xii 
…many passages of great literary beauty, and instinct
with profound thought and a contagious enthusiasm.
…a trumpet-call to a most definite and most difficult
life of the spirit.
…none may be excluded from the highest life that is
within man’s power under God’s grace; but at the same time it is a call
that –it seems—can only be heard and obeyed by the few…
xiii
The author of the Cloud was, as has been said already,
a diligent student of that unknown writer who chose to issue his profound
treatises under the style of “Dionysius the Areopagite”; Denis is his mystical
teacher. The psychology and the allegories which he takes from St Augustine
and Richard of St Victor are of small importance in comparison with that
main theory of the mystical effort which he adopts from the Areopagite.
Denis is profoundly impressed with the thought of
the transcendence and incomprehensibility of God. So transcendent is his
infinite Being that no human words are able to describe him. We may take
all the highest words of human language and apply them to God; but we do
not express his Being. We may go further and speak of him as the super-Good,
the super-Beautiful, the super-True; but still we fall short. And, in fact,
we reach more nearly to him when, pursuing the “negative way,” we say that
he is neither good, nor beautiful, nor true – as we understand those words.
And what is true of language is true also of thought. Let us form the noblest
conceptions we may of goodness, and beauty, and truth, we still must fail
to comprehend God; let us take these conceptions and raise them to their
highest power, we are yet far from God. But if we…reach out in a way above
mind to him who is above mind, then (like Moses on Sinai) we pass within
the cloud, we enter the “divine dark,” and are united in a way that surpasses
reason and cannot be expressed by language to the incomprehensible and
inexpressible God.
xiv
…makes great use of paradox. God is light, but he
is also darkness; he is being, but he is also not being…
…infinite transcendence of God and the inadequacy
of human expression.
…some have been led to maintain that he severs God
utterly from all possible contact with human knowledge…
…yet man can attain God. For in and through his recognition
of his own impotence and of the limitations of his thought – that is to
say, in the darkness of his ignorance, in his cloud of unknowing – man
is united to God.
…union of man’s finite being with the being of the
Infinite.
The first chapter of the Mystical Theology treats
of the “divine darkness.”
…Psalmist says that He hath made darkness his hiding
place (xvii 12) and that clouds and darkness surround him (xcvi
2), yet God is light and in him there is no darkness (I John I 5)
…Denis speaks of this darkness as “most luminous”…
xv
The mind ceases, indeed, to consider this or that
divine attribute, ceases from any vain effort at comprehending the incomprehensible;
but it raises itself up to that which is highest of all, the pure Being
of God, and in an inexpressible way is united with this Being.
The spark of conscience (scintilla syderesis)
which alone may be united to the divine Spirit…
St Bonaventure – in the same century – teaches that
the highest mystical experience is not an exercise of he intellect, but
of the will; it is a union, a quasi-ecstatic union of love.
xvi
Aquinas insists abundantly on the immediacy of love,
and maintains that we are here united to God more intimately by love than
by knowledge.
…but he does not push this doctrine to the point of
discarding the intellect. Nor, if we read the Cloud attentively, shall
we accuse the author of anti-intellectualism
xvii
...to put aside the lower activities of the soul,
to check the imagination, to silence the discursive reason, which would
be busy with various meditations, and to reduce the intellective act to
a very simple contemplation of God’s Being. That object baffles man’s understanding,
and =his contemplation is therefore ignorance and unknowing; but this ignorance
is a better thing than all the knowledge that is within man’s grasp.
xviii
…in this “beating on this dark cloud of unknowing,”
the contemplative attains a comprehension of God which is beyond the power
of the intellect and a foretaste of the bliss of heaven.
…he may in some measure pierce this cloud “with a
sharp dart of longing love,” and this is the consummation of he work of
this book.
…negative process, a progressive abstraction from
sense and sensible things, and from discursive thought, until his activity
may be described as a “loving stirring and a blind beholding.”
xix
...doctrine of he two lives: active and contemplative.
To each of these he gives two parts, a lower and a higher; but the higher
part of active life being the same as the lower part of contemplative life,
we get no more than three degrees, which we may call active, mixed, and
contemplative. In the first a man is occupied with the corporal works of
mercy and charity; in the second he practices discursive prayer – i.e.,
mental prayer – with meditation on such subjects as sin, the life of Christ,
the attributes of God; in the third he puts aside all busy activity both
of body and mind, and endeavoring to contemplate God in his pure Being,
reaches out to him with an effort of will.
Our Lord gives a general invitation in the Gospel,
where he bids us be perfect as he himself is perfect; but there is a more
special call than this.
