De docta ignorantia

All our elders concordantly assert that faith is the beginning of intellect. For in every faculty certain things are presupposed as first principles, which are apprehended by faith alone, from which the understanding of things to be treated is elicited. For everyone ascending willing to doctrine must believe those things, without which he cannot ascend. For Isaiah says: Unless you believe, you shall not understand. Faith, therefore, is enfolding in itself every intelligible. But intellect is the unfolding of faith. The intellect is directed, therefore, through faith, and faith is extended through intellect. Where, therefore, sound faith is not, there is no true intellect. Of the error of principles and the weakness of the foundation, what conclusion they subinfer, is manifest. But no faith is more perfect than the truth itself, which is Jesus. Who does not understand that right faith is the most excellent gift of God? John the Apostle says that the faith of the incarnation of the Word of God leads us into truth, that we be made sons of God, and this in the beginning he simply opens, then narrates many works of Christ according to that faith, that the intellect be illuminated in faith. Hence this final conclusion he subinfers in saying: These things indeed are written, that you believe that Jesus is the son of God. But the sweetest faith of Christ firmly founded in simplicity can be extended and unfolded by degrees of ascensions according to the given doctrine of ignorance. For the maximal and most profound mysteries of God, hidden to the wise walking in the world, are revealed to the little and humble in the faith of Jesus, since Jesus is he, in whom all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledges are hidden, without whom no one can do anything. For he is the Word and the power, through whom God also made the ages, alone the highest having power above all things which are in heaven and on earth. Who, since in this world he is not knowable, where by reason and opinion or doctrine we are led in symbols through the more known to the unknown, is apprehended only there, where persuasions cease and faith accedes; through which we are rapt into simplicity, so that above all reason and intelligence in the third heaven of the simplest intellectuality we contemplate him in body incorporeally, because in spirit, and in the world not mundanely, but celestially, incomprehensibly, so that even this be seen, namely that he cannot be comprehended on account of the immensity of his excellence. And this is that learned ignorance, through which blessed Paul himself ascending saw that he was ignorant of Christ, whom once he only knew, when he was elevated higher unto him. We, therefore, the faithful of Christ, are led in learned ignorance unto the mountain, which is Christ, which to touch with the nature of our animality we are prohibited; and while with the intellectual eye we strive to behold him, we fall into darkness, knowing that within that darkness the mountain is, in which alone it is well-pleasing to dwell for all vigorous in intellect. Which if with greater constancy of faith we approach, we shall be rapt from the eyes of those walking sensually, that with the interior hearing we perceive voices and thunders and terrible signs of his majesty, easily perceiving that he alone is Lord, whom all things obey, arriving gradually at certain incorruptible vestiges of his feet, as at certain most divine characters, where hearing the voice not of mortal creatures, but of God himself in the holy organs and signs of the prophets and saints, we more clearly behold him as through a cloud of reason. Then with more ardent desire the faithful continually ascending are rapt unto simple intellectuality, leaping over all sensible things, as from sleep to waking, proceeding from hearing to seeing, where those things are seen which cannot be revealed, since they are above all hearing and the doctrine of voice. For if the things there revealed had to be said, then unsayables would be said, inaudibles heard, as the invisible is there seen. For Jesus blessed for ever, the end of all intellection, because truth, and of all sense, because life; of all being, finally, the end, because entity; and the perfection of every creature, because God and man, is there heard incomprehensibly as the limit of all voice. For from him all voice proceeds, and unto him it is terminated; whatever of true is in voice, is from him. All voice is unto doctrine; it is unto him, therefore, who is wisdom itself. All things whatsoever are written, are written unto our doctrine. Voices are figured in the scriptures, by the word of the Lord the heavens were firmed. All created things, therefore, are signs of the word of God. All corporeal voice is the sign of the mental word. The corruptible cause of every mental word is the incorruptible word, which is reason. Christ is the incarnate reason itself of all reasons, for the word was made flesh. Jesus, therefore, is the end of all. Such things indeed are gradually manifested to one ascending unto Christ through faith. Of which faith the divine efficacy is inexplicable; for it unites the believer with Jesus, if it have been great, so that he is above all things which are not in unity with that Jesus himself. For here, if faith is whole in the virtue of Jesus, to whom it is united, having power above nature and motion, it also commands malignant spirits, and wonderful things not he himself, but in him and through him Jesus works, as the deeds of the saints hand down examples. But the perfect faith of Christ must be most pure, maximal, formed by charity, as effectively