Meister Eckhart with Prof. Bernard McGinn

greetings and welcome on behalf of the lumen christi institute my name is michael lee Chevallier and i am the associate director of the lumen christi institute what is the lumen christi institute the celebrated university president of the university of chicago president robert maynard hutchins once remarked that the Catholic Church has the longest intellectual tradition of any institution in the contemporary world the mission of lumen christi institute is to make that tradition a vital part of the culture of today's university and the bra and our broader society through lectures master classes non-credit courses and summer seminars each week those of you have been tuning in have been able to get a taste for the type of programming that we provide to students each week in person and of course now to students across the nation as they tune in to learn from master scholars about great church fathers and church mothers if you want to help support our work you can donate today at WWE women Christi org you can also support our work by sharing it with a friend many of you have identified on the surveys after these events that you would recommend this event to others so we would invite you to do so not only sharing the video of events like this but also our future events I want to thank our co-sponsoring Catholic Institute's who are helping to extend the reach of these events by sharing it with their students now in terms of announcements next week is a rich week for the Catholic intellectual tradition at lumen christi on tuesday will be hosting a discussion between economists theologians and ethicists on lessons learned after the lockdown public health economics and the common good this is part of the ongoing initiative of the lumen christi institute to try and bring economics and catholic social thought into dialogue on Wednesday we are co-sponsoring a symposium organized by the Collegium Institute featuring four prominent female scholars on one of the great Catholic female writers of the 20th century Flannery O'Connor exploring imagine a in solitude and the oddities of life within her work and finally you can tune in again next week Thursday for our final lecture of this series with David Albertson on Nikolas of kuzu now I'd like to hand it over to dr. Robert poor Vall who works with us to organize not only this series but a range of events that we offer for undergraduate students here at the University of Chicago Robert thank you Michael and welcome to everyone for to this second to last event in our series on reason and wisdom and medieval Christian thought as you as you've seen this before you know it offers entries into the rich Treasuries of spiritual and theological thought in the Middle Ages and especially the hot it highlights the tension we find between contemplative or spiritual and rational and a dialectical ways of seeking knowledge of God next week as Michael already said will be hosting professor David Allison to speak on late medieval Nicholas of creuza whose deep and rich thought is is it's not well known enough and as it heads up we have in the works plans for a follow-up series on Reason abudiate the Renaissance so stay tuned for more more information about that at any time during tonight's presentation you can ask a question using the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen and at the end of the presentation I'll moderate a question and answer period with Professor again if you have trouble with the connection you can also stream us live using the link at the top of your screen or on our on our site and now let me introduce Brian begin Renard beginning is the naomi's gemstone donnelly professor emeritus of historical theology and history of Christianity in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago he sits on the committee of the Medieval Studies of Committee on Medieval Studies and on general studies at the University and has written extensively on the history of apocalyptic thought spirituality and mysticism and particularly on the thought of meister eckhart who will be speaking about today he's a regular contributor to lumen christi programming and sort of been our companion through this this quarantine time as well as my delight to have to invite Bernard begin to turn on your your camera and unmute yourself professor I would just okay live with them just in there all right we're waiting for the camera number there we have a press start my video here we go I'm a my here we see a lot affair I'm glad to be a well Robert thank you and Michael thank you and to all those people who are out there listening I want to say great word of thanks that you're interested in that cart especially in this hard time and I'd like to just take a moment at the very beginning here a moment of silence that we could all think about the 100,000 and more Americans who have just died [Music] many many of us have friends and relatives who are numbered in that group so requiescat in pace a may they may they all rest in peace now I'm happy to talk about meister eckhart which I've been doing for a long long time and to try to give a kind of introduction to his thought in a relatively brief time and I'll do that under the inspiration of Meister Eckhart this is a Meister Eckhart icon done by a very nice Anglican brother called brother Eckhart Camden who made this for me some years ago and Eckhart may not be canonized but he's considered a blessing by many not only the German Dominicans so you know who was that card his times and why is his mysticism and it's thought so important today and when you think that you know this is so many centuries many centuries later and that card himself of course is a controversial figure because he was never declared a heretic you'll read that it's incorrect but some of the things he wrote were denounced as heretical or dangerous after his death by Pope John the 22nd so I'll give you just a brief run over about his life and then the things that he wrote a few hints about how to read a card if you have never had a chance to read him and then I look at maybe one or two Eckart texts that would illustrate you know why he's so important in so read today Eckart's takes roughly 1262 about 1328 he was born in southern Germany in Saxony from a family of the lower nobility and of course the two great religious success stories in the 13th century the new movements were the bending mendicant orders Dominicans and Franciscans and the begings and Eckhart as a young and joined join the Dominicans at Air Force in Saxony and this was always his home his home cloister where he studied his theology and then was promoted at like the smart young men would be promoted first of all to go to the dominican house