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Spirituality, ascetical and mystical theology

What is spirituality, ascetical and mystical theology?

Spirituality, ascetical and mystical theology is the study of the Christian inner life: personal and communal prayer outside public worship, and the traditions that teach it. Older Catholic manuals called it ascetical and mystical theology, the theory and practice of Christian perfection and of the contemplative life. Since the late twentieth century spirituality has also been an academic discipline.

  • 92Sources
  • 14Traditions
  • 16Dated entries
  • 15Minutes

Study v1.1, 5 November 2026

Spirituality, ascetical and mystical theology

At a glance

Why it matters for reading Scripture

Prayer and the inner life: growing in faith, not only learning about it.

What the study found

Rooted in Jewish Scripture, Jesus's prayer and Paul's life in the Spirit, Christian prayer developed through desert, Syriac, Ethiopian, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal and African traditions; most share the Lord's Prayer.

Where traditions divide

They divide on how experience and claimed revelation relate to Scripture and church authority, on contemplative methods, on invoking Mary and the saints, on charismatic gifts today, and on asceticism.

How the traditions compare

  • Roman Catholic Church

    Holds that spiritual progress tends toward ever more intimate union with Christ, to which God calls everyone, and that the way of perfection passes by the Cross, with renunciation, ascesis and mortification.

    Prayer must be learned, and the Catechism recognizes different schools of spirituality sharing in the one tradition of prayer. Private revelations do not belong to the deposit of faith, and under the 2024 norms the faithful are not obliged to believe even a phenomenon given a nihil obstat. The saints can be asked to intercede, the rosary contemplates Christ with Mary, and the 1989 letter Orationis formas allows some elements of Eastern methods while warning against techniques. It values mystical writers as teachers of the Church and has named some of them Doctors, among them Hildegard of Bingen in 2012 and Thérèse of Lisieux in 1997.

    Sources1–9

  • Eastern Orthodox Church

    Does not usually separate the field from theology: hesychasm, the prayer of the heart in stillness, was defended by Gregory Palamas and upheld by councils at Constantinople in 1341 and 1351, so that hesychast experience became conciliar teaching.

    The Philokalia is the nearest equivalent to a manual, and theosis names the goal. The elder (starets) guides discernment, and the more intensive forms of the Jesus Prayer have been taught under an elder's guidance; ordinary, brief use of the prayer does not require one. Fasting serves self-mastery and attention to the Kingdom and is not a means of earning forgiveness. Icons are honored, with adoration reserved to God alone, as the Second Council of Nicaea (787) taught.

    Sources10–16

  • Oriental Orthodox churches and the Church of the East

    Pray through their own books of hours: the Coptic Orthodox Agpeya, whose seven canonical hours each open with the Lord's Prayer and Psalm 50 (51 in the Hebrew numbering), the Syriac Orthodox Shhimo and the Khudra of the Assyrian Church of the East.

    Armenian Christians pray the Book of Lamentations of Gregory of Narek, written in 1003. This daily prayer is ecclesial and psalm-based, not only the devotion of individual teachers. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church reads the Weddase Maryam, the "Praises of Mary", in its order of prayer, and Isaac of Nineveh, a bishop of the Church of the East, is honored across the Church of the East, Orthodox and Catholic traditions.

    Sources17–24

  • Lutheran

    Roots prayer in the catechism and in Scripture: Martin Luther's A Simple Way to Pray (1535) prays through the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Creed, treating each commandment as instruction, thanksgiving, confession and prayer.

    The Augsburg Confession keeps the memory of the saints as examples of faith but rejects their invocation and names Christ as the one mediator. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's common life of prayer, Scripture meditation and confession at Finkenwalde shows a Lutheran theologian adopting a disciplined common life of prayer.

    Sources25–27

  • Reformed

    John Calvin calls prayer "a perpetual exercise of faith" and gives four rules: reverence, a real sense of need, humility that sets aside any claim to merit, and confident hope.

    The Westminster Confession holds that nothing is to be added to Scripture "by new revelations of the Spirit", while affirming that the Spirit's inward illumination is needed to understand it, and directs worship to God alone, not to "angels, saints, or any other creature". Its statement that the former ways of revelation have ceased concerns completed revelation; it does not mean that every Reformed church today rejects every charismatic manifestation. Reformed piety included daily household prayer under the Directory for Family Worship (1647), and the Puritans practiced private meditation, as in Richard Baxter and John Owen; Jonathan Edwards's Religious Affections set careful tests for genuine experience.

