rahner, Religious Enthusiasm and the Experience of Grace, in Theological Investigations,
volume 16, translated by David Moreland (New York: Seabury, 1979), 3551.
28
Rahner, Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology, 99.
27

Harvey D. Egan

Dustin Maust

50

In contrast to an elitist tendency by some in charismatic groups to

identify every emotional twitch as a sign of the Holy Spirit, Rahner
recommends:
A mysticism of daily life, the finding of God in all things, the sober
drunkenness of the Spirit mentioned by the Church Fathers and
ancient liturgy, which we dare not reject or disdain just because it
is sober.29

He much prefers people who pray, receive the sacraments and experience
only what he calls a wintry spirituality,30 that is, one closely allied with
the torment of atheists, though obviously people who practise it are not
atheists.
The Mysticism of the Classical Masters
In addition to the mysticism of everyday life and the mysticism of the
masses, Rahner writes of the mysticism of the classical masters. These
giants of the Christian mystical tradition fascinate him because from them
one hears the views of the person who himself experiences most clearly

29

Karl Rahner in Dialogue, 329, 297 (emphasis added). Sober Christianity is a phrase often found in
his lectures and writings.
30
See Faith in a Wintry Season.

The Mystical Theology of Karl Rahner

51

and with the least distortion the relationship which exists between the
human subject and the reality we call God.31 He thus looks to them
because of the exceptional clarity and intensity with which they partake
in the fundamental God-experience that everyone has. These geniuses
of the mystical life live through, and explain, what mysticism in the strict
sense actually is.
The Churchs extraordinary mystics, in Rahners view, can teach us
much in this increasingly secular and self-sufficient age, an age in which
God is seemingly absent. Rahner writes:
It is more urgent than ever to have a theology and, even beyond this,
an initiation into mans personal experience of God. And the classical
masters are thoroughly good and irreplaceable teachers when it is
a question of developing such a theology and mystagogy that makes
intelligible the personal experience of God.32

A theology that awakens people to their own inner depths can illuminate
the experience of God not only for Christians but also even for those who
would deny Gods existence. This is the context for understanding a
statement of Rahners that is becoming well known: The devout
Christian of the future will either be a mystic, one who has experienced
something, or he will cease to be anything at all.33 Moreover, a theology
and mystagogy drawn from the experiences of the great Christian mystics
may help Christians in their dialogue with Eastern religions.
Because the classical mystics interpreted their experiences of God with
the terms of their day, their writings must be transposed for contemporary
use.
And such a transposition could be fruitful, because the depth and
radicality of the experience of God which the classical authors describe
are not so commonplace that we could discover in ourselves the
buds and traces of such an experience of God just as easily without
their help as with it.34

Since the characteristic piety of a mystic is given a special depth and

power by the specifically mystical element of his piety,35 this Jesuit views
31

Rahner, Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology, 92.

Rahner, Teresa of Avila: Doctor of the Church, 362.
33
Karl Rahner, Christian Living Formerly and Today, Theological Investigations, volume 7, translated
by David Bourke (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), 15.
34
Rahner, Teresa of Avila: Doctor of the Church, 362363.
35
Rahner, The Ignatian Mysticism of Joy in the World, 280281.
32

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Harvey D. Egan

the mystic as the one for whom the often barely audible and distorted
experience of God found in everyone has been purified and amplified
without deformation.
To Rahners way of thinking, it is extremely difficult to define
precisely a specific element or elements in the mysticism of the classical
masters. He writes, however, that,
we do after all possess a vague empirical concept of Christian
mysticism: the religious experiences of the saints, all that they
experienced of closeness to God, of higher impulses, of visions, of
inspirations, of the consciousness of being under the special and
personal guidance of the Holy Spirit, of ecstasies, etc. All this is
comprised in our understanding of the word mysticism without our
having to stop here to ask what exactly is of ultimate importance in
all this, and in what this proper element consists.36

