Passion for Creation

“You should be renewed in your spirit”—the Latin word mens means mind [or spirit]. This is what Saint Paul is saying in Ephesians 4:23.

Now Saint Augustine says that God has made a certain power together with the existence of the soul in that highest part of the soul which is called mens or mind. The teachers call this power a container or shrine of spiritual forms or formlike images (ideas). This power is the foundation of the likeness between the soul and the Father. On the one hand, the Father pours out his divinity in such a way that he gives the entire possession of his divine being to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, with the only distinction being that between the three persons. On the other hand, the memory of the soul pours out the treasure of images into the other powers of the soul. Whenever the soul views something with this power—whether it be the image of an angel or its own image—there is a sense of insufficiency. Even if it were to see God insofar as he is God (as opposed to the Godhead) or insofar as he can be imagined or insofar as he is a threeness, this same insufficiency would be there. But when all images of the soul are taken away and the soul can see only the single One, then the pure being of the soul finds passively resting in itself the pure, form-free being of divine unity, when the being of the soul can bear nothing else than the pure unity of God.

Now Saint Paul says: “You should be renewed in spirit.” Renewal pertains to all creatures under God. God himself, however, needs no renewal but only eternity. What is eternity? Pay attention. Eternity is the peculiarity that being and being young are one. For eternity would not be eternity if it could become new and were not continually the same. I maintain that newness does pertain to the angel and precisely with regard to the angel’s information about future things, for the angel knows about future things only so much as God reveals. The soul too experiences renewal insofar as it is called soul, for the word soul is used with reference to the fact that it gives life to the body and is the form of the body. Renewal pertains to the soul also insofar as it is called spirit And the soul is called spirit because it is separated from the here and now and from everything natural. But in that respect in which the soul is an image of God and is, like God, nameless, there the soul knows no renewal but only eternity, like God.

Now notice this. God is nameless, for no one can know or articulate anything about God. A pagan teacher speaks to this point in saying that what we can know or express about the First Cause is more than anything else what we are than anything that the First Cause is or might be, for it is beyond all expression and understanding. If I were to say that God is good, I would be wrong; it is more correct to say that I am good and God is not good. The point I am making is that I end up saying that I am better than God, because whatever is good can become better and what is better can become best. But God is not good and therefore cannot become better. And because God cannot become better he cannot become best, for all three of these terms—good, better, and best—are far from God’s reality, for he is exalted above everything. If I go on to say that God is wise, it is not true—I am wiser than God. If I further say that God is a being, that is not true. God is a being beyond being and a nothingness beyond being. This is why Saint Augustine says that the most beautiful thing which a person can say about God consists in that person’s being silent from the wisdom of an inner wealth. So be silent and do not flap your gums about God, for to the extent that you flap your gums about God, you lie and you commit sin. If you want to be without sin and perfect, then do not flap your gums about God. Nor should you want to know anything about God, for God is above all knowledge. A teacher says: “If I had a god whom I was able to know, I would never be able to regard him as God.” But if you know something about him, he is nothing of that which you think you know. With this business of knowing about God you run into complete lack of knowledge, and through this you fall into a beastlike state of existence, for that part of a creature which is without knowledge is beastlike. So if you do not want to be a beast, know nothing about that God who is inexpressible in words. And if you ask: “How can I keep myself from doing this?” then I advise you to let your own ‘‘being you” sink into and flow away into God’s “being God.” Then your “you” and God’s, “his,” will become so completely one “my” that you will eternally know with him his changeless existence and his nameless nothingness.

Now Saint Paul says, “You should be renewed in spirit.” If we want to be renewed in spirit, the six powers of the soul, the highest and the lowest, must each have a golden finger ring, gilded with the gold of divine love. Now pay attention. There are three lower powers of the soul. The first is called the power of making distinctions, rationdis; on this power there should be a golden ring, namely, enlightenment. This enlightenment consists in the rational faculty always being enlightened by divine light. The second power is called anger, irascibilis; on this power there should be the golden ring called peace. Why? Insofar as one is in peace, one is in God; insofar as one is outside peace, one is outside God. The third power is called desire, concupiscibilis. On this power you should wear a ring called self-content, so that you can be content with all creatures under God. But you should never be content with what you have of God, for you can never have enough of God. The more you have of God, the more you want of him. If you, in fact, could have enough of God, so that there came about a satiety of God in you, then God would not be God.

