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I Know That I Do Not Know: Nicholas of Cusa’s Augustine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2020

Samuel J. Dubbelman
Samuel J. Dubbelman*
Affiliation:
Boston University; sdubbelm@bu.edu
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Abstract

Nicholas of Cusa read Augustine, like he read Dionysius the Areopagite, as teaching that God was best known and encountered in an understanding of one’s own ignorance of ultimate reality (learned ignorance). Cusa’s use of Augustine in Defense of Learned Ignorance, On the Vision of God, and On the Not-Other helps recover the importance of learned ignorance in Augustine’s own writings. This study tracks learned ignorance as an essential mechanism of Augustine’s pursuit of wisdom through his early writings, the Confessions, and the later anti-Pelagian treatises. Learned ignorance functioned as philosophical dialectic in his earliest treatises, a practice of prayer in the Confessions, and as both polemic and apophatic theodicy in his later writings. Augustine’s shifting conceptualization of learned ignorance, in turn, helps recover how Cusa often preached learned ignorance as the humility of faith. Thus, Cusa’s commitment to learned ignorance derived from both the Neoplatonic dilemma of knowing the unknowable and the Augustinian understanding of original sin as pride and redemption as humility.

Keywords

Nicholas of CusaAugustinelearned ignoranceNegative Theologythe darkness of faithapophatic theodicy
Type
Articles
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 113 , Issue 4 , October 2020 , pp. 460 - 482
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© President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2020

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Footnotes

*

This article originated as a research paper in a seminar on Nicolas of Cusa taught by Andrea Hollingsworth in Spring 2016 at Boston University. An earlier version was presented at the 53rd International Congress on Medieval Studies, 10 May 2018, and appeared in the newsletter of the American Cusanus Society (Samuel J. Dubbelman, “Nescio quod nescio: A Cusan Reading of Augustine’s Confessions,” American Cusanus Society Newsletter 35 [2018] 25–31). I would also like to acknowledge the generosity and collegiality of the American Cusanus Society, and thank Don Duclow in particular for his continued encouragement and guidance.

References

1 Nicholas of Cusa, Apologia doctae ignorantiae discipuli ad discipulum, in Nicholas of Cusa’s Debate with John Wenck (ed. and trans. Jasper Hopkins; 3rd ed.; Minneapolis: Banning, 1988) 467. All Latin references to Cusa are from Nicolai de Cusa opera omnia, iussu et auctoritate academiae litterarum heidelbergensis (Leipzig and Hamburg: Meiner, 1932–); accessed through the Cusanus Portal of the Institute for Cusanas Research at the University of Trier, http://www.cusanus-portal.de (hereafter h).

2 For postmodern theological retrieval of Cusa, see Richard Kearney, The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); Catherine Keller, Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement (Insurrections; New York: Columbia University Press, 2014) 87–123; and David Tracy, “The Post-Modern Renaming of God as Incomprehensible and Hidden,” Cross Currents 50 (2000) 240–47. For ignorance in Augustine, see Andreas Nordlander, “Nescio: The Pedagogy of Ignorance in Augustine’s Confessions, Book X,” Patristica Nordica Annuaria 28 (2013) 37–58; idem, “Remembering Mind: Augustinian Moves in Continental and Analytic Philosophy,” in Monument and Memory (ed. Jonaa Bornemark, Matthias Martinson, and Jayne Svenungsson; Nordic Studies in Theology 1; Zurich: LIT, 2015) 211–38; Jean-Luc Marion, In the Self’s Place: The Approach of Saint Augustine (trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky; Cultural Memory in the Present; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012); idem, Negative Certainties (trans. Stephen E. Lewis; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015); Rowan Williams, On Augustine (London: Bloomsbury, 2016) 18–19, 103; Karmen MacKendrick, Mark D. Jordan, and Virginia Burrus, Seducing Augustine: Bodies, Desires, Confessions (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010) 14; T. J. van Bavel, “God in between Affirmation and Negation According to Augustine,” in Augustine: presbyter factus sum (ed. Jospeh T. Lienhard, Earl C. Muller, and Roland J. Teske; Collectanae Augustiniana; New York: Lang, 1993) 73–97; Vladimir Lossky, “Elements of ‘Negative Theology’ in the Thought of St. Augustine,” SVTQ 21 (1997) 67–75; Andrew Louth, “Apophatic and Cataphatic Theology,” in Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism (ed. Amy Hollywood and Patricia Z. Beckman; Cambridge Companions to Religion; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012) 137–46, at 143; and Knut Alsvag, What No Mind Has Conceived: On the Significance of Christological Apophaticism (Studies in Philosophical Theology; Leuven: Peeters, 2010) 93.

