 Cusanus relies on the traditional microcosm/macrocosm trope to explain why human nature would be the contracted nature best suited for union with the divine Absolute. Human nature is the created nature “more common to the totality of beings” (III.3, Hopkins translation) because the intermediate status of human beings between angels and all other bodily creatures provides common ties to the whole range of created things. These ties are based on its capacities as “what is highest of the lower and what is lowest of the higher” natures (ibid.), so that it stands as representative microcosm of the created macrocosm. The upshot is that the historical Jesus Christ is human in such a way as to be divine and divine in such a way as to be human, the Maximum at once contracted and absolute, the human image who is simultaneously the divine Original. Because the divine Word is one with Jesus’ human nature, that nature is perfect of its kind, at the same time contracted and maximal. Learned ignorance may thus press the Cusan metaphors and ideas to the limit in dealing with Jesus Christ, because the hypostatic oneness of the incarnate God will always elude full human understanding.