If We Cannot Know it All, Why Know at All? Exploring, through Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas of Cusa, the Reason Why God Cannot be Named
Drawing upon Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae and Nicholas of Cusa’s On Learned Ignorance, I discuss the significance of naming God and whether the attempt to understand Him by doing so is a redundant pursuit. I explore the implications of God’s simplicity and our reasoning. I focus on the significa...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group
2021
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| In: |
Medieval mystical theology
Year: 2021, Volume: 30, Issue: 2, Pages: 85-98 |
| Further subjects: | B
Nicholas of Cusa
B Thomas Aquinas B Analogy B Potential B Simplicity B Reason |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Drawing upon Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae and Nicholas of Cusa’s On Learned Ignorance, I discuss the significance of naming God and whether the attempt to understand Him by doing so is a redundant pursuit. I explore the implications of God’s simplicity and our reasoning. I focus on the significance of Cusa’s learned ignorance, Aquinas’s analogical perfections, and how we may understand God’s Unity prior to differentiable otherness by understanding in terms of potential. I then demonstrate how we can become unified with all possibilities, impossibilities, knowns, unknowns, and left open to fully realise the simplicities inherent within and prior to the effect of our cause. This allows us to obtain a perfect [self] awareness, analogical or connected to that perfect knowledge only God has of Himself, and which He has expressed through the language of actualisation. I close by arguing that we may analogically express God, but cannot name Him. |
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| ISSN: | 2046-5734 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Medieval mystical theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/20465726.2021.1997185 |