An esteemed theologian contemplates prophetic faith, reason, spiritual practice, and God’s infinite love

David Tracy (1939–2025) was an internationally renowned theologian whose ongoing public dialogue with classical Christian thinkers, other religious traditions, and modern rationality set theological studies on a new path for a pluralistic society. For over five decades, he published books that reconfigured the various forms of theology and their relation to the broader field of religious studies. The Prophetic and Mystical Understanding of God integrates both his deep-rooted and his more recently developed ideas about interconnections between prophetic faith and reason, spiritual practices, and mystical discernments of the divine.

This book is a distillation of the wide-ranging concerns Tracy grappled with over the course of his remarkable career. In many ways it is an introduction to what he called Christian theology’s “near impossible task of thinking of the incomprehensible.” It continues his progressive, interfaith approach to Christian thought, positing that faith is not a personal achievement but rather a gift, a mystical “revelatory happening” of God’s own self as Infinite Love.