Thus, the mysticism of the classical masters has something to do with

their enhanced God-consciousness, their raptures, their visions and their
special sensitivity to the least motion of the Holy Spirit. Rahner often
explains their mysticism in terms of infused contemplation and the
concomitant suspension of the faculties.37
Following mainly the teachings of St Teresa of Avila and St John of
the Cross, classical mystical theologians sharply distinguish between
acquired and infused contemplation.38 In infused contemplation God
makes Godself known to the individual through a special grace given
only to a select few,39 but acquired contemplation is accessible to any
Christian who cooperates generously with ordinary grace.
36

Rahner, The Ignatian Mysticism of Joy in the World, 279280.

In Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology, 98 n. 9, Rahner accepts the understanding of the
mysticism of the classical masters presented in Irene Behns classic study, Spanische Mystik (Dsseldorf:
Patmos, 1957).
38
Augustin Poulain, The Graces of Interior Prayer, translated by Leonora L. Yorke Smith (Westminster,
Vt: Celtic Cross, 1978); Auguste Saudreau, The Life of the Union with God and the Means of Attaining It
according to the Great Masters of Spirituality, translated by E. J. Strickland (New York: Benziger Brothers,
1927); John Baptist Scaramelli, Guide to the Spiritual Life (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne,
1924); Joseph de Guibert, The Theology of the Spiritual Life, translated by Paul Barrett (New York:
Sheed and Ward, 1953); Joseph De Guibert, The Jesuits: Their Spiritual Doctrine and Practice, translated
by William J. Young (Chicago: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1964), 4445; and Poulain, The Graces of
Interior Prayer, 64200, for a highly detailed exposition. Poulain prefers the phrase mystic union to
infused contemplation. Acquired contemplation is also frequently called ordinary prayer.
39
Although this terminology is relatively recent in the Christian mystical tradition, the reality is not.
The anonymous author (d. c. 1386) of The Cloud of Unknowing, to give one example, distinguishes
clearly between what he calls meditation and contemplation. In his view, only God can grant the
exceptional mystical the grace of contemplation. Examples abound. See Harvey D. Egan, Soundings in
the Christian Mystical Tradition (Collegeville: Liturgical, 2010).
37

The Mystical Theology of Karl Rahner

53

Acquired Contemplation

Acquired contemplation comprises four levels: focused vocal prayer,

meditation, affective prayer and the prayer of simplicity. Liturgical and
some private devotions obviously require vocal prayerand
a struggle against distractions. Meditation involves discursive, A tranquil
step-by-step remembering, reasoning about and pondering, abiding in the
for example, one of the mysteries of Christs life, death and presence of
resurrection. Affective prayerwhich requires only a minimal God
use of reason, memory, and imaginationarises when healthy religious
emotions predominate during meditation. The prayer of simplicity 40 is
the highest stage of acquired contemplation possible through human
effort assisted by ordinary grace. Here, intuition replaces imagining,
remembering and reasoning. A tranquil abiding in the presence of God,
often accompanied by strong emotions of joy, sorrow, admiration and
adoration, dominate this level of prayer. Like a few bars from a song
once heard, a dominant theme of spirit begins to haunt the person. More
of the person seems to be praying, at a perceptively deeper level, and
with less effort and interior activity.
Infused Contemplation

Classical mystical theologians emphasized the qualitative difference

between acquired and infused contemplation, not only because the latter
requires a special grace but also because infused contemplation brings
about an explicit consciousness that one is grasped by God, that God is
not only working with one, but also operating alone and requiring only
ones consent.41 Rendered passive because of Gods compelling influence,
mystics at this stage find vocal prayer difficult and meditation impossible
because of the suspension of the faculties that renders reason, memory
and imagination almost powerless to act, except through violence.
However, infused contemplation produces an immediate, indubitable
consciousness of Gods presence and powerful control. An obscure, yet
rich and satisfying, loving knowledge penetrates and dominates the soul

40

It is also called the prayer of simple regard, active recollection, active repose, active quietude
and active silenceactive, to underline the difference between it and passive, or mystical modes
of prayer.
41
See Jean Vincent Bainvel, Introduction to the Tenth Edition, in Poulain, Graces of Interior Prayer,
lxxxviii, and Albert Farges, Mystical Phenomena (London: Burns, Oates and Washington, 1926), 311.
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Christian Perfection and Contemplation According to St Thomas Aquinas and
St John of the Cross, translated by M. Timothea Doyle (Saint Louis: B. Herder, 1937), 162, leaves explicit
consciousness out of his definition of infused contemplation.