of studies for all of Germany at Cologne this is probably in the you know the 12 days or so and then aren't to do theology in Paris where he studied for any number of years in the 12 80s and the 12 and the 12 90s so the Dominicans had organized this kind of you know essential process where the smart kids got promoted and they got promoted again and then they got they got promoted again it's significant to see Eckhart going to Cologne because well everybody knows Paris was so important as the Center for medical biology modern research has shown that the Dominicans at Cologne the origins of the present University of Cologne were actually a significant movement in 13th and 14th century a theological thought in 1248 the great Dominican teacher Albert Albert Rose - we call him Albert astute on eCos Albert the German is what he was called then he was sent by the order to set up what was called a studium Generale a we would quote a kind of university today for the German Dominicans and that German studium Generale a from 1248 to about 1348 for about a hundred years this was a center for theological philosophical mystical thinking in Germany a whole generation of people studied with with that cart you know with Albert I'm sorry Albert had come from Paris and Albert brought his best student from Paris along with him in 1248 happened to be an Italian named Tommaso doc we know Thomas Aquinas is what we call him who studied there and with Albert for the next four years or so but Albert Louis time in clone was short he educated a whole range of Dominicans and established a big a german dominican studium a german dominican way of doing theology and philosophy includes a whole number of people I don't need to go into them here but my staircar was one of them and then meister eckhart followers great thinkers great mystics like henry soo so john tower and and various others this is the major philosophical theological mystical tradition in medieval Germany it was basically a Dominican and it had been established by by Albert the great so a cart has beginning there he went on to Paris where he studied and became a master on my gist their tale of GA then as was typical he was sent back to his own province in Germany for a number of years in order to be in his convent at Airport but then he was promoted in 1302 to become a Magister in Paris this was the high point of anybody's theological career the the master of theology for the for the Dominicans you know in in Paris where he only served for a couple of years but that also was typical during this time both back in his continent Airport and in his first career in Paris his first period of cars he was writing he was preaching he was preaching in the vernacular he was writing in Latin and beginning his great series of commentaries questions and propositions etcetera then he was sent back to airport again for a period of administration and then which was very unusual he was sent back to Paris for another period a second period of majesty air of being master only thomas aquinas before him had enjoyed that privilege within the dominican order again he was only there for a couple of years but he continued that that period and then for the rest of his career he really was engaged in the in pastoral work what the Dominicans called qura an e mahram the care of souls first at strasbourg between about thirteen thirteen and thirteen twenty four then later on in his age years at cologne from about 13 24 through 13 26 and it's here that probably most of his most of his preaching work was done well it's very difficult to you know sort out one exactly at carts heck arts writing stay from so what do we have for record in terms of what remains to us quite a bit we have about a hundred and eighteen sermons in the vernacular and this is a very significant body of material we also have a series of sermons in Latin some of them just notes brothers develop sermons we also have six long biblical commentaries because that card thought that commenting on the Bible was essential to theological education so Row two commentaries and Genesis were two commentary and exit commentary and wisdom short commentary and ecclesiasticus very long commentary on John these are the heart of his theological endeavor really and you have to keep both sides of that card together both very creative vernacular preaching in middle high german and then also the very technical academic scholastic work in the and the sermons themselves and we have now a very good edition of these in 1934 the german government established a commission to edit all of Eckart's works you'll be happy to know they're still at it but they're getting close to finishing and these are massive volumes six for the Latin works five for the German works this is what one of the German but no I'm sorry this is volume for the Latin needs of Alliance German so they're they're huge folio volumes and now they're continuing on finishing off the German the German sermons this is the latest fascicle of the German thermos published in 2016 but they're not they're not questioned so you have a very good critical edition which has inspired and you know given a lot of public attention to at card and also to the translations of that card we are fortunate in English because a good deal of that card is available in English not quite all of it but if you're interested in a card you can you can read a lot and show-and-tell again in in the 1980s I did two volumes of that card in the classics of western spirituality which combined both selected sermons and also some of the Latin works and then recently and I really want to recommend this because sermons most people will find the sermons more interesting recently we have two pretty full versions in English of the sermons the one that's most really the complete mystical works of meister eckhart published by crossroad it's an old translation by wonderful English Eckhart scholar from many many years ago and then very very recently as a matter of factors in the last year Marcus Vincent a German scholar is doing Meister Koch the German works this is all the sermons for the liturgical year you know day temporary the sermons of Allah surgical year so you know you can read lots of that card and I think that's wonderful because this is not always the case with regard to many you know many many prophecies but reading that card is not always easy and particularly the sermons because they're different from almost any other medieval sermons that you'll read or if you or a few familiar with these as I said he wrote about a hundred and seventeen or eighteen German sermons he wrote many Latin sermons he wanted them to be collected in a book and that's what this Marcus Vincent thing is trying to do to follow a little