The first great disciple of Boehme after his death was a German who took refuge in Holland, Johann Georg Gichtel ( 1638-1710). We owe to Gichtel first of all an edition of Boehme's works ( 1682). Gichtel also developed his theosophy in numerous epistles, which were published in seven volumes
under the title Theosophia Practica. During his life, Gichtel gathered around him a small family of kindred spirits. After his death, his disciple Johann Wilhelm Ueberfeld, a German who had likewise taken refuge in Holland and was his biographer and the editor of Theosophia Practica, founded an actual society, the Community of Brothers of the Angelic Life.
Gichtel was a visionary, but he interests us mainly because of the way he expounded Boehme's doctrine. He accentuated its tendency toward dualism, going so far as to defend Manicheism. Gichtel's dualist spirit is seen in his asceticism. Before turning to Boehme, Gichtel, a German Protestant born in Ratisbonne, a city where Reformed and Catholic lived side by side, had considered becoming a monk. It was not a true vocation, but it left in him a disdain for the flesh that pushed him so far as to renounce marriage. Like Boehme, Gichtel opposed celestial flesh to terrestrial flesh. He celebrated his wedding to Wisdom. But Boehme did not go so far as to prohibit marriage; he tolerated it because of the divine patience exercised until the day of judgment. Boehme himself was married and had children.
Gichtel bent Boehme's doctrine in the direction of dualism. He was faithful to the master, however, in rejecting the theory of apokatastasis, whose defenders took the universality of redemption to the letter, inferring the redemption of the devil and the end of hell.
Among the Germans who were "converted" to Boheme's ideas in Holland, we must mention the Silesian Quirinus Kuhlmann ( 1651-1689). He was initiated into Boehme's doctrine by the same man who had taught Gichtel, Friedrich Breckling ( 1629-1710), a German from the north. Kuhlmann was also influenced by Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil ( 1595-1661), another German, a Swabian, living in Holland. Thus all these German lands -- Bavaria (in the person of Gichtel), Silesia, Schleswig, and Swabia -were reunited in Holland in the name of Boehme.
Quirinus Kuhlmann was burned at the stake in Moscow. He was a militant millennialist, who saw in Boehme not only the prophet of the eternal gospel but also one called to establish it. Kuhlmann was a chiliast revolutionary. Gifftheil, under whose influence Kuhlmann had come, took him to be a new David. Nothing could have been more opposed to the spirit of Boehme than to seek to establish the reign of Christ on earth. Gichtel himself reprimanded these impatient prophets. Finally Kuhlmann dedicated a cult to the divine Sophia. On this point he would have been faithful to Boehme had he not established a dubious analogy between Sophia and a sister soul named Maria Anglicana. Any linking of Sophia with the earthly Eve would have horrified Boehme. For Gichtel it was the height of impiety.
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We turn now to theologians who did not advertise themselves as disciples of Boehme but were influenced by him. The first is a French Protestant, a Huguenot, Pierre Poiret ( 1646-1719), born in Metz. His works were published in French, but he was a pastor in Germany and spent the last forty years of his life in Holland. It was in Amsterdam in 1687 that he published his most important work, L'Oeconomie divine.
Some major themes of Boehme's theosophy are found in Pierre Poiret. Thus, he understood that hell is at the root of the nature of the human soul. Like Boehme, he affirmed that in order to gain access to true life one must have lived through the anguish of hell. And the mystical theology that developed within German Protestantism, of which Poiret was a representative, rested on the idea
of the second birth. The elect person privileged with a second birth has a foretaste of the eternal happiness to be granted after the last judgment. Now this type of "pre-eternity" makes one forget the beyond a little. This is a marked tendency in the spirituality of Pietism. To be sure, it does not lead one to confuse heaven and earth; nevertheless, the kingdom of God is located between the two. It is established on the one hand within the soul of each believer throughout every human epoch. It is further objectivized on the collective level in the reign of the elect during the last millennium. This reign in the twilight of time appears at the border between what is here on earth and what is beyond. Similarly, the world of the soul is an intermediary between the body and the spirit. It is the middle space between time and eternity; it is the privileged place of the mystical theology of which Pierre Poiret is an eminent representative. This is a logical development from Boehme's system.
On the other hand we are becoming further removed from Boehme. It was in the seventeenth century, in Germany and Holland, that mystical Christianity became systematized within Pietism. In Poiret as in Gottfried Arnold, of whom we shall speak later, mystical theology appears as an attempt at synthesis between different Christian traditions. Poiret was an
indefatigable compiler, editing the works of Christian mystics. A veritable library of mystics was being created. Mystical theology is founded on this work, which seeks to achieve a genuine summation.