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Harvey D. Egan

in its innermost depths. Mystics maintain that the souls mystical senses
analogous to the five bodily sensesawaken to Gods touch, voice,
sweetness, scent and, to a lesser and highly qualified extent, visibility.42
Their total inability to awaken, prolong, renew, or even foresee the
approach or the end of these experiences astonishes them. Mystics claim
that the experience is ineffable: that it cannot be translated into forms of
current language or explained to someone who has never experienced
anything similar.
Awakened Contemplation

A definite tension exists in Rahners theology of grace and mystical

theology because of his respect for the Scholastic manual theology of his
day. Despite his emphasis on the intrinsic nature of grace at the heart
of human existence, one still finds the influence of an older theology in
his writings.43 I find it strange that Rahner still uses the term infused
contemplation, with its overtones of Gods almost miraculous, extrinsic,
direct intervention in the soul. I suggest that in view of his theologically
and pastorally profound view of grace as the intrinsic milieu of all human
activity, the term awakened contemplation is preferable.44
Mystical Theology in Terms of Human Consciousness
Bernard McGinn, the foremost scholar of the history of the Western mystical
tradition, defines the mystical element in Christianity [as] that part of its
beliefs and practices that concerns the preparation for, the consciousness
of, and the reaction to what can be described as the immediate or direct
presence of God.45 With this definition, he shifts the understanding of

42
See, for example, Karl Rahner, The Spiritual Senses according to Origen, Theological
Investigations, volume 16, 81103, and The Doctrine of the Spiritual Senses in the Middle Ages,
Theological Investigations, volume 16, 104134.
43
This tension is evident in, for example, Karl Rahner, Grace II. Theological, Grace III. Structure of
De Gratia and Grace and Freedom, in Encyclopedia of Theology, 587595, 595598, 598601. Also
see Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, Grace, Grace, Systems of and Grace, Theology of, in
Dictionary of Theology, new revised edn (New York: Crossroad, 1981) 196200, 200, 200201.
44
From the viewpoint of contemporary evolutionary theory, the British Jesuit theologian Jack Mahoney
(Christianity in Evolution: An Exploration [Washington: Georgetown UP, 2011], 117) criticizes the term
infused contemplation as evoking the half conscious image of a God separate from us and pouring
into us as into distinct containers the creative expressions of divine causal energy. In contrast, the view
of divine communication that emerges from the evolutionary approach partakes more of the idea
of a fountain welling up from inside rather than of something being poured in from the outside.
45
Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, volume 1, The
Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century (New York: Crossroad, 1991), xvii (emphasis
added).

The Mystical Theology of Karl Rahner

55

mysticism away from an emphasis on experience. In his view, this

emphasis lends itself to a misunderstanding mysticism as consisting of
unusual sensations, particular forms of feelings, or sensible perceptions
easily deracinated from the spiritual activities of human consciousness that
form the full range of human conscious life: understanding, judging,
willing, deciding and loving. McGinn prefers to explain mysticism in
terms of consciousness because the mystic is one who, in his view,
becomes immediately and directly awareconsciousof new and
transformative ways of knowing and loving through states of awareness
in which God becomes present in inner spiritual acts, not as an object
to be grasped, but as the direct and transforming centre of ones life.
Rahners understanding of the dynamism of human consciousness
also grounds his transposed and contemporary mystical theology.46 His
cognitional theory distinguishes between intentionality, which makes
objects present to us, and consciousness, which makes us present to
ourselves and to God. Whatever is known or loved as finite and
particular (categorical) is known and loved against the transcendental
horizon of holy Mystery, like a distant ship viewed against the sky. In
Rahners view,
particularized knowledge is implicitly based on the unthematic
awareness one also has of Being simpliciter, which includes an
awarenesshowever inarticulateof God, spirit, and freedom and
thus of the mystery above us and within us.47