surgical year but as you read these sermons you'll say you know what's what's going on here some years ago I taught a course at Notre Dame on a meister eckhart in the summer and I had all the students report on a single Eckart sermon you know as that's a kind of classroom presentation and they would read it negative presentation in class and I had this one older nun who read her sermon and she gave a presentation and she said afterwards well that's what this is what my stack card says if somebody liked that preach to me I'd walk out of the church so Eckhart may not be for everybody but I think if you're prepared to know what's going on understand what his preaching is trying to do so let me just give you a few points about that before I I turn to looking at some of the words themselves Eckhart was a Dominican Ordo pretty Couture of the order of preachers so his major identity in life was to be a preacher not you know not to be really a university professor although he was that but to be a preacher and that card was convinced that the preacher should be a channel for divine truth should not be preaching his own stuff he should be preaching God's Word God should preach through him in one of his Latin commentaries he puts it this way the preacher of the word of God which is God's power and God's wisdom ought not to exist and live for himself but for the Christ he preaches okay but that car takes this a step further because in some sermons and I hope to talk about 752 today he says that it's not meister eckhart preaching to you it's divine truth preaching to you so listen up this is really important so he was firmly convinced that if the preacher empties himself of his own particularity x' and his desires in his own knowledge and his wisdom that God divine truth will preach through him and then Eckhart said sermons also you know from the viewpoint of what we might call style not to theological so much but it's a tremendous verbal creativity he was preaching middle high german it was a new language so Eckart had to invent new words and phrases to express what he intends to say and he has to take the rhetorical strategies from you know the classical rhetoric paradox oxymoron antipathies negations double negations exaggerations accumulations parallelism hyperbole all those things and he has to bring them over to the german language as its beginning to form so Eckhart is using language in new ways and you could say he tries to subvert language and to surpass language in his practice this is one of the reasons why modern deconstruction and stinking figures I have often been interested in in Eckhart and and turned to his sermons a card is not a deconstructionist I want to tell you that but I can see why some modern thinkers would be interested in him then Eckhart insists that his language is excessive you know he goes over the top he's not holding back and he does that because he says that scripture is excessive so if you're gonna preach the scripture you're going to preach excessively again I have a quotation from his commentary in the Gospel of John such a mode of speaking that is excessively properly belongs to divine scriptures everything divine is such as immense not subject to measure the excellence of divine things does not allow them to be offered to us uncovered but they're hidden being sensible figures so yeah Eckhart says of course I often speak very very excessively and but that's the way I feel I have to do it and cars a biblical preacher but he's very very free to interpret the scripture in his own way no there's no German Bible at this stage so he takes the Latin Bible and he interprets it he reads it he often rewrites it in order to make the point that you know that he's trying to put across in the sermons and then just a final point or two here Eckart's sermons are what German scholars have called appellative that is they address the hearer the reader directly they're not just lining up truths I'm going to tell you something no they invite the hearer to do something they call on the hearers to do something they not ordering them but inviting them if you want to do this then this is how you should act and then they rarely have a sequential sequence you know many medieval sermons because there's sermon books it tells us they tell you exactly how to organize the sermon point by point by point by point eckhart rarely does that he doesn't follow a what we call a logical sequence this is difficult for the modern reader he uses what another German scholar has called a paradigmatic substitution paradigmatic substitution which means that guard has a number of mystical and theological dimes models important aspects of things in his mind and he jumps back and forth because he sees them as all related we may not always see them that way so you'll be reading Eckhart and you'll say he's jumped to something totally different where did that come from and that's part the the joy and perhaps the frustration of reading a cart of these paradigmatic substitutions where did he get this how are these the kinds of things for bidders and then finally I would say that supporting to remember a car so liturgical preacher everything he preaches is on liturgical texts from the feasts of the day where he picks out a passage or two but it's also different because the point is he's gonna pick out the inner message of the feast and this particular text so he's not going to tell you a story when he preaches at Christmas or Easter it's not going to tell you about baby Jesus in the crib or anything like that he's gonna take the fundamental notion of Christmas which is the birth of the word in the human life and so that but that's for him that's the liturgical meaning of the mystery he wants to get you to the heart of the mystery now I'd like to show you this chart Robert can we move on to there it is once you've mastered that you don't know everything you need to know about that card I've been using this chart it was much simpler forty years ago or whenever I first I used it and now you know it gets a little more complicated but this is the way I usually try to introduce people to the thinking of my stack card and I'll try to explain it and I'll try to illustrate it by a text or two at a time that's remaining and remaining to us you'll note on the far left hand side the word grunt ground grunt very simple call it a metaphor I've called it a master metaphor explosive metaphor when Eckhart says my ground is God's ground and God's ground is my ground you meditate about that you will begin to get into a car's vision about the reality total reality and our relationship to to the divine so God is important but it's God not as we understand him but God got as the mysterious ground of all things and what's most