Summary: The Christian mystical tradition repeatedly encounters a fundamental question: how can the soul love God when God cannot be seen or comprehended by the intellect? This question lies at the heart of the development from Pseudo-Dionysius through the medieval affective tradition, Hugh of Balma, Ruusbroec, Hendrik Herp, the Spanish tradition of recogimiento, and finally St. John of the Cross. The history is not simply one of progressively rejecting knowledge in favour of love. Rather, it concerns a progressive clarification of the different ways in which knowledge and love operate when the soul encounters the incomprehensible God.
Pseudo-Dionysius establishes the apophatic foundation: God transcends everything perceived by the senses and everything comprehended by the intellect. Hugh of Balma develops this into an affective interpretation in which love can reach beyond intellectual comprehension. Ruusbroec introduces the language of the deepest ground of the soul, while Herp brings together Ruusbroec‘s mystical anthropology with the Dionysian-Balmain tradition, developing a theology of naked love and detachment from spiritual consolation. The subsequent doctrine of pure love asks whether charity can remain wholly directed towards God when consolation, sweetness and even the felt experience of loving God disappear.
John of the Cross inherits this entire problematic but gives it a distinctive theological structure. He does not simply say that the will can love what the intellect does not know. Rather, both knowledge and love are transformed by faith. Faith gives the intellect a true but obscure knowledge of God, while charity unites the will to God beyond intellectual comprehension and sensible experience. Thus the soul can truly know God without seeing Him and truly love Him without feeling the love. For John, the darkness of mystical contemplation is therefore not an absence of divine action but the disproportion between God’s infinite mode of being and the finite modes through which the human faculties ordinarily know and experience.
The central thesis of this development may therefore be expressed in a simple formula: the deeper the operation of divine charity becomes, the less its reality can be identified with the psychological experience produced by that operation. The love may be greater than the experience of love, just as the knowledge given by faith is greater than the understanding of what is believed.
Introduction
One of the deepest questions in mystical theology is also one of the simplest to formulate: how can a person love what he does not know?
At first sight, the question seems to expose a contradiction. Love belongs to the will or affective faculty, but the will does not simply invent its object. Traditionally, Christian philosophy had affirmed the principle nihil volitum nisi praecognitum: nothing is willed unless it has first been known. If, therefore, mystical prayer involves the intellect entering darkness, if God is no longer represented through images and cannot be grasped by concepts, what remains for the will to love?
The history of Christian mystical theology contains several different answers to this question. Pseudo-Dionysius gives the fundamental apophatic framework. The medieval Victorine tradition begins to interpret this apophaticism affectively. Hugh of Balma makes the problem explicit and gives an extraordinarily radical account of the possibility of affective union with God. Ruusbroec develops the language of the deepest ground of the soul, and Hendrik Herp synthesises this tradition with the Dionysian theology of Hugh of Balma while developing an increasingly radical doctrine of nakedness and detachment from consolation. The Cloud of Unknowing gives the same basic intuition a more popular and experiential form: the intellect remains in unknowing while the will reaches towards God through love.
By the sixteenth century, the question has become inseparable from the language of recollection, infused contemplation, naked faith and pure love. It is then taken up by St. John of the Cross, who gives it a particularly precise theological formulation. John does not merely choose between knowledge and love. He asks how both faculties participate in God when God exceeds every natural mode of cognition and experience.
His answer leads to the centre of his theology of faith: the soul is united to God neither by what it sees nor by what it feels, but by the theological virtues. As John puts it, “the soul is not united with God in this life through understanding, nor through enjoyment, nor through the imagination, nor through any sense whatsoever; but only through faith, according to the understanding; and through hope, according to the memory; and through love, according to the will.” (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
This statement allows us to understand both the continuity and the originality of John of the Cross.
1. Pseudo-Dionysius: God beyond seeing and knowing
The deepest historical starting point is Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. In the Mystical Theology, the soul’s approach to God involves a movement beyond the things perceived by the senses and beyond the things comprehended by the intellect. God cannot be reduced to any object that the human faculties can grasp.
The significance of this apophaticism, however, must be carefully understood. Dionysius is not proposing a psychological technique in which the soul simply moves into an unconscious interior region. Nor is he saying that God is encountered by entering a mysterious faculty where neither knowledge nor love exists. His point is theological: God infinitely exceeds the created modes by which human beings ordinarily know.
This distinction becomes enormously important in the later mystical tradition. Once Dionysius has said that God transcends sensible and intellectual apprehension, subsequent theologians must ask what remains. If God cannot be seen, represented or comprehended, how can He nevertheless be encountered?
The answer gradually moves towards love.
2. From apophatic knowledge to affective union
The medieval development of Dionysian theology is therefore not simply a movement from knowledge to ignorance. It is also a movement from intellectual cognition towards affective participation.
The Victorine tradition plays an important role here. Hugh of St Victor interprets Dionysius in an explicitly affective direction, giving rise to the striking idea that love can reach where intellectual knowledge cannot. The famous formulation expresses the paradox: “one loves more than one understands and love enters in and draws near where knowledge remains outside.”
The underlying distinction is crucial. The intellect is incapable of comprehending God because God’s infinite reality exceeds its capacity. But this does not mean that the human person is thereby incapable of union with God. The affective power can be elevated by grace towards the God whom the intellect cannot comprehend.
This is the beginning of what can properly be called an affective interpretation of Dionysian mysticism. The question is no longer simply, “How can God be known if He cannot be comprehended?” It becomes, “Can God be reached by love where intellectual comprehension fails?”
Hugh of Balma will radicalise precisely this question.
3. Hugh of Balma: love beyond intellectual comprehension
Hugh of Balma’s Viae Sion Lugent is one of the most important stages in this development. His mystical theology distinguishes the highest union with God from both sensible perception and ordinary intellectual cognition. The mystical experience is essentially imageless: God is not grasped through an image, concept or discursive act. But Hugh does not therefore eliminate affectivity. On the contrary, the affective faculty becomes precisely the faculty through which union occurs. This is why it would be misleading to say that Hugh’s position is simply: “nothing is seen, therefore there is no consolation”. His position is more subtle. The intellect does not comprehend God, but the affective faculty can be elevated into union with Him. The darkness of the intellect does not imply the absence of divine action. Hugh therefore represents a decisive stage in the history of mystical theology. He preserves the Dionysian transcendence of God while refusing to allow that transcendence to result in a merely negative or agnostic mysticism. God cannot be grasped intellectually, but He can be loved. The apparent contradiction between knowledge and love is therefore resolved by distinguishing intellectual comprehension from mystical union. The soul does not comprehend God, but it can be united to Him. This distinction will become foundational for the later mystical tradition.
4. Ruusbroec and the deepest ground of the soul
Jan van Ruusbroec adds another dimension to this development. His mystical theology provides an anthropology of the deepest ground, the grond, in which the soul is capable of being united with God beyond the ordinary operations of consciousness. Here the question of knowledge and love becomes connected with the structure of the person. Mystical union is not simply a particular experience occurring within consciousness. It concerns the deepest capacity of the human person to receive and participate in God. Ruusbroec can nevertheless speak about mystical union in strongly experiential language: embrace, mutual love, friendship and participation in divine life. This is important because it prevents us from equating apophatic mysticism with the absence of experience. The mystical tradition is not teaching that “less feeling equals more mysticism”. Rather, it is beginning to distinguish the divine operation itself from the psychological effects which that operation may produce.