Because of what he calls the unlimited receptivity of the human spirit,

the human person has a dynamic orientation toward participation in
the life of God and an implicit awareness of it.48
Rahner maintains that in knowing or loving any object, the human
spirit concomitantly co-knows and co-loves itself and God, through
its intelligible and loving return-to-self. Knowing or loving anything
particular initiates the luminous presence of the human spirit to itself. This
return-to-self contains a simultaneous awareness of its transcendental
movement beyond anything particular to an infinite horizon within which
all finite realities are known and loved. God, as the graced horizon of all

46

In my view, the best explanation of Rahners mystical theology is found in his article, The Logic of
Concrete Individual Knowledge in Ignatius Loyola, in The Dynamic Element in the Church, translated
by W. J. OHara (New York: Herder and Herder, 1964), 84170.
47
Karl Rahner, Transcendence, in Dictionary of Theology, 509.
48
Rahner, The Logic of Concrete Individual Knowledge in Ignatius Loyola, 144.

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Harvey D. Egan

knowing and loving, is also implicitly co-known and co-loved. Rahner

himself emphasizes that this transcendental dynamism of the human
spirit is the essential foundation of mysticism.49
Rahner insists, too, that ones awareness of the spirits transcendental
movement, with God as the pure and unlimited term of his endless
dynamism, can grow, [and] become more pure and unmixed.50 In mystical
consciousness, the normal object of consciousness becomes increasingly
transparent and may almost entirely disappear. Then, the usually only
implicit transcendental consciousness of God, which is co-present in
every act of self-presence, begins explicitly to dominate consciousness.
Finally, the horizon of all knowledge and love saturates the mystics
consciousness. The overlooked milieu in which normal consciousness
occurs now takes centre stage. Rahner maintains that:
the more intensive and mystical the experience becomes, and the
more a supernatural elevation of transcendence exerts its influence
the clearer it must become that this emergence into awareness
of transcendence and of the term to which it tends, discloses a
transcendence qualitatively different from the merely concomitant
and implicit form.51

Of the numerous figures in the Christian mystical tradition52 who

experienced the qualitative change in consciousness that Rahner describes,
I shall briefly mention only five. Evagrius Ponticus (d.399) talks about a
pure prayer that transcends ones normal consciousness and is granted
only to the most advanced monks. John Cassian (d.c.435) praises the
prayer of fire which is likewise reserved only for an elite few. Isaac the
Syrian (d.c.700) writes of a prayer of no prayer, in which one is engulfed
by the Holy Spirit and ecstatically gazes at the incomprehensible.
Nicholas of Cusa (d.1464) emphasizes a consciousness replete with
learned ignorance, one illuminated from within by Gods knowing within
us. He urges his readers to lift themselves up to God, who is the light of
the human intellect, because in Gods light is all our knowledge, so that
it is not we ourselves who know, but rather it is God who knows in us.53

49

Rahner, Transcendence, 509.

Rahner, The Logic of Concrete Individual Knowledge in Ignatius Loyola, 145.
51
Rahner, The Logic of Concrete Individual Knowledge in Ignatius Loyola, 145146 n. 34 (emphasis
added). Also, Karl Rahner, Experience of Transcendence from the Standpoint of Christian Dogmatics,
in Theological Investigations, volume 18, 173188.
52
See Egan, Soundings in the Christian Mystical Tradition.
53
On Seeking God, in Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings, translated by H. Lawrence Bond
(Mahwah: Paulist, 1997), volume 2, 36, 225.
50

