The Unknowability and Imagination in Mystical Doctrines of the Late Medieval English Mysticism

Abstract

There are three English authors of the fourteenth century we may call “imaginative mystics” because of their use of imagination in spiritual praxis, i.e., Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, and the unknown author of the Cloud of Unknowing. However, recently, there has been some criticism expressed regarding these doctrines; in particular, there is a question of whether a spiritual praxis, which includes imaginative images, can keep the principle of the unknowability of God. There is also a question of sensual perception. Imaginative images keep some attributes of sensual perception, such as shape, and they always have some spatiality and temporality. There is a question: how can these images depict the spiritual nature of God and spiritual objects themselves? There is even a possibility that imagination darkens contemplative vision and turns the soul’s attention back to the world. In this paper, I will try to show how these three English authors kept the principle of God’s unknowability and what the role of the imagination in their spiritual praxis is.

1. Introduction

Serm. 277, 14 (PL 38): After all, we look with our eyes, we don’t look askance at our eyes. Only don’t let us strive to reduce God to a place, don’t let’s strive to shut God up in a place, don’t let’s strive to spread God out in any kind of bulk through extended space; let us not have the nerve to do that, let’s not even think of it. Let the substance of divinity remain in its own proper dignity.

(Translation by Hill 1994, p. 41)1

In the excerpt from Sermon 277 above, Augustine asks, “How could God be seen if He is a spiritual being and has no physical attributes that we can see with our fleshly sight?”. Augustine warns against understanding God as a fleshly being because of God’s spiritual nature. Seeing God with carnal attributes limits the understanding of his true divinity. Augustine’s question of how “God could be seen,” in the light of this problem with the inadequacy of bodily seeing of spiritual nature, became later a question of spiritual practice. A few centuries later, there were three 14th-century English mystics, Richard Rolle (1300–1349), Walter Hilton (1340–1396), and especially the unknown author of Cloud of Unknowing, who, similarly as Augustine says:

Cloud, ch. 61, p. 88: Take case, therefore, that you do not understand in a bodily sense what is meant spiritually, even though it is expressed in bodily words, such as UP or DOWN, IN or OUT, BEHIND or IN FRONT, ON ONE SIDE or ON THE OTHER SIDE. For however spiritual something may be in itself, yet if it is to be spoken about, given that speech is a bodily activity performed by the tongue, a bodily organ, it must always be spoken in bodily words. But does it follow that it must therefore be received and understood in a bodily sense?—no, not spiritually.

Every expression within a language is connected to corporeality. The author of Cloud of Unknowing stresses that spiritual metaphors have to be interpreted adequately in their spiritual sense because the corporeal sense leads to misinterpretation.

A similar problem is associated with imagination in spiritual practice. There is the question of whether imaginative images can truly represent spiritual objects always associated with corporeality, for every such image carries at least spatiality and temporality. It is not only English authors who often use imagery with various parables and metaphors. A peculiarity of these images lies in their double quality. They carry a spiritual meaning while retaining the characteristics of bodily perception. We can then suppose that the imagination cannot adequately represent God and spiritual objects because the association with corporeality limits our understanding. The fundamental questions are “can God be seen in the imagination?” and “what is the role of the imagination in spiritual practice?” English authors offer specific answers to these questions characterized by their awareness of this problem and their connection to the Christian tradition.

We can doubt the credibility of the imagination and the images it provides. Augustine associates the unreliability of imagery with corporeality for a specific reason. There is no image that was not perceived by the senses before. Imagination needs bodily perception. Augustine shows the fallibility of the imagination in his reply to Nebridius in his Seventh Epistle2 where he answers the question of whether the imagination as the soul’s power is independent of the senses:

Ep. 7, 2, 3 (CSEL 34/I, 14, 26–29): […] images is not, as you write, the mere suggestion or admonition occasioning their formation by the mind within itself, but the actual bringing in to the mind, or, to speak more definitely, impressing upon it of the illusions to which through the senses we are subject.