3 For Cusa’s initial exposition of learned ignorance, see On Learned Ignorance (1440), in Nicholas of Cusa, Selected Spiritual Writings (trans. H. Lawrence Bond; CWS; New York: Paulist, 1997) 87. I refer to the author of the Corpus Dionysiacum as “Dionysius the Areopagite” rather than the modern and often pejorative “Pseudo-Dionysius” (see Charles M. Stang, Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite: “No Longer I” [OECS; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012]; idem, “Dionysius, Paul and the Significance of the Pseudonym,” Modern Theology 24 [2008] 541–55).

4 See, for instance, Peter Casarella, “Cusanus on Dionysius: The Turn to Speculative Theology,” Modern Theology 24 (2008) 667–78; and Matthieu van der Meer, “Divus Dionysius: Jean Gerson, Nicholas of Cusa, and the Interpretation of Pseudo-Dionysius’s Mystical Theology,” Viator 44 (2013) 323–42.

5 Jasper Hopkins, “Nicholas Cusa,” in The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine (ed. Karla Pollman et al.; 3 vols.; New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) 1444–445; F. Edward Cranz, “Saint Augustine and Nicholas of Cusa in the Tradition of Western Christian Thought,” Spec 28 (1953) 297–316; and Sarah Powrie, “Nicholas of Cusa’s Dialogue with Augustine: The Measure of the Soul’s Greatness in De Ludo Globi,” Renaissance and Reformation 38 (2015) 5–25. Nancy J. Hudson, on the other hand, does not include Augustine as a source for Cusa’s understanding of transcendence (Becoming God: The Doctrine of Theosis in Nicholas of Cusa [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007] 89–133).

6 Alexia Schmitt tracks Cusa’s reception of Augustinian interiority—the mind’s ability to return to itself and in so doing to transcend itself—through explicit references, Cusa’s marginalia on Augustine’s Confessions (Codex Cusanus 34), and the mediation of key figures such as Anslem, Bonaventure, and Eckhart (Interioridad y trascendencia. Asimiliación de la interioridad agustiniana en el pensamiento cusano: hacia la subjetividad moderna [Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2017]). See also Paula Pico Estrada, review of Interioridad y trascendencia, by Alexia Schmitt, American Cusanus Society Newsletter 35 (2018) 43–44.

7 David Albertson, Mathematical Theologies: Nicholas of Cusa and the Legacy of Thierry of Chartres (OSHT; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014) 176–78.

8 Volker Leppin, “The Mystics the Protestants Read,” in Protestants and Mysticism in Reformation Europe (ed. Ronald K. Rittgers and Vincent Evener; St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History 14; Leiden: Brill, 2019) 17–33, at 32.

9 I have taken the notion of an “optics of comfort” from Alexis Peri, The War Within: Diaries from the Siege of Leningrad (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017).

10 As Heiko Oberman noted, “one’s closeness to truth in general and to the gospel in particular was measured against one’s proximity to Augustine” (The Masters of the Reformation: The Emergence of a New Intellectual Climate in Europe [trans. Dennis Martin; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981] 70–71).

11 For more on the book history of Augustine’s writings, see Arnoud S. Q. Visser, Reading Augustine in the Reformation: The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500–1620 (OSHT; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

12 For the case of Hadewijch of Antwerp, see Willemien Otten, “Between Praise and Appraisal: Medieval Guidelines for the Assessment of Augustine’s Intellectual Legacy,” AugStud 43 (2012) 201–18, at 207–9.

13 I owe this observation to a conversation with Don Duclow; see also Willemien Otten, “Eriugena, John Scottus,” in Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine (ed. Pollman et al.) 938–41.