The Mystical Theology of Karl Rahner

57

Ignatius of Loyola (d.1556) stresses

consolation without previous cause.
It is the prerogative of the Creator
alone, he writes, to enter the soul,
depart from it, and cause a motion
that draws the whole person into love
of His Divine Majesty (Exx 330),
which produces a consciousness that
is empty, yet fecund.
One contemporary commentator,
Louis Roy, writes of an objectless
consciousness, yet one that includes
the element of infinite lovingness.54
Bernard McGinn emphasizes, however,
that in God, infinite lovingness is
one with infinite intelligibility and Russian icon of St John Cassian, c.1800
both aspects of Gods reality are made
present in the objectless awareness he also calls meta-consciousness.55
Both scholars dislike the terms pure consciousness and bare
consciousness because, to their way of thinking, mystical consciousness
exhibits the paradox of being an emptiness that is full. In Rahners
view, mystical consciousness is simply one saturated with the human
spirits unrestricted and infinite non-conceptual loving knowledge of God
that destroys the conceptual and the categorical in so far as these
claim to be ultimate realities.56
The Natural Foundation of the Mysticism of the Classical Masters
Rahner departs most radically from the classical masters and classical
mystical theology when he contends that their mysticism differs from
the mysticism of everyday life solely in the area of natural psychology.
He insists that:
mystical experience must not be interpreted as something which
fundamentally transcends and supersedes the supernatural experience
of the Spirit in faith. That is why the specific difference of such

54

Louis Roy, Mystical Consciousness: Western Perspectives and Dialogue with Japanese Thinkers (Albany:
State U. of New York P, 2003), 4648, 50.
55
See Bernard McGinn, Mystical Consciousness: A Modest Proposal, Spiritus, 8 (2008), 52.
56
Rahner, Religious Enthusiasm and the Experience of Grace, 47.

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Harvey D. Egan

experience, as distinct from the Christians normal experience of the

Spirit must belong to mans natural sphere . Psychologically mystical
experiences differ from normal everyday occurrences in consciousness
only in the natural sphere and to that extent are fundamentally
learnable.57

premasagar

To put it more concretely, the specific way in which the classical

mystics experienced God belongs to the persons natural capacity for
concentration, contemplation, meditation, submersion into the self,
self-emptying and other psychomental techniques often associated with
Eastern mysticisms.58 In Rahners view, even normal Christians, in
certain circumstances, can learn meditative-contemplative psychosomatic

57

Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology, 95 (emphasis added). Although Evelyn Underhill would
disagree with Rahner on this point, she did stress that the classical mystics possessed a tenacious and
even heroic psychological makeup, a nature capable of extraordinary concentration, in order to endure
the great psychological storms that accompany mystical ascent. See Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A
Study in the Nature and Development of Mans Spiritual Consciousness (New York: New American,
1974), 9092. The Cloud of Unknowing, chapter 21, and The Book of Privy Counseling, chapter 17, in
The Cloud of Unknowing and the Book of Privy Counseling, edited by William Johnston (Garden City:
Doubleday-Image, 1976), St John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2. 13, and The Dark Night of
the Soul, 1.9, in The Collected Works of St John of the Cross, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio
Rodriguez (Washington: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1991), and St Teresa of Avila, The Book of
Her Life, chapter 23, in The Collected Works of St Teresa of Avila, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and
Otilio Rodriguez (Washington: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1976), also underline that God alone
can cause these mystical experiences and states. Rahner, therefore, contradicts the views of two
Doctors of the Church.
58
Brief von P. Karl Rahner, 406.