(Translation by Augustine and Dods 1872, p. 15)3

The images of imagination are not genuine and affect the soul with illusions; our bodily perception is much more truthful. (Ep. 7, 2, 5 (CSEL 44/I, 16, 20).4 Thomas Aquinas follows Aristotle’s treatise on the faculties of the soul from De anima. We can adopt his definition of imagination (imaginatio) as a mental faculty common to humans and animals that preserves images of things not currently experienced by the senses (Com. De anima, 3, 5, 151).5 Imagination participates in knowledge as one of the four inner senses of the soul.6 The question of the role of imagination in gaining knowledge of God is even more challenging. The second article of the sixth question of Thomas’s Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, “whether divine science must be founded on imagination?” or “whether imagination must be renounced?” offers an answer. Thomas first gives reasons why God can be understood only through imagination. He refers to Aristotle, according to whom we cannot understand anything intellectually without the participation of imagination. (Expos. super librum Boethii De trinitate, 6, 2, 1).7 The opposite position that understanding God does not depend on imagination is supported by Thomas at the beginning of Augustine’s De trinitate. Augustine points out the problem of bringing spiritual things within the limits of bodily perception, as by imagination, only bodily matters could be understood. (Expos. super librum Boethii De trinitate, 6, 2, 2).8 In his reply, Thomas argues that all knowledge consists of a beginning and a goal, i.e., judgment. The origin of all knowledge is sense perception and grasping by imagination. The intellectual understanding then is derived from this imaginative grasp. The origin and goal of knowledge are often in the senses (knowledge of nature) and the imagination (mathematics), but there is also the knowledge that transcends both. Thomas refers here to the knowledge of spiritual things, which may originate from the senses and imagination, but they cannot form a judgment:

Expos. super librum Boethii De trinitate, 6, 2: In the case of divine things, we may use the senses and the imagination as the principles of our reasoning, but not as the ends of it, as if we were to judge that divine things are as things perceived by the senses or the imagination. For to aim at something is to have a goal in it. Therefore, divine science can aim neither at the imagination nor the senses, in mathematics only at the imagination but not at the senses, and in natural science at the senses.

(Translation by LR)9

Our knowledge may begin in the imagination, but it does not complete in the senses or the imagination. Understanding is initiated by the action of the intellect. According to Thomas, if we were to prevent the imagination from acting, we would also prevent the intellect from understanding things, even divine things.10 (Expos. super librumBoethii De trinitate, 6, 2).

In this article, I will focus on how the English mystics of the late Middle Ages dealt with the question of the imagination and what methods they adopted to overcome the problems associated with the imagination. The essential question I ask is whether and how it is possible to see God in the imagination.

2. The Limits of Imagination and the Mutual Discussion between English Authors

In his works, Richard explicitly rejects the participation of imagination in spiritual life, especially in contemplation. His rejection of this mental potency confirms the writing Officium et miracula written in defense of Richard’s canonization, which never took place. According to the Officium, one of the manifestations of contemplation, the song Richard heard in contemplation, did not come from the imagination because it was a genuine spiritual song (Officium, p. 15).11 We can doubt the success of the Officium’s defense when we read the notes of Richard’s contemporaries, the unknown author of Cloud of Unknowing and Walter Hilton:

Scale, II, II, XI, pp. 233–34: In like manner may it be said of other kind of feelings that are like to bodily, as hearing of delectable songs, or feeling of comfortable heat in the body, seeing of light, or sweetness of bodily savour. These are not spiritual feelings; for spiritual feelings are felt in the powers of the soul, principally in the understanding, and in love and little in the imagination. But these feelings are felt in the powers of the body in the imagination and therefore are not spiritual feelings.

In this passage, Hilton mentions “bodily feelings” and condemns them as false expressions of contemplation that have no relationship to true spirituality. The reason why we can assume that this is a condemnation of Richard’s mystical work lies in his particular kind of bodily metaphors. Richard speaks in very colorful language about the three manifestations of contemplation, heat (calor), sweetness (dulcor), and song (canor).12 Further, the passage shows that Hilton believes true spirituality lies in understanding, the rational part of the soul, and love, but not in the imagination, which can only contribute a little (it is just “little in the imagination”). These sensory metaphors lead us to the author of Cloud of Unknowing. In Chapter 46 of the treatise, he says:

Cloud ch. 46, pp. 69–70: For God’s love, therefore, take care in this work of contemplation not to strain your heart in your breast too roughly or immoderately, but work with skill rather than with brute force. For the more skilfully, the more humbly and spiritually; and the more roughly, the more physically and like a beast. So take care, for any beast-like heart that presumes to touch the peak of contemplation will certainly be beaten away with stones.

