So back to the Noll and Nystrom question while rejecting the slogan ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda (the church reformed, always reforming).1 Always reforming is misused by modern theologians. Where the word “reform” as a verb, neglects appropriation for a church needing reform in a substantive sense in recalibrating back toward scripture. Theological creativity has decimated mainline Protestant churches, bound by philosophical enlightenment presuppositions (modernity). To transcend this inheritance by an existential pusuit, whereas theological synthesis has allowed Rome to absorb centuries of human tradition.2 I hold that Eckhart was part of very different conversation that had more grass-root saavy in belief than church history can document with a paper trail. These include what are commonly called heretics and Ashkenazi Hassidics.
In terms of the ‘Great Western Tradition,’ Meister Eckhart more than any other scholastic interacted and fraternally deviated from the developing authority of St. Thomas Aquinas’ analogia entis (analogy of being) for Romanism's nature and grace symmetry. Ironically and by analogy, Aquinas' method mirrors the magisterial Reformers, and Eckhart's liberty exemplifies the maverick heterodox theologians of many an era. However, historically, this is rather complex and plays into Roman Catholic magisterial accommodation and Vatican II’s broadening of the tent. For the Meister was, in the end, a medieval theologian confined to his era who anticipated and looked beyond into modernity from the 'now.' Eckhart, the grandfather of German philosophy produced a oneness theology, yet its unstable element was divine immediacy, asymmetrical for Romanism’s mediation.
This brings us back to the ‘event’ of the Reformation as a historical milestone and its validity as a certain standard for doctrinal presentation through its principles of the solae, in scripture, Christ, grace, faith, and for God's glory alone. A benchmark, which culminated in the convergence of a scripturally-based interpretational alignment utilizing the original languages in accentuating apostolic and patristic authority with medieval scholastic rigor, yet still a modernity with its own selective oral tradition as supercessionism over Judaism. In light of this, the incarnation within the time-space continuum needs an important qualification.
Theological linear history tends to draw its legitimacy through the early church Ecumenical Councils attested and by Augustine articulated in Civitas Dei. The traditional Roman Catholic church medieval era utilized political exclusivity for ecclesiastical purposes with the canonization of Aristotelian first philosophy, now known as metaphysics with earlier Neo-Platonic notions. The power of the gospel produced receptive moments demonstrated by regional movements.
In the Christian high middle-ages, it could be argued that attempts of various reforms toward the Reformation could be traced. Here the question on how philosophy relates to theology emerges demontrating Rome’s metaphysical project. Although, the impulse of reform has existed throughout all ages of Christian history by doing theology but among the approved. This impulse works itself out in both positive and negative ways by theologians. The negative aspect is reinforced by natural human limitations, the corruptive factor and the noetic effects of sin, contributing to faulty ideas within organizational structure and directives, even upon the well-intentioned mind doing theology rather than prescribing sound doctrine founded in the narrative of scripture and the cultivated olive tree of Jacob/Israel.
The well-intentioned mind of Johannes Eckhart of Hochheim (1260? - 1328) produced a tedious, yet overtly rational thought. His thought demonstrates the commitment and depth involving theological discussion in the Western Church. Meister Eckhart (magister theologiae with two Parisian appointments like Thomas Aquinas) is a generally neglected theologian for research among Reformed Protestants, perhaps due to the label as 'mystic' implying irrationality, experienced-based belief and his current utility for religious inclusivism. Such a label goes against his rational approach which was without raptus an exstasis and appealed to Luther,3 Eckhart merged with a contextual mystical regional movement of the era where his unmediated spirituality resonated. This intellectus based mysticism is also indicative of the broad Roman Catholic accommodation. Eckhart’s thought should be placed within the Roman Catholic Fides et Ratio tradition affirmed by Pope John Paul II’s encyclical which in effect reaffirmed the canonized Aristotelian metaphysics of Thomas.4 Highlighting the difference between Catholics and Protestants with the use of philosophy for theology. Catholic theology is philosophy, yet not in a pronounced way, whereas Protestant evangelicals utilize philosophy more as an apologetic tool and correlation according to context. Although, this does not preclude the production of the Roman magisterium and the reality of esse – existence, substance, and through the analogia entis (the analogy of being) as descriptive rather than the Roman prescription. However, how this established the nature-grace foundation has had a limiting effect upon the reading of scripture demands further scrutiny.5
Eckhart, the Dominican monk, has received much study in general from the German academy and recently as a philosopher by historical-critical approaches. Since the 19th century, the mystical Eckhart has been presented as a forerunner of the Reformation through the extension of his ideas by his Dominican disciples, Henry Susa and Johannes Tauler as found in an influential book called Theologica Germanica re-published by Martin Luther.7 Possibly, Eckhart set ideas into play proving positive for the Reformation and sola fide. However, the condemnation of 28 propositions drawn from his teachings as questionable within Catholic dogma and 13 thereafter being condemned posthumously by the Papal Bull in Agro Domino in 1329 was warranted, but its attempt to keep simple people from hearing his ideas. not. Theology and practice do go hand and hand.8 Besides his work as a theologian, Eckhart was also an authoritative leader, organizer, and manager of the expanding Provinces of the Dominican Order in territories now known as Germany. Where his sermons interfaced with movements and devoted groups like the Beguines and the Brethren of the Free Spirit already operating outside of the Church and under scrutiny, on their way to rejection, and condemnation.9 Therefore, a certain appealing element within his thought resonated in the midst of an already spiritually saturated, yet hierarchical mediated medieval world emerging onto a new socio-economic stage.
Eckhart the theologian worked in the successive generations after Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, all men bound by their era, and these Dominican confréres impacted Eckhart profoundly. (1) Albert’s mass empirical scholarship as an early form of 'science' (Wissenschaft) out of neo-platonic presuppositions served both Eckhart’s explanations of transcendence but also German philosophic immanence, something arguably proving seminal against and throughout modernity developed with diversely expressed notables such as Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger. This places Eckhart as an intriguing figure for the currents of heterodoxy drawing on the German tradition. This not only contains the scope of various readings that promote inter-religious spiritual identification but his part in the narrative of the development of the ethical unreligious man. On the other hand, (2) Thomas as the ultimate synthesizer served Eckhart’s role as a mendicant preacher, who was instituted to guard against heresy. Eckhart, like Thomas, passionately brought the mind into the heart, yet understood the Aristotelian virtue ethic of Thomas bolstered ecclesiological authority and distorted the origin of faith, even though the Meister’s Augustinian commitments concerning sin proved weak along with a less pronounced Christology. His hamartiology and Christology held as medieval presuppositions not explicitly developed as robustly as they were 300 years later. Spiritual access, rather than religious conformity provided the fuel for his sermons. The speculative thought behind sourced philosophy mixed with a reading of scripture produced a sophisticated approach showing a certain highpoint that Thomas emulated and Eckhart followed garnering the attention of historicist scholars such as Alain De Libera and Kurt Flasch, who dub the era as an age 'thinking about thinking.'
Eckhart's rational thought was viewed as irrational as understood from his statements. A personal witness to his trial in Avignon was non-other than William of Ockham from whose philosophy Protestant magisterial theologians can trace principles, known as the nominalistic method. Ockham also ran into his own problems with Pope John XXII, but as far in assessing Eckhart’s ideas, Ockham called him more of a lunatic than a heretic. Eckhart should not be reduced to such a judgment because he wrote and said far-fetch things. He utilized the ‘four senses’ approach to understanding scripture and preached sermons as provocations to initiate a peculiar dialectic, yet these were based upon a unique metaphysic, employing all of the scholastic terminologies. In light of this, it is proposed that Eckhart was the product and victim of his own institution deviating from the Roman magisterium. The nature – grace ambiguity and the blurring of time distinctions are notable, but this metaphysic served the purpose of his idiosyncratic pursuit of spiritual reality. The way Eckhart explained deification, the homo divinus or simply the 'just', (iustus) with his teaching on detachment (gelassenheit or abgeschiedenheit) was certainly different from the doctrine of his day and seemed to promote a personal living faith from within rather than an imposed externally religious conformity that monasticism reinforced within Catholic ecclesiology. It is suggested that the Meister’s many readings and interpretations are promoted without a proper theological reformulation of Justification, Sanctification, and Glorification out of the Reformation era.
Possibly, Eckhart’s thought may have aided these components of their ordo salutis to emerge, still, an anachronistic reading of Eckhart today needs much caution. This is not an attempt for rehabilitation, but analysis and comment on Eckhart in light of Vatican II which has had a reciprocal effect on evangelical theology and proclivities highlighted by the so-called Emerging Church and Progressive Christianity movement were anachronistic readings act without historical theological skill. Current Roman Catholic spirituality also seems comfortable in going back to the Meister’s expression. It must be acknowledged, Eckhart’s metaphysical ideas deeply impacted a rational understanding of soteriology marked by its time, but this may not help anyone without the historical-grammatical reading of scripture. So with the benefit of hindsight, a task is at hand to continue to answer the question of the Reformation's relevance and our union with Christ.
On 18 April 1294, Easter day, Eckhart was in Paris as lector sententiarum, with the task of commenting on the four books of the Sentences of Peter Lombard. He opened with the sermon, (Pascha nostrum immolates est Christus. Itaque epulemur, Christ’s salvation through the passion), an academic sermon following the style of liturgical solemn sermons, constituted by I Cor. 5: 7; (for we walk by faith, not by sight) a prayer, where the theme and frequent citations of Augustine, lead into the celebration of the Eucharist. Eckhart contrasts the Doctor with the ideal of the rational and wise Aristotelian who by means of knowledge or reason alone achieves his own perfection and, thus, his own happiness, with the model of the Augustinian humble man, being conscious of himself and his own limits. The philosophical Eckhart is evident from the beginning of his academic career. This also points to how he used his philosophy, perhaps as an apologetic toward the radical Aristotelian Faculty of Arts at the University of Paris as the auctoritates are quoted throughout. The Eckhartian program, however, avoids the preambula of Thomas, who held a clearer differentiation, between philosophy for its own sake and theology. Eckhart is convinced that a philosophy of religion is possible because religion is also one of the ways in which wisdom discloses itself among other sources. Here the theological tradition that exalted the virtue of humility above the arrogance of a self-assured thought is interpreted as a consciousness of one’s own limits and, thus, opposes the knowledge of things to the knowledge of oneself. True interiority coincides with true humility. Thomas would not have denied this, but his system of moral theology, which forms the Roman Catholic magisterium was pressed into itself, taking to its logical conclusions as rational mysticism.10
This interior focus of Eckhart facilitates his homo divinus theme. In Paris in 1302, now as magister, Eckhart, and as any professor of theology, had three main tasks: to give lessons on the Scriptures, discuss and determine quaestiones (both those formulated by himself and those proposed by his students), and preach. Out of all this activity, undertaken for at least a whole academic year, if not more, there are only a few traces left outside of his bombshell quaestiones disputatae.11 When reading the Parisian Quaestiones and the few testimonies Eckhart himself left us, one gets the impression that Eckhart was fully in line with the Dominican school, defending the thesis of the primacy of the intellect over the will against the opposing Franciscan emphasis. Moreover, when Eckhart comes to determine more precisely the intellectus option, the distance he takes from Thomas is striking. Alongside his metaphysics, this ethical ends work out primarily by the ‘humble man’ which Eckhart accomplished through all that the Scriptures that proclaimed Jesus: “I said in the schools of Paris that all things shall be accomplished in the truly humble man.” The perfect man who has arrived at the awareness of himself and of the world and which, in the Latin works—in particular, the Commentary on St John’s Gospel—is presented as a 'divine man' (homo divinus) appearing with a peculiar coherence in the figure of the 'humble man'. 12
The Aristotelian - Averroist doctrines at the University of Paris may help our understanding of the value of his contribution. For 30 years earlier, this current had put forward the exact opposite of the figure of the ‘humble man,’ namely that of the magnanimous man (magnanimitas). The study and the enthusiastic deepening of the knowledge of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics emphasizing Greek values centered on the virtue of magnanimity. The received interpretations that brought the Bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier to publish a decree condemning this Aristotelian virtue in 1277 among others are complex.13 Later, in Eckhart’s time, the doctrine of 'magnanimity' was still a topic of interpretation by the professors of the arts in Paris. Surely it was not the case that Eckhart, in placing retrospectively his own professorial activity in theology in Paris under the sign of evangelical humility, that he intended to take up a specific position in favor of the bishop’s condemnation. Perhaps he intended to distance himself from the ethical doctrines of Aristotle and the Averroists employing a specific apologetic. Without directly implicating Thomas, it is clear the Meister’s target was his Dominican frater’s moral theology, which alongside his nature – esse metaphysics aided his own rehabilitative trek culminating with his canonization in 1323 and, moreover, in 19th century reaffirmed by Leo XIII in recognizing Thomas’ utility in addressing modernity and continuing ecclesiastical authority. Thomas was often seen as 'guilty by association' with Aristotle out of the impact of 1277, and his death in 1274 cut a prolific genus short at 49 years of age. But defending the Italian from Aquino generally was taken up by his brothers, however, certain German Dominicans had a different agenda. Eckhart in this regard brought forward a comprehensive original contribution by 1303, which had at its center a new metaphysical theology (deus est intelligere), emerging anthropology (intelligere est increabile), and a radical approach to ethics (the humility of the homo divinus).14
Eckhart’s Latin manuscripts (outside his sermons), became available at the end of the 19th century, found in minor libraries and his famous Parisian Quaestiones in personal notebooks, authenticated and studied. Scholarship has had Eckhart in their sights for around 90 years with a Nazi initiated critical edition of both his German and Latin works. They emphasize that “all that the Holy Scripture says about Christ, it comes completely true about the good and divine man.” These texts philosophically explain much of what Eckhart’s sermons brought to his listeners. Kurt Flasch (see endnote 5) downplays this, but Eckhart’s expositions on the Scriptures such as the Commentary on St John’s Gospel consider only some philosophic auctoritates for his metaphysics. This resonates with an apologetic tone in my estimation. Here in the most theological Gospel, the majority of his comment concerns the first chapter.15 Two thirds refer to the prologue (Joh. 1:1–18) very little else is touched upon, even chapters 18 and 19, which narrate the passion and death of Jesus, are cursory. Here Eckhart dwells mostly on the verse: Quid est veritas? (18:38), while not considering the passion of Christ.16 Eckhart states in the proem of the commentary in following Augustine to justify his method: “that Augustine in Book 7 of the Confessions says that he read a large part of the first chapter of the Gospel of St John in the books of certain Platonists”. According to Eckhart, it is within these “In the beginning lines”, and interpreted in the right way, which “teach the natures and properties of things, both as far as their understanding of esse – existence is concerned and their way of operating, whilst they build up our faith, they teach us about the nature of things” (LW III, n° 13, p.12). The first six verses of Chapter 1 contain 15 points, which are axioms, rules, and foundations and are indispensable in order to interpret metaphysical reality. In summary: in divine things, as in the natural and artificial ones, that which is produced or proceeds from something else is always pre-contained in that from which it comes to be and is thus produced. That is to say, the first foundation concerns that which, from Albert onwards, is designated as 'essential causation', according to which the product is always present in a simpler way in its own cause and is not essentially different from its own cause, though it appears different. It is to this philosophical truth that the evangelist refers when he declares: in principio erat Verbum. That which is produced from something can be compared to the word which is pronounced, which says something and communicates something about whom it is who pronounces it. From this, the following comes about: that what proceeds (procedens) is in the producing principle as a ratio and similitudo, that is to say in a “more simple” and indeterminate form (LW III, n° 4-7, pp. 6-8). The first four axioms are concerned with the identity between the principle and principled. The other axioms, in contrast, deal with the difference between principle and principled. Hence, it follows that the Son, or the Word, is equal to the Father. At this point, Eckhart introduces a distinction: if that which he has said up until now concerns, on his own explicit affirmation, both the relation between Father and Son in the Trinity (in divinis) as well as the relation between principle and principled, cause and effect, in nature and in art (things made) (in naturis et artificialibus), however, it is only in the Trinity that this relation of perfect equality comes about, of which the verse verbum erat apud deum speaks. The preposition apud, “by”, is only said of the Son in the Trinity, while created beings are not apud, but sub (i.e. inferior to the Creator).