This distinction will become decisive in Hendrik Herp.
5. Hendrik Herp: naked love and the purification of consolation
Hendrik Herp stands at a particularly important intersection. His Mirror of Perfection is profoundly indebted to Ruusbroec for its overall mystical architecture, while the Dionysian affective tradition, especially as mediated through Hugh of Balma, contributes significantly to his understanding of contemplation. Herp therefore stands at the convergence of two traditions. From Hugh of Balma he receives the Dionysian-affective understanding of mystical theology: the highest union transcends sensible images and ordinary intellectual cognition, while the affective power is drawn towards God. From Ruusbroec he receives much of the language and structure of the superessential life and of the deepest ground of the soul. Herp then takes these traditions further in the direction of nakedness and detachment. This is where the question of consolation becomes especially significant. The soul must eventually cease to seek God because of the sweetness, satisfaction, illumination or consolation received from Him. The problem is not that divine consolation is evil. The problem is appropriation: the soul can begin to desire the experience of God rather than God Himself. This is the beginning of the mature doctrine of pure love.
The distinction is therefore between consolation as an experience and charity as a divine operation. The former may disappear while the latter becomes more profound. Herp’s radicality consists not in saying that God no longer acts, but that the soul must become free even from its attachment to the experiential effects of God’s action. Thus “pure love” does not initially mean “love without experience”. It means love purified of appropriation.
6. The emergence of pure love
The history of pure love is considerably broader than the Dionysian tradition. Its roots reach back into the Fathers and into the Western theology of charity, especially Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard’s theology of love is particularly important because he insists that the soul ultimately loves God for God’s own sake.
The Dionysian tradition introduces a different but complementary question: what happens to knowledge when the soul encounters the incomprehensible God?
These two lines gradually converge.
The first asks: “Why does the soul love God?”
The second asks: “How can the soul know God when He cannot be comprehended?”
Pure love and apophatic mysticism meet when the answer to both questions becomes detached from ordinary psychological experience. The soul can love God for Himself even when it no longer possesses the consolations which previously accompanied that love.
Herp is an important bridge in this development. The Spanish tradition then receives and transforms this inheritance. Francisco de Osuna’s Fourth Spiritual Alphabet, for example, contains an explicit treatment of the quest for pure love and belongs to the tradition of recollection which will form part of the environment from which the Carmelite mysticism of the sixteenth century emerges.
The development should not, however, be represented as a single straight line of textual dependence. Several traditions converge: patristic teaching on charity, Dionysian apophaticism, Victorine affective theology, Bonaventure’s theology of ecstatic love, Hugh of Balma’s affective Dionysianism, Ruusbroec’s theology of the deepest ground, Herp’s synthesis, Spanish recogimiento, and finally the Carmelite theology of John of the Cross.
What develops through these traditions is an increasingly precise distinction between the reality of love and the experience of love.
7. The crucial distinction: consolation, affective love and charity
This distinction is essential for understanding both pure love and the doctrine of mystical darkness. Consolation is an experience. It can include sweetness, warmth, tears, joy, illumination or a felt sense of God’s presence. It can accompany genuine divine action, but it is not identical with that action. Affective love is the movement of the appetitive or affective faculty towards God. It can be accompanied by intense feeling, but it need not be. A person can genuinely love without experiencing the psychological sensation of loving. Charity is deeper still. It is the supernatural participation in God’s own love, ordering the will towards God for God’s own sake. The consequence is profound: the reality of charity cannot be measured by the intensity of consolation. This is precisely why pure love becomes possible. The soul can reach a point where it loves God without relying upon the experience of loving God as confirmation that it loves Him. The love may therefore be greater than the experience of love. This principle is already approaching the theology of John of the Cross.
8. The question that John inherits: how can one love what one does not know?
John of the Cross inherits the entire problem, but he does something distinctive with it. He recognises the difficulty represented by the principle nihil volitum nisi praecognitum: if the will follows the intellect, how can the will love God when the intellect is in darkness? The answer cannot simply be that the intellect knows nothing and the will somehow functions independently. Such an answer would create an artificial division between the faculties. John instead introduces faith. Faith is not simply the absence of knowledge. Nor is it an inferior substitute for knowledge. Faith is a supernatural mode of knowing appropriate to the incomprehensible God. John therefore says that faith is “the proximate and proportionate means” of union with God. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library) This is one of the most important sentences in his mystical theology. The question is not whether the soul has knowledge or no knowledge. The question is what kind of knowledge is proportionate to God. Natural intellectual knowledge is inadequate because it works through concepts and representations proportionate to created reality. God infinitely exceeds such representation. Faith, however, gives the intellect God as He has revealed Himself without comprehending Him. Faith therefore possesses a paradoxical character: it is genuinely knowledge, yet it is dark knowledge. John explains this with extraordinary precision: “Faith, say the theologians, is a habit of the soul, certain and obscure.” It is obscure precisely because the truths revealed by God “transcend all natural light, and exceed all human understanding”. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library) The darkness therefore does not mean that the intellect has no object. It means that the object exceeds the mode of intellectual apprehension.
9. Faith does not destroy knowledge; it transforms its mode
This is where John differs significantly from a simple affective-Dionysian solution. Hugh of Balma can be read as saying: intellectual cognition cannot reach God, but love can. John says something more integrated: the intellect reaches God through faith, and the will reaches God through charity. He writes that “the soul is not united with God in this life through understanding, nor through enjoyment, nor through the imagination, nor through any sense whatsoever; but only through faith, according to the understanding; through hope, according to the memory; and through love, according to the will.” (Christian Classics Ethereal Library) This is not a rejection of knowledge. It is a transformation of knowledge. The intellect is emptied of its own mode of comprehension so that it may receive God according to faith. The will is emptied of its dependence upon created affection and consolation so that it may love God through charity. Faith therefore does not merely occupy the place left vacant by knowledge. It is itself the supernatural mode of knowing appropriate to the present state of the pilgrim. John makes this especially clear when he says that faith presents God to the soul “as infinite”, and that, because God is “Three and One”, faith sets Him before the soul precisely as Three and One. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library) This is an important point for understanding John’s theology. The soul does not enter mystical darkness because God has become less knowable. It enters darkness because God is infinitely more than the intellect can comprehend.
10. The will can love while the intellect remains in darkness
John consequently gives a very precise answer to the original problem. In the Dark Night, he describes infused contemplation as a divine light which can affect the will without producing corresponding intellectual illumination. He writes that “when this loving light is communicated”, it may “strike the will at times more effectively by enkindling it with love and leaving the understanding in darkness”. The image is extraordinarily important. The divine communication is light, but the intellect may experience that light as darkness because it exceeds its capacity. The same divine communication can nevertheless enkindle the will with love. John elsewhere uses the analogy of fire. Fire possesses both light and heat, but the two effects are distinguishable. One may experience the heat without seeing the light, or the light without experiencing the heat. This allows John to explain how love can be genuinely present without corresponding psychological illumination. The important point is that he does not posit an entirely cognitionless love. The soul does not love an absolutely unknown or meaningless object. It loves the God whom faith presents, although faith does not comprehend Him. Thus John’s position is more precise than the statement that “the will can love what the intellect does not know”. The intellect does know God through faith, but it does not comprehend God. The will does love God through charity, but it does not necessarily feel that love. This distinction resolves the apparent contradiction.