    Sources28–33

  • Anglican

    The Caroline divines of the seventeenth century joined the Book of Common Prayer to private devotion, and Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living gave practical rules and model prayers.

    The Thirty-Nine Articles hold that Scripture "containeth all things necessary to salvation" and call the invocation of saints "a fond thing vainly invented". The Articles are the formulary; living Anglican practice differs between Anglo-Catholic, evangelical, charismatic and contemplative streams.

    Sources34–35

  • Methodist

    John Wesley defined Christian perfection as "purity of intention, dedicating all the life to God".

    Methodist spirituality is carried by the means of grace: works of piety, individual and communal, including fasting and "Christian conferencing", and works of mercy, all counted as disciplines of the Christian life, not optional extras. The holiness movements that grew from Wesleyan teaching fed into early Pentecostalism.

    Sources36–37

  • Baptists and the free churches

    Pray chiefly in their own words rather than set forms, in personal devotion, family prayer and the congregational prayer meeting.

    John Bunyan, a Baptist preacher imprisoned for unlicensed preaching, wrote The Pilgrim's Progress, which became the most widely read Protestant devotional book.

    Sources38

  • Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

    Gives silence a central place: Britain Yearly Meeting's Quaker faith and practice says Friends "highly prize silent waiting upon the Lord", that the waiting and listening engage everybody, and that ministry "comes through us, not from us".

    Its silence is communal and expectant, not a technique for emptying the mind, and its silent worship does not use set forms.

    Sources39

  • Pentecostal and charismatic

    Expects God to speak and act today, under the authority of Scripture, and does not understand prophecy as adding to the canon; tongues, prophecy and prayer for healing are, for hundreds of millions of Christians, ordinary forms of prayer.

    Pew's 2006 survey of ten countries found large majorities of Pentecostals in every country who said they had experienced or witnessed divine healing, from 56 percent in South Korea to 87 percent in Kenya, while in six countries more than four in ten said they never speak or pray in tongues. Practice varies widely within the movement.

    Sources40

  • William James's four marks

    William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), proposed four marks of mystical states: ineffability, a noetic quality, transiency and passivity.

    He treated such states as possibly "windows through which the mind looks out upon a more extensive and inclusive world", while holding that usefulness does not prove truth.

    Sources41

  • Perennialism

    Holds that a common core lies beneath the mystical traditions of different religions.

    Twentieth-century perennialists claimed a common core of esoteric doctrine; "new perennialists" who claim a common core of experience are better called essentialists. Robert Forman answered the constructivists with "pure consciousness events", contentless awareness reported across traditions, which critics say may be idealized reports.

    Sources42

  • Constructivism

    Begun by Steven Katz in 1978, holds in its strong form that a mystic's concepts and tradition "over-determine" the experience, so that there is no shared, unmediated core; in its moderate form, experience is shaped by culture but still has its own content.

    Wayne Proudfoot distinguished an experience from the event it interprets, and Ann Taves's "attribution" approach holds that experiences become religious when people deem them so.

    Sources42

  • Bernard McGinn's "presence of God"

    Sets the debate about experience aside for the historian: McGinn confines his history to mystical texts in their social and church setting, since the inner experience is not open to the historian, and organizes it around the presence of God.

    The mystical, on this account, is "the dynamic power that drives the religious mind toward the experienced presence of God", without necessarily reaching full union.

    Sources43

How the field developed

  1. Late antiquity
    346 to 399

    Evagrius of Pontus writes in the Egyptian desert on contemplative prayer and on eight principal vices. Through John Cassian he shapes Latin monasticism, and through Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus the Confessor the Greek East, though his teachings are condemned as Origenist in 553.44

  2. Late antiquity
    c. 485 to 528

    Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, active in these years, gives the West the term mystical theology; his Mystical Theology describes the soul's ascent into a divine darkness beyond knowing.45

  3. Late antiquity
    6th century

    The Rule of Benedict takes its seven daytime offices and a night office from Psalm 119 and divides the day between manual work and reading, the reading from which lectio divina grew. It shapes Western monastic prayer for fifteen centuries.464748