You must also have golden rings on the higher powers of the soul. There are also three of these. The first is called the power of retention, memoria. This faculty makes one like the Father in the Trinity. On this power you should have a golden ring called preservation, so that you can preserve in yourself all the eternal things, that is, the eternal ideas of things. The second power is called intellect, intellectus. This power makes one like the Son. On this faculty you should wear the ring which is called knowledge, so that you can always know God. How should you do this? Without image, without mediation, and without likeness. If I am to know God in such an unmediated way, then I must simply be come God and God must become me. I would express it more exactly by saying that God must simply become me and I must become God—so completely one that this “he” and this “I” share one “is” and in this “isness” do one work eternally. For this “he” and this “I”—that is, God and the soul—are very fruitful as they eternally do one work together. But as soon as a single here and now come into the picture—that is, when we are not talking about an eternally timeless and spaceless doing—then already this “I” and this “he” could never do anything together or be one. The third power is called will, voluntas. This faculty makes one like the Holy Spirit. On this faculty you should wear the golden ring which is called love, so that you might love God. You should love God with no regard to his being lovable, that is, not because he is lovable. For God is really not lovable, since he is above all love and lovableness. How then should one love God? You should love God mindlessly, that is, so that your soul is without mind and free from all mental activities, for as long as your soul is operating like a mind, so long does it have images and representations. But as long as it has images, it has intermediaries, and as long as it has intermediaries, it has neither oneness nor simplicity. And therefore your soul should be bare of all mind and should stay there without mind. For if you love God as he is God or mind or person or picture, all that must be dropped. How then shall you love him? You should love him as he is, a not-God, not-mind, not-person, not-image—even more, as he is a pure, clear One, separate from all twoness. And we should sink eternally from something to nothing into this One. May God help us to do this. Amen.

COMMENTARY: The Radical Insufficiency of Language About God/Three Occasions When God Is Not God/Letting Go—a Process of Subtraction That Allows Us to Love God Mindlessly/Reconciliation Within Oneself—the Sign of the New Creation

In the previous sermon Eckhart explored the darkness of the hidden God or the apophatic God. In this sermon he elaborates on the implications of God’s unknown or dark side—namely the apophatic side of God—for our own spiritual journey. In this sermon, therefore, Eckhart explores the via negativa as a way to know God. Indeed, he ends this sermon with a classic statement on what is meant by the via negativa or negative way into God, saying: You should love him as he is, a not-God, not-mind, not-person, not-image—even more, as he is a pure, clear One, separate from all twoness.

The setting for this sermon is the Epistle to the Ephesians, wherein the author talb about the new creature and what will constitute the new man and new woman remade after God’s image. In a previous section of his letter, the writer wrote of “putting on the new person” (2:15) in order to be re-created in Christ, a theme Paul had developed in Galatians: “you have all clothed yourselves in Christ, and there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Ga. 3:28). For Paul as for Eckhart, oneness—a “separation from all twoness”—characterizes God and the children of God. Unity will be a sign of the new creation. So will renewal be such a sign, and renewal as the author of Ephesians saw it forms the textual basis for Eckhart’s present sermon:

I want to urge you in the name of the Lord, not to go on living the aimless kind of life that pagans live. Intellectually they are in the dark, and they are estranged from the life of God, without knowledge because they have shut their hearts to it. Their sense of right and wrong once dulled, they have abandoned themselves to sexuality and eagerly pursue a career of indecency of every kind. Now that is hardly the way you have learnt from Christ, unless you failed to hear him properly when you were taught what the truth is in Jesus. You must give up your old way of life; you must put aside your old self, which gets corrupted by following illusory desires. Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of the truth. (Ep. 4:17–24)

Eckhart’s sermon is an elaboration on how he interprets the “spiritual revolution” that renews the mind and puts on a “new self” fashioned after God’s way.

The first point that Eckhart makes is that to take on God’s mind we must stop projecting onto God our notions of who God is. In doing so, we destroy God. Or, as he puts it, there are three situations in which God would not be God. Each of these situations is of our own choosing—it is we who slay God. The first of these occasions when we destroy God is when we try to name God. We need to reverence the “hidden God” that Eckhart preached about in the previous sermon, for God is nameless and no one can know or articulate anything about God. When we talk about God we are in fact talking about ourselves, for God is beyond all expression and understanding. Language is radically insufficient for naming God. Eckhart demonstrates this with an elaboration of our words, “good,” “better,” “best” and “wise,” “wiser,” “wisest.” In this sense too, God can be said to be not lovable, since he is above all love and lovableness.

