Sermon Twenty-eight: WHERE THE SOUL IS, THERE IS GOD

“God is love, and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God in him” (1 Jn. 4:16)^a

God lives in the soul with everything that he and all creatures are. Therefore, where the soul is, there God is, for the soul is in God. Therefore the soul is also where God is unless the Scripture lies. Where my soul is, there is God, and where God is, there my soul is also. And this is as true as God is God.

An angel is so noble in his nature that, if a tiny fragment or a little spark were to fall from him, it would fill this whole world with rapture and bliss. Now listen attentively to how noble an angel is in his nature, and there are, God knows, so many of them that they are countless. I say that everything is aristocratic in an angel. If a human being had to serve until Judgment Day and the end of the world in order to see an angel in all his purity, such a service would have been well rewarded.

With all spiritual things we find that one of them can place itself as undivided inside another. Where the soul is in the purity of its nature, separated from and freed of all creatures, the soul has in its nature and through its nature all the perfection and all the joy and all the rapture that all the angels have, in both quantity and number, through their nature. I have these qualities, whole and entire, with all their perfection and all their joy and all their bliss just as the angels have them. And I have distinguished every angel in myself, just as I have distinguished myself in myself, without the encumbrance of any other creature. For no spirit hinders another spirit. The angel remains unencumbered in his soul. Therefore he surrenders himself to every soul completely, unencumbered by another soul and by God himself. My soul rejoices not only through its nature but also beyond its nature in all the joy and all the bliss in which God himself rejoices through his divine nature, whether happily or unhappily. For only one thing is important there, and where this one thing is, I have everything. Where I have everything there is only one thing. This truth is certain. Where the soul is, God is, and where God is, the soul is also. And if I were to say that it is not so with God, I would be speaking incorrectly.

Truly now, pay attention to a little message I consider very much to the point. I am reflecting on how God is one with me as if he has forgotten all other creatures and as if nothing else existed besides myself. Now make entreaties for those who have been given into my charge! Those who ask for something other than God alone or for God’s sake are asking wrongly. If I ask for nothing, I am asking for what is right, and such a prayer is appropriate and powerful. Whoever asks for anything else is praying to an idol, and we might say that this is pure heresy. I ask for nothing so rightly as when I ask for nothing and for no one—not for Tom, Dick, or Harry. The true men and women of prayer are those who pray to God in truth and in the Spirit, that is, in the Holy Spirit

What God is in his power, we are also in the divine image that is in our soul. What the Father is in his power [potestas] and the Son in his wisdom [sapientia] and the Holy Spirit in his goodness [bonitas], this is what we are in the “image in our souls.” “There we shall know, as we are known,” and we shall love as we are loved. This knowing and being known, this loving and being loved in the “image” of the Trinity in our soul is, however, still not without action. For the soul is preserved in this way in the threefold “image” and functions in the divine power just like that power. The soul is taken up into the divine Persons and conducts itself in accord with the power of the Father, and the wisdom of the Son, and the goodness of the Holy Spirit. Above all this, no being is more efficacious. But there, in the threefold “image” of the soul, there is only being and action. Where the soul is, however, in the single, onefold God in contrast to the threefold Godhead—indeed, in accord with the complete absorption of the Persons into the pure, divine Being—there action and being are one. This is where God is. It is where the soul has taken hold of the Persons in the being that is in God. It is where the Persons have never emerged, and where a perfect image of the essence and the nature of God is found. This is the essential intelligence of God: the pure and unadulterated power of the intellect [intellectus] which the masters of the spiritual life call “receptivity.”

Now listen to me! Only above what I have sought to characterize so far does the soul understand the pure “absoluteness” of a free being, which is without a place where it either receives or gives. It is rather a pure existence that is deprived of all being and all existence. There God grasps the soul strictly according to his divine existence where he is above all other being. If there still existed a soul in its being, this soul would receive its being in the absolute being. For there is nothing else there but one absolute existence. This is the highest perfection of the spirit to which we can attain in this earthly life in a spiritual way, that is, without the body. But this purely spiritual comprehension of God in our earthly life is not the highest perfection that we shall possess in the hereafter with our body and soul in such a way that our bodily person will be completely possessed by the personal being that is God. In the same way, humanity and divinity are one personal being in the person of Christ. In the same act of being possessed by God I am completely my own person by denying my personal understanding of self according to which in a spiritual way I am a unit according to the essence of my soul, just as the divine essence is one essence. And thus I remain the same person according to my bodily being, which is totally deprived of my own basis of support.

This personal union of God and humanity grows and hovers completely above the bodily individual, so that the latter can never reach it. Relying on himself or herself, the individual receives indeed from his or her person sweetness, consolation, and spiritual depth in various ways, which is a good experience. It is, however, not the highest experience. If the bodily individual were to remain thus within himself or herself, unsupported by God, the spiritual individual would have to turn aside from the essence in which he or she is one with the divine essence, even though he or she might receive consolation from grace and the cooperation of grace. But this is still not the highest experience. And the spiritual individual would have to conduct himself or herself according to the being full of grace by which he or she is bound. On this account the spirit can never become perfect unless body and soul are perfect. Just as the spiritual individual falls away from his or her own being in a spiritual way if he or she becomes one essence with the divine essence, in the same way the bodily individual would have to be deprived of his or her own substance in order to be completely of one substance with the eternal being-God—who is a person in himself.