  4. Medieval
    1310 to 1329

    Marguerite Porete, author of The Mirror of Simple Souls, is burned in Paris on 1 June 1310 as a relapsed heretic, and the Council of Vienne (1312) condemns errors attributed to beguines. The bull In agro dominico of 27 March 1329 condemns twenty-eight articles drawn from the works of Meister Eckhart, who had submitted to the church's judgment and was never declared a heretic.495051

  5. Medieval
    1338 to 1351

    Gregory Palamas answers Barlaam in the Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts (1338). A council at Constantinople in 1341 accepts his teaching that God, unknowable in his essence, reveals himself through his energies, and the Council of Blachernae upholds it in 1351.10

  6. Medieval
    1373

    Julian of Norwich, gravely ill in May 1373, traditionally dated 13 May, receives sixteen revelations whose central theme is God's love. She lives as an anchoress at St Julian's church in Norwich and leaves a short and a long text.5253

  7. Reformation
    1535

    Martin Luther writes A Simple Way to Pray for his barber, Peter Beskendorf, teaching him to pray through the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Creed.25

  8. Reformation
    24 August 1647

    The Church of Scotland approves the Directory for Family Worship, which requires heads of households to lead daily family prayer, praise, Scripture reading and catechizing.30

  9. Modern
    1675

    Philipp Jakob Spener sets out the program of German Pietism in Pia Desideria and gathers collegia pietatis, small groups for Bible study and prayer.54

  10. Modern
    1782

    The Philokalia, compiled by Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and Macarius of Corinth, is published in Venice as one folio volume of 1,206 pages, gathering ascetic texts on prayer from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries.1155

  11. Modern
    1881

    The Way of a Pilgrim, an anonymous Russian narrative of a pilgrim taught the Jesus Prayer by a starets, is first published; an edition edited by Theophan the Recluse follows in 1884.5614

  12. Modern
    1902

    William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience proposes four marks of mystical states and becomes the founding text that spirituality and the psychology of religion share.5741

  13. Modern
    1911

    Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism appears and is the most influential English study of the subject for half a century.58

  14. Modern
    1989

    Sandra Schneiders writes in Theological Studies that the academy is witnessing the birth of a new discipline. On 15 October the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's letter Orationis formas allows some elements of Eastern methods but warns against techniques and pseudo-mysticism.597

  15. Modern
    2002

    John Paul II proposes five Luminous Mysteries of the rosary, from Christ's public ministry, leaving their use to the freedom of individuals and communities.6

  16. Modern
    2024

    The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issues new norms for discerning alleged supernatural phenomena, effective 19 May, with six possible conclusions from nihil obstat to a declaration that a phenomenon is not supernatural. On 9 November Pope Francis announces the inclusion of Isaac of Nineveh in the Roman Martyrology.524

How to study spirituality, ascetical and mystical theology

The questions it asks

  • What does the word spirituality name: a dimension of the person, the lived experience that actualizes it, or the academic discipline that studies that experience?59
  • Is spirituality a part of systematic theology, or an interdisciplinary field in which theology is one partner among history, biblical studies and the human sciences?
  • Is mysticism a type of experience, a type of text or a strand of tradition, and which comes first?
  • Is there a common core beneath the mystical traditions of different religions, or does each tradition shape the experience itself?42
  • How do the purgative, illuminative and unitive ways relate: as stages, or as parallel paths?60
  • How is claimed experience discerned, and what authority does it carry?429

Its method

Start

  1. Distinguish the three senses of spirituality, and use the academic sense to organize the other two59.

  2. Begin from Scripture, the common root: the Psalms, Jesus at prayer, the Lord's Prayer and Paul's prayer in the Spirit, with Jewish prayer as the setting in which Jesus prayed6162636465.

  3. Set out each school with its dates, key texts and teachers, since schools form around teachers and texts48112539.

  4. Describe each practice: where it comes from, how it is done, who uses it and who objects.

  5. Work across disciplines, with theology one partner among history, biblical studies and the human sciences59.

  6. Read mystical writers as texts in their social and church setting, since the inner experience is not open to the historian43.

  7. Use the psychology of religion, which studies the same experiences by experimental, correlational, qualitative and clinical methods, while remembering that it can describe and measure experience but cannot by its method say whether God is its object66.