11. The three theological virtues and the three faculties
John’s doctrine becomes even clearer when the three theological virtues are considered together. Faith corresponds to the understanding. Hope corresponds to the memory. Charity corresponds to the will. John says explicitly that faith produces darkness in the understanding, hope emptiness in the memory, and charity detachment in the will. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library) This means that the three theological virtues do not merely add supernatural qualities to already functioning natural faculties. They transform the way those faculties are ordered towards God. Faith empties the understanding of its demand to comprehend. Hope empties the memory of its dependence upon possession. Charity empties the will of its dependence upon created affection and consolation. The result is not the destruction of the faculties but their supernatural purification. This is why John can speak of darkness and emptiness so positively. The emptiness is not an absence of God. It is the removal of what prevents the faculty from being proportioned to God. The understanding must become dark because God is beyond comprehension. The memory must become empty because God is not a possession of the past. The will must become detached because God must be loved for Himself rather than for the sweetness which accompanies the experience of loving Him.
12. Pure love and the disappearance of consolation
This brings us back to pure love. If charity is the supernatural participation of the will in divine love, then the presence of consolation cannot be the measure of charity. John says something particularly striking when discussing the infused love received in contemplation. The soul may “neither understand this love nor feel it”; nevertheless, this love “resides, not in sense, with its tender feelings, but in the soul”. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library) This is perhaps one of the clearest statements in the whole tradition for the distinction we are seeking. The absence of feeling does not mean the absence of love. Indeed, John continues by saying that the soul must learn to “build its love and joy upon that which it neither sees nor feels, neither can see nor feel in this life, which is God”. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library) Here the connection between pure love and apophatic theology becomes unmistakable. The soul no longer measures the reality of its love by its experience of love. This is not because feeling is bad. John does not deny that infused love can overflow into the senses and produce tenderness. He explicitly acknowledges that it sometimes does. But the psychological experience is secondary. The theological reality is deeper. The soul can love without feeling. It can know without seeing. And it can be united without possessing God in the mode of sensible or intellectual comprehension.
13. “All is happening in the spirit”: an essential qualification
This makes the language of the deepest spirit, mens, substantia animae and grond particularly illuminating. Yet it also requires great precision. To say that “all is happening in the spirit” must not mean that mystical prayer is simply something happening in the subconscious. Nor does it mean that the human person possesses a hidden psychological zone in which God can be encountered independently of knowledge and love. For John, the deepest operation is theological before it is psychological. The soul is elevated by grace. Faith elevates the understanding. Hope elevates the memory. Charity elevates the will. And God Himself is the agent of the supernatural transformation. John therefore speaks of the deepest operation of contemplation as something which can escape ordinary consciousness. He can even describe the soul as being so absorbed in God that it does not know what has happened during the period of union. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library) But this does not turn mystical union into unconsciousness. It means that God’s operation exceeds the soul’s ordinary capacity to apprehend and measure what He is doing. This is why the phrase “deep in the spirit” is useful only if it remains theological. The deepest reality is not an unknown psychological mechanism. It is the soul’s supernatural participation in God.
14. The Trinitarian foundation: Word and Spirit
At this point the Trinitarian dimension becomes decisive. The Christian participates in God through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. The eternal Son proceeds as Word, while the Holy Spirit proceeds as Love. This provides a theological framework for understanding why knowledge and love must never be separated in mystical theology. The Christian life cannot consist of an isolated “experience of love” detached from truth, nor can it consist of intellectual knowledge detached from charity. John’s theology of the theological virtues reflects precisely this inseparability. Faith gives the intellect access to God as Truth, but in a mode appropriate to the present life: obscurely, without comprehension. Charity unites the will to God as Good, but again in a mode appropriate to the present life: really, but without possession in the mode of vision or sensible feeling. The Word and the Spirit are therefore not competing explanations of mystical experience. They are inseparable dimensions of participation in the one divine life. This gives a deeper meaning to John’s insistence that faith and charity cannot be separated. The soul knows God in faith. The soul loves God in charity. Both operations are supernatural. Neither depends upon sensible experience. Neither reaches God by natural comprehension. And yet neither is unreal.
15. John of the Cross and his medieval inheritance
John of the Cross therefore cannot be understood adequately simply as an isolated genius who suddenly discovered the theology of the Dark Night. His doctrine stands within a long historical development. Pseudo-Dionysius establishes that God transcends sensible and intellectual comprehension. The Victorine tradition develops an affective interpretation of Dionysian theology, insisting that love can reach beyond intellectual understanding. Bonaventure develops the final transitus of the soul towards God in ecstatic love. Hugh of Balma radicalises the possibility of affective union beyond intellectual cognition. The Cloud of Unknowing gives the intellect’s darkness and the will’s movement of love an exceptionally clear experiential formulation. Ruusbroec develops the theology of the deepest ground and superessential union. Herp brings together Ruusbroec’s mystical anthropology with the Dionysian-Balmain affective tradition and develops the language of naked love and detachment from consolation. The Spanish tradition develops recollection, nakedness and pure love. John of the Cross inherits this entire problematic and gives it a new theological precision through faith, hope and charity. His originality therefore does not consist primarily in discovering that God is beyond comprehension, nor even in discovering that love can operate without sensible consolation. His originality lies in the way he integrates these insights into a systematic theology of the theological virtues and of the supernatural transformation of the faculties.
16. The decisive difference between Hugh of Balma and John of the Cross
This allows us to state the difference between Hugh of Balma and John of the Cross more precisely. Hugh’s great question is: can love attain God where intellectual cognition cannot? His answer is essentially affirmative. The affective faculty can reach towards God beyond the limits of intellectual comprehension. John accepts the essential intuition but gives it a different theological structure. He does not leave us with a dichotomy between intellect and affect: intellect cannot reach God, but love can. Instead, he says that both faculties are united to God through supernatural virtues. Faith is the mode of union according to the understanding. Charity is the mode of union according to the will. The intellect therefore does not comprehend God, but neither is it excluded from God. The will does not necessarily feel God, but neither is it excluded from God. Both faculties are united to God according to a supernatural mode which exceeds their natural capacities. This is why John’s formulation is so powerful. He preserves the truth of the traditional philosophical principle that love has an intelligible object while simultaneously affirming that the object of mystical love exceeds intellectual comprehension. The soul does not love what it knows nothing about. It loves what it knows obscurely through faith, while loving beyond what it knows through charity.
17. Practical consequences for spiritual formation
This distinction has considerable practical importance.
First, the presence or absence of consolation should never become the principal criterion by which a person evaluates his spiritual life. Consolation may accompany genuine growth, but its disappearance does not prove that God has withdrawn. Indeed, according to John, the purification of the soul may precisely involve the removal of the experiential supports upon which it has learned to rely.
Secondly, the absence of felt love does not mean the absence of charity. A person may pray without sweetness, remain faithful without enthusiasm, obey God without consolation and persevere without any interior sense of reward. None of these things, by themselves, establishes that charity has disappeared.
Thirdly, intellectual darkness should not automatically be interpreted as spiritual failure. There is a darkness which comes from confusion, ignorance or lack of formation, but there is also the darkness of faith. John insists that the latter can be the very means by which the soul is united to God. Faith is dark not because God has ceased to communicate Himself, but because God’s light exceeds the natural capacity of the intellect.
