Von Speyr's more immediately mystical writings were not released until 1985 and vary in theme and style. The work Book of All Saints gives inner portraits of many saints and historical figures in terms of their prayer lives; one Dominican scholar has expressed doubts about her critical description of Saint Thomas Aquinas in the first of her two entries on him. In another posthumous text, Kreuz und Hölle, von Speyr relates her experiences of the Passion and of the descent into Hell, giving illustrations of the metaphysical nature of damnation as isolation and "total depersonalization," in Professor Matthew Sutton's phrase. Some scholars have interpreted these visions as suggesting universalism, or a belief that Hell is empty, but other scholars insist that this is a misreading of the text; Hans Urs von Balthasar himself rejects the universalist reading, understanding von Speyr's experience of Hell as "so real that, in view of it, it would be ridiculous and blasphemous to speak of the nonexistence of hell or even just of apokatastasis [universalism] in the 'systematic' sense." There are critics who dispute the authenticity of von Speyr's visions on other grounds, citing features such as apparent changes of personality and voice and the use of sarcasm, although von Balthasar, who originally related these phenomena, believes these episodes had a pedagogical purpose, to form him in humility as a spiritual director.