The statement of the unknown author is less clear than the Hilton’s in the quotation above. However, the unknown author distinguishes between mystical experience as such and its other manifestations (“brute force”), such as bodily experiences. If this deduction is correct, the problem of “brute force” applies only to beginners, not advanced students who have already received grace. The secondary manifestations mean unpreparedness for spiritual progress. Although we see some rejection of bodily manifestations and Richard’s use of sensory metaphors, in fact, neither Hilton nor the author of Cloud of Unknowing directly names Richard, so we have no certainty that these are comments on his mystical teachings.13 Moreover, this is not a criticism or rejection of imagery but just of its specific use when connected with senses. The author of Cloud of Unknowing, however, also offers us an explicit rejection of imagination, which seems to refer to Richard (whom he again does not name):

Cloud, ch. 65: In those who are newly turned from the world to devotion, this disobedience of imagination can be clearly recognized when they are praying. For until the time comes when the imagination is to a great extent controlled by the light of grace in the reason—as it is by continual meditation on spiritual matters, such as their own sinfulness, the Passion, the kindness of our Lord God, and many others similar topics—they are quite unable to set aside the strange and alien thoughts, delusions and images that are supplied and imprinted in their minds by the light and ingenuity of imagination. All this disobedience is the punishment for original sin.14

From this statement, we can see that the problems encountered by beginners are considered by the author of Cloud of Unknowing to be the result of original sin. It is probably a refinement of the problems of beginners in the previous passage. The author discusses a particular form of beginner’s problems. He names meditation on spiritual topics, about our sinfulness, the passion, kindness of God, and so on, which he believes are manifestations of uncontrolled imagination. Richard uses the term sympathy for the very ideas that we can classify among these named spiritual topics:

Med. on the pass., p. 97: Dear lady, because the sorrow which you endured at your son’s suffering ought to have been mine… seeing the precious wounds were my own just desert and that you are considerate, obtain just a single one of them for me, one pang in my heard of the same pain, a drop of that lamentation to accompany him with… I have a craving for pain, to implore my lord for a drop of his blood to make my soul bloody with.

There are elements in Richard’s work that the author of Cloud of Unknowing would later describe as incipient expressions of imagination. Of course, we cannot know if the anonymous is commenting on Richard’s doctrine. However, the author of Cloud of Unknowing presents a way of setting aside imagery and distancing himself from metaphor, a significant feature of his doctrine that differs at first glance from Richard’s mystical doctrine.

Richard has been explicit about the imagination on several occasions; each time he has done so, he excludes it from participation in the true spiritual life, at least, he excludes it from partaking in contemplation. According to Richard, there are examples of people who consider themselves saints, even if their mystical life takes place only in the imagination. It is not the true spiritual life (Fire, 2, p. 71).15 It is clear that Richard had to face objections to his mystical doctrine in his time because he defended himself and claimed that his spirituality did not come from the imagination:

Fire: […] for that I have done is not from feigning simulation, and being taken by imagination, as some say of me; and many therewith are beguiled that ween they have that they never received.16

We might think that Richard excludes imagination from participation in contemplation. The lower degrees, especially the meditative degree,17 consist of most precisely this imagery named by the anonymous author.18 It stems from the definition of the meditative degree that Richard gives us. However, Richard admits a considerable variety of individual spiritual experiences, so these imageries can also be very simple and austere, not as rich as the sympathy with Mary. Richard considers these simpler images even more perfect and more typical for people that are more experienced in spiritual life.19 Even in his early references, Richard rejects imagination, although this is again partly to deflect the criticism of his contemporaries. At the very beginning of the Fire of Love, he says that he felt heat on his chest and immediately dismisses the objection that it happened only in his imagination:

