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The most important way of responding to the question, “what is God?” is of course to say that, essentially, God is mystery. For many believers, the term “mystery” is resonant with the depth, future, freedom, beauty, and truth to which I have pointed in this book. And undoubtedly, for many such individuals, the term “mystery” is more religiously appropriate than any of the five notions that I have used. Rudolf Otto considered mysterium to be the very essence of the sacred and theological reflection may no more casually abandon use of the term “mystery” than the word “God.”55 The notion of mystery is indispensable to our discourse about the divine.

Therefore, we must come back to this word “mystery” at the end of our obviously unsatisfactory attempts to verbalize the “whatness” of God. To say that God is ultimately mystery is the final word in any proper thinking about the divine. Recourse to the notion of “mystery” is essential in order to accentuate the utter inadequacy of any thoughts we may formulate about God. And it is also necessary to evoke in us a cognitive “feeling” of the inexhaustibility we have pointed to by way of our five metaphors.

None of the five notions I have employed can be substituted for that of mystery. My objective in resorting provisionally to them has been simply to provide several avenues leading up to the idea of mystery as the most appropriate designation for the divine. In the esoteric language of theology, it might be said that my purpose in writing this little book has been to provide a simple “mystagogy,” that is, an “introduction to mystery.”56 We live in an age and culture in which there reigns an “eclipse of mystery.” And the difficulty people have in connecting their experience with the word “God” is, for the most part, a consequence of the lack of a sense of mystery in their lives. Mystagogy would not be necessary if we could presume that people were universally in touch with the encompassing horizon of mystery in their lives and in the world around them. Books on the problem of God would not be so abundant if mystery were self-evident in our cultural experience. For ultimately, “God” means mystery, and the prevalence of a sense of mystery would render books like this one superfluous.

Unfortunately, the dimension of mystery, though never absent from the experience of any of us, has been lost sight of by our theoretical consciousness. It still hovers around the fringes of our spontaneous involvements in life, in our relations to nature, other persons, and ourselves. And it is intimated in the symbols and stories that inform our consciousness. But in a world where the mastering methods and techniques of science have become so dominant, the cognitive surrender that a sense of mystery requires of us has often been subordinated to an “epistemology of control.”57 That is, the handing of ourselves over to mystery has become almost impossible whenever knowledge has been understood in terms of power. Confrontation with the uncontrollable domain of mystery often leaves us feeling insecure, restless, and even hostile. So we strive to suppress the unmanageable horizon of mystery and vanquish the need for any surrender of self to it.

In the face of this eclipse of mystery, the very possibility of speaking meaningfully about God has likewise diminished, even to the point of almost vanishing. And yet mystery cannot be completely suppressed. It still functions as the silent horizon that makes all of our experience and knowledge possible in the first place. In its humility and unobtrusiveness, it refuses to force itself upon us, but nonetheless it graciously undergirds our existence and understanding without making itself obvious. We go through the course of our lives enabled by the horizon of mystery to think, inquire, adventure, and discover, but we seldom become explicitly aware of its encompassing presence-in-absence or extend our gratitude to it for giving us the free space in which to live our lives. My objective in the preceding has been to render this dimension of mystery somewhat more obvious by leading up to it with alternative names. But because of its highly theoretical nature, such an approximation still leaves us only at the doorway of mystery. Only the actual living of our lives—and not the mere reading of a book—can lead us into the realm of mystery. The most that any book like this can do is merely point the reader in a certain direction. It cannot substitute for experience itself.

A theoretical introduction to mystery may not be a necessity to many people for whom the term already possesses a symbolic power sufficiently expansive enough to open up to them the ultimate horizon of their existence. But for countless others, the term “mystery,” like the words “God” and “sacred,” has also lost its power and meaning, or it has become so trivialized by common usage that it no longer evokes in them any deep sense of the inexhaustible depths of reality. For some, the notion of mystery has even become altogether empty. For that reason, it is essential today to provide a sort of pedagogy to mystery. I do not in any way consider my own attempts adequate, and I have presented them only as starting points for introducing some small part of what is designated theologically by the notion of divine mystery. At this point, then, it may be well to speak a bit more directly about the word “mystery” as such, if indeed this term is finally the most suitable one we can use in thinking of God.

Mystery and Problem

The term “mystery” is often misunderstood simply as a gap in our knowledge, a temporary hiatus that might possibly be closed as scientific consciousness advances further. According to this narrow view, as our intellectual mastery of the world progresses, we will find answers to the “mysteries” which remain in principle answerable but in fact are unanswered at the present. Thus the realm of “mystery” will allegedly be gradually diminished and “knowledge” will take its place. As noted psychologist B. F. Skinner has put it, the objective of science is to eliminate mystery.58

When “mystery” is understood in this fashion, namely as a gap to be replaced by scientific knowledge, it is little wonder that the word no longer functions to evoke a religious sense of the tremendum et fascinans. For in this case, “mystery” is merely a vacuum that begs to be filled with our intellectual achievements and not an ineffable depth summoning us to surrender ourselves completely to it. If such is the meaning of mystery, then it is hardly adequate as a term for the divine.