  8. Report what traditions teach and practice, and how scholars study them, without deciding which tradition is right.

What to read

Its primary witnesses

  • Scripture: the Psalms, Jesus at prayer, the Lord's Prayer and Paul on prayer in the Spirit67626163.
  • Desert and early monastic texts: Athanasius's Life of Antony and John Cassian's Conferences686970.
  • The Rule of Benedict4847.
  • Eastern texts: the Philokalia and The Way of a Pilgrim1114.
  • The books of hours of the Oriental Orthodox churches and the Church of the East: the Agpeya, the Shhimo, the Khudra and Gregory of Narek's Book of Lamentations17181920.
  • The Ethiopian Orthodox Weddase Maryam and Arganona Dengel21.
  • Western medieval writers: Bernard of Clairvaux's On Loving God, Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, The Cloud of Unknowing and Thomas à Kempis's The Imitation of Christ71537273.
  • The Catholic Reformation: Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, Teresa of Ávila's Interior Castle and John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul747576.
  • Protestant classics: Luther's A Simple Way to Pray, Calvin's Institutes III.20, Baxter's The Saints' Everlasting Rest, Wesley's A Plain Account of Christian Perfection and Edwards's Religious Affections2528313633.
  • Britain Yearly Meeting's Quaker faith and practice39.
  • Confessions and church teaching: the Westminster Confession, the Augsburg Confession, the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Catechism of the Catholic Church29263577.
  • Surveys of present practice: Pew's ten-country survey of Pentecostals (2006) and its survey of Black Americans (2021)4078.

Standard reference works

  • Philip Sheldrake's Spirituality: A Brief History (second edition, 2013), the standard one-volume survey7980.
  • Bernard McGinn's The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, beginning with The Foundations of Mysticism (1991)43.
  • Adolphe Tanquerey's The Spiritual Life (preface dated 1923; English translation 1930), the classic manual of ascetical and mystical theology8160.
  • Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism (1911)58.
  • William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)57.
  • Sandra M. Schneiders, "Spirituality in the Academy", Theological Studies (1989)59.
  • The Catechism of the Catholic Church on prayer772.
  • Jerome Gellman's "Mysticism" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy42.
  • Harold Koenig's Handbook of Religion and Health, now in a second edition, the standard compendium on religion and health82.
  • The journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, published by the American Psychological Association's Division 3666.

Scholarship referenced in this study

The works below shaped the field and are cited in this study, from the earliest to the most recent. Hover over a book, or select it, to see its author and the sources behind it.

  • 1003Book of LamentationsGregory of NarekBook of Lamentations (1003)Gregory of Narek (about 950 to 1005)Sources20
  • 1338Triads in Defence of the Holy HesychastsGregory PalamasTriads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts (1338)Gregory Palamas (1296 to 14 November 1359)Sources10
  • 1535A Simple Way to PrayMartin LutherA Simple Way to Pray (1535)Martin LutherSources25
  • 1675Pia DesideriaPhilipp Jakob SpenerPia Desideria (1675)Philipp Jakob Spener (1635 to 1705)Sources54
  • 1782The PhilokaliaNicodemus of the Holy MountainThe Philokalia (1782)Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain (about 1749 to 1809), with Macarius of CorinthSources11
  • 1902The Varieties of Religious ExperienceWilliam JamesThe Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)William JamesSources4157
  • 1911MysticismEvelyn UnderhillMysticism (1911)Evelyn UnderhillSources58
  • 1930The Spiritual Life: A Treatise on Ascetical and Mystical TheologyAdolphe TanquereyThe Spiritual Life: A Treatise on Ascetical and Mystical Theology (1930)Adolphe TanquereySources81
  • 1949Jesus and the DisinheritedHoward ThurmanJesus and the Disinherited (1949)Howard Thurman (1899 to 1981)Sources83
  • 1989Spirituality in the AcademySandra M. SchneidersSpirituality in the Academy (1989)Sandra M. SchneidersSources59
  • 1991The Foundations of MysticismBernard McGinnThe Foundations of Mysticism (1991)Bernard McGinnSources43
  • 2013Spirituality: A Brief HistoryPhilip SheldrakeSpirituality: A Brief History (2013)Philip SheldrakeSources79

Listed because this study draws on their published work; no association with or endorsement of Numa Verse is implied. Suggest a correction.