Fire, prol., p. 11: More have I marveled than I showed when, forsooth, I first left my heart wax warm, truly, and not in imagination, but as if were burned with sensible fire.20

Richard further rejects the objection that his mystical experience originated in imagination and desire (fleshy love, concupiscencia).21 Then, perhaps the cause of Richard’s rejection of the imagination in his doctrine is not so much the doctrine itself as it is his association of the imagination with corporeality, as we see in this introduction to his most important work.22 Gregory the Great also rejects imagination. According to Gregory, imagination distracts the soul from prayer and distracts it with bodily images. (Homil in Ezech. 1, 8, 13). Gregory divides the mystical way into three degrees. At the first degree, the soul turns inward (se colligat). At the second degree, the soul knows itself (est collecta), and at the third degree, it devotes itself to contemplation (se contemplat). (Homil. In Ezech. 2, 5, 9). Hilton presents a similar progression in his second book, Scale of Perfection. The soul first penetrates itself to know itself. Then the soul recognizes God. The primary condition at the beginning of the journey, according to Gregory, is the ability to withdraw from the images of objects in the world that “are in the heavens and the sky” and to know oneself without these images:

Homil. in Ezech, 2, 5, 9, 5: But no one can turn inward unless he first learns to suppress heavenly and earthly images with the eyes of reason.23

(Translation by LR)

Similarly, the author of Cloud of Unknowing explains in the passage above that spiritual metaphors cannot be interpreted physically and that “up” does not mean “higher” in the physical sense but in the spiritual sense. In this passage, he advises beginners and explains that they must keep a certain distance from metaphors and that this is a faculty of reason. That is some concession to imagination because, for beginners at least, imagination is a part of their spiritual life, that is, if reason interprets metaphors correctly. Gregory, on the other hand, completely rejects images of imagination because, according to him, they cannot capture spiritual objects at all:

Homil. in Ezech, 2, 5, 18, 5: It is not as with corporeal things that we know by imagination and immaterial light cannot be apprehended because while visible light is thus knowable invisible light is impenetrable.24

(Translation by LR)

Richard’s approach to imagination seems to be similarly dismissive to that of Gregory, and spiritual meanings cannot be brought down from heaven to earth because of the incompatibility of physical and spiritual vision.

3. Attempts to Overcome Imaginative Images in English Mysticism

Because all three English authors were aware of the problems associated with imagination, as we have already seen in their mutual discussion and their specific definitions of imagination as mental faculty, we can suppose they all have some way of overcoming imagery or at least keeping some distance from images.

3.1. Overcoming Imagination and Images in the Cloud of Unknowing

At first glance, the author of Cloud of Unknowing demonstrates the most promising technique of detachment from the images that imagination provides. The anonymous author creates a metaphor of a cloud of forgetting, under which the disciple should hide everything that prevents his will from reaching out freely to God. Thus, under this cloud, all desires, thoughts, and even the activity of the soul, especially senses and rational cognition and the action of the imagination, gradually disappear. In my opinion, one of the most complex themes of the Anonymous author’s works and his demands on the student is the last requirement he imposes on them, i.e., to forget oneself, thus to complete this intentional forgetting in a void he calls humble darkness.

In the first chapters of Cloud of Unknowing, the author introduces two negative metaphors—a cloud of unknowing and a cloud of forgetting. The cloud of unknowing stands between man and God, while the cloud of forgetting stands between man and the world. Man stands between the two clouds, while God is above the cloud of unknowing that hides him from human sight. The cloud of unknowing, according to these early chapters, prevents reason from a direct understanding of God; it also prevents perception and feeling:

Cloud, ch. 3, p. 22: For the first time you do it, you will find only a darkness, and as it were a cloud of unknowing, you do not know what, except that you feel in your will a naked purpose towards God. Whatever you do, this darkness and this cloud are between you and your God, and hold your back from seeing him clearly by the light of understanding in your reason and from experiencing him in the sweetness of love in your feelings. And so prepare to remain in this darkness as long as you can…

The cloud of forgetting does not stand between man and the world naturally, as the cloud of forgetting stands between man and God. The author asks the disciple to place it there of his own free will and to hide everything he knows, and eventually himself, under it:

