Human liberty as participation in the divine in the work of Nicholas Cusanus Knut Alfsvåg, School of Mission and Theology, Stavanger, Norway 1. Introduction There are reasons to suggest that the voyage to Constantinople in 1437-38 was the decisive moment in the intellectual life of Nicholas Cusanus. The learning and spirituality he met in Constantinople made a lasting impression on him, 1 and his later emphasis on the principle of learned ignorance was in his own view caused by a personal experience while at sea 2 on the return voyage from Constantinople. He thus learned to approach infinity in a way that let him know “incomprehensible things incomprehensibly”, 3 and considered this as a knowledge that would let the human intellect raise to the level of “simplicity where contradictories coincide”. 4 This issued in a lifelong exploration of the 1 See H. Lawrence Bond, “Nicholas of Cusa from Constantinople to “learned ignorance” : the historical matrix for the formation of the De docta ignorantia”, in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the church., ed. Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki, (Leiden, 1996), 135-163. 2 Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle, “Cusanus at sea : the topicality of illuminative discourse”, Journal of Religion 71 (1991), 180-210 argues that the reference to the sea is metaphorical. 3 “ . . . ad hoc ductus sum, ut incomprehensibilia incomprehensibiliter amplecterer in docta ignorantia per transcensum veritatum incorruptibilium humaniter scibilium” (De docta ignorantia III, Ep., 263). My English translations from Cusanus’ works are indebted to the suggestions in Nicolaus Cusanus, Complete philosophical and theological treatises, Jasper Hopkins trans., 2 vols. (Minneapolis: Arthur J. Banning Press, 2001) without necessarily following them exactly. 4 “Debet . . . nostri humani ingenii conatus esse, ut ad illam se elevet simplicitatem, ubi