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