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The Classics of Western Spirituality
Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings
Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) is often called the outstanding intellectual figure of the fifteenth century as well as the principal gatekeeper between medieval and modern philosophy. This volume gives fresh attention to the theological and mystical dimensions of his thought. The introduction casts new and exciting light on the development of Cusa's theology of spirituality. The book also provides for the first time in one volume an English translation of Cusa's basic mystical On Learned Ignorance; On the Hidden God; On Seeking God; On the Vision of God; and On the Summit of Contemplation. Another unique feature is the annotated glossary of key Cusan terms that accompanies the texts. Cusa's writings reveal a remarkable imaginative and gifted theologian who anticipated contemporary questions of ecumenicity and pluralism, empowerment and reconciliation, and tolerance and individuality. These translations particularly communicate to us his experience of a very large God that jostles us out of our parochialism. For all his intellectual power, he never closes his thought into a system. He is a significator and a conjecturer. He keeps pointing beyond his own words and beyond even his prized formulae and labels, including "learned ignorance" and "coincidence of opposites." He persistently brings theology to the edge of incomprehensibility, beyond both positive and negative ways, beyond even paradox and the coincidence of opposites, to the realm of the Purely Absolute and Infinite, to the contemplation of Possibility Itself.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1997
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June 30, 2022“Unite, therefore, these apparent opposites antecedently […] and you will not have one and three or three and one but the ‘unitrine’ or the ‘triune.’ And this is the absolute truth.”
Every page, every passage, every line, is so gorgeous that I found myself taking notes in vain. How was I to get across the full complexity of this profound collection? Impossible. I have tried my best to convey the most resonant parts in my reading, below—but this is one of those books you can’t read just once.
What is learned ignorance? It is the idea that we speak of God more truly in negation than in positive affirmation. Interestingly, Cusa takes the latter relationship with God as idolatry, as when he says, “the theology of negation is so necessary to the theology of affirmation that without it God would not be worshiped as the infinite God but as creature; and such worship is idolatry, for it gives to an image that which belongs only to truth itself.” God, rather than some thing or sum total of “stuff” which must be worshiped, is the true and Absolute infinite.
Sure, nothing easier can be said, though this is the point. But how we get there is quite a trip (and this is the “learned” part, lol). At bottom, there is Absolute maximum (God) which transcends all oppositions between minimum and maximum. This is to say, the minimum and maximum, thought opposed, find themselves in the Absolute maximum which encompasses both terms, what Cusa calls the “coincidence of opposites.” Cusa explains this through (among other models) the example of an infinite line. Now, when we picture an infinite line we can either imagine a line which extends in either direction in infinite degrees and take this ever-compounded line to be the infinite line, as opposed to the short line, which finds its limit. *Alternatively,* we can imagine a line segmented, even a line which finds its limit, into various parts and imagine the infinite degrees contained therein, regardless of their length. The infinity contained within each segment remains infinity, for their can be no lesser or greater infinity. Thus, as Cusa says, “the maximum Is such that in it the minimum is maximum, so that the maximum infinitely and completely transcends all opposition.” Similarly, “the infinite line [..] is entire in each line in such a way that each line is in it.” God is thus both infinite nothing and infinite being all at once, that which encompasses the coincidence of opposites.
(Passages such as these reminded me of Hegel’s concept of good and bad infinity as he lays it out in his ‘Science of Logic’—indeed, it would be shocking if Hegel *didn’t* simply lift Nicholas of Cusa’s paradigm and use it for his own purposes.)
In any case, this is the foundation of Cusa’s “negative theology,” for what we praise in God is not some sort of sum total of infinity, but His being the transcendent, Absolute maximum infinity which cannot be thought. God is the one infinite form of forms of which all forms are images. With something so incomprehensible, we revere that which cannot be articulated rather than that which can be inventoried. As the Christian says to the Pagan in the ‘Dialogue on the Hidden God,’ “I worship because I do not know.”
This dictum leads us to some pretty Kantian junctures. Cusa asks, “does not whoever ascends above the end enter into what is indeterminate and confused and thus, with respect to the intellect, into ignorance and obscurity, which belong to intellectual confusion? The intellect, therefore, must become ignorant and established in darkness if it wishes to see you. But what, my God, is intellect in ignorance if not learned ignorance?”
And so we find ourselves in God, through this ignorance. We see God, not in His person, but, as Cusa puts it, at the gates where we find the coincidence of opposites guarded by the angels stationed at the gates of paradise who is the highest spirit of Reason. Yet He is not unknown to us. The infinity which exists in all segmentations of line is the infinity which exists in all creation (or contracts, as Cusa terms it). The actual that results from the contraction of the infinite is the realization of the possible, which dwells in the infinite. Our being a part of this infinite, though contracted, means that God sees us at all times, and knows us perfectly. In the work “On the Vision of God” he compares God’s sight to the of a painting we behold—we walk across the room and the eyes of the portrait seem to follow us as we move. We turn away from its gaze, though we know it to be there even if we deny it, for God is the truth which is desired in every desiring. Those who think they know the ends of there desire, those who would profess to have knowledge—these are the real simpletons.
This is a very labyrinthine work. Much remains to be said on his reflections on the trinity, the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and so on. What was a thinking in attempting a review which would cover all the basics? Best let Cusa have the last word on things. This, friends, might serve as the manifesto of the learnedly ignorant—
“But to one who in learned ignorance inquires what they are or how they exist or to what purpose they exist, all things reply: ‘Of ourselves we are nothing, nor of ourselves are we able to give any other reply than nothing, nor of ourselves are we able to give any other reply than nothing, since we do not even have knowledge of ourselves, but the One alone has knowledge by whose understanding we are that which that One wills, commands, and knows in us. Indeed, we are all mute; it is that One who speaks in all things. The One who made us alone knows what we are and how and to what purpose we exist. If you wish to know anything about us, seek it in our reason and cause, not in us. There, while seeking one thing, you will find all things. Nor can you find yourself except in the One. Therefore make certain,’ says our learned ignorance, ‘that you find yourself in God. And since in God all things are God, nothing can be wanting to you. Yet it is not ours to approach the inaccessible, but it belongs to God, who has given us a face turned toward God and also and exceeding desire to seek God. And when we seek God, God is most compassionate and will not abandon us, but rather after showing Godself to us God will eternally satisfy us, when God’s glory will appeal. May God be blessed forever.’”
