Speaking of the final perfection of the soul theologians ask. What is meant by saying that the spirit in its understanding has become the intellectual existence of the eternal essence in the perennial now with nothing between ? That is the first question. The second question is. How can the spirit make good its intellectual return into the unchanging, and have the eternal image in perfect clearness and essential intimacy and in the interior freedom of the spirit ? The third question is about the highest flight of the spirit, its nearest approach of all to the divine presence and whether its own powers are equal to the task ?
First, we must remember how the divine being proceeded forth in the present now, with falling man, the gist of it, immediate in his spiritual prototype in virtue of its nearness and also by reason of the inherent now of its light of glory and intellectual image from which the intellect sees back quite clearly to the un-proceeded splendour of its eternally immanent spiritual exemplar wherein it is nameless and beyond all words which are creaturely. The word is in the eternal Word and one presence with it and God with his whole nature and the full range of his power can make out of his essence nothing more resembling the divine species in the ground divine nature and reflecting him so well. He who receives the light of the spirit as it is the image of God, wherein is no part, that is the medium of perfection, for therein his spirit is one with divine nature.
1 See also Jostes, No. 34, of which this tractate forms the middle portion.
Tractates 80 T
As to the second question, you must understand that although the intelligible image of God in the spirit partakes in its nature and purity more of the perfection of the content of its immanent essence than of the emanation of itself, nevertheless it is therein essence that has become. Take the spirit in its nearest ground, abiding within in its endless image and eternal image. As the endless image it is always within and in its eternal image it presents itself as an eternal question. As Christ asks, ‘ Whose is this image and this superscription ? ’ Mark the difference between this image and its superscription. In the image exists God, and all his output in spirit and in nature — the human mind (or spirit) with all it is able to afford, — these are in uniformity so exact and close that the image of divine glory shines in all its detail in the spirit and this image in the spirit is perfectly reflected back into its indwelling essence. So much for the image of God. And what of the superscription ? That is the unspeakable species of the divine nature, which in its whole ground, actual and essential, is a naked and immediate presence in the spirit, in virtue of which the spirit in its free nature and intellectual image suffers all God’s super-rational operation. The limit comes where the divine freedom seizes the spirit’s freedom and turns it into foolishness and at this point all scientific knowledge fails ; there is no further progress to be made by natural creature-knowledge but only in spirit by experiencing God.
Now to answer the third question. Philosophers say that one’s own is ever innate and can be had at will. It follows .thfit the spirit can rise to the supreme perfection of its divine nature for it can stand in its first now, in that wherein it was not. And that is the answer to the third query.
Then there is the question, can God leave man’s spirit to itself or not ? I say, No, it would be against the justice of his nature and against his truth and would make a travesty of God’s whole creation. God must cither let the spirit be God extra to himself or else he must merge it in himself, when it has left all things. This will not outrage God, for the spirit is too haughty and touches too closely the honour of God for him to be able to make aught but himself the end of its perfection. It has this unique property : its ground can overleap all spirits into his super-intelligible spirit, namely, the indwelling essence of divine nature.
A man was asked, What dost thou lack ? He said. Nothing, except poverty of spirit. — And though I have a will no bigger than a grain of mustard seed I am no poor man, and if God were to ask me. Art thou a poor man ? I should reply that, be my will as good as God’s yet am I not poor, not even if with that same will I do as much as God, And why ? Because God and God’s will
80S are one, I and my will are two, for I am a man and not God and if I mean to do real work entirely without or free from will then I must emulate the stone which lies in the water and the water Hows over it but enters not into the stone. Even so if I were a poor man I should do my works in such a way that they entered not into my will any more than the water does into the stone : I should do them simply at the will of God. And if again God asked me, whether I was poor and if I replied, ‘ I have abandoned my own will and did I know the will of God that would I do,’ I might be assuming something not my own, for no one knoweth who we are, though we are not the truth for God can changeour knowledge, not his knowledge, because he is the truth and we are not.
Perhaps someone will say, How can I do my work like this, will -free ? The answer is, I ought to do my work as though no one existed, no one lived, no one had ever come upon the earth. Then if God asked me once again. Art thou a poor man ? and if I replied, ‘ I am unworthy of that knowing,’ that were the barest poverty that ever I heard tell of or went through : the deepest, direst poverty. Yet all the while I have within enough of place for God to do his work in me, to give his gift to me, all that while I am not a poor man for all that while I am expecting God. — What more can I do ? — Thus shalt thou do : thou shalt leave all willing and knowing and receiving of things and at the very point where thou hast left all things there God has given thee all things ; he durst, not give thee more nor any more work with thee nor canst thou take in more, but thou shalt simply leave thyself. That is poverty of spirit the most near of all, for none is downright poor but he who wills not, knows not, has not, whether within or without. To the eternal truth, God help us. Amen.