Niziński, Rafał Sergiusz. “Mystical Contemplation and Other Ways of the Cognition of God According to Saint John of the Cross.” Verbum Vitae. 43, no. 2 (2025): 293–313.
Niziński’s article offers a thoughtful explanation of St. John of the Cross’ understanding of the relationship between mystical contemplation and knowledge. In other words, it explores the idea of mystical cognition of God. In particular, Niziński highlights how St. John understands mystical contemplation as a means of preparation for seeing God after death. Thus, mystical contemplation is important insofar as it releases the believer from thinking about God according to anthropomorphic or otherwise worldly categories. The author seeks to analyze why exactly the movement from faith to contemplation purifies human cognition. He begins by noting the ways that St. John believes we can know God to varying degrees, while emphasizing that true knowledge of God in se requires a complete turn towards God, not merely a cognitive one. Further along, he explains that following the Sanjuanist understanding, faith is that which presents God to us as He really is (omnipotent, etc.), but at the same time faith is a sort of indirect or “dark” cognition because it is not vision. Faith is a light so bright that it in some sense it blinds our cognition, thereby uniting us more closely to God. Whereas the intellect always seeks by nature to grasp God fully but necessarily is insufficient to do so, St. John posits that faith can grow infinitely in God, ever increasing one’s union with and concentration on Him. The author goes on to argue that this line of reasoning in John is a sort of analogous preparation for the beatific vision, though distinct on the level of corporality. Moreover, faith is that which begins to allow the believer to focus all their faculties on God wholeheartedly in contemplation, which turns out to be a form of passivity. As Niziński writes, “contemplation simplifies faith by silencing all human activity of the intellect in favor of pure acceptance” (309). Among his concluding remarks, the author notes importantly that “mystical cognition is not about thinking, but about opening up to God through love” (310). He also makes the significant observation that the feelings which arise in contemplation differ in nature from those studied by psychology. Therefore, much like one cannot reason their way to love or friendship, the mystic may struggle to narrate how they feel in contemplation. For these reasons, and others set forth in the article, St. John of the Cross helps us to understand how faith prepares us by way of purification for contemplation as a unique form of cognition that passively and totally unites us to God.