De docta ignorantia

Now that with God's help we have striven by mathematical example to become more skilled in our ignorance concerning the first maximum, let us further investigate for the completion of the teaching concerning the name of the maximum; and this inquiry indeed, if we have rightly kept in mind the things often said, will be easy of discovery. For it is manifest that, since the maximum is the maximum itself simply, to which nothing is opposed, no name can properly befit it. For all names are imposed from a certain singularity of reason, through which the discretion of one from another is made; but where all things are one, there can be no proper name. Hence Hermes Trismegistus rightly says: "Since God is the universality of things, then there is no proper name of him, since either God must be called by every name or all things by his name, since he in his simplicity enfolds the universality of all things." Hence according to him the proper name which is called ineffable by us is of the tetragrammaton, or four letters, and proper for this reason, because it does not befit God according to any habitude to creatures, but according to his proper essence must be interpreted one and all, or all unitedly, which is better. And thus we found above the greatest unity, which is the same as all unitedly. Indeed unity still seems a nearer and more fitting name than all unitedly. And on this account the Prophet says: "How on that day God will be, and his name one." And elsewhere: "Hear, Israel, that is see God through intellect, since your God is one." But unity is not the name of God in the manner in which we either name or understand unity, since just as God surpasses all intellect, so a fortiori every name. Names are indeed imposed through the motion of reason, which is much inferior to intellect, for the discretion of things: but since reason cannot leap across contradictories, hence there is no name to which another is not opposed according to the motion of reason. Hence plurality or multitude is opposed to unity according to the motion of reason. This unity does not befit God, but the unity to which neither otherness nor plurality nor multitude is opposed. This is the greatest name, enfolding all things in its simplicity of unity; this is the ineffable name and above all intellect. For who could understand an infinite unity anteceding through infinity all opposition, where all things without composition are enfolded in simplicity, where there is no other or diverse, where man does not differ from lion, and heaven does not differ from earth, and yet they are there most truly not according to their finitude, but enfoldedly the greatest unity itself? Hence, if anyone could understand or name such a unity, which since it is unity is all things, and since it is minimum is maximum, he would attain the name of God. But since the name of God is God, then his name is not known except through the intellect, which is the maximum itself and the greatest name. Hence in learned ignorance we attain, although unity seems the nearer name of the greatest, yet it is distant through infinity from the true name of the greatest, which is the maximum itself. It is therefore manifest from this that affirmative names, which we attribute to God, befit him diminutively through infinity; for such are attributed to him according to something found in creatures. Since, therefore, nothing such particular, discrete, having an opposite can befit God except most diminutively, hence affirmations are disjointed, as Dionysius says. For if you say he is truth, falsity occurs; if you say he is virtue, vice occurs; if you say substance, accident occurs; and so of the rest. But since he is not substance which is not all things and to which nothing is opposed, and is not truth which is not all things without opposition, those particular names can befit only diminutively, very much through infinity. For all affirmations, as positing in him something of their signification, cannot befit him who is not more something than all things. And therefore affirmative names, if they befit, befit only in respect of creatures; not that creatures are the cause of their befitting, since the maximum can have nothing from creatures, but they befit from infinite power toward creatures. For from eternity God could create, because unless he could, he would not have been supreme power. Therefore this name creator, although it befits in respect of creatures, yet also befitted before the creature was, since from eternity he could create. So of justice and all other affirmative names, which we transfer translatively from creatures to God on account of a certain perfection signified through those names; although all those names were from eternity, even before we attributed them, truly in their supreme perfection and in the infinite name enfolded, just as also all things which are signified through such names, and from which they are transferred by us into God. And to such an extent is this true of all affirmatives that even the name of trinity and of the persons, namely Father and Son and Holy Spirit, are imposed in habitude to creatures. For since God from this, that he is unity, is begetting and Father, from this, that he is equality of unity, begotten or son, from this, that he is the connexion of both, holy spirit; then it is clear the son is called son from this, that he is the equality of unity or of beingness or of being. Hence it is evident from this, that God from eternity could create things, although he also had not created them, in respect of those things themselves the son is called, for from this he is son, that he is the equality of the being of things, beyond which or below which things could not be — namely in such a way that he is son from this, that he is the equality of the beingness of things which God could make, although he was not going to make them; which if he could not make, neither would God be father or son or Holy Spirit, indeed nor God. Hence, if you consider more subtly, for the father to beget the son, this was to create all things in the Word. And this Augustine affirms the Word also art and idea in respect of creatures. Hence from this God is father, because he begot the equality of unity, but from this holy spirit, that he is the love of both, and all these respectively of creatures. For the creature from this, that God is Father, begins to be; from this, that son, is perfected; from this, that he is holy spirit, the universal order of things concords; and these are in each thing the vestiges of the trinity. And this is the sentence of Aurelius Augustine expounding that of Genesis: In the beginning God created heaven and earth, saying God, from this that Father, created the principle of things. Hence whatever is said of God through the theology of affirmation is founded in respect of creatures, even those most holy names, in which the greatest mysteries of divine cognition lie hidden, which are held among the Hebrews and Chaldeans, none of which signifies God except according to some particular property, except the name of four letters, which are יהוה, which is proper and ineffable as interpreted above, concerning which Jerome and Rabbi Solomon in the book of the guide of the perplexed treat extensively, who may be seen.