E HAVE FOLLOWED ECKHART'S PATH of the outflowing of all things within and without God. But Eckhart the teacher and preacher did not wish his audience merely to be con
tent with whatever intellectual grasp of bullitio and ebullitio was possi
ble for them-the purpose of his message was to rouse his hearers to a new state of awareness that would lead them back to the divine ground within. It is interesting to note that in the "Granum sinapis" sequence Eckhart spends the first three strophes describing the emanation of the Persons in the Trinity and the unknown nature of "the Principle [whose] point never moves" (ist ein gesprink/gar unbewegit stet sin punt), and no fewer than five strophes exploring the path that is no
path back to God:
hi stat, Ia zit, ouch bilde mit!
genk ane wek den smalen stek,
so kurus du an der wiiste spor.
Leave place, leave time, Avoid even image!
Go forth without a way On the narrow path,
Then you will find the desert track.1 It is, of course, impossible to make any separation between exitus and reditus in Eckhart's works-"God's going out is his going-in" (Pr.
53). But, just as the preacher can only present one aspect of the divine mystery at a time, so too, for the sake of clarification it is useful to sketch out the major themes of Eckhart's understanding of the return to God, as long as we realize that these do not constitute any itinerary of stages in the manner of some other mystics. For Eckhart one must
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"Go forth without a way;' because " [w] hoever is seeking God by ways is finding ways and losing God, who in ways is hidden" (Pr. Sb) .
My consideration of Eckhart's doctrine of the return to God will begin with a treatment of the Dominican's understanding of Christ, the Godman. Just as creation, for Eckhart, is a continuous and eternal process (creatio continua), so too the Word taking on flesh is not a past event we look back to in order to attain salvation, but rather is an ever
present hominification of God and deification of humanity and the universe-an incarnatio con tinua.
ECKHART's CHRI STOLOGY2
Eckhart's Christology was out of step with his times. He shares little of the new christological currents, both in theology and in devotion, that shaped the later Middle Ages. The importance of innovative forms of devotion to Christ's humanity that developed in the twelfth and thir
teenth centuries, while sometimes exaggerated and misunderstood, is undeniable, as names such as Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clair
vaux, and Francis of Assisi, demonstrate.3 Bernard's "fleshly love of Christ" (amor carnalis Christi), and Francis's stigmata seen as a literal sharing in Christ's passion (a new form of imitatio Christi) effected a revolution in piety.4 The new forms of piety centering on Christ's life were accompanied by a search for better understanding of the person and work of Christ in the theology of the schools. On the basis of the Chalcedonian dogma that a full divine and full human nature were united in the Person of the Word (i.e., a hypostatic union), "faith seek
ing understanding" pursued more adequate expressions of how God and human are one in Christ. Since the early twelfth century, theolo
gians had also begun to formulate new ways of understanding redemp
tion. How had Christ redeemed us? How did the effects of his death and resurrection reach the believer? Anselm's concentration on the motif of satisfactio marked a key moment in the evolution of Western redemption theology. Most thirteenth-century scholastics devoted considerable effort to exploring the nature of the hypostatic union, as well as to analysis of the meaning of redemptive satisfaction.
When we look at Meister Eckhart's writings, both his technical scholastic works and his MHG sermons and treatises, we find almost nothing of this. There are no pictures of the infant Jesus in the crib or meditations on the bloody Christ on the cross. There is little
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ation of the historical events of Christ's life. At times, Eckhart seems to go out of his way to avoid an obvious christological reading of a text. 5 On the more technical side, Eckhart spends no time discussing the var
ious theories of the hypostatic union or of satisfaction. Only a single sermon gives any real attention to one of the hotly debated areas of speculative Christology, the question of the modes of knowledge, divine and human, enjoyed by Christ.6 It is clear, then, that Eckhart's preaching and teaching are exceptions to much of late medieval Chris
tology.
But does this mean that Christology is unimportant to Eckhart's message? Does his emphasis on the birth of the Divine Word in the soul reduce the historical events of Christ's life, especially the passion, to secondary or even unimportant status? If we think that the new spiri
tuality of the amor carnalis Christi and the literal imitatio Christi is the only form of late medieval devotion to Christ, then we must answer yes. Likewise, if subtle analysis of the union of God and man in Christ is essential to Christology, then Eckhart has little to offer in this area.
Nevertheless, Eckhart's view of the God-man and his theology of redemption are both original and essential for understanding his the
ology and mysticism. Numerous christological discussions in Eckhart's works show that without attention to the role of Christ it is impossible to understand his message or to attempt to put it into practice.
Eckhart's Christology was fundamentally practical, or perhaps bet
ter, as some have called it, a "functional Christology."8 Thinking about the mystery of the God-man was not meant to be an exercise in mak
ing scholastic distinctions, but in learning how to live the meaning of the life of the Incarnate Word. This emphasis on the practical payoff of his message also indicates that the imitatio Christi plays a role in Eck
hart's thought, though one different from what we usually meet with in the late Middle Ages.