The Mystical Theology of Karl Rahner

59

techniques that may enable them to sink more deeply into the self in
order to experience God in a purer, clearer and more intense manner.59
The mysticism of classical masters, therefore, results from an unusual
though naturalpsychological way of experiencing God in faith, hope
and love. Furthermore, it is just one variety of the experience of the
Spirit offered to everyone, even to non-Christians.60 However, Rahner
underlines that,
meditation and similar spiritual exercises are not thereby
deprecated. For example, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the
thirsty, clothing the naked, and the likethough natural acts in
themselvescan be of extreme significance for salvation.61

The same can be said of natural meditative, contemplative and other

psychomental techniques. One might also claim that the classical mystic
is a salient example of one who has explicitly accepted Gods selfcommunication to an existentially intense degree.62
Rahners View of the Relationship between Mysticism and Holiness
One of the most disputed and long-standing questions among the older
schools of spirituality centres on the precise relationship between
mysticism, understood classically as infused contemplation, and holiness.63
Is infused contemplation absolutely necessary in order to attain the
holiness enjoined by the gospel, becoming perfect as your heavenly
Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48)? The older mystical theologians normally
divide into two camps: those who maintain that only someone graced
with infused contemplation can attain holiness64 and those who contend
that there are other ways to holiness than infused contemplation.65

59

For a similar approach, see Mark McIntosh, Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology
(Malden: Blackwell, 1999).
60
Rahner, Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology, 94.
61
Brief von P. Karl Rahner, 406.
62
Rahner, Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology, 96.
63
For a good overview of this issue, see E. Lamballe, Mystical Contemplation, translated by W. H.
Mitchell (London: R. and T. Washbourne, 1913).
64
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange writes: There are not two unitive ways. There is only one. And, the
full perfection of charity in this life cannot exist without mystical contemplation. See Garrigou-Lagrange,
Christian Perfection, 60, 175, 2344, 162. For another proponent, see Antonio Royo and Jordan Aumann,
The Theology of Christian Perfection (Dubuque: Priory, 1962), 178196.
65
Jean Vincent Bainvel, for example, insists that there are very perfect persons to whom our Lord
never gives such delights . Not all the perfect are raised to perfect contemplation . Many perfect
men and women are canonized by the Church without there being in the process the slightest mention
of infused contemplation. (Introduction to the Tenth Edition, lxxiv) Hans Urs von Balthasar (Von

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Harvey D. Egan

Despite flagging interest in this issue in his time, Rahner still asks,
whether infused contemplation is a normal stage in the Christian
road to heroic holiness, or whether it is an unusual gift with which
not all saints are favored. One can ask further how mysticism and
faith relate to one another.66

He also cautiously writes that the New Testament does not give
explicit expression to such an orientation towards mysticism.67
Rahner transposes this question by appealing not to theology but
to what he calls an appropriate psychology.68 If this psychology were to
show that we cannot surrender with our entire being to the mystery
that we call God without suspension of the faculties, concentration,
infused contemplation, meditation, submersion into the self, self-emptying
and other psychomental techniques, then mysticism and holiness are
intrinsically linked. Furthermore, if the appropriate psychology can show
that such factors are necessarily part of a personal maturing process, even
if they are not always technically cultivated or reflected upon, then mysticism
is indeed necessary for holiness.69 If, on the other hand, psychology can
establish that not every personal and Christian maturing process
requires such natural phenomena, even though these may possibly be
a useful auxiliary,70 then mysticism is not a necessary aspect of every
Christian life.
My more than fifty years of reading the Christian mystical classics
and forty years of personal experience with people of varying degrees of
spirituality lead me to agree with Rahner that there is a mysticism of
everyday life, wherein Gods silent, mysterious action causes for many,
through their fidelity to the demands of daily life, not only the dreadful
dark nights described so vividly by the classical masters, but also oases
of spiritual joy and peacebut in a more anonymous way than that

Balthasar Reader, 342) pointedly writes that the counterpart of the Oriental yogi or Zen master who
has attained the peak of human capability is not the Christian mystic, but the Christian saint, whether
mystic or not. William Thompson-Uberuaga casts the issue differently when he writes: Unless one
eliminates the one thing necessary for authentic mysticism in the judgment of most of the mystics,
namely love, cannot any saint be a mystic? Perhaps the words mystic and saint highlight specific
features of one and the same reality ? Thompson concedes that to distinguish between saint and
mystic is not to separate them (Listening to Gods Whispers, America [2027 June 2011], 2425).
66
Brief von P. Karl Rahner, 405406 (unpublished English translation by Daniel Donovan).
67
Rahner, Reflections on the Problem of the Gradual Ascent to Christian Perfection, 22 (emphasis added).
68
Rahner, Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology, 9798.
69
Rahner, Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology, 98 (emphasis added).
70
Rahner, Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology, 98.