But the gaps in our present understanding and knowledge would better be called problems than mysteries.59 “Problem” points to an area of ignorance that is eventually able to be solved by the application of human ingenuity. Perhaps at the present time, a “problem” remains unsolved and even unsolvable by the devices at our disposal, but it should not be called a mystery, for it is at least open to some sort of future solution. For example, a science that connects gravitational, electro-magnetic, and other forces into a unified field theory is at present unavailable. But since such a science will probably emerge at some future time it is better to call this quandary a problem rather than a mystery. A problem is in principle open to a scientific, logical, or technological solution. It is somehow under our human control and can be mastered by our intellectual or technological powers.

Mystery, on the other hand, denotes a region of reality that, instead of growing smaller as we grow wiser and more powerful, can actually be experienced as growing larger and more incomprehensible as we solve more of our scientific and other problems. It is the region of the “known unknown,” the horizon that keeps expanding and receding into the distance the more our knowledge advances. It is the arena of the incomprehensible and unspeakable that makes us aware of our ignorance, of how much more there yet remains to be known. No one to date has shown Socrates to be wrong in his insistence that we are truly wise only when we are aware of the abysmal poverty of our present cognitional achievements. Such an awareness of the lowliness of our knowledge is possible, though, only if we have already been made aware of the inexhaustibility of the yet-to-be-known—that is, of mystery. It is wise for us to emphasize that this state of “learned ignorance” (docta ignorantia) is possible only to those whose horizons have expanded beyond the ordinary; in other words, to those who have begun to taste the mysteriousness of reality.

Mystery, in contrast to problems, is incapable of any “solution.” Whereas problems can be solved and thus gotten out of the way, mystery becomes more prominent the deeper our questions go and the surer our answers become. Mystery appears to consciousness at the “limit” of our ordinary problem-oriented questions. It reveals itself decisively at the point where we seriously ask what may be called “limit-questions,” questions that lie at the “boundary” of our ordinary problem-solving consciousness.60 For example, while science is dominated by problems for which some resolution or definitive answer is expected, the scientist might find himself or herself eventually asking: Why should I do science at all? Why search for intelligibility in the universe? Is the universe completely intelligible, as scientific questioning seems to take for granted? At this point, the scientist has reached the limit of the problem and has asked a kind of question that explicitly opens up the horizon of mystery. This type may be called limit-questioning since it does not fall within but rather only at the boundary of ordinary scientific inquiry.

Naming the Mystery

The question remains, however, why we may call this mystery by the name “God.” Is it not sufficient that we simply have a vivid sense of the horizon of mystery? And is it essential that we give it any specific name? I think that in the case of some of us, because of the psychologically unhealthy images evoked by the word “God,” it may be better not to use this word at all. There are individuals for whom the word “God” may actually stand in the way of a healthy sense of mystery. However, I would suggest that this is due less to the term itself than to a faulty religious education or trivialization through its usage in self-justifying political and ecclesiastical discourse. When the word has been so misshapen, it is better to abandon it—at least until such time as its usage once again opens us to a sense of mystery.

On the other hand, the word “God” is irreplaceable in theistic religion, and it cannot be dropped completely from our Western vocabulary for naming the mysterious dimension of our existence. Furthermore, the word “God,” if it is understood according to the symbolic and narrative way in which it originally came into religious consciousness, specifies and adds an element of meaning to the notion of mystery that the latter term itself may not immediately suggest. We may call this added dimension of significance simply the “graciousness” of mystery. It is in order to accentuate the gracious, self-giving nature of mystery that we use the term “God” in referring to it.61

We might say that there are only two major “truths” that a genuine religious sense requires from us.62 All other “doctrines” of religion are derivatives of these two truths; if we keep this in mind, religion will not have to be as cumbersome or complicated an affair as it sometimes seems to be. The first of these truths, as I have been trying to show, is simply that our lives are embraced by mystery. The second major truth is that this mystery is gracious. All religions try to give their devotees some sense of mystery, and this fact alone should be sufficient to establish a sense of community and solidarity among all the various religious traditions today, especially in the face of the contemporary suppression of mystery by cultures built on the ideal of domination. The graciousness of mystery is also enunciated by all the religious traditions, in markedly diverse ways of course, but with a sense of unanimity that mystery is trustworthy and that our fulfillment lies only in a surrender to it. One of the most explicit formulations of the graciousness of mystery is the one which maintains that the mystery gives itself away completely, in self-emptying love, to the world which it embraces.63 It is especially because of this graciousness that we may call the mystery by the name “God.”