remarkable about this is that we share in God's ground God's ground is my ground my ground is God's got what can he possibly mean mean by that but the way in which Eckhart begins to explain it across its numerous sermons and this also goes for the the Latin works as well is by very ancient and traditional theological paradigm the notion of xe2 sand raitis whose Gong can in Gong in German the going out from and the returning to God of all things I often think it is a very nice little poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins D God I come from to the go all day long like water flow from my hand out swayed about in nine mighty glow I mean that's what exit us and raises really mean that the dynamic process by which the hidden ground of God becomes evident in the Trinity and then in creation and then returns to the ground is the kind of basic if you will the basic life of the of the accordion system so the ground in itself is hidden it's unknown it's beyond all language although we use that metaphor but as it comes forth as it exits as it goes out and then as it returns it manifests itself and in its life when a car talks about this XE to us or whose gunk in several sermons he makes it very important to a distinction and this is very typically eckhart between what he calls in Latin bullet Co and I believe Co you'll see them there on the on a little chart believe Co is inner boiling you put the top on the pot you boil the water remarkable things have been inside elbow lead Co is when you take the top off and it overflows it boils away and bleach Co that is the inner life of the Trinity the divine inner boiling the life of the three persons of the Trinity is for Eckart the source the paradigm the model for all Emily she oh that is the whole universe as a boiling out from God is Trinitarian in structure again a remarkable insight and Bonaventure has something close to it but not not not quite in the same way so in the belief co and by the way beliefs yo in technical scholastic terminology is what a car would call formal causality which for him is far more important than heavily Co which is faith efficient causality the reverse for Thomas Aquinas by the way both Thomas Aquinas and Eckhart thought both forms of causality were very very important as well as final causality but Thomas put the emphasis on efficient causality a card put the emphasis on formal causality so that inner boiling the formal causality is God understood as absolutely one noonim God an understood his indistinct si indistinct existence and God understood as pure and to leisure a pure the pure active understanding all these traditional attributes for God are very very important for a card but he gotta has his own way of dealing with them and it's not quite Thomas Aquinas he he loved Thomas Klein's and decisive often got his fundamental thinking is rather different so this bully CEO takes place in God it's the beliefs CEO in which that word flows from the Father and the Holy Spirit flows from the father and the son but for a card it also takes place in humanity huh why cuz Humanity is made in the image and likeness of God as it says in Genesis so if we're really gonna be image HomeAway tamago we will be in some sense divine we take part in the inner boiling of the Trinity at card insisted on that got him into lot of trouble but he was he was insistent that this was indeed the case and it happens in the principle in principio because God is that is the principle the principle of all things so that belief Co in which the Trinity boils over and boils among itself in which humanity as imago Dei shares is the source for the boiling over which is creation so you see under evolution so there you see chaos see oh and foxy oh that is creation and you all kinds of making Hunts on too because but that cart will insist that if we make anything any intelligent subject who makes something is partaking in the same kind of activity of the God who made the universe and here this is an expression of God as as bonum and the God is goodness overflowing from his inner oneness and as same distinctive and intially jury into the world a world that is a world of particular things particular existences that's what this term sa hawk at hug means and it's a world in which humans exist but humans exist as kinase a second part a second aspect of humanity which is homo would Adi magine M not in but I did imagine him made to the image so the human being for Eckhart exists on two levels on the first level or demongo as one and the same as God on the second level as created as odd imagining that is less than God a created being a particular being been s a hawk at hawk and this is very important because that carts most daring statements about our oneness with the word being born from the father and all these other things have to be understood with regard to one aspect of humanity and Eckhart when taking the task would say oh but wait a minute I never denied that humans also have another aspect so there we are the process of exitos has happened but that process involves the kind of distancing from God and sin is involved here complicated I don't want to go into that but in order to return there has to be a link between God and human that is taken up in the role of the Incarnate Word at cars essential Christology and for Eckart God created the world so that the word would become incarnate it's not because Adam sinned that was a an unfortunate add-on but it's that was the intention of God from the beginning that the overflowing would return through the second person of Trinity taking on human flesh and encouraging and enabling human beings to become involved in that in that ready to this process so that's a very deep what I call essential Christology in Eckhart different front of a lot of other contemporaries but to say as some people have said in the dead well there's really no rolls of Christ in that card totally wrong but what about this ray eaters second part of the outline here well it really involves three kinds of activities that are communicated to us by the word through script and through the preacher detaching birthing and breaking through and as you read Eckhart sermons the whole 117 of a vernacular name or that you'll find these themes over and over and over again being being emphasized detaching that is what detaching means is we have to become detached from our particularity our si hawk at hawk we have to let that go colossal night we have to detach ourselves from it that's what the term of the shrine night means we have to become free and clear and empty lydic pride loss record attachment to ourselves our desires this is the enemy of the possibility of returning so detaching is a fundamental process and as you detach these