De docta ignorantia

It is fitting to premise a small digression unto the expression of the intent, that we may more clearly attain the mystery of the cross. There is no doubt that man exists from sense and intellect and the middle reason, which binds both. But the order submits sense to reason, reason to intellect. The intellect is not of time and the world, but absolute from them; sense is of the world under time, existing subject to motions. Reason is as on the horizon, with respect to the intellect, but on the height, with respect to sense, so that in it coincide those which are below and above time. Sense is incapable of supertemporal and spiritual things. An animal therefore does not perceive those things which are of God, since God is spirit and more than spirit, and on account of this sensitive cognition is in the darkness of ignorance of eternal things, and is moved according to the flesh unto carnal desires through the concupiscible power and unto repelling what impedes through the irascible. But reason, surpassing in its nature from participation in the intellectual nature, contains certain laws, through which as ruler it moderates the passions of desire, and reduces them unto the equal, lest man, putting his end in sensible things, be deprived of the spiritual desire of the intellect.

And the chiefest of laws is, that one not do to another what one would not be done to oneself, and that eternal things be preferred to temporal, and clean and holy to caducous and unclean; and unto this cooperate the laws elicited from that reason by the most holy legislators, according to the diversity of place and time, promulgated as remedies in the reason of sinners. The intellect flying higher sees that, even if sense were subjected to reason through all things, not following the passions connatural to it, man through himself could nevertheless not arrive at the end of intellectual and eternal affections. For since man is generated from the seed of Adam in carnal pleasures, in whom that animality according to propagation conquers spirituality, then that nature itself, immersed in the root of origin in carnal delights, through which man proceeded into being from his father, remains utterly impotent to transcend temporal things for the embrace of spiritual things. Hence if the weight of carnal delights draws downward reason and intellect, so that they consent to those motions by not resisting, it is clear that man, thus drawn downward and averted from God, is utterly deprived of the fruition of the best good, which is intellectually above and eternal. But if reason dominates sense, there is still need that intellect dominate reason, that above reason it adhere through formed faith to the mediator, so that thus it can be drawn through God unto glory. No one was ever potent of himself above himself and his own nature thus originally subjected to the sins of carnal desire to be able to ascend above his own root unto eternal and celestial things, except he who descended from heaven, Christ Jesus — this is he who also ascended by his own virtue — in whom that human nature itself, born not from the will of flesh, but from God, had no obstacle to returning potently unto God the father. In Christ, therefore, that human nature itself was exalted through union unto the highest power, and rescued from the weight of temporal and burdening desires. But Christ the man willed all the deeds of the human nature of men, drawing us unto earthly things, in his human body not for himself, since he did no sin, but for us utterly to mortify, and by mortifying to purge, that all men of the same humanity with him might find in him all purgation of their sins. The voluntary and most innocent, most shameful and most cruel death of the man Christ on the cross was the extinction, satisfaction, and purgation of all carnal desires of human nature. Whatever can be done against the charity of neighbor by human nature is abundantly fulfilled in the fullness of the charity of Christ, whereby he gave himself even for enemies. Humanity in Christ Jesus, therefore, supplied all defects of all men. For since it is maximal, it embraces the whole potency of the species, so that it is the equality of being such of any man, in that much more than a brother and most special friend it is conjoined to each. For this the maximality of human nature effects, that in each man adhering to him through formed faith Christ is himself that same man, by a most perfect union, with the number of each preserved. Through which this is true which he himself says: Whatever you did unto one of the least of mine, you did unto me; and conversely, whatever Christ Jesus merited by his passion, they merited, who are one with him, with the difference of degrees of merit preserved, according to the difference of degrees of union of each with him through faith formed by charity. Hence in him the faithful exist circumcised, in him baptized, in him dead, in him made alive again through resurrection, in him united unto God and glorified. Our justification is not from ourselves, therefore, but from Christ, who since he is all fullness, in him we obtain all things, if we have him; whom when in this life we attain through formed faith, we can be justified in no other way than by that faith itself, as below in a certain place we shall say more extensively. This is that ineffable mystery of the cross of our redemption, in which, beyond those things which have been touched, Christ showed how truth and justice and the divine virtues must be preferred to temporal life, as eternal to caducous; and that in the most perfect man there must be the highest constancy and fortitude, charity and humanity, as the death of Christ on the cross showed those and all other virtues to have been maximally in the maximal Jesus. The more, therefore, man ascends in those immortal virtues, the more like unto Christ he will be; for the least coincide with the greatest, as the maximal humiliation with exaltation, the most shameful death of the supremely virtuous with glorious life, and so of the rest, as all these things the life, passion, and crucifixion of Christ manifest unto us.