Centered in God

Karl Jaspers summarizes Cusa’s argument for an infinite cosmos: “Because the cosmos is an image, it is infinite, but its infinity is of the imitative kind, which denotes endlessness, the possibility of always going further. In time, eternity is endless duration. In space, the infinite is the endless; in the division of matter, it is the impossibility of ever arriving at the smallest particle. Neither the greatest nor the smallest, neither the most distant boundary in space nor the smallest particle of matter, neither the beginning nor the end in time is accessible to us. When we conceive of the world as having been created simultaneously with time, we speak metaphorically of a beginning and an end of time, not in time. The cosmos is not infinite in the same sense as God, nor can it be conceived as finite, since no boundaries confine it. Thus the cosmos has no center and no periphery. If it has a periphery, it would be bounded by something else. If it had a center, it would also have a periphery, which it does not have . . . . As a copy, the cosmos cannot be contained between a center and a periphery. For God alone is both the center and the periphery . . . Neither the earth nor any other place is the center of the cosmos.”