The first of the four sermons takes its cue from a homiletic theme that con-sists of two biblical quotations. The first states: when all things were keeping silent, there came into me from above, from the royal throne, a hidden word:
dum medium silentium tenerent omnia . . . de caelis porro ad me dictum est ver-bum absconditum (Wisdom 18:14–15). Eckhart extracts three key terms from this and another biblical passage (Job 4:12): medium, silence, hidden word.
The keyword “medium” he translates with the noun “means” and gathers from the text, in a daring exegesis, that no means, no middle stands between the divine Word and the ground of the soul: the birth occurs unmediated.
The second keyword is “silence,” and Eckhart interprets it as follows: when the Father enters into the ground of the soul, human beings act receptively.
They listen and are not to speak in the process. They receive and are not to act. The third key term is “hidden word”: the Word that is born within us is more easily recognized in unknowing than in knowledge. I provide a short analysis of these three key terms.
There is no medium. Becoming one happens in unmediated form; noth-ing created steps in between the soul and God, the Father. This means first of all: the ground of the soul must not be drawn outward by its powers. It has to break off its relations with the outside. In that sense, it is active; it removes ob-stacles. It interrupts the three types of intellectual relations with the outside: it intermits the worldly conditions that are produced by the intellect, memory, and will. The rule calls for a hard break, and any weakening of it is forbidden.
In addition, the rejection of any intermediary between the Father and the ground of the soul within the context of theology signified a modified version of the doctrine of grace as it had been developed since the reception of Aristotle. The question “What is grace?” had long been answered in two ways. On the one hand, grace was God’s benevolence, that is, the goodness and love that he himself was and that he bestowed on humanity. It was an “un-created grace”; it was an essential benevolence or God’s goodness. On the other hand, grace could mean the effect that this benevolence was said to cate in men, that is, an impulse to act or a certain disposition in those who re-ceived grace. Peter Lombard did not strictly define this efficient grace ontologically; it was no accident of the soul for him, not something created, but the presence of the Holy Spirit within the recipients of grace. During his trial, Eckhart invoked this doctrine of grace by the Lombard. Most theo-logians of the thirteenth century, however, even Bonaventure, defined grace
ontologically and in fixed terms. Grace, they said, on the one hand was God’s benevolence, that is, his nature. On the other hand, the effect of this divine benevolence within man was not a substance, for no substance could be with-in another substance. What remawith-ined, then, were two conceptions: divwith-ine grace was either a temporary divine impulse or a disposition toward good actions. Grace, insofar as it is within man, certainly belongs within the catego-ry of accident; it is a quality of the soul (so, for example, in Thomas Aquinas Sth I–II 110, 2 ad 2). It was created as such. Grace (gratia) is something cre-ated within the soul that is given freely (gratis), Aquinas wrote (2 Sent. 26, 1, 1). And if grace is created, then it can only be an accident of the soul, for it is added to man’s essence and presupposes it. The ontological analysis of this given grace for Aquinas resulted in an interpretation of grace as a reality within a being as that being’s property, actus subjecti in esse accidentali (ibid., ad 3). And more precisely, grace belonged with the first type of the category
“quality”: Gratia est in prima specie qualitatis (De veritate 27, 2 ad 7). Thomas Aquinas said as well that the relation of the soul to its final aim occurred with-out mediation, withwith-out something else stepping in between them. Yet for him, this immediacy consisted of God creating the accident “grace” immediately as an additional property. That meant that God immediately created a mediat-ing quality of the soul. For Eckhart, that was not enough. Grace had a role in strengthening the powers and removing obstacles, but the ground of the soul did not include anything created.11 The Thomistic solution did not suffice for his pathos of immediacy. Only God himself can bless the soul: immediately, unmediated, without medium.
The differences in the concept of grace resulted in different interpreta-tions of Christianity: Thomas Aquinas believed that something immediately created by God entered the soul, whereas Eckhart’s God himself entered the soul unmediated. Eckhart’s sermon initially calls for a break with the love of the worldly, but also invites a renovation of the Christian self- understanding.
If Eckhart had focused simply on cultivating the souls of individual people, preferably in remote nunneries containing women prone to deep feeling, he would hardly have fallen into conflict with the guardians of Christian truth.
But he offered a new interpretation of Christianity and preached a new con-ception of the Christian way of life.