14 See Boyd Taylor Coolman, “The Medieval Affective Dionysian Tradition,” Modern Theology 24 (2008) 615–32.

15 See Christopher B. Brown’s introduction to the preface to Augustine’s On The Spirit and the Letter (1533?), by Martin Luther, in Luther’s Works: American Edition (ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, et al.; Saint Louis: Concordia, 1955–) 60:35–43 (hereafter LW); see also Luther, Disputation against Scholastic Theology (1517), LW 31:9.

16 LW 60:38. See Scotus, Ordinatio 2 dist. 33, in Opera omnia (ed. Carolo Balic; Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1950–) 8:364–67.

17 Cusa, Selected Spiritual Writings, 206.

18 See Herveus Burgidolensis, Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, in Saeculum XII. Ven. Hervei Burgidolensis monachi opera omnia demum restituta et nunc primum in unum collecta (ed. J. P. Migne; PL; 217 vols.; Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1844–1864) 181:714b; Bonaventure, Breviloquium 5.6.8, in The Works of St. Bonaventure (ed. Robert Karris et al.; 18 vols.; St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2005) 9:196; Petrarch, On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others, in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man: Patrarca, Valla, Ficino, Pico, Pomponazzi, Vives (ed. Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948) 64.

19 See On Unknown Learning, in Nicholas of Cusa’s Debate (ed. and trans. Hopkins) 425–56.

20 Ibid., 428.

21 Ibid., 444. For “validissimus malleus haereticorum,” see Bernard of Clairvaux, Homiliae super Canticum Canticorum 80.7, in Sancti Bernardi Opera (ed. J. Leclercq et al., 8 vols.; Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–1977) 282; Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend (trans. William Granger Ryan; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) 514; Rudolph Arbesmann, “The Malleus Metaphor in Medieval Characterization,” Traditio 3 (1945) 389–92.

22 Cusa, Defense of Learned Ignorance, in Nicholas of Cusa’s Debate (ed. and trans. Hopkins) 459–92. Not counting biblical authorities, Cusa cites the following figures: Socrates, Philo, Hermes Trismegistus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Avicenna, Plato, Algazel, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Mechlin, Ambrose, Pope Celestine, an anonymous commentator on Boethius’s De Trinitate, Athanasius, Meister Eckhart, Marius Victorinus, Honorius Augustudonensis (Clavis physicae), John Scotus Eriugena, David Dinant, John of Mossbach, Hierotheus, Pope Leo, and Fulgentius. The Clavis physicae contained edited excerpts of Eriugena’s Periphyseon.

23 Cusa, A Defense of Learned Ignorance, 460.

24 Cusa references Augustine six times and Dionysius eighteen times.

25 “The divine Dionysius imitated Plato to such an extent that he is quite frequently found to have cited Plato’s words in series” (ibid., 466). Cusa refers to Augustine as “the Platonist Aurelius Augustine”; see Nicholas of Cusa, Selected Spiritual Writings, 101.

26 Cusa, Defense of Learned Ignorance, 467–68; h ii, 13.

27 “But Aurelius Augustine—expounding the word of Paul in Romans 8 (‘We do not know what to ask for’)—declared, after other things, how it is that we have learned ignorance: ‘We know that what we seek exists; but we do not know what kind of thing it is. We have this ‘learned ignorance,’ so to speak, through the Spirit, who helps our infirmity…. Since Paul says that the Spirit implores with unutterable groanings, he indicates that the unknown thing is both unknown and not altogether unknown. For if it were altogether unknown, it would not be sought with groaning” (ibid.).

28 De apice theoriae, in Nicholas of Cusa: Metaphysical Speculations; Six Latin Texts Translated into English (trans. Jasper Hopkins; 2 vols.; Minneapolis: Banning, 1998) 504; see Augustine, On the Trinity (Trin.) 15.2.

