Speech and Sense in Meister Eckhart's Liber Parabolarum Genesis

Abstract

This paper examines Meister Eckhart's statement in the Liber Parabolarum Genesis that scripture must be interpreted parabolically, a statement included in the first document drawn up against him at Cologne, in the context of his account of the divine locutio and its relationship to exterior acts. This paper argues that the dynamic of divine creative speech that Eckhart elucidates in his commentary offers a crucial theological rationale for his exegetical approach. The utterance by which God speaks to the soul is also the principle of order in the universe, and the more perfect form and model of all human order and hierarchy. In Eckhart's commentary, the third chapter of Genesis teaches about the creation and ordering of nature and the proper ordering of the soul according to God's voice. And, as the text reveals, parabolically, God's voice speaks to all these things ‘in exactly the same way’. Thus, scripture permits no division into multiple modes because God's Word in all things is indivisible. Just as God does not command the exterior act except through the interior locutio, so scripture speaks the literal truth only by means of parables.