The argumentative process set out by Eckhart is rigorously dialectical. He expounds the Trinitarian relations which constitute one of the cases or examples of essential causality. The others are the relation between the knowing subject and known object, and the relation between God and created beings. Since Eckhart saw the entities of creation as ‘no-thing’ it can be argued that this was ground zero of the modern subject and object that has dictated philosophy into the contemporary era. From the point of view of essential causality, these three cases manifest the same characteristics: co-essentiality, eternity, and intellectuality. Again, the created being as such (i.e. as a being determinate and separated from its principle), is a pure nothing, for all of its being, its ratio is the same as the principle which has produced it, just as the concrete boat is nothing in comparison with the model that exists eternally and intellectually in the mind of its designer. This indifference which Eckhart demonstrates with regards to the created is evident in the relation between a general term (justice) and a particular term (just), which he subsequently speaks of precisely in order to clarify the 15 points he examines. The 'just', or the 'just man', as a concrete entity, is nothing in himself as this individual. As 'just', this individual has no value, no sense. If, on the other hand, he is taken on the basis of an ontic relation with transcendent justice itself from which he derives, then and then only is the just man justice itself. God’s “necessary entering into” the human being is not to be understood in moral terms but as a metaphysical necessity."17 Thomas’ metaphysics and ethics were part of an integral system, Eckhart could do no less. If this provides the extrinsic dimension of the imputation of the Reformed doctrine of 'justification' is a worthy question.
In commenting on The Book of Wisdom found in the Apocrypha, there is a development of the terms of the love/consciousness relation, a classic argument of the times, but one on which Eckhart dwells with particular interest, trying to bring out all the nuances. He takes up the will/intellect relation, as a good Dominican and develops it in his own distinctive manner. Again his insistence on the subject of justice and the relation between the just and justice. For Eckhart, justice is not something to follow or describe in a certain way, nor is a man just because he adapts himself to justice or behaves in conformity with it. From the point of view of knowledge (gnosis), only the just man, that is to say, he who is detached, is a man of intellect, a man of the spirit. Only the intellectus is, in effect, capable of absolute substance, that is, actual divine wisdom.18 This explicit metaphysical direction of Eckhart works with a univocal aspect of the intellectus as the imago Dei and tends toward the reductionist tendency in defining the soul as an immaterial element.19 It also reduces the Fall to the loss of that perfect state which implies no need for the moral reasoning capacity within the first couple. Is this traditional physically separated Platonic? No. But neither was Thomas with his Aristotelian emphasis where nature was posited as exclusive. These Dominicans were most original in their use of the auctoritates.
Eckhart agrees with the tradition in defining sin first of all as death (Rom. 6:2), since it is a turning away from God, Being, and life (LW IV, 162, 11f.) and hence a turning away from blessedness and virtue (DW II, 14, 1f.). Accordingly, the human person ought not to want to commit sin in time and eternity (DW V, 232, 3–5). God and sin are incompatible. Sin is negatio esse and thereby a negation of God’s self-communication. “God is pure Being and sin is nothing and removes [one] from God” (DW II, 597, 6). The sinner gives primary importance to nothing, but God gives primary importance to Being. In addition to the pejorative understanding of sin, Eckhart also knows an affirmative understanding: “The inclination to sin is always useful to the human person,” bringing benefit and gain (DW V, 212, 9f.). “The more gravely he sins, the more does he praise God” (LW III, 426, 9f.). God smites the sinner in order, via the sin, to open up to him the path to salvation. God “is very ready” to suffer all the damage of sin, “in order that the human person may subsequently” come “to a great knowledge of his love” and to fiery thankfulness (DW V, 234, 7–10). To bear the frailties of sins is “a great training” in the human person’s trust in God (DW V, 301, 7–9). God, who alone forgives sin, forgives readily, and “the greater and graver the sins are, all the more immeasurably is God pleased to forgive them” (DW V, 238, 2f.). Forgiveness creates complete trust. One to whom much is forgiven will love much (DW V, 244, 2f.). God brings the human person “out of a sinful life into a divine life” (DW V, 232, 7) on the path of righteousness. 20
The inquisitorial authorities understandably jumped all over any insinuation that God could be glorified in human sin, even more from sermons of a leader of the Order of the Preachers who had grass-root access.21 Although, this may not seem so blasphemous from our vista with certain qualifications the Reformation dealt with in not implicating God for evil. Meister Eckhart’s esse – ‘existence’ is modally complex and mostly follows Thomas on ‘substantial form’ but with a different application of metaphysical terms such as ‘analogy’.22 The Commentary on Exodus provides a clear example of Eckhart positing the whole and its sharing in a single existence, something that would have kept him out of trouble if he only ascribed to Thomistic or rather Dionysian 'participation' in his defense, but he consciously did not. Here in Exodus, Aristotle is cited on how to speak properly of 'being, '(Meta. VII 1028a18), thus beings are only related by analogy to the one absolute being (existence), which is 'substance' as only the substantial form gives 'existence - esse', an accident finds existence already in its subject. Therefore, all of these are beings or things (res) extrinsically, in analogy to the One that is a being and a thing, namely substance, which is God. For Eckhart, both nature and grace hold an axiomatic identity through reason and the supernatural which seem presupposed already within the created human.
German Sermon 73 from the apocryphal, The Wisdom of Jesus Sirach is typical of this.23 Eckhart the preacher illustrates: "I was once asked why good folk feel so happy with God and are so zealous to serve Him. I replied by saying it was because they had tasted God, and it would be strange indeed if the soul that had once tasted and tried God could stomach anything else. One saint says that the soul that has tasted God finds all things that are not God repugnant and stinking. [...] Often I feel afraid, when I come to speak of God, at how utterly detached the soul must be to attain to union with Him. But no one should think this impossible: nothing is impossible for the soul that possesses God's grace. Nothing was ever easier for a man than it is for the soul that has God's grace to leave all things: no creature can harm her. St. Paul says, ‘I am persuaded that no creature can separate me from God: not good fortune or bad fortune or life or death". 24
The foundation of his hamartiology is found in his extensive Commentaries on Genesis produced in two different works. Here the Meister often cites the Jewish philosopher Moises Maimonides and seems to track the theologian Origen rather than Augustine. Adam and Eve are types of the humans we were meant to be. The Fall is seen as the loss of our highest ability in moral reasoning. There was no 'will'. It is astounding that Eckhart’s inquisitor and trial did not even bring up his teaching differing from Augustine’s original sin nor the way his salvific Christology never came under scrutiny, this all certainly seemed trivial in light of his concept of God and appears as a metaphysical eisegesis over an exegesis of scripture. Something Roman Catholic theology has always accommodated, but Eckhart ventured onto a point of no return. Instead of measuring Eckhart’s project with a primarily supra-temporal concept of philosophy one really must go beyond the conventional division between 'natural' and 'supernatural' knowledge. Eckhart shows a two-story Godhead built from his Neoplatonic sources: the philosophically recognizable one God (Deus unus) lived downstairs, while the Triune God (Deus trinus), only recognizable supernaturally, lived upstairs. Eerily Kantian to say the least. For Eckhart, the dividing line between nature and super-nature or grace lay elsewhere. And he explained it in the first two Parisian Quaestiones, Eckhart describes the specific nature of the intellect, its characteristic agreement (condicio), in order to conceptualize God beyond esse – ‘being’ existence. To the German Dominicans, he said: “there is nature within the intellectus, but the intellectus itself is something higher than nature; it is the site of the ideas. It belongs to a higher world, namely, the intellectual world that Augustine and Plato, his source, had described" (In Eccli., LW 2, n. 10, 240.1–7). The intellectus is super- nature. Here Plato’s intellectual world will eventually become Leibniz’s “realm of grace.” It was possible to condemn this view, but it is what Eckhart said and thought, and it changed the intellectual coordinate system of the time.25 It also shows indirectly how the Roman Catholic church has canonized Thomas’s metaphysics with his preference of Aristotle, to bring the discussion back into the empirical. Protestant proclivities against this as founded upon rationality or innate rationalism shows the Reformed preference following Calvin.
Eckhart’s originality is not an irrational system nor a simple pantheism. This touches on the depth of the intellectus soul in Augustine’s De Trinitate and the self-manifestation of God in the Trinity which is followed by his manifestation in the human person relating toward creation just as Augustine posited, i.e. the external object, the act of seeing, and the attention of the mind.26 Everything in creation as 'form' ascribes God’s esse existence.27 But this divine existence does not manifest itself in its entire fullness in a neo-platonic sense. So from creation’s “view from below”; the unum, bonum, verum existence of the creatures is immanent in the eternal divine existence. Creation’s dependency on God presents certain structures in reading Eckhart. Even to the point of understanding modes and differences where “esse – existence” acts as its non-negotiable, holding together an understanding of its absolute necessity as manifested in its further unity in creation. The interpretive key wrought here is through similarity and dissimilarity also shown in The Gospel of John.28 This should precede metaphysical tools such as analogy and univocity which Thomas and Thomists hold dogmatically. This differentiation of Eckhart’s seeks a ‘view from above’ or placing it relative to God. In Eckhart’s Commentary on Exodus: Nor any likeness which in heaven above, or on the earth below (Ex. 20.4; LW II n° 117); he focuses on what is known as dissimilar and similar to something else as that whose ‘dissimilitude’ is its very ‘similitude,’ whose indistinction is its very distinction. God is distinguished from everything created, distinct, and finite ‘being’ by His being as an indistinction to other things and through His infinity. Therefore, because he is distinguished by indistinction, and is assimilated by dissimilitude, the more dissimilar he is, the more similar he becomes. Thus, the more one tries to speak about the ineffable, the less one says about it as ineffable.29 Eckhart is profoundly logical here and simply uses Thomas' distinctive, analogy, to clarify these sentences in the quote through the authority of Augustine and by using apophatic speech Eckhart pursues truth — God the omnipotent creator and savior of His people as revealed in Exodus. This commentary stands as a prime example in how Eckhart compares the divine with the human through strict philosophical and theological language in expounding scripture and it should not be read as pantheistic in the conventional sense. Again, the super-natural possibility for man, over the natural fallen sensing man distracted by esse - existence hoc et hoc.
