Scribd
Upload
109 views2 pages

Meister Eckhart: Union of Soul and God

1. Meister Eckhart was a 14th century German Dominican theologian and writer who was a leading speculative mystic. In his sermons, he explored the union between the individual soul and God. 2. Eckhart entered the Dominican order at age 15 and studied in Cologne. He later taught theology in Paris and received a master's degree. Some of his main works included the Talks of Instruction which discussed self-denial, will, and obedience to God. 3. Eckhart's teachings explored the relationship between God and the soul, stating that God's operation and man's becoming are one. He taught that detachment from individual things allows one to discover their identity with

Uploaded by

Qura Tul Ain
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
109 views2 pages

Meister Eckhart: Union of Soul and God

1. Meister Eckhart was a 14th century German Dominican theologian and writer who was a leading speculative mystic. In his sermons, he explored the union between the individual soul and God. 2. Eckhart entered the Dominican order at age 15 and studied in Cologne. He later taught theology in Paris and received a master's degree. Some of his main works included the Talks of Instruction which discussed self-denial, will, and obedience to God. 3. Eckhart's teachings explored the relationship between God and the soul, stating that God's operation and man's becoming are one. He taught that detachment from individual things allows one to discover their identity with

Uploaded by

Qura Tul Ain
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Meister Eckhart

Dominican theologian and writer who was the greatest German speculative mystic. In the
transcripts of his sermons in German and Latin, he charts the course of union between the
individual soul and God.
Johannes Eckhart entered the Dominican order when he was 15 and studied in Cologne .In
his mid-30s, Eckhart was nominated vicar (the main Dominican official) of Thuringia. Before
and after this assignment he taught theology at Saint-Jacques’s priory in Paris. It was also in
Paris that he received a master’s degree (1302) and consequently was known as Meister
Eckhart.
Eckhart wrote four works in German that are usually called “treatises.” At about the age of 40
he wrote the Talks of Instruction, on self-denial, the nobility of will and intellect, and
obedience to God. In the same period, he faced the Franciscans in some famous disputations
on theological issues. His main activity, especially from 1314, was preaching to the
contemplative nuns established throughout the Rhine River valley. He resided
in Strasbourg as a prior.
.

1.Dissimilarity:
“All creatures are pure nothingness. I do not say they are small or petty: they are pure
nothingness.” Whereas God inherently possesses being, creatures do not possess being but
receive it derivatively. Outside God, there is pure nothingness. “The being (of things) is
God.” The “noble man” moves among things in detachment, knowing that they are nothing in
themselves and yet aware that they are full of God—their being.

2. Similarity:
Man thus detached from the singular (individual things) and attached to the universal (Being)
discovers himself to be an image of God. Divine resemblance, an assimilation, then emerges:
the Son, image of the Father, engenders himself within the detached soul. As an image, “thou
must be in Him and for Him, and not in thee and for thee.

3. Identity:
Eckhart’s numerous statements on identity between God and the soul can be easily
misunderstood. He never has substantial identity in mind, but God’s operation and man’s
becoming are considered as one. God is no longer outside man, but he is perfectly
interiorized. Hence such statements: “The being and the nature of God are mine; Jesus enters
the castle of the soul; the spark in the soul is beyond time and space; the soul’s light is
uncreated and cannot be created, it takes possession of God with no mediation; the core of the
soul and the core of God are one.”

4. Breakthrough:
To Meister Eckhart, identity with God is still not enough; to abandon all things without
abandoning God is still not abandoning anything. Man must live “without why.” He must
seek nothing, not even God. Such a thought leads man into the desert, anterior to God. For
Meister Eckhart, God exists as “God” only when the creature invokes him. Eckhart calls
“Godhead” the origin of all things that is beyond God (God conceived as Creator). “God and
the Godhead are as distinct as heaven and earth.” The soul is no longer the Son. The soul is
now the Father: it engenders God as a divine person. “If I were not, God would not be God.”
Detachment thus reaches its conclusion in the breakthrough beyond God. If properly
understood, this idea is genuinely Christian: it retraces, for the believer, the way of the Cross
of Christ.

You might also like