Every page, every passage, every line, is so gorgeous that I found myself taking notes in vain. How was I to get across the full complexity of this profound collection? Impossible. I have tried my best to convey the most resonant parts in my reading, below—but this is one of those books you can’t read just once.
What is learned ignorance? It is the idea that we speak of God more truly in negation than in positive affirmation. Interestingly, Cusa takes the latter relationship with God as idolatry, as when he says, “the theology of negation is so necessary to the theology of affirmation that without it God would not be worshiped as the infinite God but as creature; and such worship is idolatry, for it gives to an image that which belongs only to truth itself.” God, rather than some thing or sum total of “stuff” which must be worshiped, is the true and Absolute infinite.
Sure, nothing easier can be said, though this is the point. But how we get there is quite a trip (and this is the “learned” part, lol). At bottom, there is Absolute maximum (God) which transcends all oppositions between minimum and maximum. This is to say, the minimum and maximum, thought opposed, find themselves in the Absolute maximum which encompasses both terms, what Cusa calls the “coincidence of opposites.” Cusa explains this through (among other models) the example of an infinite line. Now, when we picture an infinite line we can either imagine a line which extends in either direction in infinite degrees and take this ever-compounded line to be the infinite line, as opposed to the short line, which finds its limit. *Alternatively,* we can imagine a line segmented, even a line which finds its limit, into various parts and imagine the infinite degrees contained therein, regardless of their length. The infinity contained within each segment remains infinity, for their can be no lesser or greater infinity. Thus, as Cusa says, “the maximum Is such that in it the minimum is maximum, so that the maximum infinitely and completely transcends all opposition.” Similarly, “the infinite line [..] is entire in each line in such a way that each line is in it.” God is thus both infinite nothing and infinite being all at once, that which encompasses the coincidence of opposites.
(Passages such as these reminded me of Hegel’s concept of good and bad infinity as he lays it out in his ‘Science of Logic’—indeed, it would be shocking if Hegel *didn’t* simply lift Nicholas of Cusa’s paradigm and use it for his own purposes.)
In any case, this is the foundation of Cusa’s “negative theology,” for what we praise in God is not some sort of sum total of infinity, but His being the transcendent, Absolute maximum infinity which cannot be thought. God is the one infinite form of forms of which all forms are images. With something so incomprehensible, we revere that which cannot be articulated rather than that which can be inventoried. As the Christian says to the Pagan in the ‘Dialogue on the Hidden God,’ “I worship because I do not know.”
This dictum leads us to some pretty Kantian junctures. Cusa asks, “does not whoever ascends above the end enter into what is indeterminate and confused and thus, with respect to the intellect, into ignorance and obscurity, which belong to intellectual confusion? The intellect, therefore, must become ignorant and established in darkness if it wishes to see you. But what, my God, is intellect in ignorance if not learned ignorance?”
And so we find ourselves in God, through this ignorance. We see God, not in His person, but, as Cusa puts it, at the gates where we find the coincidence of opposites guarded by the angels stationed at the gates of paradise who is the highest spirit of Reason. Yet He is not unknown to us. The infinity which exists in all segmentations of line is the infinity which exists in all creation (or contracts, as Cusa terms it). The actual that results from the contraction of the infinite is the realization of the possible, which dwells in the infinite. Our being a part of this infinite, though contracted, means that God sees us at all times, and knows us perfectly. In the work “On the Vision of God” he compares God’s sight to the of a painting we behold—we walk across the room and the eyes of the portrait seem to follow us as we move. We turn away from its gaze, though we know it to be there even if we deny it, for God is the truth which is desired in every desiring. Those who think they know the ends of there desire, those who would profess to have knowledge—these are the real simpletons.
This is a very labyrinthine work. Much remains to be said on his reflections on the trinity, the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and so on. What was a thinking in attempting a review which would cover all the basics? Best let Cusa have the last word on things. This, friends, might serve as the manifesto of the learnedly ignorant—
“But to one who in learned ignorance inquires what they are or how they exist or to what purpose they exist, all things reply: ‘Of ourselves we are nothing, nor of ourselves are we able to give any other reply than nothing, nor of ourselves are we able to give any other reply than nothing, since we do not even have knowledge of ourselves, but the One alone has knowledge by whose understanding we are that which that One wills, commands, and knows in us. Indeed, we are all mute; it is that One who speaks in all things. The One who made us alone knows what we are and how and to what purpose we exist. If you wish to know anything about us, seek it in our reason and cause, not in us. There, while seeking one thing, you will find all things. Nor can you find yourself except in the One. Therefore make certain,’ says our learned ignorance, ‘that you find yourself in God. And since in God all things are God, nothing can be wanting to you. Yet it is not ours to approach the inaccessible, but it belongs to God, who has given us a face turned toward God and also and exceeding desire to seek God. And when we seek God, God is most compassionate and will not abandon us, but rather after showing Godself to us God will eternally satisfy us, when God’s glory will appeal. May God be blessed forever.’”
February 18, 2025
Nicholas of Cusa’s supreme theological accomplishment is to use the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation to elaborate on the theme of monotheism to the very limits of comprehension—to the wall of paradise, as he would put it—and then to gesture beyond it to the infinite mystery of being, mind, and life, including and transcending every nameable reality, which we call God.
To the parochial mind, monotheism is opposed to “paganism”: a term which did not initially denote a religious category, but which has come to entail worship of the multiplicity of created things rather than the single creator. But as John Milbank, a student of Cusanus, has pointed out, this conception relativizes God and thus amounts to a kind of “pagan monotheism.” This God is only numerically one, and thus his oneness is relative to twoness, threeness, and fourness, to which he is other. God may be the most powerful being, but he remains enmeshed in number, which for Nicholas “includes all that is capable of proportion.” He remains a discrete subject acting within a larger reality, a fixed and comprehensible (i.e. containable) center.