Different traditions mingled in this theology. First there is the confluence of medieval German mysticism and the theosophy of Boehme. Certainly the theosopher echoed the mystics of the past, but he also differed greatly from them. Thus, for Boehme, God offers himself to
contemplation only within the limits of a form, whereas the mysticism of Tauler aimed at immersion in the ocean of divinity beyond all forms. Poiret more or less did away with these differences. He created an amalgam which risks making one forget the specificity of theosophy.
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To these two currents is added a third, that of contemporaneous Roman Catholic mysticism. In his library of mystics Poiret devoted a large place to the Frenchwoman Madame Guyon ( 1648- 1717), whose name evokes a heresy known as quietism, which was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church. This spirituality is for many people a feminine mysticism. As such it is different from the theosophy of Boehme. The theosopher celebrated the divine Sophia (Wisdom), but this did not prevent him from attributing to the female sex the nature of the dark fire. As for Gichtel, who also glorified Wisdom, we know what hatred he had for women.
Thus, Pierre Poiret was one of those through whom the theosophy of Boehme was transmitted, but he grounded it in a context that betrays the eclectic spirit of mystical theology.
Poiret was fascinated by a visionary whose writings he edited, Antoinette Bourignon ( 1616- 1680), who was born in Lille and died in Holland. Though Bourignon had not read Boehme, she believed herself to be the Virgin whose coming at the twilight of time Boehme had announced. She came to be venerated as the Mother of the True Believers. When she died, Poiret declared the saint to be "the most divinized and pure soul who walked the earth since Jesus Christ." Here then is a "mystical" adventure to illustrate what was then called "Boehmenism."
Antoinette Bourignon may remind us of Gichtel, because she also considered marriage an abomination. But Gichtel's mysogyny did not permit him to feel any sympathy whatsoever for the type of feminine mysticism she represented. As for Poiret's veneration of this "saint," it
displays the ambiguity of "Boehmenism." On the one hand, Poiret is an intelligent reader of Boehme's works. On the other hand, he becomes an enthusiast for a prophecy which is attributed to Boehme but which has nothing else in common either with the work of the theosopher or with his spirit.
Gottfried Arnold ( 1666-1714) does not present himself as a disciple of Boehme in the manner of Gichtel, but he contributed greatly to making Boehme accessible to his epoch. Arnold published a treatise in 1700 entitled The Mystery of the Divine Sophia, in which he echoed Boehme and Gichtel. He also published the latter's epistles.
Arnold's most famous work, however, is a monumental production entitled Impartial History of Churches and Heretics ( 1699). We may speak here of a Copernican revolution in religious historiography. In fact, when Arnold wrote his History he no longer followed criteria of orthodoxy, although he was himself a Lutheran pastor; instead, he reversed the roles. It is the visible churches that have fallen away from the faith, and the heretics who represent the true church. Arnold reversed the traditional study of heresy.
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In this apology for heresy, the heretic par excellence, Jacob Boehme, occupies a place of honor. Arnold took pleasure in portraying the theosopher's agreement with scripture and the church fathers. Gottfried Arnold held that the only true church was the invisible church. Yet he was a pastor and did not leave the visible church. But this was not a contradiction according to him, since if the true children of God enjoy perfect freedom vis-à-vis external constraints, they submit to them, in a spirit of mortification. It is this submission to Babel that Boehme himself practiced while clerical authority was persecuting him. Boehme remained faithful to the visible church even though according to him one could gain salvation without having been baptized with a sacrament administered by human hands.
The true children of God observe the external rite in mortification. But they also do this for their neighbors, that is, all those who, unlike themselves, are not privileged with twice-born souls. For such people, the visible church is an institution that has its value. They need to be guided to acquire faith, and the rites serve as a support for them. It is necessary therefore to maintain religion. That is why Arnold attacked separatists who left the church out of impatience. This distinction between true children of God and other Christians proves to be of capital importance within Pietism, as it already had been with Boehme. Even more than Sophianic mysticism, it is the duality between the invisible church and the visible churches, on the one hand, and, on the other, that between true children of God and common Christians, which places Arnold in the current of thought that began with Boehme.
This same duality is found in Count Nikolaus Zinzendorf ( 1700-1760), the founder of the Herrnhut community, of which the Moravian Church, still very much alive in America, is an offshoot. The duality mirrors an invisible separation: the true children of God remain faithful to the visible church even while they are elsewhere. The twice-born faithful are members of two churches -- one visible, the other invisible. As for other believers, they belong only to the visible temple.
From its beginning, the Assembly of Brothers (Brüdergemeine) conceived of itself as the communion of the true children of God. It was absolutely distinct from the communion of
ordinary believers within the visible church. According to the Spirit which presided over its creation, it located itself above confessions. The religion of the Brothers, a religion of the heart, was the only true religion. It did not mingle with any of the visible religions, however reformed they might be.
