Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings (Classics of Western Spirituality (Paperback))

This book is one of many translations that are currently being made for English language readers on the 15th century writings of Nicholas of Cusa. New translations of Cusanus writings began to appear in the late 1970s by Jasper Hopkins of the University of Minnesota. Free copies of some of Hopkins translations are available on the Internet at [...] Today, translations of these 15th century writings are also being made by the American Cusanus Society. The author of this book is past president of this society.The writings of Nicholas of Cusa are significant because his writings, on God and our world, initiated the modern world in which we live today. To me, his writings are the most important religious writings to be found on amazon.com today. His writing will help people transform the out-dated ancient views of God and our world they have been taught into modern views supported by modern science. Without this transformation, a person becomes conservative with a closed mind and will not understand the natural changes that are taking place among liberal and open-minded people.This book is a necessary addition to any home or public library. It is necessary by any person who is working on the unification of science and theology. And, it is necessary for any person who believes that a pure spiritual/modern world is possible beyond the materialistic-driven spiritual/modern world in which we live today today.

Purchased this to add to my Classics of Western Spirituality collection. When I get around to reading it, probably years from now, I'll probably review it then.

Excellent service. Highly recommend.

Nicholas of Cusa is a rare and lonely genius who straddles the time of change between the late medieval period and the early Renaissance. A cardinal in the Roman Church, Cusa like many more modern mystics, led a highly active as well as contemplative life.This collection of writings includes Cusa's most important work, 'On Learned Ignorance' as well as several smaller works including 'The Vision of God' and 'The Unknown God.'Cusa's mysticism is deeply speculative and intellectual, perhaps more so than any other Christian mystic except Eckhart and Eriugena. At the heart of Cusa's mysticism is God's absolute infinity, which renders God utterly and entirely incomprehensible to the human mind. Because incomprehensibility is not merely due to a defect of the human mind but is an attribute of God himself, Cusa rigorously adopts a strongly apophatic approach to God, developed along lines already laid out by Dionysius the Aeropagite, Eckhart, and Scotus Eriugena.In the Learned Ignorance Cusa likens God to the 'absolute maximum' who while ineffable, contains the fullness of being and reality. The absolute maximum is God's essence as it is in itself, what philosophers might now call the Absolute. In the absolute maximum, which is basically God's infinite nature, all coincidences and opposites merge into one basic unity. In other words, the many become the one and the one becomes the many in God's plenitude of being.Cusa then goes on to describe how God is related to the universe. The universe is the absolute contractum or minimum, crudely a mirror of God's infinity and infinite itself, but not God. The universe presents the believer with an overwhelming expression of God's ineffability, however God himself by virtue of his absolute infinity remains shrouded in incomprehensibility and mystery. One of Cusa's favourite sayings is the ancient maxim 'God is a sphere whose circumference is everywhere and centre is nowhere.'Cusa also argues that as God is radically unknowable, also the universe is in a way radically unknowable. Humans are engaged in an ever deepening vision of God through creatures, though God himself will forever remain unknown to the created mind. Like Eriugena and Eckhart, Cusa pushes his apophatic theology and mysticism to the very limit and seems to argue at times even creatures themselves are somehow theophanies or appearances of deeper realities or reality which we can never know. In this sense he seems to anticipate Kant, who put a radical barrier between the knowable and the unknown.Cusa's vision of God contains astonishing philosophical and theological depth which remains unmatched until the arrival of Spinoza. His vistas of an infinite universe are perhaps unmatched until the arrival of the mystical cosmology of Giordo Bruno and the universe of Isaac Newton.While perhaps Cusa's vision may not be appropriate for today's universe, his courage in exploring the hidden deeps of God's being are to be admired for their profoundity and originality, and one looks forward with hope to the next Cusa who will integrate all things into a grand vision before which one feels only awe.

I first read De Imago Dei before getting this. Why does Ficino not mention him, they were virtually contemporaries? Probably because he was not explicitly Platonic, and yet he belongs to a long tradition that ran through the whole of the Middle Ages, that includes the likes of Eckhart and Hidergaard of Bingen. I must admit, though, when Christian Theologians start to talk about the Trinity, I get a bit lost. I incline to St John rather than St Paul.