Fundamental Themes in Meister Eckhart’s Mysticism

Abstract

FUNDAMENTAL THEMES IN MEISTER ECKHART'S MYSTICISM INTRODUCTION T HERE ARE in Meister Eckhart's writings two great motifs which animate his thought. The first, a Neoplatonic theme, is that of the unity and simplicity of pure being. For Eckhart, the highest name one can give to God is to call Him a nameless One, a unity in which all the divine attributes interfuse. To call God the One is to admit our inability to name God. It is to recognize that all God's attributes are identical with God Himself and identical with one another. What God truly is recedes behind the attributes we give Him in some mysterious dark night of unity which Eckhart likes to call a divine " wasteland " or the " Godhead." God is the negatio negationis (LW, I, 175) ,1 that is, not what1 All references to Eckhart's German works will be to Deutsche Predigten und Traktate, hrsg. u. iibers. v. Josef Quint (Miinchen: Hanser Verlag, 1968); hereafter " Q ". The page references will be followed by the lines, then a slash followed by the pagination of the English translation, where this is available. The English translations we will cite will be referred to as follows. " Bl. " : MeUter Eckhart, A Modern Translation by Robert Blakney (New York: Harper and Row, 1941). "CS": MeUter Eckhart: Sel,ected Treatises and Sermons, trans. J. M. Clark and J. V. Skinner (London: Faber and Faber, 1958). "Cl.": Meister Eckhart: An Introduction to the Study of His Works with an Anthology of His Sermon8, selected and trans. J. M. Clark (London: Nelson and Nelson, 1957). Other abbreviations of Eckhart's works to be employed are as follows. DW: Meister Eckhart, Die Deutsche Werke, Hrsg. im Auftrage der deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft hrsg. J. Quint, 5 Bande (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1986 ff.) LW: Meister Eckhart, Die Lateinische Werke, 5 Biinde, Hrsg. im Auftrage der deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, hrsg. E. Benz et al. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1986 ff.) The best overall introduction to Eckhart's work is Quint's splendid " Einleitung" in Q, 9-50. The best study of the Latin works is Vladimir Lossky, Theologie negative et connaissance de Dieu chez Maitre Eckhart (Paris: J. Vrin, 1960). For a comparison of the thought of Meister Eckhart with that of Martin Heidegger, see my The Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1978) . 197 198 JOHN D. CAPUTO ever we say He is. He is pure, simple, naked, divested of every attribute the human mind can frame. And if the soul would unite with God, the soul too must become naked and pure and simple, divested of all "properties," free of all creatures. The second theme is that of life and birth, of emergence and pouring forth, of life being passed on to life. Instead of the stillness of the Godhead, Eckhart speaks of a divine process; instead of the barren wasteland, giving birth; instead of a nameless substance, the relation of Father and Son. Of course this theme too is Neoplatonic, insofar as the doctrine of "emanation" from the One is Neoplatonic. But Eckhart has baptized emanationism and rethought it around the Christian doctrines of the Trinity, Creation, the Incarnation and Redemption . The Trinity is the divine life of the Father giving birth to the Son and the two together to the Holy Spirit. This is a process of life welling up within God Himself and then spilling over into creation and into the Son of God made man in Christ. Finally this life flows into all men in the life of grace, wherein the just man is justified by being born again as that same Son of the Father. It is in this context that Eckhart developed his most characteristic and well known teaching, the birth of the Son in the soul of the just man. As a springboard for discussing Eckhart's thought I wish to take as a guide one sermon in particular, "Beati pauperes s'j)iritu," " Blessed are the poor in spirit." This particular sermon has all the characteristics of Eckhart's authentic style. It is a paradoxical, daring and, at first hearing, even an outrageous sermon. It was this sermon among others that William of Ockham had in...