The best place to begin to grasp Eckhart's Christology is in his com
mentary on John's Prologue. 9 The lengthy remarks on vv. 1-10 ring the changes on the relation between the just person and Justice, the theo
logical foundation of Eckhart's frequent preaching about the birth of the Eternal Word in the soul. However, when Eckhart reaches v. 1 1 ("He came into his own") , he reads the text both as expressing the universal reception of the Divine Word in all reality (especially in the intellect), and also as indicating the Word's assumption of human nature with its passibility and mortality. This leads him to an interpretation of v. 1 2b ("He gave them the power of becoming sons of God"), which empha
sizes the core of his Christology, namely, his constant insistence on the
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purpose of the Incarnation. God's intention in sending his Son was that
"man may become by the grace of adoption what the Son is by nature"
(n. l06). This version of the ancient patristic motto ("God became man that man might become God") was repeated often by Eckhart in his Latin works and especially in his vernacular preaching.10 "Why did God become man?" he rhetorically asks in Pr. 29-"So that I might be born God himself" is the answer. 1 1
The distinction between "Son by nature" and "sons by adoption"
that Eckhart appealed to in interpreting John 1 : 1 2 was a motif rooted in Scripture, especially the Pauline letters, and can be found as early as Augustine.12 He uses the distinction in numerous places in his Latin and German works. 13 When his Christo logy was taken to task in the trials at Cologne and Avignon, it is not surprising that he appealed to it to explain how his statements could be squared with traditional theol
ogy. 14 For example, his defense of the final article from the second list of extracts culled from his German sermons says: "Don't think that there is one Son by which Christ is God's Son and another by which we are named and are sons; but it is the same and is he himself, who is Christ, born as Son in a natural way, and we, who are sons of God analogically-by being joined to him as heir, we are coheirs!' 15
In commenting on John 1 : 1 2, Eckhart explains the divine intention in taking on human nature by calling on one of his favorite christolog
ical texts, 2 Corinthians 3 : 1 8 ("With faces unveiled reflecting as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed in the same image from glory to glory") . If the distinction of sonships emphasizes the traditional side of Eckhart's theology of the Incarnation, the stress on transformation into the same, that is, identical, image suggests its more daring aspects. 16 In concluding his reading of John 1 : 12, Eckhart returns to the first part of the verse and asks who are "the many who received him" and thus gained sonship? Here the Dominican intro
duces a third essential motif of his Christology, when he says that they are "as many as were empty of every form begotten and impressed by creatures" (n. l l O). Total purity, emptiness, detachment-abandoning the esse hoc et hoc of created being-is the condition for the possibility of receiving the "same image" which is Christ as God and man.
These three central motifs are fleshed out in Eckhart's comments on v. 14a ("The Word became flesh and dwelt among us") . Here Eckhart says, "It would be of little value for me that 'the Word was made flesh' for man in Christ as a person (supposito) distinct from me, unless he was also made flesh for me personally so that I too might be God's son!'1 7 Does this mean that we ourselves become the Second Person of
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the Trinity? Yes and no, according to Eckhart. Yes, in the sense that there is only one Sonship, which is not other than the Person of the Word;
no, in the sense that "we are born God's sons through adoption." In his defense at Cologne and Avignon, Eckhart would appeal to the inquan
tum principle to explain this kind of expression. Insofar as there is only one real Son of God, if we are sons (as scripture expressly says), we are indeed identically the same Son insofar as we are sons, univocally speaking. From the perspective of our existence as created beings, how
ever, we are sons by adoption and participation, analogically speak
ing. IS
Eckhart interprets the two parts of v. 14 as expressing the indissolu
ble link between the hominification of God and the divinization of man-"The Word was made flesh" in the Incarnation, "'and dwelt among us' when in any one of us the Son of God becomes man and a son of man becomes God:'19 When he turns to v. 1 4b ("We saw his glory, . . . ), the wider cosmological implications of sonship, typical of his fusing of all truth, theological and philosophical, into a single sys
tem, emerge. Eckhart notes that in Confessions 7.9. 1 3 Augustine said that he had found everything John wrote about the eternal generation of the Word in the "books of the Platonists:' but he did not fmd there any reference to the Incarnation. Eckhart politely disagrees with the bishop, claiming that seeing the glory of the Incarnate Word, notwith
standing the truth of the historical birth of Christ, " . . . is contained in and taught by the properties of the things of nature, morality, and art.
The Word universally and naturally becomes flesh in every work of nature and art and it dwells in things that are made or in which the Word becomes flesh:'20 Every time a form is generated and comes to perfection in the natural world, and even in the artificial world of human creativity, we can catch a glimpse of the glory of the Only
Begotten of the Father taking on flesh.