Cloud, ch. 5, p. 26: I am telling you, then, just as this cloud of unknowing is above you, between you and your God, so you will need to put a cloud of forgetting beneath you, between you and everything that was ever created… they should all be hidden in this way under the cloud of forgetting.25

Cloud of forgetting is a negative method of overcoming imagery. What is mysterious is the form of darkness the author is talking about. Is it darkness without imagery? It is perhaps the most plausible way of interpreting it, to which many scholars lean,26 but we should be intrigued by a certain paradoxicality of such a statement. The question is whether the cloud of forgetting is a means of overcoming imagery. Then it is striking that cloud of forgetting is itself an image coming from imagination. In that case, the author of Cloud of Unknowing overcomes imagination and its images precisely through the imagination itself. This method of overcoming imagery seems to be less convincing.27

3.2. Hilton’s Imaginative Meditation

The fundamental question we must ask addresses the role of imagination in mysticism. It seems to be a means of communication, and it also assists in the expression of individual spiritual experiences. Furthermore, the role of imagination is expressed the most clearly by Hilton in Scale of Perfection, where its role is shown in its relation to affectivity. In Richard’s work, the imagery in the meditative degree manifests itself as sympathy, by which he likens himself to Christ and the Virgin Mary. We see this likening to divinity in a more developed form in Hilton since affective devotion is a necessary part of the progression to divinity (Clark 1984, p. 83). This may be surprising, as we know that Hilton warned against imagery. Nevertheless, Hilton does not support the involvement of imagination during all the stages of mystical progress. He defines it as the second stage, while in the first and second stages, the involvement of the imagination is not desirable.28 Hilton divides the mystical journey into three stages, reading (lectio), meditation (meditatio), and prayer (oratio).29 In Hilton’s teaching, the goal of the mystical journey is a renewal of the soul according to the image of the Trinity.30 The soul is renewed gradually during each stage. First, the memory is recovered in the reading stage, then affectivity is recovered in the stage of meditation, and understanding is recovered in the prayer stage. Prayer connects the affective and cognitive parts of the soul (Clark 2009, pp. 26–27).

The reason is active in the initial degree of reading, but affectivity is not involved.31 This first degree belongs to the active life founded on the faculty that Hilton believes all men possess, namely reason. Therefore, all men can attain this first degree.32 The second part of the progression to contemplation involves the renewal and increase in affectivity, but the understanding (feeling) or intellect is irrelevant at this stage.33 According to Hilton, this second and higher degree of contemplation is granted as a grace of the Holy Spirit and cannot be attained by our own will. It is also the stage of meditation, which means knowing one’s soul, destroying sins, and acquiring virtues, and these stages of soul renovation are done through the imagination in meditation. The third kind of contemplation combines knowledge and affectivity. Hilton refers to the attainment of the perfection of both powers—the achievement of the perfect love of God and the perfect understanding of God. The third kind of contemplation involves “seeing the truth itself,” God, and unification with God, being likened to him, or the restoration into the soul’s original form in the image of the Trinity.34

Hilton’s meditative stage resembles Richard’s notion of sympathy, which the author of Cloud of Unknowing criticized; in particular, when Hilton writes about thinking of what it means to be a human, motivated by a desire to understand the humanity of Christ.35 Meditation has two meanings in Hilton’s work. First, it is associated with affectivity, which grows during this stage and concentrates on God. Meditation is thus a practice that encourages affectivity (Cleve 1989, pp. 23–24). The second meaning of meditation is that it helps the soul to know itself (Cleve 1989, pp. 23–24). This is the theme of the first book, Scale of Perfection.36 Imagination is a kind of exercise that the soul needs to pass through in preparation for contemplation, to increase its love or affectivity directed towards God, and to know itself on this journey. In this process, the soul itself becomes more spiritual. The further it is on the path of renewal, the more it becomes aware of its spiritual nature and feels more similar Christ and God:

Devoute Man, XVI, p. 355: […] yet for all this we are unfit and indisposed for to seek and behold spiritual things that are above us, until our souls thought precedent exercise of the imagination, become to be more subtle, or as it were thin, a somewhat spiritual, and withal he became well mortified and settled in virtues by process of time and increase of grace.