Now there are in this connection two kinds of being. One being according to divinity is the pure essence of Christ. The other is the personal being of Christ. Yet both are one and the same substance or personality. Since the same substance of Christ’s personality as the bearer of Christ’s eternal humanity is also the substance of our soul, and since Christ is one in himself and in his personal substance, we must also be the same Christ, imitating him in his actions just as in his being he is one Christ in his humanity. For since I am the same type as Christ according to my humanity, I am so united to Christ’s personal being that I am through grace one with Christ in his person and I remain also my own person. Since Christ is eternally present in the essence of the Father and since I am in him as one essence and as the same Christ who is a bearer of my own humanity, both my humanity and Christ’s humanity are in one substance of the eternal being. Thus both beings—the being of the body and of the soul—are made perfect in the one Christ as one God and one Son.

May the Holy Trinity help us to experience all this I Amen.

COMMENTARY:  Our Inness with God Is a Oneness with God/How All Saintly Beings Who Share This Inness Celebrate Together/Where Action and Being Become One/The Union of Humanity and Divinity That Christ Demonstrates to Us Who Are Other Christs

Eckhart explores more deeply what our inness with God is about in this sermon, which is based on the following passage from John’s First Epistle:

We can know that we are living in him

and he is living in us

because he lets us share his Spirit.

We ourselves saw and we testify

that the Father sent his Son

as saviour of the world.

If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God,

God lives in him, and he in God.

We ourselves have known and put our faith in

God’s love toward ourselves.

God is love

and anyone who lives in love lives in God,

and God lives in him.

Love will come to its perfection in us

when we can face the day of Judgment without fear;

because even in this world

we have become as he is. (1 Jn. 4:13–17)

What does it mean to say that we “live in God” and that in this world we “have become as he is”? These are questions that Eckhart pursues in this sermon. The first thing it means, according to Eckhart, is what it says. God is utterly transparent and because no spirit hinders another spirit we can be in God and God in us at the same time. This union is so real that, unless the Scripture lies, we must say that where the soul is, there God is. Where my soul is, there is God, and where God is, there my soul is also. So taken was Eckhart with this description that he repeats it in this same sermon: This truth is certain. Where the soul is, God is, and where God is, the soul is also. He repeats an almost identical saying in another sermon when he says: “Where I am, God is; thus I am in God, and where God is, I am there . . . Wherever I am, there is God. This is the pure truth and is as truly true as God is God.”¹ He repeats the same formula on another occasion: “Wherever God is, the soul is, and wherever the soul is, God is.”²

What is so clear in these statements and what is so significant to Eckhart is their panentheistic implications. He destroys and insists on destroying all subject/object thinking about God and us. God is not out there, above here, below here, or far from here. Very simply, where we are, God is; where God is, we are. So transparent is our unity with God that Eckhart says “the eye in which I see God is the same eye in which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are one eye and one seeing and one knowing and one loving.”³ Our oneness with God is very real and very transparent, as in the seeing that eyes do. In this sense he can say that “our truest I is God.”⁴ He also suggests that our ears are God’s ears and vice versa when he talks of our being the Word of God. We can

dwell in eternity, and dwell in the spirit, and dwell in unity, and in the desert, and there [we] hear the eternal Word . . . In the eternal Word, that which hears is the same as that which is heard. All that the eternal Father teaches is his being and his nature and all his Godhead. He reveals this fully to us in his only begotten Son, and he teaches us that we are the same Son.⁵

Indeed, we have “become as he is” in this indescribable unity. Eckhart searches for metaphors for this unity—it is one that makes God forget all but us: I am reflecting on how Cod is one with me as if he has forgotten all other creatures and as if nothing else existed besides myself. It is the highest spiritual experience to be one with God in this way, though after death we will be completely possessed by the personal being that is God. In this unity we apprehend “God in his wilderness and in his own ground.” Such a union is the greatest union there is, save for that of the Three Persons in God.⁶ It is greater than that of body with soul. “The soul is much more closely united with God than body and soul, which form one person. This union is much closer than that of a drop of water poured into a barrel of wine. It would be water and wine, yet they would be so transformed into one that no creature could discover the difference.”⁷ Such a union is a divine touch received and given. The soul “receives a kiss from the Godhead” and

is embraced by unity. In the first touch with which God touched the soul and still touches it as uncreated and unbeatable, the soul is as noble as God himself is, as a result of God’s touch. God touches it as he does himself.⁸

Immersed in the divine inness, we are embraced and touched and kissed by unity itself. Indeed, “it is for this very union that God made human beings.”⁹

One result of this union between God and us is a kind of divine joy and celebration. For where the Father begets the Son, joy reigns.