His second key term exemplifies this: silence. His admonition “You shall keep silent. Let God act and speak,” “dû solt swîgen und lâz got würken und spre-chen” (101, 355.116–17), contains a twofold challenge. First, to interrupt every
contact with the outside world, to become ignorant of all things, to no longer know anything even about one’s own life, to no longer overfeed oneself with images of worldly things or with oneself. The faculties of the soul constantly produce worldly images and pull the ground of the soul outward. Resisting it is a necessity; not passivity, but active withdrawal: “Detach yourself from the turmoil of external works! Flee and hide yourself from the storm of internal thoughts when they create strife!,” “vliuch und verbirc dich vor dem gestürme in-wendiger gedanke, wan sie unvride machent” (101, 357.133–34). We have to con-sider every word of it: not every work is to be avoided, but active change is necessary. What Eckhart demands is inward action (102, 416.83). Thoughts are a hindrance if they create strife. Even fleeing is an action. The well- counseled soul fabricates imagelessness. It rejects the flow of images that it constantly receives from the intellect, memory, and will. It has to know that it cannot contemplate everything at once. The narrowness of consciousness de-mands that it be decisive: its powers are closely connected with it; it loses itself through the powers to the outside if it does not object. It cannot at once both look outward and develop an internal, intellectual action (102, 417–18, 101–11).
The soul does not have an image of itself. Images are determined, well defined; but the soul itself is indeterminate, indeterminable, not well defined.
In another sense, it is itself an image: it does not have an image of itself, for it is the unfixed image of the eternal God. Thus, not an image. But its unfa-miliarity with itself and, relatedly, its imagelessness do not preclude it from knowing very well that it exists (its thatness) and from comprehending its unfamiliarity with itself as an impulse to hunt after its own essence (101, 361.154–60). Eckhart highlights, in coincidental formulations, that unknow-ing and the manifestness of the self exist simultaneously. It is not true that Eckhart “denies all self- recognition by natural means.”12 We do not know the self, but it shows itself:
It emerged and was hidden. Ez schein und was verborgen. (101, 362.168) It hides itself and nonetheless reveals itself. Ez birget sich und wîset sich doch.
(101, 364.182–83)
Only when one no longer knows it does it show itself and reveal itself. Dâ man niht enweiz, dâ wîset ez sich und offenbâret ez sich. (102, 419.125)
The self shows itself as darkness. The birth of God presupposes an entering into this self- darkness. That is what silence means.
But it means more. The soul must know—and execute that knowledge in an internal act—that it has to prepare for the birth of God by breaking with any dependence on externals, but that it cannot itself effect its own transformation. It is not what induces the act of birth. God effects it; the soul receives it. God must effect it wherever it is possible. His nature demands it;
it is who he is. He does not withhold anything; he does not disseminate him-self in an act of random selection. But he is the Creator, and the Son is the Created. We ourselves become the Son, we step into the role of the Created:
we become the Created. Eckhart also calls this being created as the Son a lîden (suffering). Like Dionysius the Areopagite, he says that we lîden, that is, we suffer, God (102, 421–22.134–45).