29 Cusa, On The Vision of God, in Selected Spiritual Writings (trans. Bond) 235–89; h vi, 3–90. For more on the treatise, see the debate by Emmanuel Falque and Jean-Luc Marian: Falque, “The All-Seeing Fraternity and Vision of God in Nicholas of Cusa,” Modern Theology 35 (2019) 760–87; Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen: Nicholas of Cusa’s Contribution in De visione Dei,” JR 96 (2016) 305–31; see also Bernard McGinn, “Seeing and Not Seeing,” in Cusanus: The Legacy of Learned Ignorance (ed. Peter J. Casarella; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006) 26–53.

30 Cusa, Selected Spiritual Writings, 235. For Cusa’s interaction with the monks of Tegernsee, see K. M. Ziebart, Nicolaus Cusanus on Faith and Intellect: A Case Study in 15th-Century Fides-Ratio Controversy (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 225; Leiden: Brill, 2014) 137–98.

31 Cusa, Selected Spiritual Writings, 247. The other Augustinian features of On the Vision of God are more stylistic in nature. The majority of the text, like the Confessions, is a first-person prayer to God. Cusa also imitates the penitential tone of the Confessions. The Augustinian hamartiological rationale of ignorance is also heightened by the epistemological distinction among sense, reason, and intellect. Meredith Ziebart argues that this distinction “will become the philosophical lynchpin of his epistemological doctrine as of his solution to the fides-ratio problem” (Nicolaus Cusanus on Faith, 9–10).

32 See Bernard McGinn, “Unitrinum Seu Triunum: Nicholas of Cusa’s Trinitarian Mysticism,” in Mystics: Presence and Aporia (ed. Michael Kessler and Christian Sheppard; Religion and Postmodernism; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003) 90–117.

33 Cusa, On Learned Ignorance, in Selected Spiritual Writings (trans. Bond) 98 (h i, 18).

34 “Because God is unity, God is begetter and Father; because God is equality of unity, God is begotten or Son; and because God is their connection, God is Holy Spirit” (ibid., 123 [h i, 50]).

35 De venatione sapientiae 21, in Metaphysical Speculations (trans. Hopkins) 1318. This articulation of the Trinity can be found in various places in the earlier writings of Augustine; see, for instance, Doctr. chr. 1.5. As Bernard McGinn notes, Augustine eventually abandons this way of referring to the Trinity in his later writings. However, Augustine’s formulation was eventually picked up and made prevalent in the work of Thierry of Chartres (McGinn, “Unitrinum Seu Triunum,” 92–93).

36 Jasper Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa On God as Not-Other: A Translation and an Appraisal of De Li Non Aliud (3rd ed.; Minneapolis: Banning, 1987) 1117 (h xiii, 13).

37 Ibid.

38 Sermon 22, in Nicholas of Cusa’s Early Sermons: 1430–1441 (ed. and trans. Jasper Hopkins; Loveland, CO: Banning, 2003) 365.

39 Hopkins, On God as Not-Other, 1117 (h xiii, 13).

40 I owe the following elucidation of non-aliud to a lecture by Andrea Hollingsworth (Boston University; 29 March 2016).

41 For a modern take on theology as an attempt to name the unnamable, see Wesley Wildman, Effing the Ineffable: Existential Mumblings at the Limits of Language (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2018).

42 Augustine, “Letter 130,” in Letters 100–155 (trans. Roland Teske; vol. II/2 of The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, 50 vols.; Hyde Park, NY: New City, 1998–) 183–99 (hereafter WSA).

43 See, for example, The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks (trans. Benedicta Ward; New York: Penguin, 2003) 148.

44 Against the Academics (Acad.), The Blessed Life (Beat.), and On Order (Ord.); see also Erik Kenyon, “The Order of Augustine’s Cassiciacum Dialogues,” AugStud 42 (2011) 173–88; and Augustine, Conf. 9.4.7–5.13.

45 Augustine, Against the Academics (trans. John J. O’Meara; ACW 12; Ramsey, NJ: Newman, 1951) 150.

46 Augustine, Soliloquies (Solil.), in Augustine: Earlier Writings (trans. John H. S. Burleigh; LCC 6; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953) 17–63.