The righteous person lives out of the one righteousness of the one God, which appertains univocally both to God and to the righteous person (LW III, 141, 15–142, 1). All the righteous are righteous because they are one in the one God (LW II, 366, 6f.) Righteousness comes to the human person through God’s justifying action, for “God justifies . . . the believers directly through his own self, not in cooperation” (LW II, 297, 10f.). The human person is righteous, not because of that which is his own; rather, the righteous person “receives his whole Being . . . from righteousness alone.” All the righteousness of the Son is due to the unbegotten righteousness of God the Father (LW II, 392, 5–393, 5). Human persons should reflect not so much on what they do, as on what they are. “If you are righteous, then your works too are righteous. One should not think about staking holiness on an action,” since “it is not the works that make us holy.” “Rather, one should base holiness on Being . . . No matter what works are performed by those who are not of great Being, nothing will come out of them” (DW V, 197, 4–198, 7). In his whole Being, the human person who is righteous is a son of the righteousness of God (LW II, 392, 10–12). Through the birth of God in the soul, the righteous person, as the Son, is conformed to righteousness. “The Father gives birth to his Son as the righteous person and to the righteous person as his Son” (DW II, 258, 2f).30
If such Eckhartian high scholastic speculation pushed the eventual formulation of the Reformed doctrine of justification onto its theological moment continues to be pondered. However, it converges with a Roman Catholic time and space-less incarnational distortion and becomes anachronistically reinforced out of those reading the controversial theologian so popular today and as unaware of his use of traditional metaphysics, whence such a nomenclature has been distorted into contemporary theological oblivion.
To be fair, the context for Eckhart’s provocation reoccurs often within the Western tradition and may have merits pointing toward personal reformation. The profundity of his explanations is admirable. The persistence of the Roman Catholic magisterium merging of justification within sanctification as facilitated by sacramental ecclesiology continues. For Eckhart, our own efforts of an imitation of Christ’s detachment seem to have more to do with our own redemption than Christ’s death on the Cross, but this could be read as a needed emphasis for the high-middle ages. This is attractive for the so-called evangelical anti-penal substitution emerging church movement' where Christ’s death has a more general and theological meaning as Eckhart expressed with the prime emphasis of self-emptying kenosis as deference to God’s will. Although this clearly moves out of any remaining vestige of orthodoxy even one that Catholic dogma holds. We live in confusing times, where the 'reform' verb requires and alignment with the solae of the Reformation. Anachronistic readings demand historical contextual guidelines.
1 Clark, R. Scott. Always Abusing Semper Reformanda, http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/always-abusing-semper-reformanda/ accessed June 2016. “Certainly, the Reformed writers spoke of a “Reformed church” and of the necessity of reformation. But men such as Calvin, who published a treatise on the need for reformation in 1543, did not use the phrase. The Dutch Reformed minister Jodocus van Lodenstein (1620-77) first used something like it in 1674 when he juxtaposed “reformed” with “reforming,” but he did not say, ‘always’.” […]The full phrase ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei (the church reformed, always reforming according to the Word of God) is a post-World War II creature. It was given new impetus by the modernist Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968), who used variations of the phrase with some frequency. Mainline (liberal) Presbyterian denominations have sometimes used variations of this phrase in official ways.”
2 De Chirico, Leonardo: The Blurring of Time distinctions in Roman Catholicism, Themelios, 29/2, p. 41. “Just as Chalcedon recognized he basic parameters for Christology, the important distinction between hapax and mallon with regard to the contours of the Christian faith that are indicated by the Word of God. In both cases even a minimal violation would become devastating, producing effects of enormous consequence. [...] The argument which will be suggested here, [..] is that Roman Catholicism operated a crucial breach of the boundary between hapax and mallon in its understanding of the Church as a prolongation of the Incarnation. This breach subsequently caused a series of further incursions, above all in the doctrines of the Eucharist and revelation.”
3 Oberman A. Heiko. Simul gemitus et raptus: Luther und die Mystik, in: Die Reformation: von Wittenberg nach Genf (Göttingen, 1986), pp. 45–89. “Remarkable as it is that mystical terminology finds its way into Luther’s understanding of faith – above all after 1515 – it is equally apparent on the other side that he does not come to his specific concept of faith from medieval mysticism, but finds access to particular mystical traditions and concepts on the basis of his new concept of faith (the first lectures on the Psalms). This can be observed with the mystical concepts of ‘raptus’ and ‘exstasis’, which he precisely does not understand in the traditional mystical sense of being transported above the sphere of mere belief (cf. Oberman ibid. pp. 74–79), but as the illuminated recognition of faith – thus in the gloss on Vulgata-Ps. 115.11: “Exstasis illa . . . est raptus mentis in claram cognitionem fidei, et ista est proprie exstatis.” Cf. on this Wolfgang Böhme (ed.): Von Eckhart bis Luther. Über mystischen Glauben (Karlsruhe, 1981) [= Herrenalber Texte 31], especially the contributions of Heiko A. Oberman, Reinhard Schwarz and Karl-Heinz zur Mühlen (this on Luther’s understanding of ecstasy p. 46f.).
4 Pope John Paul II, himself a philosopher, spoke approvingly of Eckhart’s central teachings. However, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was more cautious, warning of the “danger . . . of syncretism.” John Paul II’s remarks and Cardinal Ratzinger’s can be found respectively at http://www.eckhartsociety.org/eckhart/eckhart-man and http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/cdfmed.htm
5 Kilcrease, Jack: Lutheran Theology and the Metaphysical question, Theologia Crucis blog, http://jackkilcrease.blogspot.it/ April 3, 2014, Accessed 16/06/2016. “The entire discussion of sanctification brought up a number of issues. Chief among them is my use of speech-act theory, as well as my use of categories of thought taken from relational and ecstatic metaphysics to explicate my views of sanctification. […] What substance metaphysics say about reality is that there are real entities within it, and that they possess an identity internal to themselves that persists over time. This is true irrespective of whether or not certain predicates of their reality are altered (my hair will turn grey some day!). Moreover, God is a certain something and humans are a certain something, and our language portrays that reality to us in a realistic fashion. So, the goal of substance language and concepts is linguistic realism and the recognition of the continuity of identity. Therefore, what we get from substance language is fundamentally a law of identity and also a law of propositional truth. This can be seen in the Catholic commitment to things like Transubstantiation and the doctrine of created grace. In the case of the Reformed, they enter into their discussion of the two natures in Christ and the sacraments with philosophical presuppositions about what divinity and humanity are (non capax, etc.), and what God would do and what he would not do. And so, ultimately they ignore or obfuscate what Scripture says about these things. Secondly, Lutheranism (or perhaps more accurately, people who define themselves as Lutheran!) has functioned with a number of different philosophical traditions: Nominalism, Scotism, Aristotelianism, Leibnizianism, Kantianism, Hegalianism, and Existentialism. Many of these philosophical schemes have had unfortunately distorting effects on the teaching of biblical truth. My opponents tend to think the Aristotelian one was pretty good. In some respects, this was true. Nevertheless, this too also created any number of problems. One example might be the false teaching of "receptionism," that is largely a function of the Melanchthonian appropriation of Aristotle's casual scheme. All causes must be in place (including reception) to actualize a reality. This distorts the gospel-promise of the Supper by effectively claiming that my action of reception is a contributing cause of the body and blood of Christ being present, rather than the sole cause lying in the promissory and consecratory word. The third reason that we cannot canonize any one metaphysical scheme is that as Oswald Bayer has pointed out, this would be the theology of glory. To know a universal scheme within which we can relate the ontic reality of God to all beings in an absolutely consistent way would in fact to suggest that we could know God's being in itself, and how all of God's works (which, often seems contrary) are coordinated with one another. This is a problem because we know that the theology of glory always leads to conceit and self-justification. Such a knowledge of God is not proper to this life, but the next life. In this life, an attempt at such a knowledge leads to creatures believing in God as a transparent ideal, rather than a savior. From this, theology and ethics becomes structured around trying to be conformed to that ideal. Such knowledge will only be possible and helpful to us in the next life when God purifies us and conforms us to his ideal reality. If metaphysical and ontological terminology and schemes have historically distorted aspects of biblical teaching, then why bother with them at all? One has heard this argument from Lutherans often enough, and indeed to some extent in the history of Protestant theology. The young Luther was contemptuous of philosophical terminology borrowed from Aristotle. Of course, he never completely rejected philosophical learning (he has very nice things to say about Plato in the Heidelberg Disputation, as he trashes Aristotle). Moreover, many of the presuppositions he used to attack philosophical reason were in fact borrowed from Nominalist philosophy (this is particularly the case in his arguments against Zwingli). Finally, he ultimately did acquiesce to Melanchthon's revival of a purified Aristotelianism in the curriculum of Wittenberg by the 1530s. Moreover, we find of course a similar rejection of philosophical metaphysics in the considerably less orthodox theology of 19th century Liberal Protestantism. Schleiermacher and Ritschl in particular rejected philosophical tradition as a basis or in some case, even a tool, for theological discourse. Adolf Harnack built an entire theory of the fall of the Church around it in his History of Dogma by positing that Christian theology had gradually been corrupted by Greek philosophy (his famous ‘Hellenization Thesis’). Unfortunately for the coherence of their argument, they attacked philosophical reason on the basis of Kantian presuppositions, thereby revealing that they were unable to escape philosophical schemes themselves!” […] Ultimately, the problem with trying to escape philosophy and metaphysical presuppositions is twofold. First, since philosophy primarily deals with the question of what is real and what is good, it is built into the unconscious presuppositions of every culture. Since the theologian or ordinary believer are not immune to their culture, all theologians and believers will have unconscious commitments to a particular philosophy. […]This ecstatic account of the reality of our identity as it subsists in the grace of God in creation, also sheds light on redemption as well. In Christ, I am righteous, and indeed, this makes little sense if I am understood as a centered-substance that persists over time. Seen from the perspective of the law of identity, I am not Christ and Christ is not me. So how could Christ be my righteousness, since he is not me? Similarly, if Christ is not me, then how can he take on my sin? (Historically, Catholic accounts of atonement going back to Anselm have denied that Christ is imputed with our sin!) Nevertheless, if we understand that our being is something ecstatically constituted, I can see that Christ is the new Adam and the same eternal Word of God that ecstatically gives me my existence through creation. And insofar as he speaks me forth anew in the address of the gospel, I have a new identity and reality before God external to myself in him. In this, I am restored to the image of God lost in the Fall. Instead of living a centered existence under the exclusive definition of the law, I now live ecstatically “in Christ through faith and in love through my neighbor” (Luther).
6 Flasch, Kurt: Meister Eckhart, Philosoph des Christentums, München, 2007. Translated by Anne Schindel and Aaron Vanides, Yale 2015. The exclusive philosopher Eckhart as a challenge to this designation as “mystic” is the culmination of 20th century studies as expressed by German medieval scholar Kurt Flash. He states concerning 19th century studies on page 46: “These works often categorize Eckhart a priori as a mystic, either in the title or within the opening sentences. Others defined him through specific philosophical currents and called Eckhart ’s intellectual position “Aristotelian-Thomistic” or “Platonic”; they characterized him as an advocate or enemy of “scholasticism.” Many distinguished between scholasticism and mysticism, seeing scholasticism as an abstract art of concepts, and mysticism as intuitive or as immediate religious experience. Still others sought a reformer before the Reformation. All of them lacked access to the Latin manuscripts. To put it bluntly: what these scholars held in their hands was Eckhart’s Sunday output; what he did from Monday to Saturday was beyond their knowledge. It had consequences for their interpretations of Eckhart. Everyone ranged between certain alternatives: pantheism or theism, realism or idealism, loyalty or disloyalty to the church. But these decisions were impossible to make without Eckhart’s Latin works.” These works were philosophical and not theological according to Flasch, seems a distortion for the Dominican as there is a secondary debate concerning the philosophical tone set by Albert the Great. Still, Flasch’s robust philosophical grid is a project that shows a certain bias against the order and religion he left as a young man. Flash continues stating further on in page 75: “Meister Eckhart thought of himself as a philosopher. People have made him into a counselor of souls, a minister to nuns, a theologian, a combatant against heresy, a preacher, a reformer before the Reformation, and an icon for the depth of the German soul. Perhaps he was all those things; for the moment, it is anyone ’s guess. Even if he were one or all those things, however, we still know him best through his philosophical writings. He explained that his commentary on the Gospel of John belonged to this group as well. And he began his sermon cycle by announcing that he would argue philosophically (German sermon 101, DW 4:342.33–35). By “philosophical arguments,” Eckhart probably understood something different from what we mean by that term today. It remains to be investigated; “philosophy,” after all, did not always mean the same thing throughout its long history. That Eckhart would have confused theology with philosophy in the intellectual climate of around 1300, however, is extremely unlikely.” This robust philosopher emphasis by Flasch is contested by current historical critical scholars of Eckhart such as Walter Senner OP. Senner who is a meticulous medieval historian and my doctoral mentor. Father Senner demonstrates a fair minded German Dominican brother toward Eckhart, and believes the condemnation of Eckhart as unjustified by political alignments and the use of philosophy was part of any rational argument. Concerning the metaphysical question this is certainly presupposed. It is clear that Eckhart worked as a theologian which was peculiar within the scholastic context. Medieval philosophy is characteristically theological as a natural theology also seemed possible in the name of reason. With the possible exceptions of Islamic thinkers such as Avicenna and Averroes, and the faculty of arts at the university of Paris subject to the 1277 condemnations, most medieval thinkers did not consider themselves philosophers at all: for them, the philosophers were the ancient pagan writers such as Plato and Aristotle. However, their theology used the methods and logical techniques of the ancient philosophers to address difficult theological questions and points of doctrine. Eckhart’s comment on scripture mainly focused on difficult, yet foundational texts. However, this does not preclude his unique agenda for the faithful and theology imbedded into an already solidifying metaphysical tradition for the Magisterium. Thomas Aquinas, following Peter Damian, argued that philosophy is the handmaiden of theology (ancilla theologiae). Nevertheless, Eckhart’s use of philosophy was much more pronounced by his diversity of auctoritates not uncommon in the day. This highlights an important aspect of historical theology, often insufficiently addressed from the vista of modernity which limits Protestant emphases. Allowing Flasch the last word between “mystic” and “scholastic”, he stresses the spirit of the university of Paris profoundly shaped Eckhart. It could be argued that Eckhart was an early prototype of a Philosopher of Religion focused on the embryonic scientific stage which the era represented in its understanding of cosmology and he tried to apologetically reconcile this toward his university context. Albert the Great and Eckhart’s direct mentor Dietrich of Freiberg (who was notably anti-Thomas) are sources for this. Without stretching Eckhart yet onto another interpretation, this seems a valid research direction.