Key terms

The words that carry the most weight in this field, each defined from the sources of this study. Turn a card over to read its definition.

A word with three senses: a dimension of the person, the lived experience that actualizes it, and the academic discipline that studies that experience59.

In the older Catholic manuals, the theory and practice of Christian perfection from its beginnings up to the threshold of infused contemplation81.

The theory and practice of the contemplative life, beginning, in Tanquerey's manual, with the first night of the senses and the prayer of quiet; Pseudo-Dionysius gave the West the term8145.

The purgative, illuminative and unitive ways, which Tanquerey insists are stages, not parallel or competing paths60.

From the Greek hesychia, stillness: the prayer of the heart practiced in solitude, defended by Gregory Palamas10.

In Orthodox teaching, union with God as real participation in God without confusion with God's essence; Eastern teaching rests it on the verse in Second Peter, "may become partakers of the divine nature"12.

"Divine reading": the slow, prayerful reading of Scripture that grew from the monastic reading in the Rule of Benedict, in its medieval form in four steps of reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation47.

A short repeated invocation of the name of Jesus, rooted in the tax collector's prayer, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner!"; in The Way of a Pilgrim its words are "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me"8414.

A short daily review in God's presence, adapted from a technique described by Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises85.

In Catholic teaching, a revelation that does not belong to the deposit of faith and may not surpass or correct the revelation fulfilled in Christ4.

Where it sits

Builds on

Spirituality, ascetical and mystical theology

Questions people ask

Scholars disagree. Perennialists hold that a common core lies beneath the mystical traditions of different religions; constructivists, after Steven Katz, hold in the strong form that a mystic's concepts and tradition shape the experience, so that there is no shared, unmediated core42. Bernard McGinn sets the question aside for the historian and studies mystical texts in their social and church setting43.

None of the traditions described here teaches that private experience adds to Scripture or the faith. The Catholic Church holds that private revelations do not belong to the deposit of faith, and its 2024 norms say that even with a nihil obstat the faithful are not obliged to believe45. The Westminster Confession holds that nothing is to be added to Scripture "by new revelations of the Spirit"29, and Pentecostals do not understand prophecy as adding to the canon. The traditions differ on the nature, continuation, authority and discernment of claimed divine communication.

No. In John of the Cross the dark night is the soul's passage through darkness, dryness and apparent absence of God toward union76. In popular speech the phrase now means any period of depression or crisis, but the dark night is a spiritual category and depression a medical one, and persistent low mood, hopelessness or loss of function calls for professional help.

The research is real but limited. A 2014 meta-analysis of 47 randomized trials found moderate evidence that mindfulness programs improved anxiety, depression and pain, but these were mostly secular programs and show nothing about Christian prayer as such86. A Cochrane review (2009) found the evidence on intercessory prayer for the sick equivocal87, and in the largest trial, STEP, complications occurred in 59 percent of patients told they would be prayed for, against 52 percent of those prayed for without certainty and 51 percent of those not prayed for88. Theological critics add that prayer is addressed to God and is not a health intervention.

Centering prayer, as taught by Contemplative Outreach, uses a sacred word as the symbol of one's intention "to consent to God's presence and action within"89. Douglas Groothuis and Sarah Geis argue that it is closer to Eastern meditation than to biblical prayer and should be rejected90; John Coe and others reject non-Christian techniques but hold that Scripture itself teaches a form of contemplation9192. For Catholics, the 1989 letter Orationis formas sets limits on technique7.

