Beyond human knowledge and understanding

(Quotations from Nicholas of Cusa)

Rapt in Simplicity

Since God is not knowable in this world, where reason, opinion, and teaching lead us, by means of symbols, from the better known to the unknown, God is grasped only where persuadings leave off and faith enters in. Through faith we are rapt in simplicity so that, while in a body incorporeally, because in spirit, and in the world not in a worldly manner but celestially, we may incomprehensibly contemplate Christ above all reason and intelligence, in the third heaven {2 Cor 12:2} of the simplest intellectuality. Therefore, we also see that because of the immensity of his excellence he cannot be comprehended. And this is that learned ignorance by which the very blessed Paul, as he ascended saw that, when he was being lifted higher up to Christ, he was then ignorant of Christ...
(p. 197)

Peering past the Wall of Paradise

{Addressed to God} ... I have discovered that the place where you are found unveiled is girded about with the coincidence of contradictories. This is the wall of paradise, and it is there in paradise that you reside. The wall's gate is guarded by the highest spirit of reason, and unless it is overpowered, the way in will not lie open. Thus, it is on the other side of the coincidence of contradictories that you will be able to be seen and nowhere on this side.
(pp. 251-252)

Therefore, I must leap across this wall of invisible vision to where you are to be found. But this wall is both everything and nothing. For you, who confront as if you were both all things and nothing at all, dwell inside that high wall which no natural ability can scale by its own power.
(p. 256)

For the wall shuts out the power of every intellect, although the eye looks beyond into paradise. Yet that which the eye sees it can neither name nor understand; for what is seen is the eye's secret love and a hidden treasure, which remains hidden after having been found, because it is discovered inside of the wall of the coincidence of the hidden and the revealed.
(p. 269)

The posse {i.e. potential} of the mind to see, therefore, surpasses the posse to comprehend...

This posse of the mind to see beyond all comprehensible faculty and power is the mind's supreme posse. In it Posse Itself {i.e. God in His Unbounded Potentiality} manifests itself maximally, and the mind's supreme posse is not brought to its limit this side of Posse Itself. For the posse to see is directed only to Posse Itself so that the mind can foresee that toward which it tends, just as a traveler foresees one's journey's end so that one can direct one's steps toward the desired goal.

Therefore, think over these matters that you may see that all things are so ordained that the mind could run toward Posse Itself, which it sees from afar, and comprehend the incomprehensible in the best way it can. For Posse Itself, when it will appear in the glory of majesty, is alone able to satisfy the mind's longing. For it is that what which is sought.
(pp. 297-298)

©1999 by Deb Platt

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