7 Ozment, Stephen E.: Homo Spiritualis: A Comparative Study of the Anthropology of Johannes Tauler, Jean Gerson and Martin Luther - 1509-1516 - In the Context of Their Theological Thought, (Studies in Medieval & Reformation Thought) 1969. Strehle, Stephen: The Catholic Roots of the Protestant Gospel: Encounter Between the Middle Ages and the Reformation, (Studies in Medieval & Reformation Thought) 1995.
8 Eckhart, Johannes: Die lateinischen Werke, eds. E. Benz, C. Christ, B. Decker, H. Fischer, B. Geyer, J. Koch, E. Seeberg, L. Sturlese, K. Weiß, and A. Zimmermann, vols I–V, Stuttgart,1936–2012 (=LW,) LW V: p.597,2–17; Essential, p. 77: “In agro dominico (In the field of the Lord): In the field of the Lord over which we, though unworthy, are guardians and laborers by heavenly dispensation, we ought to exercise spiritual care so watchfully and prudently that if an enemy should ever sow tares over the seeds of truth (Mt. 13:28), they may be choked at the start before they grow up as weeds of an evil growth. Thus, with the destruction of the evil seed and the uprooting of the thorns of error, the good crop of Catholic truth may take firm root. We are indeed sad to report that in these days someone by the name of Eckhart from Germany, a doctor of sacred theology (as is said) and a professor of the Order of Preachers, wished to know more than he should, and not in accordance with sobriety and the measure of faith, because he turned his ear from the truth and followed fables. The man was led astray by the Father of Lies who often turns himself into an angel of light in order to replace the light of truth with a dark and gloomy cloud of the senses, and he sowed thorns and obstacles contrary to the very clear truth of faith in the field of the Church and worked to produce harmful thistles and poisonous thorn bushes. He presented many things as dogma that were designed to cloud the true faith in the hearts of many, things which he put forth especially before the uneducated crowd in his sermons and that he also admitted into his writings.”
9 Senner, Walter: Meister Eckhart’s life, training, career, and trial, in: A Companion to Meister Eckhart, ed. Jeremiah Hackett, Leiden 2013, (Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition 500–1800, 36). pp. 42-44. Senner cites that many condemnations of groups outside the Church were occurring out of Cologne during the later years of Eckhart’s life.
10 Connelly, John, M.: Living Without Why: Meister Eckhart's Critique of the Medieval Concept of Will, Oxford 2014. Connelly’s thesis is formed out of the following on p. 3: “Eckhart was not denying the goodness of external acts altogether, but he stressed instead the importance of the attitude or motivation of the agent. Here he was following Aristotle (and anticipating Kant), and his teaching—which obviously aroused the Inquisitors’ ire—is, as we will see, closely connected to his counsel to “live without why (or will).” It represents a particular position in the age-old controversy over the role of “works” in our quest to live the good life (or find salvation), which came to be one of the principal points of contention in the Reformation, and which echoes still in the disputes between Kantians and consequentialists.”
11 Eckhart: Parisian questions and prologues, trsl. Armand Maurer, (Toronto 1974), p. 13: In the introduction Maurer states: “Eckhart defends the position that in God existence and knowing are identical in reality and perhaps even in our thought about them (ratione). He takes the same stand in his commentaries on Scripture, though in these works he does not qualify it with the cautious ‘perhaps’. Verbally at least this contradicts Thomas Aquinas, who wrote in his Summa: In God to be and to know are one and the same thing, differing only in our manner of understanding them (secundum intelligentiae rationem). Cf. Thomas De Aquino, STh Iª q. 26 a. 2. […] Eckhart does not seem pleased with the way of putting the matter [Thomas], for it appeared to him to compromise the divine unity. […] He agreed with Aquinas that we can form many concepts about God which are not synonymous in meaning, but he emphasized that this posits no distinction in God himself or even in our thought about him, […]”.
12 Eckhart Johannes: Die deutschen Werke, edited by J. Quint and G. Steer, vols I–V, Stuttgart, 1936–2007. (=DW ) Sermon 14, DW I, p. 235, 4–5; Sermon 24, DW I, p. 421, 1–422, 3; Sermon 15, DW I, p. 247, 5–6.
13 Thijssen, Hans: Condemnation of 1277, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2013, Accessed 6/2016. “Tempier's condemnation has often been depicted as the most dramatic and significant doctrinal censure in the history of the University of Paris, and a landmark in the history of medieval philosophy and theology. Yet, the doctrinal significance of the condemnation has received very diverse assessments. Since the appearance of the studies by Pierre Mandonnet and Fernand van Steenberghen, Tempier's condemnation has come to be associated with the opposition between faith and reason, caused by the introduction of newly translated philosophical sources in the Latin West, in particular Aristotle and his commentator Averroes. Studies which present Tempier's condemnation as a response to “Averroism” or to “radical Aristotelianism,” follow this line of interpretation. This interpretation is often associated with the view that Tempier's action was a symptom of an already existing opposition to rationalism, that is, against philosophical research pursued without concern for Christian orthodoxy. Evidence of the presence of rationalist tendencies at the University of Paris was found in certain articles of Tempier's syllabus, or in the prefatory letter in which Tempier expounded his notion of double truth. According to Tempier, some scholars maintained that certain views were true according to philosophy, but not according to Catholic faith, “as if there were two contrary truths, and as if against the truth of Sacred Scripture, there is truth in the sayings of the condemned pagans.” The so-called theory of double truth has been the source of much confusion. Nowadays, scholars agree that there were no medieval authors who entertained the philosophically absurd theory that two contradictory propositions – one derived from philosophical investigation, the other from Christian revelation--can both be true at the same time. Rather, Tempier's reproach should be taken as an attempt to ridicule the hermeneutical practice of commentators to evaluate a doctrine (for instance's Aristotle's) from a philosophical point of view (“philosophically speaking”) and from faith. In reality, however, medieval scholars generally supposed that in cases of conflict between reason and faith, the truth was always on the side of the faith. In more recent times, the idea that Tempier's condemnation was a symptom of the existence of rationalist currents at the University of Paris, in the sense of the emergence of philosophy as an autonomous discipline vis-à-vis divine revelation, has been further developed by scholars such as Alain de Libera, Kurt Flasch, and Luca Bianchi. Although there are differences in detail and in emphasis, they view Tempier's action as an attempt to curb the concept of philosophy as a comprehensive doctrine of natural knowledge aimed at the attainment of happiness here in this life, rather than after death. Their studies about the significance of Tempier's condemnation also address fundamental questions about the nature of philosophy in the Middle Ages. In the historiography of medieval science, the views of Pierre Duhem, have proven to be extremely influential. Duhem believed that Tempier, with his insistence of God's absolute power, had liberated Christian thought from the dogmatic acceptance of Aristotelianism, and in this way marked the birth of modern science. Especially articles 39 and 49 played a pivotal role in his eyes. Duhem's thesis has opened up the historiography of medieval science as a serious academic discipline. Yet, at the same time, no one in the field any longer endorses his view that modern science started in 1277. Of contemporary historians of science, Edward Grant probably comes closest to Duhem's vision, though his view includes many refinements and historical materials that were unknown to Duhem.”
14 Sturlese, Loris: The origins of the Opus Tripartitum in: A Companion to Meister Eckhart, ed. Jeremiah Hackett, Leiden 2013, (Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition 500–1800, 36) pp.129-131.
15 Eckhart: Expositio s. evangelii sec. Iohannem, on John 1, n° 1-283, in: LW III pp. 3 ‒ 237. For an English translation on these texts. See Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, (endnote #017) trans. by Bernard McGinn. pp. 122-173.
16 op. cit.: in John 18:38 1, n° 684-688, in: LW III pp. 599 ‒ 603.
17 McGinn, B.: Meister Eckhart Essential Sermons, Treatises, and Defense. (Paulist Press, 1981) trans. notes from p.126. “ see note 20: A remote source may be found in Augustine’s discussion of the just man in Trin.8.6, but the Meister’s development is highly original. The important principle “insofar as” (in quantum), indicating that the discussion is based on a limited, formal and abstract point of view, and was one of the key issues in Eckhart’s defense of his thought during the process against him.” McGinn has translated this on pp.72-73, Selection’s from Eckhart’s Defense.
18 Eckhart: Expositio libri Sapientiae, on Sap. c. 24. V. 3, n° 8-10, in: LW II, pp. 235-240.
19 Allison, G.R.: Roman Catholic Theology and Practice, Wheaton, 2014, Kindle edition. Location 2680 of 13099.
20 Kern, Udo: Eckhart’s Anthropology in: A Companion to Meister Eckhart, ed. Jeremiah Hackett Leiden 2013, (Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition 500–1800, 36), pp.248-249.
21 Eckhart: In Exodum n°. 54-58 in: Lateinishe Werke II, pp. 58f: Here Eckhart takes Thomas’ metaphysics to task. “In the second part it remains to take a summary glance at what our Christian teachers hand down on this. There are four points to clarify this. The first is that there is one way of speaking and thinking about beings or things and their existence and another way about the categories of things and how we make use of them. By not paying attention to this some people have fallen into many difficulties. The ten categories are not ten beings or ten things, nor are they the ten first beings and ten first things, but they are the first ten categories of things or beings. (Metphy. 4.2 (1003a) […] From this the true answer of that knotty and famous question whether there is a distinction of the attributes of God or only in our intellect’s way of grasping is clear and evident. It is certain that the distinction of divine attributes, for example, power, wisdom, goodness, and the like, is totally on the side of the intellect that receives and draws knowledge of such things from and through creatures.”
22 Eckhart: Dilectus Deo et Hominibus, cuius memoria in benedictione est. Similem illum fecit in Gloria Sanctorum. III:p. 261.11–12.
23 Walshe & McGinn: The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart (Herder, 2009) pp. 371-372.
24 Op. cit. Flasch: pp. 110-111.
25 Augustine: De Trinitate XI, 2: Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 50, p. 334.1-16, p. 335.32-49; for the English De Trinitate XI, 2 Cambridge, p.65.
26 Eckhart: Expositio libri Exodi, on Exod. c. 15.3, n° 60, in: LW II, p. 66.4-6: Here Eckhart is affirming the unity and oneness of God, He is totally ‘other’ - “Tertio, quia esse cum ente non ponit in numerum, nec universaliter forma cum formato. Esse autem et omnis forma a deo est, utpote primo esse et forma prima. Nulla igitur in ipso deo distinctio esse potest aut intelligi”. Third, because existence is not counted along with being, nor is form generally with the thing that is formed. Existence and everything for is God as the First Existence and the First Form.
27 Eckhart: Prologus in opus propositionum, n° 15, in: LW I, p. 175. 5-8: “rursus sic declaratur: impossibile est aliquod esse sive aliquem modum seu differentiam essendi deesse vel abesse ipsi esse. Hoc ipso quod deest vel abest ab esse, non est et nihil est”.
28 Eckhart: Expositio libri Exodi, on Exod. 20. 4, n° 117, in: LW II, p. 112.7-15, here translation from McGinn, B.: Meister Eckhart Teacher and Preacher. (Paulist Press, 1986) p.82: “The third proposition is that nothing is both as dissimilar and similar to anything else as God and creature. What is as dissimilar and similar to something else as that whose “dissimilitude” is its very “similitude,” whose indistinction is its very distinction? God is distinguished from everything created, distinct, and finite by his indistinction and its infinity, as is evident from [Thomas’ ST] Ia, q.7, a. 1, ad 3. Therefore, because he is distinguished by indistinction, is assimilation by dissimilitude, the more dissimilar he is the more similar he becomes. Thus, the more that one tries to speak about the ineffable, the less that one says about it as ineffable, as Augustine says in Christian Doctrine. Again, someone who denies time actually posits it, as Averroes says, because to deny time happens in time.
29 ] Mojsisch, Burkhard: Meister Eckhart: Analogy, Univocity and Unity, translated with a Preface and Appendix by Orrin F. Summerell, Amsterdam / Philadelphia 2001, p. 26. Emerging is an important distinction as the profound shift in Eckhart’s radical metaphysics in standing behind his theory of ‘being’ and is also presented from another angle in the first thesis of his Prologus Generalis in Opus Propositionem: Esse deus est. In avoiding a pantheism, this posits a subtle distinction between “absolute being” and “determinate being” or as Eckhart calls it “ens [or] esse hoc aut hoc.” Therefore, this “distinction of being” is not really a distinction at all as we see with other predecessors nor contemporaries of Eckhart but is something mostly likely gleaned from Albert the Great.
