On being renewed in the mind, and the nameless God

Renovamini spiritu mentis vestrae (Ephesians 4:23): Be renewed in the spirit, here called mens or mind. So says St Paul. Now St Augustine says that in the highest part of the soul, known there as mens or the mind, there was created along with the soul a capacity called by philosophers the casket or shrine of mind-forms or formless images. This power makes the Father comparable to the soul in his emanating deity, in that he has poured out the whole hoard of divine being into the Son and into the Holy Spirit in distinction of Persons, just as the memory of the soul pours out its treasure of ideas into the soul's powers. Now if with this faculty the soul sees form, whether she sees the form of an angel or her own form, it is an imperfection in her. But when all forms are stripped from the soul and she sees nothing but the one alone, then the naked essence of the soul finds the naked, formless essence of the divine unity, the being beyond being, passive, resting in itself. What surpassing wonder, what lofty suffering that is, when the soul suffers nothing but the absolute unity of God!

You shall be renewed in the spirit, says St Paul. Renewal comes to all creatures under God, but for God there is no renewal, only eternity without end. What is eternity? It is characteristic of eternity that in it youth and being are the same, for eternity would not be eternal if it could newly come to be and were not always. Now I say that renewal comes to the angels, that is, in their knowledge of what is to come, for an angel knows of future things only as much as God reveals to him. And renewal comes to the soul insofar as she is soul, and she is soul insofar as she gives life to the body and is the form of the body. And renewal comes to her too insofar as she is spirit. She is spirit insofar as she is detached from here and now and from everything that belongs to matter. But insofar as she is the image of God and nameless as God is nameless, no renewal comes to her, only eternity, as in God. Now mark this. God is nameless: no one can know or say anything of him. A pagan philosopher says that what we know or say about the first cause is what we are ourselves rather than what the first cause is, for this is beyond speech and knowledge. If I say God is good, that is not true: I am good, God is not good. I say more: I am better than God is, for what is good can become better, and what is better can become best. But God is not good, and therefore he cannot become better, and since he cannot become better he cannot become best. These three, good, better, best, are far removed from God, who is above all of them. And if again I say that God is wise, that is not true: I am wiser than he. Or if I say God is a being, that is not true: he is a reality beyond being, a being beyond being that is nothing. St Augustine says, 'The finest thing a man can say of God is that he is silent from the fullness within.' So hold your peace and do not chatter about God, for in chattering about him you lie and commit sin. If you want to be free of sin and complete, do not babble about God. Nor should you know anything of God, for God is beyond knowing. One philosopher says, 'Had I a God that I could know, I would no longer hold him for my God.' Do you know anything of him? He is not any such thing, and in that you know anything of him at all you are in ignorance, and ignorance leads to the condition of the brute, for in creatures what is ignorant is brutish. If then you do not want to be brutish, know nothing of the unspoken God. What then shall I do? You shall lose your you-ness and dissolve into his his-ness. Your yours shall become his mine, so utterly one mine that in him you shall know, in an eternal way, his is-ness, free of becoming: his nameless nothingness.

'Be renewed in the spirit,' says St Paul. If we mean to be renewed in spirit, then those six powers of the soul, the higher and the lower, must each wear a golden ring gilded all over with the gold of divine love. Consider the lower powers, of which there are three. The first is called reason, rationale. On this you shall wear a golden ring: light, so that your reason may always be irradiated, outside of time, with divine light. The second power is anger, irascibilis. On it you shall wear the ring of peace. Why? Because in peace is God, and without peace one is outside of God. The third power is desire, concupiscibilis, and on it you shall wear enough, so that you may be done with all creatures under God. But with God you shall never be done, for of God you can never have enough. The more you have of God, the more you want of him. If you could have enough of him, if enough could ever apply to God, then God would not be God.

Also on each of the higher powers you shall wear a golden ring. Of these higher powers there are also three. The first is the retentive faculty, memoria. This power is likened to the Father in the Trinity. On it you shall wear the golden ring of remembrance, so that all eternal things may be stored up in you. The second is understanding, intellectus. This power is likened to the Son. On this too you shall wear a golden ring: perception, so that you may be always grasping after God. In what way? You shall know him without image, without likeness, and without anything between. But for me to know God this way, with nothing between, I must be all but him, and he must be all but me. I say that God must be very I, and I very God, so completely one that this he and this I are one is, in this is-ness working one work eternally. But so long as this he and this I, that is, God and the soul, are not one single here, one single now, the I cannot work with that he nor be one with it. The third power is will, voluntas. This power is likened to the Holy Spirit. On it you shall wear the golden ring of love, so that you may love God. But you shall love God apart from his worthiness of love, not because he deserves love, for God is beyond being loveworthy: he is above love and above worthiness of love. How then shall I love him? You shall love God in a way that is not spiritual, your soul must be stripped of spirituality. For as long as your soul is specifically spirit, it has form, and as long as it has form it has neither unity nor union, and as long as it lacks union it has never truly loved God, for actual love lies in union. So let your soul be stripped of all spirit, let it be spiritless. If you love God as God, as spirit, as Person or as image, all of that must go. Then how shall I love him? Love him as he is: a not-God, a not-spirit, a not-Person, a not-image, as sheer, pure, clear unity, set apart from all duality. And into this one let us sink down eternally from nothingness to nothingness. So help us God. Amen.