are not stages there they work together you gradually come to realize the birth of the word in the soul and it's always happening the divine word is always being born in the soul because we are we are the image of God no different from the second person but we just don't know that when we become attached and stay attached to our own particular wishes so Eckhart is always talking about the birth of the word in the soul and how it's necessary to let go of everything to recognize the birth of the word in the soul with him this is probably the most constant theme in a card says sermons of the notion of the the birth of the word and so on a lot of the formulations of this and you know very dangerous because these are things that were brought up in the papal own investigation of how that cards appreciate so by birthing we recognize that we are within the life of the Trinity that cart goes even further because in some sermons he talks about the necessity for going beyond the Trinity breaking through to Lush breaking breaking beyond the Father Son and Holy Spirit insofar as they seem to represent some kind of distinction and breaking back into the grunt which is source now those particular passages on door fracking are breaking through they're obviously very very controversial but I think properly understood within the context of what I'm trying to lay out here have a fifty a carting system what happens and when you break through you learn to live without a why that's that carts ethics living without a why God has no why he operates out of his spontaneous goodness the person was broken through into the ground also lives without a why in life of spontaneous goodness and he achieves una toss indistinct see onus an indistinct oneness with God again quite controversial because many earlier mystics had talked about well you become one with God in spirit and in love but you're not one being with God that car says no you are you know said well you're one beyond being but you are absolutely one your indistinct at this stage I would ask classes if they understood everything perfectly but I don't quite have bad Devon option here I I'd like to illustrate that general picture with Granum Sanaa peas I love this poem it's up the mustard seed and it's a sequence medieval form it's really a victory sequence in terms of its rhyming schemes etc but victory sequences are all in Latin this one happens to be in German from the early 14th century and I think it's a very fine summary of a carts view as I tried to look try to lay it out here is it by a cart the scholars differ as you as you might imagine and lots has been written on this particular on this particular poem in in various ways I tend to I think that cart didn't write it who could have written it it's a fantastic summary and it's also one of the greatest mystical poems I think in the Western Canada it stands with John of the Cross and various other great great mystical poems and it tries to lay out this picture of basically X e to sin and rage was obviously in a short poem you can pull everything in but I think it does and it does what it what it tries to do so let me let me take you let me take you through it the first three there eight stanzas the first three stanzas I think deal basically would be with the XE to us and they deal primarily with EE so in the Trinity let me just read it and how try to not a scholar of middle high german but let me ending begin hurry the scene east yet of wort or I shall heart I yeah begin begin gotta Oh father Bristol steam and rust that's what he f loose so hot - host that's what the harden kasisvara so in the beginning in the principal which should be Milan high above all understanding is ever the word it's very interesting because you know as you know John's Gospel says the word was from it was in the beginning was he record says not was but is because this is always absolutely absolutely eternal so high above understanding is ever the word and the word is a rich treasure they are the beginning that is the father always bore the beginning because the beginning is also the son the son is the beginning of all things and then you turn o father's breast from the I delight the word ever flows I mean it's not only an intellectual procession it's also a procession of love the word ever flows from night delight list and flowing out here we go XE to us the word ever flows yet the bosom retains the word truly so the word is both flowing out but staying in out in and the second stands it takes up the whole of the role of the Holy Spirit once feigning truth their meaning glue dots fie upon't then sang the conch Creuset their feet Sousa Geist behaving me angelic did Rice name by stavast nine if I six silver alum ice so from the two has one source think we could move to the next okay good from the two is one source comes the fire of love this is the Holy Spirit the fire of love the bond of father and son that's good Augustinian theology known to both so it's a both a bond of love and a bond of knowledge so it flows the old sweet spirit and then co-equal undivided interesting I mean Shaylee feet aiming lakeland shade like this is the Athanasian Creed by the way about the attributes of the of the three persons of the Trinity and then you know the three are one do you understand why no it best understands itself so only the Trinity you know can really understand this mystery but we can kind of set it for them and then you set forth what I would call you know the kind of apophatic theology in the third in the third strophe here which doesn't really describe so much the belief show itself but presupposes it this bond of three causes deep fear different ways to translate that I looked up my friend Alan did lamella today says is profound and terrible that might be a better translation this bond of three causes deep fear of this circle there's no understanding it's a pathetic you cannot extend it this is a depth without ground I ain't ain't proof or swindle grunt there's that carts terminology about ground D too deep for understanding and then he turns to creation it was very you know kind of powerful metaphor check and mate two time forms place you know checkmate everything in creation time forum place they don't pertain to this world and then he says this wondrous circle is the principle to spring Devlin during he's things anger sprinkle enraged at Saint point wonders circle is a principle as point never moves and that's actually a reference to a famous medieval definition of God in the book of the 24 philosophers but we don't need to go into that here I do want to get to because I know our time moving is moving on here the last four stanzas which you have really concerned the radius the in Gong and they talked about it under