For Nicholas, the true pagan believes that God is comprehensible—that God has a center and a circumference—while the Christian, the true monotheist, is a practitioner of “learned ignorance,” the subject of Nicholas’s best-known treatise, knowing that God in Godself is unknowable, and worshipping on precisely that basis. All human reasoning, every word, name, and concept, pertains to proportion and relativity, and is thus qualitatively distinct from infinite reality. No amount of relative knowledge brings one closer to the infinite. True knowledge is therefore of the Socratic kind: an ever-increasing awareness of the depths of one’s ignorance, establishing our silhouette against the wondrous and unutterable mystery from which all things have their being, which is both wholly present to everything and illimitable by anything; the unoriginate basis and infinite end of rational desire.
If God is infinite, then he has no opposite, nor can he be “other” than anything that can be conceived. His oneness is not opposed to multiplicity, but unites both in the aspect of infinity, in which there is no difference or distinction between the two. God transcends the coincidence of opposites, which constitutes the limit of human reason: in him unity and multiplicity, creation and createdness, motion and rest, seeing and being seen, and every sensory faculty coincide. For Nicholas, idolatry is not so much about worshipping the creation rather than the creator, but instead to imagine that creation and creator are, in the final analysis, two separate things. For with God, every act of creation is an act of being created; every act of vision is God’s willing to be seen. Creation is incarnation. To exist is both to see and be seen by God, because vision coincides with being in the infinite.
All things are enfolded in God, while God is unfolded in all things; and this enfolding and unfolding are simultaneously one act of creative vision whereby God is the God that he is. Nicholas claims that before the mystery of Christ was revealed to the world, ancient Jews and educated pagans alike accepted the unity of the supreme God, the difference between them being that Jews worshipped God as the enfolding of all things, while pagans worshipped God in his unfolding in images, which less educated pagans confused with God himself.
If God is the Infinite One, then he must be united with the creation, including the rational spirits whom he has endowed with the image of his own freedom and awareness, bestowing upon them his own perfection. Creation, as David Bentley Hart once wrote, is theogony. God mysteriously enters into the motion and growth of finite reality, manifesting himself in rational spirits and making them, so far as is possible for “contracted” beings, as he is.
For this bond with rational spirits to be real, God must not only be infinitely loving, but also infinitely lovable, as well as the infinite bond of love that unites the loving and the lovable. This triunity of the loving, the lovable, and love itself corresponds, of course, to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
If God’s infinite lovableness were not distinct from his lovingness, there would be no free will, for to be loved by God would entail loving him in return. Yet because all things are one in the infinite, God’s lovingness, lovableness, and the love which unites them cannot be separate. Nicholas concludes from this that God is numerically neither one nor three, but precisely and extra-numerically triune.
- De Visione Dei (p.271)
For Nicholas, if God were not triune, creation could not be united to him in the rational freedom that is the nature of spiritual beings. Ultimately, God would not be God.
Nor can this union be accomplished in the abstract, since the contracted maximum (i.e. the universe) exists only as contracted in particulars. Humanity, as the all-encompassing “median” of creation, cannot be united to God merely in essence, but in the concrete form of an individual person. The locus of this union is Christ, in whom is effected the ultimate coincidence of opposites—that between the infinite and the finite—through whom all things come into being and hold together, in whom all rational spirits find their rest in God-consciousness, and who is rightly identified as the Son and Logos of God.
Overall, Nicholas is remarkable for introducing a novel theological vocabulary to explicate traditional doctrines, and for reintroducing θαυμάζειν, or wonder, into the heart of proper reflection on divinity, nature, and the mystery of their conjunction, which in-forms everything from the profoundest questions of cosmic existence to our moment-to-moment experience of reality.
To the parochial mind, monotheism is opposed to “paganism”: a term which did not initially denote a religious category, but which has come to entail worship of the multiplicity of created things rather than the single creator. But as John Milbank, a student of Cusanus, has pointed out, this conception relativizes God and thus amounts to a kind of “pagan monotheism.” This God is only numerically one, and thus his oneness is relative to twoness, threeness, and fourness, to which he is other. God may be the most powerful being, but he remains enmeshed in number, which for Nicholas “includes all that is capable of proportion.” He remains a discrete subject acting within a larger reality, a fixed and comprehensible (i.e. containable) center.
For Nicholas, the true pagan believes that God is comprehensible—that God has a center and a circumference—while the Christian, the true monotheist, is a practitioner of “learned ignorance,” the subject of Nicholas’s best-known treatise, knowing that God in Godself is unknowable, and worshipping on precisely that basis. All human reasoning, every word, name, and concept, pertains to proportion and relativity, and is thus qualitatively distinct from infinite reality. No amount of relative knowledge brings one closer to the infinite. True knowledge is therefore of the Socratic kind: an ever-increasing awareness of the depths of one’s ignorance, establishing our silhouette against the wondrous and unutterable mystery from which all things have their being, which is both wholly present to everything and illimitable by anything; the unoriginate basis and infinite end of rational desire.
“If all this is true, since the desire in us for knowledge is not in vain, surely then it is our desire to know that we do not know. If we can attain this completely, we will attain learned ignorance. For nothing more perfect comes to a person, even the most zealous in learning, than to be found most learned in the ignorance that is uniquely one’s own. One will be the more learned, the more one knows that one is ignorant.”
- De Docta Ignorantia (pp.88-89)
“You come down, Lord, that you may be comprehended, and you remain innumerable and infinite, and unless you remained infinite, you would not be the end of desire.
“You are, therefore, infinite that you may be the end of all desire. For intellectual desire is not borne toward that which can be greater or more desirable. But everything this side of infinite can be greater. Therefore, the end of desire is infinite.
“You, therefore, O God, are infinity itself, which alone I desire in every desiring. But I cannot approach the knowledge of this infinity more closely than to know that it is infinity.”