130
HERE FOLLOWETH THE TRANSLATION OF DENIS HID DIVINITY
HERE BEGINNETH THE PROLOGUE
This writing that next followeth is the English of
a book that Saint Denis wrote unto Timothy, the which book is called in
Latin tongue Mystica Theologia.
…seventieth chapter of a book written before – the
which book is called the Cloud of Unknowing – how that Denis’ sentence
will clearly confirm all that is written in that same book: therefore,
in translation of it, I have not only followed the naked letter of the
text, but for to declare the hardness of it, I have much followed the sentence
of the Abbot of Saint Victor, a noble and a worthy expositor of this same
book.
THIS IS SAINT DENIS’ PRAYER
Thou unbegun and everlasting Wisdom…sovereign-substantial
Firsthood…sovereign Godhead…sovereign Good…inly Beholder of the godly made
wisdom of Christian men…
132
And for all these things be above mind, therefore
with affection above mind (as I may) I desire to purchase them unto me
with this prayer.
THE FIRST CHAPTER
HOW A MAN SHALL RISE IN THIS HID DIVINITY BY DOING AWAY OF ALL THINGS ON THIS SIDE GOD
Thou friend Timothy, what time that thou purposest
thee by the stirring of grace to the actual exercise of thy blind beholdings:
look thou forsake, with a strong and sly and lusty contrition, both thy
bodily wits (as hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching), and
also thy ghostly wits, the which be called thine understandable workings;
and all those things the which may be known with any of thy five bodily
wits without-forth; and all those things the which may be known by thy
ghostly wits within- forth; and all those things that be now, or yet have
been, though they be not now; and all those things that be not now, or
yet may be in time for to come, though they be not now…rise with me in
this grace (in a manner that is thou knowest never how) to be oned with
him that is above all substance and all manner of knowing.
134
Beware that none of these unwise men…hear these things…that
be fastened in knowing and in loving of these things that be knowable and
have beginning.
…those that be more unwise, dwelling yet not only
in their ghostly wits of natural philosophy, but low down beneath in their
bodily wits, the which they have but in common with only beasts? For these
men can not come to the knowing of the First Cause, the which is sovereignly
set above all things, but by making of figures of the last and the least
worthy things.
…for to set, for to see, and for to affirm all the
settings and the beings of all these being things in him that is above
all knowing and mind, as him being the cause of all these things
…more properly…to deny all these being things, as
him sovereignly being above them all, full high in himself, separated from
them all.
…Bartholomew, the Apostle of Christ, saith in his
writing that Christ’s divinity is both much, and it is least; and the Gospel
is broad and much, and eftsoons he saith it is strait and little. As it
seemeth to me, in this he was ravished to behold above nature…
136
How the godly Moses, mildest of men, first he is bidden
to be cleansed, both in himself and also in his people, and after that
to be separated from occasion of defiling. And then, after all cleansing
of himself and of his people, he heard trumps of many voices and saw many
lights with shining, sending out from them full broad and full clean beams.
Afterwards he was separated from the multitude of this people, and with
priests that were chosen, he attained to the highness of the godly ascensions,
the which is the terms and the bounds of man’s understanding, be it never
so helped with grace. And yet in all this he was not with God…for he may
not be seen by that eye. But the place where he was, that was his object.
And that place betokeneth the highest godly beholdings.
138
In this time it was that Moses in singularity of affection
was separated form these beforesaid chosen priests, and entered by himself
the darkness of unknowing…in the which he shineth, all-knowable knowing…he
is knitted unto him in the best manner; and in that that he knoweth no
thing, he is made to be knowing above mind.
THE SECOND CHAPTER
HOW WE SHALL BE ONED TO THE CAUSE OF ALL, BEING ABOVE ALL
…we pray to be done up, and, by not seeing and unknowing,
for to see and for to know him that is above all seeing and all knowing…
…to praise, by doing away of all these being things,
him that is sovereign-substantial in himself.
…to make an image of the least quantity, of that place
of the wood the which is (by measuring of right lining) in the centre and
the middle of that same stock.
…void away all the outward parts of that wood, being
about and hindering the sight of that same image.
140
…to man’s understanding – the whiles it is knitted
to this corrupted body – he is nevermore clearly showed but as it were
a thing that were covered and overlapped and overlaid with innumerable
sensible bodies and understandable substances, with many a marvelous-fantastic
image, congealed as it were in a cumbrous clog about him as the image of
the ensample written before is hid in the thick great, sound stock. The
which cumbrous clog, thus congealed of these innumerable diversities, we
must surely pare away craftily by sleight of grace in this divine work,
as strong hindrances contrarying unto this clean hid sight.