From these two propositions—that we are circumscribed by mystery and that this mystery, referred to as God, gives itself completely to us—can be derived all the other important ideas of religion. Religion has been made entirely too complicated and forbidding at times and, in the morass of doctrines and practices that it inevitably generates, its two foundational insights may easily be lost sight of. Obviously, the sense of mystery and its graciousness have to be mediated in particular forms of speech, narrative, and activity corresponding to different cultural and historical habits of thought. So we must be tolerant of the diversity of religions and not seek the monotony of a homogeneous, all-encompassing religious format. But amidst the diversity of religious ideas and practices, it is helpful to keep before us their common grounding in an appreciation of mystery and its gracious intimacy with the universe. Seeing through the jungle of concrete religious life to these two central tenets of religion should prevent us from making hasty condemnations of others’ religious ideas and practices. For beneath their apparent peculiarity and needless extravagance, there may lie a deep and simple sense of mystery and its goodness.

At the same time, however, our keeping the two “truths” constantly before us provides us with criteria to evaluate and criticize the actual religious lives of others and ourselves. For there is no doubt that religious traditions which have their origin in a decisive encounter with mystery and its graciousness can themselves deviate from their founding insights and end up participating in the eclipse of mystery. Religions can become entangled in the pursuit of domination or the legitimation of oppression and thus themselves become an obstacle to the sense of liberating mystery. Hence they should constantly be evaluated in accordance with the criteria of mystery and its graciousness.

It should not be either embarrassing or surprising to us that the human experience of the nearness and graciousness of mystery would often come to expression in a religious language heavily loaded with personalistic imagery. Although the mystery is not exhausted by its representation as a “person,” the disclosure of its intimacy to human subjects endowed with intelligence, will, and feelings could scarcely be possible unless it were itself presented to them as having analogously personal attributes. It is doubtful that something less than personal could inspire us deeply to trust and surrender. To persons the mystery must at least be personal itself. It is difficult to find precise language with which to interpret the relationship of divine personality to divine mystery. Is the mystery really personal, or is personality merely one of the projective ways in which we creatively go out to meet the mystery that summons us toward itself? We have already admitted that our religions are inevitably imaginative, projective, and that there is always some level of illusion in our actual religious consciousness, owing to the infantilism of desire that we can never completely eradicate. Is the propensity to think of God as personal still perhaps more a manifestation of our immaturity than a realistic appreciation of the inexhaustible mystery of reality?

Without denying that our images of a personal God always have a projective aspect to them or that these images do not exhaustively represent the mystery of our lives, we may still view “divine personality” as an indispensable symbol of the proximity to us of mystery. All of our language about this mystery necessarily has a symbolic character. Because of mystery’s unavailability, we cannot discuss it directly or literally. We tend to speak of it, if we speak of it at all, in terms of those places and events where it breaks through to us most decisively and intensely. For most of us, the most intense disclosure of mystery probably occurs in our encounter with other persons. The child’s earliest encounter with mother and father, for example, is an experience of such overwhelming “numinosity” that it remains a permanent layer of all of our involvements. And the meeting with a truly accepting and caring person is often the occasion for our experiencing the depth and graciousness of life’s mystery in a decisive way. The human face itself has often been experienced as deeply mysterious, as causing us to turn away in fear or as attracting us with its enchanting power. Human personality is often the occasion for our experiencing the mysterium tremendum et fascinans.

Inasmuch as human personality is especially transparent to the horizon of mystery and its graciousness, it is not surprising, then, that personalist imagery would cling to our discourse about God. Since we often perceive the mystery most clearly as it shines through the lives of other persons, we can never completely separate our experience of God from the experience of personality. To do so would again be an unnecessary reduction of the mystery. The freedom and unmanipulability of other persons gives us a sense of the unavailability of the mystery that is their depth. To remove the personal face of mystery is to lose access to it. Through the medium of personality, the depth of reality is “revealed” in such a complete way that we must speak of God as personal. God is the depth and ground of all personality.64

54. The following text is an excerpt. Previously published in Haught, What is God?, 115–131. Reprinted with permission.

55. See Otto, Idea of the Holy.

56. See Bacik, Apologetics, 3–64.

57. See Smith, Beyond the Post-Modern Mind, 83, 88, 114, and 134–35.

58. Skinner, Beyond Freedom, 54.

59. On the distinction between problem and mystery, see Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having, 117.

60. Haught’s discussion of limit questions was especially influenced by Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order, 91–118. The original notion of “limiting questions” comes from the philosopher Stephen Toulmin, Examination, 202–21.

61. See Rahner, Theological Investigations, 67–73.

62. Rahner speaks of three central mysteries in Christian faith. Speaking of religion in a general sense, Haught believes it is consistent with Rahner’s thought to only speak of two.

63. See Rahner, Theological Investigations, 67–73.

64. This formulation is, of course, a Tillichian one.