The Mystical Theology of Karl Rahner

61

described by the classical masters. However, for the vast majority of

persons, even those who have walked some distance with the classical
masters on the mystical path, perfect union with God is eschatological,
to be reached only by passing through the dark night of the senses and of
the spiritwhich is death itselfand consummated through a purgatorial
and transforming encounter with the spiritual fire, who is Christ
himself, the Judge and Savior.71
That most Christians do not become mystics in the strict sense is
obvious to Rahner.72 He thus rejects any elitist interpretation of life
which can see a persons perfection only in the trained mystic.73 He
insists that the New Testament,
awards to all who love their neighbor unselfishly and therein
experience God that final salvation in Gods judgment which is not
surpassed even by the highest ascent or the deepest absorption of
the mystic.74

Any other understanding of Christian life, in his view, would undoubtedly

be either Gnosticism or theosophy and either an overestimation of
mysticism or else a fundamental underestimation of the real depth of
the ordinary Christian life of grace.75 For this reason, I have called
Rahner a mystic of everyday life.76
Although Rahner died in 1984, I maintain that his mystical theology,
albeit incomplete, has yet to be surpassed.77 Through his mystagogical,
theopoetical use of the great saints and mystics as theological sources
he has, to a large extent, bridged the gap between theology and vital
spirituality. His ability to link the mysticism of everyday life, the
mysticism of the masses and the mysticism of the classical masters to
the transcendental experience of grace that haunts every human heart
71

See encyclical letter of Benedict XVI, Saved in Hope: Spe Salvi (Boston: Pauline Books and
Media, 2007), nn. 4647, 5354.
72
Rahner, Reflections on the Problem of the Gradual Ascent to Christian Perfection, 22.
73
Rahner, Experience of Transcendence, 175 (emphasis added).
74
Rahner, Experience of the Holy Spirit, 208.
75
Rahner, Mysticism, 10101011.
76
Egan, Karl Rahner: Mystic of Everyday Life.
77
An adequate, contemporary mystical theology awaits an extraordinary scholar who is capable of
assimilating Bernard McGinns monumental volumes, including those to come, on the history of the
Christian mystical tradition and of transposing the historical data through the cognitional theory of
Bernard Lonergan. See Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism,
5 volumes to date (New York: Crossroad, 19912012), and Harvey D. Egan, Bernard Lonergan,
Soundings in the Christian Mystical Tradition, 345349.

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Harvey D. Egan

makes him truly the outstanding mystical theologian of the twentieth

century. Convinced that there is nothing profane in the depths of
ordinary life, Rahner challenges everyone to look more closely at what is
actually therealthough, all too often, only anonymously or repressed.
Whenever there is a radical self-surrender, an absolute yielding of
everything, a surrender to the Mystery that embraces all lifethere is
the Spirit of the crucified and risen Christ, the source of all mysticism.

Harvey D. Egan SJ received his doctorate in theology in 1973 under the direction of
Karl Rahner from Westflische Wilhelms-Universitt in Mnster. Having taught
at the College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, Massachusetts) and the University of
Santa Clara (California), he is currently professor emeritus at Boston College, where
he taught for 35 years. His books include Soundings in the Christian Mystical
Tradition, An Anthology of Christian Mysticism, Karl Rahner: Mystic of Everyday Life,
Christian Mysticism: The Future of a Tradition and Ignatius Loyola the Mystic. He is
well known for his studies on Christian mysticism and for his writings on the
thought of Karl Rahner and translations of Rahners works.