as this can be done. For it suffers nothing to be mixed with itself, since it is the faith of the purest truth potent unto all things. Most often in what went before it is found replicated that the least coincides with the maximal; so indeed in faith, which, simply maximal, cannot be in a wayfarer who is not also at once a comprehensor, as Jesus was. But even for one only a wayfarer, as wanting to have in act the maximal faith of Christ, it is necessary that faith be elevated unto him unto so great a degree of undoubtable latitude, that it is even least faith, but the highest certainty without hesitation in anything whatsoever. This is the potent faith, which is so maximal and minimal, that it embraces all credibles in him, who is truth. And if perchance the faith of one man does not attain the degree of another on account of the impossibility of equality, as one visible cannot be seen in equal degree by many, yet this is necessary, that each, as much as in him lies, believe maximally in act. And then he who in comparison with others would obtain faith scarcely as a grain of mustard, unto this of immense virtue is that faith, that it would find obedience even in mountains, when the same in the virtue of the Word of God, with whom, as much as in him lies, he is maximally united through faith, commands, whom nothing can resist. See how great is the potency of thy intellectual spirit in the virtue of Christ Jesus, if it adhere to him above all, so that through it [the virtue of Christ Jesus] it [the intellectual spirit] be quickened, as supposted in him through union, with its own number preserved, as in its own life. But since this is not done except through the conversion of the intellect, which sense obeys, unto him through maximal faith, then it must be formed through the uniting charity; for the maximal faith cannot be without charity. For if every living thing loves to live, and every intelligent to understand, how can Jesus the immortal life itself be believed and the infinite truth, if he is not supremely loved? For life is lovable through itself; and if Jesus is maximally believed to be eternal life, he cannot not be loved; for it is not living faith, but dead, and utterly not faith without charity. But charity is the form of faith, giving it true being; nay, it is the sign of most constant faith. If therefore for Christ all things are postponed, body and soul are held for nothing in comparison with him, it is the sign of maximal faith. Nor can faith be great without the holy hope of the fruition of Jesus himself. For how would one have certain faith, if he did not hope for the things promised to him by Christ? If he did not believe he would have eternal life promised by Christ to the faithful, how does he believe Christ? Or how does he believe him to be truth? If in promises he has not undoubting hope, how would he choose death for Christ, who would not hope for immortality? And because he believes that he does not desert those hoping in him, but bestows on them sempiternal beatitude, hence for Christ to suffer all things for so great a reward of retribution the faithful holds for little. Great indeed is the force of faith, which makes man Christiform, that he leave sensible things, despoil himself of the contagions of flesh, walk in the ways of God with fear, follow the vestiges of Christ with joy, and voluntarily accept the cross with exultation, so that he be in flesh as spirit, to whom this world for Christ is death, and to be taken from it, that he be with Christ, is life. Who, thinkest thou, is this spirit, in whom Christ dwells through faith? What is this admirable gift of God, that we constituted in this pilgrimage, in fragile flesh, can be elevated unto another power in the virtue of faith above all things, which are not through union with Christ? Come, that successively with flesh mortified, gradually through faith, each ascend gradually unto unity with Christ, that into him by profound union, as much as this in life is possible, he be absorbed. Leaping over all visible things here which are in the world, he attains the complete perfection of nature. And this is the complete nature itself, which in Christ with flesh mortified and sin transformed in his image we shall be able to obtain; and not that phantastic of magicians, who say man ascends by certain operations through the mediation of faith unto a certain nature of influential spirits conjectural to them, that in the virtue of such spirits, to whom through faith they are united, they effect many and singular wonderful things either in fire or in water or in harmonic sciences by apparent transmutations, manifestation of hidden things, and the like. For it is manifest that in all these there is seduction and recession from life and truth. On account of which such men are so bound unto compacts and pacts of unity with malignant spirits, that what they believe, they show in work in purifications and adorations due to God alone, which unto spirits, as potent to fulfill petitions, and to be invoked through these mediations, they expend with great observance and veneration.

Sometimes through faith they obtain even the caducous things requested, thus united to the spirit, to which also eternally divided from Christ they will adhere in punishments. Blessed be God, who through his Son redeemed us from the darkness of so great ignorance, that we know all false and deceptive things, which with another mediator than Christ, who is truth, and another faith than of Jesus, in whatever way are perfected! For there is but one Lord Jesus potent above all, filling us with all blessing, alone making all our defects abound and supplying.