Negative Theology and Love in Marguerite Porete’s The Mirror of Simple Souls

In this paper I examine Marguerite Porete’s The Mirror of Simple Souls as an illustration of how the two concepts: love and negative theology can be brought together in an unusual spiritual journey. The thesis I develop is that both have the same impetus: a going out of oneself. Love is extasis because it is the going out into the heart of an other; extasis is the central moment in a negative theology when the soul no longer knows either the self or God but is in the same place as, or is united to, God. Following a brief exposition of negative theology, I explain how Porete portrays the soul become what she truly is by falling out of herself under the impetus of love. When the soul is liberated from will and reason her divine lover can be and love in her. In Porete’s falling into the ocean of the Divine, she is made no thing so that her divine lover can be all. Her self-annihilation is the portal to her deification when she is finally changed into God. The continuous hominification of God and divinization of humanity is the eternal process of Love loving Love’s self. Porete focuses on the self rather than on purifying God concepts; it is a relentless stripping the self of all that is creaturely to make the soul an empty dwelling place for Love to reside. Thus, Porete’s is a radical negative theology: she never “knows” God even when she becomes Love’s dwelling place.