- De Visione Dei (p.266)
If God is infinite, then he has no opposite, nor can he be “other” than anything that can be conceived. His oneness is not opposed to multiplicity, but unites both in the aspect of infinity, in which there is no difference or distinction between the two. God transcends the coincidence of opposites, which constitutes the limit of human reason: in him unity and multiplicity, creation and createdness, motion and rest, seeing and being seen, and every sensory faculty coincide. For Nicholas, idolatry is not so much about worshipping the creation rather than the creator, but instead to imagine that creation and creator are, in the final analysis, two separate things. For with God, every act of creation is an act of being created; every act of vision is God’s willing to be seen. Creation is incarnation. To exist is both to see and be seen by God, because vision coincides with being in the infinite.
“What other, O Lord, is your seeing, when you look upon me with the eye of mercy, than your being seen by me? In seeing me you, who are the hidden God, give yourself to be seen by me. No one can see you except in the measure you grant to be seen. Nor is your being seen other than your seeing one who sees you.”
- De Visione Dei (p.241)
“Consequently, when I am at the door of the coincidence of opposites, guarded by the angel stationed at the entrance of paradise, I begin to see you, O Lord. For you are there where speaking, seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, reasoning, knowing, and understanding are the same and where seeing coincides with being seen, hearing with being heard, tasting with being tasted, touching with being touched, speaking with hearing, and creating with speaking. If I were to see just as I am visible, I would not be a creature, and if you, O God, did not see just as you are visible, you would not be God, the Almighty. You are visible by all creatures and you see all. In that you see all you are seen by all. For otherwise creatures cannot exist since they exist by your vision. If they did not see you who see, they would not receive being from you. The being of a creature is equally your seeing and your being seen.”
- De Visione Dei (p.253)
“As you are, you are invisible; as the creature is, which exists only insofar as the creature sees you, you are visible. You, therefore, my invisible God, are seen by all, and in all sight you are seen by everyone who sees. You who are invisible, who are both absolute from everything visible and infinitely superexalted, are seen in every visible thing and in every act of vision.”
- De Visione Dei (p.256)
“If your seeing is your creating and if you see nothing other than yourself, but you yourself are your own object, for you are the seer, the seeable, and the seeing, how, therefore, do you create things that are other than yourself? For you seem to create yourself even as you see yourself. But you strengthen me, Life of my spirit. For I am confronted by the wall of absurdity, which is the wall of the coincidence of creating with being created, as if it were impossible for creating to coincide with being created. For it seems that to admit this would affirm that a thing exists before it exists; for when a thing creates, it is, and yet it is not since it is created. Nevertheless, this wall is not an obstacle, for your creating is your being. Creating and being created alike are not other than communicating your being to all things so that you are all things in all things and yet remain absolute from them all. To call into being things which are not is to communicate being to nonbeing. Thus, to call is to create, and to communicate is to be created. Beyond this coincidence of creating with being created are you, O God, absolute and infinite, neither creating nor creatable, although all things are what they are because you are.”
- De Visione Dei (p.257)
All things are enfolded in God, while God is unfolded in all things; and this enfolding and unfolding are simultaneously one act of creative vision whereby God is the God that he is. Nicholas claims that before the mystery of Christ was revealed to the world, ancient Jews and educated pagans alike accepted the unity of the supreme God, the difference between them being that Jews worshipped God as the enfolding of all things, while pagans worshipped God in his unfolding in images, which less educated pagans confused with God himself.
“The ancient pagans used to ridicule the Jews, who worshipped the one, infinite God whom they did not know, while the pagans themselves were worshipping God in God’s unfoldings, that is, they were worshipping God wherever they beheld God’s divine works. At that time all believed God to be the one maximum, than which there cannot be a greater, but there was this difference between all human beings: Some, like the Jews and the Sissennii, worshipped God in God’s most simple unity, as the enfolding of all things is, but others worshipped God in the things where they found the unfolding of God’s divinity by taking what they sensibly perceived as a guide to the Cause and Principle. In this last way the simple folk were led astray, for they did not take what was unfolded as an image but as the truth. As a consequence, idolatry was introduced among the common folk, while the wise, for the most part, correctly believed in the unity of God, as can be ascertained by anyone who will carefully examine Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods and the ancient philosophers.”
- De Docta Ignorantia (pp.124-125)
If God is the Infinite One, then he must be united with the creation, including the rational spirits whom he has endowed with the image of his own freedom and awareness, bestowing upon them his own perfection. Creation, as David Bentley Hart once wrote, is theogony. God mysteriously enters into the motion and growth of finite reality, manifesting himself in rational spirits and making them, so far as is possible for “contracted” beings, as he is.
“Who could understand how all things, though different contingently, are the image of that single, infinite Form, as if the creature were an occasioned god, just as an accident is an occasioned substance and a woman an occasioned man? The infinite form is received only in a finite way; consequently, every creature is, as it were, a finite infinity or a created god, so that is exists in the way in which this could best be. It is as if the Creator had spoken: ‘Let is be made,’ and because God, who is eternity itself, could not be made, that was made which could be made, which would be as much like God as possible. The inference, therefore, is that every created thing as such is perfect, even if by comparison to others it seems less perfect. For the most merciful God communicates being to all in the manner in which is can be received. Therefore, God communicates without difference and envy, and what God communicates is received in such a way that contingency does not permit it to be received otherwise or to a higher degree. Therefore, every created being finds its rest in its own perfection, which it freely holds from the divine being. It desires to be no other created being, as if something else were more perfect, but rather it prefers that which it itself holds, as if a divine gift, from the maximum, and it wishes its own possession to be perfected and preserved incorruptibly.”
- De Docta Ignorantia (p.134)
For this bond with rational spirits to be real, God must not only be infinitely loving, but also infinitely lovable, as well as the infinite bond of love that unites the loving and the lovable. This triunity of the loving, the lovable, and love itself corresponds, of course, to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
“You have disclosed yourself to me, O Lord, as so lovable that you cannot be more lovable. For you are infinitely lovable, my God. Never, therefore, can you be loved by anyone as you are lovable except by one who is infinitely loving. For unless there were one who is infinitely loving, you would not be infinitely lovable; for your lovableness, which is the power to be loved infinitely, exists because there is a power to love infinitely. From the power to love infinitely and the power to be loved infinitely arises an infinite bond of love between the infinite lover and the infinite lovable. But the infinite cannot be multiple. You, therefore, my God, who are love, are the loving love, the lovable love, and the love which is the bond of loving love and lovable love.”
