The Dark Night of the Soul: Pastoral Care when God is Gone

The dark night of the soul is a phenomenon of spirituality. Or perhaps better, it refers to an empty void where there is only a longing for spirituality. As an ambiguous phenomenon, it has mystic and melancholic overtones. The dark night is its most vivid, imaginary depiction, but in the spiritual literature, “spiritual desertion” is also one the terms that is used for this experience of the soul (Raath, 2004:1449). God’s darkness and the darkness in the believer’s soul come together in a spiritual state of anxiety and desertion (Raath, 2023:6). The dark night, and the emptiness it refers to, is located somewhere between a mystical experience and a fundamental critique of all religious experience. This contribution starts with a brief practical-theological reading of St John of the Cross’ work on the The dark night of the soul, the medieval text that functions as specimen for the phenomenon. Next, the experience that St John writes about is put in the discursive frameworks of two disciplinary perspectives: a theological perspective (Gisbertus Voetius, 17th century) and a psychological perspective (William James, 19th century). The chapter closes with a perspective on care for the soul when God is gone.