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  1. 1Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2012 to 2016 (The Holy See)https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P71.HTM (opens in a new tab)
  2. 2Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2650 to 2651 (The Holy See)https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P9C.HTM (opens in a new tab)
  3. 3Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2683 to 2684 (The Holy See)https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P9H.HTM (opens in a new tab)
  4. 4Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 65 to 67 (The Holy See)https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PH.HTM (opens in a new tab)
  5. 5Norms for Proceeding in the Discernment of Alleged Supernatural Phenomena (Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, The Holy See)https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20240517_norme-fenomeni-soprannaturali_en.html (opens in a new tab)
  6. 6Rosarium Virginis Mariae (The Holy See)https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/2002/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_20021016_rosarium-virginis-mariae.html (opens in a new tab)
  7. 7Orationis formas, on some aspects of Christian meditation (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, The Holy See)https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19891015_meditazione-cristiana_en.html (opens in a new tab)
  8. 8Apostolic Letter proclaiming Saint Hildegard of Bingen a Doctor of the Church (The Holy See)https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/apost_letters/documents/hf_ben-xvi_apl_20121007_ildegarda-bingen.html (opens in a new tab)
  9. 9Divini Amoris Scientia (The Holy See)https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1997/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19101997_divini-amoris.html (opens in a new tab)
  10. 10Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica (Orthodox Church in America)https://www.oca.org/saints/id/lives/103303 (opens in a new tab)
  11. 11Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, The A to Z of the Orthodox Church (Scarecrow Press, azbyka.ru)https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/world/the-a-to-z-of-the-orthodox-church/465 (opens in a new tab)
  12. 122 Peter 1, Berean Standard Bible (Bible Hub)https://biblehub.com/bsb/2_peter/1.htm (opens in a new tab)
  13. 13Saint Seraphim of Sarov (Encyclopaedia Britannica)https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Seraphim-of-Sarov (opens in a new tab)
  14. 14The Way of a Pilgrim, tr. R. M. French (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)https://www.ccel.org/ccel/p/philip_allan/pilgrim/cache/pilgrim.txt (opens in a new tab)
  15. 15Fasting (Orthodox Church in America)https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/worship/the-church-year/fasting (opens in a new tab)
  16. 16Second Council of Nicaea, acts (New Advent)https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3819.htm (opens in a new tab)
  17. 17About the Agpeya (Agpeya.org)https://www.agpeya.org/about/ (opens in a new tab)
  18. 18Shhimo: the simple prayer (Syriac Orthodox Resources)https://syriacorthodoxresources.org/Liturgy/SimplePrayer/index.html (opens in a new tab)
  19. 19Library (Assyrian Church of the East)https://acote.church/library (opens in a new tab)
  20. 20Saint Gregory of Narek (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)https://www.usccb.org/prayer-worship/liturgical-year/saint-gregory-of-narek (opens in a new tab)
  21. 21Devotion (Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, ethiopianorthodox.org)https://ethiopianorthodox.org/english/Lent/devotion.html (opens in a new tab)
  22. 22Faith and Order, order of prayers and readings (Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, ethiopianorthodox.org)https://mail.ethiopianorthodox.org/english/weekly/eotcholyweek.pdf (opens in a new tab)
  23. 23Isaac of Nineveh (Encyclopaedia Britannica)https://www.britannica.com/biography/Isaac-of-Nineveh (opens in a new tab)
  24. 24Inclusion of Isaac of Nineveh in the Roman Martyrology (Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity)https://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/news/2024/2024-11-11-inclusion-of-isaac-of-nineveh-in-the-roman-martyrolog.html (opens in a new tab)
  25. 25A Simple Way to Pray, The Annotated Luther, sample PDF (Fortress Press)https://ms.fortresspress.com/downloads/R2R_ASimpleWaytoPray.pdf (opens in a new tab)
  26. 26Augsburg Confession, Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. III (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/creeds3.iii.ii.html (opens in a new tab)
  27. 27Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Encyclopaedia Britannica)https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dietrich-Bonhoeffer (opens in a new tab)
  28. 28Institutes of the Christian Religion III.20, John Calvin (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.v.xxi.html (opens in a new tab)
  29. 29Westminster Confession of Faith (Orthodox Presbyterian Church)https://opc.org/wcf.html (opens in a new tab)