Hilton proceeds to distinguish three ways of knowing God; the second way (meditatio) is less ideal than the third way (oratio) but more idea than the first way (lectio):

Scale, II, XI, p. 229: For thou shalt understand that the love of God is in three manner of ways; all of which are good, but each one is better than other. The first cometh only through Faith, in the lowest degree of clarity; and it is good, for it sufficient to salvation. The second is that which a soul feeleth thought faith and imagination of Jesus in His Manhood. This love is better than the first, when the imagination is stirred by grace, for then the spiritual eye is opened in beholding of our Lord’s humility. The third love that a soul feeleth thorough spiritual sight of the Godhead in the humanity, as it be seen here, is the best and most worthy, and that is perfect love. This love a soul feeleth not, until it be reformed in feeling.

I think there are some reasons to believe that the sensory cognition that dominates at the first degree is overcome by Hilton.37 At this first degree, imagination is associated with senses, but this stage ends with the end of the dominance of senses in the soul. Imagination is then the dominant means of knowledge in the second stage, and it is a dispensed grace. At the third degree, the intellect (feeling) dominates and is the perfect way of knowing or understanding. The imaginative way of knowing, however, is not an inappropriate way of knowing the divine; it is just less ideal than knowledge in the intellect:

Scale, III, I, p. 237: One is had principally in imagination, and little in understanding. This knowing is in chosen souls beginning and profiting in grace, who know God, and love Him humanly (not spiritually) with human affections, and with a corporal image of His Humanity, as I have spoken before.

While it seems clear that Hilton overcomes the senses when he proceeds to the second degree, it is less clear if he overcomes the imagination when he moves to the third degree. The true goal of his endeavor is the perfect knowledge in the intellect. The nature of imagination is peculiar, as its purpose lies in assisting the dominant power, the intellect, on the third degree. Thus, the role of imagination in the attainment of knowledge probably does not end even with the progression to intellectual understanding:

Scale, III, I, p. 237: This knowing is good, and is likened to milk, by which they are tenderly nourished as children until they be able to come to the Father’s table and take from His hand substantial bread. Another knowing is principally felt in the understanding, and little in imagination, for the understanding is the lady, and the imagination is the maid, serving the understanding when need is. This knowing is solid bread meet for perfect souls, and is reforming in feeling.

Hilton does not abandon the imagination as he abandoned sense cognition when he moved to the second degree of knowledge, even when the intellect becomes the dominant mode of cognition.

3.3. Richard and God behind the Dark Column

Surprisingly, we can hardly find a better example of the overcoming of imagination and its images elsewhere than in Richard’s Emendatio vitae, probably criticized by other authors (mentioned before) for its excessive use of imagery. Perhaps not surprisingly, as Richard abandons imagery, he begins to express himself through negative metaphors of light and darkness. He also very convincingly preserves God’s unknowability. After Richard passes through the stages of prayer and meditation, in which he expresses himself mainly through metaphors of love and uses sensory metaphors, he abandons these metaphors at the highest stages of contemplation.

The object of contemplation, according to Richard, is eternal truth, for which he uses the metaphor of light. The spiritual progress in contemplation manifests itself in a sharper vision of this truth, which has been blurry for a long time:

Mending of Life, pp. 86–87: By long ghostly travail we should arise to contemplation of heavenly things; and so the ghostly eye is lifted up into the sight of ghostly things. But this sight is not clear, for the while we live here, we see by our own, faith as by a mirror. Though the eye of understanding busy itself for to profit in ghostly sight, yet it may not see that light as it is; but it hath a feeling thereof, since it keepeth and holdeth the savour and the fervour thereof.38

When Richard describes the nature of God, he points to the inadequacy of reason. An adequate description of God’s nature could provide only a reason, but a reason is incapable of achieving divinity. Thus, the only knowledge of his nature is that he is greater than anything we can think of. God can be only loved:

Mending of Life, p. 76: God is of endless might and goodness: His sweetness may not be told nor thought, nor it may not the comprehended nor all received of a creature.39