…in a manner that is unknown how unto all, but only
to those that it proveth;
…affirmings begin at the most worthy things of these
being things, and so forth by the means we descend to the least. But in
our denyings we begin at the least and rise up to the most.
…we fold all together and do them away, that we may
clearly know that unknowing…and that we may see that sovereign- substantial
darkness, privily hid from all light in these being things.
THE THIRD CHAPTER
WHICH BOOKES BE OF AFFIRMING DIVINITY AND WHICH OF DENYING DIVINITY
142
The first of the Hierarchies of Heaven, and
the second of the Hierarchies of this Fighting Church – in both
these, we have set with praising how that high divine singular Nature,
the which is God, is one; how it is three, the which after itself is
called Fatherhood and Sonhood and Holy Ghosthood; how the lights of goodness
dwelling in the heart burgeoned of that immaterial
…in the books of God’s Names it is affirmingly
set and praised, how that he is named Good, how Being, how Life, how Wisdom,
and how Virtue…
Gathering of Divine Sentence…which be the godly
forms, which be the godly figures, which be his parts and his instruments,
which be his places and his adornments, which be his frenzies and his heavinesses,
which be his madness and his drunkenness, which be his gluttonies and his
oaths and his cursings, which be his sleepings, and which be his wakings…
...Hierarchies and the opening of the Godly
Names in the third book were of fewer words than this Gathered book
of divine Sentence, touched here last. For inasmuch as we behold to things
most high, insomuch the words that be spoken of them to our beholdings
make strait our understanding. As it is now here in this book, when we
enter into the darkness that is above mind, we shall not only find the
shortening of words, but as it were a madness and a perfect unreasonability
of all that we say.
144
…other books our enditing descended from the highest
things to the lowest; and, according to the quantity of descending, it
spread out to a great multitude. But now it ascendeth in this book from
the lowest things to the highest; and…it is made strait. And after all
such ascension it shall all be without voice, and all it shall be knitted
to a thing that is unspeakable.
…it is most according that we set first those things
that be most worthy and most nigh unto him. And if we will mark him by
doing away of all understandable things, it accordeth most that we first
do away those things the which be seen to be most far from him.
THE FOURTH CHAPTER
THAT HE IS NONE OF SENSIBLE THINGS THE WHICH IS CAUSE OF THEM ALL
We put away first from God thing that is without substance,
and all thing that is not, beginning from the most far; for that thing
is more further than those things that but only be and live not. [And then
we put away those things that but only be and live not;] for that is further
than that that is and liveth. And after that we put away those things that
be and live and lack feeling; for those be further than those that have
feeling. And after that we put away those that have feeling and lack reason
and understanding; for those be farther than those that have reason and
understanding. And with all these things we remove from him all bodily
things, and all those things that pertain to body, or to bodily things
– as is shape, form, quality, quantity, weight, position, visibility sensibility
and all doing and suffering; all inordination of fleshly concupiscence,
all troublous complexion of material passion, all impotence subject unto
sensible chances, all needfulness of light; and all generation, and all
corruption, and all division, and all passibility, and all corporeal flowing
by process of times. For he neither is any of these things nor hath any
of these, or any or all these other sensible things.
THE FIFTH CHAPTER
THAT HE IS NONE OF UNDERSTANDABLE THINGS THE WHICH IS CAUSE OF THEM ALL
…also we ascending and beginning our denyings and
our doings away at the highest of understandable things, say that he is
neither soul, nor angel, nor hath fantasy, nor opinion, nor reason, nor
understanding; nor he is reason nor understanding; nor he is said nor understood.
And – that we run from these high things by means to the last things –
he is no number, nor order, nor greatness, nor littleness, nor equality,
nor likeness, nor unlikeness; nor he standeth, nor he moveth, nor he holdeth
no silence, nor he speaketh…he hath no virtue, nor he is virtue, nor time,
nor there is any understandable touching of him, nor his is unity, nor
Godhead or goodness; nor he is spirit, as we understand spirit; nor sonhood,
nor fatherhood, nor any other thing known by us or by any that be; nor
he is anything of not-being things, nor anything of being things; nor any
of those things that be, know him as he is; nor he knoweth those things
that be as they be in themselves, but as they be in him; nor there is any
way of reason or understanding for to come unto him; nor name, nor knowing
of him; nor he is darkness, nor he is light, nor he is error, nor he is
truth. Nor (knittingly to say) there is of him of setting nor doing away;
but, when we affirmingly set, or denyingly do away, all or any of those
things that be not he, him we may neither set nor do away
…And his not-understandable overpassing is understandably
above all affirming and denying.