Fourthly, spiritual formation should therefore teach people to distinguish divine action from the psychological effects which may accompany it. A consolation may be genuinely from God, but God is not identical with the consolation. An illumination may be genuinely given by God, but God is not identical with the illumination. A felt love may be genuinely produced by grace, but charity is not reducible to the feeling of loving.
Finally, this provides a profound criterion for mature love. The question eventually becomes not “How much do I feel that I love God?” but “Am I willing to love God for Himself?” This is the heart of pure love. The purification of love is not primarily the destruction of affectivity but the liberation of charity from appropriation.
Conclusion
The historical development from Dionysius to John of the Cross can therefore be understood as a long meditation upon one fundamental paradox: God is beyond every created mode of knowledge, and yet He gives Himself to be known and loved. Dionysius establishes the apophatic principle. God cannot be reduced to what the senses perceive or what the intellect comprehends. Hugh of Balma discovers in this darkness the possibility of affective union. Love can reach towards God beyond intellectual comprehension. Ruusbroec locates this union in the deepest ground of the person, while Herp combines the Dionysian-affective tradition with Ruusbroec’s mystical anthropology and pushes the purification of love towards nakedness and detachment from consolation. The doctrine of pure love then asks the decisive question: can the soul love God when the consolations of loving God disappear? John of the Cross gives the most precise answer by refusing to separate knowledge and love. The intellect is united to God through faith; the will is united to God through charity. Faith is dark because God exceeds intellectual comprehension. Charity can be unfelt because God’s love exceeds the mode of sensible experience. This is why John can say that “faith is above all that he understands and experiences and feels and imagines”. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library) Faith does not leave the soul without God; it gives God in a mode that transcends the natural capacity to comprehend Him. And this is why pure love is not simply love without feeling. It is love whose reality no longer depends upon feeling. The deepest mystical paradox can therefore be expressed in three statements: the soul can know God without seeing Him; it can love God without feeling that it loves Him; and it can be united to God without possessing Him in the mode of ordinary human experience.
The disappearance of sensible consolation does not necessarily indicate the disappearance of divine love. The darkness of the intellect does not necessarily indicate the absence of divine knowledge. On the contrary, in the theology of John of the Cross, both can become signs of a deeper participation in God: “the more the soul desires obscurity and annihilation with respect to all the outward or inward things that it is capable of receiving, the more is it infused by faith, and, consequently, by love and hope”. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
The deepest operation of the Spirit is therefore not necessarily the one most clearly perceived by consciousness. The greatest knowledge may be received without intellectual comprehension; the greatest love may be present without emotional consolation. What appears to the natural faculties as darkness can, through faith and charity, be the very place in which the soul is most deeply receiving God.
The mature mystical tradition does not finally oppose knowledge and love. It discovers their unity in God Himself. The Word and the Spirit are not separated; truth and love are not separated; faith and charity are not separated. The soul knows according to faith and loves according to charity, and both movements carry it beyond the limits of what it can see, comprehend or feel.
Thus the ultimate purification of mystical theology is not the passage from knowledge to love, but the discovery that true knowledge and true love both lead beyond themselves into the incomprehensible God.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The Complete Works. Translated by Colm Luibheid. New York: Paulist Press, 1987. Particularly important are The Mystical Theology and The Divine Names. This is the essential primary source for the apophatic foundation of the tradition: the movement beyond sensible perception and intellectual comprehension. (see The Mystical Theology))
Hugh of Balma. Hugh of Balma on Mystical Theology: A Translation and Overview of His De Theologia Mystica. Translated by Jasper Hopkins. Minneapolis: The Arthur J. Banning Press, 2002. This is particularly important for the present study because it gives the complete Viae Sion Lugent and directly addresses the possibility of affective union beyond intellectual cognition. A scholarly review describes Hopkins’s volume as a “complete translation of the Viae Sion Lugent”. (IUScholarWorks)
Hugh of Balma. Carthusian Spirituality: The Writings of Hugh of Balma and Guigo de Ponte. Translated and introduced by Dennis D. Martin. New York: Paulist Press, 1992. This is an especially useful alternative to Hopkins for reading Hugh in the wider context of Carthusian spirituality.
Jan van Ruusbroec. The Spiritual Espousals and Other Works. Translated by James A. Wiseman. New York: Paulist Press, 1985. This is fundamental for understanding the grond, the superessential life, union, and Ruusbroec’s theology of the deepest operation of love.
Jan van Ruusbroec. The Book of the Twelve Béguines. Translated by Eric Colledge. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1971. Useful particularly for Ruusbroec’s account of contemplative union and the relationship between divine life and the soul.
Henry Herp. The Mirror of Perfection (Spieghel der Volcomenheit). For the critical Dutch text, see J. Verschueren, ed., Spieghel der Volcomenheit, 2 vols. Antwerp, 1931. Herp is particularly important because his Mirror combines Ruusbroec’s mystical structure with the Dionysian affective tradition mediated through Hugh of Balma. Modern scholarship explicitly identifies Ruusbroec as providing the basic structure and much of the content of the Mirror, while describing the Dionysian affective tradition, especially through Hugh of Balma, as important to Herp. (SciELO)
Anonymous. The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counselling. Translated by William Johnston. New York: Image Books, 1973. This is indispensable for the development of the distinction between intellectual unknowing and the movement of the will towards God through love. It should be read alongside Hugh of Balma rather than treated as an isolated English phenomenon.
Francisco de Osuna. The Third Spiritual Alphabet. Translated by Mary E. Giles. New York: Paulist Press, 1981. Osuna is particularly important for the transition from the late-medieval mystical tradition into sixteenth-century Spanish recogimiento and the language of nakedness and pure love.
John of the Cross. The Collected Works of St John of the Cross. Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991. This should be the principal English edition for the study. The most important works for your argument are The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night, The Spiritual Canticle, and The Living Flame of Love.
John of the Cross. The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book II, especially chapters 3–9 and 23–32. These chapters are essential for John’s theology of faith as the means of union with God and his insistence that faith transcends everything the intellect can naturally understand or experience.
John of the Cross. The Dark Night, Book II, especially chapters 5, 13 and 20. Chapter 5 is particularly important for the identification of infused contemplation with the “loving wisdom of God”; chapter 13 is especially important for the question of how the will can be affected by love while the understanding remains in darkness.
John of the Cross. The Living Flame of Love, especially stanza 1. This is indispensable for the theology of the “deepest centre” of the soul and for John’s mature account of the divine action at the deepest level of the person. Recent scholarship likewise identifies the “deepest center” as one of John’s three principal apophatic metaphors. (OUP Academic)
Medieval and Early Modern Studies
Guinan, Patricia Ann. Carthusian Prayer and Hugh of Balma’s Viae Sion Lugent. San Francisco: Catholic Scholars Press, 1994. This is one of the most useful specialised studies of Hugh of Balma and his Carthusian context. The volume includes a substantial bibliography and index. (OBNB)
Krynen, Jean. “La pratique et la théorie de l’amour sans connaissance dans le Viae Sion lugent d’Hugues de Balma.” Revue d’ascétique et de mystique 49 (1964): 161–183. This article is particularly important for your precise question concerning “love without knowledge”. It directly addresses the practice and theory of love without knowledge in Hugh of Balma. (University of Rwanda)
Dubbelman, Samuel J. “Mystica Theologia and Imageless Prayer in Hugh of Balma and Blosius.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 55, nos. 1–2 (2024): 281–303. This is a particularly valuable recent study. Dubbelman argues that both Hugh of Balma and Louis de Blois use mystica theologia for an advanced form of imageless prayer associated with immediate union with God. (Chicago Journals)
Windeatt, Barry, ed. English Mystics of the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Particularly useful for the Cloud of Unknowing and for understanding the transmission of Hugh of Balma’s Viae Sion Lugent into English mystical circles. The manuscript tradition itself is significant: a manuscript associated with the London Charterhouse contains both the Cloud and extracts from Hugh of Balma. (Cambridge University Press)
McGinn, Bernard. The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism, 1350–1550. New York: Crossroad/Herder & Herder, 2012. This is one of the major works for situating Ruusbroec, Herp, the Cloud, and the wider late-medieval development of vernacular mysticism.