the metaphors powerful metaphors that Eckhart uses throughout his his teaching and his sermons but also in his in his Latin works as well now it starts with and what I would call it mystical oxymoron note the last stanza closes its point never moves the saloon do they instead sang food the next stand of style would stop put this barrack in America the mountain of this point I'm not gonna point be alone that's the mystical oxymoron the point of this mountain and then why it's an invitation ste gain and Eric Bentley kind intellect only intellect force dentists I can understand begin to ascend the paradoxical mountain the mystery of God the point that is the mountain so intellect you know you better get working here you gotta start heading up the mountain but then as you head up the mountain the mountain turns into a desert this road the road did it leads you into a marvelous desert on a boost of unbelief and that cart often talks about God as the desert the measureless desert you didn't create this theme the desert is important Souter she's the first Western think who speaks about God as a desert is actually John SCOTUS air you Jonah but that card goes into great detail and many many sermons about God as the desert desert is a major metaphor the immeasurable emptiness attractive emptiness silence of the of the God so the road leads you out in the marvelous desert and it's a desert so broad so wide it stretches out immeasurably the desert has neither time nor place that's not a creative desert no time in place its mode of being evasive yes deists wounded it it's motive being singular it's it's unusual there's nothing like it so we stick with the desert then for the next few stanzas it's a good desert the good desert no foot disturbs it created being never enters there it's gone it is and no one knows why is east of I stopped me my bus it exists in some way but we don't know why God exists without a why he just is and then you get these wonderful you know joined a couple of tear it's here it's there as far it's near steep it's high it is in such a way that is neither this nor that it's not created this is sa distinctive si hawk at hog God is not si höckert how God is not a thing God is beyond this or that guys if we want to use the language of si R existence God is si indistinctive induce indistinct existence and by the way again just a note and that phrase whose Vera who's na it's far and it is near oh that cards contemporary the great begging mystic Marguerite poor it speaks of God as the want play the far near we know that card read Marguerite Barret so I think it's quite possible he's echoing parade here it's it's far and it is near it puts together things that we think of as contradictory and he continues this now instead of paying them and service six it's light it's clear it's totally dark it is unnamed it is unknown it's free of beginning or end but it's eternal it is it stands still it's cured unclothed who knows where it dwells it's whose device Singh whose let him come forth and tell us of what former sword it is nobody knows God is fundamentally Apple fact he's beyond all our understanding we can talk about God and Eckhart and other mystics talk about God endlessly with great creativity but they recognize the what I call the apathetic imperative we cannot know God finally that the sequence changes to a personal level not just laying out things we have what's called what I call us do Strava use drop it in seven and then an Easter offer a nice throw in eight so dress first of all it's a dress to the reader it's not just we don't read about this now this is great theology no do something about it it's a pelleted xavier palace I'm keen to become like a child become deaf become blind and then the great lines your own something must become nothing your own something your issue must become niched you must annihilate yourself that card superb for that in middle high german not used yours aunt burden unbecoming drive away or something all nothing leave place lee time avoid even images and buildin is another fine bourbon Eckart dis imaging go without a way on the narrow path then you will find the deserts track so this is that card you know addressing the reader you better start doing this but then and that I loved the close of this and I'll close with this too because it won't have time for and the author I think my steric art addresses himself oh say timing gingka's Claudine oh my soul go out let God come in sync all my something into God's nothing singer the bottomless flood if I flee from you you come to me if I lose myself then I find you oh goodness above being it's a very kind of Augustinian conclusion to that and I think there's a lot of augustiner here as well as die nieces and others you know a Gustin and the confessions talks a lot about fleeing from God and yet God is always going to come to him so that's an approach to meister eckhart I think I better close here because if I start on doing one of his sermons we'll be going beyond our legitimate time Robert and Michael is that said okay for your oh yes thank you so much this this has been tremendous before before we move off the share screen can I ask you a quick question sure you've mentioned a couple times about my strat cards life how he was considered a heretic that that's not quite right but he does get into some kind of trouble we have a slide real fest about about that let's see if I can navigate back would you say really fast hearted hundred meister eckhart finish out okay in 1326 some of that carts opponents while he was living in cologne who's an elderly man pulled out a bunch of articles from his and from his written works and we he was accused of heresy Eckhart defended himself vigorously and we have those documents in avignon and then he appealed to the Pope and so in 1327 he went to Avignon and we also have documents in Avignon where he defended himself at the at the papal court and card says I may have said some wrong things I was never a heretic because then if you if you show me where I'm wrong I will immediately correct it and he labored extensively to try to show what he sometimes it meant that was not well said I'm sorry I said that but he said you can accuse me of error but you can't accuse me of heresy so then Eckhart dies probably early 1328 in 1329 pope john xxii issues of bullying aggro Domenico condemning 3026 propositions from that car some has heretical some as dangerous but at the end of that bull he says well these are wrong by that car himself at the end of his life admitted that and you know they could be only insofar as they could be misunderstood they should be condemned so he never admitted he was wrong said only insofar as some stupid people misunderstood them so he was never