Richard also uses the metaphor of light and darkness to express God’s unknowability when he writes that God dwells “in the darkness,” so we cannot know him directly:

Mending of Life, p. 88: As when we stand in mirkness we see nothing, so sometime in contemplation, when a soul is lighted with ghostly light, it seeth no light Holy Writ saith of Christ: “Posuit tenebras iatibulum suum”: “Christ hideth Him to us in mirkness, and “He speaketh to us in a cloud ”; and though that light may not be seen here, yet there is felt a delicious thing in that ghostly sight.40

We also see that Richard abandons sensory metaphors at this highest stage of the mystical journey. He associates “seeing” and “light” with the unknowability of God, that is, with the rational part of the soul. He writes that “there is no visible light” in contemplation. This is not a sensory metaphor. The light that illuminates the soul is intellectual, transcending the senses. Richard emphasizes the unknowability of God, “speaking through the dark pillar” so that he does not manifest himself directly and does not show himself quite clearly.

Because Richard abandons all the metaphors he has used before in higher stages of contemplation and engages metaphors of light and darkness, which he has not used until now, to express God’s unknowability and indescribability, we can assume that he is expressing his distrust of imagination by abandoning imaginative images. In the previous stages of prayer and meditation, he used imagery plentifully. So we may conclude that he excludes imagery from contemplation.

4. How Can the Imagination See God?

Richard answers the question of how the image-making soul can preserve God’s unknowability and indescribability—by giving up imaginative images in contemplation. However, we have not yet learned whether and how the imagination could know the divinity. Hilton, on the other hand, gives us a more confident answer.

4.1. Knowledge of God’s Likeness

We have found that, unlike Richard, Hilton does not abandon imagination even in contemplation, assigning imagination the auxiliary role of a maid to the intellect, which dominates knowledge in contemplation. The role of imagination is essential in the preceding stage of meditation, when the soul has already attained some knowledge of God, only less perfect than in contemplation. Hilton does not believe that knowledge without imagination is better than knowledge that is imaginative, which is perhaps why he does not attempt to abandon imagination and its images. The essential point is that the perfection of knowledge depends on the mental potency that is currently dominant, not on the mental potency that is overcome or does not participate in knowledge. So, the perfection of knowledge in the second stage depends on the quality of knowledge that imagination can provide.

The knowledge provided by imagination brings an understanding of God. It enables the soul to know the likeness of God, just as it allows the soul to know itself, the spiritual nature of the soul. So, if the imaginative way of understanding has any limit, it is the recognition of the nature of God, which is unknowable in the second degree through imagination:

Scale, I, II, I, p. 35: Aspiring upward to Jesus Christ, whom yet thou canst never see bodily as He in His Godhead, nor frame any image or likeness of Him in thy imagination; but thou mayest, though devout and continual beholding of the humility of His precious humanity, feel the goodness and the grace of His godhead.41

God remains unknowable and indescribable, at least his very essence. In contrast, according to Hilton, God’s form, the way he shows himself in the imagination, does not preserve God’s unknowability so much, as can be seen from his comparison of imaginative and intellectual knowledge:

Scale, III, II, p. 241: Not as some manner imagine, that the opening of Heaven is as if a soul could see by imagination through the skies above Firmament, how our Lord Jesus sitteth in His Majesty, in a bodily light, as much as un hundred suns. No, it is not so; no, though he see never so light on this manner, verily he seth not the spiritual Heaven… Nevertheless, this kind of sight is tolerable in simple souls that can seek no better for Him that is invisible.

Thus, even according to Hilton, the imagination shows the soul inadequate images of God, but he still values this knowledge. Hilton’s solution to the problems associated with imagination is to separate the knowledge of God’s image and God’s essence. It leads us to the question, does Hilton believe that the intellect can know the nature of God? If the soul could transcend imagination, the intellect could rise to perfect knowledge. However, I believe that imagination will never be overcome or surmounted. Even though the intellect may dominate understanding, the power of the intellect is not strong enough to raise itself to comprehend supernatural knowledge.