McGinn, Bernard. The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany, 1300–1550. New York: Crossroad, 2005. Particularly useful for the Rhineland and Low Countries background to Herp and the transmission of the Dionysian tradition.
McGinn, Bernard. The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century. New York: Crossroad, 1991. Useful for establishing the much earlier patristic genealogy of the relation between knowledge, love and participation in God.
McGinn, Bernard. The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. 7 vols. New York: Crossroad. This is probably the single most useful secondary resource for the historical project you are undertaking. It allows the development from the Fathers through Dionysius, the medieval mystical tradition, the Spanish Carmelites and the early modern period to be followed within one overarching history.
Studies on Herp and Ruusbroec
Verschueren, J., ed. Spieghel der Volcomenheit. 2 vols. Antwerp, 1931. This remains the fundamental critical edition of Herp’s major work. Modern scholarship confirms that the Mirror was composed in the 1460s and that Ruusbroec provides much of its basic structure and content. (SciELO)
Kalverkamp, D. Die Vollkommenheitslehre des Franziskaners Heinrich Herp. Werl, 1940. This is an important specialised study of Herp’s doctrine of perfection.
Janssen, C. “L’Oraison aspirative chez Herp et chez ses prédécesseurs.” Carmelus 3 (1956): 19–48. Particularly relevant to the transmission of Hugh of Balma’s doctrine of aspiration into Herp.
Smits van Waesberghe, M. M. J. Het verschijnsel van de opheffing des geestes bij Jan van Ruusbroec en Hendrik Herp. Nijmegen, 1945. Important for the relationship between Ruusbroec and Herp concerning the elevation of the spirit.
Freienhagen-Baumgardt, K. Hendrik Herps Spieghel der Volcomenheit in oberdeutscher Überlieferung: Ein Beitrag zur Rezeptionsgeschichte niederländischer Mystik im oberdeutschen Raum. Leuven, 1998. Particularly valuable if your research develops towards the reception and transmission of Herp.
The recent study “Mystical Handbooks of the Late Middle Ages” is also worth consulting closely because it provides a concise modern synthesis of Herp’s sources and explicitly identifies the convergence of Ruusbroec’s mysticism with the Dionysian affective tradition mediated by Hugh of Balma. (SciELO)
John of the Cross: Knowledge, Faith and Love (see Addendum below)
Howells, Edward. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila: Mystical Knowing and Selfhood. London: Continuum, 2002. This is especially relevant to your concern with knowledge, experience, faith and the transformation of the faculties.
Howells, Edward. “John of the Cross.” In The Oxford Handbook of Apophatic Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2026, pp. 379–393. This is an exceptionally relevant recent contribution for your project. Howells identifies three principal apophatic structures in John: the dark night, the wound of love, and the deepest centre of the soul. (OUP Academic)
Thompson, Colin P. St John of the Cross: Songs in the Night. London: SPCK, 2002. An important study of John’s theology, particularly useful for the relationship between mystical experience and theological doctrine.
Kavanaugh, Kieran. John of the Cross: The Ascent to Mount Carmel. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1985. Useful for a close theological reading of the Ascent.
Sobrino, José Antonio de. Estudios sobre San Juan de la Cruz y nuevos textos de su obra. Madrid, 1950. This is an important older scholarly reference, particularly for the historical and textual study of John.
Pure Love and the French Tradition
McDonnell, Eunan. “Holy Indifference: Freeing the Heart for Pure Love.” Journal of Salesian Studies 18, no. 1. Particularly useful for François de Sales and the distinction between pure love and emotional experience.
François de Sales. Treatise on the Love of God. Translated by John K. Ryan. Rockford, IL: Tan Books, 1975. This is indispensable for tracing the transition from medieval pure love into the Salesian formulation of disinterested love.
Fénelon, François. Maxims of the Saints. Translated by Jacques Delacroix. Various English editions. This is essential for the culmination of the pure-love controversy and the distinction between love of God for Himself and love motivated by personal spiritual benefit.
Cognet, Louis. Crépuscule des mystiques: Bossuet, Fénelon. Paris: Desclée, 1958. Important for the historical development of the French controversy over pure love.
Le Brun, Jacques. Le pur amour de Platon à Lacan. Paris: Seuil, 2002. Useful for the much broader intellectual history of pure love, particularly if you want eventually to investigate the transition from mystical theology into the theological controversies of the seventeenth century.
Particularly Important Articles for Your Argument
For the specific argument developed in the article, I would put five works at the centre of the research.
First, Jean Krynen, “La pratique et la théorie de l’amour sans connaissance dans le Viae Sion lugent d’Hugues de Balma” (1964). This directly addresses the problem you are investigating: love without intellectual knowledge. (University of Rwanda)
Second, Patricia Ann Guinan, Carthusian Prayer and Hugh of Balma’s Viae Sion Lugent (1994). This gives the necessary historical context for Hugh and his Carthusian environment. (OBNB)
Third, Samuel J. Dubbelman, “Mystica Theologia and Imageless Prayer in Hugh of Balma and Blosius” (2024). This is especially valuable because it is recent scholarship and directly treats the relation between imageless prayer, mystical theology and immediate union. (Chicago Journals)
Fourth, the recent study “Mystical Handbooks of the Late Middle Ages”, which is particularly useful for establishing the relationship between Herp, Ruusbroec and Hugh of Balma. It explicitly states that “Ruusbroec’s mysticism forms the basic structure and provides much of the content” of Herp’s Mirror, while “the Dionysian affective tradition is important, especially as mediated by Hugh of Balma”. (SciELO)
Fifth, Edward Howells’s 2026 chapter on John of the Cross in the Oxford Handbook of Apophatic Theology. It is especially useful because it places John’s “dark night”, “wound of love” and “deepest centre” within a single apophatic framework. (OUP Academic)
For your particular research question, I would make the central primary-source sequence:
Pseudo-Dionysius → Hugh of St Victor → Bonaventure → Hugh of Balma → Cloud of Unknowing → Ruusbroec → Herp → Osuna → John of the Cross.
The crucial thing, however, is not to present this as a simple chain of literary dependence. It is better described as a convergence of traditions. The evidence for Herp, for example, explicitly shows several influences operating together: Ruusbroec, Hugh of Balma, Bonaventure, Tauler and other late-medieval mystical sources. (SciELO)
And for the precise question that seems to be emerging at the centre of your research — “How can one love what one does not intellectually know?” — I would put Hugh of Balma’s Viae Sion Lugent, Krynen’s 1964 article, Herp’s Mirror, and John of the Cross’s Ascent II and Dark Night II.5 and II.13 at the very centre of the investigation.