- De Visione Dei (p.267)
If God’s infinite lovableness were not distinct from his lovingness, there would be no free will, for to be loved by God would entail loving him in return. Yet because all things are one in the infinite, God’s lovingness, lovableness, and the love which unites them cannot be separate. Nicholas concludes from this that God is numerically neither one nor three, but precisely and extra-numerically triune.
“You love, O loving God, all things in such a way that you love each single thing. You stretch forth your love to all. Yet many do not love you but prefer another to you. However, if lovable love were not distinct from love that loves, you would be so lovable to all that they could not love anything besides you, and all rational spirits would be compelled to love you. But you are so magnanimous, my God, that you will for rational souls to be free to love you or not to love you. For this reason it does not follow that because you are love, you are loved. You, therefore, my God, are united to all by a bond of love, for you stretch forth your love upon all your creatures. But not every rational spirit is united to you, because it extends its love not to your lovableness but to another to which it is united and bound.”
“Who, therefore, can deny that you, O God, are triune, when one sees that if you were not three and one, you would not be a noble or a natural and perfect God, nor would there be the spirit of free choice nor could one arrive at the joy of you and at one’s own happiness?”
- De Visione Dei (p.271)
For Nicholas, if God were not triune, creation could not be united to him in the rational freedom that is the nature of spiritual beings. Ultimately, God would not be God.
Nor can this union be accomplished in the abstract, since the contracted maximum (i.e. the universe) exists only as contracted in particulars. Humanity, as the all-encompassing “median” of creation, cannot be united to God merely in essence, but in the concrete form of an individual person. The locus of this union is Christ, in whom is effected the ultimate coincidence of opposites—that between the infinite and the finite—through whom all things come into being and hold together, in whom all rational spirits find their rest in God-consciousness, and who is rightly identified as the Son and Logos of God.
“Accordingly, the middle nature [i.e. humanity], which is the means by which the lower and the higher are united, is alone that nature that can suitably be elevated to the maximum by the power of the maximum and infinite God. This middle nature enfolds all natures within itself, as the highest of the lower nature and the lowest of the higher. Consequently, if, in accord with all comprising it, it ascends to union with maximumness, it is evident that in this nature all natures and the whole universe have in every possible way attained to the highest gradation.
“Humanity, however, exists in this or that thing only in a contracted way. For this reason, it would not be possible for more than one true human being to be able to ascend to union with maximumness, and, certainly, this being would be a human in such a way as to be God and God in such a way as to be a human. This human being would be the perfection of the universe, holding primacy in everything. And in this individual the least, the greatest, and the middle things of the nature united to absolute maximumness would so coincide that this human would be the perfection of all things, and all things, as contracted, would come to rest in this individual as in their own perfection. The measure of this human would also be that of an angel, as John states in the Apocalypse, and of each thing. For this human being would be the universal contracted being of each creature though this human’s union with the absolute, which is the absolute being of all things. Through this human being all things would receive the beginning and the end of their contraction, so that through this human, who is the contracted maximum, all things would come forth from the absolute maximum into contracted being and would return to the absolute through the same intermediary, so to speak, through the one who is the beginning of their emanation and the end of their return.
“But as the equality of being all things, God is the creator of the universe, since the universe has been created according to God. It is to this highest and maximum equality of being all things absolutely that the nature of humanity would be united. As a result, through the assumed humanity, God would, in the humanity, be all things contractedly, just as God is the equality of being all things absolutely. Because this human being would, by the union, exist in the maximum equality of being, this human would be the Son of God, just as this human would be the Word, in whom all things have been made, and the equality of being, which, as we have already shown, is called Son of God.”
- De Docta Ignorantia (pp.176-177)
“Christ is the center and circumference of intellectual nature, and because the intellect embraces all things, he is above all things. Yet in holy, rational souls and in intellectual spirits, which are the heavens declaring his glory, he resides as if in his own temple.”
- -De Docta Ignorantia (p.191)
Overall, Nicholas is remarkable for introducing a novel theological vocabulary to explicate traditional doctrines, and for reintroducing θαυμάζειν, or wonder, into the heart of proper reflection on divinity, nature, and the mystery of their conjunction, which in-forms everything from the profoundest questions of cosmic existence to our moment-to-moment experience of reality.
May 30, 2022
Nicholas of Cusa is one of those great spiritual writers whose work is both profound and relevant for today. This book includes his primary spiritual writings with a helpful introduction.
The first work is on learned ignorance, emphasizing that the more we learn of the divine, the more we recognize we do not know:
“Clearly, therefore, we know of the truth only that we know that it cannot be comprehended precisely as it is. Truth is like the most absolute necessity, which can be neither more nor less than it is, while our intellect is like possibility” (91)
“Sacred ignorance has taught us that God is ineffable, and this is the case because God is infinitely greater than all that can be named; and this is so greatly true that we speak of God more truly through relation and negation” (126)
There is a long Christian tradition of such negative theology, and I wish more Christians today would speak with less confidence of God for in their use of God they speak more of themselves than God. “God” becomes a deus ex machina to justify whatever we think. That said, eventually we do turn from negative to positive and do speak of God. Cusa, following the tradition, recognizes that God has revealed God’s self in Jesus:
“In Christ, therefore, human nature by its union with the divine nature was exalted to the highest power and was delivered from the burden of temporal and oppressive desires” (184)
The way writers like Cusa speak of Christ and salvation is so much richer than much we hear today. Today Jesus is reduced to a momentary sacrifice, a quick transaction of debt payment. The question is whether we acknowledge the truth of the matter. For mystics like Cusa (actually, for most Christian theologians in the first 1000, or even 1500, years) it was about the divine lifting up all of human nature:
“Christ underwent death in order that human nature might rise again with him to everlasting life and that the animal and mortal body might become spiritual and incorruptible. He could not be a true human being unless he were mortal, and he could not bring mortal nature to immortality unless it were divested of mortality through death” (186)
God becomes human to elevate humanity to God.
“The conclusion is evident: Because Christ the human arose, all human beings will rise through him after all motion of temporal corruptibility will have ceased, so that they will be forever incorruptible” (189).
