St John of the Cross, born in Spain in 1542, was a Catholic priest and mystic. Known for his writings, he is considered one of the foremost poets in the Spanish language and the summit of mystical Spanish literature.
His poem Entering into Unknowing, written in 1590, concerns an “ecstasy experienced in high contemplation”. That contemplation he described as “transcending all knowledge”. He writes: “The higher he ascends the less he understands, whoever knows this remains always in unknowing, transcending all knowledge.”
Elsewhere in his poem The Ascent of Mount Carmel he writes: “In order to draw nearer the divine ray, the intellect must advance by unknowing rather than by the desire to know.”
John’s description of transcending knowledge can be understood in the context of apophatic theology: the idea that God is beyond human understanding and experience, so that the only way of approaching the nature of God is to recognise and renounce what God is not. It is, therefore, not about knowing or acquiring knowledge, rather about unknowing or renouncing knowledge.
An early exponent of this apophatic tradition in Christianity was the monk and ascetic Evagrius of Pontus (345-399AD), who wrote that prayer is a “letting go of concepts”. Concepts can be of any type – even pious concepts. Such thoughts, according to Evagrius, are calculated to persuade us that God is quantitative “but God is without quality and without outward form”.
Evagrius said that the way to God, who is beyond all knowledge, is to abandon that self which knowledge constitutes, and the way to achieve this he taught “is to make knowledge fail”.
The apophatic tradition finds parallels in the pre-Christian world. Socrates described himself as wiser than all other Athenians, not by having knowledge but by the realisation of his “not knowing”. In the Vedic tradition the route to appreciation of God is described as a process of rejection of knowledge – every thought or understanding is rejected as “Not This”.
The basis of science must be the acceptance that our understanding is always limited
Towards the end of his life, Karl Rahner, the German theologian who was a pioneer in the revival of apophaticism, was asked: “What constitutes the mystery of human life?” His response was: “That is difficult to answer. Perhaps it could be put briefly this way: for me, the mystery consists in being able to grasp rationally that the incomprehensible really exists.”
In our world knowledge and its pursuit are highly treasured. We distinguish the human from other creatures by our ability to think and to understand. We look upon the advances of science as marvels of human ingenuity; the product of the scientific method of objectively establishing facts through test and experimentation.
This appears to stand in direct contradiction to Evagrius’s exhortation to “make knowledge fail”. Or does it? Are science and mysticism opposed? Is the yearning to understand creation and the yearning to understand God incompatible?
The basis of science must be the acceptance that our understanding is always limited. New galaxies recently revealed by the Webb telescope challenge current models of the universe, just as in the 20th century quantum physics turned classical physics on its head.
No scientist could reasonably assert that we know it all – indeed it may appear that the more we know, the more we understand how little we know. Einstein said that he did not imagine a personal God but that “it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it”.
There is nothing arrogant in this beautiful statement – the greatest physicist of the modern age could only “stand in awe”. And what about God? Does God exist? This question can never be answered because God is not a concept or a thing that has form or description – in a way, all we can do is follow Einstein and “stand in awe”. But to stand in awe we must renounce what we think we know.
In the words of John of the Cross, “this knowledge in unknowing is so overwhelming that wise men disputing can never overthrow it, for their knowledge does not reach to the understanding of not understanding, transcending all knowledge.”
Writing in The Spiritual Canticle, John cautioned against seeking satisfaction in what we understand about God: “Do not be like the many foolish ones who, in their lowly understanding of God, think that when they do not understand, taste, or experience him, he is far away and utterly concealed. The contrary belief would be truer. The less distinct is their understanding of him, the closer they approach him, since in the words of the prophet David, ’he made darkness his hiding place’.”
John’s poem speaks of God as infinitely outside all human knowledge and understanding; he wrote, “the soul is joined to God by faith and not by any other means, and it reaches God more by not understanding than by understanding”.
Annetta Maguire is author of Praying with Christian Mystics and a member of OCDS or Secular Carmelites, who meet at the Avila retreat centre in Donnybrook Co Dublin
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