Abstract

Lyra Pitstick, Richard Gallagher:
A Deeper Look at the Balthasar-Speyr Collaboration
Part I: Three Little-Known Texts and Their Preliminary Assessment
(FKTh 2025-2, p. 89–131)

In the Catholic context, true mysticism requires supernatural origin. But the Church’s guidelines require a skeptical stance about direct divine causation unless reasonable confirmation is obtained. As material causes and human ones are both more knowable to us and more common, they must be considered and ruled out first, and then demonic sources, before a conclusion of supernatural causation can be reliable. This two-part article follows this procedure to take a deeper look at the collaboration between the theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and the alleged mystic, Adrienne von Speyr. In Part I, we thus introduce, translate, and examine three little-known texts that shed light on the pair’s psychology and outlook on their joint work. Never published outside Balthasar’s private distribution before, the first text gives evidence of his intentionally delayed release of material necessary for the evaluation of Speyr’s experiences and the theology dependent upon them. The second, an excerpt from that curated material first highlighted by Manfred Lochbrunner and here translated into English with commentary, shows that both Speyr and Balthasar knew their theology of hell was a theological novelty but intended to present it as already Catholic teaching. Finally, an anonymized case study by the prominent Catholic neuropsychiatrist Jean Lhermitte is identified as applicable to the pair, and also translated into English. Testimony from Balthasar provides complementary evidence. While Lhermitte’s assessment is illuminating and must be taken into consideration, we note that the adequacy of his diagnosis of a psychological origin for Speyr’s claims is limited by his lack of important relevant data. Consequently, in Part II, we will ask whether the various unusual phenomena reported of Speyr (primarily by Balthasar), such as visions, locutions, stigmata, levitations, healings, etc., necessarily have supernatural origin?