SOURCE: Johnston, William. “The Problem of Unknowing,” “The Cloud of Forgetting,” and “The Cloud of Unknowing.” In The Mysticism of “The Cloud of Unknowing,” St. Meinrad, Ind.: Abbey Press, 1975.

In the following excerpt, Johnson explores the intellectual and philosophical climate that must have influenced the education and thinking of the Cloud-author.

The Problem of Unknowing

In East and West the language of the mystics is full of paradox. Concepts of “light” and “darkness,” “vision” and “blindness,” “all” and “nothing,” “knowledge” and “ignorance” keep recurring with a frequency that is sometimes bewildering. The author of The Cloud, then, is true to type in constantly playing on the paradoxical theme of “knowing” and “unknowing.” Toward the end of The Cloud he strikes the keynote of his message with an appeal to Dionysius:

And therefore St. Denis said, “The most godly knowing of God is that which is known by...