That is where the historical development becomes particularly interesting: John does not merely inherit the medieval “love beyond knowledge” solution. He appears to reconfigure the problem through faith and charity, so that knowledge and love are no longer two competing routes to God but two distinct participations in the one divine life.
Addendum
“‘The Greatest of Them All’?”
It often happens, when reading St Paul and surveying the tradition, that one comes to believe that charity is the greatest of the three virtues, that love is called to grow indefinitely on earth, whereas faith, the intellect, will attain its fullness only in Heaven. St John of the Cross is more nuanced and more precise. Let us see what he says.
Divine pedagogy
In his pedagogy, God communicates himself according to the soul’s modality: “the Holy Spirit illumines the recollected understanding and illumines it according to its recollection” (MC II, 29, 6). The soul’s modality may be human or divine. If it is human, God will act according to the order of the gifts of the Holy Spirit; if it is divine, he will act according to the order of the virtue of faith.
The visions, words and all the extraordinary supernatural manifestations that come from God are the work of the Holy Spirit. But this does not mean that they should be admitted, because they involve many dangers!!! For this, one would need to read the whole of chapter 17 of Book II of The Ascent of Mount Carmel, where the Saint explains the economy of God and how he acts in order to seek out the soul at the lowest degree where it finds itself. The Holy Spirit is given “economically” through these imaginative manifestations; for example, the Saint warns us: “[…] since the spirit of these imaginary apprehensions is passively given to the soul, it should behave passively towards them, without in any way introducing its own interior or exterior actions”. We can clearly see the expression: “the spirit of these apprehensions”. There is the bark and there is the fruit. He does not deny the reality of these communications, but he distinguishes what is essential from what is secondary and accidental. And if the soul wishes to receive the Spirit contained in these graces, it must not dwell upon their exterior aspect, which is like “the bark and the accident” (MC III, 13, 4).
We understand from this that there are two levels in the action of the Holy Spirit. Here we can better see the difference between the regime of faith and that of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. We understand the error of Thomas of Jesus and of neo-Thomism, who explained infused, supernatural contemplation, as well as the divine modality of God’s action, by the action of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. We see how gross an error this is.
a) According to the divine modality (“fine gold”, “the whole sea”)
Here, “God teaches the soul supernaturally and secretly and raises it in virtues and gifts without its knowing how” (MC II, 29, 7).
This action takes place in the supra-conscious depths of the soul which are called “spirit”; this is constituted by the intellect and the will insofar as they are passive — to be distinguished from the soul which, for its part, is also the intellect and the will, but insofar as they are active and conscious. And it is “all the Wisdom of God […] who is the Son of God”, loving Wisdom, which is infused into the spirit, into both the passive intellect and the passive will.
Here we encounter an interesting expression which enables us to understand better what contemplation is. True contemplation communicates the very Word of God. We can see the connection between this and what Denys says in his book The Mystical Theology concerning Scripture. The soul which has reached the heights of the spiritual life, when reading Scripture contemplatively, receives in it the very Word of God. He calls this “the highest summit of the Scriptures”. Denys thus prays to God: “Lead us not only beyond all light, but even beyond unknowing to the highest summit of the mystical Scriptures, where the simple, absolute and incorruptible mysteries of theology are revealed in the more luminous Darkness of Silence” (cf. Denys the Areopagite, Mystical Theology I.1). Here Scripture seems to deliver God himself! Scripture, like a sublime sacrament, gives us God himself. At its summit, we find the “Dark Ray of the divine Superessentiality”. Elsewhere he speaks of “the very Ray of the holy thearchic words” (Divine Names I.1). This superessential Ray contains, from all eternity, in a manner for which it is an understatement to call it ineffable, the terms of all knowledge. It cannot be conceived, expressed or grasped by any kind of vision, for it is separated from all things (cf. Mystical Theology I.4). He therefore seems to say that this Ray emerges from Scripture as from a tabernacle. Denys shows us that Scripture contains a Ray. Scripture is therefore compared to a high mountain which must be climbed; at the summit we have God himself in a manner that surpasses all understanding. It is there, at the summit of Scripture, that we receive the superessential Ray.
b) According to the human modality (“the basest metal”, “a drop of water”)
This takes place at the level of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the conscious and active intellect, that is, the soul. The intellectual gifts which govern the active organism of the intellect are: Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge and Counsel. The Saint will say that God can communicate the “wisdom of one or two or three truths”, etc. There are the gifts of the Holy Spirit which govern the active will, and these are: Piety, Fortitude and Fear. In order to understand this question better, let us look at the transcendence of the Holy Spirit.
Gift and gifts of the Holy Spirit
A remark is necessary here. It is at once dogmatic and anthropological in nature. St John of the Cross maintains the transcendence of the Holy Spirit God!!! Acting in the spirit as a divine Person, he does not fall within the senses or the intellect. One thing is a gift of the Holy Spirit; another is the Holy Spirit himself. Or, if one prefers, one thing is the Gift of the Holy Spirit, the transcendent Person who acts in the supra-conscious depths of our being (the spirit), and another is his gifts or his action in the conscious part of our being (the soul). There is therefore a difference between the theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They do not act in the same place within the human being, nor do they have the same modality of action.
In chapter 29 of Book II of The Ascent of Mount Carmel, St John of the Cross helps us to distinguish between the virtue of faith and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. There is an implicit reference in this passage to the intellectual gifts and to the lights which they confer upon the intellect. In this chapter, St John of the Cross considers the case where, in prayer, while recollected, one receives lights which one regards as supernatural. He seems to classify them within the category of the “gifts of the Holy Spirit”. But he does not attach importance to them. Compared with what the soul can receive through a recollection of faith, it is not very much. Moreover, he explains to us that the gifts come to us from love, which itself comes to us from pure faith.
Pure faith → Charity → “Supernatural” lights
He therefore concludes that no importance should be attached to these lights, however good they may be. One should even deprive oneself of them. Here is the passage:
“If you ask me why the understanding should deprive itself of these truths, since the Spirit of God illumines it there, and therefore this cannot be bad, I answer that the Holy Spirit illumines the recollected understanding and illumines it according to its recollection. And because the understanding cannot find a greater recollection than in faith, the Holy Spirit will not illumine it in anything more than in faith. Because the purer and more eminent the soul is in faith, the more infused charity it has from God, and the more charity it has, the more he illumines it and communicates to the soul some light in this illumination of truths; nevertheless, it is also different — as regards quality — from that which is in faith, without clear understanding, as there is as much difference between fine gold and the basest metal; and as regards quantity, there is as much difference as between a drop of water and the whole sea. For in the one he communicates to it the wisdom of one or two or three truths, etc., and in the other, the whole wisdom of God in general, who is the Son of God, who communicates himself to the soul in faith.” (M.C. II, 29, 6)
Note: A passage by John of St. Thomas O.P. (1589–1644) also goes in the same direction: “[The gifts of Understanding and Wisdom] do not have God himself immediately in himself as their matter, but God insofar as he is experienced and connaturalised, and united to us in something created, namely love itself, and the experiential union of charity. Hence knowledge through the gifts is affective and mystical, not quidditative, not intuitive of the thing in itself. Whereas the theological virtue has as its object God in himself, immediately, and not by reason of something created which is formally attained” (John of St Thomas, “The Gifts of the Holy Spirit”, trans. Raïssa Maritain, Paris, 1950, p. 92).
