The Cloud of Unknowing

In the 1380s, an anonymous monk in England wrote a spiritual classic called The Cloud of Unknowing. It is a meditation on meditation, within the Christian tradition. He argues that there are two ways of knowing God. One is to describe God in terms of things we already know: God as a parent, a king, a friend, a fortress. This is how most of Christianity approaches God. However, there is another way, known as the via negativa. It resists the temptation to think of God as knowable in terms of the created world. Instead, our goal should be to empty the mind as much as possible, to enter the cloud of unknowing so we may get closer to feeling a union with God, which can come suddenly, at God’s grace. Buddhists would call this enlightenment, and this book has much in common with Hindu and Buddhist thought and practice regarding meditation. But since this is a Christian work, the anonymous monk refers to the road to God in terms of a contrast between knowledge and love:

“Only see: all rational beings, angels and men, having them, each individually, two principle active faculties, one faculty of knowledge, and the second faculty of love; and God, their maker, is forever beyond the reach of the first of these, intellectual faculty; but by means of the second, loving faculty, he can be fully grasped by each individual being, to such an extent that each single loving soul may, by virtue of love, embrace within itself him who is fully sufficient (and beyond comparison more than fully ) to fill all the souls of angels that can ever exist. And this is the unending marvellous miracle of love, which will never be concluded; for God will always do it, and will never cease from doing it. Let whoever has grace to see this, see it, for to experience this is unending bliss, and to lack it is unending pain.”

For this monk, our rational minds are just wasting our time trying to find the perfect formula or metaphor for describing God. God is by definition more than all that it is, so God is unlike all that is. We can discern aspects of God’s character from the world, but full knowledge is impossible intellectually. However, we can and should draw closer to God using the other faculty possessed by the soul: love. This is the royal road to God, where we will feel our way to God in the quiet of meditation, in the stillness of the cloud of unknowing. Peace. 

-Rev. Stephen Milton, Lawrence Park Community Church, Toronto

Source: Anonymous, The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 4

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