  30. 30The Directory for Family Worship (Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland)https://www.fpchurch.org.uk/about-us/important-documents/the-directory-for-family-worship/ (opens in a new tab)
  31. 31The Saints' Everlasting Rest, Richard Baxter (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)https://ccel.org/ccel/baxter/saints_rest (opens in a new tab)
  32. 32Of Communion with God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, John Owen (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)https://ccel.org/ccel/owen/communion (opens in a new tab)
  33. 33A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Jonathan Edwards (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/affections (opens in a new tab)
  34. 34Holy Living, Jeremy Taylor (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)https://ccel.org/ccel/taylor/holy_living (opens in a new tab)
  35. 35Articles of Religion (Church of England)https://www.churchofengland.org/liturgy/book-of-common-prayer/articles-religion (opens in a new tab)
  36. 36A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, John Wesley (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)https://ccel.org/ccel/wesley/perfection (opens in a new tab)
  37. 37The Wesleyan Means of Grace (United Methodist Church)https://www.umc.org/en/content/the-wesleyan-means-of-grace (opens in a new tab)
  38. 38The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)https://ccel.org/ccel/bunyan/pilgrim (opens in a new tab)
  39. 39Quaker faith and practice, chapter 2: Approaches to God (Britain Yearly Meeting)https://qfp.quaker.org.uk/chapter/2/ (opens in a new tab)
  40. 40Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals (Pew Research Center)https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2006/10/05/spirit-and-power/ (opens in a new tab)
  41. 41William James (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/ (opens in a new tab)
  42. 42Mysticism, Jerome Gellman (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mysticism/ (opens in a new tab)
  43. 43Review of McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism (PhilPapers)https://philpapers.org/rec/DUPTFO-4 (opens in a new tab)
  44. 44Evagrius Ponticus (Encyclopaedia Britannica)https://www.britannica.com/biography/Evagrius-Ponticus (opens in a new tab)
  45. 45Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-dionysius-areopagite/ (opens in a new tab)
  46. 46Rule of Saint Benedict, chapters 9 to 17, tr. L. J. Doyle (Order of Saint Benedict archive)https://archive.osb.org/rb/text/rbefjo2.html (opens in a new tab)
  47. 47Rule of Saint Benedict, chapters 48 to 49, tr. L. J. Doyle (Order of Saint Benedict archive)https://archive.osb.org/rb/text/rbemjo3.html (opens in a new tab)
  48. 48Rule of Saint Benedict, chapters 18 to 23, tr. L. J. Doyle (Order of Saint Benedict archive)https://archive.osb.org/rb/text/rbefjo3.html (opens in a new tab)
  49. 49Evil-Sounding, Rash, and Suspect of Heresy, B. McGinn (Catholic Historical Review 90.2, isidore.co)https://isidore.co/misc/Res%20pro%20Deo/Journals/Catholic%20Historical%20Review%20(1995-2023)/OCR-layer-only-PDFs/2004_Volume90_Number2.pdf (opens in a new tab)
  50. 50Eckhart, Meister, F. Vandenbroucke (New Catholic Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia.com)https://encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/eckhart-meister (opens in a new tab)
  51. 51Meister Eckhart (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/meister-eckhart/ (opens in a new tab)
  52. 52General Audience on Julian of Norwich, Benedict XVI (The Holy See)https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20101201.html (opens in a new tab)
  53. 53Revelations of Divine Love, ed. Grace Warrack (Project Gutenberg)https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/52958/pg52958.txt (opens in a new tab)
  54. 54Philipp Jakob Spener (Encyclopaedia Britannica)https://www.britannica.com/biography/Philipp-Jakob-Spener (opens in a new tab)
  55. 55The Inner Unity of the Philokalia and Its Influence in East and West, Kallistos Ware (Myriobiblos)https://mail.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/wear_innerunity1.html (opens in a new tab)
  56. 56Pilgrim, Way of the, K. Gavrilkin, The Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodox Christianity (Wiley, azbyka.ru)https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/world/the-encyclopedia-of-eastern-orthodox-christianity/247 (opens in a new tab)
  57. 57The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James (Project Gutenberg)https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/621 (opens in a new tab)
  58. 58Mysticism, Evelyn Underhill (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)https://ccel.org/ccel/underhill/mysticism (opens in a new tab)
  59. 59Spirituality in the Academy, Theological Studies 50 (Scholar Commons, Santa Clara University)https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/jst/111 (opens in a new tab)
  60. 60The Spiritual Life, Second Part: the three ways, A. Tanquerey (EWTN Library)https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/spiritual-life-12634 (opens in a new tab)