I believe the logical extension of such theology is that God is reconciled to all things. If God is all in all, there is no separation from God. Cusa briefly writes of hell. I do not want to project my own hope in universal reconciliation onto Cusa, but it is hard not to read what he writes (such as the quote above) and see how unending hell fits into the picture. Perhaps that is why he only mentioned it in about two paragraphs. Could even he not see how it fit, but he had to believe it as a 15th century Catholic?
Overall, I find a lot of depth here. God is not just a being some of us believe in - God is the very air we breath, the Desire at the heart of all our Desires. When we desire the Good, the Beautiful, Love, Truth we are Desiring God (and I see echoes of David Bentley Hart’s You Are Gods here as well):
“You, therefore, O God, are infinity itself, which alone I desire in every desiring” (266)
The first work is on learned ignorance, emphasizing that the more we learn of the divine, the more we recognize we do not know:
“Clearly, therefore, we know of the truth only that we know that it cannot be comprehended precisely as it is. Truth is like the most absolute necessity, which can be neither more nor less than it is, while our intellect is like possibility” (91)
“Sacred ignorance has taught us that God is ineffable, and this is the case because God is infinitely greater than all that can be named; and this is so greatly true that we speak of God more truly through relation and negation” (126)
There is a long Christian tradition of such negative theology, and I wish more Christians today would speak with less confidence of God for in their use of God they speak more of themselves than God. “God” becomes a deus ex machina to justify whatever we think. That said, eventually we do turn from negative to positive and do speak of God. Cusa, following the tradition, recognizes that God has revealed God’s self in Jesus:
“In Christ, therefore, human nature by its union with the divine nature was exalted to the highest power and was delivered from the burden of temporal and oppressive desires” (184)
The way writers like Cusa speak of Christ and salvation is so much richer than much we hear today. Today Jesus is reduced to a momentary sacrifice, a quick transaction of debt payment. The question is whether we acknowledge the truth of the matter. For mystics like Cusa (actually, for most Christian theologians in the first 1000, or even 1500, years) it was about the divine lifting up all of human nature:
“Christ underwent death in order that human nature might rise again with him to everlasting life and that the animal and mortal body might become spiritual and incorruptible. He could not be a true human being unless he were mortal, and he could not bring mortal nature to immortality unless it were divested of mortality through death” (186)
God becomes human to elevate humanity to God.
“The conclusion is evident: Because Christ the human arose, all human beings will rise through him after all motion of temporal corruptibility will have ceased, so that they will be forever incorruptible” (189).
I believe the logical extension of such theology is that God is reconciled to all things. If God is all in all, there is no separation from God. Cusa briefly writes of hell. I do not want to project my own hope in universal reconciliation onto Cusa, but it is hard not to read what he writes (such as the quote above) and see how unending hell fits into the picture. Perhaps that is why he only mentioned it in about two paragraphs. Could even he not see how it fit, but he had to believe it as a 15th century Catholic?
Overall, I find a lot of depth here. God is not just a being some of us believe in - God is the very air we breath, the Desire at the heart of all our Desires. When we desire the Good, the Beautiful, Love, Truth we are Desiring God (and I see echoes of David Bentley Hart’s You Are Gods here as well):
“You, therefore, O God, are infinity itself, which alone I desire in every desiring” (266)
February 16, 2025
Theology is the study about nothing. Nicholas of Cusa makes God that nothing while making him infinite while making our knowing ignorant and the contradiction of the coincidences become our essence, and for Cusa without God, we can’t participate with absolute being.
Cusa bridges the medieval thought (the scholastics) into a question of being as participation within an absolute infinite with intellect, sensual and experiences only fully realized through the unknowable but certain infinite. Meister Eckhart’s plea to God ‘please let me not know you so that I can be most complete’ is Cusa’s mystical guide post.
Dun Scotus closed out the scholastics with ‘synchronic contingency’ by making the now infinite with no past nor future and Heidegger brings back ‘being qua being’ in a similar manner as Cusa does but while not going through pseudo-Dionysius as Cusa does. Heidegger beyond ‘Being and Time’ will reinstate the mysticism, and his doctoral dissertation was on Duns Scotus and being qua being.
Cusa leverages Anslem’s definition of God: ‘that which nothing greater can be conceived’ and assumes Its existence. The fault of the scholastics up to Scotus is believing that ‘the sum of the parts must be less than or equal to the whole.’ True for finite sets, not necessarily true for infinite. Cusa applies finite rules for the infinite and creates ‘learned ignorance’ as knowledge and ‘the coincidences of contradictions.’ He ‘proves’ the trinity through infinite logic applied to finite categories.
A person participates in humanity and is only divine through associating through a God that is being itself according to Cusa. The ‘whatness’ of humans, that is ‘our substance’ is such that our reality is through the divine and our ‘thingness,’ that is our ‘accident’ is freely given from the Good and we are not divine because of humanity or humanness but because of the sacrifice of Jesus, according to Cusa.
Cusa’s double talk reminds me of Karl Barth’s first volume of ‘Systematic Theology.’ I could only read the first volume because any more of that nonsense would have driven me to distraction and this little book gives just the right amount of Cusa’s spiritual philosophy to help me understand why James Joyce’s ‘Finnegans Wake’ relies so heavily on it.
Even with Cusa’s acceptance of absurdities (learned ignorance, coincidence of contradictions, necessity of trinity and Jesus, mystical realities, ….) he resurrects being qua being and gives impetus to Spinoza’s one substance with infinite attributes, almost any book by Deleuze (see ‘Difference and Repetition,’ or ‘Logic of Sense,’) and Heidegger’s search for ‘why there is something rather than nothing,’ and that makes this little book valuable reading. I would even say that Deleuze’s ‘Logic of Sense’ is mostly just a reworking of Cusa with the overtly religious parts taken out.
Cusa bridges the medieval thought (the scholastics) into a question of being as participation within an absolute infinite with intellect, sensual and experiences only fully realized through the unknowable but certain infinite. Meister Eckhart’s plea to God ‘please let me not know you so that I can be most complete’ is Cusa’s mystical guide post.