30 Kern, Udo: Eckhart’s Anthropology (#020) p. 249.
In terms of the ‘Great Western Tradition,’ Meister Eckhart more than any other scholastic interacted and fraternally deviated from the developing authority of St. Thomas Aquinas’ analogia entis (analogy of being) for Romanism's nature and grace symmetry. Ironically and by analogy, Aquinas' method mirrors the magisterial Reformers, and Eckhart's liberty exemplifies the maverick heterodox theologians of many an era. However, historically, this is rather complex and plays into Roman Catholic magisterial accommodation and Vatican II’s broadening of the tent. For the Meister was, in the end, a medieval theologian confined to his era who anticipated and looked beyond into modernity from the 'now.' Eckhart, the grandfather of German philosophy produced a oneness theology, yet its unstable element was divine immediacy, asymmetrical for Romanism’s mediation.
This brings us back to the ‘event’ of the Reformation as a historical milestone and its validity as a certain standard for doctrinal presentation through its principles of the solae, in scripture, Christ, grace, faith, and for God's glory alone. A benchmark, which culminated in the convergence of a scripturally-based interpretational alignment utilizing the original languages in accentuating apostolic and patristic authority with medieval scholastic rigor, yet still a modernity with its own selective oral tradition as supercessionism over Judaism. In light of this, the incarnation within the time-space continuum needs an important qualification.
Theological linear history tends to draw its legitimacy through the early church Ecumenical Councils attested and by Augustine articulated in Civitas Dei. The traditional Roman Catholic church medieval era utilized political exclusivity for ecclesiastical purposes with the canonization of Aristotelian first philosophy, now known as metaphysics with earlier Neo-Platonic notions. The power of the gospel produced receptive moments demonstrated by regional movements.
In the Christian high middle-ages, it could be argued that attempts of various reforms toward the Reformation could be traced. Here the question on how philosophy relates to theology emerges demontrating Rome’s metaphysical project. Although, the impulse of reform has existed throughout all ages of Christian history by doing theology but among the approved. This impulse works itself out in both positive and negative ways by theologians. The negative aspect is reinforced by natural human limitations, the corruptive factor and the noetic effects of sin, contributing to faulty ideas within organizational structure and directives, even upon the well-intentioned mind doing theology rather than prescribing sound doctrine founded in the narrative of scripture and the cultivated olive tree of Jacob/Israel.
The well-intentioned mind of Johannes Eckhart of Hochheim (1260? - 1328) produced a tedious, yet overtly rational thought. His thought demonstrates the commitment and depth involving theological discussion in the Western Church. Meister Eckhart (magister theologiae with two Parisian appointments like Thomas Aquinas) is a generally neglected theologian for research among Reformed Protestants, perhaps due to the label as 'mystic' implying irrationality, experienced-based belief and his current utility for religious inclusivism. Such a label goes against his rational approach which was without raptus an exstasis and appealed to Luther,3 Eckhart merged with a contextual mystical regional movement of the era where his unmediated spirituality resonated. This intellectus based mysticism is also indicative of the broad Roman Catholic accommodation. Eckhart’s thought should be placed within the Roman Catholic Fides et Ratio tradition affirmed by Pope John Paul II’s encyclical which in effect reaffirmed the canonized Aristotelian metaphysics of Thomas.4 Highlighting the difference between Catholics and Protestants with the use of philosophy for theology. Catholic theology is philosophy, yet not in a pronounced way, whereas Protestant evangelicals utilize philosophy more as an apologetic tool and correlation according to context. Although, this does not preclude the production of the Roman magisterium and the reality of esse – existence, substance, and through the analogia entis (the analogy of being) as descriptive rather than the Roman prescription. However, how this established the nature-grace foundation has had a limiting effect upon the reading of scripture demands further scrutiny.5
Eckhart, the Dominican monk, has received much study in general from the German academy and recently as a philosopher by historical-critical approaches. Since the 19th century, the mystical Eckhart has been presented as a forerunner of the Reformation through the extension of his ideas by his Dominican disciples, Henry Susa and Johannes Tauler as found in an influential book called Theologica Germanica re-published by Martin Luther.7 Possibly, Eckhart set ideas into play proving positive for the Reformation and sola fide. However, the condemnation of 28 propositions drawn from his teachings as questionable within Catholic dogma and 13 thereafter being condemned posthumously by the Papal Bull in Agro Domino in 1329 was warranted, but its attempt to keep simple people from hearing his ideas. not. Theology and practice do go hand and hand.8 Besides his work as a theologian, Eckhart was also an authoritative leader, organizer, and manager of the expanding Provinces of the Dominican Order in territories now known as Germany. Where his sermons interfaced with movements and devoted groups like the Beguines and the Brethren of the Free Spirit already operating outside of the Church and under scrutiny, on their way to rejection, and condemnation.9 Therefore, a certain appealing element within his thought resonated in the midst of an already spiritually saturated, yet hierarchical mediated medieval world emerging onto a new socio-economic stage.
Eckhart the theologian worked in the successive generations after Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, all men bound by their era, and these Dominican confréres impacted Eckhart profoundly. (1) Albert’s mass empirical scholarship as an early form of 'science' (Wissenschaft) out of neo-platonic presuppositions served both Eckhart’s explanations of transcendence but also German philosophic immanence, something arguably proving seminal against and throughout modernity developed with diversely expressed notables such as Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger. This places Eckhart as an intriguing figure for the currents of heterodoxy drawing on the German tradition. This not only contains the scope of various readings that promote inter-religious spiritual identification but his part in the narrative of the development of the ethical unreligious man. On the other hand, (2) Thomas as the ultimate synthesizer served Eckhart’s role as a mendicant preacher, who was instituted to guard against heresy. Eckhart, like Thomas, passionately brought the mind into the heart, yet understood the Aristotelian virtue ethic of Thomas bolstered ecclesiological authority and distorted the origin of faith, even though the Meister’s Augustinian commitments concerning sin proved weak along with a less pronounced Christology. His hamartiology and Christology held as medieval presuppositions not explicitly developed as robustly as they were 300 years later. Spiritual access, rather than religious conformity provided the fuel for his sermons. The speculative thought behind sourced philosophy mixed with a reading of scripture produced a sophisticated approach showing a certain highpoint that Thomas emulated and Eckhart followed garnering the attention of historicist scholars such as Alain De Libera and Kurt Flasch, who dub the era as an age 'thinking about thinking.'
Eckhart's rational thought was viewed as irrational as understood from his statements. A personal witness to his trial in Avignon was non-other than William of Ockham from whose philosophy Protestant magisterial theologians can trace principles, known as the nominalistic method. Ockham also ran into his own problems with Pope John XXII, but as far in assessing Eckhart’s ideas, Ockham called him more of a lunatic than a heretic. Eckhart should not be reduced to such a judgment because he wrote and said far-fetch things. He utilized the ‘four senses’ approach to understanding scripture and preached sermons as provocations to initiate a peculiar dialectic, yet these were based upon a unique metaphysic, employing all of the scholastic terminologies. In light of this, it is proposed that Eckhart was the product and victim of his own institution deviating from the Roman magisterium. The nature – grace ambiguity and the blurring of time distinctions are notable, but this metaphysic served the purpose of his idiosyncratic pursuit of spiritual reality. The way Eckhart explained deification, the homo divinus or simply the 'just', (iustus) with his teaching on detachment (gelassenheit or abgeschiedenheit) was certainly different from the doctrine of his day and seemed to promote a personal living faith from within rather than an imposed externally religious conformity that monasticism reinforced within Catholic ecclesiology. It is suggested that the Meister’s many readings and interpretations are promoted without a proper theological reformulation of Justification, Sanctification, and Glorification out of the Reformation era.
Possibly, Eckhart’s thought may have aided these components of their ordo salutis to emerge, still, an anachronistic reading of Eckhart today needs much caution. This is not an attempt for rehabilitation, but analysis and comment on Eckhart in light of Vatican II which has had a reciprocal effect on evangelical theology and proclivities highlighted by the so-called Emerging Church and Progressive Christianity movement were anachronistic readings act without historical theological skill. Current Roman Catholic spirituality also seems comfortable in going back to the Meister’s expression. It must be acknowledged, Eckhart’s metaphysical ideas deeply impacted a rational understanding of soteriology marked by its time, but this may not help anyone without the historical-grammatical reading of scripture. So with the benefit of hindsight, a task is at hand to continue to answer the question of the Reformation's relevance and our union with Christ.
On 18 April 1294, Easter day, Eckhart was in Paris as lector sententiarum, with the task of commenting on the four books of the Sentences of Peter Lombard. He opened with the sermon, (Pascha nostrum immolates est Christus. Itaque epulemur, Christ’s salvation through the passion), an academic sermon following the style of liturgical solemn sermons, constituted by I Cor. 5: 7; (for we walk by faith, not by sight) a prayer, where the theme and frequent citations of Augustine, lead into the celebration of the Eucharist. Eckhart contrasts the Doctor with the ideal of the rational and wise Aristotelian who by means of knowledge or reason alone achieves his own perfection and, thus, his own happiness, with the model of the Augustinian humble man, being conscious of himself and his own limits. The philosophical Eckhart is evident from the beginning of his academic career. This also points to how he used his philosophy, perhaps as an apologetic toward the radical Aristotelian Faculty of Arts at the University of Paris as the auctoritates are quoted throughout. The Eckhartian program, however, avoids the preambula of Thomas, who held a clearer differentiation, between philosophy for its own sake and theology. Eckhart is convinced that a philosophy of religion is possible because religion is also one of the ways in which wisdom discloses itself among other sources. Here the theological tradition that exalted the virtue of humility above the arrogance of a self-assured thought is interpreted as a consciousness of one’s own limits and, thus, opposes the knowledge of things to the knowledge of oneself. True interiority coincides with true humility. Thomas would not have denied this, but his system of moral theology, which forms the Roman Catholic magisterium was pressed into itself, taking to its logical conclusions as rational mysticism.10
This interior focus of Eckhart facilitates his homo divinus theme. In Paris in 1302, now as magister, Eckhart, and as any professor of theology, had three main tasks: to give lessons on the Scriptures, discuss and determine quaestiones (both those formulated by himself and those proposed by his students), and preach. Out of all this activity, undertaken for at least a whole academic year, if not more, there are only a few traces left outside of his bombshell quaestiones disputatae.11 When reading the Parisian Quaestiones and the few testimonies Eckhart himself left us, one gets the impression that Eckhart was fully in line with the Dominican school, defending the thesis of the primacy of the intellect over the will against the opposing Franciscan emphasis. Moreover, when Eckhart comes to determine more precisely the intellectus option, the distance he takes from Thomas is striking. Alongside his metaphysics, this ethical ends work out primarily by the ‘humble man’ which Eckhart accomplished through all that the Scriptures that proclaimed Jesus: “I said in the schools of Paris that all things shall be accomplished in the truly humble man.” The perfect man who has arrived at the awareness of himself and of the world and which, in the Latin works—in particular, the Commentary on St John’s Gospel—is presented as a 'divine man' (homo divinus) appearing with a peculiar coherence in the figure of the 'humble man'. 12
The Aristotelian - Averroist doctrines at the University of Paris may help our understanding of the value of his contribution. For 30 years earlier, this current had put forward the exact opposite of the figure of the ‘humble man,’ namely that of the magnanimous man (magnanimitas). The study and the enthusiastic deepening of the knowledge of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics emphasizing Greek values centered on the virtue of magnanimity. The received interpretations that brought the Bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier to publish a decree condemning this Aristotelian virtue in 1277 among others are complex.13 Later, in Eckhart’s time, the doctrine of 'magnanimity' was still a topic of interpretation by the professors of the arts in Paris. Surely it was not the case that Eckhart, in placing retrospectively his own professorial activity in theology in Paris under the sign of evangelical humility, that he intended to take up a specific position in favor of the bishop’s condemnation. Perhaps he intended to distance himself from the ethical doctrines of Aristotle and the Averroists employing a specific apologetic. Without directly implicating Thomas, it is clear the Meister’s target was his Dominican frater’s moral theology, which alongside his nature – esse metaphysics aided his own rehabilitative trek culminating with his canonization in 1323 and, moreover, in 19th century reaffirmed by Leo XIII in recognizing Thomas’ utility in addressing modernity and continuing ecclesiastical authority. Thomas was often seen as 'guilty by association' with Aristotle out of the impact of 1277, and his death in 1274 cut a prolific genus short at 49 years of age. But defending the Italian from Aquino generally was taken up by his brothers, however, certain German Dominicans had a different agenda. Eckhart in this regard brought forward a comprehensive original contribution by 1303, which had at its center a new metaphysical theology (deus est intelligere), emerging anthropology (intelligere est increabile), and a radical approach to ethics (the humility of the homo divinus).14
Eckhart’s Latin manuscripts (outside his sermons), became available at the end of the 19th century, found in minor libraries and his famous Parisian Quaestiones in personal notebooks, authenticated and studied. Scholarship has had Eckhart in their sights for around 90 years with a Nazi initiated critical edition of both his German and Latin works. They emphasize that “all that the Holy Scripture says about Christ, it comes completely true about the good and divine man.” These texts philosophically explain much of what Eckhart’s sermons brought to his listeners. Kurt Flasch (see endnote 5) downplays this, but Eckhart’s expositions on the Scriptures such as the Commentary on St John’s Gospel consider only some philosophic auctoritates for his metaphysics. This resonates with an apologetic tone in my estimation. Here in the most theological Gospel, the majority of his comment concerns the first chapter.15 Two thirds refer to the prologue (Joh. 1:1–18) very little else is touched upon, even chapters 18 and 19, which narrate the passion and death of Jesus, are cursory. Here Eckhart dwells mostly on the verse: Quid est veritas? (18:38), while not considering the passion of Christ.16 Eckhart states in the proem of the commentary in following Augustine to justify his method: “that Augustine in Book 7 of the Confessions says that he read a large part of the first chapter of the Gospel of St John in the books of certain Platonists”. According to Eckhart, it is within these “In the beginning lines”, and interpreted in the right way, which “teach the natures and properties of things, both as far as their understanding of esse – existence is concerned and their way of operating, whilst they build up our faith, they teach us about the nature of things” (LW III, n° 13, p.12). The first six verses of Chapter 1 contain 15 points, which are axioms, rules, and foundations and are indispensable in order to interpret metaphysical reality. In summary: in divine things, as in the natural and artificial ones, that which is produced or proceeds from something else is always pre-contained in that from which it comes to be and is thus produced. That is to say, the first foundation concerns that which, from Albert onwards, is designated as 'essential causation', according to which the product is always present in a simpler way in its own cause and is not essentially different from its own cause, though it appears different. It is to this philosophical truth that the evangelist refers when he declares: in principio erat Verbum. That which is produced from something can be compared to the word which is pronounced, which says something and communicates something about whom it is who pronounces it. From this, the following comes about: that what proceeds (procedens) is in the producing principle as a ratio and similitudo, that is to say in a “more simple” and indeterminate form (LW III, n° 4-7, pp. 6-8). The first four axioms are concerned with the identity between the principle and principled. The other axioms, in contrast, deal with the difference between principle and principled. Hence, it follows that the Son, or the Word, is equal to the Father. At this point, Eckhart introduces a distinction: if that which he has said up until now concerns, on his own explicit affirmation, both the relation between Father and Son in the Trinity (in divinis) as well as the relation between principle and principled, cause and effect, in nature and in art (things made) (in naturis et artificialibus), however, it is only in the Trinity that this relation of perfect equality comes about, of which the verse verbum erat apud deum speaks. The preposition apud, “by”, is only said of the Son in the Trinity, while created beings are not apud, but sub (i.e. inferior to the Creator).