The full explanation for this claim is not given until the comment on v. 1 7 ("The law was given through Moses, grace and truth were made through Jesus Christ" ). In contrasting Moses and the Old Testament with Christ and the New Testament, Eckhart once again speaks onto
logically, comparing the Old Law to the imperfection of all forms of change, becoming, and m ultitude, while the grace and truth of Christ indicate "existence, generation, immutability, eternity, spirit, simplicity, incorruption, infinity, the one or unity" (n.l86). This is so because it is the Incarnation that is the necessary link between the eternal emana
tion within the Trinity and the whole of created reality. As he puts it:
Again, note that because "The Word was made flesh;' that he might dwell amone; us. as expounded above, . . . it seems added that the
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Wisdom of God deigned to become flesh in such a way that the Incar
nation itself, like a medium between the procession of the divine Per
sons and the production of creatures, tastes the nature of each. This happens in such a way that the Incarnation itself exemplifies the eternal emanation and is the exemplar of the entire lower nature.21
Here Eckhart goes beyond his usual formulations found in the exegesis of the early verses of the Prologue and elsewhere, in which he roots all making (factio) in the eternal emanation of the Word from the Father without reference to the Incarnation. This passage expresses something like the pan-Christie ontology of Maximus the Confessor and others, who saw the Incarnation, the hominification of God, as the very pur
pose and inner reality of creation itself.22 Eckhart makes the same point with classic economy in S. XXV: "'I came forth from the Father and came into the world' [John 1 6:28 ] through creation, and not only through Incarnation."23
A look at another text in the Latin writings that provides an exposi
tion of Eckhart's Christology helps fill out the picture presented in the Commentary on John. In the Dominican's response to the second list of articles presented to him at Cologne, he spends considerable time defending article 27: "God gives nothing outside himself; he always gives in eternity, not in tirne:'24 Eckhart's response to this objection constitutes a mini-treatise in the form of a scholastic quaestio in which he both defends the principle from an ontological perspective and also shows how it is crucial for understanding Incarnation and redemption.
Eckhart begins by presenting four premises necessary for grasping how God chooses us from all eternity, "although it is true that we receive in time:' Two of these echo the text from the commentary on John 1 : 1 7 quoted above and emphasize the teleological connection between creation and redemption. "This;' he says, "is because the work of creation, of nature, is ordered to the work of re-creation and grace, as the material to the formal, matter to form, the passive to the active, woman to man:'25 The fourth principle notes that while particular agents intend and produce particular effects, the nature of a species intends something similar to itself in species and nature. As applied
"principially to God;' this helps us understand the identity of the one Sonship in which our salvation rests. The conclusions that Eckhart draws from these general principles are largely christological in nature, another sign that for him creation and recreation are two sides of one and the same coin. The core of his position is put as follows:
Everything that is declared in these four preliminary articles is manifest, that the Word
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this human nature, that is, in Christ-for the sake o f the whole human species. Therefore, by assuming that nature, in himself and through himself he confers the grace of sonship and adoption on all humans, me, you, and anyone at all who shares univocally and equally that nature, according to the text, "The Word was made flesh;' namely in Christ, "and dwelt among us:'26
Eckhart then draws out some necessary corollaries from this argument.
Many of these are Christological and echo what can be found in the Commentary on John, such as the insistence that Christ assumes the human nature that is common to all, the necessity for loving all humans equally in Christ, and the need to put off everything that is ours or that is particular in order to love in this way.27 Eckhart's defense of his teaching about Christ in article 27, as well as the numerous other appearances of Christology in the trial documents, provides ample proof of how important this aspect of his teaching was for him and for his critics.
On the basis of these two Latin treatments, it is dear that Eckhart's functional Christology was not concerned with exploring the mode of the union of God and human in the Incarnation. He concentrated, instead, on the redemptive significance of the Word made flesh. The same message is conveyed in his vernacular preaching. An analysis of two christological sermons, as well as some passages in the Book of Divine Consolation, will show how the Meister presented the meaning of the Incarnation to a lay audience.
Pr. 46 is relatively short, but typically Eckhartian in its depth and complexity.28 In explaining John 1 7:3 ("This is eternal life"), the preacher underlines three key points with interjections like Nu merket!
"Now note well!" The first is that in order to know God and reach blessedness we must become "one Son, not many sons; rather, one Son;' since in God there is only "a single flowing out with the eternal Word" (niht wan ein natiurlicher ursprunc). The second point explains how this is possible. Just as Eckhart's ontology distinguished between the esse hoc et hoc, the diz und daz of created reality, and the pure esse indistinctum of God, so too the economy of redemption demands that the Word did not assume this or that human person, but pure, unformed humanity in itself. It is this humanity, without image or par
ticularity, that the Son takes to himself. Because we too possess this humanity, his Form or Image ( i.e., the very Image he eternally receives from the Father) becomes the image of humanity. "Hence;' Eckhart says, "it is just as true that man became God as it is that God became
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man. This is how human nature was transformed (uberbildet) ; by becoming the divine image, that is, the image of the Father."29
In order to attain this transformation we must free ourselves from all the "nothing;' that is, everything accidental, in us. What is accidental causes distinction, and distinction separates us from God. We leave behind every "accident of nature" (zuoval der nature) by reaching into the power in the soul that is "separated from nothing" (i.e., indistinct) . When we arrive at this power, where God "shines naked" (what Eckhart
In order to attain this transformation we must free ourselves from all the "nothing;' that is, everything accidental, in us. What is accidental causes distinction, and distinction separates us from God. We leave behind every "accident of nature" (zuoval der nature) by reaching into the power in the soul that is "separated from nothing" (i.e., indistinct) . When we arrive at this power, where God "shines naked" (what Eckhart