Becoming God: The Doctrine of Theosis in Nicholas of Cusa

3. Transcendence as the Distance between Knower and Known

3 T ra n s c e n d e n c e a s t h e D i s ta n c e b e tw e e n K n ow e r a n d K n ow n t h e e p i s t e m o l o g y o f c u s a n u s Transcendence and Immanence In Cusanus’s thought, the paradoxical counterpart of the divine presence in the created order that results from theophany is divine transcendence.The mystical union afforded by the intimacy of God’s manifestation is balanced by God’s distance. Cusanus’s epistemology is thus infused with a sense of divine mystery and is evidence that he was not a monist. This chapter will treat the mystery of God, the Trinity, and creation. Beginning with Aristotle and Theophrastus and developed by Plotinus and later Neoplatonists, true knowledge of something, especially of immaterial things, was not mere sensation but union with it.The modern assumption that knowledge of one thing by another requires a distance between the two, a distance allowing for observation and  measurement, was unheard of.To know something was to encompass it completely, not to observe it dispassionately. Cusanus, too, adhered to the notion that “unless the intellect becomes like the putatively intelligible object, it does not understand it.”1 “For assuredly, every thing of which there is a concept is encompassed by that concept.”2 Because God is the “absolute Concept” he enfolds everything conceivable and is himself held by no concept.The Concept or Word is therefore inconceivable, and all names for conceivable things must be removed from it. Given this tradition of knowing something as becoming one with it, divine transcendence would, one would think, endanger union with God by removing it as a cognitive possibility .That is, this pole of Nicholas’s metaphysical scheme would seem to undermine the primary path to theosis, the path of the mind. It would thus appear that his metaphysics destroys his epistemology (vis-à-vis God) and, thus, for all practical purposes, also destroys itself. What use would an ontological union with God be if God could not be thought of, contemplated, spoken to, or made relevant to the life of the mind? An utterly unconscious union would be no union at all.The dilemma of negative theology is that it negates the basis for theology itself, God’s expressiveness. In an effort to pay homage to God’s transcendence , he is venerated out of existence.Therefore, the main issue in the discussion of transcendence is its implications for human relationship with God, and especially relationship as worked out through the processes of human thought. In this context, then, it is knowledge, not as theoretical definition, but as unitive contemplation, that is important. For Nicholas of Cusa and many of his Neoplatonic predecessors,defining God was more than a philosophical exercise. It was a religious act that itself was the axis of unitive relation.   t r a n s c e n d e n c e 1. DP 18, Hopkins, 923. Nisi enim intellectus se intelligibili assimilet, non intelligit, cum intelligere sit assimilare et intelligibilia se ipso seu intellectualiter mensurare. 2. DP 40, Hopkins, 934. Omne enim cuius conceptus est aliquis, utique in conceptu clauditur. If transcendence, the polar opposite of theophanic immanence, is to be understood,it must be in the dual context of on the one hand divine Supereminence and paradox,and on the other,human ratio and intellect. As in the previous chapter, this chapter will focus first on God (his transcendence and unapproachability) and then with increasing specificity on the created order.And also similar to the previous chapter, this one will end with a return to God.An examination of the above concepts will reveal that Nicholas’s understanding of the mystical union that culminates in theosis is not obviated by his insistence on the absolute distance of God. Building on the Dionysian tradition of negative theology, he is able to provide for a profound union that is situated in the intellect rather than in human reason.The epistemological consequences of transcendence do not undermine theophany or its goal, theosis, but serve to underscore them in a new way. They also help Nicholas maintain his orthodoxy by providing a bulwark against those who, focusing on his emphasis on union, have accused him...