47 Ibid., 26.

48 Ibid.

49 Ibid., 37.

50 Ibid.

51 Augustine, On the Teacher (Mag.), in Augustine: Earlier Writings (trans. Burleigh) 64–101.

52 Ibid., 100.

53 Augustine admits his ignorance at least seventy times: Conf. 1.6.7; 1.6.8; 1.6.10; 1.7.11; 1.7.12; 3.7.12; 3.7.14; 3.10.18; 3.8.21; 4.2.3; 4.4.9; 4.6.11; 4.7.12; 4.12.19; 4.13.20; 4.15.24; 4.15.25; 4.15.26; 4.16.30; 5.10.20; 5.13.23; 6.3.3; 6.3.4; 6.4.5; 6.4.6; 6.5.7–8; 6.11.20; 6.16.26; 7.1.1; 7.1.2; 7.7.11; 8.6.14; 8.6.15; 9.4.9; 9.5.13; 9.7.16; 9.10.23; 9.11.28; 9.13.37; 10.5.7; 10.8.15; 10.10.17; 10.15.23; 10.20.29; 10.28.39; 10.33.49–50; 10.37.60–62; 11.2.2; 11.4.6; 11.8.10; 11.9.11; 11.12.14; 11.14.17; 11.18.23; 11.19.25; 11.22.28; 11.25.32; 11.26.33; 11.29.39; 11.31.41; 12.5.5; 12.6.6; 12.30.41; 13.7.8; 13.11.12; 13.14.15; 13.23.33; 13.38.53.

54 Augustine, Confessions (ed. and trans. Carolyn J.-B. Hammond; 2 vols.; LCL 26–27; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014–2016) 26:11, 15 (hereafter LCL).

55 Ibid., 17.

56 Conf. 6.3.4 (LCL 26:245); Conf. 6.5.8 (LCL 26:253); and Conf. 7.1.1 (LCL 26:293).

57 For an exposition of the theme of the divine double in early religious thought, see Charles M. Stang, Our Divine Double (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016).

58 LCL 26:146.

59 See Conf. 8.6.13; 8.12.30.

60 See Nordlander, “Nescio: The Pedagogy of Ignorance.”

61 Cusa’s marginalia evidence his interest in Book 10. In descending order: Book 10 (82 notes); Book 9 (78 notes); Book 7 (56 notes); Book 8 (47 notes); Book 1 (43 notes); Books 6 (35 notes); Book 11 (35 notes); Book 12 (33 notes); Book 13 (15 notes); Book 4 (7 notes); and Book 5 (7 notes). See Schmitt, Interioridad y trascendencia, 225–307.

62 LCL 27:79.

63 Ibid., 154–55. “In cuius oculis mihi quaestio factus sum, et ipsi est langur meus.” Sometimes “quaestio” here is rendered in English as “enigma,” as in “I have become an enigma to myself” (see The Confessions [trans. Maria Boulding; vol I/1 of WSA; Hyde Park, NY: New City, 1997] 270).

64 Cf. Trin. 8.2.3; see also Lossky, “Elements of ‘Negative Theology,’” 74; and Alexander Golitzin, “‘Suddenly Christ’: The Place of Negative Theology in the Mystagogy of Dionysius Areopagites,” in Mystics (ed. Kessler and Sheppard) 8–37.

65 In Retract. 2.6, Augustine explained the structure of Conf. as first having to do with himself (Books 1–10) and then having to do with Scripture (Books 11–13) (see Augustine, Retract., in WSA I/2:114).

66 LCL 27:193.

67 Ibid., 217.

68 Ibid., 245.

69 Ibid., 233.

70 Ibid., 213; translation altered.

71 Ibid., 197.

72 Ibid., 281.

73 Stultus; ibid., 317.

74 Ibid., 331.

75 Ibid., 283.

76 Ibid., 427.

77 See Charles T. Mathewes, “The Liberation of Questioning in Augustine’s Confessions,” JAAR 70 (2002) 539.

78 The Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins (Pecc. merit.) (WSA I/23:18–132).

79 Ibid., 3.6.12 (WSA I/23:123). Augustine offers a further autobiographical description of his interaction with Pelagius’s views in The Deeds of Pelagius (Gest. Pelag.) 22.46 (WSA I/23:354).