condemned as a heretic some things from his writing were condemned his dangerous or heretical Magna Carta was said and well you know I'm some people when you get him wrong and so that's too bad there's there's lots of little little hints there I were just wondering yeah thank you I would say this is quite a card still has an ambiguous reputation yeah 30 or 40 years ago you tried to talk about that card lot of Catholics was it oh he's a heretic right no that's not quite right in the 1980s the Dominican Order petition Pope John Paul the second to rescind the condemnation thus far no word from the Vatican but they go slow thank you so we only have a little bit of time left but we've had a lot of great questions so far we have a first question about this this grand scheme which you've laid out for us so well and the Exeter's the outgoing and their attitudes the return our first our first question comes from John who asks is Eckart's Edie bulit CEO as a participatory conception of humankind's relationship to infinity as closely comparable to Eastern Christian understanding of theosis as they superficially might seem if so how do you think Eckart's thought differs from Orthodox theology that's a very tough question which I think I would need another lecture to try to spell out I let me put it very briefly I think there are certain very useful analogies between why that card is saying and what a number of Eastern theologians have said particularly about say Oh sis and and the like but it's a complex question and get car it's not an Eastern theologian he comes out of a Western tradition some Eastern theologians quite well so as I said that's another lecture thank you and just invite me back and I'll well so you actually left an opening in the door there because we have another question about day vacation and Augusta and the Western tradition Thomas asks meister eckhart snow ssin of human participation in divinity as a mock oday seems somewhat reminiscent of st. Augustine's teaching about the imago Dei as the basis for human deification what was his relationship to Augustine did meister eckhart integrate Augustinian texts or allusions into his sermons dealing with the imago Dei eckhart like all Western theologians is deeply Augustinian he cites agustin and at least as much or almost as much as anybody but there are differences for agustin humans are only automata they're always made to the image of God Agustin ruled out it you mean my go day is one and the same as as the word in that in the divine life so there he uses Agustin he appreciates Agustin but he differs from Agustin thank you on the same topic this sort of the redditors side of the diagram we have a question about callosum height a famous famous concept ninh duo asks there's a little bit of long question about the heritage of this this concept they asked whether is callosum height really mean for a card there are multiple meanings to this word in your book you chose to translate it as letting go or detachment which is close to self-abandonment i could shine a night I came across early Anabaptist used of collage at height in which they understood it as complete yielded nests or yielding oneself to God's well since early bet anabaptists was like Han dong were influenced by johannes teller and the Theologica you're Monica yep yes there you similar to the meaning of Galison height as Eckhart understood it yeah that's very interesting question because letting go of course is rooted in the scriptures who does not abandon himself and follow me you know that all of that thing about abandoning the self so it's very deep in the whole Christian tradition with that card in his contemporaries that idea of release meant takes on I would say much more a kind of metaphysical coloring and then a purely moral Carl coloring that it is still moral it's what you have to do but it also is a metaphysical practice aircars excusing gotta take them Oh carts notions very influential on tolerance ooh so and then on people who read them and also on on the radical reformers in the Reformation including people like dink and even more people like Michael and and others like that so and there's a history of Glasson height down and for the next four centuries that it's not and not just purely Eckhart but who often uses a Cardian themes in their own way I I think and I've suggested this in writing that the radical reformers tend to build in more of the moral dimension or they build it back in in a way somewhat different from that car hmm thank you then could be a good example but not Vigo Vigo is very metaphysical that this ideological whatever we want to call it and and in the same respect we've had another question about Luther's influence or the influence of Luther received from from this this tradition as well as as well as a Carl M self I seem to have lost it right now in the question in the Q&A but could you say a little bit about how how a crack fed into into Luther's thinking yeah Luther and love Taylor mmm he just thought good doctor teller was a really good German theologian many yet it did you know his his humus works and he read him very carefully we now know that some of the German sermons and that Eckhart and that Luther wrote or actually by Eckhart so that there is a line of connection there but it's basically through tower hmm fair enough so Tyler's first name on it John tower Coriolanus tower and particularly quest at talus notion and you know complete self-abandonment which loser load the complete dark night you know the dereliction of the soul which is stronger and then in the Nannette card so there's a lot of connection mm thank you and speaking about some of the central metaphors or images as you mentioned he's a preacher who uses images to excess Michael asks about the central image of the ground a little bit Michael asks that card Central's metaphor is that of the ground Grund given that he is also very interested in negations is there a specific significance for eckhart and using the metaphor of the abyss operand literally a negation of the ground they're very closely connected hmm eckhart tends to use grunt and grundel o segundo which is like a grunt you know the groundless ground more often than a grunt of the abyss but Eckhart does use the abyss fairly frequently and the abyss kind of takes over among that cards followers it's complicated but it's used much more by his followers that it is very much I think they go together particularly when you think of the groundless ground which is the same as the abyss mmm I think in terms of its function within this thought but this is a new movement I think in Western in Western thinking because and the ground earlier on had been thought of you know is it God's groundless goodness and our groundless