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Meister Eckhart Home / Works by Meister Eckhart - Quotes / Inspired by Eckhart / Studies / The Papal Condemnation / Mail & Announcements / Links / Books |
Page 5
It is true that the ultimate end of union with God in contemplation, or in the surrender of the will to the Divine Love, still somehow always involves a certain loss of selfhood in God. In this respect Dante himself found it difficult to preserve the distinction. There can, however, be no doubt that mysticism intends to maintain the elevation, salvation, and deification of the true and genuine centre of personality. The whole mystical idea itself is indeed at the service of a personal living piety, of an "interior life" which has a direct experience of salvation. This fact, together with the relation between the inner working of the Spirit and the stimulation, heightened power, and intensification which come from history (which was somehow always maintained), distinguishes this Christian mysticism from its ancient foundation of Neo-Platonism, quite apart from the fact that the Trinitarian-Christological doctrine was retained and interpreted in this sense. Read Complete
The notion of a union of wills remains central to the theological articulation of mystical experience throughout the Middle Ages. Yet there is a counter-trend, one first visible in northern Europe in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries (although there is evidence for similar views espoused contemporaneously south of the Alps). The beguines Hadewijch (c. 1250) and Marguerite Porete (d. 1310) and the Dominican Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1328) suggest that complete union with God occurs when the soul not only overcomes its sinfulness, but also its very creatureliness or createdness. Hadewijch hints at this view in a vision in which an angel shows her an ideal, 'full grown' Hadewijch who is enclosed within the deity and who has never fallen into sin. Marguerite Porete goes further, arguing that the truly free and annihilated soul – one who has not only overcome her own sin and will, but who has also destroyed reason, will and desire – exists there 'where she was before she was'. Read Complete