  61. 61Matthew 6, Berean Standard Bible (Bible Hub)https://biblehub.com/bsb/matthew/6.htm (opens in a new tab)
  62. 62Mark 1, Berean Standard Bible (Bible Hub)https://biblehub.com/bsb/mark/1.htm (opens in a new tab)
  63. 63Romans 8, Berean Standard Bible (Bible Hub)https://biblehub.com/bsb/romans/8.htm (opens in a new tab)
  64. 64The Shema (My Jewish Learning)https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-shema/ (opens in a new tab)
  65. 65The Amidah (My Jewish Learning)https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-amidah/ (opens in a new tab)
  66. 66Division 36 (American Psychological Association)https://www.apadivisions.org/division-36 (opens in a new tab)
  67. 67Psalm 8, Berean Standard Bible (Bible Hub)https://biblehub.com/bsb/psalms/8.htm (opens in a new tab)
  68. 68Life of Antony, Athanasius, NPNF second series vol. 4 (New Advent)https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2811.htm (opens in a new tab)
  69. 69Conferences 9, John Cassian, NPNF second series vol. 11 (New Advent)https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/350809.htm (opens in a new tab)
  70. 70Conferences 10, John Cassian, NPNF second series vol. 11 (New Advent)https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/350810.htm (opens in a new tab)
  71. 71On Loving God, Bernard of Clairvaux (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)https://ccel.org/ccel/bernard/loving_god (opens in a new tab)
  72. 72The Cloud of Unknowing (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)https://ccel.org/ccel/anonymous2/cloud (opens in a new tab)
  73. 73The Imitation of Christ, tr. William Benham (Project Gutenberg)https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1653/pg1653.txt (opens in a new tab)
  74. 74Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius of Loyola (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)https://ccel.org/ccel/ignatius/exercises (opens in a new tab)
  75. 75Interior Castle, Teresa of Ávila (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)https://ccel.org/ccel/teresa/castle2 (opens in a new tab)
  76. 76Dark Night of the Soul, John of the Cross (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)https://ccel.org/ccel/john_cross/dark_night (opens in a new tab)
  77. 77Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2558 to 2565 (The Holy See)https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P8Z.HTM (opens in a new tab)
  78. 78Faith Among Black Americans (Pew Research Center)https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/02/16/faith-among-black-americans/ (opens in a new tab)
  79. 79Spirituality: A Brief History, 2nd edition, publisher listing (Wiley-Blackwell, e-bookshelf)https://wiley-vch.e-bookshelf.de/spirituality-750400.html (opens in a new tab)
  80. 80Spirituality: A Brief History, 2nd edition, contents (Schweitzer Fachinformationen)https://www.schweitzer-online.de/en/buch/Sheldrake/Spirituality/9780470673522/A2063164/ (opens in a new tab)
  81. 81The Spiritual Life, Introduction, A. Tanquerey (EWTN Library)https://origin.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/spiritual-life-12633 (opens in a new tab)
  82. 82Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health (Duke University)https://spiritualityandhealth.duke.edu/ (opens in a new tab)
  83. 83Howard Thurman (Encyclopaedia Britannica)https://www.britannica.com/biography/Howard-Thurman (opens in a new tab)
  84. 84Luke 18, Berean Standard Bible (Bible Hub)https://biblehub.com/bsb/luke/18.htm (opens in a new tab)
  85. 85The Examen (IgnatianSpirituality.com, Loyola Press)https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-examen/ (opens in a new tab)
  86. 86Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being (JAMA Internal Medicine, PubMed)https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24395196/ (opens in a new tab)
  87. 87Intercessory prayer for the alleviation of ill health (Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, PubMed)https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19370557/ (opens in a new tab)
  88. 88Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients (American Heart Journal, eScholarship)https://escholarship.org/content/qt9416b8sg/qt9416b8sg.pdf (opens in a new tab)
  89. 89Centering Prayer Method (Contemplative Outreach)https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/centering-prayer-method/ (opens in a new tab)
  90. 90Examining Contemplative Prayer, Bibliotheca Sacra 172 (Galaxie)https://www.galaxie.com/article/bsac172-685-02 (opens in a new tab)
  91. 91The Controversy over Contemplation and Contemplative Prayer, J. H. Coe (PhilArchive)https://dc2.philarchive.org/rec/COETCO (opens in a new tab)
  92. 92Embracing Contemplation, ed. J. H. Coe and K. C. Strobel (InterVarsity Press)https://ivpress.com/embracing-contemplation-ebook (opens in a new tab)

Page record

Reviewed and approved by Duane Herholdt, BA (Theology), Chief Executive Officer, Numa Verse

Study version: v1.1, 5 November 2026 (theology map v1.27)

Last reviewed: 9 November 2026

How these pages are made

  • 9 November 2026: First draft from the approved assessment v1.1.