If I were to say that God is good, I would be wrong; it is more correct to say that I am good and God is not good. The point I am making is that I end up saying that I am better than God, because whatever is good can become better and what is better can become best. But God is not good and therefore cannot become better. And because God cannot become better he cannot become best, for all three of these terms—good, better, and best—are far from God’s reality, for he is exalted above everything. If I go on to say that God is wise, it is not true—I am wiser than God. If I further say that God is a being, that is not true. God is a being beyond being and a nothingness beyond being.

It is in this sense—namely, that our God talk falls so short of God—and not as a putdown of creation or as a denial of the previous ten sermons we have studied in Path One, that Eckhart says: “All the creatures cannot express God, for they are not receptive of that which he is.”¹ Eckhart swings between the cataphatic (beings are the Word of God) and the apophatic traditions (no being can express God). If “the unfathomable God is without a name,”² what are we to do? Eckhart advises silence.

The most beautiful thing which a person can say about God consists in that person’s being silent from the wisdom of an inner wealth. So be silent and do not flap your gums about God, for to the extent that you flap your gums about God, you lie and you commit sin. If you want to be without sin and perfect, then do not flap your gums about God.

God’s bigness and our language’s puniness demand silence on our part about God. Interestingly enough, this is the first time in twelve sermons that Eckhart has used the word sin. He calls our putting talk about God ahead of silence with God a sin. For such relationships to God are a kind of control over God that all projection is about. To project onto others, especially the divine Other, is to operate from a sinful consciousness, one that lacks reverence for the other. Those who flap their gums about God are sinful.

A second way in which we turn God into a God who would not be God is by imagining that we can know God. To Imagine this is to reduce God to our size. Such a God is not worthy to worship. If I had a god whom I was able to know, I would never be able to regard him as God. God is beyond our knowledge of God and bigger than all our knowledge. This is why God remains a “hidden God.”

But how does one know and love such an unnameable and unknowable God? By letting go or detaching oneself [Abgeschiedenheit] from all images. “God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction.”³ This “process of subtraction” allows us to make contact with the oneness and simplicity that is our knowledge of God, a God already deeply present in US. In this way we make contact with the non-God who is a not-mind, not-person, not-image.

You should love God mindlessly, that is, so that your soul is without mind and hee from all mental activities, for as long as your soul is operating like a mind, so long does it have images and representations. But as long as it has images, it has intermediaries, and as long as it has intermediaries, it has neither oneness nor simplicity. And therefore your soul should be bare of all mind and should stay there without mind.

Loving God mindlessly means loving God without images or intermediaries. It is our unitive act with God, an act of pure intuition and union, not of analysis or of names or knowledge derived from analysis. It is an act of sinking rather than of striving, for the spirit is a vortex or whirlpool, as we have seen in Path One, and to get in touch with the divine depth of the vortex is to sink. We should sink eternally from something to nothing into this One. The oneness of God is the inness of the panentheistic God who sinks into us and into whom we sink. Just as we have seen Eckhart say previously that to “rise up” means to “enter within” (“by sublime I mean innermost”), so here he equates “rising up” with “sinking.” “The spirit should rise up with its whole strength and sink unfettered into its God.”⁴ True letting go of something to pass to nothing—in other words, true sinking—results in the most indescribable union between God and ourselves.

I advise you to let your own “being you” sink into and flow away into God’s “being God.” Then your “you” and God’s, “his,” will become so completely one “my” that you will eternally know with him his changeless existence and his nameless nothingness.

Another reason why we are called to sink into God is that sinking is what God does, and we who are God’s images are to imitate God.

God is being and all being is derived immediately from him. Therefore he alone sinks into the essences of things. All that is not being itself, stands outside, is alien and distinct from the essence of each thing. Moreover, being is more inward to each thing than the essence of the thing itself.⁵

Eckhart is suggesting that the way we get to the essence of anything is by sinking. Those who love each other sink into each other, as in the case of God and us. God and we become one I, one us in such an act of sinking. And from this union, a shared work takes place. We share a common isness and a common fruitfulness.