HERE ENDETH THE TRANSLATION OF DENIS HID DIVINITY
In the Prologue to Denis Hid Divinity the Cloud Author declares that what “…next followeth is the English of a book that Saint Denis wrote unto Timothy, the which book is called in Latin tongue Mystica Theologia,” and that this is the work mentioned in the “…seventieth chapter of a book written before – the which book is called the Cloud of Unknowing – how that Denis’ sentence will clearly confirm all that is written in that same book…” (130).
This English translation of twelfth and thirteenth century Latin paraphrases of the third century Greek work was published in England following the publication of the Cloud of Unknowing to lend authority to the Author’s doctrine. Dionysius the Areopagite was still regarded as an authentic contemporary and companion of Christ and the Apostles, and his books as being addressed to St Timothy. Both works enjoyed enormous popularity throughout England. The Cloud Author’s free translation follows the five chapter divisions of Dionysius’ Mystical Theology. The work as a whole is an attempt at what the Cloud Author translates as a “denying divinity,” or what a modern English translation of Dionysius renders: “negative theology.” In chapter three of the original, Dionysius places his previous works into categories of positive and negative theology, the former involving the description of God through affirmation of his qualities and properties:
…the first of the Hierarchies of Heaven, and the second of the Hierarchies of this Fighting Church – in both these, we have set with praising how that high divine singular Nature, the which is God, is one; how it is three, the which after itself is called Fatherhood and Sonhood and Holy Ghosthood…
…in the books of God’s Names it is affirmingly set and praised, how that he is named Good, how Being, how Life, how Wisdom, and how Virtue…
…Gathering of Divine Sentence…which be the godly forms, which be the godly figures, which be his parts and his instruments, which be his places and his adornments, which be his frenzies and his heavinesses, which be his madness and his drunkenness, which be his gluttonies and his oaths and his cursings, which be his sleepings, and which be his wakings… (142)
The Cloud Author’s works of negative theology including The Cloud of Unknowing and the present work, approach the description of God through denial of those things which He is not. The principle is that, if the nature of God is such that it surpasses all human understanding, then the only way to describe it is by removing from our understanding of God all those properties that he does not possess. The fourth and fifth chapters make this process of denial explicit:
THE FOURTH CHAPTER
THAT HE IS NONE OF SENSIBLE THINGS THE WHICH IS CAUSE OF THEM ALL
We put away first from God thing that is without substance, and all thing that is not, beginning from the most far; for that thing is more further than those things that but only be and live not. [And then we put away those things that but only be and live not for that is further than that that is and liveth. And after that we put away those things that be and live and lack feeling; for those be further than those that have feeling. And after that we put away those that have feeling and lack reason and understanding; for those be farther than those that have reason and understanding. And with all these things we remove from him all bodily things, and all those things that pertain to body, or to bodily things – as is shape, form, quality, quantity, weight, position, visibility sensibility and all doing and suffering; all inordination of fleshly concupiscence, all troublous complexion of material passion, all impotence subject unto sensible chances, all needfulness of light; and all generation, and all corruption, and all division, and all passibility, and all corporeal flowing by process of times. For he neither is any of these things nor hath any of these, or any or all these other sensible things.
THE FIFTH CHAPTER
THAT HE IS NONE OF UNDERSTANDABLE THINGS THE WHICH IS CAUSE OF THEM ALL
…also we ascending and beginning our denyings and our doings away at the highest of understandable things, say that he is neither soul, nor angel, nor hath fantasy, nor opinion, nor reason, nor understanding; nor he is reason nor understanding; nor he is said nor understood. And – that we run from these high things by means to the last things – he is no number, nor order, nor greatness, nor littleness, nor equality, nor likeness, nor unlikeness; nor he standeth, nor he moveth, nor he holdeth no silence, nor he speaketh…he hath no virtue, nor he is virtue, nor time, nor there is any understandable touching of him, nor his is unity, nor Godhead or goodness; nor he is spirit, as we understand spirit; nor sonhood, nor fatherhood, nor any other thing known by us or by any that be; nor he is anything of not-being things, nor anything of being things; nor any of those things that be, know him as he is; nor he knoweth those things that be as they be in themselves, but as they be in him; nor there is any way of reason or understanding for to come unto him; nor name, nor knowing of him; nor he is darkness, nor he is light, nor he is error, nor he is truth. Nor (knittingly to say) there is of him of setting nor doing away; but, when we affirmingly set, or denyingly do away, all or any of those things that be not he, him we may neither set nor do away…
…And his not-understandable overpassing is understandably above all affirming and denying. (144)
This process of negative theology is carried out in a reverse order to positive theology:
…in other books our enditing descended from the highest things to the lowest; and, according to the quantity of descending, it spread out to a great multitude. But now it ascendeth in this book from the lowest things to the highest; and…it is made strait. And after all such ascension it shall all be without voice, and all it shall be knitted to a thing that is unspeakable… (144)
Positive theology begins by asserting the existence of the highest qualities it can attribute to God, and proceeds to enumerate properties of decreasing importance and increasing distance from the divine nature:
…affirmings begin at the most worthy things of these being things, and so forth by the means we descend to the least. But in our denyings we begin at the least and rise up to the most. (140)
Because the insignificant is far more numerous than the significant, words become increasingly multitudinous as we proceed in positive theology.