80 This last question seems to stem from Augustine’s work as a preacher. Why is it that some are moved by the words of a sermon and others are not? (See The Predestination of the Saints [Praed.] 8.14 (WSA I/26:110); The Gift of Perseverance [Persev.] 14.37 [WSA I/26:171–72]).

81 For these “why” questions, see Pecc. merit. 1.19.25–21.30, 2.5.6, 2.18.32, 2.33.53 (WSA I/23:47–50, 82, 98, 111); The Spirit and the Letter (Spir. et litt.) 34.60, 36.64 (WSA I/23:184–85, 187); Answer to the Two Letters of the Pelagians (C. du. ep. Pelag.) 4.6.16 (WSA I/24:198); Rebuke and Grace (Corrept.) 8.17 (WSA I/26:63); Praed. 8.16, 12.23–14.26 (WSA I/26:111, 117–120); Persev. 9.21, 11.27, 12.30, 14.37 (WSA I/26:156, 163, 165, 172); The Nature and Origin of the Soul (Nat. orig.) 2.13.18 (WSA I/23:492).

82 Pecc. merit. 1.21.29 (WSA I/23:49).

83 See Pecc. merit. 1.35.65–39.70, 2.29.48 (WSA I/23:71–75, 108); Nature and Grace (Nat. grat.) 3.3, 22.24 (WSA I/23:218, 227); The Perfection of Human Righteousness (Perf.) 2.1–4.9 (WSA I/23:279–82); and Persev. 12.29 (WSA I/26:164).

84 Pecc. merit. 2.29.48 (WSA I/23:108).

85 See, for instance, The Grace of Christ and Original Sin (Grat. Chr.) 2.35.40–36.41 (WSA I/23:440–41).

86 The “darkness of faith” intends to emphasize the auricular (over visual) nature of faith (see, for instance, Spir. et litt. 23.38–40, 28.49, 31.54, 36.65 [WSA I/23:167–68, 175, 179, 187–88]; Perf.,7.17, 8.19 [WSA I/23:285, 287]; and Grat. Chr. 2.35.40–36.41 [WSA I/23:440–41]). For Martin Luther’s use of tenebrae fidei, see Samuel J. Dubbelman “‘Faith from Hearing’ in Luther’s Sermons on the Visitation” LQ 33 (2019) 276–86.

87 Pecc. merit. 2.31.50 (WSA I/23:109).

88 Ibid., 2.33.53 (WSA I/23:111).

89 Spir. et litt. (WSA I/23:135–94).

90 See also Nat. grat. 60.70 (WSA I/23:252).

91 Spir. et litt. 34.60 (WSA I/23:185).

92 Ibid., 36.66 (WSA I/23:189).

93 Ibid.

94 Nat. orig.,WSA I/23:451–542.

95 Ibid., 4.11.15 (WSA I/23:524).

96 Ibid., 1.19.34 (WSA I/23:477).

97 Grace and Free Choice (Grat.), Corrept., Praed., and Persev.

98 See, for instance, Corrept. 8.17 (WSA I/26:63).

99 Ibid., 8.18 (WSA I/26:64).

100 Ibid., 8.19 (WSA I/26:65).

101 Ibid., 15.46 (WSA I/26:89).

102 Persev. 8.18 (WSA I/26:154).

103 I owe the above clarification of apophatic theodicy as a mechanism of humility to an anonymous reviewer (see also Elizabeth Groppe, “After Augustine: Humility and the Search for God in Historical Memory,” in Learned Ignorance: Intellectual Humility among Jews, Christians, and Muslims [ed. James L. Heft, S.M., Reuven Firestone, and Omid Safi; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011] 191–205).

104 Citations of Cusa’s sermons will be by section and page in h, followed by citation of the translation by Hopkins: Nicholas of Cusa’s Early Sermons (ed. and trans. Hopkins) (hereafter ES); idem, Nicholas of Cusa’s Didactic Sermons: A Selection (ed. and trans. Jasper Hopkins; Loveland, CO: Banning, 2008) (hereafter DS).