In the question raised in chapter 13 of Book III (cf. also chapters 16 and 17 of Book II of The Ascent of Mount Carmel, where he deals with this), the Saint distinguishes in the action of the Holy Spirit two levels: one in the spirit (this is the substance of his action) and the other in the soul (this is the redundancy, the echo of his action), and he shows us how to respond to it. We must distinguish, on the one hand, what is the profound action of God in the spirit and, on the other, its redundancy. To confuse the two and, moreover, to attach a certain importance to the redundancy in the soul is a grave error of discernment. It delays the progress of the soul. It must be understood that the action of the Holy Spirit cannot be felt.
Note: This shows us the discernment to be exercised in the face of certain contemporary manifestations of the Holy Spirit (for example, in the charismatic renewal). As regards manifestations in the soul, “the principal doctrine is to make no account of them whatsoever” (MC II, 30, 6). An unequivocal sentence!!! But he is more nuanced and more precise in chapter 13: in the face of visions, words, feelings or revelations which the Spirit of love gives to the soul, one must “take care to have the love of God which they cause inwardly in the soul” (MC III, 13, 6); one must take account “only of the feelings of love, sentimientos de amor, which they give” (ibid.)!! He even says that one may remember them, precisely in order to recover these feelings, and that it is a grace which God leaves in the soul: the remembrance of graces received.
Finally, it should be noted that St John of the Cross mentions the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit only in passing. They are never at the heart of his message concerning the Holy Spirit.
Links between knowledge and love:
There exists in the soul a link between knowledge and love, just as there is in God a link between the two operations of the Trinity: the generation of the Word and the spiration of the Holy Spirit. Or again, as regards the Incarnate Word, the link is the fact that it is he himself who communicates (spirates) the Holy Spirit. Therefore, by participating in his being, one participates in his operation: to spirate the Holy Spirit.
Here are the most typical passages: “in this knowledge, once again she [the soul] loves very closely and very highly, transforming herself into him according to these new knowledges” (SCA 36,5); “the fruition which the soul […] receives in this knowledge of the divine attributes, and the delight deleite of the love of God which she savours in them” (SCA 36,6).
It is we who have added the emphasis.
Here are the decisive texts concerning our question:
“Where it must be understood, concerning what some say, that the will cannot love except what the understanding has previously understood, that this is understood naturally, for by the natural way it is impossible to love if one does not first understand what one loves. But by the supernatural way, God can indeed pour love into the soul and increase it, without communicating or increasing any distinct understanding, as is made clear in the authority cited above. This has been experienced by many spiritual persons, who often find themselves burning with the love of God without having any more distinct understanding than before: for they can understand little and love much, and they can understand much and love little. On the contrary, ordinarily those spiritual persons who are not greatly advantaged in the understanding with regard to the things of God tend to be advantaged in the will; and infused faith is sufficient for them as knowledge of the understanding, by means of which God pours charity into them and increases it through its act, which is to love more, even though (as we have said) their knowledge is not increased. And thus the will can drink love [in the soul] without the understanding drinking new knowledge. Although in the case of which we are speaking, where the soul says that she has drunk from her Beloved, all the faculties drink together, because it is union in the secret of the wine-cellar, which union (as we have said) is according to the three faculties of the soul.” (SCA 17,6)
“because the mystical wisdom of which these Canticles treat (which is understood through love) does not need to be understood distinctly in order to produce an effect of love and affection in the soul, insofar as it is like faith, in which we love God without knowing Him.” (SCA Prol,2)
“it is an aspiration that God makes to the soul, in which, by means of this awakening of the high knowledge of God, the Holy Spirit spirates her in the same proportion as the understanding and knowledge of God have been; He absorbs her very deeply into the Holy Spirit, ravishing her in love with a divine excellence and delicacy, according to what she has seen in God.” (LF IV,17)
Another passage which points in the same direction:
“[…] pure faith and nakedness in the darkness of all these things carry and raise her there much further, without knowing how or from where this comes to her. And thus it will happen that the soul will be inflamed with the anguish of a very pure love of God and will not know from where it comes to her, nor what foundation it has had. And this is because, just as faith has become more deeply rooted and has flowed more deeply into the soul through this emptiness, these darknesses and this nakedness of all things, or this spiritual poverty — for we may call all these things one and the same — so likewise the charity of God becomes more deeply rooted and slips more deeply into the soul. Hence, the more the soul desires to darken and annihilate herself in all the exterior and interior things that she can receive, the more faith is poured into her and, consequently, love and hope, since these three theological virtues go together.” (MC II,24,8)
Another passage concerning the fact that God gives both faith and charity equally:
Dark Night II, ch. 12:
“1. It can be seen from what has been said how this obscure night of loving fire, just as it goes about purifying in darkness, also goes about inflaming the soul in darkness. It can also be seen that, just as spirits are purified in the other world by dark and material fire, so in this life they are purified and cleansed by loving, dark and spiritual fire — with this difference, that there they are purified by fire, whereas here they are purged and illumined only by love. This is the love which David asked for when he said: ‘O God, create in me a clean heart.’ For purity of heart is nothing less than the love and grace of God. For our Saviour calls those who have clean hearts blessed, which is as much as to say: lovers, since beatitude is given for no other price than love.
Now, that the soul is purged, being illumined by this fire of Loving Wisdom (because God never gives mystical wisdom without love, since it is love itself that communicates it (cf. MC II,29,1–6)), Jeremiah shows clearly in these words: ‘He sent fire into my bones and taught me.’ And David says that the Wisdom of God is ‘silver tested in the fire’, that is, in the purgative fire of love. For this obscure contemplation pours into the soul simultaneously both love and wisdom, to each according to its capacity and need, illumining the soul and purging it, as the Wise Man says, of its ignorances — just as he also says that it did with him.
[…] 6. Now this burning of love with the union of these two faculties — understanding and will, which are here united — is something of great richness and delight to the soul; for it is a certain touch of divinity and already the beginnings of the perfection of the union of love for which it hopes. […] 7. From what we have just said, it follows that, in these spiritual goods which God passively pours into the soul, the will can very well love without the understanding understanding; likewise, the understanding can understand without the will loving. For, since this obscure night of contemplation is composed of divine light and love — just as fire possesses both light and heat — there is no difficulty in the fact that, when this loving light communicates itself, it sometimes strikes the will more powerfully, making it ardent with love, while leaving the understanding in darkness, without striking it with light; and that at other times, by illumining it with its light, it gives understanding, leaving the will dry (just as it can happen that one receives the heat of fire without seeing its light, and also that one sees the light without receiving its heat) — and this is the work of the Lord, who pours out as it pleases Him.” (Dark Night II, 12, 1–7)
St Thomas Aquinas, Compendium (Part Two, chapter 9, §23):
“the vision (of God) itself completely inflames the affection for divine love”
“from the perfect vision of God arises perfect love”.
In support of this, he cites Denys and Gregory:
Denys: “It is impossible that God, who is essentially beauty and goodness, should be seen without being loved” (De divinis nominibus, ch. 4).
Gregory: “The fire of love which here below begins to be kindled, when it has seen the one whom it loves, will burn ever more intensely in its love” (Super Ezechielem 2,9).