Nevertheless, the Brothers maintained their practice within the visible church, imitating Jesus, who meticulously performed the rites of the
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synagogue. They were part of two churches. Through their body of light, that of the Inner Person, they were members of the body of Christ. This body made up the only true church on earth, invisible to the eyes of the flesh. The Brothers, however, belonged to one of the visible churches through the perishable body which they had not yet left behind. With regard to this body, they were not distinguishable from other believers.
The visible church, even when Christian, is the synagogue. The church, the only true church, is the communion of those who by the privilege of their second birth have become participants in the divine nature, according to the words of scripture ( 2 Peter 1:4).
According to our earthly body, we are citizens of this world and are always under the law, like the Jews of the Old Testament. The visible religions are themselves, without exception,
expressions of the law, which is abrogated only for true believers and then only at the level of the Inner Person. Thus, the rule of law and that of the Gospels operate simultaneously until the consummation of time.
The law exists relative to sin. It is the manifestation of divine wrath. For Zinzendorf as for Boehme, there are two faces to the divinity. God manifests himself through his love and through his wrath. Love is synonymous with light, while wrath is identified with the dark principle. The law is at once the expression of divine wrath and divine patience. It was instituted for human good, but at the same time is the sign of human downfall. Thus it was, for Zinzendorf, that religions practiced in visible churches existed as a result of divine patience. They prepare for conversion. To be sure, one day this patience will end; this will be the Day of Wrath, the fall of Babel. For Zinzendorf, Babel was not only Rome; it was the totality of all visible churches. On this point Zinzendorf is in agreement with Boehme. He similarly echoes the theosopher when he describes the Lamb, the Christ, offered to the wrath of the Father. This wrath is the devouring fire of which Boehme speaks in the vocabulary of scripture. Zinzendorf expresses himself in Boehme's style when he defines the blood of Jesus in alchemical terms. This blood is the
universal tincture which purifies and regenerates. It is the fire that annihilates corrupt matter; it is the light that gives life.
Zinzendorf did not claim to be a disciple of Boehme. On the contrary, he protested his orthodoxy. Nevertheless, the main ideas of Boehme reappeared in his theological discourse. He was without doubt influenced by an avowed disciple of Boehme, to whom we shall now turn. Although it is true that the two men had a falling out, the hypothesis of an influence nevertheless appears completely legitimate.
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Friedrich Christoph Oetinger ( 1702-1782) was a dignitary of the Lutheran Church of Württemberg and one of the great figures of Swabian Pietism. Oetinger declared himself a disciple of Boehme, who represented in his eyes an age of revelation. Oetinger viewed himself as living in a later age, but the theosophy of Boehme had not for all that passed away. On the contrary, it had not yet been fully discovered, and there remained the task of making clear what Boehme had expressed in an obscure fashion. It was this task that Oetinger set about to
accomplish.
But Oetinger was not a disciple of Boehme alone. He absorbed the heritage of the Kabbalah, upon which he made a commentary, in its christianized form, harmonizing it with Boehme's theosophy. It is this conjunction of the theosophy of Boehme and Christian Kabbalah that constitutes the uniqueness of Oetinger's writings. We have an illustration of it in his most important work, the commentary on a kabbalistic painting commissioned in the seventeenth century by a princess of Wiirttemberg for a small church in the Black Forest -- Oeffentliches Denckmahl der Lehr-Tafel . . . ( 1763).
Boehme places at the origin of eternal nature a massive power of contraction which produces bodies and gives them an extreme hardness. Immediately thereafter an opposite force appears, which causes them to break apart. These two forces confront each other, resulting in a terrible vortex, which is the dark life. Nature is originally torn apart by this struggle, a cause for infinite suffering. It must cease for light to pour forth by the action of gentleness. When it does, nature will be harmonious. Darkness is dissonance; light is synonymous with harmony and a blessed life.
There are therefore two phases in the cycle of archetypal nature, which Boehme calls eternal nature. The first is dark. It is the time of merciless combat; the two forces facing each other appear irreconcilable. It is only in the second phase that violence is conquered by gentleness, and then the light streams forth.
Oetinger modified Boehme's system. He saw clearly at the origin of nature an opposition between two forces, but they are opposites, which are balanced at the outset. Swabia is
accustomed to reconciling opposites. For Oetinger, this reconciliation is brought about through an alternation between two poles. The opposition between opposites is described as a type of polarity -- in fact, a bi-polarity. Goethe will echo Oetinger when he sees in polarity, thus defined, the phenomenon upon which all life rests.
Oetinger was a scientist who embraced the knowledge of his time. He outlined a theology of electricity. The fire that is the reality of life is electricity, which is governed by polarity. Thus Oetinger stressed the resolution of
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opposites. In reading his works one often forgets the terrible confrontation which for Boehme was the drama of life at its creation. Oetinger softens the memory of hell, the universal suffering at the root of Being.
For Boehme, not only does hell lie at the origin of all life; it remains even when light has