The argumentative process set out by Eckhart is rigorously dialectical. He expounds the Trinitarian relations which constitute one of the cases or examples of essential causality. The others are the relation between the knowing subject and known object, and the relation between God and created beings. Since Eckhart saw the entities of creation as ‘no-thing’ it can be argued that this was ground zero of the modern subject and object that has dictated philosophy into the contemporary era. From the point of view of essential causality, these three cases manifest the same characteristics: co-essentiality, eternity, and intellectuality. Again, the created being as such (i.e. as a being determinate and separated from its principle), is a pure nothing, for all of its being, its ratio is the same as the principle which has produced it, just as the concrete boat is nothing in comparison with the model that exists eternally and intellectually in the mind of its designer. This indifference which Eckhart demonstrates with regards to the created is evident in the relation between a general term (justice) and a particular term (just), which he subsequently speaks of precisely in order to clarify the 15 points he examines. The 'just', or the 'just man', as a concrete entity, is nothing in himself as this individual. As 'just', this individual has no value, no sense. If, on the other hand, he is taken on the basis of an ontic relation with transcendent justice itself from which he derives, then and then only is the just man justice itself. God’s “necessary entering into” the human being is not to be understood in moral terms but as a metaphysical necessity."17 Thomas’ metaphysics and ethics were part of an integral system, Eckhart could do no less. If this provides the extrinsic dimension of the imputation of the Reformed doctrine of 'justification' is a worthy question.
In commenting on The Book of Wisdom found in the Apocrypha, there is a development of the terms of the love/consciousness relation, a classic argument of the times, but one on which Eckhart dwells with particular interest, trying to bring out all the nuances. He takes up the will/intellect relation, as a good Dominican and develops it in his own distinctive manner. Again his insistence on the subject of justice and the relation between the just and justice. For Eckhart, justice is not something to follow or describe in a certain way, nor is a man just because he adapts himself to justice or behaves in conformity with it. From the point of view of knowledge (gnosis), only the just man, that is to say, he who is detached, is a man of intellect, a man of the spirit. Only the intellectus is, in effect, capable of absolute substance, that is, actual divine wisdom.18 This explicit metaphysical direction of Eckhart works with a univocal aspect of the intellectus as the imago Dei and tends toward the reductionist tendency in defining the soul as an immaterial element.19 It also reduces the Fall to the loss of that perfect state which implies no need for the moral reasoning capacity within the first couple. Is this traditional physically separated Platonic? No. But neither was Thomas with his Aristotelian emphasis where nature was posited as exclusive. These Dominicans were most original in their use of the auctoritates.
Eckhart agrees with the tradition in defining sin first of all as death (Rom. 6:2), since it is a turning away from God, Being, and life (LW IV, 162, 11f.) and hence a turning away from blessedness and virtue (DW II, 14, 1f.). Accordingly, the human person ought not to want to commit sin in time and eternity (DW V, 232, 3–5). God and sin are incompatible. Sin is negatio esse and thereby a negation of God’s self-communication. “God is pure Being and sin is nothing and removes [one] from God” (DW II, 597, 6). The sinner gives primary importance to nothing, but God gives primary importance to Being. In addition to the pejorative understanding of sin, Eckhart also knows an affirmative understanding: “The inclination to sin is always useful to the human person,” bringing benefit and gain (DW V, 212, 9f.). “The more gravely he sins, the more does he praise God” (LW III, 426, 9f.). God smites the sinner in order, via the sin, to open up to him the path to salvation. God “is very ready” to suffer all the damage of sin, “in order that the human person may subsequently” come “to a great knowledge of his love” and to fiery thankfulness (DW V, 234, 7–10). To bear the frailties of sins is “a great training” in the human person’s trust in God (DW V, 301, 7–9). God, who alone forgives sin, forgives readily, and “the greater and graver the sins are, all the more immeasurably is God pleased to forgive them” (DW V, 238, 2f.). Forgiveness creates complete trust. One to whom much is forgiven will love much (DW V, 244, 2f.). God brings the human person “out of a sinful life into a divine life” (DW V, 232, 7) on the path of righteousness. 20
The inquisitorial authorities understandably jumped all over any insinuation that God could be glorified in human sin, even more from sermons of a leader of the Order of the Preachers who had grass-root access.21 Although, this may not seem so blasphemous from our vista with certain qualifications the Reformation dealt with in not implicating God for evil. Meister Eckhart’s esse – ‘existence’ is modally complex and mostly follows Thomas on ‘substantial form’ but with a different application of metaphysical terms such as ‘analogy’.22 The Commentary on Exodus provides a clear example of Eckhart positing the whole and its sharing in a single existence, something that would have kept him out of trouble if he only ascribed to Thomistic or rather Dionysian 'participation' in his defense, but he consciously did not. Here in Exodus, Aristotle is cited on how to speak properly of 'being, '(Meta. VII 1028a18), thus beings are only related by analogy to the one absolute being (existence), which is 'substance' as only the substantial form gives 'existence - esse', an accident finds existence already in its subject. Therefore, all of these are beings or things (res) extrinsically, in analogy to the One that is a being and a thing, namely substance, which is God. For Eckhart, both nature and grace hold an axiomatic identity through reason and the supernatural which seem presupposed already within the created human.
German Sermon 73 from the apocryphal, The Wisdom of Jesus Sirach is typical of this.23 Eckhart the preacher illustrates: "I was once asked why good folk feel so happy with God and are so zealous to serve Him. I replied by saying it was because they had tasted God, and it would be strange indeed if the soul that had once tasted and tried God could stomach anything else. One saint says that the soul that has tasted God finds all things that are not God repugnant and stinking. [...] Often I feel afraid, when I come to speak of God, at how utterly detached the soul must be to attain to union with Him. But no one should think this impossible: nothing is impossible for the soul that possesses God's grace. Nothing was ever easier for a man than it is for the soul that has God's grace to leave all things: no creature can harm her. St. Paul says, ‘I am persuaded that no creature can separate me from God: not good fortune or bad fortune or life or death". 24
The foundation of his hamartiology is found in his extensive Commentaries on Genesis produced in two different works. Here the Meister often cites the Jewish philosopher Moises Maimonides and seems to track the theologian Origen rather than Augustine. Adam and Eve are types of the humans we were meant to be. The Fall is seen as the loss of our highest ability in moral reasoning. There was no 'will'. It is astounding that Eckhart’s inquisitor and trial did not even bring up his teaching differing from Augustine’s original sin nor the way his salvific Christology never came under scrutiny, this all certainly seemed trivial in light of his concept of God and appears as a metaphysical eisegesis over an exegesis of scripture. Something Roman Catholic theology has always accommodated, but Eckhart ventured onto a point of no return. Instead of measuring Eckhart’s project with a primarily supra-temporal concept of philosophy one really must go beyond the conventional division between 'natural' and 'supernatural' knowledge. Eckhart shows a two-story Godhead built from his Neoplatonic sources: the philosophically recognizable one God (Deus unus) lived downstairs, while the Triune God (Deus trinus), only recognizable supernaturally, lived upstairs. Eerily Kantian to say the least. For Eckhart, the dividing line between nature and super-nature or grace lay elsewhere. And he explained it in the first two Parisian Quaestiones, Eckhart describes the specific nature of the intellect, its characteristic agreement (condicio), in order to conceptualize God beyond esse – ‘being’ existence. To the German Dominicans, he said: “there is nature within the intellectus, but the intellectus itself is something higher than nature; it is the site of the ideas. It belongs to a higher world, namely, the intellectual world that Augustine and Plato, his source, had described" (In Eccli., LW 2, n. 10, 240.1–7). The intellectus is super- nature. Here Plato’s intellectual world will eventually become Leibniz’s “realm of grace.” It was possible to condemn this view, but it is what Eckhart said and thought, and it changed the intellectual coordinate system of the time.25 It also shows indirectly how the Roman Catholic church has canonized Thomas’s metaphysics with his preference of Aristotle, to bring the discussion back into the empirical. Protestant proclivities against this as founded upon rationality or innate rationalism shows the Reformed preference following Calvin.
Eckhart’s originality is not an irrational system nor a simple pantheism. This touches on the depth of the intellectus soul in Augustine’s De Trinitate and the self-manifestation of God in the Trinity which is followed by his manifestation in the human person relating toward creation just as Augustine posited, i.e. the external object, the act of seeing, and the attention of the mind.26 Everything in creation as 'form' ascribes God’s esse existence.27 But this divine existence does not manifest itself in its entire fullness in a neo-platonic sense. So from creation’s “view from below”; the unum, bonum, verum existence of the creatures is immanent in the eternal divine existence. Creation’s dependency on God presents certain structures in reading Eckhart. Even to the point of understanding modes and differences where “esse – existence” acts as its non-negotiable, holding together an understanding of its absolute necessity as manifested in its further unity in creation. The interpretive key wrought here is through similarity and dissimilarity also shown in The Gospel of John.28 This should precede metaphysical tools such as analogy and univocity which Thomas and Thomists hold dogmatically. This differentiation of Eckhart’s seeks a ‘view from above’ or placing it relative to God. In Eckhart’s Commentary on Exodus: Nor any likeness which in heaven above, or on the earth below (Ex. 20.4; LW II n° 117); he focuses on what is known as dissimilar and similar to something else as that whose ‘dissimilitude’ is its very ‘similitude,’ whose indistinction is its very distinction. God is distinguished from everything created, distinct, and finite ‘being’ by His being as an indistinction to other things and through His infinity. Therefore, because he is distinguished by indistinction, and is assimilated by dissimilitude, the more dissimilar he is, the more similar he becomes. Thus, the more one tries to speak about the ineffable, the less one says about it as ineffable.29 Eckhart is profoundly logical here and simply uses Thomas' distinctive, analogy, to clarify these sentences in the quote through the authority of Augustine and by using apophatic speech Eckhart pursues truth — God the omnipotent creator and savior of His people as revealed in Exodus. This commentary stands as a prime example in how Eckhart compares the divine with the human through strict philosophical and theological language in expounding scripture and it should not be read as pantheistic in the conventional sense. Again, the super-natural possibility for man, over the natural fallen sensing man distracted by esse - existence hoc et hoc.