4.2. Knowledge of the Divine Is a Natural Knowledge

From Hilton’s description, we can assume that even at the highest degree of contemplation, the imagination assists the intellect. The author of Cloud of Unknowing presents a way that enables the soul to keep its distance from imagery. The author of Cloud of Unknowing keeps warning us that “within” does not mean within oneself, through one’s mind, and that “above” does not mean in the heavens, for as the author writes:

Cloud, ch. 61, p. 88: How could a soul, which by its nature has nothing physical about it, be turned upright in a bodily sense? No, it cannot be so.

The author is not trying to overcome physical obstacles and reach supernatural knowledge. He does not want a man to overcome the soul’s natural ability to create images. However, he understands well that a metaphor, similar to any idea, cannot fully correspond to an object and that it does not capture it completely. I believe we will always create images and imagery, but we will keep our distance from them, based on understanding their spiritual meaning, not on the mere belief that they are true.

The soul can still use imagery and metaphors, but it must interpret them correctly. In this way, it maintains an intellectual distance from them on the degree of natural language. No matter how close the Cloud of Unknowing has moved toward its target, it still has to contend with misconceptions. The entire treatise accompanies an insistent warning of its author against misunderstanding the metaphors. The author probably does not want us to reject imagination as such; he does not say that we must stop creating images anywhere in his writing. Nevertheless, both Cloud of Unknowing and Epistle of Privy Counselling contain several requests to abandon concrete imagery:

Privy Counselling, ch. 1, p. 172: Empty your mind of everything except a naked intent reaching out to God. Don’t clothe this with thoughts of who God is or what he has created. Just be aware that he is as he is.

Denying the adequacy of imagination does not imply that the author rejects the potency of imagination to help our spiritual progress. The author wants us to understand that the ideas of the world, ourselves, and God can be false and that an idea of anything can be inadequate to its object:

Privy Counselling, ch. 6, p. 187: Give God the blind awareness of your being. Forget your education and everything you know. Push it away for now because you’re much better off if you gain the spiritual wisdom and expertise of contemplation. These riches are even more valuable than the gold and silver we collect on earth. By “gold” and “silver” I mean the physical and spiritual knowledge that we gather by reflecting on the traits of God and on those of all created things below, within, and beside us.

The author does not want to translate our expectations about ourselves and God or the world into knowledge about God, so he asks the reader to keep his distance from them and himself by a continuous awareness of the fact he may be wrong.

5. Conclusions

We can summarize that all three English authors are aware of the problems associated with imagination, especially the limitation of spiritual qualities to sensual qualities. They are equally mindful that imagination in the spiritual life is a subject they should have commented on because of the criticism they may have faced in their own time. As we can see, the English authors are not convinced of the adequacy of the simplest solution, the exclusion of imagination from spiritual life. I believe that the closest to this solution is Richard, who, most likely under the influence of Gregory the Great, excludes imagination from contemplation. On the other hand, it does not restrict it in any way to the level of prayer and meditation, although it explicitly rejects imagination as such. Hilton clarifies Richard’s conviction when he explains that imagination increases affectivity, and thus helps the soul to rise to God. I think the author of Cloud of Unknowing is not trying to overcome imagery. Similar to Hilton, the anonymous author puts imagination in a subordinate role to reason or intellect, as he explains that we must interpret spiritual images and metaphors adequately. For both authors, imagery is acceptable at the initial degree, and for beginners in spiritual life, according to Hilton, imagination even participates in contemplation.

Another question is whether it is possible to “see God” in one’s imagination. Hilton approached the closest to an affirmative answer to this question, and according to him, spiritual things can be viewed through imagination, though not perfectly. The author of Cloud of Unknowing also considers imagination a way of learning about spiritual things, which, at least for beginners, can support the understanding of the spiritual meanings of metaphors. Hilton places imaginative cognition between sensory and intellectual knowledge. However, Hilton already considers the imaginative understanding of the divine as a part of contemplation. It is a kind of imaginative contemplation, which is not so perfect as contemplation in the intellect, but it is still a good way of understanding God’s likeness. Hilton points to the fact that the imagination is a mediator of the intellect’s vision, and therefore he calls it a “maid of the intellect”.