If I am to know God in such an unmediated way, then I must simply become God and God must become me. I would express it more exactly by saying that God must simply become me and I must become God—so completely one that this “he” and this “I” share one “is” and in this “isness” do one work eternally. For this “he” and this “I”—that is, God and the soul—are very fruitful as they eternally do one work together.

Eckhart explains why, from the point of view of psychology, an act of letting go and sinking and loving God mindlessly effects so total a union with God. He considers the highest part of the soul to be a container of spiritual forms or formlike images (ideas). And this dynamic power forms the very foundation of the likeness between the soul and the Father. In other words, the imago Dei or true likeness between people and the Creator is the very capacity to make images. Eckhart talks of the treasure of images that flow out horn this most divine aspect of our psyches but does not use the word “imagination,” because in medieval Scholasticism imagination did not mean what it means to us today.⁶ Eckhart’s word is mens, which we usually translate in a literal sense as mind but which in this sermon has every right to be translated as creative imagination. Eckhart goes on and comments that, as great as imagination is with its divine capacity for birthing images, nevertheless, even in being creative we experience an insufficiency. In other words, there are times for letting go even of our images. Such times constitute the via negativa and they allow the soul to be true to its deepest self, which, like God, is both nameless and eternally youthful.

When all the images of the soul are taken away and the soul can see only the single One, then the pure being of the soul finds passively resting in itself the pure, form-free being of divine unity, when the being of the soul can bear nothing else than the pure unity of God.

Notice that the soul “finds God passively resting” therein. Thus, the need to let go and sink mindlessly rather than to strive. The knowledge that we are capable of at this level of intuition is possible because of the power called intellect. It affords a direct knowledge of God, without image, without mediation, and without likeness. It is at this level of depth that we become as God is and God as us.

The third way in which we can reduce God to not being God is by imagining that we ever have enough of God. God is too infinite for our desire for God ever to be sated.

You should never be content with what you have of God, for you can never have enough of God. The more you have of God, the more you want of him. If you, in fact, could have enough of God, so that there came about a satiety of God in you, then God would not be God.

Eckhart makes a conscious and deliberate effort to avoid dualisms regarding body, soul, and spirit in this sermon in the via negativa. This is all the more striking since the letter to the Ephesians on which he based this talk is, as we have seen, quite conscious of the sexual license of pagan living, their “pursuing a career of indecency of every kind.” Eckhart resists any temptations to preach on sexual immorality that a lesser preacher might have picked up on. In fact, he does just the opposite. He points out once again that body and soul are not in opposition and that soul and spirit are not synonymous. The renewal of what Ephesians calls the “spiritual revolution” of the new person needs to take place in the soul as it pertains to both body and spirit. One would think that Eckhart, like so many spiritual theologians, would fall into dualism when discussing the so-called “lower powers” of our psyches. But that is not the case. In fact, he invents a gentle image, an image of reconciliation, namely that of a “golden ring” to describe how we are to live in harmony with these energies and not be putting them down in the name of ascetic practices. In talking of concupiscible desires, he says simply: Wear a ring called self-content so that you con be content with all creatures under God. We see in this statement a consistency with Path One of Eckhart’s spiritual journey wherein all creatures are in God and we also see that Eckhart’s perspective on concupiscence is from the point of view of contentment and discontent. He does not want us to be discontent, but he refuses to endorse dualistic methods of controlling desire. He prefers reconciliation, the harmony symbolized by a ring on the finger (cf. p. 221). In this regard he may very well have had at hand a text from Paul that parallels the one he is preaching from. In it Paul elaborates on what attitudes will characterize the new person.

For anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here. It is all God’s work. It was God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the work of handing on this reconciliation. In other words, God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not holding men’s faults against them, and he has entrusted to us the news that they are reconciled. (2 Co. 5:17–19)

Eckhart sets himself the task of “handing on this reconciliation.” It is a reconciliation of creation that begins with a reconciliation in oneself. For the power of reason to make distinctions becomes, by reconciliation, an experience of enlightenment; the power of anger, an experience in peace; the power of desire, an experience in contentment; the power of memory, an experience of the Creator or Father and the goodness of creation; the power of intellect, an experience of knowing God without intermediaries; and the power of will, an experience of love of God. These are the signs of the new creation for Eckhart. They are the way of God that has become our way. They are the fruits of the spirit of letting go and knowing and loving God mindlessly. In this way we enter into a oneness that is a separation from all twoness. Here God can be God once again. And so can we.