Therefore, the “Hierarchies and the opening of the Godly Names in the third book,” dealing with the highest qualities positively attributable to God,
…were of fewer words than this Gathered book of divine Sentence, touched here last. For inasmuch as we behold to things most high, insomuch the words that be spoken of them to our beholdings make strait our understanding. As it is now here in this book, when we enter into the darkness that is above mind, we shall not only find the shortening of words, but as it were a madness and a perfect unreasonability of all that we say. (142)
By contrast, negative theology begins by denying the attribution of insignificant properties to God and proceeds to deny properties of greater and greater significance and proximity to the divine nature. Consequently, when this process is carried to its limit, it expresses the “unspeakable” and is therefore “without voice.” Both processes taken together in this order (positive to negative; beginning with the highest things, proceeding to the lowest and then returning to the highest) are necessary for a complete mystical theology.
The process of negative theology is analogous to the search for the smallest part located at the center of a block of wood:
…to make an image of the least quantity, of that place of the wood the which is (by measuring of right lining) in the centre and the middle of that same stock.…void away all the outward parts of that wood, being about and hindering the sight of that same image.
…to man’s understanding – the whiles it is knitted to this corrupted body – he is nevermore clearly showed but as it were a thing that were covered and overlapped and overlaid with innumerable sensible bodies and understandable substances, with many a marvelou-fantastic image, congealed as it were in a cumbrous clog about hims as the image of the ensample written before is hid in the thick grea, sound stock. The which cumbrous clog, thus congealed of these int numerable diversities, we must surely pare away craftily by sleight of grace in this divine work, as strong hindrances contrarying unto this clean hid sight…in a manner that is unknown how unto all, but only to those that it proveth…(140)
This is the “hid divinity” that the Cloud Author, following Dionysius is attempting to lead us to. It is not a simple intellectual exercise. The object of this process of voiding away all that is not of God is not an intellectual understanding of the nature of the divine, but an experience of unity with God that is “without voice” and therefore transcends understanding. The model for this mystical union is given in Denis Hid Divinity as Moses ascending Mount Sinai:
How the godly Moses, mildest of men, first he is bidden to be cleansed, both in himself and also in his people, and after that to be separated from occasion of defiling. And then, after all cleansing of himself and of his people, he heard trumps of many voices and saw many lights with shining, sending out from them full broad and full clean beams. Afterwards he was separated from the multitude of this people, and with priests that were chosen, he attained to the highness of the godly ascensions, the which is the terms and the bounds of man’s understanding, be it never so helped with grace. And yet in all this he was not with God…for he may not be seen by that eye. But the place where he was, that was his object. And that place betokeneth the highest godly beholdings. (136)
In this time it was that Moses in singularity of affection was separated form these beforesaid chosen priests, and entered by himself the darkness of unknowing…in the which he shineth, all-knowable knowing…he is knitted unto him in the best manner; and in that that he knoweth not thing, he is made to be knowing above mind…(138)
Denis is profoundly impressed with the thought of the transcendence and incomprehensibility of God. So transcendent is his infinite Being that no human words are able to describe him. We may take all the highest words of human language and apply them to God; but we do not express his Being. We may go further and speak of him as the super-Good, the super-Beautiful, the super-True; but still we fall short. And, in fact, we reach more nearly to him when, pursuing the “negative way,” we say that he is neither good, nor beautiful, nor true – as we understand those words. And what is true of language is true also of thought. Let us form the noblest conceptions we may of goodness, and beauty, and truth, we still must fail to comprehend God; let us take these conceptions and raise them to their highest power, we are yet far from God. But if we…reach out in a way above mind to him who is above mind, then (like Moses on Sinai) we pass within the cloud, we enter the “divine dark,” and are united in a way that surpasses reason and cannot be expressed by language to the incomprehensible and inexpressible God. (xiii)