The righteous person lives out of the one righteousness of the one God, which appertains univocally both to God and to the righteous person (LW III, 141, 15–142, 1). All the righteous are righteous because they are one in the one God (LW II, 366, 6f.) Righteousness comes to the human person through God’s justifying action, for “God justifies . . . the believers directly through his own self, not in cooperation” (LW II, 297, 10f.). The human person is righteous, not because of that which is his own; rather, the righteous person “receives his whole Being . . . from righteousness alone.” All the righteousness of the Son is due to the unbegotten righteousness of God the Father (LW II, 392, 5–393, 5). Human persons should reflect not so much on what they do, as on what they are. “If you are righteous, then your works too are righteous. One should not think about staking holiness on an action,” since “it is not the works that make us holy.” “Rather, one should base holiness on Being . . . No matter what works are performed by those who are not of great Being, nothing will come out of them” (DW V, 197, 4–198, 7). In his whole Being, the human person who is righteous is a son of the righteousness of God (LW II, 392, 10–12). Through the birth of God in the soul, the righteous person, as the Son, is conformed to righteousness. “The Father gives birth to his Son as the righteous person and to the righteous person as his Son” (DW II, 258, 2f).30
If such Eckhartian high scholastic speculation pushed the eventual formulation of the Reformed doctrine of justification onto its theological moment continues to be pondered. However, it converges with a Roman Catholic time and space-less incarnational distortion and becomes anachronistically reinforced out of those reading the controversial theologian so popular today and as unaware of his use of traditional metaphysics, whence such a nomenclature has been distorted into contemporary theological oblivion.
To be fair, the context for Eckhart’s provocation reoccurs often within the Western tradition and may have merits pointing toward personal reformation. The profundity of his explanations is admirable. The persistence of the Roman Catholic magisterium merging of justification within sanctification as facilitated by sacramental ecclesiology continues. For Eckhart, our own efforts of an imitation of Christ’s detachment seem to have more to do with our own redemption than Christ’s death on the Cross, but this could be read as a needed emphasis for the high-middle ages. This is attractive for the so-called evangelical anti-penal substitution emerging church movement' where Christ’s death has a more general and theological meaning as Eckhart expressed with the prime emphasis of self-emptying kenosis as deference to God’s will. Although this clearly moves out of any remaining vestige of orthodoxy even one that Catholic dogma holds. We live in confusing times, where the 'reform' verb requires and alignment with the solae of the Reformation. Anachronistic readings demand historical contextual guidelines.
1 Clark, R. Scott. Always Abusing Semper Reformanda, http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/always-abusing-semper-reformanda/ accessed June 2016. “Certainly, the Reformed writers spoke of a “Reformed church” and of the necessity of reformation. But men such as Calvin, who published a treatise on the need for reformation in 1543, did not use the phrase. The Dutch Reformed minister Jodocus van Lodenstein (1620-77) first used something like it in 1674 when he juxtaposed “reformed” with “reforming,” but he did not say, ‘always’.” […]The full phrase ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei (the church reformed, always reforming according to the Word of God) is a post-World War II creature. It was given new impetus by the modernist Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968), who used variations of the phrase with some frequency. Mainline (liberal) Presbyterian denominations have sometimes used variations of this phrase in official ways.”
2 De Chirico, Leonardo: The Blurring of Time distinctions in Roman Catholicism, Themelios, 29/2, p. 41. “Just as Chalcedon recognized he basic parameters for Christology, the important distinction between hapax and mallon with regard to the contours of the Christian faith that are indicated by the Word of God. In both cases even a minimal violation would become devastating, producing effects of enormous consequence. [...] The argument which will be suggested here, [..] is that Roman Catholicism operated a crucial breach of the boundary between hapax and mallon in its understanding of the Church as a prolongation of the Incarnation. This breach subsequently caused a series of further incursions, above all in the doctrines of the Eucharist and revelation.”
3 Oberman A. Heiko. Simul gemitus et raptus: Luther und die Mystik, in: Die Reformation: von Wittenberg nach Genf (Göttingen, 1986), pp. 45–89. “Remarkable as it is that mystical terminology finds its way into Luther’s understanding of faith – above all after 1515 – it is equally apparent on the other side that he does not come to his specific concept of faith from medieval mysticism, but finds access to particular mystical traditions and concepts on the basis of his new concept of faith (the first lectures on the Psalms). This can be observed with the mystical concepts of ‘raptus’ and ‘exstasis’, which he precisely does not understand in the traditional mystical sense of being transported above the sphere of mere belief (cf. Oberman ibid. pp. 74–79), but as the illuminated recognition of faith – thus in the gloss on Vulgata-Ps. 115.11: “Exstasis illa . . . est raptus mentis in claram cognitionem fidei, et ista est proprie exstatis.” Cf. on this Wolfgang Böhme (ed.): Von Eckhart bis Luther. Über mystischen Glauben (Karlsruhe, 1981) [= Herrenalber Texte 31], especially the contributions of Heiko A. Oberman, Reinhard Schwarz and Karl-Heinz zur Mühlen (this on Luther’s understanding of ecstasy p. 46f.).
4 Pope John Paul II, himself a philosopher, spoke approvingly of Eckhart’s central teachings. However, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was more cautious, warning of the “danger . . . of syncretism.” John Paul II’s remarks and Cardinal Ratzinger’s can be found respectively at http://www.eckhartsociety.org/eckhart/eckhart-man and http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/cdfmed.htm
5 Kilcrease, Jack: Lutheran Theology and the Metaphysical question, Theologia Crucis blog, http://jackkilcrease.blogspot.it/ April 3, 2014, Accessed 16/06/2016. “The entire discussion of sanctification brought up a number of issues. Chief among them is my use of speech-act theory, as well as my use of categories of thought taken from relational and ecstatic metaphysics to explicate my views of sanctification. […] What substance metaphysics say about reality is that there are real entities within it, and that they possess an identity internal to themselves that persists over time. This is true irrespective of whether or not certain predicates of their reality are altered (my hair will turn grey some day!). Moreover, God is a certain something and humans are a certain something, and our language portrays that reality to us in a realistic fashion. So, the goal of substance language and concepts is linguistic realism and the recognition of the continuity of identity. Therefore, what we get from substance language is fundamentally a law of identity and also a law of propositional truth. This can be seen in the Catholic commitment to things like Transubstantiation and the doctrine of created grace. In the case of the Reformed, they enter into their discussion of the two natures in Christ and the sacraments with philosophical presuppositions about what divinity and humanity are (non capax, etc.), and what God would do and what he would not do. And so, ultimately they ignore or obfuscate what Scripture says about these things. Secondly, Lutheranism (or perhaps more accurately, people who define themselves as Lutheran!) has functioned with a number of different philosophical traditions: Nominalism, Scotism, Aristotelianism, Leibnizianism, Kantianism, Hegalianism, and Existentialism. Many of these philosophical schemes have had unfortunately distorting effects on the teaching of biblical truth. My opponents tend to think the Aristotelian one was pretty good. In some respects, this was true. Nevertheless, this too also created any number of problems. One example might be the false teaching of "receptionism," that is largely a function of the Melanchthonian appropriation of Aristotle's casual scheme. All causes must be in place (including reception) to actualize a reality. This distorts the gospel-promise of the Supper by effectively claiming that my action of reception is a contributing cause of the body and blood of Christ being present, rather than the sole cause lying in the promissory and consecratory word. The third reason that we cannot canonize any one metaphysical scheme is that as Oswald Bayer has pointed out, this would be the theology of glory. To know a universal scheme within which we can relate the ontic reality of God to all beings in an absolutely consistent way would in fact to suggest that we could know God's being in itself, and how all of God's works (which, often seems contrary) are coordinated with one another. This is a problem because we know that the theology of glory always leads to conceit and self-justification. Such a knowledge of God is not proper to this life, but the next life. In this life, an attempt at such a knowledge leads to creatures believing in God as a transparent ideal, rather than a savior. From this, theology and ethics becomes structured around trying to be conformed to that ideal. Such knowledge will only be possible and helpful to us in the next life when God purifies us and conforms us to his ideal reality. If metaphysical and ontological terminology and schemes have historically distorted aspects of biblical teaching, then why bother with them at all? One has heard this argument from Lutherans often enough, and indeed to some extent in the history of Protestant theology. The young Luther was contemptuous of philosophical terminology borrowed from Aristotle. Of course, he never completely rejected philosophical learning (he has very nice things to say about Plato in the Heidelberg Disputation, as he trashes Aristotle). Moreover, many of the presuppositions he used to attack philosophical reason were in fact borrowed from Nominalist philosophy (this is particularly the case in his arguments against Zwingli). Finally, he ultimately did acquiesce to Melanchthon's revival of a purified Aristotelianism in the curriculum of Wittenberg by the 1530s. Moreover, we find of course a similar rejection of philosophical metaphysics in the considerably less orthodox theology of 19th century Liberal Protestantism. Schleiermacher and Ritschl in particular rejected philosophical tradition as a basis or in some case, even a tool, for theological discourse. Adolf Harnack built an entire theory of the fall of the Church around it in his History of Dogma by positing that Christian theology had gradually been corrupted by Greek philosophy (his famous ‘Hellenization Thesis’). Unfortunately for the coherence of their argument, they attacked philosophical reason on the basis of Kantian presuppositions, thereby revealing that they were unable to escape philosophical schemes themselves!” […] Ultimately, the problem with trying to escape philosophy and metaphysical presuppositions is twofold. First, since philosophy primarily deals with the question of what is real and what is good, it is built into the unconscious presuppositions of every culture. Since the theologian or ordinary believer are not immune to their culture, all theologians and believers will have unconscious commitments to a particular philosophy. […]This ecstatic account of the reality of our identity as it subsists in the grace of God in creation, also sheds light on redemption as well. In Christ, I am righteous, and indeed, this makes little sense if I am understood as a centered-substance that persists over time. Seen from the perspective of the law of identity, I am not Christ and Christ is not me. So how could Christ be my righteousness, since he is not me? Similarly, if Christ is not me, then how can he take on my sin? (Historically, Catholic accounts of atonement going back to Anselm have denied that Christ is imputed with our sin!) Nevertheless, if we understand that our being is something ecstatically constituted, I can see that Christ is the new Adam and the same eternal Word of God that ecstatically gives me my existence through creation. And insofar as he speaks me forth anew in the address of the gospel, I have a new identity and reality before God external to myself in him. In this, I am restored to the image of God lost in the Fall. Instead of living a centered existence under the exclusive definition of the law, I now live ecstatically “in Christ through faith and in love through my neighbor” (Luther).
6 Flasch, Kurt: Meister Eckhart, Philosoph des Christentums, München, 2007. Translated by Anne Schindel and Aaron Vanides, Yale 2015. The exclusive philosopher Eckhart as a challenge to this designation as “mystic” is the culmination of 20th century studies as expressed by German medieval scholar Kurt Flash. He states concerning 19th century studies on page 46: “These works often categorize Eckhart a priori as a mystic, either in the title or within the opening sentences. Others defined him through specific philosophical currents and called Eckhart ’s intellectual position “Aristotelian-Thomistic” or “Platonic”; they characterized him as an advocate or enemy of “scholasticism.” Many distinguished between scholasticism and mysticism, seeing scholasticism as an abstract art of concepts, and mysticism as intuitive or as immediate religious experience. Still others sought a reformer before the Reformation. All of them lacked access to the Latin manuscripts. To put it bluntly: what these scholars held in their hands was Eckhart’s Sunday output; what he did from Monday to Saturday was beyond their knowledge. It had consequences for their interpretations of Eckhart. Everyone ranged between certain alternatives: pantheism or theism, realism or idealism, loyalty or disloyalty to the church. But these decisions were impossible to make without Eckhart’s Latin works.” These works were philosophical and not theological according to Flasch, seems a distortion for the Dominican as there is a secondary debate concerning the philosophical tone set by Albert the Great. Still, Flasch’s robust philosophical grid is a project that shows a certain bias against the order and religion he left as a young man. Flash continues stating further on in page 75: “Meister Eckhart thought of himself as a philosopher. People have made him into a counselor of souls, a minister to nuns, a theologian, a combatant against heresy, a preacher, a reformer before the Reformation, and an icon for the depth of the German soul. Perhaps he was all those things; for the moment, it is anyone ’s guess. Even if he were one or all those things, however, we still know him best through his philosophical writings. He explained that his commentary on the Gospel of John belonged to this group as well. And he began his sermon cycle by announcing that he would argue philosophically (German sermon 101, DW 4:342.33–35). By “philosophical arguments,” Eckhart probably understood something different from what we mean by that term today. It remains to be investigated; “philosophy,” after all, did not always mean the same thing throughout its long history. That Eckhart would have confused theology with philosophy in the intellectual climate of around 1300, however, is extremely unlikely.” This robust philosopher emphasis by Flasch is contested by current historical critical scholars of Eckhart such as Walter Senner OP. Senner who is a meticulous medieval historian and my doctoral mentor. Father Senner demonstrates a fair minded German Dominican brother toward Eckhart, and believes the condemnation of Eckhart as unjustified by political alignments and the use of philosophy was part of any rational argument. Concerning the metaphysical question this is certainly presupposed. It is clear that Eckhart worked as a theologian which was peculiar within the scholastic context. Medieval philosophy is characteristically theological as a natural theology also seemed possible in the name of reason. With the possible exceptions of Islamic thinkers such as Avicenna and Averroes, and the faculty of arts at the university of Paris subject to the 1277 condemnations, most medieval thinkers did not consider themselves philosophers at all: for them, the philosophers were the ancient pagan writers such as Plato and Aristotle. However, their theology used the methods and logical techniques of the ancient philosophers to address difficult theological questions and points of doctrine. Eckhart’s comment on scripture mainly focused on difficult, yet foundational texts. However, this does not preclude his unique agenda for the faithful and theology imbedded into an already solidifying metaphysical tradition for the Magisterium. Thomas Aquinas, following Peter Damian, argued that philosophy is the handmaiden of theology (ancilla theologiae). Nevertheless, Eckhart’s use of philosophy was much more pronounced by his diversity of auctoritates not uncommon in the day. This highlights an important aspect of historical theology, often insufficiently addressed from the vista of modernity which limits Protestant emphases. Allowing Flasch the last word between “mystic” and “scholastic”, he stresses the spirit of the university of Paris profoundly shaped Eckhart. It could be argued that Eckhart was an early prototype of a Philosopher of Religion focused on the embryonic scientific stage which the era represented in its understanding of cosmology and he tried to apologetically reconcile this toward his university context. Albert the Great and Eckhart’s direct mentor Dietrich of Freiberg (who was notably anti-Thomas) are sources for this. Without stretching Eckhart yet onto another interpretation, this seems a valid research direction.
