De docta ignorantia

Since the worship of God, who must be adored in spirit and truth, necessarily founds itself on positives affirming God, hence every religion in its worship necessarily ascends through affirmative theology adoring God as one and threefold, as most wise, most pious, inaccessible light, life, truth, and so of the rest, always directing worship through faith, which it more truly attains through learned ignorance; believing namely that him whom it adores as one to be unitedly all things, and him whom it worships as inaccessible light not indeed to be light as this corporeal light is, to which darkness is opposed, but most simple and infinite, in which darkness is infinite light, and that that infinite light itself always shines in the darkness of our ignorance, but the darkness cannot comprehend it. And thus the theology of negation is so necessary to the other of affirmation that without it God would not be worshipped as infinite God, but rather as creature; and such worship is idolatry, which attributes to the image what befits truth alone. Hence it will be useful to add a little here concerning negative theology. Sacred ignorance teaches us God is ineffable; and this because he is greater through infinity than all things that can be named: and this indeed, because it is most true, we speak of him more truly through removal and negation, as also the greatest Dionysius, who would have him be neither truth, nor intellect, nor light, nor anything of the things that can be said, whom Rabbi Solomon and all the wise follow. Hence they deny he is Father, nor Son, nor Holy Spirit according to this negative theology, according to which he is only infinite. But infinity, as infinity, is neither generating nor generated nor proceeding. Hence Hilary of Poitiers most subtly said, when distinguishing the persons: In the eternal, he says, infinity, likeness in the image, use in the gift; wishing to say that although in eternity we can see nothing but infinity, yet that infinity itself, which is eternity itself, since it is negative, cannot be understood as generating, but well eternity, since eternity is affirmative of maximal unity or presence, hence principle without principle. Likeness in the image he calls principle from principle; use in the gift he calls procession from both. Which are altogether most known through what precedes; for although eternity is infinity, so that eternity is not a greater cause of the Father than infinity, yet according to the mode of consideration eternity is attributed to the Father and not to the Son nor to the Holy Spirit; but infinity not to one person alone rather than another, since that infinity itself according to the consideration of unity is Father, according to the consideration of the equality of unity Son, according to the consideration of the connexion Holy Spirit, according to the simple consideration of infinity neither Father nor Son nor Holy Spirit — although that infinity and eternity itself is each of the three persons, and conversely each person infinity and eternity; yet not according to the consideration as set forth; since according to the consideration of infinity God is neither one nor many, and there is not found in God according to the theology of negation anything but infinity. Hence according to it he is not knowable in this age, nor in the future, since every creature is darkness in the respect that it cannot comprehend the infinite light, but he is known to himself alone. And from these it is manifest how negations are true, affirmations insufficient, in theological matters; and nevertheless the negations removing imperfection from the most perfect are truer than others. As because it is truer that God is not stone than that he is not life or intelligence, and not drunkenness than not virtue — the contrary in affirmatives; for the affirmation saying God is intelligence and life is truer than earth, stone, or body. For all these are most clear from what precedes. From which we conclude that the precision of truth shines incomprehensibly in the darkness of our ignorance. And this is that learned ignorance which we inquired into; through which alone we have explicated that to the greatest God, three-one, according to the steps of the teaching of ignorance itself, we can approach, so that from all our striving concerning this we may ever be able to praise him, that he has shown himself to us incomprehensible, who is above all forever blessed.