It is important that we think along with Eckhart to determine what
“lîden” can mean here. There are interpreters of Eckhart who are not inter-ested in the minor difference between “suffering” God and receiving a blow to the head. To think along with Eckhart means that we do not suppress questions of this kind and that we look more carefully at the text. For suffer-ing God happens in the mind, in the head of the soul. God, who does not destroy but perfects nature, does not cut off the head of the soul but gives it its divine form. The mind is by nature incapable of suffering, impassibilis, as Eckhart says in good Aristotelian fashion.13 It cannot lîden at all. It can receive, but this receiving is, according to its nature, an action. Nothing falls into it from the outside. It has to appropriate what is supposed to be available to it. Its nature demands that it actively receive what is supposed to be avail-able to it into its essence. Latin- speaking Peripatetics often repeated that knowing was a certain kind of suffering, est quodam pati, but they explained that what was meant in this case was receptivity, and passio here meant re-ceiving something, recipere.14 The active intellect, Eckhart says, can never cease in its activity, because it is its essence. It is always active. It is similar to the divine Father; it effects a new essence in things.15 The hidden essence of the soul, the abditum mentis, is always shining, as Eckhart says in reference to Augustine.16
Someone who has followed along with Eckhart’s train of thought knows: receiving is also an action; he pays attention to Eckhart’s choice of words—the Middle High German word “lîden” is not always identical to our
“suffering.” No theologian will admit that the Son of God is “suffering” from his own creation in all eternity. He is created, and he intellectually accepts his being created. He sees and affirms his receiving of the wholly identical divine
nature. And so does the divine man. Our modern word “suffering” invokes improper associations. Eckhart was able to write: God as Father acts, the Son lîdet, that is, he is born (German sermon 40, DW 2:279.1). Suffering in our modern sense is unfamiliar to God in eternity (Book of Divine Consolation, DW 5:48); he had to become man in order to experience it, and only in that way does he lîden within the suffering man (5:51, 53, 54). The word “lîden”
takes on a different nuance depending on whether it is used by God or by the mind, and these nuances are not always synonymous with the modern term
“to suffer,” not even when Eckhart writes that he is lîdende in hearing but ac-tive in seeing (102, 421.143–44). The mind (nous) was called apathés in Aristotle, and Eckhart calls the intellectus “impassibilis”; modernizing and sentimentalizing tendencies loom large when we claim, in an overly literal translation, that mind- nous- intellectus is “suffering.” Our salvation depends not on our (external) works, but on our suffering of God, daz wir got lîden (102, 422.145), but this receiving is at the same time our highest activity.
Blessedness consists not of doing but of receiving, beatitudo siquidem consistit in receptione (Latin sermon 11, 1 [first biblical passage discussed], LW 4, n. 112, 105). This type of “suffering,” passio, does not take away anything but per-fects: Passio illa nihil abicit, sed perficit. That is why it is sweet (n. 113, 107).
Eckhart’s final word regarding the suffering of God is: blessedness is not a kind of being overcome, but of being presented with a gift—it is understand-ing and becomunderstand-ing one. Bliss is the naked substance of God, nuda dei substan-tia, and it is found, received, touched, and used by the intellect. This receptivity is simultaneously the highest work: Dîn lîden ist alsus dîn oberstez werk (102, 425.162).17
Eckhart knew: he was speaking in a world with a new mercantile bent.
Therefore, he accentuated—updating Dionysius the Areopagite—that we do not make, acquire, or earn our own felicity (101, 354.108). The heavenly realm suffers violence, he said, but he was referring to the precondition of felicity, to the irreversible break (102, 418.115–17; 103, 478.45–46; 103, 490.149), not to the intellectual receptivity within the beatifying birth of God.
Allow me a few words about Eckhart’s third key term: God enters as a hidden word, verbum absconditum. The ground of the soul is unfamiliar, and it is united with the unfamiliar God. The birth does not occur if we imagine before our eyes the philosophical- dogmatic tenets of God’s properties (103, 475.15–477.30); it is not a mere act of the intellect, not a result of academic study. The genesis of the deified Man, the homo divinus, is not rational in this
narrowly rationalistic sense. Eckhart distanced himself from the knowledge of God obtained through reason, as traditionally taught in the schools. But he certainly did not contest the possibility of knowing God and the soul via philosophy. In Aristotelian fashion, he postulated the dependence of think-ing on ththink-ings—that is, thinkthink-ing as a faculty of the soul—in order to prove the unfamiliarity of God and of the ground of the soul. He insisted that this type of understanding first entered into darkness. He elaborated: God was an abyss, and the soul was also an abyss, and they united in an abysmal, that is, inscrutable, fashion. The traditional sciences of the schools needed to be silent; their knowledge had to recognize itself as unknowing before God’s light would reveal itself. It arrives like a powerful flash that inverts every-thing that existed before it came (103, 488.124–37). New light inundates us incessantly (102, 412.32–36). The last words are not powerlessness and darkness, but perfection and heavenly feast: hospitality and celebration at the divine court (102, 415.78), here on earth. Even though God at times with-draws himself, the birth of God means that God is born; it is the new beginning of the divine man. The heart of the soul remains but is trans-formed: you are reborn. Transformed knowledge develops out of learned unknowing (102, 420.130). The intellectual nature is perfected, not destroyed (104, 576.125–278). Admittedly, it requires the radical break. The necessity of the turnaround is not abolished. The entering into the inner desert (103, 482.34) and darkness (caligo; 103, 478.39–44) remains. Love is stronger than death. It survives the complete detachment from things and from traditional knowledge (103, 492.168–72).