Meister Eckhart: His Times and His Writings

MEISTER ECKHART: HIS TIMES AND HIS WRITINGS IN INDICATING SOME of the best modern studies of Eckhart's life and works one must begin with the writings of Josef Koch, whose death in 1967 was so great a loss.1 His major achievement is the magisterial edition, still not complete , of the German and Latin works for the Deutsche FUS tnpartitum, the 'Threefold Work '.2q Koch writes of this project : '... we probably shall not be far out if we attribute it to the mature man who at the height of his powers is setting in order the riches. of the knowledge he has gained . . . we can still form a picture of this work, which was to have contained more than a thousand sententiae in fourteen treatises, because we know the models which Eckhart had in mind when he formed his plan. Such philosophical works, consisting of prminico does not condemn articles 17 and 18 as heretical; it does this only for the first fifteen articles, and, as we have seen, the last two it does condemn , but accepts that Eckhart never taught them. The rest, including 17 and 18, it deplores for their rash language and the difficulty .with which they can be reconciled with sound doctrine , but it does no more. Eckhart's Reply to His Critics With regard to this reply of Eckhart's, the difficulties surely are not so great. Karl Kertz, in his learned and subtle exposition of Eckhart's teaching on 'the birth of the Word in the soul,' 28 recognized and partly investigated what should be decisive in determining whether teaching that ' man is the onlybegotten son of God• is true or :false: does this only-begotten son of God share in the Hypostatic Union or not? In this one instance, when Eckhart writes of the identity of the second person of the Trinity, and of all the :faithful sons of God who are in the Trinity ' by adoption,' this cannot, I believe, be interpreted other than as teaching that God's creatures do not share in the Hypostatic Union. Of the many urgent tasks awaiting Eckhart theologians, none is perhaps more needed than a patient and thorough examination of what he taught upon this topic. We do not know, but we may guess that Fournier perceived that this defense o:f Eckhart's was theologically admissible, and that this is why articles 17 and 18, among others, were deplored but not condemned. How deplorable are Eckhart's views and language? Much ••Ibid. 1 SS7. 98 ' Meister Eckhart's Teaching on the Birth of the Divine Word in the Soul ' (Tradition 15, 1959, S27-S6S). ECKHART: TIMES AND WRITINGS H9 has always depended, I think, on the willingness of his auditors and readers to take scandal. If one has the misfortune (this was the case with me) to make one's first acquaintance with him through In agro dominico, one of two reactions will be most probable. Either one will surmise (as I for long did) that this was a field in which an enemy came to sow tares, that Eckhart never said what he was accused of, or one will take up Ockham's attitude (though not, let us hope, with his impure motives), and write Eckhart off as a purveyor of insidious and irrational falsehoods. The first reaction has not been possible since Laurent's careful identification of each article from In agro dominico with a place or places in the genuine works, where Eckhart did write what he was alleged to have written.29 What is now needed, and is being done, step by step, is to do for him what Fournier wished to achieve for Durandus, to restore the scandala to their contexts and reflect whether they are, after all, so scandalous. Let me now briefly examine only two places to illustrate what I am asking for; in one Eckhart may seem to be teaching ' false deification'; in the other false quietism. The first is from The Book of Divine Consolation, where, it is true, Eckhart writes: ' For that which he loves is God the Father unbegotten, and he who loves '-that is, every just soul-' is God the Son...