God speaks into the soul and expresses himself completely in the soul. There the Father begets his Son and he has such great joy in the Word and has, moreover, such great bliss that he never ceases to speak eternally the Word that is beyond time.¹⁰

The Word spoken and begotten is a Word of joy, divine joy. We celebrate and share the divine joy that is ours too in our adopted divinity. My soul rejoices not only through its nature but also beyond its nature in all the joy and all the bliss in which God himself rejoices through his divine nature, whether happily or unhappily. We rejoice because only one thing is important, and we have that one thing. Where I have everything there is only one thing . . . Where the soul is, God is, and where God is, the soul is a/so. Nor is our joy limited to the divine joy in God. It extends to the divine joy that embraces all creatures, angels included. Just a tiny spark from an angel’s being could fill this whole world with rapture and bliss. And yet we can participate with such beings not by tiny sparks alone but by our shared inness in God and in one another. In such a communion of saintly beings, the soul has in its nature and through its nature all the perfection and all the joy and all the rapture that all the angels have, in both quantity and number, through their nature. This communion of saints is a communion of shared perfection and shared joy. I have all these qualities, whole and entire, with all their perfection and all their joy and all their bliss just as the angels have them.

When we are in God and the divine image that is in our soul is allowed to become what it is, then we share the qualities of the Persons of God. We share the power of the Father, the wisdom of the Son, and the goodness of the Holy Spirit Indeed, this is what we are in the “image in our souls.” We become the Trinity in action, ushering power, wisdom, and goodness into human history. Indeed, it is absolutely essential to Eckhart’s theology that this Trinitarian union bear fruit in action. In this instance Eckhart alludes to Paul’s hymn of charity, where he insists that without love all other gifts are void. Eckhart refers to the conclusion of that hymn when he says, “there we shall know, as we are known,” and we shall love as we are loved. Paul had written: “The knowledge that I have now is imperfect; but then I shall know as fully as I am known” (1 Co. 13:12). Eckhart elaborates, much in the spirit of Paul’s hymn to charity: This knowing and being known, this loving and being loved in the “image” of the Trinity in our soul is, however still, not without action. Why must action be so integral a part of our union with the Divinity? Because it is so integral a part of Divinity! Divinity is not just being, it is being diffusing itself, it is power, wisdom, and goodness pouring forth on the world. There action and being are one. And so, where the soul is, there is only being and action. This is where God is—where action and being are one. Eckhart is calling for a revitalized form of action, one that truly flows from our being; but he insists that being without action is not true divine being. If we are “to be as he is,” our action and our being must become one. Action is the key to Eckhart’s mysticism—so long as it is action that flows from our being. This distinguishes his mysticism from many species of quietistic spiritualities that have held sway in the West since his day. Indeed, Eckhart takes it for granted that action is part of being in God. “The soul dissolved into God and God into the soul. And whatever the soul then does it does in God.”¹¹ The issue is not to stop acting, but to make sure that our actions, like our being, are in God. Our union with God means that we become God’s tools—God is our overseer—as we do God’s work.

Human beings are the tools of God, and a tool accomplishes things according to the nobility of the overseer . . . The effect of grace is not enough for the soul because the soul is a creature. It must rather reach the point where God accomplishes things in his own nature, where the overseer accomplishes things according to the nobility of the tool . . . The soul is united with God and embraced by God, and grace escapes the soul so that it now no longer accomplishes things with grace but divinely in God. Thus the soul is in a wonderful way enchanted and loses itself.¹²

Union reaches its fullness when things are accomplished “divinely in God.” The soul now functions in the divine power just like that power. The union and rest with the Trinity are not introverted or narcissistic but outward-oriented. The soul conducts itself in accord with the power of the Father, and the wisdom of the Son, and the goodness of the Holy Spirit. Above all this no being is more efficacious. And, in the intimacy of this union, we learn that there, there is only being and action. Pure being becomes pure action; pure action flows from pure being. This union of divine being and divine action will form the basis of Eckhart’s theology of work, which we will see in greater detail in Path Four.

Eckhart points out in the present sermon that we have Christ as a model of our union with divine being and with divine works. Indeed, we are to do more than use Christ as a model; we are ourselves other Christs, sons and daughters of God, meant to imitate his union and his work. We must also be the same Christ, imitating him in his actions just as in his being he is one Christ in his humanity. For just like Christ, we bear both humanity and divinity in us. A resurrected person experiences that he or she is completely possessed by the personal being that is God. In the same way, humanity and divinity are one personal being in the person of Christ. It is by grace that we are other Christs in this life. I am so united to Christ’s personal being that I am through grace one with Christ in his person and I remain also my own person. Eckhart does not find it necessary to destroy the individual personality of a person who becomes a child of God, another Christ. We share Christ’s personal being as the bearer of Christ’s eternal humanity. But because his personal and human being is related to his divine being because it is all one substance in God, and since we too are united in God, we share with Christ his divine origin in God.

This Trinitarian theology is not meant to be idle speculation for academic experts—it is experiential or it is nothing. May the Holy Trinity help us to experience all this, Eckhart prays at the conclusion of his sermon. For we are, as John said, “to know that we are living in him and he is living in us.” This knowledge, which is a kind of tasting, is for all.