Gisbertus Voetius on Meditation and Learned Ignorance: Mysticism, The Devotio Moderna and the Nadere Reformatie

Abstract

ABSTRACT Gisbertus Voetius, intellectual head of the Nadere Reformatie, commends an eclectic range of medieval and mystical thinkers with links to the Devotio moderna including Thomas Aquinas, Denys the Carthusian and Nicholas of Cusa. Voetius draws appreciatively but critically on Aquinas and Denys in his exploration of meditation or contemplation. Voetius is also influenced by Cusa’s doctrine of learned ignorance. Voetius goes beyond Aquinas, for whom contemplation is essentially and primarily an act of the intellect, and even beyond Denys, for whom affection is virtually included in contemplation, and draws heavily on Cusa's theory of learned ignorance, which provides a certain unity of contemplation and affection, as well as a tight integration of faith and reason. This article builds on a recent groundswell of interest in the modern reception of Cusa, correcting and extending previous scholarship. It also addresses an important lacuna in the scholarship on Protestant mysticism.