Dun Scotus closed out the scholastics with ‘synchronic contingency’ by making the now infinite with no past nor future and Heidegger brings back ‘being qua being’ in a similar manner as Cusa does but while not going through pseudo-Dionysius as Cusa does. Heidegger beyond ‘Being and Time’ will reinstate the mysticism, and his doctoral dissertation was on Duns Scotus and being qua being.
Cusa leverages Anslem’s definition of God: ‘that which nothing greater can be conceived’ and assumes Its existence. The fault of the scholastics up to Scotus is believing that ‘the sum of the parts must be less than or equal to the whole.’ True for finite sets, not necessarily true for infinite. Cusa applies finite rules for the infinite and creates ‘learned ignorance’ as knowledge and ‘the coincidences of contradictions.’ He ‘proves’ the trinity through infinite logic applied to finite categories.
A person participates in humanity and is only divine through associating through a God that is being itself according to Cusa. The ‘whatness’ of humans, that is ‘our substance’ is such that our reality is through the divine and our ‘thingness,’ that is our ‘accident’ is freely given from the Good and we are not divine because of humanity or humanness but because of the sacrifice of Jesus, according to Cusa.
Cusa’s double talk reminds me of Karl Barth’s first volume of ‘Systematic Theology.’ I could only read the first volume because any more of that nonsense would have driven me to distraction and this little book gives just the right amount of Cusa’s spiritual philosophy to help me understand why James Joyce’s ‘Finnegans Wake’ relies so heavily on it.
Even with Cusa’s acceptance of absurdities (learned ignorance, coincidence of contradictions, necessity of trinity and Jesus, mystical realities, ….) he resurrects being qua being and gives impetus to Spinoza’s one substance with infinite attributes, almost any book by Deleuze (see ‘Difference and Repetition,’ or ‘Logic of Sense,’) and Heidegger’s search for ‘why there is something rather than nothing,’ and that makes this little book valuable reading. I would even say that Deleuze’s ‘Logic of Sense’ is mostly just a reworking of Cusa with the overtly religious parts taken out.
January 23, 2024
For me, Nicholas's ideas, presented in this volume with its scholarly introductions and outstanding translations, are life-changing. Personally, I would group this with Dionysius the Areopagite's works and Augustine's Confessions because this, too, has deeply and permanently affected me as a Christian man and as a theologian. However, I do not believe that I was supposed to have read this earlier in my life for I have not been ready for it until now. Only after lots of other reading and changes in my life was I prepared for the subtlety of Cusanus. His ideas would have been cold and foreign for me at any other point in my life, but now they are warm and familiar - even life-giving. And I am now saying this quite seriously; one should not embark upon Nicholas before one is ready by the power of the Holy Spirit to do so. But I can say colloquially, Nicholas is the "real deal."
One finds in Nicholas an amazing balance of intellectual acumen, piety, devotion to the Tradition, and creativity or originality. Nicholas is one of those figures that seemed to have enemies on both ends of many different spectrums: political, philosophical, theological, and ecclesiastical, which always piques my interest; for it seems that individuals like this are never trying to please the crowd or keep their jobs, but are pursuing truth no matter what the cost. This is Nicholas of Cusa.
Strongly Augustinian, he writes in the vein of Dionysisus the Areopagite and is intimately familiar with the entire Platonic, Aristotelian, and scholastic traditions, as well as (for him) contemporary Jewish and Islamic philosophy. Nicholas has an intimate understanding of neoplatonism, with its many Christian and pagan interpreters, but he cannot really be described as a "neoplatonist." Indeed, Nicholas can't really be pigeonholed at all, for he is always seeking new ways of understanding the truth and better modes of expressing it. Nicholas mentions fairly frequently Augustine and Dionysius, but also Proclus, Maximus the Confessor, John Scotus Eriugena, Bede, and the Victorines. When he mentions Aristotle it is often to correct him, and he rarely cites any of the great scholastics of the century prior to his, though he knew and understood them well.
This particular collection, with its outstanding introduction, contains five of his most important works: "On Learned Ignorance" (De docta ignorantia - 1440), "Dialogue on the Hidden God" (Dialogus de Deo abscondito - 1445), "On Seeking God" (De quaerendo Deum - 1445), On the Vision of God" (De visione De - 1453), and "On the Summit of Contemplation" (De apice theoriae - 1464). Of these, the two most crucial are "On Learned Ignorance" (which is, indeed, his most important work), and "On the Vision of God" (which is his most beautiful work). The book contains an invaluable appendix serving as a "glossary" of Cusanus's unique terms.
Indeed, these terms are the "key" to Cusa, though his books are stylistically beautiful and should be read for enjoyment, not only for the extraction of these theological "data." But, nevertheless, I would say that to "get" Cusa one must "get" his lingo: "coincidence of opposites," "contraction," "learned ignorance," "unfolding and enfolding," and "posse" ("können," "Can-Itself").
To explain these briefly, the coincidence of opposites is the idea that God is above our human notions of contradiction. In Him, past and present do not nullify and contradict one another; they find their union in His divine, eternal gaze. The coincidence of opposites is not God, but more like God's "logic," or, as Nicholas puts it, the wall around paradise with the Infinite and Incomprehensible God within. His thoughts are truly not our thoughts, nor His ways our ways.
Contraction is Nicholas's notion that things (beings) exist from God (Source of Being) in an individuated way. The universe is the maximum contraction of the Ultimate, uncontracted Maximum (God) and includes all that is. Contraction is related to God's condescension, and the greatest paradox of all is that the Uncontracted (God) became contracted (incarnation) though in a perfectly maximal way (Christ).
Learned ignorance has some semblance to "Socratic ignorance," particularly that kind explained by Hamann and Kierkegaard, though I believe it has a different (higher) emphasis in the end. Nicholas agrees with the Tradition that we really do not know as we ought to know (*1 Corinthians 8:2), and that therefore, in a sense, this is all we know. Yet, it is God who knows us (*Galatians 4:9) and His knowing is not different than His loving and saving. The idea of learned ignorance came to Nicholas as a gift from the Father of heavenly lights (James 1:17) when he was on a ship sailing back to Europe from Constantinople. The focus is not only on the weakness and ignorance of man and his sinful nature, but on the love of God who stoops down to His level and gives him the gifts of His grace so that understanding, peace, and knowledge can happen.