105 Joel Harrington, Dangerous Mystic: Meister Eckhart’s Path to God Within (New York: Penguin, 2018).

106 For an introduction to Cusa’s sermons, see Lawrence F. Hundersmarck, “Preaching,” in Introducing Nicholas of Cusa: A Guide to a Renaissance Man (ed. Christopher M. Bellitto, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Gerald Christianson; New York: Paulist, 2004); Walter Andreas Euler, “Sermones. Die Predigten des Nikolaus von Keus,” in Handbuch Nikolaus von Kues: Leben und Werk (ed. Marco Brösch et al.; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2014) 306–52; ES, vii–xx; and Richard J. Serina, Nicholas of Cusa’s Brixen Sermons and Late Medieval Church Reform (Studies in the History of Christian Thought 182; Leiden: Brill, 2016).

107 Cusa uses this three-fold division, for instance, in Sermon 12, 4 (h xvi, 230) ES 255; Sermon 16, 5 (h xvi, 264) ES 291; and Sermon 22, 6 (h xvi, 335) ES 359.

108 See DS, xi.

109 See Ziebart, Nicolaus Cusanus on Faith; Peter Casarella “Justification by Faith in Nicholas of Cusa,” in Nicholas of Cusa and Times of Transition: Essays in Honor of Gerald Christianson (ed. Thomas M. Izbicki, Jason Aleksander, and Donald F. Duclow; Studies in the History of Christian Traditions 188; Leiden: Brill, 2019) 175–96; idem, Word as Bread: Language and Theology in Nicholas of Cusa (Buchreihe der Cusanus-Gesellschaft 21; Münster: Aschendorff, 2017); see also Jason Alexander, “Faith as Poiesis in Nicholas of Cusa’s Pursuit of Wisdom,” in Nicholas of Cusa and Times of Transition (ed. Izbicki, Aleksander, and Duclow) 197–218.

110 Sermon 275, 29 (h xix, 541) DS 185. Ziebart draws a distinction between epistemological and dogmatic faith in Cusa’s thought, and prioritizes the former (Ziebart, Nicolaus Cusanus on Faith, 24; see also Ziebart, “Laying Siege to the Wall of Paradise: The Fifteenth-Century Tegernsee Dispute over Mystical Theology and Nicholas of Cusa’s Strong Defense of Reason,” Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 41 [2015] 41–66).

111 For this axiom in his sermons, see Sermon 3, 11 (h xvi, 48) ES 49; Sermon 7, 32 (h xvi, 140) ES 153; Sermon 11, 3 (h xvi, 224) ES 250; Sermon 16, 7 (h xvi, 265), ES 292; Sermon 22, 32 (h xvi, 351) ES 368; Sermon 172, 1 (h xviii, 248–49) DS 85.

112 Schmitt, Interioridad y trascendencia, 60–63 and 165–70.

113 Sermon 6 (h xvi, 99–118) ES 108–30. For the Marian festival of the Day of Visitation, see, for example, Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013) 156–57.

114 Sermon 68 (h xvii, 394–405) DS 452–65.

115 Sermon 68, 3 (h xvii, 395) DS 453.

116 Sermon 17, 10 (h xvi, 277) ES 303.

117 See, for example, Sermon 22, 7 (h xvi, 336) ES 359; Sermon 135, 6 (h xvii, 72) DS 117.

118 Sermon 189, 19 (h xviii, 367) DS 285.

119 Sermon 22, 7 (h xvi, 336) ES 359.

120 Sermon 22, 10 (h xvi, 338) ES 360.

121 Sermon 22, 39 (h xvi, 355) ES 371.

122 Sermon 258 (h xix, 377–89) DS 20–32.

123 Sermon 258, 4 (h xix, 379) DS 21.

124 Sermon 258, 7 (h xix, 380) DS 22.

125 Sermon 158, 11 (h xix, 383) DS 24.

126 Ibid.

127 See, for example, Sermon 135, DS 121; Sermon 254, DS 324.

128 Sermon 275 (h xix, 238–40) DS 178–88.

129 Sermon 275, 2 (h xix, 238) DS 178. Cusa refers elsewhere to “internal attestations” of faith (see, for instance, Sermon 186, 3–18 [h xviii, 332–38] DS 212–18).

130 Sermon 196 (h xviii, 408–18) DS 352–66.

131 Sermon 196, 12 (h xviii, 415) DS 359.