One cannot comprehend God in Heaven (SCA 13,8)
“The Prodigious Islands”
8 The prodigious (extraordinary) islands are surrounded by the sea and lie beyond the seas, very far removed and distant from human communication; and thus things very different from ours grow and are born there, in a most prodigious manner, endowed with rare and unknown qualities which astonish and amaze those who see them. And so, because of the great and admirable novelties and prodigious knowledge, far removed from ordinary knowledge, which the soul sees in God, she calls them prodigious islands; because someone is called prodigious for one of two reasons: either because he is withdrawn from the world, or because he is excellent and distinguished from others in his deeds and works. And so the soul calls God prodigious for both these reasons: because He is everything that is prodigious in islands that have never been seen, and also because His ways, His counsels and His works are prodigious and of an admirable newness to men. And it is no wonder that God is prodigious to men who have not seen Him, since He is still so to the holy Angels and to the souls who see Him clearly, given that they cannot comprehend Him and never will comprehend Him; and until the last day of judgement they will continually come to know so many new things according to His profound judgements in the works of His mercy and His justice, that they remain continually in astonishment and admiration. Thus all men and Angels can call Him prodigious islands; it is only to Himself that He is neither prodigious nor new.” (SCA 13,8)
Knowledge in Heaven (SCA 7,9–10)
And dying I remain
Of a certain something of which they stammer.
9 As if she were saying: but beyond the wound that I receive from these creatures through the account they give me of the multitude of your graces, there is a certain “I know not what” which one senses remains to be spoken, and something which one knows remains to be discovered, and a sublime trace of God which is discovered to the soul, but which remains to be followed, and a very high knowledge of God which cannot be explained, and which for this reason she calls an “I know not what”; so that if the other thing which I understand wounds me and pierces me with love, this which I do not finish understanding, of which I have a lofty awareness, makes me die. This sometimes happens to advanced souls, to whom God, in what they understand, or see, or know, and sometimes without these things, grants the favour of giving a heightened knowledge, in which they are given to understand, or to feel, the height and greatness of God; and in this awareness, the soul experiences God so sublimely that she clearly understands that everything remains to be understood.
And this understanding and awareness that the divinity is so immense that it cannot be perfectly understood is a most eminent knowledge. And thus one of the greatest favours that God grants, as though in passing through this life, is to make the soul clearly understand and to make her feel so sublimely about God that she manifestly knows that He cannot be entirely understood or felt. For this is in some way like those who see Him in Heaven, where those who know Him more understand more distinctly the infinity that remains for them to understand than those who see Him less, to whom what remains for them to understand does not appear so distinctly as it does to the others who see Him more.
10 I believe that one who has not experienced this will not be able to understand it well. But the soul who has experienced it, when she sees that what she has a very lofty awareness of remains for her to understand, calls it an “I know not what”, because, just as one does not understand it, so one cannot express it, although one knows very well how to feel it. This is why she says that the creatures go on stammering to her, because they cannot make this understood to her; for this is what the word “stammer” means, which is the speech of children who cannot explain or make understood what needs to be said. (SCA 7,9–10)
SCA 35,6
“And this depth of the Wisdom and Knowledge of God is so profound and so immense that, whatever the soul may know of it, she can nevertheless always enter further into it because it is immense and its riches are incomprehensible, as St Paul cries out: ‘O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and his ways inscrutable!’ (Rom 11:33).”
the principal thing has remained for them to say and still to know (SCA 36,2–4)
Soon then we shall go
Into the very high caverns of the rock:
2 The rock of which she speaks here is Christ, according to what St Paul says to the Corinthians: “Petra autem erat Christus” (The rock was Christ, 1 Cor 10:4). The high caverns are the lofty, high and profound mysteries in the Wisdom of God which are found in Christ: concerning the hypostatic union of the human nature with the divine Word and the correspondence between the union of human beings in God and the hypostatic union; and the fittingness between the justice of God and his mercy concerning the salvation of the human race, in the manifestation of his judgements. These, being so lofty and so profound, are properly called high caverns: high because of the sublimity of the mysteries; caverns because of the depth of their wisdom; for just as caverns are deep and have many winding passages, so each mystery among those found in Christ is very deep in wisdom and has many recesses of his hidden judgements concerning predestination and foreknowledge towards the children of men; hence she immediately says:
They are so well concealed!
3 So much so that, whatever mysteries and wonders the holy Doctors may have discovered and whatever the holy souls may have understood in the state of this life, the principal thing has remained for them to say and still to know. Thus there is much to explore more deeply in Christ because He is like a fertile mine containing numerous recesses of treasures which are incessantly explored without ever being exhausted. Far from it; in every recess, new veins of new riches are continually being discovered here and there. This is why St Paul said of Christ himself: “In quo sunt omnes thesauri sapientiæ et scientiæ Dei absconditi”, that is: “In whom are hidden all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God” (Col 2:3). The soul could neither enter into these nor reach them if beforehand (as has been said) she did not pass through the depth of exterior and interior sufferings — after God has granted her many other intellectual and sensible favours, and after a very long period of spiritual exercise. For all these things are inferior and are merely dispositions for attaining the high caverns of the knowledge of the mysteries of Christ, which is the highest wisdom that can be attained in this life.
Hence, when Moses asked God to show him his glory, He replied that he could not see it in this life, but that He would show him all good (Ex 33:21–23), that is, all that can be seen here below. And this happened when, having placed him in the cleft of the rock — which is Christ — He showed him his back — which was nothing other than giving him knowledge of the mysteries of his works, and principally of those of the Incarnation of his Son (1 Cor 10:4). (SCA 36,2–4)
St Teresa of Avila
This is found in her commentary on the Song of Songs. She begins by saying in the first chapter that she is struck by a passage in the text:
“I was struck to see that the soul, by the way in which she expresses herself here, seems to be speaking to one person and asking peace of another. Indeed, she says: ‘let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth’; and immediately afterwards, appearing to address the one with whom she finds herself, she adds: ‘your breasts are more delightful than wine’.”
She then opens a parenthesis on the attitude to adopt when one does not understand the meaning of a text:
“I do not understand this, and I take great pleasure in not understanding it. Indeed, my daughters, it is very true that the soul should admire less those things which our earthbound minds can grasp than those whose meaning it is impossible for us to penetrate, for the former inspire her with less admiration and reverence for her God. Here, then, is an important recommendation that I give you. When you read a book, hear a sermon, or think about the mysteries of our holy faith, do not tire yourselves, do not exhaust your minds in trying to make subtle what you cannot easily understand. There are so many things beyond the capacity of women, and even beyond that of men!
When the Lord wishes to give understanding, he does so without any effort on our part. At this moment I am addressing women, and also men whose mission is not to defend the truth by their doctrine; for those whom the Lord has charged with explaining it to us, it is evident that they must deepen their understanding of it and that they derive great benefit from doing so. As for us, let us receive with complete simplicity what the Lord gives us; and what he refuses us, let us not tire ourselves by seeking it. Rather, let us rejoice at the thought that we have a God and Master so great that a single one of his words certainly contains a thousand mysteries, of which we will not understand the first word. If it were a Latin, Hebrew or Greek text, there would be nothing astonishing about this, but the same is true of a Castilian text. To speak only of the psalms of the glorious David, how many things, even when translated into our own language, remain for us as obscure as they are in Latin! Thus, carefully avoid tiring yourselves and exhausting your minds by trying to penetrate these things. Women need no more than what their intelligence can contain. With this God will have mercy upon them. When His Majesty wishes to give us more, we shall understand it without making any effort to attain it. As for the rest, let us humble ourselves and, once again, rejoice that we have so great a Master, whose words, even when spoken in our own language, are incomprehensible.” (Thoughts on the Love of God, 1,2)