7 Ozment, Stephen E.: Homo Spiritualis: A Comparative Study of the Anthropology of Johannes Tauler, Jean Gerson and Martin Luther - 1509-1516 - In the Context of Their Theological Thought, (Studies in Medieval & Reformation Thought) 1969. Strehle, Stephen: The Catholic Roots of the Protestant Gospel: Encounter Between the Middle Ages and the Reformation, (Studies in Medieval & Reformation Thought) 1995.
8 Eckhart, Johannes: Die lateinischen Werke, eds. E. Benz, C. Christ, B. Decker, H. Fischer, B. Geyer, J. Koch, E. Seeberg, L. Sturlese, K. Weiß, and A. Zimmermann, vols I–V, Stuttgart,1936–2012 (=LW,) LW V: p.597,2–17; Essential, p. 77: “In agro dominico (In the field of the Lord): In the field of the Lord over which we, though unworthy, are guardians and laborers by heavenly dispensation, we ought to exercise spiritual care so watchfully and prudently that if an enemy should ever sow tares over the seeds of truth (Mt. 13:28), they may be choked at the start before they grow up as weeds of an evil growth. Thus, with the destruction of the evil seed and the uprooting of the thorns of error, the good crop of Catholic truth may take firm root. We are indeed sad to report that in these days someone by the name of Eckhart from Germany, a doctor of sacred theology (as is said) and a professor of the Order of Preachers, wished to know more than he should, and not in accordance with sobriety and the measure of faith, because he turned his ear from the truth and followed fables. The man was led astray by the Father of Lies who often turns himself into an angel of light in order to replace the light of truth with a dark and gloomy cloud of the senses, and he sowed thorns and obstacles contrary to the very clear truth of faith in the field of the Church and worked to produce harmful thistles and poisonous thorn bushes. He presented many things as dogma that were designed to cloud the true faith in the hearts of many, things which he put forth especially before the uneducated crowd in his sermons and that he also admitted into his writings.”
9 Senner, Walter: Meister Eckhart’s life, training, career, and trial, in: A Companion to Meister Eckhart, ed. Jeremiah Hackett, Leiden 2013, (Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition 500–1800, 36). pp. 42-44. Senner cites that many condemnations of groups outside the Church were occurring out of Cologne during the later years of Eckhart’s life.
10 Connelly, John, M.: Living Without Why: Meister Eckhart's Critique of the Medieval Concept of Will, Oxford 2014. Connelly’s thesis is formed out of the following on p. 3: “Eckhart was not denying the goodness of external acts altogether, but he stressed instead the importance of the attitude or motivation of the agent. Here he was following Aristotle (and anticipating Kant), and his teaching—which obviously aroused the Inquisitors’ ire—is, as we will see, closely connected to his counsel to “live without why (or will).” It represents a particular position in the age-old controversy over the role of “works” in our quest to live the good life (or find salvation), which came to be one of the principal points of contention in the Reformation, and which echoes still in the disputes between Kantians and consequentialists.”
11 Eckhart: Parisian questions and prologues, trsl. Armand Maurer, (Toronto 1974), p. 13: In the introduction Maurer states: “Eckhart defends the position that in God existence and knowing are identical in reality and perhaps even in our thought about them (ratione). He takes the same stand in his commentaries on Scripture, though in these works he does not qualify it with the cautious ‘perhaps’. Verbally at least this contradicts Thomas Aquinas, who wrote in his Summa: In God to be and to know are one and the same thing, differing only in our manner of understanding them (secundum intelligentiae rationem). Cf. Thomas De Aquino, STh Iª q. 26 a. 2. […] Eckhart does not seem pleased with the way of putting the matter [Thomas], for it appeared to him to compromise the divine unity. […] He agreed with Aquinas that we can form many concepts about God which are not synonymous in meaning, but he emphasized that this posits no distinction in God himself or even in our thought about him, […]”.
12 Eckhart Johannes: Die deutschen Werke, edited by J. Quint and G. Steer, vols I–V, Stuttgart, 1936–2007. (=DW ) Sermon 14, DW I, p. 235, 4–5; Sermon 24, DW I, p. 421, 1–422, 3; Sermon 15, DW I, p. 247, 5–6.
13 Thijssen, Hans: Condemnation of 1277, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2013, Accessed 6/2016. “Tempier's condemnation has often been depicted as the most dramatic and significant doctrinal censure in the history of the University of Paris, and a landmark in the history of medieval philosophy and theology. Yet, the doctrinal significance of the condemnation has received very diverse assessments. Since the appearance of the studies by Pierre Mandonnet and Fernand van Steenberghen, Tempier's condemnation has come to be associated with the opposition between faith and reason, caused by the introduction of newly translated philosophical sources in the Latin West, in particular Aristotle and his commentator Averroes. Studies which present Tempier's condemnation as a response to “Averroism” or to “radical Aristotelianism,” follow this line of interpretation. This interpretation is often associated with the view that Tempier's action was a symptom of an already existing opposition to rationalism, that is, against philosophical research pursued without concern for Christian orthodoxy. Evidence of the presence of rationalist tendencies at the University of Paris was found in certain articles of Tempier's syllabus, or in the prefatory letter in which Tempier expounded his notion of double truth. According to Tempier, some scholars maintained that certain views were true according to philosophy, but not according to Catholic faith, “as if there were two contrary truths, and as if against the truth of Sacred Scripture, there is truth in the sayings of the condemned pagans.” The so-called theory of double truth has been the source of much confusion. Nowadays, scholars agree that there were no medieval authors who entertained the philosophically absurd theory that two contradictory propositions – one derived from philosophical investigation, the other from Christian revelation--can both be true at the same time. Rather, Tempier's reproach should be taken as an attempt to ridicule the hermeneutical practice of commentators to evaluate a doctrine (for instance's Aristotle's) from a philosophical point of view (“philosophically speaking”) and from faith. In reality, however, medieval scholars generally supposed that in cases of conflict between reason and faith, the truth was always on the side of the faith. In more recent times, the idea that Tempier's condemnation was a symptom of the existence of rationalist currents at the University of Paris, in the sense of the emergence of philosophy as an autonomous discipline vis-à-vis divine revelation, has been further developed by scholars such as Alain de Libera, Kurt Flasch, and Luca Bianchi. Although there are differences in detail and in emphasis, they view Tempier's action as an attempt to curb the concept of philosophy as a comprehensive doctrine of natural knowledge aimed at the attainment of happiness here in this life, rather than after death. Their studies about the significance of Tempier's condemnation also address fundamental questions about the nature of philosophy in the Middle Ages. In the historiography of medieval science, the views of Pierre Duhem, have proven to be extremely influential. Duhem believed that Tempier, with his insistence of God's absolute power, had liberated Christian thought from the dogmatic acceptance of Aristotelianism, and in this way marked the birth of modern science. Especially articles 39 and 49 played a pivotal role in his eyes. Duhem's thesis has opened up the historiography of medieval science as a serious academic discipline. Yet, at the same time, no one in the field any longer endorses his view that modern science started in 1277. Of contemporary historians of science, Edward Grant probably comes closest to Duhem's vision, though his view includes many refinements and historical materials that were unknown to Duhem.”
14 Sturlese, Loris: The origins of the Opus Tripartitum in: A Companion to Meister Eckhart, ed. Jeremiah Hackett, Leiden 2013, (Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition 500–1800, 36) pp.129-131.
15 Eckhart: Expositio s. evangelii sec. Iohannem, on John 1, n° 1-283, in: LW III pp. 3 ‒ 237. For an English translation on these texts. See Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, (endnote #017) trans. by Bernard McGinn. pp. 122-173.
16 op. cit.: in John 18:38 1, n° 684-688, in: LW III pp. 599 ‒ 603.
17 McGinn, B.: Meister Eckhart Essential Sermons, Treatises, and Defense. (Paulist Press, 1981) trans. notes from p.126. “ see note 20: A remote source may be found in Augustine’s discussion of the just man in Trin.8.6, but the Meister’s development is highly original. The important principle “insofar as” (in quantum), indicating that the discussion is based on a limited, formal and abstract point of view, and was one of the key issues in Eckhart’s defense of his thought during the process against him.” McGinn has translated this on pp.72-73, Selection’s from Eckhart’s Defense.
18 Eckhart: Expositio libri Sapientiae, on Sap. c. 24. V. 3, n° 8-10, in: LW II, pp. 235-240.
19 Allison, G.R.: Roman Catholic Theology and Practice, Wheaton, 2014, Kindle edition. Location 2680 of 13099.
20 Kern, Udo: Eckhart’s Anthropology in: A Companion to Meister Eckhart, ed. Jeremiah Hackett Leiden 2013, (Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition 500–1800, 36), pp.248-249.
21 Eckhart: In Exodum n°. 54-58 in: Lateinishe Werke II, pp. 58f: Here Eckhart takes Thomas’ metaphysics to task. “In the second part it remains to take a summary glance at what our Christian teachers hand down on this. There are four points to clarify this. The first is that there is one way of speaking and thinking about beings or things and their existence and another way about the categories of things and how we make use of them. By not paying attention to this some people have fallen into many difficulties. The ten categories are not ten beings or ten things, nor are they the ten first beings and ten first things, but they are the first ten categories of things or beings. (Metphy. 4.2 (1003a) […] From this the true answer of that knotty and famous question whether there is a distinction of the attributes of God or only in our intellect’s way of grasping is clear and evident. It is certain that the distinction of divine attributes, for example, power, wisdom, goodness, and the like, is totally on the side of the intellect that receives and draws knowledge of such things from and through creatures.”
22 Eckhart: Dilectus Deo et Hominibus, cuius memoria in benedictione est. Similem illum fecit in Gloria Sanctorum. III:p. 261.11–12.
23 Walshe & McGinn: The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart (Herder, 2009) pp. 371-372.
24 Op. cit. Flasch: pp. 110-111.
25 Augustine: De Trinitate XI, 2: Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 50, p. 334.1-16, p. 335.32-49; for the English De Trinitate XI, 2 Cambridge, p.65.
26 Eckhart: Expositio libri Exodi, on Exod. c. 15.3, n° 60, in: LW II, p. 66.4-6: Here Eckhart is affirming the unity and oneness of God, He is totally ‘other’ - “Tertio, quia esse cum ente non ponit in numerum, nec universaliter forma cum formato. Esse autem et omnis forma a deo est, utpote primo esse et forma prima. Nulla igitur in ipso deo distinctio esse potest aut intelligi”. Third, because existence is not counted along with being, nor is form generally with the thing that is formed. Existence and everything for is God as the First Existence and the First Form.
27 Eckhart: Prologus in opus propositionum, n° 15, in: LW I, p. 175. 5-8: “rursus sic declaratur: impossibile est aliquod esse sive aliquem modum seu differentiam essendi deesse vel abesse ipsi esse. Hoc ipso quod deest vel abest ab esse, non est et nihil est”.
28 Eckhart: Expositio libri Exodi, on Exod. 20. 4, n° 117, in: LW II, p. 112.7-15, here translation from McGinn, B.: Meister Eckhart Teacher and Preacher. (Paulist Press, 1986) p.82: “The third proposition is that nothing is both as dissimilar and similar to anything else as God and creature. What is as dissimilar and similar to something else as that whose “dissimilitude” is its very “similitude,” whose indistinction is its very distinction? God is distinguished from everything created, distinct, and finite by his indistinction and its infinity, as is evident from [Thomas’ ST] Ia, q.7, a. 1, ad 3. Therefore, because he is distinguished by indistinction, is assimilation by dissimilitude, the more dissimilar he is the more similar he becomes. Thus, the more that one tries to speak about the ineffable, the less that one says about it as ineffable, as Augustine says in Christian Doctrine. Again, someone who denies time actually posits it, as Averroes says, because to deny time happens in time.
29 ] Mojsisch, Burkhard: Meister Eckhart: Analogy, Univocity and Unity, translated with a Preface and Appendix by Orrin F. Summerell, Amsterdam / Philadelphia 2001, p. 26. Emerging is an important distinction as the profound shift in Eckhart’s radical metaphysics in standing behind his theory of ‘being’ and is also presented from another angle in the first thesis of his Prologus Generalis in Opus Propositionem: Esse deus est. In avoiding a pantheism, this posits a subtle distinction between “absolute being” and “determinate being” or as Eckhart calls it “ens [or] esse hoc aut hoc.” Therefore, this “distinction of being” is not really a distinction at all as we see with other predecessors nor contemporaries of Eckhart but is something mostly likely gleaned from Albert the Great.
30 Kern, Udo: Eckhart’s Anthropology (#020) p. 249.