Unfolding and enfolding relates to the old philosophical "problem" of the One and the many. How is it that I am not God, and yet I am "in" God (Acts 17:28) and even have my very "being" in Him, in some sense? Isn't there a danger of pantheism here, or, on the other hand, of reducing God to a Creature among creatures? This is what Nicholas is navigating. God is somehow in all things and in no things. All things are somehow God but not God. He uses his language of unfolding and enfolding to explain this; in God, all things are enfolded; in creation, God unfolds all things. Nicholas was accused by his enemies of being a pantheist or a "Beghard" (i.e., someone who believed he himself was God and was incapable of sinning), but his position is much more subtle, and is in line with the great Christian mystics who came before him.
"Posse" (which corresponds to the German infinitive können - "canning," "to can-itself") is one of Nicholas's most subtle ideas. Famously, he came to the realization as an old man that God is the "can," that is, "the possibility as pure possibility" behind every earthly possibility. Nicholas grasped, before Easter toward the end of his life, that for anything to happen at all there must be a Source, a Happen Itself, as this is God. Famously, Posse then became one of Nicholas's favorite names for God.
This book should be any anglophone reader's first port of entry into Nicholas's thought.
One finds in Nicholas an amazing balance of intellectual acumen, piety, devotion to the Tradition, and creativity or originality. Nicholas is one of those figures that seemed to have enemies on both ends of many different spectrums: political, philosophical, theological, and ecclesiastical, which always piques my interest; for it seems that individuals like this are never trying to please the crowd or keep their jobs, but are pursuing truth no matter what the cost. This is Nicholas of Cusa.
Strongly Augustinian, he writes in the vein of Dionysisus the Areopagite and is intimately familiar with the entire Platonic, Aristotelian, and scholastic traditions, as well as (for him) contemporary Jewish and Islamic philosophy. Nicholas has an intimate understanding of neoplatonism, with its many Christian and pagan interpreters, but he cannot really be described as a "neoplatonist." Indeed, Nicholas can't really be pigeonholed at all, for he is always seeking new ways of understanding the truth and better modes of expressing it. Nicholas mentions fairly frequently Augustine and Dionysius, but also Proclus, Maximus the Confessor, John Scotus Eriugena, Bede, and the Victorines. When he mentions Aristotle it is often to correct him, and he rarely cites any of the great scholastics of the century prior to his, though he knew and understood them well.
This particular collection, with its outstanding introduction, contains five of his most important works: "On Learned Ignorance" (De docta ignorantia - 1440), "Dialogue on the Hidden God" (Dialogus de Deo abscondito - 1445), "On Seeking God" (De quaerendo Deum - 1445), On the Vision of God" (De visione De - 1453), and "On the Summit of Contemplation" (De apice theoriae - 1464). Of these, the two most crucial are "On Learned Ignorance" (which is, indeed, his most important work), and "On the Vision of God" (which is his most beautiful work). The book contains an invaluable appendix serving as a "glossary" of Cusanus's unique terms.
Indeed, these terms are the "key" to Cusa, though his books are stylistically beautiful and should be read for enjoyment, not only for the extraction of these theological "data." But, nevertheless, I would say that to "get" Cusa one must "get" his lingo: "coincidence of opposites," "contraction," "learned ignorance," "unfolding and enfolding," and "posse" ("können," "Can-Itself").
To explain these briefly, the coincidence of opposites is the idea that God is above our human notions of contradiction. In Him, past and present do not nullify and contradict one another; they find their union in His divine, eternal gaze. The coincidence of opposites is not God, but more like God's "logic," or, as Nicholas puts it, the wall around paradise with the Infinite and Incomprehensible God within. His thoughts are truly not our thoughts, nor His ways our ways.
Contraction is Nicholas's notion that things (beings) exist from God (Source of Being) in an individuated way. The universe is the maximum contraction of the Ultimate, uncontracted Maximum (God) and includes all that is. Contraction is related to God's condescension, and the greatest paradox of all is that the Uncontracted (God) became contracted (incarnation) though in a perfectly maximal way (Christ).
Learned ignorance has some semblance to "Socratic ignorance," particularly that kind explained by Hamann and Kierkegaard, though I believe it has a different (higher) emphasis in the end. Nicholas agrees with the Tradition that we really do not know as we ought to know (*1 Corinthians 8:2), and that therefore, in a sense, this is all we know. Yet, it is God who knows us (*Galatians 4:9) and His knowing is not different than His loving and saving. The idea of learned ignorance came to Nicholas as a gift from the Father of heavenly lights (James 1:17) when he was on a ship sailing back to Europe from Constantinople. The focus is not only on the weakness and ignorance of man and his sinful nature, but on the love of God who stoops down to His level and gives him the gifts of His grace so that understanding, peace, and knowledge can happen.
Unfolding and enfolding relates to the old philosophical "problem" of the One and the many. How is it that I am not God, and yet I am "in" God (Acts 17:28) and even have my very "being" in Him, in some sense? Isn't there a danger of pantheism here, or, on the other hand, of reducing God to a Creature among creatures? This is what Nicholas is navigating. God is somehow in all things and in no things. All things are somehow God but not God. He uses his language of unfolding and enfolding to explain this; in God, all things are enfolded; in creation, God unfolds all things. Nicholas was accused by his enemies of being a pantheist or a "Beghard" (i.e., someone who believed he himself was God and was incapable of sinning), but his position is much more subtle, and is in line with the great Christian mystics who came before him.
"Posse" (which corresponds to the German infinitive können - "canning," "to can-itself") is one of Nicholas's most subtle ideas. Famously, he came to the realization as an old man that God is the "can," that is, "the possibility as pure possibility" behind every earthly possibility. Nicholas grasped, before Easter toward the end of his life, that for anything to happen at all there must be a Source, a Happen Itself, as this is God. Famously, Posse then became one of Nicholas's favorite names for God.
This book should be any anglophone reader's first port of entry into Nicholas's thought.
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August 25, 2023the center is everywhere
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