sinfulness for Eckhart the ground characterizes both God and the soul and it's their inner mystery such as the contrast between goodness and sinfulness but as the inner mystery of the union of God and the soul it on that quite right on that on that theme this unity or this oneness right living with her or there's absolutely indistinct oneness and living without a why we have a question from Hans about on this topic Hans writes how would a car explain that we become absolutely one with God and still remain who we are do we remain distinct as Father Son and spirit are distinct yet one or are we absorbed into the person of God somehow it's both hmm and that's why I stressed that distinction between homo imago and homo would I'd imagine em and Eckhart you know when he's taking the task in his trial he invokes that distinction quite often well usually doesn't use it in sermons he's preaching from one side of the other that is the concrete human existence such as we exists on two levels a level will you inner level where we are one with God both as Trinity and his ground and an outer level where we will we live in distinction at cards preaching is designed to say wake up you're forgetting that you are really one with God in your inner being but you remember a question you're not one was gone in your outer in your outer created being so that's the essence adequate it's hard to understand and this is why I thought was taking the test for the I didn't read you know the he has these statements said you say how can you say that but echo could say well you you can say that because if you recognize that there is a distinction and he said his purpose is the preacher is to remind people of that message because they don't hear it otherwise and this this seems to have touched a nerve because we've had so we have several comment not only in his own time but also in our presentation there's a lot of questions about this indistinct unity what another question is right on this line if I might if I have press this a little bit further huh the question right reads how does indistinct unity differ from the day if occation of the Saints in which they are raised at the godlike status through their unity in and with Christ well I think I could God use his deification language quite frequently and I think what he would say is that you know the inner meaning of deification is becoming indistinctly one was gone but there's also the process of deification which concerns the outer of the outer person two distinct human being who's using you know the the grace and the sacraments and various other things a car's primary concern though is that people should not forget that and there is a deep level which is always in the depths of the soul in the grunt of the soul where they are one with God and they are one with the word being born from the Father one with the Holy Spirit proceeding from father and son and all and also even one with the ground which is boiling out into the Trinity hard to figure yeah these are difficult difficult concepts oh let go hmm just have to let go a cart is very much in favor of letting go mmm last night in the context of this of this course we would looking at the more technical as you said who the more the technical rational thinking as well as the contemplatively as you said before a carts doing both in a very rigorous way we've had a question about this more technical side of things from para wat if I'm getting the name right they asked his Eckart's attitude towards nature and natural philosophy how does nature fit in for instance within his within his analogy between divine creation create co and human Foxy Oh a cardigan is very unusual because he thinks that philosophy and good theology are one and the same hmm and he says several times of what you read in Scripture and what you read in the Aristotle or one of the same thing if you have the proper understanding so that he says because Aristotle for instance understood the nature of foxy or making Aristotle I really grasped the truth of the trinitarian emanations he's quite different from Thomas Aquinas hmm who has his two levels even what nature can know and what revelation has to give you for a cart that isn't so God is the author both of Scripture and a philosophy and good philosophy can be coherent fully coherent with revelation and he argues that a great detail is more in his Latin works of course hmm so in that way would he be closer to Bonaventure than been to Thomas and in some ways but again there's also difference necklace Bonaventure has two kinds of philosophy Christian philosophy and revealed philosophy if cart doesn't have that distinction ah okay thank you so much we've had several questions about the poem from Gerard Manley Hopkins could you repeat the name of the poem for us I'm not sure I can repeat the name it's it's it's in The Collected Poems ah it's a very short poem I'm not sure he gave it a name okay we'll look it up and maybe we'll post it on our online when we put this on on youtube if you could that would be great wonderful I think we're coming to the end of time professor Bernard I'm again thank you so much this has been quite a quite a heady presentation it's something something really to think about it and swim with thank thank you all thank you all over listening in or looking in and just learn to love that card well professor again on behalf of the lumen christi institute and on behalf of all our other viewers thank you for giving us this deep dive into meister eckhart and I I think the wisdom of both learning to live without a Y and learning to let go is relevant to all of us during this time of sheltering in place and and in this time we're we're all facing the challenges both that we're hearing from the outside world and and the challenges in our own home I want to thank you all for tuning in this week and if you've enjoyed this program and you want to support our work to continue to bring free events like this to you to students and to other viewers you can support our work at WWN Christy org slash donate I'd also invite you to join us next week for actually a student of Professor McGinnes David Albertson who will be who will be teaching us about Nikolas of Cuza next week Bernie do you have a plug for Nikolas of Kooza for those who don't know anything about him hey love that card with good reason well there we are so if you've enjoyed this week and if you've enjoyed Eckhart then tune in next week to learn about another person who loved him as well Bernie thank you once more and have a laugh thanks Michael thanks Robert you [Laughter] [Music]

Channel: Lumen Christi Institute

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Length: 69min 45sec (4185 seconds)

Published: Thu May 28 2020